A New Perspective on Jesus: What the Quest for the Historical Jesus Missed

Acadia Studies in Bible and Theology

by James D.G. Dunn, Craig Evans (Series Editor), Lee McDonald (Series Editor)

In this compelling study, renowned author James D. G. Dunn provides a critique of the quest for the historical Jesus. Dunn claims that the quest has been misguided from the start in its attempt to separate the historical Jesus from the Christ of faith.

Dunn argues that Jesus scholars have consistently failed to recognize how the early disciples' pre-Easter faith and a predominantly oral culture shaped the way the stories about Jesus were told and passed on. Dunn also examines the implications of oral transmission for our understanding of Synoptic relationships.

A New Perspective on Jesus proposes a change in direction for Jesus scholarship. It will be of interest to pastors, church leaders, students, and thoughtful laypersons wanting a fresh perspective on Jesus studies.

Genres: Theology, Biblical Studies, Christianity, Religion, New Testament

136 pages, Paperback

First published March 1, 2005

About the author

James D. G. ("Jimmy") Dunn (born 1939) was for many years the Lightfoot Professor of Divinity in the Department of Theology at the University of Durham. Since his retirement he has been made Emeritus Lightfoot Professor. He is a leading British New Testament scholar, broadly in the Protestant tradition. Dunn is especially associated with the New Perspective on Paul, along with N. T. (Tom) Wright and E. P. Sanders. He is credited with coining this phrase during his 1982 Manson Memorial Lecture.

Dunn has an MA and BD from the University of Glasgow and a PhD and DD from the University of Cambridge. For 2002, Dunn was the President of the Studiorum Novi Testamenti Societas, the leading international body for New Testament study. Only three other British scholars had been made President in the preceding 25 years.

In 2005 a festschrift was published dedicated to Dunn, comprising articles by 27 New Testament scholars, examining early Christian communities and their beliefs about the Holy Spirit. (edited by Graham N. Stanton, Bruce W. Longenecker & Stephen Barton (2004). The Holy Spirit and Christian origins: essays in honor of James D. G. Dunn. Grand Rapids, MI: W.B. Eerdmans Pub. Co. ISBN 0-8028-2822-1.)

Dunn has taken up E. P. Sanders' project of redefining Palestinian Judaism in order to correct the Christian view of Judaism as a religion of works-righteousness. One of the most important differences to Sanders is that Dunn perceives a fundamental coherence and consistency to Paul's thought. He furthermore criticizes Sanders' understanding of the term "justification", arguing that Sanders' understanding suffers from an "individualizing exegesis".

Reviews

[Ben De Bono · Rating 5 out of 5]

For anyone who's ever wondered about the historical Jesus, or followed scholarly attempts (such as the infamous Jesus Seminar) to find him, A New Perspective on Jesus is a must read.



James Dunn argues that previous quests to uncover the historical Jesus have largely failed for three main reasons. First, they've attempted to draw a distinction between the Jesus of history and the Jesus of faith. The presumption is that religious faith in Jesus created a picture of him different than who he was as a man. Not so, argues Dunn. The historical Jesus is inseparable from the Jesus of faith. Jesus as a historical figure was created as a direct result of the impact he had on his earliest followers: his disciples. We have no accounts of Jesus outside of those of his followers. Therefore, the historical Jesus is a product of faith, not something that can be separated from it.



Second, attempts to find the historical Jesus have failed to fully understand and take into account oral tradition. Dunn argues that because we are so dependent on a literary paradigm, it's nearly impossible for us to imagine anything else. But the world Jesus lived in wasn't a literary world. Most of Jesus' followers would have been illiterate, and it's possible Jesus himself was too. Attempts to reconstruct the sources of the Gospel have been framed almost exclusively in literary terms. Dunn doesn't deny the existence of literary sources (i.e. the Q document) but he argues against reconstructing everything in the Gospels in terms of literature. For us to understand how the Gospels came into being we must understand oral tradition and the many ways it differs from literary tradition. If we don't fully engage in that paradigm shift, we'll never have a hope of understanding the historical Jesus.



Finally, Dunn argues that attempts to uncover the historical Jesus have gotten stuck looking for someone who is distinct from his surroundings. Most scholars have spent their time searching for a non-Jewish Jesus. For as dominant as that approach has been, it's also an enormous mistake. There were certainly ways where Jesus differed from the Judaism of his time, but he also was part of the culture he lived in. It's wrong to draw too sharp a distinction between Christianity and Judaism (as Dunn, N.T. Wright and others in the New Perspective on Paul have long argued). Rather, if we're to understand both Jesus and Christianity we must also understand Second Temple Judaism.



