How Has The Understanding Of Jesus Christ Changed Over Time

"The Jesus Movement"

How Jesus' followers responded in the traumatic days following his death.

Fifty. Michael White:

Professor of Classics and Director of the Religious Studies Program University of Texas at Austin

THE RESURRECTION

The movement that originated around Jesus must have suffered a traumatic setback with his death. Not so much that a Messiah couldn't die, only that cypher happened. The kingdom didn't arrive immediately every bit they might accept expected. For a while we don't know what happened to the followers of Jesus. They apparently scattered, but non likewise long thereafter it seems that they came to the confidence that something had happened. Something that did change their perspective on who Jesus was and what he would mean for the hereafter of the movement, and this is what we know every bit the resurrection. Now information technology's not clear what happened in the resurrection. Nosotros don't know exactly how it occurred but what we do know that the followers of Jesus were admittedly convinced that he had been raised from the dead and had been taken abroad into sky as a vindication of his messianic identity. He was the crucified and risen Lord.... The resurrection story brings a unlike perspective to the agreement of Jesus. If he thought of himself as a prophet, as a messenger of God, that changes when he himself is raised by God from the dead. He is at present someone vindicated, and it's really the conventionalities in the resurrection experience that leads the disciples to come up to think of Jesus as somehow more than simply a prophet. Equally the Messiah himself. He is the 1 who has been vindicated by God by existence exalted into heaven as son of God.

It'due south probably in these early days afterwards the death of Jesus that the motion really starts to reorganize around his retentivity... it'due south probably very much dependent upon this growing agreement that he had been raised from the dead. Information technology seems to have circulated very quickly among his followers, but the primeval course of the movement is still thoroughly a sect inside Judaism. He is a Jewish Messiah. They are followers of a Jewish apocalyptic tradition. They are expecting the coming of the kingdom of God on earth. It's a Jewish motion.

... The primeval forms of the Jesus movement then are probably small, sectarian groups. At least one of them seems to be based in Jerusalem but there may exist others besides spread throughout the countryside. In all probability at that place's at least one or more in the Galilee as well. So we take to think of the earliest days of the Jesus movement as actually small pockets of sectarian activity all focused on this identity of Jesus equally the Messiah.

... Now who were the members of these earliest groups? Information technology's difficult to know in all the cases. Nosotros know a few names largely from the New Attestation itself. At Jerusalem it seems to be James, the blood brother of Jesus, who was the leader of the group for a whole generation thereafter. We hear of other people. There's a woman by the name of Mary... There are others in the Jerusalem congregation besides including Peter and some of the other original disciples of Jesus, but beyond that we know very few names and they accept to exist very small convacles of people however belongings on tightly to their beliefs and expectations while at the same time continuing in their Jewish tradition.

WANDERING CHARISMATICS

One of the earliest indications that we have of the Jesus movement is what we tend to telephone call "wandering charismatics," traveling preachers and prophets, who go on maxim the kingdom of heaven is at manus, continuing the legacy of Jesus' own preaching, plainly. They travel around with no coin and no extra clothes. And so, they are supposed to perform miracles and heal the ill for costless merely they plainly begged for food. This is a different pic of the primeval grade of the Jesus motion than what we've come up to expect from the pages of the New Testament and yet, it's within the tradition, itself. We hear even in Paul's twenty-four hours that he encounters people who come from Judea, with a different kind of gospel bulletin, and it looks like these are the same kind of wandering charismatics that nosotros hear of, in the earlier stages of the motion, later Jesus' death.

The Jesus movement is a sect. How do sects behave? One of the things they have to do is, they have to distance themselves from their dominant cultural environment. A sect e'er arises within a community with whom information technology shares a basic fix of behavior and yet, it needs to find some mechanism for differentiating itself. And then, sectarian groups are e'er in tension with their environment. That tension is manifested in a variety of ways - controversies over belief and practice; different ideas of purity and piety. But, some other manifestation of that tension is the tendency to want to spread the message out, to hit the road and convince others that the truth is real.

Wayne A. Meeks:

Woolsey Professor of Biblical Studies Yale University

Offset OF THE JESUS MOVEMENT

In what mode were the earliest followers of Jesus, the cults, if you volition, similar to other cults in the pagan world and in what very distinctive mode where they different?

Christianity begins actually every bit a sect among Judaism. I of several sects that we know of from virtually the same fourth dimension. Josephus tells us almost a number of prophets who appeared and gathered followers and were wiped out by the Roman Governors and their followers were disbursed, and if you read the series of revolts that Josephus talks most, and nearly the prophets that come up and promise to office the waters of the Jordan or whatever, brand the walls of Jerusalem fall downward, and they assemble followers and so their leader is captured and he dies and that'due south the end of it, of the story that we take near Jesus and the gospel fits rather nicely in that succession.

But the mystery that remains and which intrigues historians is precisely that. None of those groups of followers had any afterlife. They made no history; then why was this one different? The followers of Jesus somehow are different and this question, which ultimately is possibly unanswerable, is the thing I think which drives people like me to endeavor to dissect these sources that nosotros telephone call the New Attestation and the other early Christian literature and investigate the context of this and do archaeology and all the other things, to try to estimate ultimately, why is this group unlike, from the others.

EXPLAINING "KING OF THE JEWS"

Were the followers of Jesus making what is a rather extraordinary claim about him? What were they proverb?

