Reading: Luke 15:1-32 (The Parable of the Prodigal Son)
 
Jesus is a riddle. His teachings are a riddle, his purpose is a riddle, his life is a riddle, the stories about Jesus in the gospels are riddles. The Oxford American Dictionary defines riddle as something mysterious and puzzling. A riddle invites misunderstanding. It turns things upside down. A riddle invites interpretation on many levels. A good riddle is never easy to solve: this is why people throughout the two thousand years since Jesus lived have had so many different interpretations of Jesus.

Jesus is a mysterious and puzzling riddle first of all because of the scarcity of the historical evidence about him. Aside from the accounts of Christian followers of Jesus, there are only two historical accounts that survive from the first two centuries of his life. The first comes from the aristocratic historian Josephus, who mentions Jesus in one paragraph of all his writings; the second a paragraph by the aristocratic Roman historian Tacitus. The almost total absence of Jesus in non-Christian writings and histories dramatically illustrates what a minor figure Jesus was during his life and in the first decades after his death. By way of comparison, there is much greater mention of John the Baptist in histories written during the first and second century.

In his book The Historical Figure of Jesus, E.P. Sanders gives a good summary of what contemporary scholars are fairly certain they know about Jesus:
 

Jesus was born in c. 4 BCE, near the time of the death of Herod the Great;
he spent his childhood and early adult years in Nazareth, a Galilean village;
he was baptized by John the Baptist;
he called disciples;
he taught in the towns, villages and countryside of Galilee (apparently not in the cities);
he preached 'the kingdom of God';
about the year 30 he went to Jerusalem for Passover;
he created a disturbance in the Temple area;
he had a final meal with his disciples;
he was arrested and interrogated by Jewish authorities, specifically the high priest;
he was executed on the orders of the Roman prefect, Pontius Pilate.

We may add here a short list of equally secure facts about the aftermath of Jesus' life:
his disciples at first fled;
they saw him (in what sense is not certain) after his death;
as a consequence, they believed that he would return to found the kingdom;
they formed a community to await his return and sought to win others to faith in him as God's Messiah.[1]

I must add one piece of historical information to this very sparse outline of what we know about the historic Jesus: he was Jewish. This important fact about Jesus has been obscured for most of the church's history in an effort to differentiate Jesus' followers from Jews. This effort has been one of the great engines of anti-Semitism. On the contrary, though, the evidence clearly indicates that Jesus was a Jew all his life. His followers were Jewish. He was not trying to start a new religion. He criticized particular aspects of how the Jews were being faithful to Judaism as a Jew, not as an outsider. He did so in a way that was not out of the ordinary for first century Judaism.[2]

Jesus is a mysterious and puzzling riddle also because of the nature of the gospel accounts of his life, ministry, death and afterlife. The four canonical gospels--Matthew, Mark, Luke and John--as well as non-canonical gospels and the Pauline letters are not biographies. Each of these episodic accounts of Jesus most likely contains some historic information, a great deal more significantly revised historic information, and a great deal of information created by the writer to help achieve the writer's purpose. The gospels and Paul's letters are interpretations of Jesus. Glorification of Jesus is more the authors' goal than strict historic reporting. It is also important to realize that the gospels were written at least a generation or two after Jesus lived. Most scholars agree that Mark dates to the 60s, Matthew and Luke to the 70s, 80s or 90s, and John from a little later still. The earliest extent writings are from Paul, who wrote in the 50s. Paul, however, did not know Jesus; his portrayal of Jesus is already second-hand. The gospels were most likely written accounts based on 40 to 70 years of oral transmission. Furthermore, we don't really know who wrote the gospels; the names Mark, Matthew, Luke and John weren't assigned until at least 120 years after Jesus died. Finally, we must remember that Jesus spoke in Aramaic and the gospels were written in Greek; thus, translation and all its inherent problems already occurred before the gospels were written. Most scholars conclude from all of this that we can find but traces of the historic Jesus in the gospels and Pauline letters.

Most importantly, Jesus is a mysterious and puzzling riddle because of who he was, what he taught and the way he taught. Who was Jesus? This is a question that Jesus' followers starting with the Disciples have asked. Was he the Messiah? If he was the Messiah, was he like David, destined to rule and revive Israel, or was he a different sort of Messiah? Was he the Christ? Was he the incarnation of God, both fully human and fully divine? Was he the Son of God? Was he a Son of God? Was he a wise sage? Was he a healer and exorcist? Was he a magician? Was he a prophet? Was he a spirit person, a shaman? Was he the Son of Man? Because there is evidence for each of these identities in the gospel accounts, Christians and scholars can and have argued on behalf of each one. Jesus' true identity is a riddle.

