what is the meaning of jesus in an increasingly secular age?
That’s a good question because it underlies the five books I’ve chosen and it’s behind the discussion of the last 200 to 300 years. by increasingly secular, we mean pluralistic. there is a wide variety of beliefs: many people are not religious and many people are not Christian. still, many people are christians. The meaning of Jesus is meant to be different for Christians and non-Christians. Furthermore, Christians in the modern world will see it differently, in some ways, from Christians of 300 years ago. what their meaning is is a big question that keeps coming up and it’s in between the lines of everything else we say about these books. meaning means meaning to whom?
You are reading: Best books on jesus
“christ is the greek word for messiah. the Hebrew word ‘mashiach’ means anointed. so ‘christ’ means the one anointed by god.”
Generally speaking, both sides and all centuries have agreed that he is a historical figure, a 1st century Jew from Galilee, who was baptized by John the Baptist, who had a ministry of teaching and healing. gathered disciples around him and spoke to the multitudes of god —and thus how to live— through parables and wisdom sayings, emphasizing the closeness of god and the imminence of god’s rule already operative in his messianic activity, transforming the world , repairing the broken and broken. soon to be consummated by the creator god who loves this good creation. It is also generally accepted that he was arrested and executed by the Roman governor from AD 26 to 36, Pontius Pilate. that is common ground whether one is a believer or not.
In terms of how Christians see it, that historical way of seeing things has now affected the way they see it too. some see him in the traditional way, like a stained glass window, others as an extraordinary human being. the important thing is whether or not you believe that it reveals god. that is the real dividing line, not whether he performed miracles or to what extent his moral teaching is useful today, or how christians can understand the central mystery of his faith: his vindication by god and his risen presence with and in god, and by his spirit, in the world.
I was going to ask you who he was, but maybe you already answered that?
yes and no. who was he and who is he? he was that historical figure that we know a certain amount about. For believers, he is a living presence through which they believe they are in relationship with God. so his relationship with god, which was important to him, is also important to those who today call themselves his followers. the question ‘who was he?’ emphasizes the historical question. That’s a natural way of looking at it, for us today, in a way that it wasn’t a few hundred years ago, but for Christians it remains subservient to the question of God, which they abbreviate with the doctrine of his divinity. /p>
He has many names: Jesus, Jesus of Nazareth, the Galilean, the Messiah, Christ. what does christ mean?
christ is the greek word for messiah. the Hebrew word ‘mashiach’ means anointed. so ‘christ’ means the one anointed by god. It’s a way for his followers to say that he was a special agent of god, rather than a prophet and teacher, which clearly he was too.
but did he call himself the messiah?
He probably didn’t call himself the messiah, perhaps because that could easily be misconstrued in a political way. he was not trying to be a revolutionary, overthrowing the Romans, which was what some Jews at the time wanted. so he may have avoided the word. Whether during his lifetime or immediately after, it is clear that at the time of his death, some of his people regarded him as a messiah, having come to the end of the current age as God’s representative or agent. then, in a very short time, a few months or years, he had become another name. we say jesus christ. But Jesus also remains ‘the Christ (of Israel)’, a designation that shows the religious significance of him.
so, if he had called himself ‘messiah’, would it have denoted that he wanted to overthrow the Romans?
no, because the word messiah has a variety of meanings. Many Jews hoped for a son of David, that is, a royal figure, who would rescue the nation from Roman imperialism. others understood that prophets and priests were anointed by god. contemporaries viewed jesus as a prophet, and he accepted that description while claiming a greater intimacy with god his father, or abba. some Christians also considered him a priest, although he was not of priestly descent like Caiaphas. they saw him as a mediating figure, putting them in relationship with god.
Then the Romans would not have been opposed to the word messiah?
The Romans would have seen crowds welcoming him as messiah as a political threat. so the notice on the cross, ‘jesus of nazareth, king of the jews’ meant messiah, a warning to the population about where the power was.
what about nazareth vs. galilee?
nazareth is the village where he grew up in galilee, the whole area being galilee.
And Bethlehem?
bethlehem is to the south, near jerusalem, where, according to legend, he was born, because some of the prophets hoped that the messiah would be born in that city of david. David was a thousand years earlier, the greatest Israelite king. it was later hoped that he would have a successor from his line.
