Abstract
This extensive ‘reference volume’ (1.xv) offers, as its title suggests, a reception-historical study of Jesus in the first three centuries. It is international, with editors in the UK and Germany and contributors from across the world, and it surely marks another step in the growing recognition of the importance of reception history in the field of biblical studies. It is wide, almost all-embracing, in the scope of its study: it is ‘focused on the various interpretations evoked by the figure of Jesus in the first three centuries ce. Put differently, it is less concentrated on the contours of the pebble dropped into the pond and more concentrated on the ripples which spread out afterwards’ (1.xx). So, not a study of the historical Jesus but of the impact that he made over the first three centuries.
Put like that, its topic is the development of Christianity in the first three centuries, rather than, say, the reception history of any particular book or, indeed, body of literature about Jesus. Paul is as important a source for the history it traces as the Synoptic—or indeed the apocryphal—Gospels. This in turn raises the question of the particular focus of this enquiry: where does the history takes its rise: what are the sources for this study; and, how does the historian work with the sources for the originating event?
The authors are clear about their starting point: ‘At the heart of our project is the figure of Jesus of Nazareth, the Galilean prophet executed on a Roman cross some time around 30 ce.’ (1.xx). But equally they are keen to distance themselves from ‘positivist views of history’. Gone is the search for the past as it was, ‘wie es eigentlich geschehen ist’; now, following in the footsteps of Gadamer and (though the complexity of the links with Gadamer are not to be underestimated) social memory studies the contributors here pursue a new programme: ‘surveying how the past has been received in subsequent periods, as well as the forces in the present and the past that influenced that reception’. Or as Jan Assmann, one of the protagonists of such studies, puts it: ‘Unlike history proper, mnemohistory is concerned not with the past as such, but only with the past as it is remembered. It surveys the story-lines of tradition, the webs of intertextuality, the diachronic continuities and discontinuities of reading the past.’ (1.xviii) This clearly opens up a very large field indeed.
How does this work out in practice, given the limitations of our existing sources for the earliest memories of Jesus? The editors take it for granted that ‘[a]ll together, there must have been a much vaster store of early Christian tradition available to our earliest writers than that which we know today’ (1.xxiii). Even if there are relatively few references to Jesus’ life and teaching in Paul’s letters, the editors, following J. D. G. Dunn, believe that the earliest churches can be ‘assumed to have had a relatively extensive knowledge of Jesus tradition, presumably passed on to them when they were first established’ (1.xxiv). Unlike the form-critics, who shared this belief, they do not however seek to uncover evidence/traces of those traditions within the texts that we possess from the early churches; they prefer to focus attention on the received literary deposits of such tradition themselves. With the notable exception of Q. The chapter on Q is contained in a volume subtitled ‘Literary receptions of Jesus in the First Century’ and within that volume in a section entitled ‘Gospel Literature and Additions to Gospel Literature’. Here there is a clear—(positivist?) historical—judgement that such a document actually existed and formed part of the literary development of the later Synoptic Gospels (see, for more detailed discussion, Alan Kirk’s lively discussion in in Vol. 1, Chapter 3). While of course such a view has a long history, it is the only such hypothesis to be given prominence in this work, while other views (sources for the Fourth Gospel, evidence of hymns in the Petrine literature) are given short shrift.
The work then has a clear form: it offers a series of studies of literary as well as physical artefacts and attempts to discern the process whereby the memories of Jesus were received and handed on in the first three centuries. In all three volumes, each chapter follows a simple pattern of introduction, portrayal of Jesus, reception of Jesus, conclusion and recommendations for further reading. The portrayal of Jesus focuses on what is distinctive about its presentation of him, the reception section discusses ‘the hermeneutical reshaping of inherited tradition’. Cumulatively, the chronological structure ‘will allow the reader to see ancient authors engaging with living history, drawing on events and witnesses of the past (‘Jesus tradition’) and making it new and foundational to the demands of their present circumstances. The task for contributors is to show how ‘Jesus’ is used to carve out specific Christian identities; how traditions about him are ‘recast to demonstrate continuity with the Scriptures, separation from the synagogue, abstention from the law and so on’ (1.xxv–xxvi).
It is a very exciting and, equally, demanding task. In every case, there is so much more that one would like to know, about the precise circumstances in which the texts and artefacts were produced, about the authors/artists, their cultural and social location, personal history, about the wider political, social and cultural context of the time, which would enable the chapter’s author to sharpen our understanding of the hermeneutical processes whereby a particular text took its present shape and shaped the understanding and identity of those who wrote and read it. In commenting on the overall ‘success’ of such a multivolume work, one needs to bear all such limitations in mind. What we have is a remarkable achievement and indeed a major milestone for early Christian studies.
