Meeting the Historical Jesus – notes from Part 1

Dr. Shiela McGinn presented to about 25 people on January 19, 2010
As further reference she suggested the following books:
•    American Bible Society, Synopsis of the Four Gospels
•    Phillip Cunningham, CSP, A Believers Search for the Jesus of History
•    Elizabeth Johnson, Consider Jesus
•    Bryan LeBeau, Leonard Greenspan, Dennis Hamm, SJ, Historical Jesus Through Catholic and Jewish Eyes.

Introduction
•    The group was asked about favorite descriptive names for Jesus: Savior, teacher, healer, nonviolent leader, rabble raiser, Son of Man, a really good man.
•    Three stories about Jesus: teacher in the Temple; Centurion’s servant; Jesus turning over the tables in the temple.

The stories tell us what kind of individual Jesus is.
•    The Centurion’s son (servant)-a centurion is like a major in the army. The Romans believed that they were superior to the Jews and everyone else. They were definitely more superior when it comes to governing. The centurion us used to telling people what to do and expects that people will obey his commands. To ask Jesus for a healing is a last resort. He has a problem and Jesus might be able to fix it. Jesus’ response if unexpected. Jesus tells the centurion that he will go his house. For a Roman to ask a Jew for help is embarrassing. It makes the centurion look bad. For Jesus, a Jew to go to a centurion’s home makes Jesus look bad to the other Jews. This is one criterion for authenticity: embarrassment.

The criterion for historicity are as follows:
•    Primary source material corroborates the story.
•    Orality-something brief and memorable like
o    A story that has a punchline
o    A proverb
o    A parable
o    A pronouncement of something new
•    Multiple attestations said in same or different ways
•    Independent sources support
•    Embarrassment-people wouldn’t make this up
•    Distinctiveness
•    Coherence-it makes sense when seen in conjunction with other incidents

Activity-Gospel writings concerning prayer
•    Mark is the first written, approximately 30 years after Jesus’ historical time. It is short, terse, and challenges the assumption.
•    Matthew says that we should pray like this.
•    Luke says the we should “say these words.”
•    The question is: which is the closest to what Jesus might have said.
•    In the synthesis of these three accounts we learn three important things from Jesus:
o    God is “our Father”, Matthew, whose name is holy
o    The kingdom is here, near and is to come
o    Forgiveness of debts is part of his message
•    The historical Jesus is our best guess; in this particular example Luke’s rendition is probably the closest to the historical Jesus.

Thanks to Jan L. for sending these in!