Search results for ""Author Alexander J.M. Wedderburn""

Much has been written about the life of Jesus in works that often claim to be historical and to employ historical methods. Yet only sometimes are the methods and the presuppositions involved made explicit. However, it has also been claimed more recently that a decisive change in our view of the nature of historical knowledge and methods has taken place, in that the 'modern' has given way to the 'postmodern'. After a survey of a number of books on Jesus that have raised the question of how his life should be studied historically, Alexander J. M. Wedderburn starts by looking at such claims, asking how new and how valid the insights involved in what claims to be a new historiographical epistemology in fact are, before turning to look at a number of problems raised by recent studies of the life of Jesus that are relevant for the work of the historian: the nature of the sources available to us and how to use them and the criteria and principles to employ; the role played by the early Christian communities' memories of Jesus and the extent to which this enhances their trustworthiness or gives reason for caution; the extent to which the traditions about Jesus were transmitted orally and the implications of this for the reliability of these traditions; and, finally, the questions how far we can investigate how Jesus understood his work and to what conclusions a historical study of this could lead us as well as the implications of this for christology.

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Taking up a number of themes and questions touched on in earlier works, the author discusses critically some attempts to interpret the death of Jesus and the assumption that these make about the nature of God and of Jesus. For Jesus himself seems to have left his followers no clear guidance on how to understand his fate, in all probability not even at his last meal with them. There is, moreover, a seeming tension in the passion story between his self-surrender in Gethsemane and the reproachful cry on Golgatha, perhaps due to contrary views of God's will and his own about God's intention. Confronted with this puzzling inheritance, early Christians adopted a variety of different images in an attempt to explain what had happened, and its place in the divine plan; and Paul, despite apparently eschewing any use of human wisdom to interpret the cross, nevertheless draws on some of these lines of interpretation. Yet characteristic for the apostle's theology and soteriology are his corporate Christology and his talk of "righteousness" and "justification". Yet the death of one person involving all humanity presents problems of understanding and ethics. Or, if Jesus is a "model" for humanity is he a perfect one and what example does he in fact give us? And is "peace with God" really all that our justification entails, especially when the cry of desolation on Golgatha shows little sign of such peace? That would mean that the views of both Jesus and Paul on this subject need to be criticized and corrected if they are to be meaningful and of use today.

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