As carefully crafted as the title for this essay may be, it remains ambiguous. By the "aims of Jesus" do we mean Ben Meyer’s stunning book by that title?¹ If so, we would be obliged to undertake a social historical analysis of Gospel criticism in Germany during the nineteenth century and position Meyer’s book within the context of the history of ideas from Reimarus to the present. That is a task worth undertaking, but it is not my present task. Rather, by the "aims of Jesus" I refer not to Meyer’s book itself, but the subject of that book, namely the guiding purposes of Jesus, which to understand helps us make the most sense out of as much as possible of all the relevant data bearing on the question of Christian origins.

I think it is fair to say that before Meyer wrote his book, this subject was generally regarded in higher circles of theological scholarship as off limits. One of the basic assumptions of mid-twentieth century critical reflection has been that the self-consciousness of Jesus is beyond recovery. To attempt to penetrate behind the earliest strata of the Synoptic tradition as formulated in the primitive Palestinian Christian communities has been to defy the gods of reason and correct academic behavior.

We have yet to take the full measure of Ben Meyer’s achievements in his book The Aims of Jesus, but for this observer, it already appears that the whole question of what we can know, and/or what we should attempt to understand about Jesus, has been recast in a very constructive way by Meyer’s soundly grounded and comprehensive study. The very formulation: "the aims of Jesus," serves to make it clear that what is under investigation is not his personality which may be beyond recovery, nor his private life, which in any case belongs to the gossip columns rather than the annals of responsible theological scholarship. What is under investigation is the public career of Jesus. What did he do and say that can make sense out what emerged from what he did and said? Of course Jesus did not speak and act within a vacuum, and every historical reconstruction must make sense in terms of what we can know about the circumstances of the time—social, historical, political et al. Jesus did do something He did say something. And what he did and said stands in some consequential relationship to what happened to his people and what happened to him. And what happened to his people and what happened to Jesus as a consequence of what he did and said stands in some consequential relationship to the Church which from the earliest period has served as the custodian of his oracles, and the perpetuator of his purposes.

We turn now to our topic: "The Historical Perimeters for Understanding the Aims of Jesus."

These historical perimeters include what may be called basic presuppositions, which while they may not be established are regarded by most critics as not only plausible but intrinsically probable.

We may begin with further reference to the common-sense assumptions of continuity between Jesus and the community which bears and cherishes his memory. Jesus did do something with his life and did teach or preach something. Is it not reasonable to conclude that this something provided the Church an initial impetus, that is, that authentic Christian life and faith, at one or more decisive points, is commensurate with the original intention of Jesus and the effect he had upon the life and faith of his disciples? Is it not reasonable to think that, however much our understanding of existence may have broadened, deepened, or changed, nothing has happened which sets aside, nullifies or contravenes the significance of original event.

In addition to this general pre-understanding there are several rather specific presuppositions or material assumptions that are important to this study.

The first is the historical existence of Jesus. The fact that some intelligent persons sincerely doubt whether Jesus ever existed as an historical personage, and that theologians have felt constrained to allow for this doubt, reminds us that in the intellectual history of the West this is still an item of unfinished business.

The second is the sanity of Jesus. Jesus’ sanity is hardly capable of competent definition or diagnosis. But the fact that it has been challenged deserves to be noted. There is no reason in principle why historical studies of Jesus presupposing that he was suffering from one or another mental illness should not be attempted. However, such studies as have been made seem incomplete and their results uncertain.

The third is the integrity of Jesus. The point at issue here is primarily this: did Jesus intend to deceive his followers or did he allow them to be deceived? Sensitive pastors are aware of the fact that there are members of their flocks whose faith in their integrity sometimes disposes them to be uncritically naive with regard to the problems pastors experience in maintaining at all times personal integrity in their ministries. Therefore, when the integrity on the part of Jesus is assumed by an historian, this assumption must not be made naively, but should be regarded as a presupposition, for it tends to limit the range of human experience by which the historian judges probabilities and improbabilities in his reconstruction of the past, by leaving out of consideration possibilities which might otherwise be entertained if the suggestion that Jesus may not have been a person of integrity were really taken seriously. To say that Jesus was a person of integrity does not rule out the possibility that he sometimes may have been conscious of failing to adhere to or wholeheartedly affirm what he preached. Such questions are virtually impossible to settle because of the difficulties with which any investigation into the self-consciousness of Jesus is fraught. The materials we have for understanding Jesus do not afford us as much of this kind of knowledge about him as we could wish. The basic question is: did Jesus mean what he said; did he intend others to take his words seriously and did he himself take seriously the understanding of existence to which he gave expression in his teaching? It is an affirmative answer to this question which is presupposed in this essay. The degree to which anyone hesitates to agree that Jesus was in this sense a person of integrity should lead her/him to a corresponding degree of skepticism regarding the possibility of ever knowing with any degree of probability what aims of Jesus actually were, since any conclusions that may be drawn on this matter presuppose such integrity on Jesus’ part.

In the fourth place it is presupposed that within the primitive Church there were those who remembered Jesus. That Jesus was remembered in the Church by those who had known him is intrinsically probable from virtually every point of view, but since it has never been demonstrated it needs to be listed as something assumed in any investigation of the "aims of Jesus."

In the fifth place it is assumed that all the gospels were written relatively late, i.e. probably a full generation after the events described. The evidence on which such dating is based is admittedly tenuous.

The sixth matter that is presupposed or assumed is closely related to the fourth and fifth. It is that within the tradition preserved in the gospels, the memory of Jesus is preserved. The alternative that, in the period between the time when Jesus was remembered in the primitive Church and the time the gospels were written, the memory of Jesus was completely or effectively lost is a real one. An although few would support this alternative, the fact that the contrary is assumed deserves noting.

