Albert Schweitzer was not a mythicist

Mythicist-sympathizer Neil Godfrey wants his readers to think that the great NT scholar Albert Schweitzer is on the same page as Hector Avalos, Thomas L. Thompson, and Earl Doherty. Go here. Balderdash. Schweitzer thought it possible to say all kinds of things about (1) Jesus and (2) the teaching of Jesus. With respect to what can be said with a reasonable degree of probability regarding both, he was not a minimalist or a nihilist. Least of all, Schweitzer did not believe for one minute – he was, after all, a careful historian – that Jesus never existed.

From a logical point of view and a methodological point of view, Schweitzer knew that historical questions cannot be settled beyond dispute. Historical knowledge is tentative by definition. But that does not mean he doubted that Jesus existed. For Schweitzer, the gospels rightly understood provide us with a wealth of detailed knowledge about Jesus and his first followers.

For Schweitzer historical knowledge is probabilistic in nature. On first principles, irrespective of the evidence in hand, it cannot provide a secure foundation for religious faith. Yet that hardly bothered Schweitzer, whose own faith was grounded in personal experience of transcendent truth, truth he did not hesitate to identify with that embodied and proclaimed by the historical Jesus. Anyone who thinks otherwise has failed to read the concluding words of his monumental Geschichte der Leben-Jesu-Forschung (9^th ed.; UTB 9; Stuttgart: Siebeck Mohr, 1984 [1906]) 630:

Als ein Unbekannter und Namenloser kommt er zu uns, wie er am Gestade des Sees an jene Männer, die nicht wussten, wer er war, herantrat. Er sagt dasselbe Wort: Du aber folge mir nach! und stellt uns vor die Aufgaben, die er in unserer Zeit lösen muss. Er gebietet. Und denjenigen, welche ihm gehorchen, Weisen und Unweisen, wird er sich offenbaren in dem, was sie in seiner Gemeinschaft an Frieden, Wirken, Kämpfen und Leiden erleben dürfen, und als ein unaussprechliches Geheimnis werden sie erfahren, wer er ist...

As one unknown and nameless he comes to us, just as on the shore of the lake He approached those men who knew him not. His words are the same, ‘Follow thou me!’ and He puts us to the tasks He has to carry out in our age. He commands. And to those who obey, be they wise or simple, He will reveal Himself in the fellowship of peace and activity, of struggle and suffering, until they come to know, as an inexpressible secret, Who He is . . . [in the translation of Antje Bultmann Lemke]

Schweitzer stressed that is unknowable, from a purely historical point of view, whether or not Jesus existed. He does that for a religious reason: he wants people to be certain of their faith based on the call to discipleship they receive here and now, not on the basis of more or less probable historical inferences.

James McGrath replied to Godfrey in a way designed, I suppose, to infuriate him. But James is spot on:

[Y]ou’ve just illustrated one of the key similarities between young-earth creationism and Jesus mythicism. Both think that simply by showing that an alternative scenario is possible, they have refuted mainstream scholarship. But no historian will deny that the existence of Jesus, like everything else in history, cannot be determined with absolute certainty. The question is what is more likely, and when placed in those terms, there can be no serious doubt that some sort of historical figure of Jesus (however obscured by myth) and some form of biological evolution have the weight of evidence and theory in their favor. The biggest challenge for mythicism is that it has yet to find a proponent who offers not only challenges to specific arguments by mainstream historians, but presents a scenario for the creation of a purely mythical Jesus as well as the New Testament Gospels and other writings, a scenario that is not only possible but more persuasive than ones involving an actual Jesus.

Comments

[Ranger]

Schweitzer was a mythicist, and Darwin denied evolution on his deathbed. *sigh*

The mythicist does something else similar to YEC in that they think the "burden of proof" is on historicists. By arguing from this position you CSM use the lack of scholarly interaction with your fringe view and say, "They don't interact with us because they have no case against our claims" or "no scholar has yet to refute Doherty." such a tactic builds confidence for your view in the face of unanimous academic rejection.

James is being extreme, but you could cut and paste YEC language into some of the comments that respond to him. For instance Tom Verenna was offended that James called it pseudo-scholarship, and responded with something like, "Please don't call it pseudoscholarship when some of our supporters have real credentials." Cut and paste from YEC. Kurt Wise got his Ph.D. under Stephen Jay Gould and just about everyone working for Answers in Genesis has a Ph.D. in the natural sciences.

