William Arnal has done a Schweitzer of sorts for the new millenium. In 1906 Schweitzer indicted first-quest scholars for making Jesus over in their self-images. Now, ninety-nine years later, Arnal is indicting third-quest scholars for making Jesus into a symbol of contemporary discourse. "Scholarship uses the figure of Jesus as a screen or symbol on which to project contemporary cultural debates," and the acrimony connected to the issue of Jesus' Jewishness masks hidden agendas.
Arnal acknowledges agendas on both sides of the field -- from those championing a "Jewish Jesus" (Sanders, Fredriksen, Vermes, Allison, Meier, Wright) and those promoting a more "non-Jewish Jesus" (Funk, Crossan, Patterson, Horsley, Mack, Vaage). But the weight of accusation falls on the former group. Though my own sympathies lie with this group, Arnal isn't being unfair, just exposing agendas which have been less transparent than usual. The latter group have clear agendas which repeat the mistakes of the past, rewriting Jesus in order to validate liberal Christianity -- or dispense with the pesky religion once and for all. This is old news. The agendas of the former group are more difficult to get a handle on.
But Arnal nails down these agendas with enviable acumen. Those aggressive about Jesus' Jewishness may be driven by:
(1) -- the agenda to save one's scholarly soul from the legacy of German Lutherans. Sanders, Fredriksen, Vermes, etc. have paved the way to a new and distinctive Anglo-American scholarship, free of Bultmannian influence.
(2) -- the intent to save one's political soul from any taint of the Holocaust. The Jewish Jesus approaches a stereotype of modern Jews, thereby reclaiming (or insulating) Christianity from complicity in the Shoah.
(3) -- the need to keep one's religious sensibilities intact. A Jewish Jesus, ironically, helps maintain a distinctive Christian identity and can even reinforce supersessionism (in cases like Wright and Witherington).
(4) -- the goal to preserve one's cultural identity in the face of postmodernism. A Jesus who believed in Torah, the temple, and purity is a formidable weapon against the erosion of social identities, in effect insisting upon cultural stability.
However important these agendas are in themselves, the author (rightly) maintains that Jesus, as an historical figure, should have nothing to do with them.
Arnal doesn't particularly like the "Jewish Jesus", which perhaps makes it easy for him to spot the agendas associated with it. I'm the opposite, and see through the likes of Crossan and Mack right away. So we learn from each other; no one is agenda-free. Reconstructions of Jesus need to be defended for the right reasons, in either case.
This is a nifty book that, while containing objectionable inferences along the way, makes the reader ask the right questions for the right reasons, just as Schweitzer's classic did a century ago. But is Arnal right to conclude that the quest for the historical Jesus should again be abandoned? Of course not. We need the historical Jesus for history's sake. But he's right that Jesus isn't needed to justify covert agendas and make us feel secure about ourselves.
"Jesus" scholars get trotted out in front of the cameras because they're well known or attractive. But the old suspects are tired and their views are well known. This book is different. Not since Whose Historical Jesus?, which Arnal co-edited, has a book on Jesus been as fresh, as critically-engaged, and as informative. Read it if you want scholarship by one of the leading scholars of Christian origins today.
