CHAPTER 17 - Jesus the Prophet
CHAPTER 17
Jesus the Prophet
“The prevailing opinion has been that Jesus acted as a prophet and was recognized as an eschatological figure. The social historian recognizes traits that support another role. The figure that immediately comes to mind is that of the popular philosopher known as the Cynic.”
BURTON MACK1
“Jesus cannot be considered simply a teacher. The miracles do not require us to think that he was an eschatological prophet, but they are compatible with that view.”
E. P. SANDERS2
“Jesus had aims which engaged with the destiny of Israel. He was not simply a wisdom teacher.”
KIM HUAT TAN3
In considering Jesus as a prophet, I subsume under this title several more specific categories sometimes offered by others: eschatological prophet; charismatic holy man and healer; and founder of a renewal movement. While these categories can be reasonably distinguished (and certainly existed separately for various ancient Jewish figures), they coalesce in Jesus and all do fit the general, earlier biblical rubric “prophet.”
That a follower of John who also drew crowds should have been considered a prophet is hardly surprising.4 The gospel tradition identifies John as the expected Elijah at various points (e.g., Mk 1:6; 9:13; Lk 1:17; Matt 17:12-13), but elsewhere more subtly reserves this image, alongside that of the new Moses, for Jesus (e.g., Lk 4:24-27; 9:8, 30-35, 61-62; Jn 1:21; 6:14-15).5 Unlike the Baptist, Jesus apparently claimed that his ministry was actually introducing (not merely presaging) the kingdom, and all strata of gospel tradition confirm that Jesus performed miracles like those of Elijah and Elisha.6 (The category also makes some sense of tradition behind Josephus’ description.)7 That the early Christian movement was also intensely prophetic8 likewise may point to the prophetic character of its founder.9
Most scholars believe that Galileans followed Jesus as a prophet,10 even if scholars continue to debate which sort of prophetic models are most relevant. Many people in Jesus’ day undoubtedly followed charismatic leaders.11 Although scholars increasingly concur that the historical Jesus was a “charismatic leader” in some sense, they dispute whether he was “(with Vermes) a charismatic healer like Hanina ben Dosa and Honi the Circle-Drawer or (with Hengel, Theissen and others) a charismatic prophet.”12 Given the fluidity of such distinctions in antiquity and the Gospel portrayal of Jesus as legal teacher, healer, and prophet, one must ask why we are forced to choose among these options. Observers probably approached him in terms of whichever role they needed him to fill, although this probably meant in practice that most people approached him as a charismatic signs-prophet (cf. Mk 1:34; 3:10; 6:4, 15; 8:28; Matt 21:11, 46; Lk 24:19).
Those who insist that because Jesus was a sage he was not a prophet13 assume exclusive modern categories that would not have held among Jesus’ contemporaries. 14 Scholars often thus reject the forced choice between Jesus being a sage or a prophet; he could have been both.15 As Vermes’ work on Honi and Hanina suggests, some popular charismatic teachers looked more like prophets, and despite more scribal teachers’ objections, the line between popular teachers and prophets may have remained thin for many.16
Modern scholars who insist that if Jesus were a sage he could not be an eschatological figure ignore the intensely eschatological orientation of Palestinian Judaism as a whole in Jesus’ day;17 nor can teachers and revolutionaries always be distinguished.18 Most such forced-choice logic represents the strict imposition of modern categories on much more fluid concepts of charismatic leaders held by people in first-century Jewish Palestine.19