Let’s move on to these books you’ve chosen. you mentioned as we were walking here that you had read over 200 books about jesus.
That’s an estimate. There are dozens of historical books about Jesus and thousands of articles, hundreds of theological books and thousands of religious books. there are also dozens of scholarly books on each of the four gospels. I have read enough in my life. . .
why is jesus important to you?
He is the key to my belief in god. I believe in God, the mystery that can only be known if somehow God makes it come true. I think that has happened in the Judeo-Christian tradition, as in other places. Jesus is the central figure after centuries of preparation, and followed by 2,000 years of effects or follow-up. Jesus himself is for Christians the focus of God revealing himself to the world and putting the world in order. as a historical figure he too is of legitimate interest to anyone. it is not just what Christians make of it that matters today. and even Christians may wonder how much we know about him beyond what we think of him religiously.
Shall we start with Rudolf Bultmann’s book? this one is quite short, so if people don’t have a lot of time, it could be a good option. Its title in English is Jesus and the Word, and it dates from 1926.
rudolf bultmann was the greatest new testament theologian of the 20th century. he was an exegete, classicist and historian, but also a theologian. he was a professor of theology relating what he knew as a historian to what he believed as a Christian. the reason i chose it, in a book that is now 90 years old and therefore somewhat outdated (it was written before the dead sea scrolls were discovered in 1947), is that i was writing after 60-odd years of people writing many lives of Jesus. what he’s saying is, ‘that’s not the point.’ A positivist historical picture of Jesus misses the point about him, and misses the point about the story as well. history is about an encounter with the past, it is not just a description. it is about our own relationship with the past, our identity. So when he was asked to write another historical book about Jesus, he agreed, but figured he’d try to write one that communicated some sense of why Jesus was important to him.
He saw his own writing of history as a dialogue with history, and his own apprehension of Jesus as confronting him with a decision about the meaning of his life, God, and the world. so he’s written a book that has included what we know about the jesus story, but somehow gives you an idea of what it means to him.
what does it mean to him?
He is not interested in the brute facts of Jesus’ life. of course, jesus was crucified and that is at the heart of things, but bultmann skirts the whole dogmatic structure of the christian faith. he is saying, ‘here is someone or something that confronts me with a decision about my life and how I understand myself’. to be a believer is to understand oneself in a particular way, in relation to the transcendent. the proclamation of god of jesus or the kingdom of god and the will of god, about how we should live, communicates some of that and says ‘this is about you: are you going to agree to this and become a disciple or a follower? or you’re just going to look at it from a historical distance and say, “That’s interesting.” ‘
here is a passage from the book that I found intriguing: “we are used to distinguish between the physical or sensual life and the mental or spiritual. the life of the spirit is the meaning of existence… this is completely foreign to the teaching of Jesus.” in translation, ‘soul’ or ‘spirit’ simply means life. so when jesus says, “what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses his soul?” (Mark 8:36) All that “loses his soul” means is “dies.”
many of bultmann’s comments take aim at people who have written before him. That particular saying of Jesus, one of which he probably said, is interesting. The Greek word that we translate as soul, that is, psyche, appears 500 to 600 times in the Greek Old Testament as a translation of ‘nefesh’, which means life. so you could read it as if jesus said, ‘what’s the point if you have everything and then you drop dead?’ that is a common sense interpretation. but later, when it was translated into Greek as ‘soul’, it took on new levels of meaning. you have all these material possessions but you lose your personal integrity or your true self. it is useless and pointless. that secondary meaning is also true, and deeper. It shows what happens to some of Jesus’ sayings as they are transmitted in people’s thinking about God and the world.
so, the distinction between body and soul appears only with discards? Or was it always part of the Christian tradition?
it is part of the Greek tradition and therefore comes to Christianity quite early. with discards and the modern world a sharp mind/body dualism is obtained again. some people think that has marred all of modern philosophy, and thus much of modern theology as well. going back to the bible is partly a way of getting away from that kind of sharp dualism and saying, ‘no, the greek idea that the body is just a tomb and the real self is the soul, is bad.’ bodies and to understand ourselves we have to recognize that. that’s much closer to biblical ways of thinking about it.
looking at jesus as a historical figure, one of the books mentions that the first mention of him in secular literature comes only in the 2nd century, in a tacit form. so where does all our knowledge of him come from?
believers. Tacitus, Pliny the Younger, and Suetonius reflect what is widely known to exist and the testimony of their followers.
