Jesus of Nazareth: What He Wanted, Who He Was

When I first saw this book, my initial reaction was, "Oh no, not another Jesus book!" The majority of modern books about the historical Jesus are a dungheap of sensational fantasies and vain speculations. A few of them turn out to be diamonds that rise to the top. This is one of the diamonds.The author hits the nail on the head by saying, "Modern Jesus literature shows more of the spirit of the writers who manufacture a Jesus who conforms to their own agenda." Lohfink demonstrates throughout this book that Jesus cannot be understood independently of faith in him and cannot be understood independently of the gospels. The Jesus of the gospels is the real historical Jesus. Lohfink also stresses that Jesus cannot be understood apart from the Old Testament and the traditions of Israel in which he was firmly rooted and fully committed to. Jesus didn't try to abrogate the Law and start a new religion. Jesus saw his ministry as the fulfillment of the Law according to God's will.Lohfink refers to the Kingdom of God as the Reign of God because it was completely centered upon God, unlike any human kingdom.Lohfink demonstates how the christology of the New Testament can be traced to the historical Jesus and was not the result of Hellenization. In other words, the gospels are an accurate reflection of what Jesus believed about himself. This is hard for many modern scholars to accept because the Jesus of the gospels does not fit into a neat little package and doesn't conform to any previously known stereotypes. The portrait of Jesus as a prophet, sage, or political revolutionary does not do justice to the historical Jesus.Unlike the prophets before him, Jesus believed the end time prophesies were being fulfilled in his lifetime and through his ministry. Jesus acted and spoke on his own authority as if God were acting and speaking directly through him. To Jesus, the Reign of God was not an abstract future event but a reality which was in the process of arriving. Jesus didn't just predict it, he acted upon it and made it happen according to the will of God. Jesus compared himself to a thief breaking into a world dominated by Satan. His exorcisms and miracles were visible signs of the Reign of God's arrival. He appointed and comissioned twelve disciples to actively go throughout Israel and gather the lost sheep into repentace in the last days. A network of households was established as their support base which would become the earliest church, a mustard seed which would miraculously dominate the world by divine intervention.Jesus saw himself as the embodiment of Israel and took the role of Isaiah's Suffering Servant upon himself. I would add that Jesus didn't just read the prophets, he read himself into the prophets.The radical teachings of Jesus can only be understood in light of the urgency of the Reign of God breaking into the present world. Only those who fully and unconditionally committed themselves to this event and were willing to risk everything for it, including worldly and family ties, were worthy of partaking of its blessings. This radical commitment is illustrated in the parable of the pearl merchand and the talents. The complacency of the status quo who were comfortable in the world and would delay the Reign of God was an anathema to Jesus as illustrated in the parable of the wedding feast.Lohfink points out that the Reign of God required a radical response of repentance and sacrifice from Israel, especially his followers. Self centered displays of asceticism whereby one attans the status of an enlightened guru would have been considered narcissistic and repugnant to Jesus. The radical separation from the world to prepare for the Reign of God was a corporate, God-centered endeavor which included all of Israel.Lohfink debunks the chasm between Jewish Christianity and Gentile Christianity created by many modern scholars. The earliest gentile converts were probably God-fearers who worshipped in synagogues and understood and embraced the Jewish faith. It is highly unlikely that there were any purely gentile Christian communities when the New Testament was written. Lohfink demonstrates how the New Testament itself is Jewish Christian.. The use of the Old Testament to explain Jesus and his ministry would make no sense and have no meaning to a gentile who had little or no knowledge of the Jewish faith.Lohfink also supports the gospel accounts of Jesus' trial and crucifixion which seems to be such a subject of contention among scholars. The prohibition of the Sanhedrin convening at night is not found in the Bible but in the Mishnah which was edited in the second century C. E. Jesus identifying himself as the Messiah Son of God in the presence of the High Priest and the elders and predicting the Son of Man prophecy being fulfilled in their lifetime would have been more than enough for him to be convicted as a false prophet who was leading Israel astray which was punishable by death. As Lohfink states, "If Jesus did not make himself known to the Sanhedrin as the Messiah, the development of the earliest christology would be beyond understanding."Lohfink demonstrates that Jesus was neither a political revolutionary nor was he a social reformer trying to create a man-made utopia. To Jesus, the reign of God was with Israel through which all nations would be reconciled to God. Jesus didn't imagine this Reign as a philosopher or a political thinker but demonstrated it with his own actions and actively led his followers into it. It was a new world order which was brought about by the will of God and centered on God alone.Throughout this book Lohfink makes it abundantly clear that to understand all we can really know about the historical Jesus, we need not go any further than the gospels in your family Bible. Everything else is pure human speculation.

