Wisdom Jesus or Prophetic Jesus?

I have been following the Jesus Seminar for about 5 years, and it has recently occurred to me that their work has some unintended harmful consequences. The Jesus Seminar is part of the renewed quest for the historical Jesus. Founded in the mid 1980’s by the late Robert Funk, it has popularized the historical Jesus quest. According to Russell Shorto who wrote Gospel Truth (1997), one of the motivations for the formation of the Jesus Seminar and its very public foray into the Jesus quest is that the truth about Jesus has never really emerged from academia. Shorto states, “…scholars have known the truth … for decades; they have taught it to generations of priests and ministers, who do not pass it along to their flocks because they fear a backlash of anger.” (p. 14). However laudable this public quest may be towards a renewed and popular understanding of the life of Jesus, I have begun to question the image of Jesus that emerges from the work of the Jesus Seminar.

John Dominic Crossan has developed the image of Jesus that seems to predominate the Jesus Seminar’s work. Crossan’s major opus is The Historical Jesus: The Life of a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant (1991). In it, he portrays Jesus primarily as a teacher of wisdom, one who belongs mainly to the wisdom tradition of Judaism. He arrives at this conclusion despite the fact that Jesus begins as a follower of John the Baptist, who clearly represents the prophetic tradition of Judaism. Crossan asserts that Jesus started out as a follower of John but inexplicably changes his mind about John’s apocalyptic message. I have heard Crossan speak; he is an engaging and persuasive speaker. His book is a marvel of methodology and precision, although critics have disagreed with Crossan’s dating and use of sources. Tom Wright, Anglican Bishop of Durham, lauds Crossan as a major intellectual force of the Jesus Seminar, but still disagrees with Crossan’s conclusions.

I understand the desire for presenting the historical Jesus as wisdom teacher rather than apocalyptic prophet. Crossan states that ‘apocalypse’ has come to mean ‘world negating’ rather than its original meaning of ‘revelation.’ There are segments of Christianity that have used the ‘world negating’ aspect to ignore social justice and global stewardship issues and emphasize personal salvation. I am not saying that Crossan intentionally created an image of Jesus so that he would be more relevant to the current times, but only that Crossan is extremely careful with word choice in his description of the historical Jesus. In fact, he does not completely rule out eschatological aspects of Jesus as wisdom teacher. Sometimes it seems to me that the historical Jesus scholars are walking a fine line between an accurate picture of the historical Jesus who might not be relevant and a relevant Jesus who might not be historical.

However, we ought to be concerned about the predominant image of Jesus that emerges from Crossan and the Jesus Seminar, particularly after it has been filtered through the popular press or presented in terms that are easy to understand. I would summarize this picture of Jesus as an itinerant, Hellenized, Jewish teacher of wisdom, a kind of Jewish cynic philosopher, who could have just as easily been Persian or Greek. Often, this image of Jesus has strands of non-violent social activism mixed in with it. Cynthia Bourgeault in her book, The Wisdom Jesus (2008), speculates that Jesus, while living in Capernaum that is on or near the Silk Road that runs between the Far East and the Mediterranean world, “soaked up spiritual teachings like a sponge. …His teachings show clear areas of overlap with the great stream of sophia perennis [‘eternal wisdom’] flowing through other spiritual traditions, particularly Buddhism and Persian light mysticism.” (p. 25).

The popular image of the Wisdom Jesus is not Jewish in any essential way. Contrast this picture of Jesus with that of John the Baptist who could not be so easily transposed to another culture. I also understand the desire to have a universal Jesus, one who could appeal to modern, post-enlightenment citizens of the globe, but is such a Jesus historical or simply an effort to make the central icon of Christianity relevant to modern times? If so, then the result is theology not history.

My fear is that this picture of the wisdom Jesus, Jesus as philosopher and Socrates-like gadfly, is one small step down a slippery slope of dejudaizing Jesus. And when a partly dejudaized Jesus confronts Jewish authorities or Pharisees or is arrested and handed over to Pontius Pilate, the Church’s history of contempt for Judaism is perpetuated and strengthened, countering the historical trend since Vatican II towards a repentance of that history and correction of it.

Tom Wright thinks that the Jesus Seminar is part of the American liberal Church’s response to the religious right and to the impact of modernity on faith. If so, perhaps the Church should focus more on modernizing its message of redemptive justice, which can have aspects of both social justice and personal redemption, rather than tinkering with the image of the historical Jesus. Given the tremendous uncertainty in the scholastic quest for the historical Jesus and given the many disagreements among scholars on the subject, I think that the effort would be better spent making the Church’s message of redemption relevant to modern life and dealing honestly with the central dilemma within Christianity: its birth from second temple Judaism.