The real issue is that all of those scholars have a view of Genesis that frames their science. And almost every mythicist has a membership in the local Skeptic society, Atheist club or was a member of the Rational Response Squad. They may have a good argument occasionally (and YEC might as well), but the case will have to be very strong in order for anyone to listen because their ideological bias is rather clear. In this age of the continuing Third Quest, arguments by Doherty that seem ignorant of Second Temple Judaism (as many have pointed out), just won't cut it. In the pre-WWII days of the anti-Jewish historical Jesus it stood a better chance, but not in academia today. Thus, the cries of "nobody takes us seriously will continue."

I've heard that Maurice Casey uses his expertise to deal with them in his new book. It should be insightful.

[Ranger]

CSM = can. I'm on my iPod.

[Steven Carr]

Maurice Casey can tell us the Aramaic of what Jesus said before he was betrayed.

Was he there?

And how did the historical Jesus know he was going to be betrayed?

And how did the historical Jesus know that the movement would continue after his surprise betrayal, and that the movement would need a ritual meal where they could obtain access to his flesh and blood?

[JohnFH]

James Crossley wrote not too long ago that reconstructions of the kind Maurice Casey proposes are likely to receive a warmer welcome than just a decade or two ago. One more sign of the fact that in the Third Quest environment, it is easier than it once was to sketch a historically probable Jesus.

"Was he there?" questions misconstrue what the quest is about. Is that all the mythicists got?

Given the probability that Jesus existed and that he was betrayed, whether he figured out ahead of time that he would be betrayed is a legitimate question. It would be fun to discuss it based on the evidence in hand, but to do so implicitly calls into the question the entire mythicist project.

[Anders Branderud]

Quote: “truth he did not hesitate to identify with that embodied and proclaimed by the historical Jesus.”
A logical analysis (found in www.netzarim.co.il (Netzarim.co.il is the website of the only legitimate Netzarim-group)) of all extant source documents and archeology proves that the historical Ribi Yehosuha ha-Mashiakh (the Messiah) from Nazareth and his talmidim (apprentice-students), called the Netzarim, taught and lived Torah all of their lives; and that Netzarim and Christianity were always antithetical.

The “historical Jesus” is an oxymoron.
The historical person was named Ribi Yehoshua.

[James Pate]

Of course he wasn't. He believed in an apocalyptic Jesus.

[Hector Avalos]

Just for the record, I would not regard myself as a "Jesus mythicist." I regard
myself as an agnostic on the question of the historical Jesus. A plausible
case for the mythic Jesus can be made, but I am not yet convinced that
it is any better than the claim that there was a real person named Jesus, even if not much can be known about him.

Of course, I do believe that many mythic elements are imposed upon Jesus in the NT, but that is not the same as saying that Jesus is a completely mythological character such as Zeus.

[Neil Godfrey]

Neil Godfrey has never at any time even hinted that Albert Schweitzer is a mythicist sympathizer. Neil Godfrey assumes most people know enough about Albert Schweitzer not to even think he would think that. Neil has made the contexts of his citations of Schweitzer clear at all times.

Mythicist arguments nowhere that I know have ever pretended that all they need to do is knock down "historicist" arguments.

If you would like to know exactly what Neil Godfrey's issue with the "Creationist" slur is, he has made it clear at http://vridar.wordpress.com/2010/02/14/creationist-slurs-have-no-place-in-an-honest-mythicist-historicist-debate/

How about a little bit of intellectual honesty in the way we define and use the term "creationism". It would also do you credit not to misrepresent what Neil Godfrey says about Albert Schweitzer.

Michael Shermer is able to quite comfortably pull apart Creationist arguments in a civil, courteous and professional manner and tone. I have demonstrated it is quite possible to pull apart in an informative and clear way something as "fringe" as Atlantis theories.

It is perhaps sadly instructive that quite a number of biblical scholars appear to find such processes beyond them when confronted with mythicist arguments,and they feel a need to resort to ridicule and misrepresentation and insult.

Albert Schweitzer -- and this is a key point of my references to him -- would not be impressed.

You are public intellectuals and I would consider that you have a responsibility to your publics to give them more than examples of prejudice and uncivil responses when faced with a radical difference of view.

Neil Godfrey

[Neil Godfrey]

I have updated my blog post with reference to the remarks made here. My inclusion of Schweitzer was designed to impact readers BECAUSE he was opposed to the mythicist arguments. If he were a mythicist sympathizer from way back I would not have bothered to reference him at all.

