The New Testament and the People of God (Christian Origins and the Question of God Book 1)

by N.T. Wright

This change takes us to the other end of the spectrum, to writers who understand early Christianity as simply a Jewish sect, not too unlike the many other Jewish sects of the period. This new point of view owes something to the discovery of the Scrolls in 1947/8, but more to the change in general attitudes towards Judaism in the period following the Second World War.10 Suddenly Jewish material was good, pure, early, ‘biblical’, and Hellenistic material was corrupt, distorted, later and non-‘biblical’. These evaluative sub-texts precipitated a widespread new reading of the period. Phenomena that had been confidently labelled ‘Hellenistic’ were, quite suddenly, relabelled ‘rabbinic’.

Adolf Schlatter in the pre-war period, W. D. Davies and J. Jeremias in the post-war period, and more recently scholars like M. Hengel and C. Rowland, have made out a strong case for seeing early Christianity as a Jewish messianic sect, going out into the world with the news that the god of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob had now revealed himself savingly for all the world in the Jewish Messiah, Jesus.11 This movement of thought has dominated a good deal of research in the last forty years. Until the recent American work of Koester, Crossan and others it could have been said that the balance had shifted decisively in its favour, and away from the Hellenistic, Cynic and/or Gnostic theories. Now, however, the field looks more open again, and the time is ripe for a reappraisal. Many scholars are now of the opinion that the main problem in describing the origin of Christianity is to account fully both for the thorough Jewishness of the new movement and for the break with Judaism that had come about at least by the middle of the second century.12

But it remains the case that the revolutions which have taken place recently in the study of Judaism, of Jesus and of Paul have not yet completely filtered through to the study of the early Christian movements which stood in a complex relation to Judaism, which told the story of Jesus, and which seem to have had a love-hate relationship with Paul.

Since we know relatively little about events in the non-Jewish world that touch on early Christianity in the relevant period, this failure to situate the task within Jewish history has meant that, as Austin Farrer observed about the dating of New Testament documents, the range of possible hypotheses, like a line of tipsy revellers with linked arms, can lurch this way and that, each piece kept in place by its neighbours, without encountering any solid object.18

The outer chronological limits for this investigation may be set by two events which form an interesting counterpoint. At the beginning there is of course the crucifixion of Jesus, which is probably to be dated in AD 30.19 At the end, about 125 years later, there is the burning of a bishop in the beautiful seaport of Smyrna, in Asia Minor.

There was a great uproar of those who heard that Polycarp had been arrested. Therefore when he was brought forward the Pro-Consul asked him if he were Polycarp, and when he admitted it he tried to persuade him to deny [his Christian faith], saying: ‘Respect your age,’ and so forth, as they are accustomed to say: ‘Swear by the genius of Caesar, repent, say: “Away with the Atheists” ’; but Polycarp, with a stern countenance looked on all the crowd of lawless heathen in the arena, and waving his hand at them, he groaned and looked up to heaven and said: ‘Away with the Atheists.’ But when the Pro-Consul pressed him and said: ‘Take the oath and I let you go, revile Christ,’ Polycarp said: ‘For eighty and six years have I been his servant, and he has done me no wrong, and how can I blaspheme my King who saved me?’20

What is more, Polycarp refers, in his most famous phrase, to his eighty-six years of allegiance to Christ. Assuming with most commentators that this is accurate, and that it means he was born into a Christian family and baptized as an infant, this puts the date of his birth, into an already Christian family in Asia Minor, at AD 69/70. We must therefore hypothesize that there was an established, though probably small, Christian church, holding allegiance to the royal figure of Jesus, and denying the pagan gods, in Smyrna within forty years of the crucifixion. This is not particularly controversial. But it provides us with a remarkably solid fixed point. The Gentile mission of the church, seen as the summoning of non-Jews to a risky allegiance to a Jewish-style Messiah, was apparently already established in Asia Minor before the fall of Jerusalem; was recognized by the authorities as a dangerous and subversive superstition by the time Pliny was governor in Bithynia (around 110); and was dealt with as a matter of routine by the middle of the second century.

Third, they were therefore classified as a political society,30 and as such came under a ban on corporate ritual meals. That is, they were seen not just as a religious grouping, but one whose religion made them a subversive presence within the wider Roman society.