Finally, we frequently presuppose that it is possible to distinguish between what was remembered about Jesus and what has been added. This analysis can be accomplished with the aid of contemporary knowledge of the relevant ancient languages; environmental research into the life situation of Jesus and of the first-century Church; literary and historical criticism (including source, form-critical and redactional analysis); and a reasonably perceptive understanding of human existence, informed by the humanities and social science disciplines. It is not presupposed that all the genuine remembrances can be identified, but that in a significant number and variety of passages in the gospels it is possible to distinguish between what has been remembered and what has been added. In this connection it can be said that it is to the enduring credit of Professor Joachim Jeremias that he was able to take the form-critical methods of his more skeptical German colleagues and by a careful and judicious application of the principles of form-critical inquiry, demonstrate to the satisfaction of most critics that one could separate the later redactional additions coming from the exegetical tradition of the early church from the earlier parables of Jesus. This triumph of Jeremias, more than his famous "Abba" triumph, accounts for the basic shift that has come over the so-called quest for the historical Jesus. It broke the back of radical skepticism and more than any other single development in German New Testament scholarship to the twentieth century, has served to open up the real possibility of an hermeneutic that can reconcile the demands of the academy with the vital interest of the church.

We turn now to a second category of historical perimeters for understanding the Aims of Jesus. These are facts or conclusions that need not be presupposed. They can all be demonstrated explicitly or inferred from circumstantial evidence.

The chief methodological problem in writing about the aims of Jesus is chronology. Since the turn of century, critical theology has been aware of the historical uncertainty of the gospel chronologies. This has led to a virtual moratorium on writing "lives of Jesus" according to the nineteenth century mode. The classic twentieth century reconstruction by Bultmann in his Jesus and the Word is largely restricted to the reconstruction of Jesus’ message. Bornkamm’s Jesus of Nazareth is an improvement on Bultmann, primarily by taking into account the intervening parable research of Dodd (The Parables of the Kingdom) and Jeremias (The Parables of Jesus).²

A peculiar merit of the approach here to be presented is that it goes beyond the simple reconstruction of Jesus’ message. Without uncritical dependence upon the gospel chronologies, it attempts to explicate Jesus’ teachings within the context of an intrinsic development in his public career. To this extent it serves in a modest way to demonstrate the possibility of a "story of Jesus" acceptable to historians, a story which is not essentially different from the story of Jesus familiar to us from the Gospels.

The gospel tradition originated with Jesus and those who worked with him and experienced his saving influence. It developed in the earliest Christian communities where Jesus was remembered and worshipped as the crucified and resurrected Lord. The traditions’ canonical function in the church calls for theological and historical reflection upon the way it developed into the forms given to it in the Gospels and upon the relationship of these Gospels to one another and to Scripture as a whole.

The Gospels embody tradition concerning Jesus. Between Jesus and the Gospels stands the traditioning process, by which the Gospel stories and sayings of Jesus were handed on. These traditions were oral and written and included sayings both of Jesus and of early Christian prophets speaking in the name of Jesus. They also included accounts of eyewitnesses concerning the actions and character of Jesus and later modifications of this tradition made to meet the changing needs of different Christian communities.

This traditioning process has never ceased. It flourished up to and through the period when the Gospels were written and achieved manifold expression during the second and third centuries. It was normed with the adoption of the fourfold Gospel canon, which in turn has enhanced the traditioning process through its influence upon the visual, arts, music, literature, and preaching.

The canonical Gospels afford us our best access to the earliest traditions concerning Jesus. From a form-critical study of the Gospels, it is clear that the Jesus tradition was already richly developed by the time the Gospels were written. A study of this developed tradition is rewarding because it helps clarify the character of Jesus and improves our understanding of the evangelists’ purpose in writing the Gospels.

The Gospels represent Jesus as he was remembered and worshipped in certain Christian communities a generation after the beginning of the church. This is clear from the traditions concerning Jesus that the evangelists used, which include not only traditions that originated with Jesus himself and his first associates, but also many which reflect the needs of later Christian communities.

Christianity as a religious movement began with Jesus and his disciples in Palestine, a meeting place for diverse cultural influences. This does not mean, however, that no viable distinctions can be made between the environment of Jesus and that of the evangelists. The environment of Jesus of Nazareth was spatially Palestinian and temporally pre-Pauline. Therefore, whatever he did and said, however distinctive it may have been, would have been accommodated to those who shared this environment. Presumably tradition concerning Jesus’ words and actions, which achieved stable form at a very early date, would tend to reflect this environment both conceptually and pictorially.

On the other hand, the environment of the evangelists was extra-Palestinian and post-Pauline. We can assume that what the evangelists wrote was accommodated accordingly. The other New Testament writings make clear that the social and theological forces set in motion by Jesus and his disciples broke out of the original Palestinian environment at an early period. The Acts of the Apostles views this transition in retrospect. More importantly, however, the transition is seen firsthand in the letters of Paul. Thus, Paul’s writings are an important control in distinguishing between the environment of Jesus and that of the evangelists.

In his letters it is clear that Paul considered carrying the gospel to the Gentiles his special vocation. This vocation committed him to lengthy journeys among people far removed from Palestine. Therefore Paul himself reflects the transitional situation, not simply because he was a Jew engaged in a mission to gentiles, but also because he knew Jerusalem and met there with those who were apostles before him. He was concerned that these leaders understand that such changes in missionary policy as he had introduced in his efforts to expedite the spread of the gospel did not affect its saving truth. In fact, Paul was prepared to question the integrity of these apostles when they conducted themselves in a manner he perceived as prejudicial to the truth of this gospel.