Gerhard Lohfink’s phenomenal “Jesus of Nazareth: What He Wanted, Who He Was” is described by the author this way: “This book is about Jesus’ public life: What did he do? What did he want? Who was he?” (p. 288). Consistent with his other books, Lohfink examines the life of Jesus from the lens of Jewish history, religion, and culture leading up to and including the first century. He attempts to free Jesus’ ideas and aims from subsequent Western accretions, beginning with the influence of Greek philosophical strains of thought. I find Lohfink’s approach and conclusions to be exhilarating and convincing.An example of Lohfink’s approach is in demonstrating how the earliest Christology of Jesus is fundamentally Jewish. Conventional thinking suggests that the divination of Jesus derived from Greek thinking. Lohfink shows how Christological formulations of Jesus’ identity in the New Testament (e.g., Acts 2:36, Matt 28:18, Rom 1:3-4, John 1:1-18, Phil 2:6-11) are, “despite the Christological novelty, … formulated in Old Testament-Jewish forms of thought” (p. 342). Lohfink illustrates this by pointing out that “when a son was born in Israel the father took him on his knee and spoke this very formula”: “You are my son; today I have begotten you” (Psalm 2:7). So, when this formula is applied to Christ in the New Testament (e.g., Acts 13:33; Heb 1:5, 5:5), “Jesus, who was already the Son of God, was publicly legitimated as God’s Son and installed in his rightful position. This should make it clear that New Testament Christology is Jewish” (p. 343).One line of argument that some orthodox readers may find difficult to accept is Lohfink’s insistence that the miracle stories and the Resurrection narrative need not be looked at as purely supernatural events. Traditionally, these miracle accounts have been viewed as either (1) acts that are beyond the rational, outside the bounds of history and the natural order (i.e., supernatural) or (2) beginning with the Enlightenment, they are fictions that carry symbolic value but are not otherwise real. Lohfink takes a third approach, which is that these events really happened and happened in a way consistent with the natural order, and that they were a cooperation between human agents and God’s intervention in history through those human agents: “every miracle is . . . always bringing to the fore what human and nature are able to do. Natural laws are not thus broken but elevated to a higher level. The miracle exalts nature; it does not bore holes in it” (p. 141).Although I find this approach refreshing, I nonetheless admit to my own difficulties imagining how this explains miracles like the multiplication of the loaves and fishes. Lohfink explicitly rejects the rationalization of such miracles, for instance, in this case, the tired trope that the miracle of the loaves and fishes was merely a bringing out of the generosity of the participants who had brought with them some food (p. 135). Instead, Lohfink suggests that there are some things that are not supernatural per se, but which nonetheless cannot be rationalized away, for example “that . . . in some malignant carcinomas, there can be ‘spontaneous healings’ that cannot be explained…” (p. 143). But in the case of such modern accounts of spontaneous healings it might be better said that they cannot be explained yet (because science doesn’t understand them) rather than that they cannot be explained at all (because presumably science eventually will understand them). What Lohfink seems to be suggesting, then, is that these miracles do involve God’s intentionality and intervention, but that nature accomplishes them within the bounds of nature, bounds that may not be well understood by us. So, how again, then, did the loaves and fishes multiply? And, what’s more, how does the Resurrection occur within the bounds of nature? Here my own imagination fails me.However that may be, “Jesus of Nazareth” is an outstanding work. By focusing on the Jewish context for the story of Jesus, Lohfink helps us understand who Jesus is in a way that is nothing short of profound. (Kudos to Linda M. Maloney for her splendid translation of this book.)

Superb book. Wonderful research and insightful and enlightening treatment of Jesus of Nazareth, Christ of faith. Deserving of many rereads.

Enjoyed immensley

Brilliant book - well written.

Good Read

good came on time