Jesus’ prophetic activity was distinctive in many respects,20 but comparisons with other prophetic figures of his day help us identify some elements of his ministry that also fit his Palestinian Jewish milieu. Popular prophets21 include both those who led movements22 and “solitary popular prophets,” such as Joshua ben Hananiah.23 The former were often perceived as prophets of deliverance, whose claims evoked Moses or Joshua; the latter resembled the majority of prophets in ancient Israel.24
Apparently many people hoped for a new deliverance like the exodus; Josephus complains about several who viewed themselves as eschatological sign prophets, and it is possible that these were simply his most conspicuous examples. Probably, then, first-century Jewish Palestine’s most popular figures were the prophets of deliverance, leading messianic movements and modeling their ministries after Moses and Joshua.25 Some of their promised activities may evoke Moses, signalling their attempts to secure eschatological deliverance. 26 (Eschatological signs were likely widely anticipated. Many Jewish people probably expected not only significant signs before the final deliverance and special miracles at the end27 but pondered the promised signs of the Messianic era offered by Isaiah, Ezekiel, and other biblical prophets.)28
First-century sign-prophets evoking Moses or Joshua included Theudas, who tried to part the Jordan, and a Jewish-Egyptian false-prophet, who expected Jerusalem’s walls to collapse before him.29 Some of these sign-prophets may have envisioned themselves as possible messiahs; Josephus, who tells us about them, had good reasons to play down messianic claims (although he does fail to brand them “brigands” as he normally does revolutionaries).30 Some of their followers undoubtedly understood them in such terms, and they could not help but recognize that their followers did so.31
No less than these prophets who sought to evoke a new Moses, Jesus was an “eschatological” prophet, a prophet of God’s impending reign. Accounts of Jesus’ miracles accord well with his interpretation of them in light of Is 35:5-6 (Matt 11:5//Lk 7:22); that is, he interprets them eschatologically as blessings of the future kingdom in the present.32 Most recognize that in the Gospels, Jesus’ miracles function as signs of the kingdom (explicit also for exorcisms in Matt 12:28//Lk 11:20).33 Subsequent Christian sources similarly associate the Christian movement with an eschatological renewal of signs (e.g., Acts 2:17-18).
Jesus’ miracles differed from those of the “sign prophets” after him denigrated by Josephus.34 Although some of these figures announced a major eschatological sign, they did not perform them.35 Unlike them, Eric Eve notes, Jesus “healed and exorcized, but seems not to have promised a particular spectacular sign.”36 The only sign attributed to him that resembles Moses was feeding people in the wilderness,37 not plagues or conquest; most of his signs were benevolent acts of healings.
Theissen and Merz appear representative of many scholars today in concluding that while Jewish wonder-workers offer closer parallels than pagan ones do, they differ significantly from Jesus (especially in working only through prayer and lacking eschatological miracles).38 No other source reports as many miracles concerning an individual as the Gospels do regarding Jesus.39 Moreover, Jesus stands alone among prior miracle-workers in using healings and exorcisms to indicate the coming of the eschatological order.40
