PART ONE / PART TWO / PART THREE / PART FOUR / PART FIVE / PART SIX

The first thing I should say is that keeping track of what I learned from Wright’s NT & the People of God and what I learned from this one is rather hard to do from memory, But memory is what I’m working with.

Secondly, before I forget, I advise readers to skip the first couple of chapters and start with the meditation on the meaning of the parable of the prodigal son. The previous material is great but it isn’t as gripping or as self-explanatory. Go back and read it when you’re done.

Wright argues that historians can figure out who Jesus was and what he did. At least, they need to try because there is nothing impossible about it in principle. Naturally, he is speaking to a great many unbelievers and does not assume the reader shares his commitment to the authority of Scripture. The method for Wright’s historical investigation is a “pincer movement” from First-Century Palestinian Judaism forward and from First-Century Chrisitanity backward. Why not see Jesus as the middle term that explains the transition? This means that Jesus will be unigue enough to implement change but understandable enough to implement change (i.e. draw followers). This is one test for various hypotheses about Jesus: Is he both comprehensible and crucifiable in his milieu?

Of course, Bible believers might be tempted to think that this is only necessary for unbelievers. But they are greatly mistaken. The wandering do-gooder, the 19th-century liberal roving Palestine in the first century, is an incredible anachronism that deserves to be abused. The roving aphoristic sage deserves about the same thing. But does the roving systematic theologian trying to correct the Jews’ ordo salutis deserve a great deal more credulity? Wright points out that, since the Reformation (and probably before) exegetes have not known what to do with the Gospels. Other than the death and resurrection, the rest is simply treated as moral examples–a pastiche, says Wright, of Socrates v. the sophists and Luther v. the Catholics. It is as if we all believe that Jesus could have been born as a Norseman and drowned in a boating accident for the sins of the world and the essential story would be fulfilled. Obviously, that sort of thinking, if it exists, does not honor the Gospels which all concur that there is more to tell. How is what Jesus did for us?

Jesus arose in Israel as more than a prophet, but not less than one. He had a prophetic message, repent and believe the good news that the kingdom of God is here–escape the wrath to come. We all “know” what this means as modern Christians: it means that everyone should admit that he or she is a sinner, and pray a prayer asking Jesus to be Lord and Savior of our lives so that we can go to Heaven when we die and not to Hell.

But Jesus was not the only person in First Century Palestine who told people to “repent and believe in me.” Perhaps we should look at such a person as closer to the source. Josephus, in Gallilee, was working with the Romans about thirty-plus years after Jesus had been crucified. He was asked, by the Romans, to approach a patriotic Jewish terrorist named Jesus (it was a common name) to get him to lay down his arms so that the Roman Army would not have to bother him (the army’s benefit) nor slaughter him, his men, and probably many other’s in the region (the terrorists’benefit). Josephus came among the men of Jesus and spoke to them about this. Jesus, according to Josephus, got upset about what he was saying and tried to kill him secretly. He failed and Josephus knew who had made the attempt. So he called Jesus asided and told him what he knew about the murder attempt. He was willing to overlook it, he told Jesus, and if Jesus would turn and entrust himself to Josephus, Josephus promised, he would save Jesus’ life and the lives of all his men.

Wright’s quotation of Josephus (I used no quotation marks since I am going by memory) comes from the Loeb Classic edition. But Wright poins ato that “turn and entrust yourself to me” could just as easily have been translated “repent and believe in me. Is it possible that Jesus (not the terrorist but the son of God), when he spoke a few decades earlier might have something similar in mind? “Give up your agenda and trust me and mine”…?

Long blog entries are always boring, but not as much as long blockquotes within them. Nevertheless please read what follows word by word and think about it:

He also said to the crowds, “When you see a cloud rising in the west, you say at once, ‘A shower is coming.’ And so it happens. And when you see the south wind blowing, you say, ‘There will be scorching heat,’ and it happens. You hypocrites! You know how to interpret the appearance of earth and sky, but why do you not know how to interpret the present time? And why do you not judge for yourselves what is right? As you go with your accuser before the magistrate, make an effort to settle with him on the way, lest he drag you to the judge, and the judge hand you over to the officer, and the officer put you in prison. I tell you, you will never get out until you have paid the very last penny.”