The story of the followers of Jesus, in ane sense begins with something that, ironically, Pilate said most him. Ane of the facts that seems to emerge from the stories about Jesus, the earliest ones which we incorporate into the gospels, is that he is crucified with a placket on the cross which says, "the Rex of the Jews." What could this peradventure mean? From Pilate's signal of view..., here is someone who was a potential leader of an insurrection against Rome. And he wants to send a sarcastic message. He has chosen the virtually humiliating grade of death which is available..., which is reserved for slaves. Information technology'south a shaming, and that wants to put a certain spin on what's happening to the public who see it. So, he's maxim, "This is what happens to a King of the Jews."

The followers of Jesus, who don't become away as they're supposed to ... have to deal with that key question, - what does this mean that the one that we had all of these expectations virtually has been crucified? How practice nosotros bargain with this, not merely the end of this life, but the shameful terminate of this life? And, the amazing thing is, they said, "Hey, Pilate's correct - he was the King of the Jews, and moreover, God has vindicated this claim, that he is the King of the Jews, by raising him from the dead." Now, this is where the Jesus motion properly understood, which is to get Christianity, begins, with trying to explain that hard fact....

The get-go interpretation is okay, "Pilate killed him but God raised him from the dead". That's the very outset of information technology all. That is an deed of interpretation, that is to say, "this wasn't concluding." A second bit of estimation is to say, yes, "King of the Jews," what could this hateful? It obviously does not mean, "King of the Jews," in the way that a generation after, Bar Kochba would try to be Male monarch of Israel and restore the political kingdom of Israel, liberated from the Romans. It couldn't mean that, so what does it mean? And and then the early Christians, equally proper Jews, they begin to search the scriptures, [looking for] what clues are hidden here which no 1 has noticed before.... They begin to find promises in scripture of an anointed king who will come at the terminate of days, a notion which they share with many other Jews, at the same fourth dimension. So, this is where information technology all begins, with this kind of interpretive process, which of course goes in many different directions.

Helmut Koester:

John H. Morison Professor of New Testament Studies and Winn Professor of Ecclesiastical History Harvard Divinity School

Early CHRISTIANS USE HEBREW SCRIPTURES

What is the Gospel of Peter and what is pregnant about it?

We have in the four gospels of the New Testament, passion narratives, narratives of Jesus' suffering and death. Outside of the New Testament canon, nosotros have just i more extensive narrative of Jesus' suffering and death, and that has appeared in the Gospel of Peter. Now it was known in ancient times that there was such a affair as the Gospel of Peter. Eusebius of Caesarea, the primeval church building historian at the beginning of the 4th century, tells well-nigh the fact that there was a Gospel of Peter which was used by some communities in Syria.But no ane really knew what was in this gospel until at the end of the terminal century papyrus was discovered, which was a small amulet that a soldier had been wearing effectually his neck and which was given into the tomb of this soldier, and when it was opened up it turned out to be a text that told the story of the suffering and decease and resurrection of Jesus. But it is told in such a manner that i can assume that it was not dependent upon the canonical gospels that we have. But that at to the lowest degree function of this gospel goes dorsum to the aforementioned story, but draws from the oral tradition of the telling of that story, or from some older gospel as somescholars believe that is preserved here. What is interesting in this Gospel of Peter is that information technology shows in some instances more conspicuously the direct dependence of the passion narrative upon the prophecy and psalms and suffering servant stories of the Hebrew Bible, and therefore gives us an insight in the evolution of the passion narrative....

I don't think that [in the menses following Jesus' death] the disciples at present were trying to look for the right stories in the Hebrew Scriptures [to explicate his suffering and death.] But rather that these texts from the Hebrew Bible were already a part of their regular reading of texts, were already a part of their worship service. Nosotros know that in the Jewish synagogue scriptural text would exist read and would be interpreted. And so the disciples of Jesus must have lived in those texts and must take brought an understanding of the explanation of suffering on world with them that was already part of their worship life, of their discussions of their meditations at the time. So it's not similar someone who tries to go back at present and says, "allow's find the right text or scripture that would fit." But it'southward rather that out of the deep involvement in a religious tradition that was anchored in the worship life of Jewish communities, these stories about Jesus arise that now use the aforementioned words, the aforementioned language, the same images, in order to describe Jesus' suffering.

[For example], the question of the suffering servant is very closely connected with Isaiah 53. And Isaiah 53, in most Christian churches, is commonly the text from the Erstwhile Attestation that is read at Adept Fri every bit a prefiguration of the death of Jesus. Who the suffering retainer was has been the field of study of debate amidst Sometime Testament scholars. Is it the prophet himself who depicts himself equally the suffering servant? Or, which is perhaps the most likely solution, that ultimately the suffering servant is Moses. And it tells a different attribute of the story of Moses, not Moses as the leader who leads the people out of exodus, but Moses equally the ane who dies eventually and who is not able to see the Holy Land, and Moses about whom the book of Deuteronomy says, his tomb could not even exist found....

This story has very securely influenced the Jewish tradition before the early on Christian period with respect to the understanding of the suffering of the righteous person. How can it exist understood that the righteous in this world have to endure? And the answer to this was constitute in the story of the suffering servant of Isaiah 53. And that is the story to which the Christians apparently went very early at this stage, to detect an understanding of what the suffering and expiry of Jesus meant and signified.