New directions in Jesus studies

Since about 2000, there has been something of a paradigm shift taking place within Jesus studies. For much of the second half of the twentieth century, the so-called criteria of authenticity ¹ held sway, culminating in the work of the Jesus Seminar convened by Robert Funk and John Dominic Crossan in 1985 and meeting biannually well into the 1990s. At its gatherings, scholars applied various tests to assess the relative likelihood of words and actions attributed to Jesus in the Gospels and elsewhere actually originating in the historical figure bearing that name. ²

From the outset, the criterion of dissimilarity has been germane to this approach which, according to one of its pioneers, can be framed thus: ‘the earliest form of a saying we can reach may be regarded as authentic if it can be shown to be dissimilar to characteristic emphases both of ancient Judaism and of the early Church’. ³ Whatever the evangelists place on the lips of Jesus which could as readily have been spoken by someone from the Jewish matrix to which he belonged or the Christian community he brought into being is unlikely to originate with him. As Morna Hooker observed in this Journal over forty years ago, however, it has one major shortcoming:

Use of the principle of dissimilarity, it is claimed, gives us what is distinctive in the teaching of Jesus. But the English word ‘distinctive’ can have two senses – as usual, the Germans use two words: ‘distinctive’ can mean ‘unique’ (what makes it distinct from other things, the German verschieden), or it can mean ‘characteristic’ (the German bezeichnend). In which sense is it being used here? Clearly the method is able only to give us the former – but what we really want is the latter: and the two are by no means necessarily the same. ⁴

Since then, there have been many other dissenting voices criticizing criteria on various grounds. ⁵ More recently, though, greater appreciation of how oral cultures remember and relate memories has challenged the presuppositions underpinning the whole enterprise: ⁶ for one, the conviction that most of the material comprising the Gospels initially existed as small units of identifiable forms reflecting particular settings which through the process of transmission were embellished or reworked. On the basis of this assumption, the task of Jesus scholars is to identify the form, strip away the secondary accretions so as to reveal the original material, which may or may not be of dominical provenance. Studies into social memory have confirmed, however, what is in a sense self-evident, namely, that memory is both selective and interpretative. Put simply, what is remembered is remembered because of its significance for those who remember it and, in committing it to memory, remembrances are inevitably interpreted within the recipient’s frame of reference. What is more, within oral cultures, this process is iterative as memories are communicated, selected and interpreted through time. One corollary of this is that we have no access to an authentic Jesus of Nazareth – raw, uncut; he is only available through memories that were eventually, thirty or forty years on, fixed and preserved in writing. As a consequence, not only is a central assumption informing the criteria of authenticity thrown into question but also the material that their application discarded as secondary turns out to be our only conduit to Jesus – ‘Interpretation is the only way the past survives into the present.’ ⁷

The ramifications of this for the study of Jesus are substantial as the enterprise finds a new focus in seeking plausible contexts to account for the memories recorded in the Gospels:

The historian’s job is to tell the stories of memory in a way that most plausibly accounts for the available mnemonic evidence. With this in mind, the historical Jesus is not veiled by the interpretations of him. He is most available for analysis when these interpretations are most pronounced. Therefore, the historical Jesus is clearly seen through the lenses of editorial agenda, theological reflection, and intentional counter-memory. ⁸

Jesus remembered. And the remembered Jesus in the Gospels may disclose clues not only as to why he was associated with certain memories through multiple retellings until their incorporation into texts but also of the originating impulse for those memories.

What difference does this make on the ground? Let us consider one saying which the Jesus Seminar, together with many other practitioners of the authenticity criteria, deemed to be the husk rather than the kernel – ‘Your faith has saved you/made you well’. ⁹ It occurs seven times in the Synoptic Gospels within four narrative contexts: ¹⁰

The healing of a woman suffering from chronic blood loss (Mark 5.34/Matt. 9.22/Luke 8.48)

The healing of a blind man, Bartimaeus (Mark 10.52/Luke 18.42)

The healing of ten lepers (Luke 17.17)

The forgiveness of a so-called ‘notorious’ sinner (Luke 7.50)

