[Update: this is a series on Jesus' complicated relationship with nonviolence that I began several months ago and neglected. Before I pick up this thread, I thought I would re-post.]
There are several modern notions of Jesus circulating out there – who he was, what he was all about, what he taught. This has been on my mind because I’ve been reading Stephen Prothero’s
American Jesus. Wonderful book. Prothero focuses on modern American portraits of Jesus, but I imagine that these bear some resemblance to those circulating outside America as well. (Of course, I’m American, so my imagination is quite limited; for example, I’ve always pictured Jesus wearing Rocky’s stars-and-stripes trunks and a NASCAR pit-crew jacket.)
One particularly “American” understanding of Jesus is that he was all about teaching people to love one another. This Jesus beckons the children hither and totes a lamb around with him and such. I call this portrait the Sunday school portrait of Jesus. It’s not difficult to find passages in the New Testament to support this portrait. Of course, this is a very selective reading of the New Testament and few (I’m aware of none) New Testament scholars promote this interpretation.
But the Sunday school portrait of Jesus overlaps in large part with the hippie, non-violent, anti-establishment Jesus. This is the turn-the-other-cheek Jesus, and the love-your-enemies Jesus and this portrait has many more supporters in New Testament Studies. I must admit that I am tempted myself. There is much in the New Testament to support such a notion. Again, admittedly, this is also a selective reading of the New Testament. Of course historical reconstructions are always based on selective readings. Selectivity isn’t, by itself, an indictment; but we generally want to make the best sense out of the data at hand when defending a thesis.
One of the longstanding notions in historical Jesus scholarship is that Jesus’ primary message had much less to do with love and lilies of the field and much more to do with pronouncements of final judgment. While this might seem perplexing to your average Sunday school-educated American, the notion of a Jesus who shouted “the end is near!” is not all that scandalous among Jesus historians. Sure, it’s a disputed notion, but it’s a very old argument. This Jesus, it would seem, has much less in common with the lamb-a-licious Jesus. Was Jesus a herald of holy war? The notion that Jesus preached about a (not so far off) day of final judgment makes him seem much less like a Prince of Peace. If this camp is right, Jesus believed that God was on his way to start a revolution. Old kings get tossed out; new world orders are established; outsiders are punished; insiders are rewarded. That old tune.
Was Jesus a Prince of Peace reminiscent of Isaiah 9, or was he a Lord of War reminiscent of Revelation 19? In Pulp Fiction terminology, we might ask: was Jesus more like the pre-conversion Jules, or the post-conversion Jules? It would be silly to think that these are the only two options, but they happen to be two very popular notions. In segments two and three of this series, I’ll explore a few avenues toward a possible answer. In the meantime, I’ll solicit your help by way of comments. Initial thoughts?
-anthony
This short lecture by Steve Ramirez and Xu Liu is well worth a watch for those interested in false memories and memory refraction. Keep in mind that Liu grants that memory is "dynamic and sophisticated". His illustration of a film clip is only heuristic.
On this date in 1884 Rudolf Bultmann was born. There is perhaps no figure more influential and yet so misunderstood in the field of Jesus studies. Cliff Kvidahl informed me via Facebook that his biography (now in English) is available on amazon for $10.
My own chapter in this book traces the development of the criterion of coherence from Johannes Weiss’ portrait of Jesus and Paul Schmiedel’s bifurcation of the Gospel tradition. I argue that coherence was applied in Jesus studies before the prominent years of form criticism, but became a sub-criterion of double dissimilarity within the programs of Bultmann, Käsemann, and Perrin. I then argue that Perrin’s application of coherence as a sub-criterion to dissimilarity is beyond repair and that both criteria should be abandoned. However, I suggest that recent adaptations of social memory theory might provide new life for the more general principle of coherence as employed from Weiss to John P. Meier. The chief problem with its present use is that New Testament studies works from a premise of binary (or ternary) opposites as they conceive of the divide between Jesus’ context and Christianity’s context. As long as Jesus historians think along the lines of binary opposites, the criterion of coherence will continue to be misleading. Thus Perrin’s use of the criterion is beyond repair and Meier’s use must be rebuilt from the ground up.
Thank you Australia for making me feel a bit better about America's general ignorance of world religions. Yes, it's just schadenfreude, but it's schadenfreude that made me laugh hard several times. Islam is a country. Muslims are under the strictures of "Haram." And Jews (who have their own religion) follow Jesus Christ. 
I'm currently reading through Francis Watson's new blockbuster Gospel Writing (Eerdmans 2013). He starts out the book with a discussion of how the affirmation of the fourfold canon (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John) presented problems for Augustine and others who were trying to affirm the historical value of the books in light of disagreements among the authors. The interesting point thus far is that it is actually the theological convictions of early Christians that create the problems that their theological convictions then lead them to try to solve. In short, although affirmation of the fourfold canon was a theological conclusion of sorts, it was also an impetus for a line questioning that continues to today. He offers these interesting points in reference to Augustine's attempt at harmonizing the gospels in De consensu:
The short answer: No.