What Jesus taught is also a riddle. Much of his message was unexpected and contrary to the conventional wisdom of his day (and our day for that matter). Contrary to many of today's "family values" advocates and capitalists, Jesus attacked the family and wealth. Listen to this from Mark's Gospel: "Jesus said, 'I tell you this: there is no one who has given up home, brothers or sisters, mother, father or children, or land, for my sake and for the Gospel, who will not receive in this age a hundred times as much...And in the age to come, eternal life. but many who are first will be last and the last first.'"[3]

 He saw the reality of the world as upside down from how most people saw it. His teachings invited listeners to begin solving the riddle and gaining salvation by recognizing the upside down reality of the world.

The way Jesus taught also added to the riddle. Rather than explicitly stating his teachings, Jesus taught primarily through short sayings and parables. These forms of teaching are particularly enigmatic and evocative. They engage both the intellect and the imagination. They are also puzzling and mysterious. Often his hearers--beginning with the disciples--fail to understand Jesus' point. Like the parable of the Prodigal Son, his teachings often end with an unexpected conclusion--a conclusion opposite from what the listener would expect. As a result, this parable and others invite the listener to see things differently, to look at the world upside down. The parable of the Prodigal Son invites the listener to let go of the image of God as Judge--a dominant image then and now--and embrace instead an image of God as gracious, loving and forgiving. In another parable, Jesus says that Kingdom of God is like a mustard seed, "which, when sown upon the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth; yet when it is sown it grows up and becomes the greatest of all the shrubs, and puts forth large branches, so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade."[4]

 The kingdom of God like a tiny mustard seed? As the Jesus historian John Dominic Crossan points out, this is "a startling metaphor." Mustard plants during Jesus' time were generally despised, especially by the rural people to whom Jesus mostly preached: mustard plants often grew out of control, taking over cultivated areas and attracting birds, the enemy of farmers.[5]

 So the Kingdom of God is like an aggressive weed that invites the birds that kill our crops. Turns things upside down, doesn't it?

The riddle of Jesus is compounded by the amazing fact that in spite of being a minor, largely unknown figure during his lifetime, he has made such an enormous impact on human history. As Crossan points out, it is remarkable that a lower class, possibly illiterate nobody from an obscure part of Palestine had such an impact. Crossan notes that at about the same as Jesus followers identified Jesus as divine, many in the Roman empire identified the recently deceased Emperor Octavius as a divine figure. Given the great fame of Octavious and the propaganda about his greatness, it is no surprise he was deified. But a carpenter's son little noted during his life? It is truly amazing. Furthermore, it is incredible that Jesus' impact came from only a year or two of active ministry. There is very little in the gospels about Jesus prior to his baptism by John the Baptism and the launch of his career, and what there is most likely is not true historically. Mark, Matthew and Luke suggest that Jesus' active career lasted a year or less; John suggests three years. Contrast with the Buddha, Moses and Mohammed, all of whom were religious teachers and leaders for from twenty to fifty years.

Since the Enlightenment, the riddle of Jesus has invited many historians to attempt the historic reconstruction of his life. With so little solid evidence, historians have to rely mostly on painstaking and often imaginative detective work to reconstruct the history of Jesus. One example of how this works is the story of Jesus' birth. This, too, is a mysterious and confusing riddle. How was he born? Where was he born? To whom was he born? Mark and John make no mention whatsoever of his birth. Luke's birth account reveals Jesus as the fulfillment of Hebrew Bible prophecies about the coming Messiah. Matthew's account reveals Jesus as a second, greater Moses. Luke's and Matthew's accounts contradict each other. Most historians believe that neither account is historically accurate. Both accounts are suspicious because they go to such great pains to fulfill prophecies: it seems likely that the point of the stories is to fulfill prophecy. An example is Luke's placing the birth in Bethlehem, which fulfills the prophecy that the Messiah--like King David before--will be born in Bethlehem. Crossan points out there are historical problems to this story, beginning with the fact there was no world-wide census at that time. There was a census in Judea, but that occurred ten years after the Judaen rule Herod the Great died. Luke's birth account begins with "in the days of Herod, King of Judea." Finally, Crossan points out that when a census did happen, people registered where they lived--just as we pay our taxes today where we live, not where we born. To have everyone register where they were born would have been a bureaucratic nightmare. Crossan concludes: "The journey to and from Nazareth for census and tax registration is a pure fiction, a creation of Luke's own imagination, providing a way of getting Jesus' parents to Bethlehem for his birth."[6]

 Most historians agree with Crossan's conclusion.