Basically, then, what is seen in Paul’s letters is one way in which it was possible to adapt the gospel so that it was viable for predominantly gentile churches in Asia Minor and points west.

The works of the Jewish historian Josephus serve not only as background material to the letters of Paul and the rest of the New Testament writings, but also provide a basis for observing the contrast between the environments of Jesus and the evangelists. Like Paul, Josephus was basically of the pharisaic persuasion. Unlike Paul and most other New Testament writers, however, Josephus reflects first-century Judaism unchanged by Christian belief. Similarly, the manuscripts from the caves of the Judean desert, Jewish writings from the intertestamental period, and some Mishnaic and other rabbinic materials all afford access to first-century Palestinian Judaism unaffected by Christian belief. These Jewish writings together with the works of Josephus provide a reliable control in determining the nature of the religious, social, economic, and political environment of Jesus. In other words, in the effort to delineate the environment of Jesus, the modern historian is not confined to the limited and selective circle of New Testament writings.

When a tradition concerning Jesus or a saying attributed to him comes alive against the background of his environment as it is known through a study of the topography, geography, and climate of Palestine and the history of Palestinian Judaism prior to AD 70, then an element in the tradition is isolated or identified which may be early. If this tradition would be unintelligible outside Palestine or unfamiliar in gentile-oriented circles, then the probabilities increase that such a saying or story belongs to an early stage in the development of the tradition. Material in the Gospels which presupposes the death and resurrection of Jesus and reflects a situation where he is remembered and worshipped as a transcendent being represents tradition which may have originated in some post-Easter Christian community. Such tradition could have developed either early or late, either in Jewish or gentile circles. Paul’s letters preserve evidence that mythopoeic tendencies were at work at a very early date in some Christian communities, producing powerful christological statements about Jesus.

There are four major turning points in the development of the tradition leading from Jesus to the Gospels: (1) Jesus’ baptism by John followed by the arrest, imprisonment, and death of the Baptist; (2) Jesus’ challenge of religious authorities climaxing in his cleansing of the Temple followed by a final institutionalizing meal with his disciples, his arrest, trial, death, and resurrection and the emergence of a post-Easter messianic community; (3) sectarian conflict and division within the Jewish-Christian messianic community over the manner by which Gentiles were to be admitted to full membership; and (4) the inspiring rediscovery and renewal of ecumenical unity in the aftermath of the martyrdom of chief apostles Peter and Paul in Rome and the outbreak of the catastrophic Roman-Jewish military conflict. From this outline it may be seen that the crucial matter is not where a tradition belongs in some temporal progression marked off by decisive periods in a developmental sequence.

The public career of Jesus falls between the first and second of these decisive periods and took place in Palestine. The Gospels were written during or following the fourth and are extra-Palestinian in provenance. Paul’s letters provide us with an indispensable control for understanding how the Jesus tradition developed between the second and fourth turning points by illuminating the third. Paul himself was intimately acquainted with both the Jewish-Palestinian environment of Jesus and with the extra-Palestinian, gentile-oriented environment of the evangelists, and his life and work provide an indispensable historiographical bridge between the two.

Because of both the historical uncertainty concerning the gospel chronologies and the mythopoeic character of much of Jesus’ "life and ministry," it is best to focus our attention on sayings of Jesus which originated during the period of his earthly ministry if we wish to reflect on the aims of the actual Jesus.

Within the corpus of the tradition which originated during the period of Jesus’ earthly ministry, the parables afford the best key for understanding his career and character. However, the following points concerning the parables merit consideration: (1) the parables are not to be interpreted allegorically (Jülicher); 2) in his parables Jesus proclaims that the eschatological kingdom of God has already broken into reality (Dodd); (3) form criticism enables the critic to identify the parables of Jesus as belonging to the genre of rabbinic parables, while as a whole presenting theologically distinctive content (Jeremias); and (4) form criticism enables the critic to distinguish the original form of Jesus’ parables from the additions that were made by the early church (Jeremias). Once these matters concerning the parables become clear, it is possible to recapture the most adequate image of Jesus’ career and character.

To do this it is also necessary to meet minimal chronological requirements. One need only recognize that Jesus’ public ministry began with his baptism at the hands of John, whose identity is established by the historian Josephus; that Jesus’ ministry ended in crucifixion in response to the fateful decisions of the procurator Pontius Pilate and the high priest Caiaphas, whose identities are also established by Josephus; and that between the beginning and end of Jesus’ ministry a two-fold and compound crisis occurred. Central to this crisis was opposition to Jesus by the religious authorities, who felt challenged by his practice of eating with tax collectors and sinners. Recognizing this fact makes it possible to perceive a credible relationship between Jesus’ ministry and his death and to develop an intrinsic chronology for his earthly career.

This can be accomplished by arranging the sayings of Jesus and particularly his parables in relationship to this twofold and compound crisis. For example, a parable in which Jesus rebukes the self-righteousness of those who resent God’s mercy toward repentant sinners would have been prompted by his decision to defend his action of eating with tax collectors and sinners against the criticism of the Pharisees. This is a decision, however, that could not have come until after a decision by the Pharisees to criticize such conduct, which decision could not have been made before some tax collectors and sinners had decided to accept Jesus’ invitation to table fellowship. This decision in turn could not have taken place until after Jesus’ decision to invite repentant tax collectors and sinners into the intimacy of his table fellowship. And this decision of Jesus could not have taken place until some of these persons had decided to respond to his gracious call to repentance, which could not have come until after Jesus’ decision to leave the sparsely settled regions of the wilderness of Judea where he had been with John and to carry his gracious call to repentance into the more densely populated urban areas of Israel.