You mentioned the Dead Sea Scrolls. what did they add in terms of our knowledge of jesus? do they mention it?
no they don’t. they greatly add to our knowledge of a branch of sectarian Judaism at the time. Some people think that John the Baptist may have had some contact with this monastic sect at Qumran, near the Dead Sea. but they were in the south, so it is unlikely that jesus, in the north, in galilee, would have had much contact with them, and his teaching was different. they had their own founder, the “teacher of justice” who died 150 years earlier. his community at qumran by the dead sea was annihilated by the romans in the jewish war. but there were many essenes living in other places and some of them probably became followers of jesus. for example, some people think that the writer of the fourth gospel may have been an Essene.
We know a lot about Judaism from the Old Testament and later Jewish writings. The entire New Testament is written in Greek, and it contains our main sources of historical knowledge of Jesus. having some writings in hebrew and aramaic, some of that sect, allows us to know more about the judaisms of the time of jesus and helps us to build historical images of jesus. that’s what’s so cool, when we get to that, about gerd theissen’s book, his use of these. Bultmann couldn’t offer as much here because he was writing 20 years before the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered, and his approach was different.
Was Judaism dividing into different sects at the time?
do not break. there were simply different points of view, and different sects and groupings: Pharisees, Sadducees, Essenes, fanatics. some became followers of jesus, seeing him as the messiah.
And Christians?
The followers of Jesus first became a messianic sect within Judaism. looking for a messiah they think they have found him. other Jews were looking for a messiah but did not think they had found one.
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And Islam?
Islam was founded about 600 years later.
Also what I found interesting was that “love of god and neighbor” was part of rabbinic teaching at the time. I associated it more uniquely with Jesus.
is a direct quote from deuteronomy 6: listen, israel. . . love god with all your heart, soul, and strength—and from leviticus 19, love your neighbor as yourself. but your neighbor is primarily your fellow Jew. jesus apparently said love your enemies too. that was amazing. also, putting in the center the love of God and the love of neighbor. you can get the combination in a Jewish text, but it’s not typical. loving your enemy is very atypical, some Jews would say. so you’re right to focus on that as the heart of the matter, but of course he’s a Jew. Jesus is fully Jewish and his relationship to other Palestinian Jews is therefore a crucial question about him.
let’s move on to the second book you’ve chosen, albert schweitzer’s quest for the historical jesus. this is from 1906.
Yes, this book is almost 120 years old, but I would put it at the top of my list of classics. the reason i chose it is because it’s mostly about what other people have made of jesus. i think getting to jesus through what other people have made of him is the best way to do it. If I were writing a book about Jesus, this is how I would do it, and the way Schweitzer did it is wonderful. then he gives his own account of jesus, which is partly wrong i think. But that does not matter. it’s still bright, thought-provoking and exciting. And he’s also a childhood hero: he was the medical missionary in Africa from 1913 to 1965. We were raised to admire him.
so go through the historiography, looking at how some 19th century scholars looked at jesus.
yes, and a rather earlier one. Reimarus died in 1768 and was published in part by Lessing in 1774-8. liberal theologians disliked dogma or doctrine, even though the gospels themselves are interpretations. they wanted to come after them to jesus as he really was. but they can only give their own interpretations. even their own historical accounts of how they believe he really was are interpretations. Schweitzer argued that they were reading too many of their own nineteenth-century perspectives on the teachings of Jesus. schweitzer says, ‘no. Jesus was totally, utterly, completely different. he was more like nietzsche’s superman. he was waiting for the end of the world and he was dead wrong. That is an oversimplification of what Jesus thought about the future. everyone else’s schweitzer accounts are wonderful, but i don’t buy his own reconstruction. someone has to make a schweitzer in schweitzer himself.
