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The gospels differ among themselves in regards to historical details about Jesus1 and in their overall interpretations of him. These differences, along with the extraordinary claims the gospels make about him, raise the question, what can be known historically about Jesus? In a society where historical inquiry is an accepted form of knowledge this question cannot be avoided. This is the starting point for the quest for the historical Jesus, which can be traced back through various stages to Hermann Samuel Reimarus (1694–1768).2 This quest is usually undertaken with some purpose related to the Christian faith.3 It has theological importance. Historical inquiry is one source of knowledge about Jesus. It can help assess the continuity and discontinuity between what faith claims about Jesus Christ and the life he lived.4 It can also give historical concreteness to one’s understanding of Jesus, showing how he was situated amidst the social conflicts of his day.

The quest has produced numerous contradictory images of Jesus. These often betray an ideological bias in relation to cultural, political, and religious conflicts of the present. Yet understandings of Jesus produced by the quest cannot be simply dismissed as expressions of current

ideologies. Research into the historical Jesus needs to be critically evaluated in terms of whose interests it serves. But it remains a potential source of knowledge about Jesus that has emancipatory power. The presence of ideological distortions in historical claims about Jesus can only be demonstrated through further historical inquiry. Therefore this inquiry needs to continue.5 What can be known historically about Jesus, like any historical knowledge, is always subject to correction or refutation by further research. It is not the basis of faith in Jesus Christ. This faith is based on experiencing the proclamation of Jesus Christ as true in a compelling way. But knowledge about Jesus gained through the quest can and should inform this faith.

This chapter presents a description and interpretation of Jesus’ message and person drawn from the work of people engaged in the quest for the historical Jesus. Subsequent chapters will return to the historical Jesus in relation to particular questions. This chapter has a broader focus: Jesus’ proclamation of the coming reign of God and how this was intertwined with his person. Who Jesus was and how he lived was a medium for his message. Conversely this message and the way he proclaimed it made an implicit claim about his person, which eventually led to his death.

The Setting

Apart from one or more trips to Jerusalem, Jesus lived and worked in Galilee. He probably first became publicly active between 26 and 29 CE. His death outside Jerusalem probably occurred in 30 CE. These dates cannot be certain, partly because of the nature of the evidence in the gospels, and partly because of the time and place in which he lived.6 Galilee was a hinterland to Jerusalem. Jerusalem was a hinterland to imperial Rome. Jesus had no significant impact on the Roman Empire during his lifetime. From a Jewish perspective he was only one of a number of charismatic leaders of messianic movements who were killed by Roman forces or by Herod, their client-king.7 In relation to the political and cultural centers of his time, he lived and died in almost complete obscurity. Consequently, little exists in the way of records or historical references independent of the New Testament or related literature like the Gospel of Thomas 8 by which a more precise dating of his activities could be obtained.

Galilee in Jesus’ time was experiencing deep social tensions along religious, cultural, political, and economic lines. Hellenism had been challenging and interacting with Judaism for several centuries. Taxation from Roman and subordinate regional authorities was pushing many peasant families into permanent debt. The divide between rich and poor was growing. Local and family authorities frequently had difficulty coping with the erosion of social values9 caused by these cultural, economic, and political forces. This helped create an openness to successive eschatological renewal movements led by charismatic figures like John the Baptist and Jesus. These movements in turn created tensions between themselves, more established forms of Jewish religion, and Roman and Jewish political authorities.

Jesus was a first-century Jew. He lived in the period known as Second Temple Judaism.10 It was a time of religious ferment and divergent movements within Judaism, to the extent that some suggest speaking of Judaisms rather than Judaism in this period. The gospels all describe Jesus as having an understanding of the Jewish religious traditions and practices sufficient to present himself as an authoritative interpreter of these and to defend his views in debate with other Jewish religious leaders. Evidence in the gospels suggests that he came from Nazareth in Galilee, a rural village off the beaten track yet close enough to the city of Sepphoris that he might be exposed to broader cultural currents.11 Jesus was a layperson with no official qualifications or group affiliation to fall back on when resistance rose up against him. By all accounts he remained unmarried. His public ministry began after his baptism by John the Baptist, a charismatic Jewish religious leader preceding him. Jesus’ relationship to John was in some ways analogous to his relationship to the institutions and traditions of Second Temple Judaism. Jesus accepted many of the teaching of both, yet he also creatively interpreted these and departed from them in significant ways. In doing so, he helped give rise to one of the covenantal renewal movements12 that were part of Second Temple Judaism.

