Jesus in contemporary Scholarship - Marcus Borg

‘Nobody is clearer, nobody fairer than Marcus Borg’. Crossan

The new quest for the historical Jesus is not only marked by new methods but also with new results. The old consensus that Jesus was an eschatological prophet who proclaimed the imminent end of the world has disappeared.

‘The coming of the son of man’ sayings were not authentic, but were created by Jesus’ followers in the decades after Easter as ‘second coming texts, expressing the early church’s conviction that the crucified and exalted one would return as vindicator and judge. But if these texts are seen as unauthentic then the immanent end of the world vanishes. “It nowhere appears from the texts that Jesus identifies the coming Kingdom of God, with the end of the world “ Schillebecke’

Jesus use of kingdom language

Kingdom as the power of God Matt 12:28
Kingdom as the presence of God and presence of God.
Kingdom as a metaphor e.g. Kingdom of Herod, Kingdom of God..
Kingdom as a messianic banquet.

The gospel of Mark comes out of an intensified period of second coming expectation.

Jesus probably believed in an after life but was more concerned about the future and history. There was imagery in the Jesus tradition. His voice was a voice of invitation, ‘see it this way’ or change your mind’.

Jesus is a figure of history before this death, a Galilean Jew; a flesh and blood human being limited in space and time, who was executed by the Roman Empire.

The awareness that the traditions about Jesus grew and changed overtime is centred on an informed understanding of the gospels. They are not primary historical reports, but the real memories of Jesus and their understanding of the significance of the rule of Jesus in their own time in their own lives. At the centre of his message was an invitation to see differently.

The pre-Easter Jesus was a spirit person or holy man. My claim is that Jesus was one of those figures in human history who had vivid and frequent experiences of the reality which has been called the ‘numinous’, the holy, the sacred, the spirit of God.
Such figures frequently become mediators of the spirit to their community as leaders, inspired prophets or enlightened teachers etc. He was a spirit person in the charismatic stream of Judaism; a God intoxicated Jew, a Jewish mystic and healer.

My own claim is that Jesus experiential relationship to the spirit of God was the source of everything else he was – a his perception as a leader of wisdom, his passion as a social prophet, his vision as a community founder. Thus the Spirit was an experimented reality for Jesus.

Community compassion completes the sketch of Jesus.
Christian life is a relationship with God, and evangelism is inviting people into that relationship.

“In a world with sharp social boundaries, the inclusiveness of the Jesus movement was remarkable. As a boundary-shattering movement, it was a new social reality with an alternative vision of human community. This, too, is connected to the Spirit. There is something boundary-shattering about the activity and experience of the spirit.”

Be compassionate as God is compassionate Luke 6:36.
Compassion reaches across boundaries, is nourishing, life giving and encompassing…. Like the Spirit of which compassion is the primary fruit, compassion shatters boundaries. In short, the Jesus’ movement was a community of compassion, and to take Jesus seriously means to become part of such a community.”

Root Image.

“A root image is a fundamental image of how reality is, our most basic picture of reality. Perhaps called world-view, it consists of our most basic assumptions about what is possible. It is an idea with immense power. A root image not only provides a model of reality, but also shapes our perception and our thinking, operating almost unconsciously within us a dim back ground affecting all our seeing and thinking. A root image functions as both an image and a lens, it is a picture of reality which becomes a lens through which we see reality.”

There are two levels of reality in the primordial tradition. (1) The level of our-ordinary everyday experience and (2) a world of the Spirit or God normally not visible but charged with energy and power and more real than the visible. In every culture known to us, there are people who have vivid subjective experiences of another world. The accounts of Jesus ministry presuppose this primordial tradition of reality.

Imagination is that part of us which creates and responds to images and symbols. What modern scholarship leaves out is the language of the other world – the world of the Spirit. We need to see the otherness of a distant culture e.g. some vision texts do reflect actual visionary experience. Vermes takes seriously the gospel texts which locate Jesus in the experiential scheme of charismatic Judaism. He was religious genius whose perception of life and God were based on a first hand religion experience rather than a second hand religion received by belief and tradition.

Unless we are inclined to deny that visions ‘happen’, it seems likely that some vision texts do reflect actual visionary experiences…. by exposing the modern root image as a limited way of seeing. This work makes religious traditions in general credible by making their central claims imaginable.

Whatever else can be said about the pre-Easter Jesus he was a teacher of wisdom, a ‘sage’ as teachers of wisdom are called. Aphorisms and parables are considered the bedrock of the Jesus tradition. They address the imagination and invite a different way of seeing things. Jesus taught a way of transformation from a life in a world of conventional wisdom to a life centred in God. Conventional wisdom is the heart and core of every culture… it’s their world view, what every body learns e.g. in our world affluence, achievement and appearance. In Jesus social world it was wealth, family, honor, purity and religiosity. It is the normal adult consciousness both in Jesus time and our time.

Jesus spoke of God as gracious and generous and compassionate and of a life in relationship with this gracious Being.
Page 14. The picture of Jesus as a charismatic or ‘holy man’ vividly in touch with the Spirit….suggests that reality might be far more mysterious than we suppose. …..We are surrounded by an actual, even though non-material, reality charged with energy and power with which it is possible to be in a relationship.
Similarly the picture of Jesus as a subversive sage, a prophet calling for change in historical direction, and a movement founder seeking to create an alternate culture, all point to a life in deep involvement with history.

The image of Jesus as a person whose mission was focused on the transformation of his social world can provide significant context for the meaning of discipleship.

A charismatic healer with a vivid sense of the reality of God. Indeed it is tempting to see him as a Jewish Mystic. He is also a sage and a teacher of wisdom.

The gospel of Jesus leads from a life of requirements and measuring up (whether to God or culture) to a life of relationship with God. It leads from the life of anxiety to trust, from the bondage of self-preoccupation to the freedom of self forgetfulness. It leads to a life centred in culture to a life centred in God. Page 152