Anyone reading Pliny’s narrative with half an ear open for echoes of Josephus may hear at least a faint resonance: They … met … to bind themselves by oath … to abstain from theft, robbery, and adultery … I found nothing but a degenerate sort of cult carried to extravagant lengths. This school agrees in all other respects with the opinions of the Pharisees, except that they have a passion for liberty that is almost unconquerable, since they are convinced that God alone is their leader and master.31 Devoted pursuit of personal holiness, and the extravagant refusal to recognize any other master: these were the hallmarks of the Jewish resistance movement.

The third fixed point, though he has not always been regarded as such, is Ignatius of Antioch.

We next meet the famous, or rather infamous, passage in Tacitus, in which Nero attempts to shift on to the Christians in Rome the blame for the great fire of AD 64: To suppress this rumour [of arson], Nero fabricated scapegoats—and punished with every refinement the notoriously depraved Christians (as they were popularly called). Their originator, Christ, had been executed in Tiberius’ reign by the governor of Judaea, Pontius Pilatus. But in spite of this temporary setback the deadly superstition had broken out afresh, not only in Judaea (where the mischief had started) but even in Rome. All degraded and shameful practices collect and flourish in the capital. First, Nero had self-acknowledged Christians arrested. Then, on their information, large numbers of others were condemned—not so much for incendiarism as for their anti-social tendencies [odio humani generis, because of their hatred of the human race]. Their deaths were made farcical. Dressed in wild animals’ skins, they were torn to pieces by dogs, or crucified, or made into torches to be ignited after dark as substitutes for daylight … Despite their guilt as Christians, and the ruthless punishment it deserved, the victims were pitied. For it was felt that they were being sacrificed to one man’s brutality rather than to the national interest.40

We come finally to the evidence of Suetonius, who was born around 69 and wrote in the time of Hadrian (117–38). Racy and unreliable though he often is, the following extracts are normally regarded as referring to actual events. In his Life of Claudius (25.4) he describes Claudius’ policies towards foreign nationals in Rome. When he comes to the Jews he has this to say: Because the Jews at Rome caused continuous disturbances at the instigation of Chrestus [impulsore Chresto], he expelled them from the City. It has often been pointed out that the difference in pronunciation between Chrestus and Christus would be minimal in this period,48 and there is no good reason to doubt that what we have here is a garbled report of disturbances within the large Jewish community in Rome, brought about by the presence within that community of some who claimed that Jesus of Nazareth was the Messiah.

We now have an initial series of fixed historical points, largely owed to non-Christian report, all involving non-Christian action: 30 Jesus’ crucifixion 49 Claudius’ expulsion of Jews from Rome because of Christian disturbances 49–51 Paul in Corinth; some time later, in Ephesus 62 Killing of James in Jerusalem 64 Nero’s persecution after the fire of Rome 70 Fall of Jerusalem c.90 Domitian’s investigation of Jesus’ relatives c.110–14 Pliny’s persecutions in Bithynia c.110–17 Ignatius’ letters and martyrdom 155/6 Martyrdom of Polycarp These events form a chain stretching across a century in which, time after time, the Roman authorities found the Christians (as they found the Jews) a social and political threat or nuisance, and took action against them. The Christians, meanwhile, do not seem to have taken refuge in the defence that they were merely a private club for the advancement of personal piety. They continued to proclaim their allegiance to a Christ who was a ‘king’ in a sense which precluded allegiance to Caesar, even if his kingdom was not to be conceived on the model of Caesar’s. This strange belief, so Jewish and yet so non-Jewish (since it led the Christians to defend no city, adhere to no Mosaic code, circumcise no male children) was, as we shall see, a central characteristic of the whole movement, and as such a vital key to its character.

This missionary activity was not an addendum to a faith that was basically ‘about’ something else (e.g. a new existential self-awareness). ‘Christianity was never more itself than in the launching of the world mission.’4

Paul writes, or perhaps quotes, passages in which specifically and indeed fiercely monotheistic texts from the Hebrew Bible are used, in explicit confutation of paganism; and there, in the middle of them, is Jesus. In place of Hear, O Israel: The lord our god, the lord is one.13 we have For us there is one god (the father, from whom are all things and we to him) and one lord (Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and we through him).14 The same phenomenon is visible across virtually all early Christianity for which we have evidence.15

Along with mission, sacrament and above all worship there went (what we would call) a strong and clear ethical code.