John the Baptist

John the Baptist was a preacher of eschatological renewal whose message centered on the theme that all people, even those considered righteous and good, needed to repent to escape God’s impending judgment. Jesus went to John to be baptized. The significance of this can be summarized as follows:

By doing this Jesus acknowledged John’s charismatic authority as an eschatological prophet, accepted his message of imminent fiery judgment on a sinful Israel, submitted to his baptism as a seal of his resolve to change his life and as a pledge of salvation as part of a purified Israel, on whom God (through some agent?) would pour out the holy spirit on the last day.13

Being baptized by John positioned Jesus as implicitly criticizing other Jewish religious authorities and institutions, as these were included among those addressed by John’s call to repentance. It is crucial though to note that John’s and Jesus’ at times radical criticism of other Jewish movements and institutions came from within Second Temple Judaism. Both John and Jesus were Jews. Neither departed from underlying assumptions shared by the divergent movements within Second Temple Judaism14 and thus by the other Jewish religious leaders and institutions they criticized. Their criticisms and denunciations were part of an inner-Jewish debate at that time about the nature and purposes of God. They were in no way a criticism of Judaism per se.

A Contemporary Debate

Jesus has recently been at the center of a debate between those who interpret him as having been an eschatological prophet of Jewish renewal, acting in expectation of a dramatic new action by God,15 and those who downplay the presence of eschatological expectation in Jesus’ teaching, preaching, and symbolic activities, or who argue that this does not indicate an expectation on his part of an imminent action by God, and who tend to see the apocalyptic elements in the Gospels as later additions to traditions that grew up about Jesus after his death.16 The debate is partly about how diverse Second Temple Judaism was and where Jesus should be located within this. Both sides have emphasized that Jesus belongs within this milieu and have enhanced contemporary understandings of Second Temple Judaism. Jesus’ baptism by John and the presence and importance of eschatological expectation in Jesus’ message, widely attested “in many different gospel sources and literary forms,”17 suggests that he too was an eschatological prophet who shared John’s expectation that God was about to dramatically intervene in history. Eschatological expectation is present to the same degree in every tradition about Jesus. Jesus probably made varying impressions on different social groups so that different kinds of traditions arose about him.18 But eschatological expectation does seem to have given decisive shape to Jesus’ message and public activity as a whole.19 A non-eschatological Jesus looks odd situated between his baptism by John and the eschatological orientation of the early church after his death. “The origin of Jesus’ activity in the apocalyptic movement of John the Baptist, the known events of his life, and the apocalyptic movement initiated by his followers after his death suggest that Jesus understood himself and his mission in apocalyptic terms.”20

Jesus’ Message: The Coming Reign of God

The gospels describe Jesus’ baptism by John as connected to the beginning of Jesus’ own ministry, which had significant differences from John’s. While John’s ministry was located on the banks of the Jordan River, Jesus circulated among villages in Galilee, preaching, teaching, healing, casting out demons, and having table fellowship with those considered sinners. Whereas people came to John, Jesus went to people. This basic difference is also reflected in Jesus’ message. Like John, Jesus preached that God was about to decisively intervene in history and that people needed to repent and recommit themselves to God in light of this. But the focus of Jesus’ proclamation was not so much the threat of judgment as the possibility and joy of salvation and reconciliation with others.21 If John with his prophecies of coming judgment, “came across to the people as a grim ascetic, . . . as a sort of dirge, . . . Jesus . . . [came] across as a song!”22 In Jesus’ public work, the gracious initiative of God was extended to people as they were, before they repented. In his parables and public activity Jesus proclaimed that God’s coming brought a possibility of salvation that was of surpassing value and available to all as a gift.

