p>
Giosuè Ghisalberti
Jesus, the Unprecedented Human Being
Bibliographic Information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek
The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data is available online at http://dnb.d-nb.de.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A CIP catalog record for this book has been applied for at the Library of Congress.
iStock.com/Jorisvo
ISBN 978-3-631-80879-5 (Print)
E-ISBN 978-3-631-81336-2 (E-PDF)
E-ISBN 978-3-631-81337-9 (EPUB)
E-ISBN 978-3-631-81338-6 (MOBI)
DOI 10.3726/b16592
© Peter Lang GmbH
Internationaler Verlag der Wissenschaften
Berlin 2020
All rights reserved.
Peter Lang – Berlin ∙ Bern ∙ Bruxelles ∙ New York ∙ Oxford ∙ Warszawa ∙ Wien
All parts of this publication are protected by copyright. Any utilisation outside the strict limits of the copyright law, without the permission of the publisher, is forbidden and liable to prosecution. This applies in particular to reproductions, translations, microfilming, and storage and processing in electronic retrieval systems.
This publication has been peer reviewed.
Dedication For my God-daughter Ellie, and to her parents John and Teresa
About the author
Giosuè Ghisalberti received his PhD from the department of Social and Political Thought at York University, Toronto, Canada where he specialized in phenomenology and hermeneutics. He currently teaches courses in philosophy, religion, and the humanities in the department of Liberal Studies at Humber Collage, Toronto, Canada. He is currently working on a projected called Nietzsche’s Ecce Homo as the autobiography of a martyr.
About the book
Does Jesus remain concealed by the very traditions intended to portray him? History and theology define Jesus to be a 1st-century Galilean or the son of God, a man limited by his time and place or exalted as the Messiah and Christ. He has been recognized as a Jewish rabbi or the prophet of a coming apocalypse. The quest for the historical Jesus and theology’s Christ of faith may both be essential and undeniable in the history of scholarship. Secular historians and the Christian church have made their claims. Jesus’ self-conception, however, has been neglected, his consciousness largely ignored. A new interpretation of the gospels presents Jesus as an unprecedented human being who will “utter things which have kept secret from the foundation of the word” (Matt. 13:35) and make their meanings significant for the here and now. Jesus’ life from the virgin birth to the resurrection can neither be reduced to history’s skepticism nor theology’s affirmation. Is it possible to re-imagine the life and words of Jesus? He reveals himself to be a “first-born” who makes possible the second act of creation for every individual no less than for the social world.
This eBook can be cited
This edition of the eBook can be cited. To enable this we have marked the start and end of a page. In cases where a word straddles a page break, the marker is placed inside the word at exactly the same position as in the physical book. This means that occasionally a word might be bifurcated by this marker.
Contents
Introduction Hermeneutics of the Gospels
1 The Virgin Birth
2 Children
3 Families
4 The Son of Man
5 Nature
6 History
7 Death
8 The Resurrection
Bibliography
Introduction Hermeneutics of the Gospels
As the gospel writers each begin their account, for their present and for a future posterity they cannot possibly anticipate or imagine, they are burdened with an almost overwhelming responsibility of representing events in the life of Jesus (his acts and his words) and to make him present to their readers despite being separated both from the man himself and the sources available to them. With compelling motivations, and recognizing the fragility of their communities and the hostility of the social world around them, the writers of the gospels attempt to portray Jesus as someone who comes into the world to be an inauguration and to begin to actualize in being what has remained, until him, inconceivable. However, despite sensing Jesus’ dynamic ability to initiate such a possibility for the first time since creation, from out of himself in the fullness of his human presence, they always return him to a prior scriptural history. They need to give him an origin in a three-part tradition announcing him from the past and thereby making him legitimate, with the most authoritative credentials related to Abraham the patriarch, David the king, and the prophets as world-historical individuals. Each writer distinguishes himself from all oral traditions because their gospel is now permanent. They avoid the discrepancy of word-of-mouth versions by creating what they believe to be two related and complementary historical events, each with a source and chronology: the life of Jesus as previously handed down by oral testimonies and, perhaps, by one or more documents – the hypothetical Q, German for Quelle or “source,” and with Mark serving both Matthew and Luke as is commonly thought – and a prophet such as Isaiah, for example, who is interpreted to have announced Jesus’ future coming and will now be a fulfillment of a historical aspiration. Despite their individual reasons for setting down their version of events in the life of Jesus, the gospel writers are at every turn confronted with a difficult situation. The complications are extreme and without resolution.
After repeated readings of their sources, making selections and decisions, each of them begins under significant pressure. The permanence of the writing had to be intimidating, more so if certain alterations were made, changes they believed to be necessary. They individually decide on a starting-point, with a reading that will move, with some uncertainty – or rather, with both deliberation and hesitation – between the available document(s) on the life of Jesus, the testimonies of “eyewitnesses,” (Luke 1:2) and a continuous reference to utterances made in the past, with direct and precise quotations. For example, “when Mark ←9 | 10→is internal to the story and intrudes his own judgment upon what people felt,” Best tells us, “he does so in order to interpret the events he reports.”1
