The Historical Jesus: Man, Myth, or God

The Historical Jesus

Man, Myth, or God

Monsignor John W. Sweeley, Th. D.

209 pages, notes, bibliography

the tools of modern biblical criticism are used to exegete the Gospels to more fully understand the life and ministry of Jesus

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Book Description

The Historical Jesus: Man, Myth, or God follows the path set by Albert Schweitzer's, Geschichte der Leben-Jesus-Forschung (The Quest of the Historical Jesus); literally, "History of Life-of-Jesus Research" first published in 1906. As such, it addresses Jesus both as a human being and a divine being; that is, Jesus as both fully human and fully God. The genius of the book is it juxtaposes how Jesus' ministry was accomplished according to God's plan for him.

This book is as current today as when it was written because it answers questions and settles debates about Jesus' life and ministry as well as his passion, death, and resurrection that must be addressed by each new generation.

Endorsements

Fr. Sweeley's book, The Historical Jesus: Man, Myth, or God is an excellent introductory study in Christology. I would recommend it for the use of seminarians and other students of religion.

The Rev. Canon James R. Willems, Canon to the Ordinary, Retired, The Bishop of Rhode Island

Fr. Sweeley knows the Bible well and presents a method of analysis of its information along with a myriad of resource materials. He explores the historicity of Jesus and describes how the Gospels were written.

Archbishop-Matriarch Meri Louise Spruit, Rector Emeritus, Sophia Divinity School

Fr. Sweeley's singular ministry is to help others view the world, the Church, and the history from a biblical point of view.

Raymond Eaton Sawyer, Bishop of Arkansas, Retired, Catholic Apostolic Church in North America

Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Jesus:

Messiah to Triune God

Quest of the Historical Jesus

The Apostolic Age

Jesus the Man to Christ the God

The Doctrine of the Trinity

Metaphysical and Philosophical Categories

The uncertainty of God in the 20th Century

Summary

Chapter 2

Jesus and the Gospel Tradition:

Who do You Say I Am?

Exegetical Methodology

Sitz im Leben

The Religious Heritage of Jesus

Infancy Narratives

Summary

Chapter 3

God’s Plan for Jesus:

The Message of this Public Ministry

John the Baptist

Baptism of Jesus

The Ethical Base of Jesus

Marriage and Divorce

The Lord’s Prayer

Parable of the Marriage Feast

Command to Baptize

The human Knowledge of Jesus

The Birth of Christianity

The Petrine Ministry

Summary

Chapter 4

The Passion of the Lord:

The Will of God or Conspiracy to Commit Murder

The Passion Narratives

Entry into Jerusalem

Anointing at Bethany

The Betrayal of Jesus

The Name Iscariot

Motive: The Sin of Judas

Motive: The Will of God

Summary

Chapter 5

The Last Supper:

Passover Meal or Mistaken Identity?

Preparation for Passover

The Passover Meal

Words of Blessing

Significance of the Words of Blessing

The Two Swords

The Garden of Gethsemane

Summary

Chapter 6

It is Finished:

The Death of Jesus

The Arrest of Jesus

Jewish Legal Proceedings

Dialogue of the Trial

Trial by Pilate

The Crucifixion

The Theophany

Summary

Chapter 7

The Resurrection of Jesus:

Myth, Magic, or Miracle?

Mythic Resurrection in the Ancient Near East

The Promise of Salvation

Resurrection in Judaism

The Resurrection of Jesus

Summary

Introduction

We live in an exciting time. The Holy Spirit is moving powerfully among us. Theologians, clergy, and lay people are questioning, challenging, and in many instances discarding long held juridical mandates, faith assumptions and prescribed beliefs. There is an obvious tension between the new Fundamentalism on the right and those who wish to impose orthodoxy and orthopraxis to their limits on the left. [1] While uncertainty in dogma and ambiguity in ecclesiology has left many uncomfortable, it is nothing new in the history of Christianity.

In the early Apostolic Age of the Church people were struggling with this same tension. The Jewish Christians in Jerusalem who were known as the Judaizers led by Peter held serious reservations regarding Paul’s mission to the Gentiles. The Judaizers perceived themselves as Jews and Christianity as a sect within Judaism. They believed any pagan, defined as anyone not born a Jew, had to first convert to Judaism before they could practice Christianity. The situation became so divisive that Paul returned to Jerusalem to meet with Peter and the other leaders of the fledgling Church. During this first Council known as the Council of Jerusalem in 49 C.E. it was decided that Gentiles did not first have to accept Judaism to become Christians. [2] Although the Judaizers were forced to accept this decision the issue continued to be controversial until the next generation when the Jewish revolt against Rome was crushed and in 70 C.E. the Temple in Jerusalem was destroyed. As a consequence of the apocalyptic nature of the Christian sect, the Jewish leaders believed it had been in collusion with the Zealots in starting the revolt and expelled the Jewish-Christians from Judaism. Christians then felt a need to distance themselves from Judaism and this effort, together with conversion, became the main focal points of the Church as reflected in the Synoptic Gospels and the Book of Acts.

