For some years I tried to write two books side by side: one about Paul and his theology, the other about Jesus within his historical context. It gradually dawned on me that the two belonged together more closely than I had realized. Both were concerned with the historical description of events and beliefs in the first century. Both emphasized a particular way of understanding the relevant texts and events. Both required a pre-understanding of first-century Judaism. Both demanded concluding theological and practical reflections. So it was that I found myself driven to think of a two-volume work on Jesus and Paul.
But the material, and the nature of the arguments I wished to advance about it, would not let me leave it at that. One of the vital questions that has to be asked as part of the search for Jesus has to do with the gospels as they stand, and the enormous problems raised there could hardly be dealt with in a single chapter somewhere within an already over-long book. Having given in, and admitted to myself that I was thus planning three volumes, it was only a short step to the realization that I was actually thinking of five: one each for Jesus, Paul, and the gospels, and an introduction (the present volume) and conclusion in which the various things that would otherwise have to be said at the beginning and end of each of the other three books could be gathered together. The result is a project which, though still focused centrally on Jesus and Paul, is also inevitably about the New Testament as a whole.
One reason for allowing the material to expand in this way is the frustrating brevity of so many one-volume, or even two-volume, ‘New Testament theologies’ in the present century. To compress the discussion of the parables, or of justification, into two or three pages is actually not much use either to the ordinary reader or to the advancement of scholarship. At best, all one can hope to do by that method is to set a few bells ringing and see if any listeners want to go away and work out what they might mean. I hope to do a little more than that, and actually to address substantial issues, and engage in debate with opposing views, at certain key points.
At the opposite extreme from the brief overall survey is the fragmentation which exists in so much of the discipline, whereby people spend entire professional careers specializing in one sub-area, and never try to draw together the threads of wider hypotheses. I believe it is important that the synthesis be attempted, but without false compression or over-simplification. I hope, then, to offer a consistent hypothesis on the origin of Christianity, with particular relation to Jesus, Paul and the gospels, which will set out new ways of understanding major movements and thought-patterns, and suggest new lines that exegesis can follow up. I hope to contribute to this task myself.
The phrase ‘New Testament theology’, which I discuss in the first chapter of the present volume, is in the present day loaded with a variety of connotations. Although in many ways what I am doing falls into the pattern of books with titles like that, I have preferred to leave the main title of the project concrete rather than abstract. One of the underlying themes throughout is the meaning of the word ‘God’, or for that matter ‘god’ (see below), and it seems to me that the early Christians, including the writers of the New Testament, wrestled with that question more than is usually imagined. The word theos for Greek-speakers (and its equivalents in other languages spoken in the first century) was not univocal, and the early Christians made out a fairly thorough case for understanding it in a particular sense. I am therefore not merely investigating the ‘general’ area of ‘theology’ (i.e. anything that passes for ‘theological’ reflection on any subject), but wish to focus particularly on ‘theology’ proper—i.e. the meaning and referent of the important word ‘god’. This has, perhaps surprisingly, been somewhat neglected within ‘New Testament theology’, and it seems to me high time that the situation was rectified.
There are five matters of linguistic usage on which I must comment, and either apologize for or, perhaps, explain why apology should be unnecessary. First, I normally refer to Jesus as ‘Jesus’, not simply ‘Christ’, as did many older writers. This is not simply to avoid offending my Jewish friends, and others for whom Jesus’ Messiahship is a matter of debate. It is because Messiahship is itself in question throughout the gospel story, and the task of the historian is to see things as far as possible through the eyes of the people of the time. In particular, it may serve as a reminder that ‘Christ’ is a title with a specific, and quite limited, meaning (see the discussions in volumes 2 and 3). It was not of itself a ‘divine’ title, however much it has been used as such in Christian circles, and was not in earliest Christianity reducible to a mere proper name.1
Second, I have frequently used ‘god’ instead of ‘God’. This is not a printer’s error, nor is it a deliberate irreverence; rather the opposite, in fact. The modern usage, without the article and with a capital, seems to me actually dangerous. This usage, which sometimes amounts to regarding ‘God’ as the proper name of the Deity, rather than as essentially a common noun, implies that all users of the word are monotheists and, within that, that all monotheists believe in the same god. Both these propositions seem to me self-evidently untrue. It may or may not be true that any worship of any god is translated by some mysterious grace into worship of one god who actually exists, and who happens to be the only god. That is believed by some students of religion. It is not, however, believed by very many practitioners of the mainline monotheistic religions (Judaism, Christianity, Islam) or of the non-monotheistic ones (Hinduism, Buddhism and their cognates). Certainly the Jews and Christians of the first century did not believe it. They believed that pagans worshipped idols, or even demons. (The question as to how Jews and Christians regarded each other’s beliefs on this topic will be addressed in Part V of the present volume.)