This message, exemplified in his eating and drinking with tax collectors and sinners, relativized many moral norms as a means or barrier to being accepted by God. Even flagrant sinners and the wicked were told that through God’s forgiving grace they too could enter the coming reign of God. Yet this also created new divisions around the acceptance or rejection of Jesus and his message. At the heart of Jesus’ message was the claim that peoples’ hope lay ultimately not in what they did, but in the gracious initiative of God.23 This emphasis on the reign of God as a gift, a feast to which all were invited, was central to Jesus’ preaching and teaching. Aspects of this scandalized some other Jewish religious leaders and helped create opposition to him. What was scandalous though was not so much the idea that God’s grace came as a gift, but Jesus’ claim that it was extended through his person to those considered unrighteous and that people would be judged in accordance with their response to him.

Jesus proclaimed the coming reign of God to be a state of salvation that would embrace the whole person and potentially all creation. Its coming in fullness would include past generations as well as the present through the resurrection of the dead.24 It was of surpassing value, worth more than anything else a person might have. It would involve a renewal of Israel and the fulfillment of God’s long-standing promises of salvation. Its coming would establish “the wholeness and integrity of creatures”25 through overcoming all forms of suffering and evil.

The reign of God was to have an egalitarian nature. Leaders were to be servants of others. While Jesus’ preaching often seems to have lacked the critical focus on sinful social structures characteristic of the Hebrew prophets, his proclamation had a politically and socially revolutionary dimension.26 The powerful would be cast down and the poor and oppressed lifted up. This clearly implied that Rome was not eternal and that its rule would soon end.27 The reign of God was to be free from oppression of all kinds. No one would be dependent upon the influence and power of others.28 As all are children of God, all were to be equal. Jesus’ message was also culturally revolutionary. Some women found a new open space around him as members of his following.29 Social and religious conventions were declared not binding if they hindered people from responding to his call. Jesus understood this reign of God to be already present to some degree in his healings, exorcisms, table fellowship with sinners, and in the community of those who accepted his message.30 Though still to come in fullness, it was already initially present in his work and the movement gathered around him.

According to Jesus, the nature of the reign of God as salvation, its coming into history, and its character as a gift result from God’s goodness. It is God’s nature to give good things to people, to bring the reign in which all life will flourish. Thus present in Jesus’ preaching is the idea that there is a dynamic quality to God’s being. God’s goodness moves God to act, to bring the reign of God. This reign comes as a gift but it is not peripheral to God. Its coming will bring an increase to God’s joy. It issues from a “relationship of God to history” that is intrinsic to God’s being.31

However, this reign of God is an embattled reality within history. It broke into the present in deeds of saving power that were part of Jesus’ ministry, yet it was also contested and opposed. There were times when Jesus could do no miracles. There were many who spurned his invitation to the reign of God. This points to an important paradox about Jesus and his message. Jesus claimed the power of God was at work in his ministry and manifest in his healing miracles and exorcisms. These helped authentic him as doing the work of God. In keeping with Jewish tradition Jesus proclaimed God as having ultimate power over the final destiny of all creation. Yet he did not claim that God was the sole power in creation or that God intended to be such.

Jesus and Power

The reign of God that Jesus proclaimed was contested on several levels. Its fundamental conflict was with the power of evil. Jesus described this power as being overcome on a metaphysical or mythic level32 through the exorcisms and healings he and others did in his name, and through his message being preached to the poor. His healings, exorcisms, and table fellowship were signs that the reign of God was initially present and a source of hope that it would soon come in fullness. Yet Jesus did not present the reign of God as breaking or ending the power of people. In relation to other people, the coming of the reign of God occurred through their being won to it. Jesus called people to follow him but he had no direct power to force them to do so. He had to move people to seek to enter the reign of God that he proclaimed. The coming of the reign of God did not break the power of people who entered into it. It increased it.