and your schweitzer on schweitzer would focus on jesus saying the end of the world was near…
is what that could mean is hard to get. I think Schweitzer was overly influenced by some newly discovered apocalyptic writings in the 19th century, and said, “Jesus must have been like that.” I am quite clear that Jesus was not like that. although one or two sayings sound a bit like that, overall jesus is much more of a prophet and a teacher of wisdom. this nightmarish, doomsday scenario like the one in the book of revelation is actually quite far removed from my mental image of jesus. but that may be because i imagine the jesus i love and want to follow.
so, for you, jesus is someone who teaches what?
points us to god. jesus was all about god. being about god means being about the meaning of life, about what the world is like and our moral responsibilities, to save the planet and love our neighbor. it has a very strong ethical or moral dimension. it also has a strong future hope, because what we think about the world and god has to do with how we think about the future.
Does Jesus prophesy a lot?
yes, it does a little bit. schweitzer notices that he said, which i don’t think jesus actually said, in matthew 10, “you shall not have passed through the cities of israel before the kingdom of god come.” Like a number of sayings in the Gospels, I think it reflects a slightly later perspective of some people who expected that end very soon, as Paul did. The reason historical images of Jesus differ is that we disagree to some extent on which sayings he actually said and which he didn’t.
that’s what I found fascinating in several of these books, the author says “jesus is quoted saying x”. He would never have said that!’ The authors seem to have a strong opinion about what he said and what he didn’t say.
yes, and of course they are just judgments of probability. we can’t be sure. Like the rest of them, I have opinions about what he said and what he probably didn’t say.
what is the most significant saying for you, of those he said?
I would find it very difficult to choose one. I would choose about 30-40, including the ones you chose. the commandment of love is certainly central. attitudes toward material possessions are important. the sermon on the mount contains many things that he said and one or two things that he probably didn’t say. would include most of the Sermon on the Mount. Although we do not have much information about his personality, we do have an idea of the human figure that has been an icon for Christians ever since. most people agree that he was a good man and that he was unjustly executed. i think he probably saw his execution as following what god wanted of him. His selfless love inspired others to live that way.
I’m still not clear why it was executed. Did the Romans feel threatened by him?
probably, or because people get excited.
And the Jews didn’t have much to do with it.
the Jews as a whole didn’t, no. But how much did the high priest Caiaphas make is a good question. I think he was probably helped by one of the 12 inner group disciples to make the arrest possible away from the crowd. you have a Roman occupation army with very volatile people who think it shouldn’t be there. they always have to monitor the political situation and rely on the local puppets, like the high priest, the aristocracy, to control things. hundreds of thousands of people come to jerusalem at easter, there is a risk of riots. you can read all about this in josephus history of the jewish war. naturally they would be nervous and what st. the gospel of john says that caiaphas’ thought—we need to get him out otherwise we’ll have problems with the romans—might actually be like that. but clearly his crucifixion was a Roman decision and carried out by Romans. the idea that jews killed jesus is a grotesque libel.
hear that people usually end up believing what their parents believe, so someone born in syria is likely to be muslim, brits are probably church of england. I’m dutch so maybe it’s predictable. I have come to think of myself as a humanist. What I find interesting about Jesus is that there is much in this teaching that is attractive to a non-believer.
Yes, I agree. I thought you were going to say that being Dutch you were a Calvinist. I would say that the church of england has a lot of humanism and jesus has a lot of humanism in his teaching. thomas jefferson’s bible, which are the parts he liked, is generally good humanism. So yes, there has to be common ground in terms of moral values between Christianity and many other people. but, at the end of the day, it is what you make of god that ultimately decides and what you make of god is also what you make of yourself and the world, at least if the believer is well informed about what the tradition. means.
so it’s not about ethics.
That’s part, but it’s not the only part. and it’s ethical in a different context, and takes on a different flavor, from being in a religious context. the sense of wonder is basic to religion, and in that sense many humanists are probably more religious than they realize. ethics and philosophical ethics may be discussing moral principles without much sense of wonder about why a world exists. ethics doesn’t have to be religious, but ethics often has been.
Your third choice of book is once again from a German. why are there so many germans on your list?