With this necessary sequence of decisive moments in Jesus’ public career, it is possible to reconstruct in outline form the essential development of his message. The ability to do this rests on the premise that the parables and other sayings of Jesus were not conceived all at once, but like the letters of Paul, were composed in response to particular situations. The essential outlines of this development are as follows:

1. Jesus followed John the Baptist, proclaiming the imminent coming of the kingdom of God.

2. His initial message issued in:

(a) A gracious call to repentance

(b) A positive response from "tax collectors and sinners."

(c) The acceptance of sinners into table fellowship, which created a new community that existed in anticipation of the coming kingdom.

3. Jesus’ ministry was beset by two separate crises; and a third occurred which was compounded by interaction between the other two.

(a) An internal crisis developed among Jesus’ followers because of uncertainty concerning the coming of the kingdom.

(b) An external crisis developed because of the Pharisees’ resistance to Jesus’ message and his table fellowship with sinners. Jesus rebuked the Pharisees and declared that it was better to be a repentant sinner than a self-righteous keeper of the law. The attitude of the Pharisees toward Jesus became increasingly hostile, and they plotted his death. Even in the face of death, Jesus reaffirmed the truth of his message.

(c) The external conflict with the Pharisees compounded the internal uncertainty among the faithful, raising the question: should we really allow sinners in our fellowship? Jesus assured his disciples that God would separate the just from the unjust. God alone, not some ritual, would decide who is justified and who is not.

On the basis of this analysis of Jesus’ ministry and message, the image of Jesus is that of one who in the face of God’s imminent destruction of the wicked issued God’s gracious call to repentance, and with compassion and joy received sinners into his fellowship. Moreover, it is the image of one who defended this action in the fact of criticism and rebuked the self-righteous attitude of those authorities who resented God’s mercy toward repentant sinners. The significance of this image of Jesus’ lifestyle is both theological and existential. There is in the parables of Jesus a theology of grace, a theology which is ethically and morally concerned with the little ones—those who are disadvantaged and victimized by the social and religious structures of their existence. This is a theology out of which comes a call to repentance and a promise of God’s salvation to all who respond. In short, Jesus’ parables demonstrate beyond reasonable doubt that the one who communicated these parables and their message provides the primal historical and theological context within which to reflect on the meaning of the cross and the resurrection.

When the parables of Jesus preserved in the Gospel of Matthew are analyzed theologically and compared to the parables of Jesus preserved in the Gospel of Luke, in every case the theology of the parables in Matthew can be matched by the theology of one or more of the parables in Luke. Moreover, the theology of Jesus’ parables is essentially the same as the theology of Paul. Since we learn from Paul himself that he preached the faith of the church he once persecuted, it follows that Paul preached a pre-Pauline faith. The historian has no alternative but to conclude that the theology common to Paul and to the two streams of parable tradition preserved separately in Matthew and Luke goes back to Jesus. To imagine that these three streams of tradition converge in some unidentified pre-Pauline theologian would be to create an unnecessary set of historical and theological problems.

It is important to clarify one further point. There is solid textual basis for making a fundamental theological distinction between Jesus and John the Baptist. Liberation theologies can be strengthened if they are careful not to blur this distinction and if they do not wrongly conclude that the polarizing effect of John’s preaching should be attributed also to Jesus and identified as the cause for Jesus’ execution at the hands of the political establishment.

Such a conclusion would be a vast oversimplification of a complex question and would leave important evidence unexplained—evidence both from the parables in Luke and Matthew and from Paul’s account of his pre-Christian persecution of the church. This evidence indicates that the religious authorities, who were drawn from the righteous elements within the established world of Jewish piety, were opposed to Jesus’ message and conduct. The woes of Jesus (which, to be sure, were added to in the bitterest of terms during the persecution of the church in which Paul the Pharisee took part) and his cleansing of the Temple polarized his relationship with the religious authorities and sealed his fate. Jesus’ fate was not in the first instance sealed by direct confrontation with Pilate and his political authority or with Roman military forces stationed in the capital. Thus, while the words of the psalmist "zeal for thy house has consumed me" (Ps 69:9) have been cited in Scripture in connection with Jesus’ cleansing of the Temple (John 2:17), Jesus was categorically more than a zealot or political activist.

There is no one category (like carpenter, king, teacher, or exorcist) that can do justice to the unique career of Jesus. The best way in which to approach an understanding of Jesus as an historical figure is to focus on his role as religious reformer (like Bernard of Clairvaux or Romero of Salvador). He certainly taught his disciples to love their enemies. any reconstruction that stumbles on that fact will not stand up to criticism. The reconstruction offered here clarifies the relationship between religion and politics in Jesus’ environment and focuses attention on what is truly liberating in Christianity.

The theology which comes to expression in the words and actions of Jesus is a theology which works against every form of oppression and exploitation and binds together all persons who love God and thirst after righteousness. It is a theology which calls for resourcement and renewal in the life of the church and for political involvement in the struggle for justice in society—for self-sacrifice and a readiness for martyrdom as exemplified in the lives of Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Archbishop Oscar Romero. Jesus’ prophetic power to unmask hypocrisy and self-righteousness is absolutely central to this theology and very distinctive of it.

