Historical Jesus or Risen Lord?

Numerous academics contend that a significant portion of the statements in the Gospels attributed to Jesus may not actually be his words, but rather post-resurrection declarations from his disciples or later prophets attributed retrospectively to the historical Jesus. These scholars scrutinize the authenticity of the New Testament by challenging the legitimacy of these statements.

In the Gospels and within Christian theology, there is often a distinction made between the "historical Jesus" and the "risen Lord." These terms refer to different aspects of Jesus' identity and role, both in his earthly life and in the Christian faith.

Historical Jesus: The "historical Jesus" refers to the figure of Jesus of Nazareth as he existed in the historical and cultural context of 1st-century Palestine. This approach seeks to understand Jesus as a human being who lived, taught, and had a ministry during his time on Earth. Historians and scholars use various methods, including historical analysis of ancient texts and archaeological evidence, to reconstruct the life and teachings of the historical Jesus. They believe that the Gospels are not historical records of his earthly life but the post-resurrection theological construction of his disciples and followers.  

Risen Lord: The term "risen Lord" or "resurrected Lord" pertains to the theological belief held by Christians that Jesus was not just a historical figure, a man who lived and died but that he was Man-God raised after his crucifixion. As the risen Lord, Jesus is considered the Son of God, the Savior, the second person of the Trinity, and the central figure in the Christian faith.

It's important to note that while the historical Jesus and the risen Lord are conceptually distinct, they are interconnected in Christian belief and theology:

The historical Jesus laid the foundation for his teachings, actions, and the events of his earthly life. These are crucial aspects for understanding his message and mission. The concept of the risen Lord in Christianity reflects the post-resurrection interpretation of Jesus' nature and identity within the Christian faith and community, rather than necessarily representing Jesus' own self-understanding of these aspects. It emphasizes his divinity, his role as the Messiah, and the basis for Christian salvation as Christians understood after his resurrection.

The tension between these two aspects arises in biblical scholarship and theology, where scholars attempt to reconcile the historical evidence and the theological interpretations found in the Gospels and other New Testament writings. Some scholars focus primarily on the historical Jesus, while others emphasize the theological significance of the risen Lord. Various schools of thought exist within Christian theology regarding how to navigate this distinction and its implications for faith and practice.

Many scholars argue that numerous sayings in the Gospels, traditionally believed to have been spoken by the historical Jesus, may actually have originated from disciples and Christian prophets. These sayings, instead of being direct teachings of Jesus, could have been about the post-resurrection Jesus and later projected back onto the historical figure of Jesus. This process of attributing later Christian ideas or sayings to Jesus as if they were part of his original teachings is referred to as "retrojection" or "retrospective prophecy." This is a phenomenon that has been discussed by scholars in the field of biblical studies and theology. It refers to instances where the early Christian community, often after significant events like Easter (the resurrection of Jesus), would attribute certain teachings, prophecies, or actions to Jesus, even if these were not originally part of his historical life and ministry.

Here are a few examples of post-Easter utterances or teachings that were supposedly retrojected into Jesus' words and life within Christian writings:

The Great Commission: In the Gospel of Matthew (Matthew 28:18-20), Jesus commissions his disciples to go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. This is seen as a post-resurrection instruction retrojected into Jesus' mouth to emphasize the mission of the early Christian community.

The Eucharistic Words: In the institution of the Lord's Supper (the Eucharist) found in the Gospels (e.g., Matthew 26:26-29, Mark 14:22-25, Luke 22:14-20), Jesus gives instructions about the bread and wine, saying, "This is my body" and "This is my blood." These words are significant in the development of Christian sacramental theology and can be seen as a later reflection of the early Church retrojecting the meaning and significance of the Eucharist back onto Jesus.

High Christology: The New Testament contains various passages where Jesus is described in terms that emphasize his divine nature, such as the prologue of the Gospel of John (John 1:1-18). These passages reflect a high Christology that developed in the post-Easter Christian community and were retrojected into the portrayal of Jesus.

Predictions of His Death and Resurrection: In the Gospels, Jesus makes predictions about his own death and resurrection (e.g., Mark 8:31, Matthew 16:21). These predictions were likely added by the early Christian community after the crucifixion and resurrection events had taken place.

It's important to note that the concept of retrojection doesn't necessarily imply deception or manipulation. Rather, it reflects the way early Christians interpreted and understood the significance of Jesus' life, death, and resurrection in light of their own experiences and theological beliefs.

Scholars of biblical studies and theology continue to examine these retrojections and their theological implications as they seek to understand the development of Christian beliefs and practices in the early Christian community.

Ernst Kasemann

Given facts and findings such as these (of oral transmission, the Easter experience, missionary zeal, and the compilation of Jesus’ sayings after a period of 30 to 60 years), many modern scholars doubt the authenticity and integrity of most of the New Testament books. According to Ernst Kasemann, “the individual sayings and stories it must be said that from their first appearance, they were used in the service of the community’s preaching and were indeed preserved for the very reason. It was not historical but kerygmatic interest which handed them on. From this standpoint it becomes comprehensible that this tradition, or at least the overwhelming mass of it, cannot be called authentic. Only a few words of the Sermon on the Mount and of the conflict with the Pharisees, a number of parables, and some scattered material of various kinds go back with any real degree of probability to the Jesus of history...The preaching about him has almost entirely supplanted his own preaching, as can be seen most clearly of all in the completely unhistorical Gospel of John.”

John Hick

John Hick claims that: “The identifiable consensus begins with a distinction between the historical Jesus of Nazareth and the post-Easter development of the church’s mingled memories and interpretations of him. And it is a basic premise of modern New Testament scholarship that we have access to the former only through the latter.”