Among the striking features of early Christian praxis must be reckoned one thing that early Christians did not do. Unlike every other religion known in the world up to that point, the Christians offered no animal sacrifices.

The early Christian mission itself was not merely a key aspect of praxis; it had a high symbolic value, since it only made sense on the premise that Jesus was enthroned as the true Lord of the world, claiming allegiance from all. As such, mission to the whole world seems to have taken the place held, within the Jewish symbolic universe, by the Land. The church itself, in its various local and trans-local manifestations, became not just a convenient collocation of the like-minded, but a powerful symbol.

Instead of a behaviour-code which demarcated a certain race and nation, the early Christians articulated in various ways a behaviour-code appropriate for truly human beings of every nation.

Finally, instead of the Temple, the geographical and theological centre of Judaism, the early Christians spoke of Jesus as the one who had embodied the living presence of the creator god, and of his own spirit as the one who continued to make that god present in the lives and assemblies of the early church.

In this context, too, it is no accident that the Latin name for a creed is precisely symbolum. The early creeds, and the baptismal confessions which partly underlay them, were not little pieces of abstract theologizing to satisfy the curious intellect, but symbols which functioned as such, badges which marked out this community from others in terms of the god in whom they believed.39 From the start, Christian creeds were not so much a matter of ‘faith seeking understanding’ as ‘community seeking definition’—and finding it in that which was believed about the true god.

Christian ‘theology’, then, was born and nurtured in the context of faith, worship, baptism and eucharist, and came to expression through the need to mark out the community which worshipped this god from communities that worshipped others. If everybody agrees about the gods, or about their particular god, there is no need for theology. The nearest we come to it in pre-Christian Judaism is, perhaps, in the anti-pagan polemic of the wisdom writers. But when the question of god is forced into the centre of the agenda, as it was at once in early Christianity, then theology, as an activity associated more with mission than with metaphysics, more with suffering than with speculation, is the inevitable result. The place and status of theology within developing Christianity, not as abstract philosophy or whimsical scholarship, but as part of the inner life of the church, was assured from the first.41

The primeval Christian theology is missiology.

To this list of symbols we must add one more feature. As we saw, from its very early days Christianity had its martyrs.

Where to begin? The most obvious place, in terms of early Christian literature, is the work of Luke.4 Luke’s gospel and Acts together, agreed virtually on all sides to come from the same hand, occupy about two-fifths of the entire New Testament, appreciably more than the whole Pauline corpus.

Luke knows all about Daniel’s prophecies, and makes his own use of them. I think it very probable that the story of the ascension of Jesus in Acts 1 owes a good deal to Daniel 7: Jesus is exalted on a cloud, presumably to the right hand of the Ancient of Days. As a result, he has received the kingdom, the world rulership, which is that for which Israel longed, but which is now seen in a different guise.

The disciples’ question and Jesus’ answer in Acts 1:6–9 effect a transformed reading of prophecy not unlike that of Josephus. First there is the question, reflecting normal Jewish expectations: So when they had come together, they asked him, ‘Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?’ Jesus reaffirms the expectation, but alters the interpretation: He replied, ‘It is not for you to know the times or periods that the Father has set by his own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.’ This is at once linked to the kingdom promised in Daniel 7, since in the next verse Jesus is described in language proper to the vindicated, kingdom-receiving son of man: When he had said this, as they were watching, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight.

[Paul] lived there [i.e. in Rome] two whole years at his own expense and welcomed all who came to him, proclaiming the kingdom of God and teaching about the Lord Jesus Christ with all boldness and without hindrance.13 Every word counts in this brief closing statement. Paul is in Rome as a free man (more or less),14 propagating the gospel freely. And the gospel is the news of the kingdom of Israel’s god, that is, the message that there is no king but this god. More specifically, it is this Jewish message now crystallized as the news about Jesus, the Messiah, whom Paul announced as kyrios, Lord. And this subversive message could be proclaimed boldly and without hindrance. It looks as though, for Luke, Christianity has taken on the traditional role of Judaism: it is the divine answer to paganism. Here at last is a Jew living in Rome itself (i.e. not just hiding in the hills of Galilee), and declaring that, in and through Jesus, Israel’s god is the sole king of the world. This is Luke’s full answer to the question the disciples asked of Jesus in Acts 1:6. Israel’s god has restored his kingdom for his people.