Where certain parables of Jesus are interpreted within the context of initial developments in his ministry and specifically within the context of his gracious call for repentance, they enable the historian to make informed suggestions about the intention of Jesus as he responded to the exigencies and difficulties he encountered. How was one to understand the delay in the coming of the kingdom which John had pronounced to be at hand, especially after John’s arrest and execution? And if one were to undertake to continue proclaiming the coming of the kingdom, how should he or she perceive this ministry? Was it to be understood as the work of God to be carried out during an extension of the period of grace in the face of the coming judgment? If so, was it not reasonable to expect that in due season, failing the fruits of repentance, this period of grace would come to a sudden and just end (Luke 13:6-9)? As for those who would mistakenly hold back because of their fear that the cost of repentance might be too great, was it not important for their sake to emphasize the joy of the kingdom (Matt 13:44-45)? Should not those who were delinquent in setting their houses in order be reminded of the inevitability of judgment (Matt 21:33-41; Luke 20:9-16), the appropriateness of radical action in the face of certain change (Luke 16:1-8b), the folly of not trusting God (Matt 25:14-30; Luke 19:11-27), and the suddenness and unexpectedness of God’s judgment (Matt 24:45-51; Luke 12:42-46; 13:1-5)?

Certainly parables which dramatically illustrate the folly of postponing repentance (Matt 22:1-10; 25:1-13; Luke 13:6-9) and which teach the wisdom of living in ready expectation of God’s gracious judgment (Luke 12:35-38) most likely would have originated in situations where such expectations would be enlivened and heightened—in the period of Jesus’ active ministry after his baptism into the movement of John and his decision to continue proclaiming the imminence of the kingdom following John’s arrest and death.

Even within this period it is possible to postulate development. Presumably Jesus would have understood the lesson the authorities intended by John’s execution: "A disciple is not above his teacher: (Matt 10:24). Jesus’ decision to carry on would have been realistic only if he understood that he did so at great risk. Although John had been beheaded, a more unusual form of execution was crucifixion. For Jesus to say "Take up (your) cross and follow me" (Matt 16:24) was his way of making clear that he had placed himself outside the discipline and protection of the established world of Jewish piety, and was calling upon others to do the same. This established world of Jewish piety derived its earthly jurisdiction from Rome. Thus, in coming into conflict with the religious authorities, Jesus was risking the ultimate wrath of Roman power. To speak in this way was a determined response to a policy of oppression which had been calculated to discourage dangerous rhetoric associated with messianic activity. But Jesus was not intimidated by what the authorities did to John. He continued to preach. "No one can serve two masters . . . You cannot serve God and mammon . . . Repent, and engage in the service of God . . . for the kingdom of heaven is at hand" (Matt 6:24; 3:2).

When Jesus said, "Take up (your) cross and follow me" (Matt 16:24) or "Leave the dead to bury their own dead" (Matt 8:22), he took upon himself the full measure of God’s absolute demand which was entailed in messianic leadership. With such startling statements Jesus challenged others to free themselves from a paralyzing fear of human authorities both those who sat in Moses’ seat and those who represented the emperor. In the former saying, Jesus unobtrusively clarified the all-important question of whether he was naively calling others into a course of action where the sacrifices being risked might be greater than he himself was prepared to bear.

"What will it profit a man, if he gains the whole world and forfeits his life?" (Matt 16:26). "Whoever would save his life will lose it" (Matt 16:25). Such brave and bold words staved off the disintegrating effects of temptation to abandon hope for the kingdom’s coming, once news of John’s arrest and imprisonment was followed by confirmation of his death. Even so, such sayings do not seem to carry one to the heart of Jesus’ message. They simply show that Jesus gave expression to qualities that help account for his emergence as a leader in Israel, greater than John.

If we are to trust the earliest and most reliable tradition, Jesus saw himself in prophetic continuity with John in commitment to the call for national repentance in the face of the imminent coming of the kingdom (Matt 11:7b-19). But Jesus saw himself in radical discontinuity with John regarding the basis for admission into the kingdom (Matt 21:28-32). John’s strictures against the moral laxities of the people were uncompromising and the ostensible cause for his death was his denunciation of immorality in high places. With Jesus it was otherwise. The misdeeds of the wealthy and powerful did not seem to preoccupy him, though he was not unmindful of the plight of the rich (Matt 19:23-24; Luke 16:19-31). Jesus came to save sinners, not to condemn them. As children of their Father in heaven, they in turn were counseled to love their enemies even as God loved his (Matt 5:43-48). They were admonished not to put forgiveness on any calculated basis, but to forgive freely, boldly, unconditionally, and from the heart—not seven times, but seventy times even (Matt 18:21-35).

The fellowship of such a community of forgiven and forgiving sinners was poignant and joyful. "There will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance" (Luke 15:7). Therefore, Jesus ate with sinners and celebrated their repentance (Luke 15:1-10). Such radical doctrine and practice was difficult to justify by legal precedent from Jewish scriptures. So revolutionary an attitude on the part of Jesus could only irritate authorities whose social importance rested upon their mastery of the exegetical intricacies of a life-encompassing legal system.

In this respect, the relationship of Jesus to the Pharisees calls for some clarification. Their opposition to his practice of admitting tax collectors and sinners into intimacy of table fellowship was rooted in two distinguishable legal concerns. First, there were the explicit food laws, called kashrut, which forbade eating pork, a kid seethed in its mother’s milk, meat with the blood still in it, and the like. These laws had governed the diet of Jews for centuries and served to keep them from eating with gentiles or other Jews who lived and ate like gentiles. Second, there was the purity code which, when applied to the laity, separated Jew from Jew socially. Such social separation was going on in the time of Jesus when some groups of Jews were applying the priestly purity code to the laity. The Jews who did this, called h\aberim in rabbinic sources, were eventually followed by the rabbis, who attempted to extend the provisions of the purity code to all Israelites.

