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Jesus and Gospel
"Gospel" initially referred to oral proclamation concerning Jesus Christ, but was later used to refer to four written accounts of the life of Jesus. How did this happen? Graham Stanton uses new evidence and fresh perspectives to tackle this controversial question. He also examines the earliest criticisms of Jesus, and early Christian addiction to the codex (book) format in place of the ubiquitous roll.
252 pages, Hardcover
First published July 8, 2004
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July 4, 2022
Review:
I am not sufficiently convinced by several of Prof. Stanton's proposals (where there are conversative leaning biases at play that discernably outweighs his argumentation- mostly notably in his defense of the Muratorian Fragment as a 2nd century piece contemporary to Irenaeus over against a much more plausible case for dating it to 4th century), but overall this book is so well researched, serious yet accessible, and the author's erudition in the American, British, German, French, and even Italian biblical scholarship of the post generation is truly impressive- almost unparalleled by any of the younger generation of conservative biblical scholars I am aware of, hence a five-star.
Notes and comments:
Ch.2.1-4
It is of critical importance that Jesus, as portrayed in the underlying "Q" tradition of Matthew's and Luke's gospels, began his public ministry in the announcement of Isaiah 61's "liberation theology" directed toward himself as the messianic harbinger.
Stanton astutely points out that given the concurrent messianic hope, fermented not least by the Essene literati (Qumran community), the symbolic action makes Jesus to medium and the "content" of the "Gospel" (good news)- "Here am I, the awaited savior." (This is important because elsewhere the "historical" Jesus is seen very reluctant to boast about his messianic identity or refer to himself the content of the good news, and phraseology in the likes of Mk 13:9 and Mk 14:9 are typical examples of a "non-historical" "post-Easter" Jesus' utterance.)
The highly historically probable passage where John the Baptist doubted Jesus' messianic claim and that Jesus' response (Matt 2:2-6, Lk 7:19-23) is once again an evidence that the content of Isaiah 61 (instead of Isaiah 53) was core to the messianic expectation of the time. For this, one DSS fragment of the so-called Messianic Apocalypse discovered in Cave 4 at Qumran and known as 4Q521 provides a significant parallel:
//[for the heav]ens and the earth will listen to his anointed one...he will honour the pious upon the throne of eternal kingdom, freeing prisoners, giving sight to the blind, straightening out the twis[ted]. ...he will heal the badly wounded and will make the dead live, he will proclaim
good news to the poor ...and .. enrich the hungry.//
This ties Jesus Christ, John the Baptist, and the Qumran community all into the Essene thread. (This last point is not Stanton's point but my highlight and main takeaway from reading this chapter.)
Ch.2.5
It is highly probable that the earliest "Greek" followers of Jesus developed high Christology against the Roman imperial cult introduced by Gaius (r. 37-40 CE). Previously during the Roman republic, "maiestas" was the legal term for the supreme status/ dignity of the "state", against which Laesa maiestas (in later French and English law, lèse-majesté) consists lists of trespasses to be punished as "treason".
Since Gaius Octavianus became Caesar "Augustus" (meaning "majestic," "the increaser," or "venerable") in 27 BCE, the veneration for the sovereign state took a gradual shift toward the sovereign ruler himself. But Gaius was in fact the first Roman emperor to emphasize his own divinity. After having his cult statues from Greece shipped to Rome (since such worship models were first created by obsequious Greek citizens, who were already polytheists to begin with), Gaius even tried to one of those erected in Jerusalem temple with the words: ‘Gaius, the new Zeus made manifest’. Though tension arose and his assassination in 41 CE put an end to such provocative acts, the cult of the emperor remained the most important type of worship until Constantine (300 CE), with its with its popular festivals, games, performances, processions and public meals (p.28).