Simply to put it like that is to draw attention to the way in which such a reference work breaks the disciplinary bounds which have so often constrained and narrowed the vision of theological historical studies. Here we are again within reach of the breadth of vision which inspired the great founders of modern theological studies, Schleiermacher, F. C. Baur, Ritschl, and Harnack. It is a view of church history as a living continuum, engaging both with its own spiritual resources and with its surrounding culture, emerging at a time of huge political change in the Augustan age, as Christianity grows to cultural dominance and engages with all the challenges and temptations which that in turn brings. Scholars are no longer to be confined behind the dividing walls of New Testament studies, church history and doctrinal theology, but to work together to recapture the extraordinarily fruitful and creative memories of this world movement, which had and still has the power to shape societies and individual lives.
The key to this lies for the editors in the understanding of the hermeneutical process which Hans-Georg Gadamer set out in his magisterial Truth and Method. As one might well expect, not all the contributors have drunk all that deeply at this particular well. Here, I can do no more than offer a few tasters of what is on offer. First, the two contributions on Mark by Sandra Huebenthal and Matthew by Matthias Konradt may be compared, to give a sense of how the work here varies from more traditional approaches.
Mark’s text, so Huebenthal, operates on two levels: on one level ‘it narrates events and encounters with Jesus and portrays what every bystander could have seen’; on another, it ‘negotiates different impressions and impressions of Jesus’, mostly introduced by the characters we encounter in the narrative’. Huebenthal’s account of the first level largely ignores modern scholarly discussions of Mark. It portrays Jesus as a figure who, apart from calling disciples, rarely approaches people, indeed who seeks to escape those who look to him for healing, whereas he wants to offer them salvation. For him, one thing was clear: a direct relation with God is waiting for everyone; it just needs to be embraced. For Jesus, this is ‘the Kingdom of God which has arrived. . .’. His message is ‘The Kingdom of God has arrived, change your mind and trust this good news. End of announcement.’(1.44). Jesus’ healing and exorcisms ‘are due to the arrival of the Kingdom of God to which he was introduced during his baptism. His special relationship to God, which became apparent in this moment, gives him the power to heal, to perform exorcisms, forgive sins, and clarify the purpose of the Sabbath’ (1.46). Nothing, at this point, is said about the place of the crucifixion in all this; nor about contemporary meanings of the phrase ‘Kingdom of God’.
Huebenthal’s section on the reception of Jesus looks at how Mark’s Gospel addresses questions about Jesus’ identity and fate by reworking and negotiating inherited traditions, from which it draws images, quotations, and interpretative frames. Here some of the strengths of this approach can be seen. The evangelist is heir to a broad range of—principally Jewish—traditional authorities, which he introduces into the narrative through a variety of characters, of varied reliability. This allows the images of the anointed one (Christ), the Son of Man, the Son of God to emerge as central for the understanding of Jesus’ identity. The Evangelist uses a framing technique whereby motifs from the tradition which are referenced, keyed into the narrative in indirect ways (not as direct quotations), aid the interpretation of the events, rendering ‘what [. . .] leaves those who experienced it in deep confusion’ intelligible and bearable (1.60). In this way notions of the innocent righteous one and Isaiah’s suffering servant provide an interpretative context for what is narrated.
This is an interesting attempt to uncover the processes whereby the first evangelist received traditions about Jesus and sought to answer pressing questions of his day. Would it not have helped to try and contextualise them? No interest is shown in either the geographical or political context of the evangelist; the focus is entirely on the evangelist’s cultural resources. How far does this derive from the rejection of ‘positivist’ forms of historical study; from a desire to retreat from the uncertain ground of searching for the actual contexts within which texts came to be to what may seem the more assured ground of identifying the memories of those events?
The contrast between Huebenthal’s chapter on Mark and Konradt’s on Matthew is striking. Konradt stands much closer to the tradition of historical critical scholarship on the Gospels and the discussion moves steadily from a consideration of Matthew’s sources to the date of composition and Matthew’s geographical location (Antioch or Galilee). For Konradt, Matthew represents a correction of Mark, agreeing with him in his stress on Jesus’ sonship of God but laying greater emphasis on Jesus’s obedience to the divine will and to his teaching on the law. To this end, Matthew draws liberally on the material he received from Q, constructing his discourses on the law from it. Jesus is portrayed predominately as a teacher and healer, but also strongly as the son of David, a title which Mark, so Huebenthal, distanced himself from as too political. Here there are no great surprises, and the reception historical task is met with Matthew’s Gospel being located in the historical continuum between Mark, Q and subsequent emergence of the Great Church. At certain points, however, he draws back from historical discussion. There is no discussion of the attempts by Saldarini, Overmann and Sim to portray the relationship between Matthew and other contemporary Jewish groups in terms of the sociological notion of sects (was this a step too far) and there is equally little engagement with theories of social memory.
