My view of the Jesus of history is that the Jesus of history is revealed in the Jesus of Scripture. This does not mean that we apprehend the Jesus of Scripture rightly simply in the act of reading Scripture, but the Jesus of Scripture is there for us to apprehend. Jesus is often misunderstood in that we have three fundamental problems in seeing him clearly: Our sin, our worldview, and the worldview of first century Palestine.

While the relationship between sin and understanding doesn’t seem to be discussed a great deal in mainstream biblical studies, it does seem to be a theme of Scripture itself. Paul writes that men "by their unrighteousness suppress the truth" in Romans 1:18. And in 1 Corinthians 2:14 writes, "The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned." Nor is this a purely Pauline teaching. The Lord Jesus himself said repeatedly, "If anyone has ears to hear, let him hear." Some apparently don’t have "ears to hear." As usual, Jesus is echoing the teaching of Deuteronomy, which declares that the Israelites have not heard the word of the Lord because "to this day the Lord has not given you a heart to understand or eyes to see or hears to hear." Lest we find something besides lack of faith and sin to ascribe this to, the prophet Jeremiah makes it clear: "Their ears are uncircumcised." (Jeremiah 6:10). This sin causes us to twist or interpret Jesus in a manner which offers the least confrontation to our own sin. This sin is both corporate and individual. We twist or reinterpret the biblical Jesus to avoid our personal violations of holiness and righteousness as well as collude with others on a societal level to do the same.

We also fall short of seeing the Jesus of history clearly because of our worldview. In the words of Bishop Wright, we don’t have the same stories as a first century Jew, Greek, Roman, or anyone else. While there are some shreds of continuity because of our Greco-Roman cultural inheritance and the sustained influence of the Bible, for the most part we live in an alien culture. The stories of Abraham and Moses are mixed in with, and overwhelmed by, stories of the Pilgrims, World War Two and the Civil Rights Movement. The Babylonian captivity, so formative for first century Jews, is almost unknown in our churches. We simply don’t have the ability, at least without some serious reflection and or the intervention of the Spirit of God, to read Scripture with the same worldview.

Finally, our ability to see clearly the Jesus of history is clouded by the vast historical distance between us and the text. There are many things we simply do not know. There are other things which are known by one type of specialist or another, but as individual readers of the Bible we lack the ability to sort and apply the information. Who were the Sadducees really? What was Pharisaical religion as it was received among the people and how does that influence our hearing of Jesus?

The main source we have for the Jesus of history is the four Gospels. As an evangelical Christian I believe that these four accounts, in their autographs, are inerrant and infallible. This does not discount the need for textual research or even biblical-historical criticism. It does also not exclude compiling, condensing, sifting and arranging by the Gospel writers, each according to his own theological-missiological agenda, such as would be conceded in the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy, to which I would subscribe. As a historical assertion I would say that the Gospels are "reliable documents," and demonstrably so. I take the synoptic Gospels as straightforward accounts of Jesus’ life and ministry, with much of the material pulled from what we might call Jesus’ "stump speeches," the kind of talks he gave over and over again. The Johannine material I take to be both more reflective and private, as well as doctrinal. John has had a long time to reflect on the life of Jesus. He also is well aware of the other Gospels and the difference of his. Many of the speeches given in John I believe were given only on one occasion and some we even given to a very small group of disciples. They were not his regular way of teaching.

If I were skeptical concerning the Gospel documents, in particular the Gospel of John, I would value the testimony of early Church documents such as 1 Clement, the Shepherd and the Didache as corroborating witnesses (The same goes for the famous letter of Pliny to Trajan.). As it is, I find them more helpful in reconstructing the early church and apostolic traditions than adding anything to the Gospels.