In his healings and exorcisms, Jesus did things for people that they were not able to do for themselves. This was also true of his preaching and table fellowship. Here Jesus mediated God’s acceptance and grace to people in ways that they could not do for themselves. However, people could only enter the reign of God through the exercise of their own power and volition. The power revealed in his healing miracles and exorcisms is portrayed at times as subordinated, even dependent, upon his ability to win their hearts and minds. The inbreaking of the reign of God was happening not through people being subdued but through their power being enhanced and reoriented.33 The reign of God was coming through God empowering people and attracting them to it. As they entered it, it in turn empowered them.

This combination of power and powerlessness was reflected in Jesus’ relationships to the political and religious institutions of his day. The ability of Jesus to frame powerful sayings and draw large crowds made him a concern to Roman officials and Jewish religious and political authorities. At the same time he was vulnerable to critique and violence from these. He announced the coming of the reign of God in a powerful way, in part through his miracles and exorcisms, but he did so in a “defenceless form,”34 leaving people free to reject his message and himself.

Thus the reign of God that Jesus proclaimed was characterized by a strange mix of power and vulnerability, as was Jesus himself. While it broke into the present through healings and exorcisms and in teaching and preaching that many experienced as authoritative and compelling, it was without any direct means of enforcement. It was supposed to gain subjects non-violently.35 As a result, Jesus frequently appeared to be powerful in relation to metaphysical evil, yet vulnerable in relation to people. This vulnerability was most profoundly expressed in Jesus’ death on the cross.

The God Jesus Proclaimed

In proclaiming the coming of God’s reign, Jesus spoke of God. He shared central convictions of Second Temple Judaism that God is one, unique, radically transcendent, good, powerful, active, calls people to do justice, and had entered into a special covenant with Israel.36 God was the sovereign Creator, the giver of life and a source of hope in the face of death. Yet Jesus also described this transcendent God as compassionate and standing in a personal relationship to people, who were to speak to God with the familiarity and confidence of a trusting child speaking to a loving parent. The active and compassionate nature of God required that God be spoken of in anthropomorphisms. Jesus did speak of God as constant, ultimate, steadfast, certain, and trustworthy. But he also spoke of God in dynamic terms; as experiencing joy, as giving daily bread, as hearing and answering prayer. Jesus often used an image familiar to his listeners, that of “the well-to-do landowner and paterfamilias of rural Galilee,”37 to describe God as directly approachable, able to help and standing in a personal relationship to those presenting petitions.

There were significant tensions in Jesus’ proclamation of God. A first relates to the nature of the power associated with the reign of God, mentioned above. On the one hand, Jesus proclaimed God as all-powerful, all-knowing, and constantly present. Yet he also described people as having freedom in relation to God, and God as having desires and intentions that depended to some extent on human freedom for their fulfilment. While Jesus proclaimed God as having ultimate power, he did not proclaim God as having the only power, or as desiring to be the only one with power.

A second tension in Jesus’ proclamation was around God’s mercy and judgment. While Jesus spoke of God’s mercy and forgiveness, he did claim that those who spurned his message or who failed to show compassion for others would experience judgment. This reflects a tension running throughout the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament between the moral demand of God for righteousness and the mercy of God which extends to sinners. This can be described as the tension between the moral and the transmoral dimensions of God.38 A fundamental affirmation of Second Temple Judaism shared by Jesus was that there is a moral dimension to God and human life. Jesus’ preaching of judgment for those who rejected his message emphasized this. Human choices can have a deep impact on God’s creation and make a difference to God. Yet in Jesus’ words and actions overall, the weight given to human choice and action was outweighed by God’s grace, which is able to create new beginnings for even the worst sinners. Though sinners deserve judgment, forgiveness and new life are made freely available to them. God’s love is transmoral in doing this in that it goes beyond what morality requires, without obviating it. According to Jesus’ teaching there is always a transmoral element to God’s love, in that God always gives people more than they deserve. God does not give because people are deserving, but because God is good and cares for all of God’s creation.39