[JohnFH]

Hector,

I'm familiar with your biblical scholarship and I respect the contributions you have made (The End of Biblical Studies, not so much, but even though I deeply disagree with what you say in that book, for that very reason it is an excellent book for evangelicals like me to engage with).

I've always thought you might do a service in the discussion by staking out a position that is not nihilist or minimalist on historical matters, and for that very reason, a more cogent critic of the biblical tradition in terms of its ideological content.

Someone like Thomas L. Thompson doesn't seem to realize that by taking as nihilist or minimalist a position as the data allows, rather than taking a more constructive position of the kind historians of antiquity usually take vis-a-vis the period(s) they study, he consigns his research, however well-done, to the round file of those of us who have gone over the data with great care and think the balance of probability lies in the direction of being able to say the kind of things about Jesus and his teaching that Schweitzer (for example) did.

Why not continue to allow for the possibility that the mythicists or the minimalists are right, but reconstruct a full-orbed first century Jesus and early Christianity in continuity and discontinuity with that of the second century and beyond? Surely the data in hand are compatible with this possibility as well.

[JohnFH]

Neil,

Thanks for adding the clarificatory note to your post. My purpose here was not to subject either YECers or mythicists to verbal abuse. It was to help people get a handle on Albert Schweitzer's take on the questions at hand.

After all, it is probable that people will still be discussing Schweitzer's views long after the views of Avalos, Thompson, Doherty, Hobbins, and Godfrey have been forgotten.

A biologist will have no trouble entertaining the possibility that YECism is right. For that to be the case, she will point out a long list of assumptions she and her colleagues routinely make that would have to be wrongheaded for YECism to be true.

A student of Jesus and early Christianity will likewise have no trouble entertaining the possibility that mythicism is right. For that to be the case, she will point out a long list of assumptions she and her colleagues routinely make that would have to be wrongheaded for mythicism to be true.

An interesting thread of scholarship for mythicists to ponder is that of Jacob Neusner and his school. These folks are minimalists to the point of being nihilists with respect to what we can say about the historical Yohanan ben Zakkai or Aqiva.

But when Neusner discusses Jesus, he is not a minimalist or nihilist. In fact, he uses the gospels, Acts, Paul, the Didache, etc., as do many historians of Second Temple Judaism, as a crucial source for the reconstruction of the same in the first cent CE. That's because these sources provide or seem to provide a wealth of historical detail of a trustworthiness that cannot be assumed for biographical traditions about the sages found in the Talmud.

I point that out with the caveat that I think we can say a lot more about the sages, biographically and historically speaking, than Neusner and his school are on record as suggesting.

[Eliyahu]

A matter can be verified by credible living witnesses. History past the presence of credible witnesses is only as good as forensic science. Scientific history requires hard objective evidence, like manuscripts and bones and things that can be seen and examined. And even then you can only make a best judgment. I hate to be so trite but if you use forensic (CSI without the hype, although it would sell big time), type methods it is going to cost you a lot of time and money. If you don't use forensic type methods then you will invariably settle in the subjective muck that most of the world accepts. Extant historical documents and recent archeology point to a man called Yehoshua ben Yoseph of the Jewish people. A human excelling in logic and wisdom and purity, but only human. All of this is available to view and scrutinize. His teachings were thoroughly Torah. Jewish people should understand him in the light of Torah but they sadly, except for a few, parrot the teachings of Xtianity and make the man into a myth, into a deity.
The distinction must be made between the man that lived and died and the myth that grew to become Xtianity. This is Jzeus. This name is historical but it never existed in time-space as a person. It is an idea and no more. It has no reality except for in the minds of those that have willed it to exist to them. That is why it's claimants can "believe" it exists without objective proof. After all, everyone with a mind has freedom to choose what they think about. But thinking something into existence is yet to be accomplished in time-space, at least by a human. This Jzeus idea is in exact opposition to the Torah that Ribi Yehoshua ben Yoseph ben Dawid, Ha Mashiach taught. If you want to test the evidence that exists with references it is found at http://www.netzarim.co.il”>Netzarim , but it is still going to be a lot of work.

[JohnFH]

On the contrary, Eliyahu, you overstate the case for the historical Jesus big time. For example, "recent archeology" does not "point to a man called Yehoshua ben Yoseph of the Jewish people."

At the most, recent archeology is compatible with the assumption - a very good one, given the amount of extant data it economically explains - that a man referred to as "Jesus" by his first-century Greek-speaking followers, Jewish and non-Jewish - said and did a variety of things of which the writings of the New Testament bear witness.