It is because I have opted for the classics and until recently the Germans have been the great pioneers.
how did that happen?
was 18th century illustration. In France, it was often anti-religious or anti-Catholic. In Germany Enlightenment was quite religious and quite Protestant and therefore German theology, like German philosophy, took Enlightenment early on, and a large part of German academic theology became infused with the beliefs and values of the illustration. In the early 18th century, English deists pioneered criticism of the Bible and dogma, but by the 19th century all the leaders were German or German-influenced. That went on until about 1970 or so. With a few exceptions, only in the last 40 years have Roman Catholics and Americans made significant contributions.
Weren’t German theologians in danger of getting into trouble?
some did, but generally not. unlike roman catholicism, there was no mechanism to kick you out if you were a critic of the bible. the conservative side of the German church was hostile to biblical criticism. but the German theological faculties in the state universities had a certain independence while being closely linked to the provincial churches. theologians were able to follow the evidence as they saw it. they were divided into different schools, but the radicals were allowed to publish books and teach students who later became clerics. therefore, the German church as a whole was open to biblical criticism earlier than the church in England.
To be a New Testament scholar, do you need to know German? than other languages
If you don’t know German, you miss out on a lot of things that haven’t been translated, which is great. Greek is your starting point, because the New Testament is written in Greek. but the old testament is mostly written in hebrew, so you must know hebrew too. Aramaic is tricky, because we don’t know much about 1st-century Aramaic, and experts sometimes disagree.
Is it Aramaic what Jesus himself spoke?
yes, probably. most people in palestine at that time would be speaking aramaic. Jesus could have understood some Greek, and he would have understood Hebrew. but it was the hellenistic age, greek was the lingua franca and a few kilometers from nazareth there were greek villages. so jesus would have heard greek and a couple of his disciples have greek names: andrew and philip. Latin, not so much: Roman authorities would have spoken Greek as well as Latin.
okay, this book number 3 is called the shadow of the galileo and it’s by gerd theissen. I’m in the middle of it, I haven’t finished it yet, but I’m totally hooked. I’m constantly flipping back to read what’s in the footnotes, which is a definite first for me for any book on anything.
I have chosen this book from a contemporary. I met him even before he was a teacher, when he was teaching in a school and writing this book. he is the most creative biblical scholar of my generation, so he had to be on this list. the particular book I have chosen is amazing. Jesus never appears, he is just the shadow of the Galilean. is to reach the truth of Jesus through a novel. but it is absolutely loaded with scholarship and theological reflection. some of the studies you will see in the footnotes. but those who know what to look for will also see layers of theological reflection there. it’s a wonderful book that one can go back to and read at different levels. It is a book that I put in everyone’s hand when I have the opportunity.
tell me more about what it is about.
is a short novel about someone who was forced by the roman authorities to spy on jesus, to see if he really represents a danger to them. in the course of that, it says a lot about the Judaism of that period and about the political situation between the Romans and the Jews. theissen also manages to fuel some of the apocalyptic, the nightmares.
It’s the hint that I like. Anyone who gives a direct portrait of Jesus is probably looking in part at himself in the mirror. trying to get to him through an indirect method, of which this book is the clearest example, actually captures some things that a pure biography might miss. everything theissen writes is creative.
what can be missing in a biography?
biographies vary, but they try to give the meaning of the person. where the meaning of the person is essentially religious, it is very difficult to describe directly. An image of the external story of Jesus does not reach the interiority of everything. attending to another by reflecting on him can bring out more of the interiority of what is happening in jesus, who christians call god. From the outside picture, a number of important facts are quite clear. But even when everyone agrees that a central theme was Jesus proclaiming the Kingdom of God, God ruling, God in charge, how Jesus understands that remains elusive. so I like to get different people’s perspectives on that and then make my own decision. but you have to be historically informed to do it responsibly. the thing about gerd theissen is that he is a very good historian. he is also a brilliant preacher. the book originated from a teacher who entertained children as well as informed them.
is that why you haven’t written a book about jesus yet, because it’s hard to write?
to write something really good, yes. any new testament scholar can write a book on jesus, it goes with the sod. you wouldn’t be competent if you couldn’t. but writing a good book about jesus is hard. I’m still trying. I’ve always been interested in the history of bible interpretation as a way of understanding what it’s all about.
