[This is
an ongoing project that is analyzing N.T. Wright’s 5 volume series, Christian Origins
and the Question of God. This series is widely read and bridges the gap between
the academic and devotional world. It is therefore worthy to be carefully
analyzed so that all readers can understand his key points while at the same
time gaining a critical eye to some of his rather bold claims. This series of
posts are concerning volume 2 – Jesus and
the Victory of God.]
N.T. Wright, at the close of this book will dedicate three
chapters to Jesus’ praxis as messiah. Given that, this first chapter then
considers the historical Jesus as Messiah. To do this, he admirably sets up the
problem well – if he claimed to be Messiah, how was that view convincing if he
did not accomplish the tasks of Messiah. To do this, Wright uses two key
historical foci which he argues are the best way to understand the historical
event – Jesus’ activity in the Temple and the titulus above his cross showing why he was crucified. He argues
that these two pieces of historical evidence are clear cut enough to show
Jesus’ messianic interests, why it was that it was enough of a challenge for him
to be killed, and why later believers accepted this view. Wright’s analysis is
helpful, but his problem lies in his one major unexplored historical focus
point that would have aided him – his being baptized by John the Baptist.
However one views that event, Jesus’ role and understanding of himself as
Messiah (or, in theory, not) should be severely influenced by his relationship
with John.
First, Wright should be lauded for some of his major points
and his clarification for his readers. His goal is to show what Jesus saw his
role or vocation to be. To do this is to move into the realm of a type of
psychoanalysis, but it is also the realm of history. Wright defends this
clearly:
Yet we can ask and historians often
do ask, about people’s aims, objectives, motives and beliefs. These things,
indeed are in large measure what ‘history’ is all about. And when we put aims,
objective, motives and beliefs together we not infrequently find something
which combines them, and which may be called “vocation” or “ambition.” To study
the sense of vocation or ambition possessed by a figure from the past is not to
enquire about psychology, but about history. We may or may not be able to
answer the question. That depends on the data available. But it can be raised
and studied in the same way as another other historical figure.[1]
Here, Wright’s view is justified because of its limits. He
is interested in how Jesus saw his own role. This question is still a
historical question. If he asked the harder question of why Jesus accepted that role, then we slide more firmly into
psychoanalysis. It might be a
historical question, but the problem is that it is very unlikely that we can
know enough historically to answer it. Almost certainly it would move into
belief (e.g. Jesus was sent by God to be Messiah, so he chose to fill that
role). However, asking how Jesus saw his own role should be able to be
interpreted through his words and deeds. This, then, is not an interpretation
of what was in his mind, it is what he was doing.
Second, Wright does a good job of dispelling many myths
about the concept of Messiah in Judaism. There was not on “Messianic
expectation” and in fact, there was not even just one Messiah. There had been
many messiahs before and many groups expected multiple ones (the Qumran
community, for instance, expected at least 2 – perhaps even 3 if one reads the
Thanksgiving hymns creatively). Wright explains this well:
To begin with, as I have argued
myself, there was no one picture of “the Messiah” within the Judaism of Jesus’
day. The royal and/or messianic movements of the time show considerable freedom
and flexibility within a broad concept; the idea of Israel’s coming king was
one that different movement and diverse claimants could quite easily reshape
around themselves without anyone denouncing them for not having conformed to a
commonly recognized ideal or portrait.[2]
The reasons, of course, there was so much flexibility with
the role of Messiah are twofold. First, it is not at all clear from the Hebrew
Bible what “Messiah” should be – it is an apocalyptic idea that was developed
from a variety of traditions. Second, and more importantly, not all “Judaisms”
were the same. In short, the concept of “Jewish expectations for Messiah” does
not function because there was not a single “Judaism.” Without that, there
cannot be a single expectation. Therefore, Jesus had tremendous flexibility as
to what the role constituted.