Since gentiles were present in the Holy Land, righteous Jews were affected in different ways as far as eating was concerned. They sometimes found it helpful to band together to see that the kashrut laws were fully observed (and the purity code, too, when that was of concern to them). A common table where proper precautions regarding these laws were observed was in order among righteous Jews who, when away from home, could not depend upon this service being rendered by members of their respective families.

The admission of unrighteous Jews (those lax in their observance of the kashrut laws) into the table fellowship of those who were righteous was permitted at the discretion of the leaders of the group. Such admissions were defended on the grounds of h\esed (covenantal love) and justified as a means of recruiting new members for the fellowship or for the renewal movement, as the case might be.

The Pharisees as righteous Jews, that is, as observants of the Law of Moses, including the kashrut laws, had no particular grounds for objecting to this practical way of facilitating the observance of the law within the wider community. To the extent that the Pharisees were looked to by the authorities, that is, the Roman-backed high priestly oligarchy, as the party best able to police the land in terms of observing the law, or to the extent that they were recognized by the people (and so perceived themselves) to be authorized by God to police the land, the Pharisees were nervous about any situation where the righteousness of those observing the law was being dangerously imputed to the unrighteous. (This is precisely what Jesus’ acceptance of sinners at table fellowship implied.) Such nervousness could best be allayed by requiring a probationary period during which anyone seeking admission to an eating group could give evidence of a sincere intent to become truly and enduringly observant.

A scandalous feature of Jesus’ admitting unrighteous Jews into the intimacy of his table fellowship was the absence of any fixed probationary period. The most liberal of the h\aberim required one month (t. Dem. 2.10-12) and the Essenes required two or three years.

Compared to the more established religious groups, then, Jesus’ fellowship appeared dangerously subversive of that law upon whose strict observance the Pharisees placed such great importance. In any case, simple prudence dictated that the Pharisees take the precautionary step of warning righteous Jews who were most likely to heed their warning. (Because of political restraints placed upon them that curtailed that zeal for the law, there was generally little the Pharisees could do against tax collectors and others who lived like gentiles, except to excommunicate them from their table fellowship.)

The Pharisees were certainly not the only righteous Jews in Palestine. The Qumran community constituted a haven for those who wanted to be right with God according to the Law of Moses. Doubtless there were other such righteous communities. But the special status of the Pharisees in the eyes of the people and their role in the power structure of the established world of Jewish piety, attested by Josephus, justify regarding some of the New Testament evidence about them as valid.

First, Paul was a Pharisee, and he was granted police power by Jewish authorities. He was not granted those powers because he was a Pharisee, but since he was a Pharisee he had credentials that stood him in good stead in carrying out his police duties. The local people present at the arrests Paul made, whose cooperation with the arresting authorities was important, knew that Paul was a Pharisee. Therefore they assented to his authority as derived from God, not from Rome. Second, Jesus recognized the Pharisees as righteous and alluded to them when his teaching required the example of a righteous person (for example, the parable of the tax collector and the Pharisee in the Temple). Third, Jesus perceived a difference between the righteousness practiced by the Pharisees and the obedience he taught his disciples to render to God. Fourth, Jesus at times came into conflict with the Pharisees, for example, over Sabbath observance and over his practice of admitting sinners into the intimacy of his table fellowship. This latter opposition possible arose only in those cases where the sinners were guilty of notorious transgression, as with tax collectors. Finally, Jesus recognized that the Pharisees possessed authority to rule on the interpretation of the Law of Moses. Taken as a legal guild, however, their example discredited their ultimate authority as reliable exponents of God’s requirements of his sons and daughters.

Whether Jesus is responsible for the woes against the Pharisees is an historical question affected by the source paradigm that is applied. According to the two-document hypothesis, Matthew 23 can be understood as an expanded Matthean construction representing development of tradition from Q, some of which was also known to Mark. On form-critical grounds, however, even assuming the two-document hypothesis, there is much against this view. The tradition preserved in Matthew 23 reflects the influence of oral tradition, Jewish and Palestinian in provenance. Regarding Matthew as the earliest of the extant Gospels removes all doubt about the Jewish-Christian and Palestinian origin of most if not all of the tradition in Matthew 23.

It is possible on form-critical grounds to reconstruct the more original form of the woes and to separate the tradition that has been added. Paul’s own testimony of his attack upon the church fits the historical requirement of a kind of violent persecution which, when inflicted by some Pharisees upon some Christians, would explain these bitter additions. The woes themselves, however, may well be authentic to Jesus. They certainly are profoundly consonant with the best attested sayings of Jesus.

Thus, it is clear that one can give a credible account of the importance of the Pharisees for understanding the New Testament, especially the importance of their opposition to Jesus’ table fellowship with tax collectors and sinners, without settling the question as to the extent the purity code was being applied to all Israelites in the time of Jesus. Depending upon the extent that the purity code was applied and whether the Pharisees had any interest at all in gaining wide acceptance of it among the laity, Jesus’ table fellowship with tax collectors and sinners could have been of added concern to the Pharisees. A concern would have been there in any case, based simply on the kashrut laws. It would not have been only the Pharisees’ concern, but one shared by all righteous Jews, to one degree or another.

It was normative that righteous Jews not eat with sinners. As one who came in the way of righteousness, John had not eaten with sinners. But Jesus did. This marks a profound theological difference between John and Jesus (Matt 11:16-19).

The objection of scribes and Pharisees to Jesus’ practice of eating with tax collectors and sinners led to a major crisis for Jesus. Succumbing to pressure to abandon this practice would possibly have brought Jesus favor; instead, he struck at an important root of the problem—the self-righteousness of a scrupulous religious establishment.

