Book review: The Historical Figure of Jesus

Hi all,

This will be my first book review:) For two reasons I decided to do this, one, I enjoy to read reviews myself before considering a book and two I think Ill be able to read more systematically books and remember more of what I read.

Author: E.P. Sanders

Title: The Historical Figure of Jesus

Publisher: Penguin Books, 1993

Pages: 337

 

In the introduction Sanders presents the reader with his aims in the study “I shall discuss Jesus the human being, who lived in a particular time and place, and I shall search for evidence and propose explanations just as does any historian when writing about a figure of history” (2).

Sanders presents the reader with a short summary of Jesus’ life and he does this in a way that made me pause to consider how brief Jesus’ appearance has been. After a period of teaching in the Galilee he goes over to Jerusalem for Pesach, “he created a disturbance in the Temple area; he had a final meal with the disciples; he was arrested and interrogated by Jewish authorities, specifically the high priest; he was executed on the order of the Roman prefect, Pontius Pilate” (11).

The first 5 chapters are mainly an introduction to the background of Jesus’ ministry; 2. Outline of Jesus Life, 3. Political Setting, 4. Judaism as a Religion, 5. External Sources and 6. The Problems of the Primary Sources.

In chapter 4, he gives mostly based on his previous work Judaism: Practice and Belief, of what he calls the basic elements of Judaism of the 2nd Temple period: 1. Monotheism, 2. The divine election and the law and 3. Repentance, punishment and forgiveness. He points out that the Torah, “brings the entirety of life, including civil and domestic practices, under the authority of G’d” (37) and gives some examples of this and says: “Judaism elevated all of life to the same level as worship of G’d” (38). Which has given me some thoughts about Noachidism, as this element seems absent therein, and would therefore seem to be lacking the power to sanctify the believers life in all areas, as the Torah is capable of in the life of a Jew.

In the sixth chapter he throws in some Biblical Criticism, which is not my favourite subject, but I must say he points out some contradictions that I hadnt seen earlier and to my dismay his argumentation with examples from the text is quite difficult to negate. In the seventh chapter he continues with this and shows some of what he calls the ‘creativity’ of the gospel authors, and again is quite good at making his case.

In chapter eight and nine Sanders talks about the environment in which Jesus worked and tries to move from the gospels back to the historical Jesus, and does this again mainly through Biblical Criticism, he proposes that the temptation narratives are legendary and mythological  but thinks it reasonable to assume that Jesus indeed withdrew to fast before his ministry, a quote that I found problematic “parallels made clear how the authors of the gospels, and possibly previous authors or editors, arranged pericopes and linked them in order to produce a narrative” (131). Although this does not invalidate the NT, it does in my opinion, devaluate it, and makes it kind of less authorative, and maybe this is the reason that people who hold such views, but want to be Christians, grant great authority to church tradition.

Chapter ten, concerns the miracles and here Sanders introduces the sage Hanina ben Dosa and also Honi the Circledrawer. I knew about these but hadnt read before why Honi was called the Circledrawer; when praying for rain without effect he drew a circle and stood in it and said: ”O L’rd of the world, your children have turned their faces to me, because I am like a son of the house before thee. I swear by your great name that I will not stir hence until you have pity on your children” (139). Whereupon it began to sprinkle, wanting more he prayed: “Not for such rain have I prayed, but for rain of goodwill, blessing and graciousness” (139). Whereupon the heavens burst open and it rained heavily:)

He explains that its “an error to think that in Jesus’ own day his miracles were taken as proving partial or full divinity” (135).

In chapter eleven up to thirteen, Sanders takes up the main topic of Jesus’ discourses; The Kingdom. He notes the various meanings this conveyed and tries to distill which one fit Jesus’ best. In the end he concludes that although Jesus had views about social, political and economic conditions, nevertheless “his mission was to prepare them to receive the coming kingdom of G’d” (188) and this would mainly be “G’d’s rule on earth”.

In chapter 12 he writes about the Gentiles and the kingdom and puts forth the idea that many of the stories in the narratives where Jesus interacts and/or speaks with Gentiles are tainted by the authors of the gospels as they “favoured the mission to the Gentiles, and they would have included all the pro-Gentile material that they could” (192).