The only general view of the Messiah is that he would be the
“anointed” that would lead a successful revolution against the Romans. This
figure, then, should be considered in at least some sense, as a king. Further,
kingship was connected with the city of Jerusalem. Zion needed to be
reestablished for kingship to be restored. Zion, of course, is integrally connected
with the temple. Since the days of Solomon (foreshadowed by David), the
kingship, the temple, and the mountain itself were inextricably linked. To
destroy one was to destroy them all, to restore one was to restore them all.
Given this background, Wright is correct to ask why anyone
considered Jesus messiah at all. Jesus did not fulfill these roles in the
least. If anything, he rejected these things outright. What makes this shocking
is that his followers very clearly did view
him as Messiah – and there is reasonable reason to argue Jesus considered
himself Messiah. Wright explains the problem well:
Even from this brief summary of the
evidence, the historian is faced with a question. Jesus of Nazareth did not
rebuild or adorn the Temple. He did not lead a successful revolution against
the Romans. He did not, that is, conform at the level of symbolic praxis (never
mind tat of the textual paradigm) even to the ill-defined popular expectation
we are able to chart. So why did his followers insist that he was, after all,
the Messiah, the son of the living god?[3]
However, one considers the variety of views concerning
Jesus, there should be a consensus that his being executed was not among the
messianic expectations. Rather, it would be the thing to prove he was not Messiah. It would seem he was a
failed messiah. Wright explains this well:
All of this adds up to a conclusion
of obvious importance for the question of Jesus and messiahship: a Messiah who
was executed by the occupying forces was not, after all, the true Messiah. This
is not a subtle theological point, though it has huge theological implications.
It is merely a truism of first-century politics.[4]
This makes Jesus a very strange messiah indeed.
While the question of how his followers could call him
messiah is interesting and worth studying (most notably through a belief in a
delay via the resurrection), the better question is how Jesus could view
himself as such. Not only did he not fulfill this role as the liberator of
Israel, he did not seek that role. How could a messiah not seek the role of
messiah?
To understand and answer to this question, Wright focuses on
the foci of the Temple activity and the titulus.
He argues that from these two key points, we should be able to discover how
Jesus refigured the role of Messiah
to be something new, but understandable:
The somewhat diffuse discussion of
these points over the last generation of scholarship has come up with tow main
focal points; the titulus and the
Temple. The ‘title’ on the cross, indicating the reason for Jesus’ execution,
is widely agreed to be genuinely historical. Jesus died with “the king of the
Jews” written above his head. This is not, after all, so surprising;
crucifixion was the regular way of dealing with would-be Messiah’s. What is at
issue is why anyone thought to lay that charge against Jesus, and why, despite
so much apparent evidence to the contrary, it stuck. And the main answer to
that question has to do with Jesus’ action in the Temple, which most now agree
was the proximate cause of his death. These two focal points will thus serve as
the framework for our discussion. In what ways Jesus’ action in the Temple
perceived to be, and/or intended to be, messianic? And in what way did the
charge under which Jesus eventually died reflect his own agenda?[5]
His activity in the Temple, then, were the way in which he
refigured the role of Messiah. Rather than restoring the Temple, he ritually
destroyed it. He argued that the old trichotomy of king-Temple-Zion is out of
date and that the temple no longer holds the same function.
