"Jesus was not a Christian but a Jew!"
Historical Jesus in current research
Abstract
This article takes its point of departure in the famous dictum of Julius Wellhausen: “Jesus was not a Christian but a Jew.” The article sets out by asking how current research, the so-called Third Quest for the historical Jesus, understands Jesus’ Jewishness, and takes notice of the radical change in picturing Jesus as a Jew that has taken place during it: The integral Jewishness of Jesus has been the center and the most elaborated question of the Third Quest. Through this emphasis, with which it contrasts earlier quests for the historical Jesus, current research has also efficiently thwarted the modernization of Jesus; a tendency to picture Jesus in light of the ideas and values of the time of the scholar so elementarily missing the archaic Jewish gure that Jesus was in reality. Indeed, this tendency has severly marred scholarhip almost throughout its history, and it only appears to loosen its grip through consistent emphasis on Jesus’ Jewishness. The modernization of Jesus was also the reason for Wellhausen’s dictum.
The article then presents and examines more closely seven concrete topics in Judaism and in the teaching of Jesus in order to illuminate Jesus’ Jewishness and Jesus’ Judaism: The jealous, one God; the Holy Scriptures (the Torah); the Jews as the people of God; the temple of the Jews; Jesus keeping company with sinners; Jesus forgiving sins; and Jesus’ allusions to his divinity. The first part of the topics exemplifies some common characteristics of the Judaism of Jesus’ time, the second, again some particularities of Jesus’ Judaism. The result is that Jesus shared all the discussed common characteristics of the Judaism of his day. Yet, it is also evident that Jesus had interpetations of his own regarding these characteristics, interpretations that not unlike those of other contemporary religious leader figures, shaped Judaism in a certain way and moved it in a certain direction. Another result, emerging already in Jesus’ take on the common characteristics of the Jewish tradition but especially in the topics of his teaching and doing that exhibit particularity or even uniqueness within that tradition, is Jesus’ elevated self-understanding. In fact, the self-understanding is of the kind that could even challenge Jesus’ belonging to Judaism—unless we accept that part of it was formed by an exceptional unity with God that Jesus experienced and that he expressed in his words and deeds.
As its conclusion, the article probes whether Jesus the Jew can be seen to lie in continuum with Christianity. Two opposite forms of Christianity are scrutinized, the primitive New Testament Christianity and an ultramodern “Christianity 2.0.” Based on the few examplary topics involved in the essay, New Testament Christianity can indeed be said to take its place as a continuation of the proclamation of Jesus the Jew. However, the modern Christianity 2.0 has little use for the archaic Jew of the first century. Finally, the Wellhausenian dictum is updated to meet today’s setting and to prevent contemporary interpretations of Jesus from falling victim to the modernizing tendency of the past centuries: For Christianity, Jesus the Jew is a sine qua non. The key to understanding Jesus as a Jew, again, is his elevated self- understanding.
