Jesus as Charismatic Healer, Prophet and Sage
Jesus as Charismatic Healer, Prophet and Sage
Of the sample views here, Borg is the one who could in some sense most easily have fit either this chapter or the previous one. Borg’s Jesus challenged injustices in the present rather than promising an urgent future kingdom (although he did warn of impending judgment). Borg emphasizes the side of Jesus that “preaches” best in a modern framework,12 but to what extent is this the Jesus of history? I believe that Borg does in fact correctly emphasize one side of the Jesus tradition, and that we can profit from his work on that aspect even if we find it less helpful with some other aspects of the sources.
Although Borg’s Jesus: A New Vision and other works are useful, I focus here most frequently on a seminal academic work revised from his doctoral thesis, Conflict, Holiness & Politics in the Teachings of Jesus. If eschatology is not limited to the literal sense emphasized by Weiss and Schweitzer, he notes, it need not exclude Jesus’ interest in his nation’s political situation.13 He shows that resistance against Rome was widespread, rather than limited to a single Jewish movement;14 he also views what he calls the “quest for holiness” in terms of resistance against gentile oppression.15 Jesus, he believes, challenged this ethos of exclusivist holiness used for resistance.16
Unlike some scholars who force a choice between Jesus as a sage and Jesus as a prophet, Borg recognizes Jesus as both sage17 and prophet.18 Like Sanders and some others,19 he argues that Jesus intended a renewal movement, exemplified by choosing twelve disciples as the nucleus of a new community.20 (We will address some of these points more fully in ch. 17.) He combines the miracle-working “holy man” model (similar to Vermes’ charismatic that we summarize in the next section) with “a prophet who spoke of the consequences of his people’s present course.”21 He rightly emphasizes how the tradition reveals Jesus’ intimacy with God22 and radical dependence on, or faith in, God.23 Like Sanders, Borg views Jesus’ action in the temple as a prophetic act, though unlike Sanders, he treats Jesus’ recorded pronouncement as the key to understanding it.24
He argues that Jesus had to defend his behavior (such as table fellowship with sinners) against pious detractors. Whereas some scholars play down Jesus’ conflicts with Pharisees, Borg emphasizes such conflicts that are so central to the tradition,25 and contends that these focused on the correct interpretation of Torah.26 On Borg’s view, Jesus posed mercy as an alternative to exclusivist holiness. 27 He believes that Jesus’ merciful interpretation of the law led to a distinctive approach to the Torah regarding the sabbath28 and the temple.29 Thus, for example, he thinks that Jesus condemned the Pharisees’ practice of extrabiblical tithes.30 His Jesus treats holiness in terms of humility and self-death31 rather than in terms of separatism, in contrast to Pharisaism.32
Borg rightly critiques some traditional critical assumptions.33 He is intensely concerned with Jesus’ social settings,34 and rightly emphasizes Jesus’ continuity with Judaism.35 Although he does not draw the net of ancient sources as widely as some, he makes heavy use of Josephus, a first-century Jewish historian who is one of our most useful sources.
More problematic is his reduction of traditional eschatology, as we have noted.36 Whereas many scholars see Jesus as an “eschatological prophet,” Borg envisions him as a social prophet.37 Borg relates “the future threat” to Israel to its misguided present course, a course that Jesus’ mission challenged.38 The alternative perspective on Jesus’ message, he says, is “apocalyptic calculation . . . that the end of all was near,” a view he claims is now rejected by “most scholars.”39
Expectation of the imminent end need not entail calculations of its precise timing (some ancient sources even include multiple estimates), but in any case one need not pose alternatives so starkly. However one counts the number of scholars (I believe that Borg is mistaken on this point),40 is the “alternative” perspective so incompatible with his own evidence? Some alternatives are not mutually exclusive in ancient Jewish sources. For example, Jewish sources could lay side by side the alternatives of the end coming at a foreordained time41 or at a time contingent on Israel’s repentance.42 Such alternatives were no more inconsistent than God’s sovereignty factoring in human responsibility, a combination many or most Jews accepted.43 However subsequent believers might temporally separate the temple’s destruction from cosmic destruction or transformation after 70 CE, distinguishing coming catastrophes may have been no more necessary for a prophet c. 30 CE than comparable earlier prophets’ warnings of imminent judgment in light of the coming day of the Lord. Likewise, the Qumran scrolls did not distinguish the two; apocalyptic sources sometimes allowed for stages of transition to the kingdom, but we might count all the future ones as eschatological in some sense.
While I do agree with Borg about the impending crisis in Israel, I would argue that the early gospel tradition also suggests a climactic future kingdom (cf. Mk 9:47; 10:23, 25; Matt 6:9//Lk 11:2; Matt 8:11-12//Lk 13:28-29) that was imminent at least in the sense of being potentially near (Mk 1:15; 9:1).44 Likewise Jesus’ promise about the twelve reigning on twelve thrones suggests the future kingdom (Matt 19:28//Lk 22:30). Our earliest extant Christian source, Paul, seems to suggest a form of imminent eschatology different from what Borg envisions for Jesus (1 Thess 4:13-5:11; 2 Thess 1:5-2:15), although including trouble in the temple (2 Thess 2:3-4).45 I will argue later (ch. 17 and especially appendix 4) that Paul here is directly echoing Jesus’ end-time teachings, hence providing our earliest extant interpretation of Jesus’ future message (within two decades after Jesus’ teaching). Nor was Paul’s interpretation, offered to many confused Gentile Christians for whom it was clearly not originally designed, eccentric; scholars have often shown that Jesus’ language resembles that of other Jewish eschatological sources,46 hence would naturally be understood by his followers in that light.
Still, the heart of Jesus’ eschatological teaching undoubtedly did involve imminent historical crisis. The old order was collapsing; his people could no longer take for granted the continuance of any structures on which they depended. Such announcements from society’s fringe could not but disturb anyone with political, economic, or other interests in the old order. Indeed, Jesus must have calculated such warnings to dislodge his hearers’ comfort and security, and must have been aware that it would provoke hostility from the elite. It did so when other prophets challenged the old order (and would undoubtedly have similar effect on modern western hearers as well). Healings and exorcisms could point people to depend on God rather than the old order for their most fundamental needs. But while all of this squares well with envisioning Jesus as a social prophet of impending crisis (such as the war with Rome a generation later), it does not rule out the possibility of eschatological transformation, whether at that time or later. In Joel, for example, a locust plague foreshadows the judgment of the nations. Apart from specifying the end as unknown and expecting judgment within a generation (see ch. 17), quantifying the times was not Jesus’ primary interest.
Borg’s appeal to shamanism (what he more often calls the “holy man” model) provides a cross-cultural model for examining Jesus’ activity as a healer.47 Nevertheless, as a context for understanding Jesus’ use of “kingdom of God”48 it is inadequate, since close Jewish parallels for Jesus’ terminology exist. For the most part, he doubts that Jesus’ kingdom teaching is clearly future eschatology, depicting it more in terms of experiential reality49 and numinous presence.50 Although Borg does not in this work rule out the possibility of future elements absolutely,51 on this point, at least, he comes close to forcing a choice that perhaps need not be forced.