One doesn’t have to search far in the other volumes to find these issues resurfacing in different forms. In a nicely written piece on the ‘Unknown Gospel’, Tobias Niklas shows how difficult it is to talk about the process of reception of memories of Jesus in the case of a document where there are close similarities in wording with both the Synoptics and John as well as interestingly divergent material. Niklas, cautiously, views the Unknown Gospel as a later, second-century text and its author’s method of working with earlier traditions, written or oral, as best thought of as a form of ‘Neuinszenierung’ or ‘re-enactment’ (2.204). This both nicely demonstrates how inevitable it is that historical judgements need to be made about the interrelationships between texts, their dating and the direction of travel before one can begin to consider the nature of the reception process itself; and, also, suggests that even in the second century, authors still drew freely on both oral and written sources. And that’s an insight which has considerable consequences for, say, earlier discussions of Q.
Similarly in Paul Parvis’s illuminating discussion of the Epistula Apostolorum (2.207–16). This is another second-century document, with one section in the form of a letter from the eleven apostles to the churches in the rest of the world, and another in the form of a dialogue between the risen Lord and the apostles. The work draws on a considerable variety of Gospel traditions, Johannine, Matthaean, but also probably Lucan and Markan, while also drawing on Paul and referring to other Christian scriptures. Here the context is drawn out a little more: there was clearly conflict within the community (the parable of the wise and foolish virgins is used to point to the sharp, and apparently final, divisions among the community, while references to figures like Simon and Cerinthus suggest the nature of the disputes which may have divided them (though nothing is spelt out, the Epistula expresses views which are sharply at odds with any kind of Docetism).
The perspective and range of discussion of contributions to this remarkable work of reference varies enormously, as witness the contrast between these two last and Alfons Fürst’s discussion of Origen. Here we are concerned not just with ‘simply taking up the words of Jesus and Jesus traditions’, but ‘with a hermeneutically reflected upon connection to and relationship with Jesus’. (2 .473) Origen’s breath-taking leap between Joshua calling on God to stop the sun, to give him more time to slaughter the Amalekites, and Jesus as the ‘sun of righteousness who constantly stands by and never leaves us and doesn’t set at all’ (Hom. Jos. 1.5, cit. 2.474) takes remembering Jesus into another realm of allegorical reading of biblical texts, which are themselves seen as embodying Jesus himself. His is a search for ‘the Word in the words’.
And then volume three steps out even further and engages with non-Christian literary receptions of Jesus in the second and third centuries, and with visual and liturgical receptions. Again, there is a wealth of fascinating material here. A few examples must again suffice. Mara ben Serapion’s letter to his son (first to sixth century?) compares Jesus’ death to that of Socrates and Pythagoras, all wise men who died an unjust death, which in turn brought retribution on their persecutors. Kathleen McVey discusses the evidence for these themes in contemporary literature, but as she clearly states: ‘The unsolved questions of date and authorship and the possibility of interpolation thwart discernment of a clearly defined reception history.’ (3.73). Even so there is much to be learned from the comparison of these themes in different strands of contemporary literature. Felicity Harley-McGowan’s chapter on the Alexamenos Graffito, which portrays the crucifixion of a figure with an ass’s head with the inscription: Alexamenos worships (his) God, shows how much is to be learnt from a study of second- and third-century imagery depicting the crucifixion, particularly if this is able to be set in its contemporary context. The fact that the graffito was found in a building occupied largely by slaves or freedman gives it a specific cultural location in a world of sharp parody and bawdy humour. The author argues that such parody was directed against Christian preaching of the crucifixion, which in turn leads to interesting discussion of the extent to which images of the crucifixion were current in the early centuries. A final section looks at the role of liturgy in shaping Christian memories of Jesus and, indeed, Christian identity. Rafael Rodriguez’s discussion of baptism shows how it penetrated all aspects of Christian living and dying, having a particular focus as not just the occasion but the means for the new member’s integration into the ‘Body of Christ’. At the same time, baptism became one of the key means for incorporating the Gentiles into the church (3.390).
It is impossible in a review of this length to give any sense of the breadth and diversity of material in this book. There is so much to be learnt, to be quarried from it, that one can only be delighted by it and have one’s curiosity stirred to read and learn more and more. The achievement of the book is to have drawn such amazingly rich material together. A book to treasure and cherish. Does it achieve the ambitions of its editors, or even, do all the contributors follow the hermeneutical strategies which the editors set out in their Introduction? It would have been (at least) a minor miracle, if they had. Many of the contributors just seem to get on doing what readers of second- and third-century texts and artefacts do, trying to place them in time and place, to relate them to their forebears. They cannot dodge the historical questions about dates, about literary priorities, which any attempt to enter more fully into this process requires, and many seem blissfully unaware of the revolution in historical studies which is mnemohistory. But then the project of understanding the reception of Jesus in the first three centuries is bigger than any single conception of how it is best undertaken. Plunge in and read and you will come away refreshed and with new understanding of these crucial centuries.