In Jesus’ proclamation the moral and the transmoral aspects of God’s nature stand in tension but they have a common source. The goodness of God demands to be reflected in human conduct. This is the source of the moral demand of the law. Yet this goodness that demands moral action and so judges also reaches out to the fallen and the wicked to reconcile and redeem. It impels the endless searching for the morally lost that will not cease until they are found. Thus the goodness of God that gives rise to judgment when life is destroyed or injured also gives rise to God’s gracious initiative to save the lost. The standard of God’s judgment in Jesus’ preaching is God’s infinite goodness,40 which stands behind the coming of God’s reign and the hope of God’s graciousness for all. In proclaiming the threat of judgment for those who spurned his message of the coming of God’s reign, Jesus was expressing the significance and urgency of God’s gracious initiative present in his own person and work. To spurn God’s grace was in effect to sin against it, to injure oneself and others. If Jesus’ proclamation of judgment on those who do this is interpreted as expressing the significance of the grace arising from God’s goodness, God’s judgment remains ultimately subordinate to God’s love. Jesus proclaimed a God who judges by high standards, but a God whose infinite goodness is always a source of assurance and hope for those judged.

At the heart of Jesus’ proclamation was “the conviction that the eternal, distant, dominating and tremendous Creator is also and primarily a near and approachable God.”41 This nearness and approachableness took on a particular emphasis in Jesus’ preaching and activity, which was characterized by a constant turning towards and openness to the marginalized and oppressed.42 While Jesus’ message and work were directed to all of Israel and potentially beyond it, they were directed first to the poor and marginalized. In this way he proclaimed God as having a preferential option for the poor. Through his words and actions, Jesus depicted God as judging reality from the perspective of the poor and marginalized and as standing in solidarity with them. Jesus’ death on the cross was the ultimate expression of this.

Jesus Himself

Jesus proclaimed the coming reign of God, not himself. Yet his proclamation was deeply intertwined with his person in two ways. First, through symbolic actions like his table fellowship with sinners, his person became a medium for his message, a way of expressing and actualizing it.43 As this happened, his person became caught up in his message and became identified with it. Second, implicit in much of Jesus’ preaching and teaching, in his relationship to the Scriptures and the traditions of Second Temple Judaism,44 in his symbolic actions such as the gathering of twelve disciples, and in his healings and exorcisms was a claim about himself. The public and symbolic actions that Jesus deliberately undertook expressed a sense of what he was trying to do and of how he saw himself.45 They indicate that he “had a sense of eschatological authority. He saw the dawn of a new world in his actions.”46 Just as John’s preaching of the imminent judgment implicitly gave him a high status as the herald of this, so Jesus’ preaching and public activity signalled that in and through him God’s reign was breaking into the present. His public activity thus made a “monumental though implicit”47 claim that he was the “climatic and definitive fulfiller of the hopes of Israel,”48 the one through whom God’s reign was being ushered in. Thus implicit in his proclamation was a claim that his person was uniquely important in salvation history and that he had a key role to play in the coming of God’s promised redemption. In his entry into Jerusalem at Passover and in the “cleansing” of the temple he made this claim explicit in a dramatic fashion that led to his death.

Jesus’ Death

That Jesus died on a Roman cross is generally accepted as one of the “few indisputable facts”49 that can be known about him. Crucifixion was “a tortuous death reserved” by the Romans “for provincial rebels as well as slaves.”50 That Jesus died in this way indicates that the Roman governor Pilate had him executed as a threat to Roman rule. This probably happened as a result of three actions on Jesus’ part.

The first was his going to Jerusalem at the time of the Passover. The crowd of pilgrims flooding into Jerusalem and the temple at this time tended to create a tense atmosphere in which unrest fuelled by religious convictions could break out against the Roman occupation.51 The nature of the gospels as theological interpretations of Jesus’ history do not enable the construction of a detailed chronology of his activity between his baptism by John and his last days in Jerusalem.52 But it can be surmised that by the time Jesus arrived at Jerusalem for the Passover celebration at which he died, he had become a public figure whose message and presence in Jerusalem at this time would have concerned Pilate and probably the temple authorities as well.53