Evidence suggests that King Herod may have not actually ordered the killing of infant Jesus, but the narrative undoubtedly would be read by the first Christian readers against the backdrop of Roman imperial cult, wherein they must face persecutions per "Laesa maiestas" in their insistence that it's Jesus Christ, instead of the reigning "Augustus", who deserves all the imperial-divine honor as the Son of God.
(It is tempting to see the Roman imperial cult as a centralized ideology enforced by a narcissistic strong man, but meticulous studies of temple remains and inscriptions have shown that it did not originate in the Latin-speaking ancient Italia but were first pushed in Greek-speaking provinces. The cult mainly inherited the republic's political theology of sovereignty in worshiping the imperial ruler as an incarnated symbol of the sacred political power of Rome. That is to say, the subject of veneration is the emperor's office and capacity as "Augustus" [Greek: Sebastos], rather than the human person himself as anything supernatural or immortal.)
The main personal takeaway and the mystery this point resolves are that it makes sense why the NT gospel narrative, written as such, could be easily intelligible and communicable among the Greek-speaking pagan community, and it also explains why the "post-Easter Christology" entertained some shift in theological content from what seemed to be Jesus' original messianic admission.
The bottom line: were we to see both Jesus' resurrection and his prediction about his later resurrection to be historical, then there should be no major theological discontinuity in linking a Jesus who understands his role to be a suffered Jewish Messiah to One who would eventually be taken to represent the reign of a true God-king.
Ch.2.6
It is argued that the imperial cult is at stake in Paul's letter to the Galatians (4:8-10), and the "Judaizers" might have employed the concept of "religio licita" when they encouraged Galatian Christian converts to be circumcised as "these were cultural hallmarks of the one group that was recognized as being exempted from worship of the emperors" (p.43).
One should also take seriously the fact that Luke, chronologically distant from Paul but geographically close to Asia Minor, "regularly takes pains to shape the speeches in Acts to fit the local context." (p.45) Luke, when composing the Acts at some probable point in the beginning of 2nd century with available sources, fit Paul's Pisidian Antioch speech content (towards Galatian converts) vis-à-vis recognizably imperial backdrop, not least by employing the cognates of "savior" for Jesus at multiple times (13:23, 26, 47). "Savior" is a term selectively used by Luke but is particularly common in inscriptions referring to the Emperor Claudius (r. 41-54 CE).
I am not sufficiently convinced by several of Prof. Stanton's proposals (where there are conversative leaning biases at play that discernably outweighs his argumentation- mostly notably in his defense of the Muratorian Fragment as a 2nd century piece contemporary to Irenaeus over against a much more plausible case for dating it to 4th century), but overall this book is so well researched, serious yet accessible, and the author's erudition in the American, British, German, French, and even Italian biblical scholarship of the post generation is truly impressive- almost unparalleled by any of the younger generation of conservative biblical scholars I am aware of, hence a five-star.
Notes and comments:
Ch.2.1-4
It is of critical importance that Jesus, as portrayed in the underlying "Q" tradition of Matthew's and Luke's gospels, began his public ministry in the announcement of Isaiah 61's "liberation theology" directed toward himself as the messianic harbinger.
Stanton astutely points out that given the concurrent messianic hope, fermented not least by the Essene literati (Qumran community), the symbolic action makes Jesus to medium and the "content" of the "Gospel" (good news)- "Here am I, the awaited savior." (This is important because elsewhere the "historical" Jesus is seen very reluctant to boast about his messianic identity or refer to himself the content of the good news, and phraseology in the likes of Mk 13:9 and Mk 14:9 are typical examples of a "non-historical" "post-Easter" Jesus' utterance.)
