Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Anthony Le Donne is assistant professor of New Testamentat United Theological Seminary, Dayton, Ohio. His otherbooks include The Historiographical Jesus: Memory, Typology, and the Son of David and The Wifeof Jesus: Ancient Texts and Modern Scandals. Visithim on the web at anthonyledonne.com.

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HISTORICAL JESUS

William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company

Contents

Foreword, by Dale C. Allison Jr...............................................ixIn Gratitude..................................................................xivBeginnings....................................................................3QUESTIONS I Totally Mental?..................................................13PERCEPTION I Thinking from the Outside In....................................15MEMORY I Family Matters......................................................24HISTORY I A Type of Now......................................................33JESUS I Dysfunctional Family.................................................42QUESTIONS II Could It Be ... Satan?..........................................55PERCEPTION II Understanding Is Construing....................................56MEMORY II Variation and Stability............................................65HISTORY II Between Certainty and History.....................................72JESUS II Talking Politics....................................................81QUESTIONS III Do You Think You're What They Say You Are?.....................95PERCEPTION III Believing Is Seeing...........................................96MEMORY III Through a Glass Darkly............................................106HISTORY III If Memory Serves.................................................111JESUS III The Big Stage......................................................120New Beginnings................................................................133Notes.........................................................................136

Chapter One

Totally Mental?

To speak of studying the mind of Jesus from within may seem presumptuous; but no other method is of the slightest value. R. G. Collingwood

Was Jesus ever married? Did he ever have sex? Did he have sexual thoughts? He wasn't genderless, was he? Sexuality is a prerequisite of gender, isn't it? Did Jesus have a sexual identity?

How self-aware was Jesus anyway? Did Jesus think he was a messiah? Did he think he was more than a messiah? Did he have a divinity complex? Did Jesus' mother think he was from God? Did she tell him this? What kind of person would do that to a kid?! Was Jesus a psychological mess? Did people think that he was crazy?

Wasn't Jesus' family life just a big cover-up? Didn't his followers try to keep embarrassing details about Jesus a secret? Aren't the stories about Jesus just fictions? Weren't they invented to illustrate disputes between early Christians? If there did happen to be "historical" stories in the Bible, how would we know? Wouldn't it be impossible to separate the memory-stories from the made-up-stories?

Does the Bible provide us with any historical data that tells of Jesus' personal goals? Did he really aspire to be an exorcist? Did Jesus' contemporaries believe that he could bring about acts of God? The supernatural? What could lead somebody to such a belief? What would it take to convince you that you just saw a supernatural event? Is it even a matter of convincing? Or is it something more primary — some primary conception of reality embedded in the mind of the perceiver?

PERCEPTION I

Thinking from the Outside In

Science is nothing but perception. Plato

The question that kicks off this discussion goes like this: How does a person gain access to her thoughts? Or, put another way, how does a person relate to his mental content? As questions go, this is one of the most foundational. Our relationship to the world around us — people, things, ideas — is all filtered through our thoughts. We relate to the rest of the world based on our thoughts, whether they are conscious or subconscious. So in order to relate to people, things, and ideas we must relate in some way to our own mental content. The question is how?

I start with this question because, once upon a time, Jesus made a historical impact that was perceived by his contemporaries. Indeed, even before Jesus became a historical figure, he was the object of people's perceptions. In other words, people saw his actions, heard his words, felt his touch. Therefore it will be necessary to have some understanding of how perception functions. It is perception that shapes the nature of Jesus' impact from the very beginning.

In order to provide a postmodern perspective to this discussion, we must first dialogue with the quintessential herald of modern philosophy, René Descartes (1596-1650). I must briefly qualify my comments by saying that these few paragraphs will not sum up the key points of Descartes' legacy. Those unfamiliar with Descartes will need to go elsewhere to learn more about his most influential ideas. I will not introduce his general impact. I begin instead with just one concept that Descartes championed: the mind's eye.

Like most philosophers (both ancient and contemporary), Descartes measured his own ideas first and foremost with the ideas of Socrates, and Plato (c. 427-348 BCE). Plato taught that the content of a person's mind (knowledge/science) was remembered by the "preservation of perception." Plato's mentor, Socrates (c. 469-399 BCE), described this in visual terms, "Just as we make impressions from seal rings; and whatever is imprinted we remember and know as long as its image lasts." This concept of seeing mental images the way the eye sees physical objects was passed on for generations. Descartes inherited this model at the dawn of the modern world.

Now, there can be no doubt that visualization is an important function of the human mind; I have no problem with the metaphor of "seeing" our thoughts. But we run into trouble when this process is oversimplified. Our minds are complex beyond any single metaphor. I think that an oversimplification on this point is where Descartes went wrong.

Descartes believed that people have a rather simple (or direct) relationship with their thoughts. He argued that people have the capacity to gain access to their thoughts in the same way that they can perceive by seeing (seeing was considered to be a direct, simple, and immediate sensation). Descartes held that a person's ability to relate to his own thoughts is without error. He did allow for errors due to lapses in judgment like prejudice or an overdependence on physical sensation, but for Descartes, these were considered exceptions to the rule. His "rule" was that you have a front-row seat to what is going on inside your mind and that you can "see" this content simply and clearly.

Philosopher Bertrand Russell (1872-1970), for the most part, agreed with Descartes and took this idea a step further. He argued that a person's relationship to his/her thoughts is direct, without error and non-perspectival, meaning that there is no barrier, filter, or lens between you and your thoughts. In other words, no perspective is needed to be introspective.

Russell also suggested that a person is able to "suppose" or "judge" without any influence from the outside world. You might recognize the problems with this model...