The view that the historical Jesus and the Christ of faith are exact opposites, like so many statements, is both true and untrue. I admire your enthusiasm for the particular religious point of view you have adopted, but historical research does not traffic in verities of the kind you espouse. That said, I'm willing to talk about either. For example, your website's claim that Jesus was a Pharisee requires very careful qualification. To start things off, there is zero evidence that Jesus, no matter how much common ground he shared with the Pharisees, self-identified as a Pharisee.

[Neil Godfrey]

I find it curious that the notion that "being a minimalist to the point of being a nihilist" about X is a matter of concern. If I opt for a particular rigour in determining what will be my boundaries on the grounds that I can not honestly justify anything else, and I find that that "rigour" leads to the death of a particular cherished concept, I do not see nihilism as the inevitable conclusion of it all. If X dies, then I am led to a new set of wonders as I explore what and why we all thought X to be there at all -- and learn to appreciate all the more about who and what we are.

I would rather live with the pain of honesty than with the comfort of illusions. I still recall vividly a dream I had as a child. I was dreaming I was dreaming and determined never to wake up and lose that dream. But I lost that illusory battle, of course. And what I have had to face in another world since that dream has not always been nice, and much has failed to endure. But I would not change it for any illusion. Does not death suggest nihilism? Do not christians believe in a resurrection after death?

[Neil Godfrey]

Back to Schweitzer, for the sake of some sort of completion I have posted a more detailed set of his comments on the historicist-mythicist debate here: http://vridar.wordpress.com/2010/02/15/schweitzers-comments-on-the-historical-mythical-jesus-debate/

As for Jacob Neusner, I have read a reasonable amount of his work, including his discussions of Yohanan ben Zakkai, and have long intended to discuss some of this on my blog. I keep coming back to the core discussion of the nature of the evidence, particularly unprovenanced literary evidence, however. But will discuss that when time permits, too.

[JohnFH]

Neil,

Being a minimalist to the point of being a nihilist with respect to the historical Jesus, James, Paul, Johanan ben Zakkai, Akiva, etc., at one level is not a matter of concern at all. Whatever gets you through the day, as they say.

It's a little bit harder however to be taken seriously as a historical researcher if one is a mythicist in relation to any of the above figures.

No one should deny the obvious, that the historical data in hand allows one to draw tentative conclusions only. But the idea that any of these figures were invented out of thin air is nonetheless preposterous.

Note that historical researchers do not argue like lawyers whose job it is to establish reasonable doubt. It's always possible to argue like Johnny Cochran - he did so to great effect and earned top dollar for it - who made the trial against O. J. Simpson into a trial of LAPD. Great fun. But the nature of the evidence in hand for most figures referred to in ancient sources make such an approach completely unhelpful.

The bad taste that lawyerly mythicists leave in the mouth of serious historical researchers in the field is entirely justified.

From a faith perspective, however, the fact that mythicism is and always will be a possible stance is a tonic to true faith. That is Schweitzer's point. The fact deprives the believer of a phantom crutch, the notion that historical evidence is a sufficient foundation for religious belief. That, I think, is never the case.

Faith in the first place is not a response to historical evidence. It is a work of the Holy Spirit, a gift of God. Classically, it is understood to be both fides quae and fides qua, in which what one believes about a person depends very much on trust and belief in that person, and the interpersonal knowledge that flows from that.

Call it "mystical" knowledge or something else, it doesn't matter much. It is knowledge of this kind that powers the faith of Jewish and Christian believers alike.

Neusner is a great read on the question of what kind of history the sources give us. I've posted on the topic more than once on this blog. For a full picture, it's important to trace Neusner's entire trajectory on the subject matter. He changed his mind rather much. Furthermore, many of his colleagues in the field of the history of Judaism are more optimistic than he is about what one can say with a reasonable degree of plausibility about the sages, biographically speaking. And with good cause.