The role of John the Baptist in Jesus' life is another good example of the detective work used by historians. John the Baptist was a well-known ascetic who preached that the end of the world as we know it was near. In the face of this impending calamity, he called people to repentance. When the political authorities perceived his preaching as too threatening, John was arrested and executed. Most historians believe that Jesus was baptized by John. Here's the logic behind this belief: they argue that John's baptism was somewhat of an embarrassment to the followers of Jesus because it makes Jesus look like a disciple of John. Indeed, many of the gospel accounts of John go to great lengths to make him seem less important than Jesus. Historians argue that the gospel writers would have found it much more convenient to leave John and Jesus' baptism out entirely. They had to include it in the story because Jesus' followers had the knowledge through the oral history that the baptism had taken place.

The problem and the blessing of historians' efforts to reconstruct the history of Jesus is that their reconstructions are based not only on the little bit of historical evidence they can muster, but also on their own personal hopes and theologies. Post-modernism suggests that the conclusions of all historians (as well as scientists) reflect their personal beliefs and ways of seeing the world in their work. This is especially true when historians (or scientists) have little hard evidence to work with.

A wonderful example of this is the Jesus Seminar. The Jesus Seminar is a well-known group of a couple hundred New Testament scholars who have met periodically since 1985. They discuss at great length individual purported sayings and actions of Jesus as reported not only in the four Gospels of the New Testament, but in other non-canonical gospels and the Pauline letters. Then they vote on whether they think the individual saying or action is historically impossible, unlikely, possible, or probable. Through this process, the Jesus Seminar has come up with an image of Jesus as a radical egalitarian who had no pretensions to be anything more than human. While I am greatly attracted to this image of Jesus and recognize there is some historical evidence to support it, I can't help but wonder if this egalitarian Jesus is to a great extent a reflection of the hopes and theologies of the generally liberal Jesus Seminar participants. Unfortunately, the Jesus Seminar is not always up front about acknowledging the role of their hopes and theologies in their reconstruction of the historical Jesus.

There's a great example of this from John Dominic Crossan, perhaps the best-known scholar in the Jesus Seminar. Like me and many other liberal Christians, Crossan struggles with how to make sense of the many gospel reports of Jesus' healings and exorcisms. Crossan reconstructs the history by asserting that those Jesus healed had both a physical disease--such as psoriasis or blindness--and a social illness, which he defines as "the personal and social stigma of uncleanness, isolation and rejection" resulting from having such diseases in that particular society. Crossan presumes that Jesus couldn't make the physical disease go away, but could heal the social illness of uncleanness, isolation and rejection by touching and accepting the diseased person.

Because I am a rationalist at heart, I find this interpretation of Jesus' healing miracles to be tremendously attractive. The problem is that I don't think the historical evidence supports it. Jesus was only one of several noted healers and exorcists of his time and place. There are no reports that these healers did anything other than actual physical healings. It is hard to imagine crowds of people turning up to see Jesus do a social healing while other healers were reported to do physical healings. Yet, it seems clear that Jesus' fame and prestige spread more because of his healing than anything else. I think people must have at least had the perception that he was performing physical healings.

The riddle of Jesus invites more than just historical reconstruction. The riddle also invites theological and mythical development (which I shall focus on next week). And it invites our imagination. I am convinced that to answer the riddle of Jesus I must pay attention to the historical Jesus, the mythological Jesus, and my own imagination. Only then can the riddle of Jesus become a transformative force in my life.

Copyright 1997 by Roger Bertschausen. All rights reserved.

Complete bibliography will be included in the final sermon of the series. 

[1] E. P. Saunders, The Historical Figure of Jesus, pp. 10-11.
[2]Ibid.; and Marcus Borg, Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time.
[3]Mark 10:29-31. (See also Matthew 19:29-30.)
[4]Mark 4:30-32.
[5]John Dominic Crossan, Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography, p. 65.
[6]Crossan, p. 20; Lk. 1:5.