I love “Historical Jesus” podcasts

June 14th, 2010 | 4 Comments

A fascinating discussion from two conservative evangelical scholars on the subject of the historical Jesus took place on last weekend’s episode of Unbelievable.

Adam Bradford, defending his book The Jesus Discovery, presented some interesting arguments in favor of the idea that Jesus was a lifelong participant in the religious community, trained from adolescence and recognized as an authority right up until the events that unraveled his rapport among the Jewish leadership and got him killed. David Instone-Brewer countered that Jesus, as a simple itinerant peasant from backwater Nazareth, was always an outsider to the Jewish leadership, as is commonly inferred from the Gospel of Mark especially.

Both sides were engaging and respectful. A brief pericope representative of the exchange: Bradford was arguing that Jesus would only have been allowed to drive out the money-changers and continue teaching within the temple habitually afterward (Lk 19.47) if he were recognized as having authority as a teacher, whereafter the host iterated, “Must have been some kind of authority he had then,” prompting Instone-Brewer’s quick and dry response, “Well, he had a whip in his hand…” All in all, I found most of Instone-Brewer’s rebuttals to be the more convincing, but there definitely seems to be something to Bradford’s contention as well.

Also coming available over the weekend was the ninth podcast in Dr. Phil Harland‘s enjoyable series on Historical Jesus studies, this one entitled Jesus in the Context of Educated Groups and Leaders, in which he described Jesus’ affinity, but not necessarily his identification with, first century groups such as the Essenes.

It’s intriguing to hear all the ways of approaching the topic, “Who was the man Jesus?” Conservative evangelicals typically react to this question with an indignant, “I can tell you who he was — the Bible tells us all about him!” But even conservative evangelical scholars such as Bradford and Instone-Brewer answered a basic question of Jesus’ background, whether he was a self-taught peasant preacher or a learned maverick rabbi, in completely different ways based upon indistinguishable hermeneutic sets approaching the same biblical data. The other expected response, “Does it matter? He’s Lord either way,” is not so easily answered, either: his background is a vital piece in determining what Jesus’ idea of his own mission was, which then informs our understanding of what it was he was sent to do, how exactly he accomplished it, and how we are to emulate him to our world.

Related posts:

  1. Podcast recommendation: introduction to the historical Jesus in context I was remiss in not sooner noting the recent completion of a podcast series by York University’s Philip Harland. It’s a recently completed set of fourteen lectures on...
  2. Evidence in the Munich Talmud of the Sanhedrin’s charges against Jesus? Via Fr. Stephen Smuts, I found this video showing David Instone-Brewer, senior research fellow in rabbinics and the New Testament at Tyndale House, Cambridge, explaining his...
  3. Jesus’ astonished disciples in Mark 10 Chalk this one up to staring too closely at the text. It’s not a felicitous scenario when the material you’re analyzing for your dissertation keeps distracting...
  4. No class warfare here: Mark’s Jesus as equal opportunity savior Keying off a comment from Marc on my last post, I looked at Peter’s response and Jesus’ response to him in the immediately following verses in...

June 14th, 2010

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  • Tim

    Hard to imagine a whip intimidating the soldiers of the Temple Guard or the Roman soldiers overlooking in the tower of Antonia. Mark 11:16 describes Jesus dictating who could or could not come through the temple courts after he had cleared the market. Could an intinerant have done that?

  • http://undeception.com/ Steve

    I didn't mean to imply that I found his humorous response to be conclusive
    refutation — it was just funny. I don't think Instone-Brewer was being
    wholly serious there, either.

    Both Mark and Luke tell us why Jesus could act thus with impunity
    (Instone-Brewer pointed out the obvious fact that it was indeed ultimately
    punished!): “…but they could not do it, for the people hung on his words “
    (Lk 19.48).

  • Tim

    Surely Lk 19:48 is in regard to the Sanhedrin's desire to kill Jesus (v 48)? It does not address their inability to intervene in any way, on either occasion (inc Jn 2), in what was effectively a huge disturbance to normal Temple life, given that money changers were needed for animal purchase. Jesus twice got away without any hindrance – seems unusual, even if he was very popular, yet at Tabernacles (Jn 7), the Guard are actually sent to arrest him (although they are unable to).

  • http://undeception.com/ Steve

    Good comment, and a definite possibility. No doubt Bradford would argue
    precisely this. Have you read his book?

    However, I don't think we're justified in envisaging two incidents, one of
    which is omitted in three accounts and the other which is omitted only in
    the latest account. If it was as dramatic an event as portrayed, surely each
    iteration would have been chronicled. John, recognizing the significance of
    the incident, resituated the event as a herald of Jesus' ministry rather
    than as a portent of its end; John's narrative is weighted toward the last
    week of his life anyway, so there was obviously a bit of conflation
    involved.

    At the very least, it seems there may be a tradition of Jesus as defrocked
    religious leader behind some of the details in the stories of the Gospels,
    and I would be curious to hear more from Bradford on that account.