In a way, for me, reading these books you picked out the other night, it felt like I was interacting with 2,000 years of history.
that’s become a big industry now, the story of the reception of the bible: what people have made of it. When I was a student in Germany we spent a lot of time on the history of interpretation, but that tended to be what theologians thought about it. now we are saying, ‘let’s also see what the artists and the novelists and the musicians and the poets have done’. all of that is part of the impact of jesus, and the impact is just as important as how it all started. but how it all started is a good way to check which parts of the shock are authentic and which are not.
let’s talk about your fourth option, raymond brown is the birth of the messiah.
I put raymond brown for two small reasons and one big reason. the little reasons are that it would be monstrous not to have a Roman Catholic, because there are so many good biblical scholars now. I also needed to have an American, because in the last 40 years, Americans have been the most productive in writing about Jesus. I wish it had been a woman because then I would also have a woman writer: I’m afraid these books are all by white men, and three of them are dead. but, more importantly, I wanted to include a comment. the reason i wanted a comment is that the four best books on jesus are called matthew, mark, luke, and john.
Of the hundreds of comments, I chose this one because it is Christmas, the story that is told at the beginning of the Gospel of Matthew and Luke. This book is a commentary on those two chapters in Matthew and two chapters in Luke. brown was an exegete. that means he is trying to say what the texts say. he’s not so much saying, ‘we can’t know what happened: there’s almost no story in the birth narratives’, he’s trying to get to the meanings of the text. that’s what’s important.
why is it important to include a comment?
a commentary addresses the difficulties that a reader is likely to encounter in the biblical text, difficulties that are not only historical but also hermeneutical and have to do with the religious or theological meaning: what is it about. some comments don’t add much to it, but ray brown adds a lot.
just to clarify: you are dealing with the fact that the stories of the birth of jesus, which only appear in matthew and luke, are often ignored by theologians as silly in a post-enlightenment age, with their exotic wizards. , a birth star, angelic messages and a virgin birth. He writes, “The stories do not have the same historical value as the stories of Jesus’ ministry.” but he still thinks they have enormous value, doesn’t he?
There is very little history there, except that Jesus was born. in some place. and his mother was maria. I’m not sure about his father, we don’t know. presumably joseph was dead when jesus grew up, since he does not appear. however, these stories are full of deep religious as well as theological meaning. they are important for that. furthermore, they have fed on tradition in many different ways. Many Christians have thought they were a simple fact, which cannot be correct, given the contradictions between Matthew and Luke. but they are there in the creed, so they are part of the Christian doctrine and therefore it is important to reflect on them.
As a Catholic priest, Brown wants to say how these texts relate to Catholic doctrine, especially what Catholics believe about Mary. what really happened, I guess he doesn’t know, but he’s very cautious and reverently agnostic about it. he doesn’t want to upset people by saying, “it’s a bunch of crap!” he doesn’t think it’s a bunch of crap. me neither.
Christmas is a big part of how people participate in Christianity!
That’s the Christmas story. How much of that depends on historical reality? except that jesus was born and that jesus was important. all the things, say the ox and the donkey in the stable, are not there in matthew or luke. it is a detail taken from isaiah. how is the crib.
don’t tell me there was “no room at the inn”… that’s there, isn’t it?
yes, that’s in luke. that is the main christmas story, in luke, plus the wise men, the magi, in matthew. that’s a nice story, because jesus becomes a refugee.
did you have to flee to egypt?
According to Matthew’s account, they fled from Herod to Egypt. it’s important to me, when we think about refugees today, to remember that about jesus. I doubt it’s historically accurate, but Jesus said, “Whatever you did not do for one of these little ones, you did not do for me.” in my Christmas sermons I will take it into account. The Christmas story is vital, but not much of it is history, which doesn’t matter.
brown is also focusing on the fact that the christmas story was put there by luke—and to some extent matthew—for a reason, it was important to them, it meant their way of interpreting what had happened.