Three other groups of sources which are important to my reading of the Gospels are Jewish background materials, Josephus and non-Jewish historians. The Old Testament Apocrypha is extremely important in understanding first century Jewish milieu. I would find Jewish sources important to the extent which they represent common streams of thought in Judaism. I am no expert on the Dead Sea Scrolls, but I am a bit skeptical of the helpfulness of the more peculiar documents for understanding the mainstream of Judaism in Jesus’ day. Josephus, for all his faults and his agenda, was pretty thorough in some areas and seems to give Pharisees a sympathetic portrayal. And reading the New Testament without an understanding of Greco-Roman history would be very difficult, and so Tacitus and others are vital.

I believe the Jesus of history was a first century artisan (I have no idea whether that places him "higher" or "lower" than a peasant) from a devout family and a mixed community. Jesus probably worked in Sepphoris on imperial building projects. New Testament scholar Frank Thielman suggests that the word tektonos may refer to stone mason instead of builder. The idyllic view of Jesus making furniture out of his shop is fairly unlikely. His family, as we see from the birth narratives, were devout. While living in Galilee and possibly working in Sepphoris, Jesus would have been exposed to many Gentiles. I think he spoke both Greek and Aramaic. I think Aramaic was his mother-tongue, what was probably spoken in his home. However, I think he might have spoken more Greek than Aramaic in his life and ministry. I view Hebrew as a mainly rabbinic tongue after the captivity until the end of the 19^th century when Elieazer ben Yehuda resurrected it as the language of Israel. I think it is possible he taught some in Aramaic, but likely taught mostly in Greek.

I believe Jesus possessed, in the Spirit, power beyond Moses or Elijah. The healings and exorcisms were real, as were the natural miracles such as walking on water or rebuking the storm. While the first century is assuredly pre-modern, I think it was a more critical time than the Middle Ages. They knew there was a difference between natural sicknesses and demonic possession (see, for example, Luke 7:21).

I believe Jesus knew, early in his ministry, perhaps from the very beginning, that he would be crucified. His entire ministry was conducted "in the shadow of the cross." (Luke 9:22) While this was a very difficult thing for the disciples to understand and accept, Jesus knew it as a daily reality. This does not mean that Jesus was suicidal; he was not self-destructive. Jesus’ prayer in Matthew 26:39 is hardly the prayer of a suicidal man. But for Jesus, obeying his father’s will was more important than saving his skin.

I believe Jesus thought his death was atoning and that he was dying as a divine substitute (Mark 10:45) and thus fulfilling the "old covenant" and inaugurating a new one (Luke 22:20; Jeremiah 31:31). Jesus did this to set his people free from the power of sin (John 8:34-36), to absolve his people from the penalty of sin, and to set in motion the beginning of cosmic redemption (Matthew 19:28).

I believe Jesus thought he was the Messiah of Israel, and as such was the anointed, Davidic king, though he knew this reality was eschatological rather than temporal. This understanding was bound up with the belief that he was the Son of Man in Daniel. He would inherit the kingdom at the end of the age (Daniel 7; Matthew 25).

I believe Jesus thought that he was divine. Jesus claimed to be one with the Father (John 10:30). Jesus claimed that he would return to claim his kingdom at the end of the age and judge the nations (Matthew 25:31-46). The Son of Man in Daniel is a divine figure 7 (He comes "with the clouds of heaven," a divine metaphor. He is given glory. Everyone on earth shall serve him. His kingdom will be forever and not be destroyed. While we cannot take a full Nicene Christology from this passage, the overtones of divinity are pretty hard to miss.). Jesus received worship from his follower Thomas and commended him for doing so (John 20:28-29). Jesus took to himself prerogatives belonging only to God. He forgave people their sins (Mark 2:5. The point being that the sins of the paralytic were not committed against Jesus. We can forgive sins committed against us, but only God can forgive sins generally.). Jesus told people to trust him for salvation( John 14:6, and others) and claimed that he could take them, himself, to heaven (Luke 23:43). Jesus called himself by God’s name (John 8:58).

And, I think Jesus was right.

1273 words, exclusive of footnotes.