Rather than begin by assessing whether or not Jesus is likely to have coined it, we consider instead why it was remembered and preserved. The first point to note is that the saying in Greek (as, indeed, in Aramaic) is eminently memorable in terms of form and content - hê pistis sou sesôken se. It is succinct, rhythmic and meaningful within second Temple Judaism and, more so, nascent Christianity where faith and salvation become key theological terms. However, the semantics of pistis (trust, faith, belief, creed etc.) and sôzô (rescue, heal, save etc.) are broad ¹¹ so meaning must be discerned from usage and context, rather than assumed or imposed. We should also note that hê pistis sou sesôken se is memorable because of its unusual configuration with faith supplying the subject of the verb – ‘Your faith has saved you.’ This is striking given the Jewish emphasis upon a saviour God, one which characterizes many expressions of Christian faith from the outset, with Jesus serving as God’s saviour. To illustrate what is self-evident:

The one who believes and is baptized will be saved. (Mark 16.16)

This is indeed the will of my Father, that all who see the Son and believe in him may have eternal life; and I will raise them up on the last day. (John 6.40)

Believe on the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household. (Acts 16.31)

For one believes with the heart and so is justified, and one confesses with the mouth and so is saved … For, ‘Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.’ (Rom. 10.10, 13)

For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God … (Eph. 2.8)

Second, it is insightful to note what counts for pistis and sôzô in these traditions. Here again our approach takes a different tack. Rather than interpreting the inclusion of hê pistis sou sesôken se as evidence of Jesus tradition being conformed to the early Church’s kerygma of belief in God’s saving initiative through the death and Resurrection of Christ, instead we are exploring the possibility that this saying was remembered by and rehearsed within communities characterized by the kind of persons, responses and transformations highlighted in these narratives – responses and transformations which were celebrated as faith filled and salvific.

From this perspective, then, where is faith to be found? It is found among outsiders: a woman (presumably, Jewish?) rendered ritually unclean through her debilitating condition, drastically reducing her social interactions (Matt. 9.19–22/Mark 5.24–34/Luke 8.42–48; cf. Lev. 15.19–33); a blind man forced into destitution, incapable of earning a living, in all probability barred from Temple, and possibly synagogue, worship (Mark 10.46–52/Luke 18.35–43; cf. 2 Sam. 5.8; 1QSa 2.5–6; b. Ḥag. 2a); a female city-dweller, judged to be a ‘sinner’ by religious authorities for reasons implied rather than specified (Luke 7.36–50); ten lepers, at least one a Samaritan, quarantined owing to their contagion (Luke 17.11–19; cf. Lev. 13—14). Nor should we overlook the theological significance of illness in Jewish traditions where it was often associated with evil either in terms of oppression by malign spirits or transgression through sin. As a consequence, sick people tended to be viewed as disordered and diseased in their relation to God, requiring exorcism or repentance before healing could take place – a world-view informing many of the Gospel miracle stories (e.g. Mark 1.21–28; 2.1–12; 9.14–29; Luke 13.1–5, 10–17; John 9.1–3). ¹²

And what counts for faith among such unlikely exemplars? In all four traditions, faith means radical trust in Jesus expressed through personal investment and concrete action: ¹³ the chronic sufferer ploughs through the crowd undeterred by the ramifications; the blind man throws off his livelihood and pleads for mercy; the penitent risks opprobrium and spends a fortune on costly ointment; the lepers, while still uncertain about their state of health, present themselves to the priest hoping he will pronounce them clean (Lev. 13–14). Each of these initiatives embodies a readiness to abandon a former way of being so as to be renewed in some way in relation to Jesus. As such, although implicit, these narratives reflect belief in him, however inchoate – confidence, at least, in his trust-worthiness as a minister of God (cf. Isa. 35.5–6; 61.1–2; Jub. 23.29–30; 4Q521).

Faith also entails radical boundary crossing ¹⁴ whether in terms of gender, purity, race, illness, morality and, possibly, class, as outsiders find in Jesus a capacity to transcend taboos and social conventions. Other expressions of faith include profession (Mark 5.33; 10.47–48), devotion/worship (Luke 7.37–38; 17.16–18), petition (Mark 10.51) and discipleship (Mark 10.52).