Throughout the evolution of Christianity from its beginnings as a small sect within Judaism to its expansion throughout the Hellenistic world there continued to be tension to exactly what constituted orthodoxy and orthopraxis as evidenced by the themes of the Apostolic writings in general and the Pauline epistles in particular. This ensuing tension eventually led to the Council of Nicaea in 325 C.E., The Council of Chalcedon in 451, and the other great Councils of the early Church. Additionally, the Protestant Reformation, the Roman Catholic Counter Reformation, the progressive development of the major denominations of Protestantism, and Vatican Councils I and II were also manifestations of this tension.

We should not be surprised by this continuing discord within Christianity. One of the primary difficulties facing those who follow Jesus is that we are faced with following a dichotomous Jesus: he is fully human and fully divine. Thus, the very foundation and existence of Christianity lies in the juxtaposed teachings of the man, Jesus of Nazareth, and the resurrected God, Jesus the Christ.

Christians in the first centuries after the death of Jesus did not have this problem because the question of Jesus' divinity did not exist. In this early period of the Church Jesus had only one nature. The question of whether or not he had a divine nature and how it interfaced with his human nature did not evolve until about 300 C.E. and was not officially addressed by the Church until the Council of Chalcedon in 451 C.E.

The Apostolic Fathers and Apologists [3] of the second and early third centuries were primarily concerned with defense of Christianity in the face of persecution. They were also concerned with the question of Jesus’ human knowledge; specifically, how much awareness he had during his public ministry of the final events of his life and to what degree he understood the impact his life, death, and resurrection would have on his followers and the world.

The primary source early Church historians utilized to answer these questions were the gospels. Originally, bits and pieces of oral history about Jesus were collected by the Evangelists and woven into a complete story much like pieces of tile interconnect to make a complete mosaic. Each of the writers took the story pieces available to him and used them to create a work which was specific to a particular time, place, audience, and need. As people heard one and then another version a gradual fusion of four separate but related stories began to emerge which in time became understood as a single narrative known as the Distessaron. [4]

However, there were significant problems with this amalgamated narrative. The first problem was the many duplications and contradictions of events. How was it possible for the same event to happen in different places at the same time? Even more difficult was the inability to reconcile the fact that if one event were true another must be false. This difficulty was particularly troubling as it was believed the narrative was written by God and was a photographically perfect image of the life of Jesus. The obvious unanswerable question was if God wrote the story why weren’t the facts correct?

The second problem was that there were passages of text that did not make sense. Either the meaning of specific words was lost or the character of the text did not fit into Greek thought and culture. [5] These anomalies were explained away as Hebraisms because Jesus was a Jew and the text was written in Greek.

The theological pre-occupation with the human nature of Jesus was shattered with the advent of the Arian Heresy that led to the Council of Nicaea in 325 C.E. From that time forward theological scholarship was centered on the divine nature of Jesus. The concept and dogma of the divinity of Jesus became central to the philosophy and theology of the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, and continued until the beginning of the twentieth century.

In 1906, Albert Schweitzer published, Von Reimarus ze Wrede: Em Geschichte der Leben-Jesu-Forschung (The Quest of the Historical Jesus). Schweitzer’s thesis struck theologians like an earthquake and its after shocks are still being felt today. Its impact has been felt on such divers entities as existential philosophy, Protestant liberalism, Fundamentalism, ethics, and Vatican Council II. In contemporary scholarship, if we want to know what it means to be Christian we must return to Palestine in its Sitz im Leben Jesu (setting in the life and time of Jesus) to discover the historical Jesus. With the advent of the historical critical method and modern tools of biblical criticism, it has been possible to strip away centuries of myth and misunderstanding about the man, Jesus of Nazareth. However, as there is no first person source material written by Jesus or anyone who knew and followed him we are still in many ways no closer to finding the historical Jesus than before we began to search.

The ministry of Jesus was to reveal our relationship to God and our responsibility to actualize that relationship in our interaction with others. He did not create Christianity or the Christian Church. He gave no guidelines and left no organizational charts initiating a hierarchal, juridical, or administrative church structure. He left no blue prints for the creation of buildings of worship. He initiated no new ceremonies or cultic practices. He asked only that the disciples remember him in the breaking of the bread, the Seder meal, which was a Jewish tradition dating from the Exodus.

At Pentecost Jesus the Christ gave us the Holy Spirit to teach and explain, by mans of divine revelation, that the kingdom of God exists in heaven and on earth. Divine revelation is a continuing process by which the kingdom of God is revealed a layer at at time much like the peeling of an onion. It is the task of each generation to ask the age-old questions about the nature of God and human existence. It is also one of the primary paradoxes of Christianity that just as the elder generation’s answers are finally made to conform as neat little stacking boxes the next generation knocks the boxes askew. Finite humanity as being, regardless of the power of its intellect or strength of its will, can never capture the infinite Being of God. [6] The more we believe we understand Jesus, the more we realize how much we have to discover. Through this continuing search for ultimate truth we transcend our separateness from God by being open to and accepting his grace. Through this process we crate a unified Jesus, both God and man, and he becomes the core of our being.