[Eliyahu]

You are quite incorrect about the archeological evidence. There is very good archeological evidence for a human Jewish man named ישוע בר יהוסף at least that is what was found on his ossurary in Talpiot, Yrushalayim (Jerusalem), note that the ossuary did not say Jzeus. The evidence is so good that the IAA, Israel Antiquities Authority, has basically lost it's case claiming the "James Ossuary" was a fake. Allow me to put this together for you. If the James ossuary is authentic then the Talpiot tomb being the tomb of Ribi Yehoshua is a slam dunk. The completely scientific atomic absorption profile of the scrapings of the James ossuary are a fingerprint match of the scrapings of another ossuary of the Talpiot tomb. My training and degree happen to be in this type of analysis. This scientific evidence is irrefutable.
Historical Yehoshua is not historical Jzeus. And I didn't write that Jzeus was a Pharisee. I wrote the opposite. On the contrary, Ribi Yehoshua did identify with some Pharisees. Rabban Gamliel was a Perushi that he identified with as was also Hillel. The clarification of Ribi Yehoshua as a Pharisee, Perushi, would only be in what type. The extant sources name at least seven kinds if I recall correctly.

[JohnFH]

Eliyahu,

I'm sure the Talpiot ossuary is a slam dunk. Just as was the CIA's case that Saddam had WMD. "It's a slam dunk, Mr. President," said George Tenet.

Perhaps the writing on the ossuary, not just the ossuary itself, is authentic. Even if it were, what that would imply about "the Torah that Ribi Yehoshua ben Yoseph ben Dawid, Ha Mashiach" taught is a matter of speculation.

You guys are mythicists yourselves. One of seven kinds out there, if I remember correctly. That is, you take the Jesus of the gospels to be a myth.

Excuse the sarcasm, but I don't think you realize that your way of reasoning and the way a historian reasons have little in common.

[Steven Carr]

'Given the probability that Jesus existed and that he was betrayed, whether he figured out ahead of time that he would be betrayed is a legitimate question.....'

SO there is no evidence that he was betrayed...

And this Jesus knew he was going to be betrayed, because the authorities had to pay people to find out what Jesus looked out....

And then Jesus knew his movement would continue after his death....

How on earth could any of the many Historical Jesus's that have been proposed have possibly known he was going to be portrayed and that the movement would survive his death - to do what exactly?

And then Jesus knew that his movement would need a ritual meal whereby his body could be made accessible to cult members.

How exactly did Jesus know that his disciples would not be killed?

Gosh, historicists can read stories about the Lord telling cult members how to conjure up his body, and they do not think this reeks of mythicism....

They actually try to sell claims that this Jesus knew he was going to be betrayed, knew his disciples would not be killed and knew that they would need a meal to conjure up his body.

You may as well have Satanists telling us how Satan told Satanists how to conjure him up.

[Steven Carr]

Of course, that should be 'betrayed' not 'portayed'...

[JohnFH]

Steven,

I can't figure out for the life of me what you are doing when you read the gospels. Historians read them as if they were texts like any other. They try to make sense of them. Given more than one text that apparently describe the same events, it becomes a puzzle to work out.

Then you walk in, like some lawyer earning six figures defending a client like OJ, and point out that the chain of custody of the evidence is unknown or tainted, that there is reasonable doubt, and so on. And you are right. Big deal.

Historians work with the sources they have, not the one they wished they had. Virtually to a man and a woman, they read the gospels and surmise, without being able to prove it in a court of law, that this Jesus guy did a number of things, probably was betrayed, probably was crucified, and probably was reported to have risen from the dead and to have been seen by some of his disciples thereafter. Et cetera.

The approach of a lawyer intent on proving reasonable doubt is one thing. That of a historian intent on making sense of fragmentary data is another.

[Steven Carr]

'Historians read them as if they were texts like any other'

They do.

They treat them the way they would treat any anonymous, unsourced works of unknown provenance and unknown date.

Works full of people that no Christian in the first century ever put his name to a document stating he had heard of these people.

people like barabbas, judas, Thomas, nicodemus, lazarus, bartimaeus, mary magdalene, joseph of Arimathea, Simon of cyrene, joanna, salome, etc etc.

All are as well attested as the second gunman who shot JFK. not even christians of the first century saw or heard of them , outside the anonymous, unsourced, unprovenanced Novels.

but Christians claim their conspiracy theory is true, even if they can produce no more evidence for it then can the people who say a second gunman shot JFK.

[JohnFH]

Steven,

Now you are drawing closer to formulating a testable hypothesis. You postulate that the gospels are novels. There are many extant novels from the Hellenistic period. The Daniel/Susanna tradition, Tobit, Judith, Esther, Joseph and Aseneth. As a control, compare those to 1, 2, 3 and 4 Maccabees. Line those up with the gospels and Acts. Paul's letters can be used as a control.