There were some present at that very time who told him about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. And he answered them, “Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans, because they suffered in this way? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish. Or those eighteen on whom the tower in Siloam fell and killed them: do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others who lived in Jerusalem? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.” And he told this parable: “A man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard, and he came seeking fruit on it and found none. And he said to the vinedresser, ‘Look, for three years now I have come seeking fruit on this fig tree, and I find none. Cut it down. Why should it use up the ground?’ And he answered him, ‘Sir, let it alone this year also, until I dig around it and put on manure. Then if it should bear fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down.’”

The above text is from Luke. We usually read it with a huge uninspired chapter division in the middle and a lot more paragraph breaks. But read all this as one. Is Jesus pointing out that unforgiven sinners go to hell when they die? Is that his message? No, his message is that something is coming on Israel. They should see the signs and realize it is approaching, they had better produce fruit quickly before the tree is cut down.

And Jesus doesn’t tell his listeners that they will also perish, like everyone does, when they die. No he tells them they will likewise perish. The Gallileans standing there will also be cut down by Roman soldiers. Those living in Jerusalem will also be crushed under collapsing buildings where, for at least one architectural structure, not one stone will be left standing on another.

And when he drew near and saw the city, he wept over it, saying, “Would that you, even you, had known on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes. For the days will come upon you, when your enemies will set up a barricade around you and surround you and hem you in on every side and tear you down to the ground, you and your children within you. And they will not leave one stone upon another in you, because you did not know the time of your visitation….”

But they all cried out together, “Away with this man, and release to us Barabbas”— a man who had been thrown into prison for an insurrection started in the city and for murder. Pilate addressed them once more, desiring to release Jesus, but they kept shouting, “Crucify, crucify him!” A third time he said to them, “Why, what evil has he done? I have found in him no guilt deserving death. I will therefore punish and release him.” But they were urgent, demanding with loud cries that he should be crucified. And their voices prevailed. So Pilate decided that their demand should be granted. He released the man who had been thrown into prison for insurrection and murder, for whom they asked, but he delivered Jesus over to their will. And as they led him away, they seized one Simon of Cyrene, who was coming in from the country, and laid on him the cross, to carry it behind Jesus. And there followed him a great multitude of the people and of women who were mourning and lamenting for him. But turning to them Jesus said, “Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me, but weep for yourselves and for your children. For behold, the days are coming when they will say, ‘Blessed are the barren and the wombs that never bore and the breasts that never nursed!’ Then they will begin to say to the mountains, ‘Fall on us,’ and to the hills, ‘Cover us.’ For if they do these things when the wood is green, what will happen when it is dry?”

They don’t know the things that make for peace. Jesus proved what he said that week, didn’t he? They chose an insurrectionist. He looked like a proper Godly patriot, not Jesus. [At this point, I have a sudden urge to quote over half of the book of Jeremiah, but I will resist.] Immediately upon telling us of the cry for a terrorist rather than Jesus, we get Jesus’ words of warning to the “daughters of Jerusalem”: He is innocent (a green tree) and yet the Romans are crucifying him. What chance to the zealots they are raising at home have (the dry tree) when they grow up having pursued a very different way than Jesus’ call to discipleship? How many little Jesuses were playing in the streets that day whose mothers forgot Jesus’ words so that they grew up to be slaughtered?

This is part of Wright’s historical reconstruction, but it is shot through with theology. This is the thing about Wright that amazes me. I was so used to extracting theological material out of a “secular” husk, but Jesus would have denied anying about his call was secular. After all, nothing about Israel was secular. They were the chosen nation. They were the light of the world, a literal city set on a hill in the case of Jerusalem. Their chosen agenda, their response to pagan oppression, was a statement about God and his ways that Jesus declared to be no better than paganism (“Do not even the nations do the same?”).

indeed, this is all about “theology proper”–the doctrine of God. Read again the accounts of the Jews and the pagans surrounding the cross. The mock him side by side. He cannot possibly be God’s king unless he comes down. God dying on the cross is simply impossible. It is a blasphemy that deserves to be mocked. God is omnipotence, not weakness; He is glory, not humiliation.

And, naturally, this doctrine of God translates into a doctrine of man for politics and resistance to tyranny. Jesus’ message was that their doctrine was a rejection of their calling to represent the true God and that their coming destruction would not be a faithful martyrdom, but a judgment of God. In the end, Jesus alone represented the true god and Jesus alone was the faithful Israel: he died.

TO BE CONTINUED