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.
