Who Was Jesus?

By James D. G. Dunn

Distills a life-time of biblical research into an easy-to-understand survey of Jesus’ life, his mission, and his self-understanding.

Renowned New Testament scholar James Dunn investigates what is known about the historical Jesus and the reasons for his enormous impact—then and now.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Church Publishing
• Release date: Aug 1, 2017
• ISBN: 9780898691665

James D. G. Dunn

James Dunn (Ph.D., Cambridge) 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, a phrase which he is credited with coining during his 1982 Manson Memorial Lecture. His books include Did the First Christians Worship Jesus? (2010), The New Perspective On Paul (2007), A New Perspective On Jesus: What The Quest For The Historical Jesus Missed (2005),The Theology of Paul the Apostle (1998), The Acts of the Apostles (1996), and The Epistles to the Colossians and to Philemon (1996).  In 2005, a festschrift dedicated to Dunn was published, entitled The Holy Spirit and Christian origins: essays in honor of James D. G. Dunn, comprising articles by 27 New Testament scholars, examining early Christian communities and their beliefs about the Holy Spirit. 

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Introduction

Who was Jesus? What a good question. It’s a good question because of Jesus’ reputation. For nearly two millennia Christians have regarded him as God’s Son. That is, not just as a son of God, as millions of Christians and others might think of themselves as sons (or daughters) of God. One of the greatest of the earliest Christians, Paul, encouraged his fellow Christians to think of themselves in that way. But Paul is clear that the relationship thus expressed is not ours by nature. He refers to it as a relationship which has come about by adoption (Romans 8.15). The implication is clear. Jesus’ sonship was different from that of Christians. As a natural son is different from an adopted son, so, in his relationship with God, Jesus is different from Christians in general.

If Paul, the author of the letter to Rome, probably written in the mid-50s of the first century, is any guide, this conviction about Jesus was already a defining mark of the first Christians. Already, within 30 years of Jesus’ death, he was regarded as God’s son in a unique sense by the first generation of Christians. Not just as a great leader, cruelly put to death by the Romans. And not just as a messenger who brought a message from God, like the prophets of old. But as unique among human beings. As more closely related to God than earlier saints and prophets. How could this be so? How did this conviction about Jesus come about? Who was Jesus?

Sources

To answer these questions satisfactorily we have to know what sources are available to us. The obvious answer is: the Gospels which make up the first four books of the New Testament. The first three, Matthew, Mark and Luke, are very similar. They are usually called the Synoptic Gospels, because they can be ‘seen together’. Indeed, they can be set down in three parallel columns, where the degree of overlap becomes immediately evident. The strong majority view is that of these three, Mark is the earliest, and that it served as a primary source for Matthew and Luke.

Specialists in the subject are equally confident that Matthew and Luke were able to use another source, a collection of Jesus’ teachings. This latter is usually known as Q, denoting the German word for ‘source’ (Quelle). The size of Q is unclear, since traditions about Jesus and his teaching were no doubt being variously used and circulated. In fact, much of the Q material is evident from the word-for-word agreement between Matthew and Luke. But other shared tradition is quite different in detail, suggesting that Matthew and Luke drew it from different sources.

The principal reason why Mark is regarded as the first of the three New Testament Gospels is simple. It is much more likely, for example, that Matthew added all his teaching material (drawn chiefly from Q) to Mark’s briefer account, than that Mark chose to omit so much of the teaching contained in Matthew. Matthew, indeed, seems to have absorbed almost all of Mark. And since Matthew was greatly prized and much used in the second century it is hard to identify distinctive use of Mark’s Gospel during that period.

The general view is that Mark was written a little before or a little after the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70, and that Matthew and Luke were written sometime in the following two decades. The written Q must have been earlier than Matthew and Luke. But, interestingly, the written Q was not preserved. This may be simply because it was totally used by Matthew and Luke, but probably also because it did not take the form of a ‘Gospel’ in the sense given to that word by Paul and Mark – that is, as an account of Jesus’ ministry climaxing in his death and resurrection.

The date of Jesus’