The highly historically probable passage where John the Baptist doubted Jesus' messianic claim and that Jesus' response (Matt 2:2-6, Lk 7:19-23) is once again an evidence that the content of Isaiah 61 (instead of Isaiah 53) was core to the messianic expectation of the time. For this, one DSS fragment of the so-called Messianic Apocalypse discovered in Cave 4 at Qumran and known as 4Q521 provides a significant parallel:
//[for the heav]ens and the earth will listen to his anointed one...he will honour the pious upon the throne of eternal kingdom, freeing prisoners, giving sight to the blind, straightening out the twis[ted]. ...he will heal the badly wounded and will make the dead live, he will proclaim
good news to the poor ...and .. enrich the hungry.//
This ties Jesus Christ, John the Baptist, and the Qumran community all into the Essene thread. (This last point is not Stanton's point but my highlight and main takeaway from reading this chapter.)
Ch.2.5
It is highly probable that the earliest "Greek" followers of Jesus developed high Christology against the Roman imperial cult introduced by Gaius (r. 37-40 CE). Previously during the Roman republic, "maiestas" was the legal term for the supreme status/ dignity of the "state", against which Laesa maiestas (in later French and English law, lèse-majesté) consists lists of trespasses to be punished as "treason".
Since Gaius Octavianus became Caesar "Augustus" (meaning "majestic," "the increaser," or "venerable") in 27 BCE, the veneration for the sovereign state took a gradual shift toward the sovereign ruler himself. But Gaius was in fact the first Roman emperor to emphasize his own divinity. After having his cult statues from Greece shipped to Rome (since such worship models were first created by obsequious Greek citizens, who were already polytheists to begin with), Gaius even tried to one of those erected in Jerusalem temple with the words: ‘Gaius, the new Zeus made manifest’. Though tension arose and his assassination in 41 CE put an end to such provocative acts, the cult of the emperor remained the most important type of worship until Constantine (300 CE), with its with its popular festivals, games, performances, processions and public meals (p.28).
Evidence suggests that King Herod may have not actually ordered the killing of infant Jesus, but the narrative undoubtedly would be read by the first Christian readers against the backdrop of Roman imperial cult, wherein they must face persecutions per "Laesa maiestas" in their insistence that it's Jesus Christ, instead of the reigning "Augustus", who deserves all the imperial-divine honor as the Son of God.
(It is tempting to see the Roman imperial cult as a centralized ideology enforced by a narcissistic strong man, but meticulous studies of temple remains and inscriptions have shown that it did not originate in the Latin-speaking ancient Italia but were first pushed in Greek-speaking provinces. The cult mainly inherited the republic's political theology of sovereignty in worshiping the imperial ruler as an incarnated symbol of the sacred political power of Rome. That is to say, the subject of veneration is the emperor's office and capacity as "Augustus" [Greek: Sebastos], rather than the human person himself as anything supernatural or immortal.)
The main personal takeaway and the mystery this point resolves are that it makes sense why the NT gospel narrative, written as such, could be easily intelligible and communicable among the Greek-speaking pagan community, and it also explains why the "post-Easter Christology" entertained some shift in theological content from what seemed to be Jesus' original messianic admission.
The bottom line: were we to see both Jesus' resurrection and his prediction about his later resurrection to be historical, then there should be no major theological discontinuity in linking a Jesus who understands his role to be a suffered Jewish Messiah to One who would eventually be taken to represent the reign of a true God-king.
Ch.2.6
It is argued that the imperial cult is at stake in Paul's letter to the Galatians (4:8-10), and the "Judaizers" might have employed the concept of "religio licita" when they encouraged Galatian Christian converts to be circumcised as "these were cultural hallmarks of the one group that was recognized as being exempted from worship of the emperors" (p.43).
One should also take seriously the fact that Luke, chronologically distant from Paul but geographically close to Asia Minor, "regularly takes pains to shape the speeches in Acts to fit the local context." (p.45) Luke, when composing the Acts at some probable point in the beginning of 2nd century with available sources, fit Paul's Pisidian Antioch speech content (towards Galatian converts) vis-à-vis recognizably imperial backdrop, not least by employing the cognates of "savior" for Jesus at multiple times (13:23, 26, 47). "Savior" is a term selectively used by Luke but is particularly common in inscriptions referring to the Emperor Claudius (r. 41-54 CE).
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