It seems to me, therefore, simply misleading to use ‘God’ throughout this work. I have often preferred either to refer to Israel’s god by the biblical name, YHWH (notwithstanding debates about the use of this name within second-temple Judaism), or, in phrases designed to remind us of what or who we are talking about, to speak of ‘the creator’, ‘the covenant god’ or ‘Israel’s god’. The early Christians used the phrase ‘the god’ (ho theos) of this god, and this was (I believe) somewhat polemical, making an essentially Jewish-monotheistic point over against polytheism. In a world where there were many suns, one would not say ‘the sun’. Furthermore, the early Christians regularly felt the need to make clear which god they were talking about by glossing the phrase, as Paul so often does, with a reference to the revelation of this god in and through Jesus of Nazareth. Since, in fact, the present project presents a case, among other things, for a fresh understanding of the meaning and content of the word ‘god’, and ultimately ‘God’, in the light of Jesus, the Spirit and the New Testament, it would be begging the question to follow a usage which seemed to imply that the answer was known in advance. I think it quite likely that many of those who come to a book like this with the firm conviction that ‘Jesus is God’, and equally well many of those who come with the firm conviction that he is not, may hold views on the meaning of ‘god’, or ‘God’, which ought to be challenged in the light of the New Testament. The christological question, as to whether the statement ‘Jesus is God’ is true, and if so in what sense, is often asked as though ‘God’ were the known and ‘Jesus’ the unknown; this, I suggest, is manifestly mistaken. If anything, the matter stands the other way around.2
Third, some people get cross if they see the usage BC and AD in reference to dates before and after the birth of Jesus, since they take it as a sign of Christian imperialism. Others are irritated if they see Christians using the increasingly popular ‘neutral’ alternatives BCE (‘Before the Common Era’) and CE (‘Common Era’), because it seems either patronizing or spineless. Similar debates rage as to whether the Hebrew Bible should be called ‘Tanach’ or ‘Old Testament’, or perhaps even ‘The Older Testament’ (in my view, this last is the most patronizing of all); or whether ‘First Testament’ and ‘Second Testament’ are more appropriate. It is strange that it seems to be scholars within the broad Christian tradition who are afflicted with these problems. Jewish writers do not affect ‘Christian’ ways of referring to dates and books, nor would I wish them to. In all these cases there is, I fear, a malaise among us, which consists of the desire to present a ‘neutral’ or ‘objective’ view as though we were all merely disinterested historians looking down from an uninvolved Olympian height. As I shall be arguing in Part II of the present volume, such an epistemology is inappropriate and indeed impossible. Therefore, mindful of the further impossibility of pleasing all the people all the time, I shall continue to follow the usages to which I am accustomed (AD and BC, ‘Old Testament’ and/or ‘Hebrew Bible’), with neither imperialistic nor patronizing intent—noting, indeed, that the same usage obtains in the revision of Schürer’s classic work by a team of historians from widely differing backgrounds under the leadership of Professor Geza Vermes.3
Fourth, we meet the currently vexed question of the gender of language about ‘God’, or gods. Here again we meet a puzzle. Nobody insists that a Muslim theologian should refer to the god he or she discusses as ‘she’; this is just as well, otherwise Muslims would not be able to write much theology. The same would be true, I think, for all Jews until very recently, and certainly for the great majority of Jews in the present. Nobody insists that someone writing about Hindu deities should make them all indiscriminately androgynous: some are clearly masculine, others equally clearly feminine. Nor would the pagan gods and goddesses of the ancient world have been pleased if their devotees had got their genders muddled. In a work of history I think it is appropriate to refer to the god of the Jews, the gods of the Greco-Roman world, and the god of the early church, in ways which those groups would themselves have recognized as appropriate.