Upon arriving at Jerusalem Jesus is reported to have staged two symbolic actions: his entry into Jerusalem and his cleansing of the temple. Both are well attested enough in the New Testament traditions to be accepted as historical in some form. His entry portrayed him as the Son of David, a messianic characterization that had definite political overtones.54 The cleansing of the temple suggested that the reign of God he proclaimed would “spell an end to the present system of temple worship.”55 In these two symbolic actions the claim about himself that had been implicit in his proclamation was dramatically portrayed in a confrontational way, exacerbating tensions between himself and religious and political authorities in Jerusalem. These two actions can be seen as leading to Pilate’s acting against him and to the accusation that he had claimed to be the king of the Jews.

The conflict that came to a head here between Jesus, other Jewish religious leaders, and Pilate was over who spoke for God.56 It was Pilate who had Jesus crucified, but Jesus’ conflicts with other religious groups and authorities likely contributed to his death as well.

The death of Jesus is the consequence of tensions between a charismatic coming from the country and an urban elite, between a Jewish renewal movement and alien Roman rule, between someone who proclaimed cosmic change which was also to transform the temple and the representatives of the status quo. Religious and political grounds cannot be separated.57

Jesus himself was to some extent responsible for his death, in that it seems to have been the confrontational nature of his final symbolic actions that provoked others to act against him. He must have known that he was risking death in acting as he did and that his lack of institutionalized power left him open to the violence of those who opposed his message. His last symbolic actions made a claim to truth that Pilate contested by putting him to death. The death of Jesus thus had an aspect of a trial about it, a testing of the truth of his claim versus others’ authority. In his symbolic actions Jesus claimed to be speaking for God and declaring that God was the ultimate power in creation. In crucifying him, others denied the first claim. Pilate may have been denying the second as well. The death of Jesus was intended to refute his claim about the coming of God’s reign and about his person. It seems to have initially shattered the movement that had formed around Jesus. But this movement was soon reconstituted around a new understanding of Jesus in light of his resurrection.

Conclusion

We will return in later chapters to what can be known historically about Jesus and his message and work. Here we have simply sketched his message, the claim about his person implicit in his preaching, and the relation of this to his death on the cross. Jesus, as a charismatic leader, had a vision of the coming reign of God that he pursued, though not a clearly defined timetable or detailed blueprint of how it would come or what it would look like. His healing miracles, exorcisms, symbolic actions, teaching and preaching—all combined to present an implicit claim about his person. He seems to have symbolically portrayed himself as the Son of David in his entry into Jerusalem, but even then he lacked some of the trappings expected of such a figure.

The grand nature of Jesus’ claims about the coming of God’s reign, the significance of his ministry and himself, combined with his vulnerability to physical violence, made putting him to death a way to decisively refute him. Shortly after his death, some of his former followers came to believe that Jesus was risen from the dead and had appeared to them. They were soon joined by others, such as James and Paul, who had not been Jesus’ followers but who also had experiences in which he appeared to them as risen from the dead. Jesus’ resurrection was interpreted by those who believed in it as the final word in the trial about the truth of Jesus’ person and message. In raising Jesus from the dead God had vindicated Jesus and his claims about himself. Jesus was also seen to have been exalted by God to a uniquely divine status. These beliefs, coupled with the experience of the Holy Spirit by those who gathered to worship in Jesus’ name, triggered dramatic developments in the way Jesus was understood. The next chapter will trace some of these, examining how Jesus, who proclaimed the message of God’s coming reign, came to be at the center of a new and very different message: that he is the Christ.

1. For instance, the day on which he died; Meier, Marginal Jew, 1:390.

2. For an overview of the history of the quest for the historical Jesus that unfortunately omits the Jesus Seminar, see Keating, “Epistemology and Theological Application,” 19–21.

3. Elizabeth Johnson divides approaches to the quest into three often concurrent trajectories: one that seeks to debunk or drastically reformulate Christian faith, one that repudiates the relevance of the quest for Christian faith, and one that sees the quest as having a theological importance on the grounds that it provides knowledge about the person that Christians claim in the Christ; see Johnson, “Word Was Made Flesh,” 147–49.