G. Zuntz

G. Zuntz asserts that people of ancient times had a different attitude towards the text of an author, “an attitude altogether different from that of ours in the modern age, an attitude of mind… prevailed among Christians of all classes and all denominations. The common respect for the sacredness of the Word, with them, was not an incentive to preserve the text in its original purity. On the contrary, the strange fact has long since been observed that devotion to the founder and His apostles did not prevent the Christians of that age from interfering with their transmitted utterances. The reliance of the believers upon the continuing action of the Spirit easily led them to regard the letter less highly; the two appeared to be at variance, the urge to interpolate what was felt to be true was not always resisted.”

Rudolf Bultmann

 Bultmann has claimed that the early Church did neither perceive nor make a distinction between the pre-Easter sayings of Jesus and the post-Easter utterances of Christian prophets which were accepted as the words of the Risen Lord and were sometimes intentionally and at other times unintentionally, retrojected into Jesus’ mouth or into settings in Jesus’ earthly life.”

M.E. Boring and H. Conzelmann

M.E. Boring has made the case that a substantial number of the early Christian prophet’s sayings found their way into the Synoptic Gospels.  H. Boers explains: “The question of whether a particular saying was actually pronounced by Jesus is not only impossible to answer but, from the point of view of the developing Christian religion, irrelevant. What was important about Jesus for the developing Christian religion was not so much the concrete facts of his life but the impact he had made on his followers, as reflected in the tradition of his life and teachings and in the legends of his birth and childhood.”

Thus, in the opinion of scholars like Boring and Boers, a great chasm was fixed between how Jesus viewed and presented himself and the way the early church interpreted him, as Christ, Lord, or Son of God. It is possible then to perceive of these books as merely interpretations of the Christ event, they do not provide us with exact and accurate information concerning what Jesus preached about himself and what he was. Therefore, according to H. Conzelmann, “The historical and substantive presupposition for modern research into the life of Jesus is emancipation from traditional Christological dogma on the basis of the principle of reason.”

I. H. Marshall

On the other hand, some scholars view the matter differently, and to them the early Christians were no innovators. I. H. Marshall suggests: “It is clear that the basic sayings of Jesus were modified both in the tradition and by the Evangelists in order to re-express its significance for new situations; it is by no means obvious that this basic tradition was created by the early church. Similarly, it is unlikely that the stories about Jesus and the narrative setting for his teaching are [all] products of the church’s Sitz im Leben. The fact that such material was found to be congenial for use in the church’s situation is no proof it was created for this purpose.”

Richard A. Burridge

Richard A. Burridge, who has carefully discussed the biographical genre of the Gospels by comparing it with forms of biographies from the Greco-Roman world, argues that “If the early church had not been interested in the person and earthly life of Jesus, it would not have produced Bioi, with their narrative structure and chronological framework, but discourses of the risen Christ, like the Gnostic ‘gospels’, instead.” Bilezikian maintains that “the very existence of the Gospel, and that of Matthew and Luke after Mark, bears witness to the importance attached to the historical Jesus by the early church.”

Jeremias and M. Black

Some of these scholars contend that Jesus used various mnemonic devices to make his teachings memorable as well as memorizable. In Jeremias and M. Black’s opinion, there had been a relatively fixed Aramaic tradition from an early date behind much of Jesus’ sayings, the statements attributed to Jesus by the present-day Gospels, which in the case of the Synoptic Gospels, seem authentic to Jeremias: “Nevertheless, we can say in conclusion that the linguistic and stylistic evidence... shows so much faithfulness and such respect towards the tradition of the sayings of Jesus that we are justified in drawing up the following principle of method: In the synoptic tradition it is the inauthenticity, and not the authenticity, of the sayings of Jesus that must be demonstrated.”

Birger Gerhardsson

Many scholars do not share Jeremias’s optimism. It is argued that Jesus enjoyed tremendous reverence among his early followers. Therefore, his words, deeds and sayings were faithfully preserved and memorized like the Jewish Talmud. Birger Gerhardsson has discussed the issue at length, stating that: “During the first four centuries of our era the oral Torah tradition of the Jewish rabbis grew enormously. And it was still being handed down orally. If one wonders how it was possible for such a huge body of text material to be preserved and passed on orally, one must consider the rabbis’ pedagogical methods and technique employed in oral transmission.” He pinpointed methods like memorization, text and commentary, didactic and poetic devices, repetition, recitation, and the art of writing, as instrumental in this aspect. From here he contended that “Jesus taught in parables and logia, in all probability he taught his hearers these texts... Jesus presented meshalim for his hearers, and the disciples were the first to memorize them, to ponder them, and to discuss together what they meant.” Therefore, he claims that “there is a historical justification, based on sound historical judgments, for concluding that there is an unbroken path which leads from Jesus’ teaching in meshalim to the early church’s methodical handing on of Jesus texts, a transmission carried on for its own sake.”

Space does not allow for a detailed discussion of Gerhardsson’s thesis, however, it may be sufficient to quote E. P. Sanders who demonstrates that the Christian tradition – at least in Papias’ generation – was not passed down and spread in a systematic manner which Gerhardsson describes as having taken place in Rabbinic Judaism. In sum, then, we see that there were probably significant differences between the Christian and Jewish methods of transmission, although there may also have been significant similarities.  

In short, to this group of scholars, the Gospel material is not inauthentic, and there is no great gulf between the historical Jesus’ sayings and the post-Easter portrayal of him in the Gospels. The only difference is that Jesus proclaimed that God was about to act decisively, after his crucifixion, whereas the first-century Apostolic preachings or kerygma proclaimed that God had already acted so. Therefore, Jesus’ historical message is deemed to be exactly what the post-Jesus Gospel materials contain. Ben Witherington concludes: “Thus, the alleged chasm between the speech event of the historical Jesus and the post-Easter speaking about Jesus probably never existed.”