Fifth, I shall constantly need to refer to that part of the Middle East in which the gospel events are set. If I consistently call this territory ‘Palestine’ my Jewish friends may object; if I refer to it as ‘Israel’ my Palestinian friends may feel slighted (and, after all, most of the native Christians currently living in the area happen to be Palestinians). I shall therefore adopt no consistent policy, but wish to place on record my desire to be sensitive to the feelings, fears and aspirations of all concerned, as well as my gratitude for the wonderful welcome and hospitality I received on all sides during the time I spent in Jerusalem in 1989, working on the first three volumes of this project.
Something must now be said about the scope of this first volume. It is basically an exercise in ground-clearing, designed to enable me to engage in further work on Jesus, Paul and the gospels without begging quite so many questions as I would have done had I tried to squeeze this material into the early chapters of other books. In most of this book, then, I write as a fascinated amateur, rather than a highly-trained professional. My own specializations have been Jesus and Paul, and I have come to hermeneutical and theological theory on the one hand, and to the study of first-century Judaism on the other, as an enthusiastic outsider. Some, eager for exegesis, will find much of this book arcane and unnecessary; others, having spent their lives sifting material that I here pull together quite briskly, will suspect that important questions are still being begged. (This is particularly true of Part II.) I have found it necessary, though, to trespass on these territories, since the present climate of New Testament studies has thrown up so many confusions of method and content that the only hope is to go back to the beginning. The only way of alleviating the remaining inadequacies of the present work would have been to turn each Part into a whole book in itself.
This means, among other things, that readers looking for a lengthy ‘history of research’ will usually be disappointed. To include that sort of material would make the project at least half as long again as it already is. I have written elsewhere about the present state of New Testament studies, and about particular issues within current research, and shall continue to do so.4 In a work like this, however, one must be quite selective in choosing one’s conversation partners, even at the risk of appearing to bypass certain questions. Those who want to check up on details or debates will find plenty of books to help them.5 In setting out my own proposals, I am at least implicitly entering into dialogue with many more writers than are listed in the footnotes. On almost every page it would have been possible to double or treble the secondary sources referred to, but one must draw a line somewhere. I have tended to refer to recent discussions, many of which give full bibliographies of earlier works.
A word must be said here about the category of ‘story’, which I have found myself using increasingly frequently. It has already proved fruitful in a variety of areas in recent scholarship, not only in literary criticism but in areas as diverse as anthropology, philosophy, psychology, education, ethics and theology itself. I am well aware that some will regard my use of it as faddish, and it is of course true that ‘story’ is a central feature of postmodern criticism, with its rejection of the anti-traditional, anti-story attitude of the Enlightenment. But I do not wish, in using this category, to buy wholesale into postmodernism itself. On the contrary: whereas postmodernism sometimes uses ‘story’ as a means whereby one may talk about something other than space-time reality, I have tried to integrate it within the ‘critical-realist’ epistemology expounded in Part II, and to use it as a way forward in history and theology as well as literary study.
This all leads to a final word of warning. I frequently tell my students that quite a high proportion of what I say is probably wrong, or at least flawed or skewed in some way which I do not at the moment realize. The only problem is that I do not know which bits are wrong; if I did I might do something about it. The analogy with other areas of life is salutary: I make many mistakes in moral and practical matters, so why should I imagine my thinking to be mysteriously exempt? But, whereas if I hurt someone, or take a wrong turn in the road, I am usually confronted quite soon with my error, if I expound erratic views within the world of academic theology I am less likely to be convinced by contradiction. (The first person here, as sometimes in Paul, includes the generic.) We all have ways of coping with adverse comment without changing our minds; but, since I am aware of the virtual certainty of error in some of what I write, I hope I shall pay proper attention to the comments of those—and no doubt there will be many—who wish to draw my attention to the places where they find my statement of the evidence inadequate, my arguments weak, or my conclusions unwarranted. Serious debate and confrontation is the stuff of academic life, and I look forward, not of course without some trepidation, to more of it as a result of this project.
Three small technical matters. First, I have adopted the increasingly popular style of bibliographical references that use author’s name and date, with full details listed in the bibliography. (Where an original-language publication, or a first edition, antedates the most recent one by more than two or three years, I have indicated it in square brackets.) This allows the footnotes to remain where they belong without becoming too lengthy. Second, in quoting from biblical and other ancient sources I have frequently used my own translations. Where I have followed others it has been because they seem adequate rather than because I have a consistent policy of following one particular version, though I have tended to use the New Revised Standard Version (substituting ‘YHWH’ for ‘the LORD’) unless otherwise noted. Third, I have deliberately kept quotation of ancient languages to a minimum, and have transliterated Greek and Hebrew in as simple a way as possible.