Wright argues that Jesus’ actions would have made sense to a
world that had the cultural memory of the Maccabees and currently had Qumran –
the communities that argued for a radical refiguration of the temple. Given
that, some attempted to take it over (Maccabees) or deny and disown it
(Qumran). The action, then, challenged the Temple and its administration and is
exactly why the Jews wanted him marginalized or even killed:
Jesus’ symbolic actions inevitably
invoked this entire wider context. Jesus was performing Maccabean actions, albeit with some radical differences. This
explains, among other things, why the High Priestly family, who regarded
themselves as in some senses the successors of the Hasmonean priestly line,
found Jesus’ action so threatening. It also explains why that action was so
inevitably charged with “royal” overtones. This in turn explains what follows:
a glittering series of riddles, all pointing back to the Temple-action and to
Jesus’ implicit messianic claim.[6]
This temple action, then, would be a defining moment where
Jesus was indeed being Messiah – through a rejection of the Temple and its
practices (and most notably here who was administering it). Jesus recasts the
Temple as needing to be destroyed in order to be purified and Israel to be
righteous. The eventual goal will cast Jesus himself as the new authority
rejecting all other hierarchy in any form:
What happens when we integrate this
picture [Jesus claims] with Jesus ‘ prophetic warning against Jerusalem and the
Temple, and his prophetic action against the Temple? The answer is, more or
less, Mark 13 and its parallels. We must now return to this passage once more,
this time to see the way in which Jesus’ Temple action is here, too, explained
in terms of his Messiahship. So closely do they belong together, in fact, that
the destruction of the Temple – predicted already in symbolic action, and here
in prophetic oracle – is bound up with Jesus’ own vindication, as prophet and
also as Messiah. In an eschatological law court scene, he has pitted himself
against the Temple. When his prophecy of destruction comes true, that event
will demonstrate that he was indeed the Messiah who had the authority over it.[7]
Here, Jesus’ role of Messiah could be recast in these
actions, here apocalyptically, in order to change the expectations of Messiah.
The execution by the Romans, then, is understandable as
Jesus did eventually argue for his
new kingdom of God to himself which would be the apocalyptic end of the Roman’s
kingdom. This sounded like violent revolution – and in one sense it was. The
only difference is that God would be returning in the future to lead this
cosmic battle rather than calling for arms in the present. Jesus was crucified
for treason as the king of the Jews – the one challenging the government of the
Romans. It made little difference to the Romans that he had recast this to be
more nuanced than a revolution. For them to hear that he was the “king of the
Jews” made him enough of a threat to be killed.
All of these points presented by Wright are perfectly fine.
The problem is that he does have as a focus much at all about John the Baptist.
John’s ministry – which directly and deliberately challenged the function of
the Temple in an apocalyptic worldview – cannot be set aside. What is more,
Jesus’ baptism by John – however one understands that – shows at the very least
an essential continuity (at least in the early going) between the message of
Jesus and John. Wright recognizes the importance of John with the one paragraph
he dedicates to the subject:
First, Jesus was implicitly
claiming, as in Matthew 11, to be the true successor of the last great prophet.
Jesus had been baptized by John; he saw his own work and ministry as the sequel
and fulfillment of John’s; onlookers would think of his career as in some sense
the sequel of John’s. John had, in his own way, begun a kingdom-movement,
independent of both Herod and the Temple officialdom. Herod had seen that John
posed a threat; how much more did Jesus. Jesus’ riddle says, as clear as a
riddle can, that the reason he has the authority to act as he has in the Temple
is because, as the one to whom John pointed, he is in fact the Messiah. If John
was a heaven-sent prophet, he was the last in the line: after him comes the
king. John’s implicit counter-Temple movement has become, in Jesus, explicit.
It has, in other words, become messianic.[8]
Given this strong claim, it is shocking that he does not go
farther into this relationship in order to understand Jesus’ view of
Messiahship. Here, one wonders if he avoids it simply because of its
controversy. If one expects that Jesus received some of his role from John,
then it would fall among those scholars who feel Jesus was John’s disciple.
However, I think it more likely Wright does not discuss this because he
continually does not want to frame Jesus’ ministry in a fully apocalyptic
framework (though he flirts with it quite frequently). To do so would make
Jesus an apocalyptic prophet expecting an apocalyptic Son of Man – here he
himself fits both roles. The problem, one expects, is that Wright wants Jesus
to be formally different than expectations, and here Jesus would be fitting at
least some people’s expectations. However, an argument that Jesus should not
fit anyone’s expectations, while perhaps being valuable apologetically (I
really do not know – I am not an apologeticist), is certainly not necessary for
the context of the first century. All in all, Wright’s chapter is laudable, it
is just surprising for him to select the foci he chooses to focus upon.
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