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The Apocalyptic Jesus: A Debate

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This is a fine scholarly debate over a very hot (read: controversial) topic in New Testament research. In this debate Dale Allison, well-known advocate of the standard Synoptic view of Jesus being a millennial prophetic figure, takes on three well-known opponents proposing a non-apocalyptic Jesus. Allison deserves credit at least for tackling a wrestling tag-team of formidable Jesus Seminar (hereafter "JS") scholars, and to this reviewer at least, easily holds his own in the debate, and even then some. This perhaps may be because his thesis, when all is said and done, seems to make more sense of the actual 1st-century Jewish milieu of Jesus than the sometimes idiosyncratic exegesis of his opponents. In fact, it seems fair to say the effort to separate Jesus away from his Synoptic apocalyptic environment seems to be a particular theological agenda of the Jesus Seminar- an agenda for which the group has come to be known by, for better or worse.

Readers unfamiliar with the debate will be wise to note several lynchpin assumptions that underlie the "JS" conclusion that Jesus wasn't, fundamentally, a prophet with an apocalyptic message of the kind you read about in the Synoptics. For many members of the Jesus Seminar, in fact, the Synoptic apocalyptic Jesus should be replaced with a completely different caricature, that of a wandering radical Hellenistic cynic whose "real" message seemingly consisted of egalitarian wisdom sayings (sounding suspiciously like modern counter-status-quo sentiments) and zen-like one-liners; never mind any consideration of Jesus' persona resembling a prototypical Jewish charismatic prophet, or any talk of a millennial kingdom around the corner...

For many folks, however (and not just the scholarly unsophisticated), the "cynic" caricature results in a Jesus few would recognize or relate to. While we may grant it being a valuable window on an aspect of Jesus' ministry, is it THE defining characteristic of who Jesus really was? Certainly many Jewish AND non-Jewish scholars have severely criticized this Jesus so abstractly yanked out of his Jewish milieu. The eminent N.T. scholar Gerd Theissen (whose sociological analysis of "wandering radicalism" provided the springboard for later speculations), for instance, humorously remarked, "The 'non-eschatological Jesus' seems to have more Californian than Galilean local colouring." Would not scholars like J.D. Crossan, for instance, have been better off had they focused less on a comprehensive cross-cultural examination of ancient Mediterranean cultures, and focused on a more relevant, but less-sweeping, analysis of the Jewish charismatic milieu of the 1st century, as others scholars have done? Would his "Jesus" have looked less like a cross-cultural hodge-podge hippy-figure that spouts quasi-Californian social sentiments? The questions deserve to be asked, and the methodologies that produce such distorted pictures, questioned.

One could well ask here, how did a non-apocalyptic caricature of Jesus arise anyway? The answer can only be understood by a thorough examination of the analysis of the "sayings" tradition by the scholarly community. Such an examination will not be taken here, obviously, for space reasons. But a few brief points may be noted. Several scholars (notably James M. Robinson and Harvard's Helmut Koester) brilliantly got the ball rolling by recognizing the similarities of Jesus' teaching style with the ancient Jewish Wisdom tradition. An appreciation began that Jesus' original sayings could be located within the "Logoi Sophon" tradition (Robinson's term), which had a long history in Jewish literature. In other words, Jesus was a Wisdom teacher, throwing out pearls of sapiential proverbs as he wandered around, much as the writer(s) of the Hebrew book of Proverbs might have spoken. However, valuable as the "Logoi Sophon" insight undoubtedly was, the danger here was already present-are the Sophia (Wisdom) sayings the ONLY valid context within which to view Jesus' teachings? As Dale Allison points out in the current debate and in his other work, just because Jesus undoubtedly had similarities with the Wisdom genre of Israel, why be narrow with the data and force the wisdom sayings to be his "main" message? Allison points out that apocalyptic is just as much a part of the so-called "Wisdom" literature as are wise proverbial sayings. By no means are such mixed contexts mutually exclusive. In fact, in the Hebrew literature, they may be typical.

What if Jesus actually WAS an apocalyptic preacher in the proto-typical Jewish tradition, much to our modern chagrin?
Like it or not, there are hints in the Synoptics (unless we automatically throw them out) that some in the crowds evidently considered him a prophet...which would be rather strange indeed, if he went around merely teaching a message of clever social maxims and one-liners with punch lines. If we can believe some of the reports about various crowd reactions to Jesus (often hostile), the logic for seeing him as a wandering hippy-figure spouting California countercultural sentiments and witty Zen one-liners just doesn't fit the scene very well. The respectful term "Rabbi" (Teacher) is perhaps more helpful to flesh out (to some degree) how his contemporaries may have saw him. Jesus is addressed as "Rabbi" many times in the Gospel accounts, which in itself carries some very traditional connotations about his milieu. Here we enter a topic of interest in N.T. research, that of how Jesus both seems to relax the typical Torah teachings on some points, yet on others very much adheres to it. Nothing extraordinary in this - creative personal interpretation of the Torah material by various Jewish teachers was actually fairly common before and after the times of Jesus. Now, this isn't to say that Jesus wasn't unique- if he wasn't, he wouldn't have had a new social movement initiated in his name- but the point is, let's not overlook some very traditional Jewish contexts here which should be the STARTING point for discussion, before wandering off into dubious speculations that portray Jesus in rather oddball images. Therefore I mention the point about Jesus addressed as "Rabbi" and his flexible use of the Torah for good reason...we need to be thinking first in terms of a typical Jewish religious context of the period before we get anxious to explore alternative (and maybe dubious) territory. That is, before we leap eagerly to consider Jesus as a quasi-Epicurean stoic, for example, or speculate on a wise Socratic sage-figure wandering around throwing out pearls of wisdom, or somebody completely removed from (then-popular) Book-of-Daniel apocalyptic hopes of freedom from Roman oppression, or before we speculate maybe the disciples and early church made up everything themselves, or that all of them completely misunderstood Jesus (all of which have been suggested by scholars at various times)- maybe a more sensible methodology might begin by NOT throwing away much of the local Jewish Galilean backdrop we are entering... not to mention overwhelming data showing an end-of-the-age expectation held by the early church. If we throw away these contexts, we run the risk of constructing a "Jesus" strangely removed from his surrounding environment, which seems to be a tendency among liberal scholars. And since we do NOT have completely-reliable snapshots of scenes, nor verbatim word-for-word accuracy on the oral content (and we surely don't), I'd argue it is all-the-more important to sensibly respect a plausible local milieu of Jesus as a Jewish teacher-figure before embarking on exotic excursions into external cultures. If we do, hopefully, anchor a methodology on a reasonable early-1st-century Jewish teaching backdrop for Jesus, we might have some (needed) checks-and-balances in place, before we wander far off on interesting - but highly speculative- cross-cultural journeys across the world, going where no man has gone befo...
[Waitaminute, wrong TV show :-)].