It only remains to thank several friends who have contributed to the project by reading bits of the manuscript, criticizing and encouraging, making suggestions of all sorts, and generally enabling me to bring a large and unwieldy project to birth. Valued readers and critics of various parts have included Professors Michael Stone and the late Sara Kamin, of the Hebrew University; Professor Richard Hays, of Duke Divinity School in Durham, North Carolina; Professor Charlie Moule, formerly of Cambridge; and Professors Christopher Rowland, Rowan Williams, and Oliver O’Donovan, of Oxford. The friendship of these last three has been, for me, among the greatest blessings of living and working in Oxford. I am particularly grateful to friends who have let me see work in progress before publication; I think particularly of Dr Anthony Thiselton of St John’s College, Durham, whose major book New Horizons in Hermeneutics I was privileged to read in typescript. I owe a further debt of gratitude to my students, both graduate and undergraduate, who have listened patiently to my ideas over the years and frequently made acute observations and criticisms. I want to thank the editors and staff of SPCK and Fortress, particularly Philip Law, for their enthusiasm for this project, the care which they have lavished upon it, and the patience with which they have waited—and are waiting!—for it. David Mackinder, Andrew Goddard and Tony Cummins all read the completed typescript and spotted dozens of ways in which it could be improved and clarified, for which I am profoundly grateful. A special word of thanks must go to the manufacturers of the superlative Nota Bene software, which has done virtually everything I have asked of it, enabling the book to be typeset in my own study. The remaining mistakes, of course, large and small, belong to none of the above persons, but to myself alone.
Secretarial and editorial assistance of high quality has been provided over the years of this work by Jayne Cummins, Elisabeth Goddard, Lucy Duffell, and particularly, in the later stages, by Kathleen Miles, who performed wonders of organization and clarification on a mass of unwieldy material, including compiling the indexes. In thanking these four I wish also to thank those who set up the fund through which I was able to afford to employ them, in these days of university austerity. Particular mention must be made in this connection of Paul Jenson, of Orange, California, and the Revd Michael Lloyd, of Christ’s College, Cambridge, who have given, in this and in many other ways, much valued support, encouragement and practical help.
The main draft of volumes 1 and 2, and the first half of volume 3, was written while on sabbatical in Jerusalem during the summer of 1989. For this I must not only thank Worcester College and the University of Oxford for granting me leave of absence, and the Leverhulme Trust for a generous Travelling Fellowship, but also my hosts in Jerusalem, namely Professor David Satran of the Hebrew University, who organized my teaching there, and particularly the then Dean of St George’s Cathedral, the Very Revd Hugh Wybrew, who gave me a marvellous pied-à-terre in his flat, and provided a context, both domestic and ecclesiastical, which came as close as anything I have ever found to creating the perfect conditions for writing. I am also deeply grateful to the Revd Michael Lloyd, the Revd Andrew Moore, and Dr Susan Gillingham for looking after the different bits of my job during my various absences, and to the latter two for reading parts of the text and offering comments whose searching nature reflected the best sort of collegiality. The librarians at the Hebrew University and the École Biblique were very helpful; back home, the Bodleian Library remains a congenial and privileged place to work, despite its problems with shrinking resources. The libraries of the Oriental Studies and Theology Faculties have likewise been of great help.
Pride of place in acknowledgement must go, as always, to the support of my dear wife and children, who put up with my absence in Jerusalem, and with numerous other absences and pressures in the course of the work. If hermeneutics, and indeed history itself, are inevitably a matter of interaction between reader and evidence, those who have helped the reader to be who he is, and to become what he ought to become, are to be recognized as part-architects of the reading that results.
One part-architect who in many ways has been a sine qua non for the whole project, and for my theological and particularly hermeneutical thinking over the last decade, is Dr Brian Walsh of Toronto. It was symptomatic of his enthusiasm for the work that he took six weeks, in the summer of 1991, to help me think through and reshape the crucial first five chapters of the present volume. The many weaknesses that the book still has belong to me alone; several of its strengths, in so far as it has any, come from this act of scholarly generosity and friendship, which is reflected, though hardly rewarded adequately, in the dedication.
N. T. Wright
Worcester College, Oxford
St Peter’s Day
June 1992