From chapter 14 onwards it gets more interesting as he starts asking questions like, “what led to Jesus’ crucifixion?” and “what was Jesus view of his role?”.  Rightly he points out that it wasnt his disagreements over the interpretation/application of the Torah, as “Pharisees disagreed among themselves over more serious issues, and Pharisess and Sadducees disagreed more sharply yet” (216). As for Jesus’ encounter with opposition, Sanders puts that the responses by his opponents are “disproportionate to his behaviour” (213). And he argues that what we see here is ‘retrojection’; “Later disputes have been thrust back into the lifetime of Jesus. [Because] the Later Christian Church, or at least sections of it, did disagree with the Pharisees and their successors, the rabbis, about the law” (217). Evidence for this he sees especially in Mark’s gospel where the reader “is invited to believe that a series of good deeds by Jesus led the Pharisees to want to kill him. He argues that “this is intrinsically improbable, and it is disproved by the subsequent history; [as] when the crunch actually came, the Pharisees had nothing whatever to do with his death” (218).

He makes a comment on Jesus’ attitude to sinners and puts forth the idea that Jesus was not a preacher of repentance. He cites for his argument the number of times the word repentance is found in the gospels and concludes that the evidence is showing that there is a much bigger emphasis on the kingdom and of the many times we see the word repentance its found in Luke and in Acts, which Sanders sees as Luke’s own emphasis. But I cannot agree with this idea, and would posit that if the idea of the kingdom is G’ds rule on earth, this would imply the need for repentance as theres no other way to cope with G’ds rule. Sanders says “although he did not oppose the law, he did indicate that what was most important was accepting him and following him” (236). Which makes me wonder again, what the difference really is, if Jesus observed the Torah, then wouldnt following him, of necessity imply Torah-observance for the Jewish hearers present?

Chapter fifthteen is on Jesus’ view of his role in G’d’s plan, Sanders points out two things, one, Jesus was an “autonomous prophet; that is, his authority (in his own view and that of his followers) was not mediated by any human organization, not even by scripture” (238), two, he claimed to have an “immediate relationship to G’d, in the strict sense of ‘unmediated’” (239). Sanders discusses the titles Messiah and Son of G’d. And I think its good that he points out that “all Jews were ‘Sons of G’d'” (243). And when applied to a particular person “would imply special standing before G’d and an unusual power to accomplish good” (243) but certainly not a hybrid.

Upon turning to the title Son of Man, it pleased me to see that he explained the figure in Daniel 7:1-14 as the nation Israel or its angelic representative.

Sanders’ own term for Jesus self concept is ‘viceroy’; “G’d was king, but Jesus represented Him and would represent Him in the coming kingdom” (249).

The last chaper is about Jesus’ last week wherein he tries to answer the question why the high priest arrested Jesus.

He talks about how Jesus’ actions around the Temple were seen by some as threatening and proposes the idea that this was mainly what led to his arrest, the actions at the Temple coupled with his prediction that the Temple would be destroyed. He briefly discusses two other theories; 1. Caiaphas and Pilate thought he was about to start a military campaign against the Roman army. 2. Theological differences were what led to his arrest; Jesus “believed in love and compassion, ideas that the Pharisees abominated, and he disagreed with petty legalism and ritualism, which they favoured” (268).  He quickly dismisses these and in response to the second theory repeats that “there is no reason at all to think that they were in conflict about love, mercy and grace” (268). In his view, “Jesus opposed Pharisaic views about what produce counted as foodstuff and should be tithed (Matt. 23.23), but such criticisms as these were not matters of life and death” (269).

He goes into detail on Jesus’ reply to Caiaphas’ question whether he was the son of the Blessed and notes the difference in answers when comparing the gospels; Mark: Yes, Matthew: You have said so, Luke: You say that I am. In this Sanders sees the activity of the church saying “some early Christians wanted to attribute his death to confessing the christology of the church” (270). I dont know about that, as in my view son of the Blessed does not indicate anything of high christology, but who knows.

He wraps up by saying: “The high priest had him arrested because of his action against the Temple, and that was the charge against him. The testimony was thrown out of court because the witnesses did not say the same things. The high priest, however, had decided that Jesus had to die, and so he was not willing to drop the case. He asked Jesus to say something about himself, and then he cried ‘blasphemy’, rending his garments… the high priest had already made up his mind” (271).

In the epilogue, he discusses briefly the resurrection and but quite carefully and shows the difficulty in describing what they were experiencing, something that did not fit into the known categories; ghost and resusciated corpses.

He ends by saying: “We know who he was, what he did, what he taught, and why he died. Perhaps most important, we know how much he inspired his followers, who sometimes themselves did not understand him, but who were so loyal to him that they changed history” (281).