A New Perspective on Jesus is short but fantastic. I've never read anything by James Dunn before. I'm looking forward to checking out more of his stuff and exploring his arguments more in depth. 4.5 stars `

[Sanjuro · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a short, readable, and well argued book tracing some of the failures of the recent "quests for the historical Jesus." Dunn brings a strong combination of brevity and thoroughness, offering correctives to HJ research by arguing for an often neglected "oral tradition" aspect to Jesus research.

Dunn's insights into both the role of faith in the earliest remembrances of the earliest of Jesus' followers, as well as his insights into "the characteristic Jesus," are also argued by writers such as Dale Allison, and are, to my mind, entirely convincing.

The book is too brief to be decisive, but serves as a great introduction to issues that will likely dominate further discussions on HJ research.

[Theron · Rating 4 out of 5]

Much better paradigm for a historical reconstruction of Jesus than the previous questers.

[Steven H · Rating 5 out of 5]

A SERIES OF LECTURES SUMMARIZING HIS "JESUS REMEMBERED"

James D. G. Dunn (born 1939) is a British New Testament scholar who was Professor of Theology at the University of Durham prior to his retirement; he is also a minister of the Church of Scotland. He has written many other books, such as 'Jesus Remembered: Christianity in the Making, Volume 1,' 'The Evidence for Jesus,' 'Jesus and the Spirit,' etc.

He wrote in the Preface to this 2005 book, "I soon realized that what I regarded as the key methodological contributions made by 'Jesus Remembered' might become lost in the scale on which I found it necessary to operate in the book. Fortunately, the invitation to deliver the Hayward Lectures [in 2003] ... gave me the opportunity to spell out these insights more fully and to carry them further forward in the light of my continuing research." (Pg. 8)

He suggests, "we may say that the 'Gospel of Thomas' is like the Gospel of John: they both attest the influence of later faith, in the one case the gnostic faith, in the other Christian faith; that is, both exemplify in their different ways the Christ of faith in protest against which the quest of the historical Jesus was first undertaken." (Pg. 32)

He argues, "The brutal fact is that we simply cannot escape from a presumption of orality for the first stage of the transmission of the Jesus tradition. So if we are to 'get back to Jesus of Nazareth' in any confident degree, we have no choice other than to use well-informed historical imagination to attempt to enter into what was happening to the Jesus tradition during that initial stage. I believe these identified characteristics of oral tradition help us to do just that." (Pg. 53)

He asserts, "Where a particular saying or episode reflects such a characteristic motif, scholarship should be asking not 'Why should it be attributed to Jesus?' but 'Why should it NOT be attributed to Jesus?' ... I therefore conclude... the Jesus tradition was a way of remembering Jesus, showing how Jesus was remembered... My threefold thesis can be summed up simply. First, Jesus made an impact on those who became his first disciples, well before his death and resurrection. That impact was expressed in the first formulations of the Jesus tradition... Second, the mode of oral performance and oral transmission of these formulations means that the force of that original impact continued to be expressed through them... And third, the characteristic features running through the Jesus tradition give us a clear indication of the impression that Jesus made on his disciples during his mission." (Pg. 77)

This is an excellent summation of his points, for people who don't have the time or inclination to work their way through 'Jesus Remembered.'

[Joe · Rating 4 out of 5]

There has always been an attempt to "discover the historical Jesus." The only written source we have is the Gospels, particularly the Synoptic Gospels, that most people focus attention on. It is around these three books that the controversy rages. It involves the fact these were written many years after the crucifixion of Jesus. How accurate are they? Because they were written so long after,do they have a "spin"? What role does faith have in these documents? What role do other documents like "Q" play? Was there no tradition prior to the writing of the Gospels? What about the role of "oral history" ? Dunn brings to the discussion table that we should focus on this oral tradition. At a minimum, 90% of the population of Palestine was illiterate at the time of Jesus and that number may be closer to 97%. Dunn says that prior to Easter and the resurrection,there was an EXTENSIVE oral tradition that had existed and that it is our lack of understanding of how this works that has caused historians to dismiss this important source as irrelevant. I found the discussion most interesting.

