Who Was Jesus?

A Little Book of Guidance

James D. G. Dunn

• Publisher: Church Publishing
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9780898691665
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

Distills a life-time of biblical research into an easy-to-understand survey of Jesus' life, his mission, and his self-understanding. Renowned New Testament scholar James Dunn investigates what is known about the historical Jesus and the reasons for his enormous impact—then and now.

1

Introduction

Who was Jesus? What a good question. It’s a good question because of Jesus’ reputation. For nearly two millennia Christians have regarded him as God’s Son. That is, not just as a son of God, as millions of Christians and others might think of themselves as sons (or daughters) of God. One of the greatest of the earliest Christians, Paul, encouraged his fellow Christians to think of themselves in that way. But Paul is clear that the relationship thus expressed is not ours by nature. He refers to it as a relationship which has come about by adoption (Romans 8.15). The implication is clear. Jesus’ sonship was different from that of Christians. As a natural son is different from an adopted son, so, in his relationship with God, Jesus is different from Christians in general.

If Paul, the author of the letter to Rome, probably written in the mid-50s of the first century, is any guide, this conviction about Jesus was already a defining mark of the first Christians. Already, within 30 years of Jesus’ death, he was regarded as God’s son in a unique sense by the first generation of Christians. Not just as a great leader, cruelly put to death by the Romans. And not just as a messenger who brought a message from God, like the prophets of old. But as unique among human beings. As more closely related to God than earlier saints and prophets. How could this be so? How did this conviction about Jesus come about? Who was Jesus?

Sources

To answer these questions satisfactorily we have to know what sources are available to us. The obvious answer is: the Gospels which make up the first four books of the New Testament. The first three, Matthew, Mark and Luke, are very similar. They are usually called the Synoptic Gospels, because they can be ‘seen together’. Indeed, they can be set down in three parallel columns, where the degree of overlap becomes immediately evident. The strong majority view is that of these three, Mark is the earliest, and that it served as a primary source for Matthew and Luke.

Specialists in the subject are equally confident that Matthew and Luke were able to use another source, a collection of Jesus’ teachings. This latter is usually known as Q, denoting the German word for ‘source’ (Quelle). The size of Q is unclear, since traditions about Jesus and his teaching were no doubt being variously used and circulated. In fact, much of the Q material is evident from the word-for-word agreement between Matthew and Luke. But other shared tradition is quite different in detail, suggesting that Matthew and Luke drew it from different sources.

The principal reason why Mark is regarded as the first of the three New Testament Gospels is simple. It is much more likely, for example, that Matthew added all his teaching material (drawn chiefly from Q) to Mark’s briefer account, than that Mark chose to omit so much of the teaching contained in Matthew. Matthew, indeed, seems to have absorbed almost all of Mark. And since Matthew was greatly prized and much used in the second century it is hard to identify distinctive use of Mark’s Gospel during that period.

The general view is that Mark was written a little before or a little after the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70, and that Matthew and Luke were written sometime in the following two decades. The written Q must have been earlier than Matthew and Luke. But, interestingly, the written Q was not preserved. This may be simply because it was totally used by Matthew and Luke, but probably also because it did not take the form of a ‘Gospel’ in the sense given to that word by Paul and Mark – that is, as an account of Jesus’ ministry climaxing in his death and resurrection.

The date of Jesus’ death is debated but most settle on AD 30 as the most likely. If so, it means that there was a gap of about 40 years between his ministry and Mark’s account. During that time, as can be easily imagined, there must have been an extensive and diverse oral tradition being passed among the spreading churches of earliest Christianity, recalling and narrating Jesus’ teaching and ministry. The significance of our being able to set out the first three Gospels in parallel is, not least, that we can clearly see that they were drawing on very similar traditions about Jesus. ‘The same, yet different’ well describes the Synoptic tradition. The important corollary is that we can gain a very clear picture of Jesus, even when differently portrayed by the first three Evangelists.¹

This ties in neatly with the early tradition that Mark had been a close companion of Peter (1 Peter 5.13), and the slightly later note of Papias that Mark had acted as Peter’s ‘interpreter/translator’ and had recorded Peter’s recollections. Matthew, of course, was one of Jesus’ twelve disciples. As a tax collector (Matthew 9.9) he was one of a small minority who could read and write. And as the ‘I’ passages in Acts indicate, the author of Luke and Acts was a close companion of Paul (also Colossians 4.14). So, in each case, we can be confident that the first three Gospels draw on direct memories of the first generation of Jesus’ disciples.

The fourth Gospel in the New Testament is different. The source of its recollections may well be another of Jesus’ disciples. But there was more than one ‘John’ in earliest Christianity, and the tradition is unclear at this point. More important is the fact that John’s Gospel was evidently doing something different from the other New Testament Gospels. In particular, the concise teaching of the Synoptics, with many parables, is replaced by lengthy dialogues and disputes with Pharisees,² in which Jesus makes amazingly bold ‘I am’ claims. For example, ‘I am the way, and the truth, and the life’ (John 14.6). At the same time, a closer examination soon makes clear that most of the dialogues are rooted in the sort of sayings which the Synoptic Evangelists recorded.

The most obvious inference to be drawn is that John was not trying simply to record what Jesus said and did (like the Synoptics). His goal was rather to reflect on and draw out the significance of Jesus for a much wider audience. Thus, for example, the great bread of life discourse in John 6 reads like an extensive reflection on Jesus’ words at the Last Supper with his disciples: ‘This is my body’; ‘This is my blood’ (Mark 14.22, 24). And in John 10, Jesus’ elaborated claim to be the good shepherd is most simply explained as growing out of Jesus’ use of the imagery of sheep (as in Matthew 18.2–3). John gives the impression of being as much concerned to reach out to the future and not just to recall the past.

What of other Gospels? The Gospel of Thomas, only discovered in 1945 – 6, has roused much speculation and controversy. And it certainly contains what may best be described as Synoptic-like material. But added to that, and clearly intended as the ‘good news’, is an understanding of the human condition which is best described as ‘Gnostic’. The Gnostic gospel worked from a fundamental distinction of flesh and spirit, which is quite different from the teaching of Jesus and the first Christians. More striking still, the Gospel of Thomas has no place for Jesus’ death and resurrection. And yet it was precisely the focus on Jesus’ death and resurrection which Paul enshrined in the word ‘gospel’. And it was Mark who extended this use to an account of Jesus’ ministry, climaxing in his death and resurrection. If the New Testament determines what the ‘gospel’ is, then the four New Testament Evangelists equally determine what a ‘Gospel’ is.

2

Jesus’ life

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Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• About the author
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Jesus’ life
• 3 Jesus’ mission
• 4 Jesus’ self-understanding
• 5 Conclusion
• Notes
• Further reading