Josephus consistently paints Rome, especially its highest officials, in a favourable light.

Luke’s motives for writing his double work are complex, to be sure, but it seems highly likely that they include a similar measure of apologetic, perhaps in both directions.21 It is quite true that if one started off simply wanting to address an apologia for early Christianity to Roman authorities, one would not necessarily produce a work like Luke-Acts. There is far too much material which seems extraneous; comparison with the work of Aristides, Justin and the other second-century apologists reveals enormous differences.22 Equally, one cannot provide a complete explanation for Luke-Acts by the hypothesis that Luke was trying to persuade his Christian readers that they could rely on the Roman authorities. But if we take a step back from these two somewhat narrow conceptions of ‘apologetic’, a larger picture may emerge in which both are held together.

As far as the Romans were concerned, the Jews were anti-social atheists. But they were not persecuted by Rome simply for being Jews; they had been granted the status of a permitted religion.23 Luke’s massive two-volume work can be read as claiming, among many other things, that this status ought now to belong to the Christians. They are the ones who have inherited the Jewish promises of salvation; they are the ones to whom accrues the status proper to a religion of great antiquity.24 They, time and again, are shown to be in the right, to be innocent, even when magistrates have pronounced them guilty: from Jesus on the cross, to the apostles before the Sanhedrin, to Paul (in Philippi, before Agrippa and Festus, or on the boat), the Christians are declared to be innocent of the charges of sedition or subversion that are laid against them.

Josephus and Luke both speak up on behalf of what they regard as the true continuation of the true Israel: Josephus, arguably, on behalf of the Jamnia rabbis who were trying to reconstruct a new sort of Judaism; Luke, on behalf of the followers of Jesus.27

Josephus did not just intend to write propaganda. Taking Thucydides as one of his models, he desired and attempted to describe events that had actually happened in the past.

Luke and Josephus are literary cousins, not child and parent or even uncle and nephew. The importance of their relationship, for our present purposes, lies in what we can now say about the nature of Luke’s story.

His formal and rounded prologue (1:1–4) evokes the literary openings of several works of the Hellenistic period, including, interestingly, two of Josephus’ books.31 He is intending this book to be placed, not in the first instance within the Jewish, biblical world (it will include that, but is not contained by it) but within the general world of serious Hellenistic writing, not least history-writing.32

For those with ears to hear, however, Luke is after all doing much the same as John and Matthew. This time, though, the allusion is not to Genesis, the creation of the world, but to 1 Samuel, the creation of Israel’s monarchy. The innocent beginning to this great Hellenistic-style history masks the long-term subversive purpose.

Within the often-remarked artistry which enables Luke to draw a complete picture with a few strokes of his pen, he has said as clearly as he can that John the Baptist is playing Samuel to Jesus’ David.

The story of salvation continues in parallel. David’s anointing is followed, in the narrative of 1 Samuel, by his taking on Goliath single-handed, as the representative of Israel. Jesus’ anointing is followed at once by his battle with Satan.

David eventually leaves the court to wander as a hunted fugitive with his band of followers; Jesus spends much of Luke’s gospel travelling with his band of followers, sometimes being warned about plots against his life.37

None of this is to imply that the parallel with 1 Samuel is the only, or even necessarily the main, key to Luke’s gospel. But the close similarity so far suggests strongly (against classical form-criticism) that Luke is not simply collecting bits of tradition and stringing them together at random; and it suggests, too (against the main forms of redaction-criticism) that the arrangement which Luke is adopting is not simply in pursuit of a home-made scheme of theology invented against a background of events at the start of the second Christian generation, but that he is telling his story in a particular way in order that it may say, as much by its shape and outline as by its detailed content: this story is the climax towards which Israel’s history has been building all along.

It is important to stress that this is not simply ‘typology’. Typology takes an event from the past and sets it in close relation to a parallel event in the present time. Luke’s Davidic theme is indeed typological—Jesus really is seen as the ‘true David’—but this is neither random nor arbitrary: it is held firmly within a historical scheme. Jesus’ life, death and resurrection, and the sending of the divine spirit, are the end-product of the long story that began with David and the divine promises made to him. The similarities, the parallels, are there because of the overall story, not vice versa. Luke is telling the story of Jesus as the fulfilment, the completion, of the story of David and his kingdom.