It is very interesting exercise. Historians since Emil Schuerer and before have occupied themselves with it. So long as you treat the gospels in isolation from the rest of Jewish literature of the Hellenistic-Roman period, you are in no position to the say whether the gospels are, from the point of view of genre, closer to being historiography, historical fictions, or novels.

Until now, Jewish and Christian scholars of Jewish literature of the relevant period inclusive of the gospels and Acts have situated the latter, from the point of view of genre, closer to 1 Maccabees than to 3 Maccabees. Bona fide Hellenistic Jewish novels seem very different from the Synoptics and Acts along a great many coordinates.

That's fine if you think otherwise. But you have your work cut out for you. If you are going to make the case that 1st century Christianity as known from the New Testament is a giant fabrication, you must do the same for the Maccabbean period and 1-4 century rabbinic Judaism. Right? Myth upon myth upon myth.

Have fun. You have to undermine the foundations of historical research, not only, of the early Christianity, but of most other forms of Judaism of the Greco-Roman period.

[Steven Carr]

So no arguments for the idea that these unsourced, anonymous works are genuine histories.

Although it is conceded that they plagiarise each other without telling the reader of the deception.

And they are full of people who are unknown even in Christian history, and who vanish as soon as there is a public church in Acts 2, with the possibility of contact with people who might ask who these alleged people had been.

Just like the Angel Moroni and the Golden Plates vanish as soon as Joseph Smith went public....

Gosh, you get better evidence from the people who think a second gunman shot JFK.

Just shut all we mythicists up by producing some evidence that Judas existed.

Just think how historicists would adore being able to have some hard evidence like that and wipe out mythicism by means other than calling people names.

[JohnFH]

Steven,

I don't want to shut you up for one minute. On the contrary, I think you should test your hypothesis against the evidence. The gospels are not history of the kind you want, but neither are they novels as you think they are. Do the comparative analysis and see for yourself.

I am a student of antiquity. I am totally at home in a field of research that must try to make sense of mostly unsourced, anonymous works. Almost none of them are "genuine histories." The writings of the NT fit very well into the larger literary legacy of the ancient world. If you don't like it, you might as well lump it. You can take it up with God one day. "If I could have watched Jesus on reality TV, then I would have believed."

You find the particular challenges the sources we have pose to a historian unacceptable. You refrain from the hard sweaty work of assigning degrees of confidence in the historical veracity of the various NT reports. Furthermore, you seem to have an understanding of history that has never been "violated" by the insights of structural anthropology or the sociology of knowledge.

Precisely historiography of the modern world, with its embarassment of riches of sourced material and external documentation, is most aware that such abundance solves precisely nothing at the level of interpretation.

Christians, because they experience Christ in worship in more or less the same way that Paul implies he and his readers did, could get by with knowing only as much about the historical Jesus as Paul's letters, written only 20-30 years after the fact, allow us to know. But the gospels open a door onto a broader landscape. Certain conclusions by definition cannot be reached, but that will not stop believers and believers from questing for the historical Jesus until kingdom comes.

You can sit on the sidelines if you want, and heckle from the peanut gallery. But you can be sure that the show will go on, whether you have a part in it or not.

[Art Smith]

Whether or not Schweitzer's historical Jesus ever existed did Albert Scweitzer believe that Jesus was/ is the Son of God? To put it another way, did Schweitzer consider himself to be a Christian in the sense of believing Jesus to be the Son of God or did he simply follow him as an extraordinary example of a truly ethical human being? ags

[JohnFH]

That's a trickier question that one might think, Art.

Schweitzer thought of Jesus in the highest possible terms; as the one through whom God and the good are made known to us in superlative fashion; as the one through whom God continues to lay claim to our lives. But he thought of terms and concepts like Messiah, Son of Man, and Son of God as typical, necessary, but culturally contingent conceptualizations of who Jesus was. Which of course they are.

To be sure, one might choose to re-appropriate the ancient conceptualizations for our day. Most preaching and teaching takes this path. I can't think of passages in which S polemicizes against the usual method, but he takes, nonetheless, the less traveled road. He seeks to formulate in terms that are transparent to us the essence of who Jesus was and is apart from the "late Jewish" titles.

My thought: without wishing to polemicize against S's method, it is precisely the characterizations of who Jesus rooted in Jewish tradition that I find most helpful in interpreting who he is.

[Art Smith]

Thank you very kindly, JohnFH. Your comments and thought are very helpful to me, and indeed, are not different from my own on this matter. ags