Jesus represented the legal authorities’ emphasis on minutiae of the law and their neglect of justice, mercy, and faith as the counsel of "blind guides" (Matt 23:23-24). This, however, may be a caricature. In any case, Jesus himself came from a religious background so akin to Pharisaism as to command the respect of the Pharisees. Their anxiety over what he was doing may have been rooted in the perception that one of their own kind was endangering the interests of "the righteous." Jesus openly said that he did not come to call the righteous (Matt 9:9-13). Although he himself was known as a righteous man, in eating with sinners Jesus was breaking down the barriers by which many righteous Jews maintained an inner group strength. This group strength was necessary to withstand external pressures to compromise religious scruples in the interests of achieving an improved economy and a more cosmopolitan society.

Jesus’ table fellowship with tax collectors and sinners may not have been in the first instance the nucleus of a new community. Nevertheless, it was based upon the recognition that God is the Father of all. Indeed, if a man has a hundred sheep and one goes astray, will he not leave the ninety-nine to search for the one that is lost? And having found it, will he not put it on his shoulder and bring it back rejoicing and call to his friends, "Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep which was lost" (Luke 15:3-6; cf. Matt 18:10-14)? How much more will our heavenly Father rejoice over the return of a lost son (Luke 15:11-24)? Therefore, how appropriate that we celebrate the repentance of those lost sons of Abraham who, once dead in trespasses, are now alive through God’s merciful judgment (Luke 15:25-32; 19:1,10).

By such forceful imagery as this, Jesus defended his practice of table fellowship with tax collectors and sinners. Parables like the one about the lost son and his elder brother (Luke 15:11-32) or the laborers in the vineyard (Matt 20:1-16) were first created in response to this crisis in Jesus’ ministry. They were used to defend the gospel of God’s unmerited and unconditional acceptance of the repentant sinner. Similarly, the parable about the great banquet (Matt 22:1-10; Luke 14:16-24) served to remind the righteous that they had no ground for complaint over the eschatological acceptance of sinners since they themselves had turned their backs on the kingdom (cf. Matt 23:13).

These parables in themselves were probably not intended to alienate the scribes and Pharisees, but to forestall their inquisitorial activity among the disciples. Nor is a parable like that of the Pharisee and the tax collector in the Temple (Luke 18:9-14) designed to hurt rather than to heal. The Pharisee in the parable does not represent all Pharisees and certainly not the ideal Pharisee. But to make his point that goodness can become demonic and destructive when it leads good men to isolate themselves from others, Jesus chose a man from one of the most virtuous circles of Jewish society. If such a man, no matter how moral, places his trust in his own righteousness and despises others, he goes from the house of God to his own house in a wrong relationship to God. However, a sinner who places his or her trust in the mercy of God goes home in a right relationship to God.

The love God has for the sinner shows no lack of love for the righteous. "All that is mine is yours," says the father to his elder son, but "it was fitting to make merry and be glad, for this your brother was dead, and is alive; he was lost, and is found" (Luke 15:31-32). This noble and heartfelt sentiment did not go completely unheeded, but lodged itself within the collective unconscious of the Pharisaic community, there to work its way inexorably against every tendency toward hard-heartedness, within the ranks of the righteous. Subsequently, the elder brother, a strict Pharisee, while persecuting the church, was won over by the powerful reality of God’s love. He became a staunch defender of what some regarded as an illicit table fellowship, but which he himself saw being at the heart of the gospel for which Jesus had died (Gal 2:11-21).

In spite of the cogency of Jesus’ defense of the gospel of God’s mercy toward repentant sinners, opposition from the religious establishment stiffened. In this period of opposition from religious authorities responsible for upholding the law in the towns and cities outside Jerusalem, Jesus formulated his woes against the "scribes and Pharisees." These utterances are uncompromising. By this time the issue had become clear; Israel was at the crossroads. The people could either follow those whom Jesus characterized as "blind guides," who hypocritically held in their hands the keys of the kingdom but who neither entered themselves nor allowed others to enter (Matt 23:13), or they could follow Jesus. Irony turned to bitter sarcasm in the judgment: "Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you build the tombs of prophets and adorn the monuments of the righteous, say, ‘If we had lived in the days of our fathers we would not have taken part with them in shedding the blood of the prophets’" (Matt 23:29-30). You hypocrites, Jesus said, because in so speaking you condemn yourselves as among those who murder prophets. For as you dissociate yourselves from those who have done evil and vainly imagine that had you been in their place you would not have committed the sins they committed, you show yourselves to be the very kind of self-righteous persons who will condone the killing of those God sends us as his messengers.

Uncompromising words like these sealed the fate of Jesus. By their use he unmasked what many in positions of privilege and power could not bear to have unmasked. Jesus penetrated the facade of goodness behind which persons hid their lust for power. He represented them to be like "whitewashed tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but within . . . are full of dead men’s bones" (Matt 23:27).

After invective like this, the legal authorities were beside themselves to find some charge on which to get rid of Jesus. The compliance of high priestly circles and the rest of the Jerusalem oligarchy was assured once Jesus made it clear that he called for changes not only in men’s hearts, but in the institutions of Zion—specifically within the central institution, the Temple itself (Matt 21:12-13).