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exactly. so the brief narrative of matthew’s birth has many quotes from the old testament. his main point is that this all happened to fulfill what the old testament prophets said would happen. it is the story of israel and the messiah. . . and God. In Luke, which is much longer, he speaks of both the birth of John the Baptist and that of Jesus. he sees that the spirit of god is at work in all this.
so you can make all these wonderful things happen…
yeah, luke knew he wasn’t writing history. luke wanted to write history when she wrote the acts of the apostles. it is not a modern critical history, but it is a kind of history. In the history of the ministry and the arrest and death of Jesus there is also a lot of history. But in the birth narrative, Luke knows perfectly well that he is telling a story to bring out the true meaning, and he even does it in biblical language. His style in chapters one and two is different from the rest of the gospel, echoing the style of the Greek translation of his Hebrew scriptures.
brown mentions that the celebration of the birth of jesus at christmas dates back to the 4th century.
Yes, no one knows the date of Jesus’ birth. Around December 25 it was already a Roman pagan holiday, Saturnalia. the Greek church actually celebrates it more on January 6. the western church opted for December. I guess because it was close to the solstice.
We are now on his latest book, by British theologian Andrew Lincoln. the title is a question: born of a virgin?
yes, it’s nice to have a recent British book, the most recent I’ve read on the subject. he is one of our two best new testament theologians in england. the reason I included it was the sheer theological seriousness of it. this is a heavyweight theology book on a subject that I wouldn’t have thought a major treatise would still be possible to write. he’s saying, ‘here’s something that some christians think is absurd to think happened’. others think it’s really important that it’s historically accurate (fundamentalists really think that) so let’s try to understand both sides and see all the different layers of meaning what matters is what it means but to unpack that you have to why some people think it’s important for it to happen, and to get the two sides to talk to each other, so you don’t have the absurd situation where some Christians don’t talk to other Christians because they think the others have it all wrong.
could have commented on this as ray brown’s book, but actually to have a great theological reflection on it, including what the greatest theologian of the 19th century: there is a chapter on schleiermacher, the founder of the modern theology in the book, in fact, is an amazing achievement
how do you do it?
says all the things an exegete is going to say by looking at the text. but it also explains how it has been understood in later Christian tradition, both ancient and modern. and some of what it means to be a Christian today, which is to be loyal to tradition but also critical of it. if you are a smart christian you need to see how you understand the tradition and he makes it clear how he does it. I find him persuasive, across the board. It’s a bit of theological education in itself, this book: you understand what it means to be a New Testament theologian by watching him reflect on these texts.
He enters into the mystery of the virgin birth in a very practical way, doesn’t he? he says there are three possibilities: 1. joseph was the father, 2. god was the father, but that’s a problem given what we now know about dna. 3. Jesus was illegitimate.
that’s just level one. is it historical? now for those of us who aren’t historical about what was just mentioned to get out of the way. the DNA issues or the biological issue are not a problem for us. but they could be for someone who thinks these things really happened. Lincoln realizes that many Christians still think it is historical, so he must address those questions and give reasons why others think it is not historical. that has to do with the type of writing we have here. it’s more of a story than a story.
then analyze what people have thought and why they have thought it. Joseph does not appear in the rest of the gospels. there is a reference to jesus in matthew as the carpenter’s son, but the earlier account of mark says ‘is not this the carpenter?’ presumably joseph had died. but whether or not joseph or someone else is the father and there is all sorts of conjecture even someone saying mary was raped by a roman soldier and god knows what christians would still say he is the revelation of god. or that he is the son of god, that is, the revelation of god. he is not an one or the other between son of joseph or son of god.
I was surprised by the way he was willing to approach it.
Lincoln is more generous with conservative views than many, but he is also a critical theologian. in the introduction, he mentions how he spoke his mind when he applied for a job at a conservative institution once. They responded by saying, “Don’t bother showing up for your interview!” he is a very impressive man and he has also written a great commentary on the gospel of saint john.
The authors of these books, beginning with the Germans, were they never afraid of where their critical investigations of the life of Jesus would take them?
I don’t know, but I think they firmly believed that “god is truth”. so they weren’t afraid to use their heads. Furthermore, Christianity is a religion of the person, rather than a religion of the book. focuses on the person of Jesus. that means we can question even something the new testament says, which bears witness to jesus. what is decisive for modern and rational people is that religion can be self-critical and in the last 300 years, and before with erasmus and others, christianity has been very good at being self-critical and self-reformist. that is exemplary for religion in a pluralistic world.
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