TheBakersfieldCalifornian.com

Dr. Tim Vivian, associate professor of religious studies at Cal State Bakersfield and vicar at Grace Episcopal Church, has agreed to write a weekly column on the New Testament class he's teaching this quarter at the university. Randall Smith, Vivian's teaching assistant, will share his insights as well.

Will the historical Jesus please stand up?

By Tim Vivian

When I was a graduate student at UC Santa Barbara, my professor of Greek said that when evaluating any word, in any language, the mantra is "context, context, context." In the same way, it's impossible to understand Jesus except in and through his historical, religious and social context.

Since the 19th century, scholars have recognized that the Gospels are not histories, much less reporting, in the modern sense. A good way to understand them is as "post-Easter narratives." What does that mean?

The Gospels were written after the crucifixion and -- of utmost importance to Christians -- resurrection of Jesus. So I ask students, "How does that influence the perspective of the Gospel writers? What did they believe about Jesus?" The students always get it right: that Jesus was raised from the dead and is the Messiah, the Son of God. Every Gospel writer held these beliefs, and these beliefs profoundly shaped the story -- good news -- they had to tell.

In movies and on television you almost never, thankfully, see the characters go to the bathroom. Bathroom visitations rarely, except in gross-out comedies perhaps, have anything to do with plot advancement or character development. In the same way, the Gospel writers are concerned only with what will advance the good news they believe. The Gospels are theological portraits -- not snapshots -- that most certainly do contain historical brushstrokes.

So, how do we discern the "theological Jesus" from the "historical Jesus"? With great care. And, as I emphasized in an earlier column, with great humility.

Scholars term Matthew, Mark and Luke the "Synoptic" Gospels (in Greek, "seen together") because they have so many similarities. The consensus is that Matthew and Luke used some form of Mark and revised Mark with other sources. This is one reason why Matthew and Luke are much longer than Mark.

Matthew and Luke probably shared another source, now lost, that scholars name "Q," from the German Quelle, "source." It is fascinating to see how Matthew and Luke differ with this material. For example, because Matthew understands Jesus as the new Moses and is writing to a Jewish or Jewish-Christian audience, in Matthew Jesus gives his famous "sermon" on a "mount(ain)": thus, "the sermon on the mount."

Since Luke is writing to Gentiles (non-Jews) and has no interest in Jesus as Moses, he actually has Jesus come down from a mountain to give his "sermon" on "a level place" or plain. Matthew and Luke (unlike Mark) both have the Beatitudes ("Blessed are ..."), which means their common source, Q, had some version of them. In Matthew, Jesus says "Blessed are the poor in spirit"; in Luke he says "Blessed are the poor." Which is the original?

Then we come to John. John is, for the most part, sui generis; he's his own cat, his own dude. Scholars unanimously agree that one thing absolutely certain about Jesus is that he taught using parables. There is not one parable in John.

John gives Jesus some of his most famous lines: "I am the way, the truth, and the life"; "Before Abraham was, I am"; "Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above (or, again)"; the famous John: 3:16: "For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life."

As a historian, I don't think Jesus said any of these. None of them is in Matthew, Mark, or Luke. For me as a Christian, that doesn't matter. These sayings are all faith statements, theological understandings of Jesus. Not historical statements by him. They come from the developing theological reflection on Christ by the early Church.

For John's community, they represent not who Jesus was, but who Jesus is. For me as a Christian, this is what matters.

Whose Jesus?

By Randall Smith

In his book, "Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time," Marcus J. Borg invites us to accept the provocative challenge of reacquainting ourselves with the Jesus we only thought we knew, and yet, in reality, the Jesus whom we did not know at all. The Jesus that Borg wants us to meet is the "subversive sage," one who "questions and undermines conventional wisdom and speaks of another way, another path." This Jesus exposes and subverts the "conventional wisdom" of his day with pithy aphorisms and pointed parables, all of which encourage both the first-century hearer and the 21st century reader to see life in radically different ways. This is the Jesus of a 21st century social revolutionary.

Borg's conclusions are supported by a series of verses from the New Testament that are considered, by Borg and many New Testament scholars, to be the closest examples of the authentic teachings of Jesus. Yet honest scholars will admit that they can make only a "best guess" as to which of the teachings of Jesus are authentic and which are inauthentic.

By relying on the "best guesses" of textual criticism, Borg draws objective conclusions from subjective evidence and creates a portrait of Jesus that is amazingly similar to the image of Borg. Thus, Jesus, the subversive sage, becomes the conventional wisdom of Marcus J. Borg. Historical Christian teaching has pointed out that when seekers come into contact with Jesus, those persons are themselves transformed into the image of Jesus, not the other way around.