Who was Jesus?

In Mark 8: 29b Jesus is recorded as saying "Who do you say I am?" There has been considerable discussion for the last two thousand years: from this discussion there are elements of Jesus that most scholars can agree upon. For the purposes of this paper and for clarity the name Yeshua shall refer to the historic Jesus, and the theological term Logos shall refer to the second person of the Trinity.

Mainstream scholars and many of those on the fringe of the discussion, agree that Yeshua bar Yosef was a first century Jew, acknowledge that he was born in Judea under Roman rule circa 4 BCE (Sanders, Borg, & The Jesus Seminar), lived during a time of Messianic and apocalyptic expectations, and that he was crucified approximately thirty-three years after his birth. During Yeshua's period of ministry, both he and his followers were itinerant, although it is not clear from the current textual evidence, whether the period of Yeshua's ministry was permanently itinerant, or whether the ministry was based in Caesarea, for example, and included times of itinerant missions. From these few points of agreement, however, there are several differing major viewpoints about the nature and function of Yeshua, with each position having dissention within: Yeshua is represented as the Son of God or the apex of humanity, an apocalyptic prophet or an enlightened teacher, a Hasid or even the Essene "Teacher of Righteousness", referred to in the Dead Sea Scrolls (Ellegard: Jesus: one hundred years before Christ).

Bart Ehrman, E.P. Sanders, Albert Schweitzer, and others believe that Yeshua was a prophet, one charged with declaring the coming apocalypse and preparing the Jews for the coming end of the world (Gerd & Merz: the historical Jesus). Within this school of thought, there appears to be a degree of uncertainty whether or not Yeshua was a failed Messiah killed by the Romans (Schweitzer: the quest of the historical Jesus: chapter 12, further imaginative lives of Jesus) or as a man who anticipates a superior place in the coming Kingdom (Sanders. The historical figure of Jesus: chapter 15, Jesus' view of his role in God's plan).

The Jesus Seminar, their fellow scholars, J.D. Crossan, R.W. Funk et al, and others such as Marcus Borg postulate that Yeshua was not an apocalyptic prophet, but rather a teacher of enlightened wisdom: one who found that the Kingdom of God was not one that was imminent, but rather the Kingdom was fully attainable in the here-and-now, but required social and personal transformation (Gerd & Merz, The Jesus Seminar, Borg & Wright). Members of this group do have differing views: Crossan contends that Jesus was the pinnacle of humanity and that the call was to follow him, both itinerantly and transformationally (Crossan: The essential Jesus) while Borg goes further than the Gandhi/Martin Luther King social and/or political dimensions and describes Yeshua in the terms of a religious mystic, one for whom the presence of God was an immediate reality – like Francis of Assisi or the Dalai Lama for example.

The orthodox view of Jesus as Son of God (Yeshua as Logos) has not fallen from scholarly opinion. Theologians such as N.T. Wright and Luke Timothy Johnson continue to defend the historical and traditional dogmatic position of the Church, that, Yeshua was not only the incarnation of Logos but that He existed in the form of the hypostatic union. For these theologians, the healings of Yeshua were more than faith healing, but rather Divine miracles, and the death and resurrection sections of the Gospel narratives are proof Yeshua and Logos are the twin natures of Jesus the Christ.

In the work "The many faces of Christology", Inbody acknowledges that our faith does not begin with knowledge or understanding of Yeshua, but rather faith in Logos. Nevertheless, it is this student's opinion that while Faith comes from understanding, the most complete picture of the pre-Easter Yeshua lends better understanding of the post-Easter Logos – if the fulfillment of
Jesus Christ rests only in the man Yeshua, then we only have a call by another great human to love God, our neighbor, and ourselves, but when we understand Jesus Christ as both Yeshua and Logos then we have the Word of God as a directive for the fulfillment of our life on earth, and with our God above.

Bibliography & Works Cited

• Borg, Marcus and N.T. Wright. The meaning of Jesus: two visions. New York, NY: Harper Collins. 2007
  
• Crossan, John Dominic. The essential Jesus: original sayings and earliest images. Edison, NJ: Castle Books. 1998.
  
• Ellegard, Alvar. Jesus: one hundred years before Christ: a study in creative mythology. London, UK: Overlook Press. 1999
  
• Funk, Hoover, and the Jesus Seminar. The five Gospels: what did Jesus really say? New York, NY: Harper Collins. 1997
  
• Inbody, Tyron. The many faces of Christology. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press. 2002
  
• Sanders, E. P. The historical figure of Jesus. Penguin, 1993.
  
• Schweitzer, Albert. The quest of the historical Jesus. London, UK: A. & C. Black, Ltd. 1910
  
• Theissen, Gerd and Annette Merz. The historical Jesus: a comprehensive guide. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press. 1998
  
• Wiley, Tatha Editor. Thinking of Christ. New York, NY: Continuum. 2003