[Jake Owen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting take on the historical Jesus conversation. He mixes early Christian traditions with the disciples' beliefs before Easter, challenging some older views. It's a great read for anyone interested in how history and faith blend together especially in the context of the world of Jesus.

[Phil Whittall · Rating 4 out of 5]

The more I read of James Dunn's scholarship the more helpful I'm finding it and this look at What the quest for the historical Jesus missed is top notch scholarship in largely accessible form.

The book is essentially lectures Dunn delivered as part of his much larger work Jesus Remembered (which I have but haven't quite been brave enough to start. It's 893 pages before the bibliography and index!). Dunn is convinced that the Quest is fundamentally flawed and so gives preachers and apologists good arguments to show why.

His new perspective might come as a bit of a surprise to the ordinary believer in Jesus and make you wonder how academics make a living but in context of the scholarship surrounding the 'historical Jesus' is actually quite profound.

Dunn says (p.12), "...a perspective that takes as a...starting point that Jesus must have made a considerable impact on his disciples..."

Yes, really but it does get better. Here is how Dunn characterizes the quest:

In all this a striking feature is readily apparent: that in the quest for the historical Jesus, faith is a hindrance, faith leads the searcher down the wrong road, faith prevents the searcher from recognizing the real Jesus. Faith is bad, history is good.
It is this that Dunn questions,

"First, we must recognize that the first faith of the disciples is what makes it possible for us to gain any information about or insight into the Jesus of Galilee; and second, we must also recognize the fallacy of thinking that the real Jesus must be a non-faith Jesus, different from the Jesus of the Gospels."

So Dunn makes three main points in critiquing the quest, each of which takes a chapter in this short book (125 pages).

Jesus made an impact on those who became his first disciples, well before his death and resurrection. That impact was then talked about and spread and became part of an oral tradition.

This oral transmission of stories about Jesus was not static as we have it in written form, but performed. Living in quality and effect.

The quest looks for the distinctive Jesus and should rather be looking for the characteristic Jesus that runs through the Jesus tradition both literary and oral.

As Dunn says to conclude (p78),

"There is no credible 'historical Jesus' behind the Gospel portrayal different from the characteristic Jesus of the Synoptic tradition. There is no Galilean Jesus available to us other than the one who left such a strong impression in and through the Jesus tradition. But this assuredly is the historical Jesus that the Christian wants to encounter. And should the scholar and historian be content with anything less?"

On the whole this is really helpful defence against the continued churning out of books claiming to have discovered the historical Jesus that ends up looking nothing like the Jesus in the Gospels and everything like the way a liberal 21st century scholar would like Jesus to be like.

I think Dunn's emphasis on the oral transmission of the Jesus tradition is likely correct but it raises questions (for which I have no answers) about how that ties in with the inerrancy of scripture, although more easily tied in with the more broad term of the inspiration of scripture.

So if near 900 pages of work on the earliest stories of Jesus sounds a bit much for you then this 125 page gem should do the trick very nicely.

[Chris Armer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dunn starts off by arguing that any attempt to separate the "historical Jesus" from the traditions given in the Gospels is futile. One cannot adequately separate the "historic Jesus" from the Jesus of faith. Dunn primarily deals with the Synoptic tradition. John is seen as reflecting a later tradition in the Church.
Dunn then spends the rest of the book discussing three theses.
1. The tradition of Jesus began BEFORE the resurrection. The Jesus portrayed in the Gospels is not just a post-resurrection creation.
2. The original tradition of Jesus was passed down orally in an oral culture. The traditions reflected various communities.
3. The traditions attest to the impact Jesus made upon his disciples.

[Jim · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book suggests that the use of literary criticism has misled biblical scholars. J. Dunn challenges us to think first in an oral context. He uses Ken Bailey to overturn hundreds of years of misleading scholarship so that we see the whole bible functioning in world where the word was heard. It is encouraging of high view of scripture but takes seriously further scholarly study that is more sensitive to Near Eastern culture. I found it helpful in sermon preparation and in talking with people in a cynical time.

[Paul Patterson · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this book twice and am enthused about its methodological opportunities but still am not prepared to enumerate them until I do some further study on Oral Tradition. I do anticipate if the oral character of the Jesus tradition were taken seriously our mental preferences for understanding the gospel and it's interpretation would go through a sea-change.