The Historical Jesus provide a careful examination and exegesis of biblical text that will illuminate the words and deeds of the historical Jesus. Our method will be to examine specific events in the life of Jesus by comparing the event as written in each of the four gospels using the hermeneutic of modern biblical criticism. [7] From this process will emerge a better understanding of the historical Jesus in his Sitz im Leben of first century Palestine. Our reward will be a more personal and intimate knowledge and understanding of Jesus the man and Christ the God.

[1] These terms mean right belief and right practice respectively. Orthopraxis has not been a familiar term in Western religious discourse due to the stress upon the correctness of doctrine in Western culture. However, orthopraxis has come to the fore in recent Christian political theology where the stress is upon praxis or doing the will of God. Then it is argued that Christian truth and knowledge of God are gained by following the praxis of Jesus and not by detached contemplation of religious truths. Nevertheless, most denominations have found it necessary to test the assent of the individual to fundamental beliefs of the faith. Disputes over differing interpretations require a means of settlement. Although Protestants and Roman Catholics agree on the need for an absolute authority, Protestants argue that sola scripture; that is, that scripture alone is the sole authority while Roman Catholics accord an equal role to the pronouncements of popes, the Magisterium, and historic councils of the Church from the Council of Jerusalem found in Acts 15 to Vatican Council II.

[2] RSV, Acts 15:29.

[3] The term Apostolic Fathers of the second and early third centuries was first used in the seventeenth century to identify five authors as well as one anonymous treatise know as Διδαχὴ τῶν δώδεκα ἀποστόλων (Teaching of the Twelve Apostles) or Didache for short which probably originated independently from a Hebrew source. The writings of the Apostolic Fathers include I Clement; II Clement (disputed), Clement, Bishop of Rome; Letters of Ignatius, Ignatius of Antioch; Epistle to the Philippians, Polycarp; Epistle of Barnabas, author unknown; Shepherd of Hermes, Hermes; and the Didache. The Apologists included Quardratus; Aristides; Justin Martyr, First Apology, Second Apology, Dialogue with Trypho; Tatian, Diatessaron, Discourse to the Greeks; Athenagoras of Athens, Supplication for the Christians, On Resurrection (disputed); Theolphilus, Bishop of Antioch, Apology to Autolycus; and Minucius Felix, Octavius which may have been borrowed from Tertullian’s Apology which would make it contemporary with the Epistle to Diognetus with its final two chapters having been derived from another author possibly Hippolytus.

There is another body of literature from this period which were accounts of the deaths of the early martyrs know as acta which were based on either the official minutes of the trial or upon descriptions given by eye-witnesses. These writings include Martyrdom of Polycarp, Acts of St. Justin and his Companions, Letter of Churches at Lyons and Vienne, and Acts of the Scillitan Martyrs.

Apocryphal scriptures include the Book of James, Gospel of Thomas, Coptic Gospel of Thomas and Gospel of Peter. Additional acts include Acts of Paul, Acts of John, Acts of Peter, Acts of Andrew as well as Epistle of the Apostles and Apocalypse of Peter.

During this period there were also many schools of writings deemed as heretical known by the term Gnostic. Prior to the discovery of the Nag Hammadi Library in 1945/46 there were only three extant copies of these works preserved in their original form: Pistis Sophia, conversations of the risen Christ with his disciples; Letter of Ptolemy to Flora transcribed by Epiphanius; and Apocryphon of John, a revelation of the risen Savior on the Mount of Olives. The Nag Hammadi collection comprises thirteen volumes and contains over on hundred treatise comprising about 1,000 pages.

The obvious question for the early Church arose as to which writings were orthodox so lists known as canons were compiled. The earliest was that of the heretic Marcion in 150 C.E. followed by the Muratorian Canon in 170 C.E. which, although mutilated, gives the major books accepted by Rome at that date. There was considerable agreement among canons; however, there were differences between local communities and between the East and West i.e., the East long hesitated to accept the Book of Revelation and the West the Epistle to the Hebrews. However, in all of the canons the Apostolic writings assumed a position of authority as embodying a doctrinal norm. Agreement on the final canon was not reached until the Third Council of Carthage in 397 C.E.

[4] A Latin term from the Greek to designate a continuous narrative of the four gospels to prove their agreement or harmony. The Diatessaron was written by Tatian (115-185 C.E.) founder of a Gnostic sect ca. 172-173. He wrote the Diatessaron between 173-185.

[5] All Christian writings of the first and second century were written in Greek. Latin was added to Greek at the beginning of the third century by North African writers such as Tertullian, Cyprian, Arnobius, and Lactantius but it was not used in Rome until the middle of the century when it was used by Novatian, Cornelius, Stephen, and Dionysius.

[6] In Medieval metaphysics big B (Being) stands for God and little b (being) stands for objects, reasons, and individuals.

[7] Hermeneutics is the science of interpretation; or, of finding the meaning of an author’s words or phrases and explaining it to others i.e., exegesis particularly applied to the interpretation of Holy Scripture.