With the Pharisees, the high priests, and the elders of the people in concert, the Roman authorities, had they insisted on due process, would have risked a tear in the delicately woven fabric of political collaboration. This collaboration enabled Rome to maintain viable control over a key sector in the defensive perimeter of its frontier with the Parthians, who were an ever-present threat to the stability of the eastern provinces. Ostensibly, in the interest of maintaining Jewish law and Roman order, Jesus was executed. This was done in spite of the fact that Jesus programmatically insisted that he came "not to destroy the law, but to fulfill it" (Matt 5:17). Moreover, Jesus taught his disciples that unless their righteousness exceeded that of the scribes and Pharisees, they would never enter the Kingdom of Heaven (Matt 5:20). Yet it can hardly be doubted that in fulfilling the "law and the prophets," Jesus ran afoul of the scribes and Pharisees. This occurred not only when he ate with tax collectors and sinners, but also in regard to other matters as, for example, the Sabbath observance (Matt 12:1-8; Luke 14:5). Jesus certainly challenged Jewish legal authority and, as for Roman order, it was to be replaced by the Kingdom of Heaven. So the die had been cast well in advance. While Jesus died a righteous man by the standards of the Kingdom of Heaven, he did not go to the cross innocent of breaking the law as it was represented by the mores of the local populace. Nor was he innocent of disturbing the peace as it was preserved in and through imperial order. He was crucified in the end by the Romans as a political criminal. We can imagine the mixed feelings of anguish and relief on the part of responsible Jewish authorities. Yet we are not in a position to know with any degree of certainty the motives of the principals who were involved in his death.

This outline of essential developments between the death of John and the death of Jesus illustrates how tradition originating with Jesus, which is preserved in the Gospels, can be set within the context of his life situation. The tradition can be seen to come alive against the historical background of the Jews in Palestine when Herod Agrippa was Tetrarch of Galilee and Perea, when John the Baptist had been preaching a baptism of repentance in the Jordan valley, and when Pontius Pilate was procurator of Judea.

In retrospect, on the basis of what can be supported by historical inquiry, is it possible to say something about the character of Jesus and about his public ministry? Jesus’ character is the mark he left or "engraved" upon his disciples, including the tax collectors and sinners he admitted into the intimacy of his table fellowship. This fellowship heard Jesus gladly and remembered his words and actions. Members of this fellowship took responsibility for formulating and handing on to the earliest churches such authentic sayings of Jesus as in fact have been preserved in the Gospels.

To the degree that the understanding of life expressed in these authentic sayings was actually represented by Jesus in his own life situation, that is, through his words and actions—to this degree it is possible to speak about the character of Jesus. Confining the inquiry to that nucleus of sayings which beyond a reasonable doubt can be accepted as authentic sayings of Jesus, it is possible to conclude that in rebuking self-righteousness and chiding those who resented God’s mercy toward sinners, Jesus disclosed something about the kind of person he was. He can be seen as a public figure in relationship to other figures. His contemporaries could understand his human concern for others, and many were moved by it. They saw not only his friendship for tax collectors and sinners, but more. They saw a concern for community.

Pretentiousness and self-righteousness on the part of individuals or groups is one of the most serious corrupting influences affecting the health and integrity of communal existence. Individual and collective self-righteousness on the part of authorities, when unchallenged is like a hard cement by which outmoded and unjust ecclesiastical, economic, political, and social structures are kept defensible in the face of justified opposition from advocates of social or religious reforms. Privileged individuals or castes are secure only so long as it is possible for society to perceive their positions of privilege as clothed with the garments of righteousness. To pull aside these garments and to expose hypocrisy and abuse is a revolutionary act of a most radical nature.

Jesus exposed hypocrisy and abuse. For him to rebuke the prideful self-righteousness of religious authorities was to strike at an important source of contra-redemptive influence in his own life situation and to encourage the continuation of the individual and covenantal renewal that was taking place in response to his preaching. Those whom Jesus had helped to perceive themselves as sinners dependent upon the unmerited grace of God were glad to know that he not only received sinners, but defended this action when it was criticized. And insofar as it was possible, they were moved to go and do likewise.

There was in this compassionate but disconcerting stance of Jesus a dynamic source of redemptive power which worked against the attempt of the established world of Jewish piety to structure human existence on the exclusive ground of the mosaic covenant. Such a source of power provided the basis for a distinctive style of life wherein Jesus and his disciples worked joyfully for a reconciling mode of human existence open to God’s grace and to a future conditioned by (1) sin and the expectation of God’s imminent destruction of sinners; (2) the unbounded sovereign love of God; and (3) a faith which led them to submit to the judgment of God and to trust themselves utterly to the mercy that was intrinsic to and inherent in God’s love. This is a style of life grounded in God’s sovereign love which results in a new creation (Paul), and being born again (John). Jesus likened this new style of life to "becoming like a child."

This personal structuring and restructuring of their historical existence, this shaping of the realities of their human environment, and the compassion and joy associated with this creative stance sustained and gave theological depth and direction to their fellow-ship. Clearly there is more to Jesus than this. But this understanding of his public career and character carries the investigator to the very heart of what can be shown as both essential and enduring in Jesus.

¹ B. F. Meyer, The Aims of Jesus (London: SCM Press, 1979).

² G. Bornkamm, Jesus von Nazareth (Urban-Bücher 19; Stutt-gart: Kohl-hammer, 1956; 11th ed., 1977); ET: Jesus of Nazareth (New York: Harper & Row, 1960; repr. Minneapolis: Fortress, 1995); C. H. Dodd, The Parables of the King-dom (London: Nisbet, 1935; 2nd ed., New York: Scribner's, 1961); J. Jeremias, Die Gleichnisse Jesu (Zürich: Zwingli, 1947; 10th ed., Göt-tingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1984); ET: The Parables of Jesus (London: SCM Press, 1963; 3rd ed., New York: Scribner's, 1972).