On the one hand, we have the Davidic story as just outlined, and with it the sense that Luke is conscious of telling, in a manner similar to Josephus, how it was that Israel’s long story reached its paradoxical fulfilment. On the other hand, we must take full account of the recent arguments that the gospels, and perhaps Luke in particular, belong within the broad genre of Hellenistic biography.

How do these genres—the Jewish story reaching its climax, and the Hellenistic bios, the life-story of a human individual within the Greco-Roman world—fit together? The answer, I suggest, lies in Luke’s grasp of a central theological point, which enables him to tell the story of Jesus in the way that he does. Like so many Jews (and presumably well-taught proselytes) of the period, Luke believed that, prior to Jesus, Israel’s story had yet to reach its climax. The exile was not over; redemption had yet to appear.41 It was appropriate, within that context, that he should tell the story of the one life in which, he believed, the exile became most truly exilic, sin was finally dealt with, and redemption at last secured. But at the same time Luke clearly grasped the equally important Jewish belief that when Israel was redeemed the whole world would be blessed. Israel’s salvation was not to be a private affair only: it was to be for the benefit of all.

The good news of the established kingdom would have to impinge on the Gentile world. Since, therefore, he believed that this good news had taken the form of the life, and particularly the death and resurrection, of one human being, and since this was a Jewish message for the Gentile world, Luke blended together two apparently incompatible genres with consummate skill. He told the story of Jesus as a Jewish story, indeed as the Jewish story, much as Josephus told the story of the fall of Jerusalem as the climax of Israel’s long and tragic history. But he told it in such a way as to say to his non-Jewish Greco-Roman audience: here, in the life of this one man, is the Jewish message of salvation that you pagans need.42

In Griemasian terms, Luke presents his gospel as the vital Topical Sequence of a larger drama, and Acts as inaugurating the Final Sequence. He presupposes, as the Initial Sequence, the story of the world and Israel to date: This story has reached an impasse: Israel is herself unredeemed, and cannot bring the divinely planned salvation to the world. Luke then tells the story of Jesus as the Topical Sequence: The result is that he can at last set out, in Acts, the story of how the Final Sequence achieves what the Initial Sequence could not: The narrative analysis of Luke’s whole work, therefore, demonstrates that he, like Josephus in the War, intends his complex story to be seen as the completion of a larger one. The story of Israel has reached its basic fulfilment in the story of Jesus, in order that its long-term further goal may be attained through the mission of Jesus’ spirit in the church.

Luke, as a historian, inhabited the worlds of both Judaism and Hellenism. As a theologian, he remained firmly Jewish while claiming to address the world of paganism.

A strong case has recently been made out by Mark Powell for seeing an overall plot for Matthew’s gospel in terms of the programmatic statement in 1:21, where the angel tells Joseph: ‘You are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.’ The gospel can be understood as the story of how this is accomplished, through the paradoxical sub-plots whereby Jesus is successfully opposed by the Jewish leaders on the one hand, and unsuccessfully supported by the disciples on the other.49

Matthew is following a standard tradition, though adapting it to his own ends. His three periods of fourteen generations may well be intended to hint at six periods of seven generations, so that Jesus starts the seventh seven, the climactic moment of the series.

The genealogy then says to Matthew’s careful reader that the long story of Abraham’s people will come to its fulfilment, its seventh seven, with a new David, who will rescue his people from their exile, that is, ‘save his people from their sins’. When Matthew says precisely this in 1:18–21 we should not be surprised.

This arrangement seems to me deliberately stylized. If Matthew has indeed marked off the five discourses deliberately, it is easy to see that he might well have arranged them in a roughly chiastic structure, with the first and the last, at any rate, corresponding to one other.59

The concluding chapters of Deuteronomy (31–4) contain Moses’ final blessing, his going up the mountain to see the land which the people would possess, and his eventual death. Matthew, I suggest, had the entire scene in mind as he arranged his material into its eventual form. The theme of the whole passage in Deuteronomy is thoroughly germane to the complex theme of his first chapter: Israel has indeed fallen into the curse of exile because of her sins, and now the story of Abraham’s people is to be brought back on course by a new exodus, by the renewal of the covenant.