4. Haight, Jesus, 38–40.

5. Schüssler Fiorenza, “Jesus of Nazareth in Historical Research,” 41.

6. Meier, Marginal Jew, 1:372–409.

7. Jaffee, Early Judaism, 114.

8. For one study of the Gospel of Thomas and other non-canonical literature that some use as a source of historical knowledge about Jesus and the development of the New Testament, see Crossan, Four Other Gospels.

9. Freyne, Jesus, 46, 136.

10. For an overview of Second Temple Judaism, see Cohen, From the Maccabees.

11. Crossan, Historical Jesus, 18–19.

12. Sanders, Jesus and Judaism, 335–40.

13. Meier, Marginal Jew, 2:116.

14. For a discussion of these, see Sanders, Jesus and Judaism, 335–37.

15. Ibid., 319. This understanding is typical of scholars participating in what is frequently called the “third quest” for the historical Jesus.

16. Crossan, Historical Jesus, 238, 243–60. This position is often found in the work of scholars associated with the Jesus Seminar.

17. Meier, “Present State of ‘Third Quest,’” 460.

18. As Michael Welker notes, “we must consider the likelihood that Jesus had a different impact on the rural population of Galilee than he did on the urban population of Jerusalem . . . that those who wished to hold high the Mosaic law or the Temple cult in the face of the Roman occupation perceived Jesus differently than did those who wanted to embrace Roman culture . . . that the testimony of those whom Jesus met with healing and acceptance must differ from the testimony of those whose main impression of Jesus was drawn from his conflicts with Rome and Jerusalem” (Welker, “‘Who Is Jesus for Us?,’” 140.

19. John Meier, “Elijah-Like Prophet,” 46.

20. Collins and Collins, King and Messiah, 171.

21. Tilley, Disciples’ Jesus, 121.

22. Schillebeeckx, Jesus, 139.

23. Becker, Jesus of Nazareth, 79–80.

24. Meier, Marginal Jew, 3:438–39, 443.

25. Becker, Jesus of Nazareth, 138.

26. Schüssler Fiorenza, Jesus, 110–11.

27. Horsley, Jesus and Empire, 103.

28. Crossan, Historical Jesus, 262, 298.

29. Becker, Jesus of Nazareth, 29; Theissen and Merz, Historical Jesus, 220–24.

30. Matt 11:2–6; Wright, Jesus, 193–94.

31. Sobrino, Jesus the Liberator, 68.

32. Wright, Jesus, 451–54.

33. Theissen, “Ambivalence of Power,” 26, 28.

34. Käsemann, Essays on New Testament Themes, 43.

35. Theissen, “Ambivalence of Power,” 28.

36. Theissen and Merz, Historical Jesus, 146.

37. Vermes, Religion of Jesus, 146.

38. For the notion of “transmoral,” see Tillich, Morality and Beyond, 80–81.

39. Freyne, Jesus, 169.

40. Theissen and Merz, Historical Jesus, 272–74.

41. Vermes, Religion of Jesu, 180.

42. Sanders, Jesus and Judaism, 179; Meier, Marginal Jew, 3:528.

43. Schillebeeckx, Jesus, 213.

44. Kasemann, Essays on New Testament Themes, 42.

45. Meyer, Aims of Jesus, 151–53.

46. Theissen and Merz, Historical Jesus, 513. See also Fredriksen, Jesus of Nazareth, 249–50.

47. Meier, Marginal Jew, 2:144.

48. Meyer, “Jesus’ Ministry and Self-Understanding,” 352.

49. Fredriksen, Jesus of Nazareth, 268.

50. Horsley, Jesus and Empire, 129.

51. Fredriksen, Jesus of Nazareth, 15

52. Meier, “Elijah-Like Prophet,” 70.

53. Fredriksen, Jesus of Nazareth, 240–41.

54. Meier, “Elijah-Like Prophet,” 68–69.

55. Ibid.

56. Sanders, Jesus and Judaism, 281.

57. Theissen and Merz, Historical Jesus, 466–67.