The alternative speculation, then, offered by certain members of the liberal crowd (i.e., James Robinson, Helmut Koester, and the Jesus Seminar by and large) of seeing Jesus as primarily an egalitarian-minded, anti-apocalyptic, wisdom-spouting cynic/sage looks rather "alien", compared to a more familiar picture of Jesus perhaps resembling a prototypical Hebrew charismatic persona; i.e.- of a teacher-slash-prophetic voice-slash charismatic leader . Such would be quite familiar to the audiences Jesus faced, even if his character produced some hostile reactions at times. Like the Gospels mention, this kind of hostility was the same shown to the prophets of old :-). And this persona does seem much more in tune with the (plausible?) "Jewish holy man" perspective offered by scholars more focused on the actual Jewish-Palestinian 1st-century culture (scholars such as E.P. Sanders and Oxford Jewish scholar Geza Vermes), than the highly "sanitized" portraits of liberals, perhaps with an agenda of making Jesus more acceptable to our modern sensibilities.
And yes, this Jewish 1st-century milieu isn't very "sexy" this day and age, let's admit it. No wonder the liberal scholarly crowd doesn't like it- it portrays an image of Jesus far removed from our modern scientific world and our current post-modern culture, placing Jesus in the midst of an alien supernatural world that not everybody today could identify with. And it cuts against the grain of attempts by many liberal scholars to make Jesus look like a hip, "with-it" socially-conscious dude we could identify with, who could (presumably) fit right into the Hollywood celebrity scene and maybe speak out against big oil companies and spotted owls disappearing in his spare time. (I DO see some similarities between N.T. figures and Hollywood celebs, however- both groups have about the same statistics for higher-education graduations. I offer this penetrating insight for free...)
But hey - to all this worry about modern sensibilities I say, "welcome to 1st-century Israel, folks" :-). The situation is what it is.

Another lynchpin the "non-apocalyptic" gospel rests on is the thesis that the mostly-sapiential "sayings" tradition as found in "Q" and the Gospel of Thomas are more primitive than the (apocalyptic and apologetic) layers that were presumably added on later by the Synoptic writers. Much of the work in this direction was laid by the detailed reconstruction of "Q" into different layers by John S. Kloppenborg, also a member of the Jesus Seminar. Kloppenborg's analysis seemed (and seems) extremely persuasive to many in the "JS" crowd, but it is perhaps fair to say his layering of Q wasn't met with quite the same enthusiasm on the European continent, nor with scholars (familiar with all the "Q" issues) in North America who questioned the arbitrary nature of some of his assumptions. Allison, also a "Q" expert, provides a good counterbalance here to his JS opponents, who seem to have thoroughly swallowed Kloppenborg's own "reconstruction".

As for the Gospel of Thomas, much has been made of this collection of "sayings", and scholars such as Stephen Patterson have gone to great lengths to ensure Thomas gets proper recognition among Patterson's peers. However, it has been noted (and must be repeated here) that using Thomas as "source material" for what Jesus "actually taught" is highly questionable; the book itself, as Allison properly observes, has it's own agenda, which seems to be a Neo-Platonic reunion with one's own true humanity... like Adam before the Fall. Thomas's Jesus is a "Guide" whose words were meant to get you to recognize your Pre-Eden immortal self. Can we use Thomas, then, as Patterson and many others do, as a source-book of Jesus' primitive teaching? Not without some twisted logic. Granted, Thomas probably does have some authentic sayings, and some of these possibly may be in a less-altered form (and earlier) than the Synoptic versions, but if we grant that Thomas is a highly selective source with a particular agenda, which we logically must, making any kind of pronouncements on Jesus' own teaching - in view of the many "pre-Eden" mystical musings in Thomas - seems highly risky.

And so on. We've barely scratched the surface with this review, but you get the idea. Read this debate, learn from all these fine scholars, but use your own judgment. Maybe you too will chuckle at some of the popular Jesus caricatures when you're done, like I do!

This book is very well writen. It is done in a well thought out manner and the layout and discussion parts are excellent. It would be good to have a decent handle on recent theology, however. It will breach some answers and conclusions that will need prior knowledge for the reader. Dale Allison does a fantastic job with his argument and ideas. It is a great book for those considering the idea of the Apocalyptic Jesus.