What, then, of salvation – what do these traditions associate with sôzô? Healing is clearly central, although, two thousand years on, within a very different world-view, it is difficult for us to assess what this entailed not least because healing is a complex, multi-dimensional phenomenon of which the underlying medical condition in only one factor. Another, is how that condition is perceived by the sufferer (e.g. punishment) and affects that person psychologically (e.g. guilt, rejection, loss of self-esteem). A third dimension is how the condition is interpreted by others (e.g. contagious, evidence of morally suspect lifestyles or divine displeasure) which may also impact upon sufferers, adding to their malaise (e.g. quarantine, exclusion, condemnation). The medical anthropologist, Arthur Kleinman, maintains that

Disease refers to a malfunctioning of biological and/or psychological processes, while the term illness refers to the psychological experience and meaning of perceived disease. Illness includes secondary personal and social responses to the primary malfunctioning (disease) in the individual’s physiological or psychological status. ¹⁵

In the light of this distinction, were these narratives remembered and associated with Jesus because of his capacity for curing disease (treating underlying medical conditions) or healing illness (overcoming the debilitating social and psychological consequences of disease)?

Perhaps the answer is both. ¹⁶ Certainly, cure is stressed (Mark 5.29; 10.52; Luke 17.14), but so also is healing. For instance, sôzô includes in each case encountering Jesus personally – the woman, whose flow of blood ceases, emerges from anonymity to tell her story (Mark 5.33); Bartimaeus is summoned into his presence (Mark 10.49–51); the alleged sinner ministers to him intimately and is assured of acceptance (Luke 7.37–38, 48); the lone Samaritan returns to acknowledge and give thanks (Luke 17.15–19). Further, implicit in these narratives is the experience of rescue from isolation, penury or condemnation and restoring of right-relating within community and before God – the wholeness of peace (Mark 5.34; Luke 7.50). And, of course, in at least one instance the overtly theological dimension of salvation is stressed in the form of forgiveness of sins, engendering in the recipient a laudable capacity for generosity and love (Luke 7.44–50). ¹⁷

If space permitted, we could dig deeper, comparing and contrasting parallel versions to reveal an evolution of usage through time, but hopefully sufficient has been presented to demonstrate the fruitfulness of this approach in which Gospel traditions are studied in an informed yet imaginative way for clues as to the nature of the communities ¹⁸ in which they were remembered precisely because they resonated with the experience and convictions of their members. In our case, we have brought into focus gatherings capable of embracing considerable diversity where members, unencumbered by many of the religious and socio-economic boundaries defining existence and fostering division, find common ground in Jesus – communities, it seems, largely comprising of, or with a bias towards, the marginalized, where faith and salvation are not tightly prescribed categories, delimiting particular sets of beliefs or experiences, but encompass a broad spectrum of responses and transformations rooted in and emerging from the particularity of members’ circumstances. There are commonalities (faith as radical trust in Jesus with life-changing implications; salvation as encountering Jesus through release from life-threatening or diminishing conditions, restoration of right-relating and social interaction), but they are animated personally, lending themselves to multiple embodiments.

What is also striking is the way in which our saying in particular and its narrative contexts generally relate Jesus to faith and salvation. Although, as we have seen, trust is implied, the emphasis for faith is upon performance, the outworking of trust in practice – a readiness to let go of past identities and constraints, to risk rejection and failure, to search Jesus out at extreme cost, to embrace a new way of being; and, conversely, a willingness to incorporate within Jesus communities those who exercise faith in these ways. Here Jesus isn’t so much the object of belief as the engenderer of faith. ¹⁹

Equally, Jesus’ salvific role is subtle, ill defined. He is not portrayed as the outright saviour-figure central to mainline Christianity, which evidently caused Matthew problems when integrating some of these traditions into his Gospel, as is reflected in his single, redacted, occurrence of the saying in 9.22 (cf. the evangelist’s ‘reformed’ version: ‘According to your faith let it be done to you’, 9.29; 15.28). ²⁰ Grammatically speaking, faith is the effector of saving activity in hê pistis sou sesôken se. Yet this is faith inspired by Jesus, yielding a spectrum of salvific transformations realizable in relation to him, framing salvation as a mutual, collaborative, this-worldly undertaking – bearing witness to communities in which Jesus is experienced as a liberating presence in a very tangible way where lives fractured by illness and frailty, prejudice and alienation, can realize a measure of healing: communities of interdependence where members discover the requisite resources to take responsibility for their own salvation (cf. Phil. 2.12).

Given its relatively undeveloped Christology and ‘unorthodox’ configuration between pistis and sôzô, our saying may well originate in very early remembrances of Jesus, at a stage when the impact of his teaching and practices loomed large. Perhaps, even during his lifetime, for unless Jesus engendered faith when alive there are few grounds for maintaining that any of our sources afford reliable information about his ministry. For without the impact of his ministry and the engendering of faith there would have been little reason for anyone to remember anything of what he did or said. ²¹