Block 3 - Borg, Pages 109-164

In reading Borg, Chapter 5, on Jesus' experience of God, as in many instances in Life of Jesus studies, we are dealing with two questions: 1) which of the applicable verses from the Gospels actually represent the ideas held by the earthly Jesus, and 2) exactly what message did Jesus intend to convey when he originally spoke these words? Scholars who use the same historical critical method can come to very different conclusions answering these two questions. The resulting "picture" of the historical Jesus of one scholar can end up looking quite different from that of another scholar using the same method, when the conclusions about the authenticity of various sayings reached by the scholars diverge from each other along the way.

On the first page (108) Borg states a fundamental presupposition of his, Jesus - during his earthly ministry - was not God in any sense whatsoever. In a sense this seems to me to be as much a doctrinal position as a conclusion of historical research. As a result, some verses that could be interpreted as referring to Jesus' self-understanding of his being the Son of God (which Borg doubts is true), are interpreted as speaking about Jesus' experience of God, not Jesus being divine.

Many modern New Testament scholars believe that the traditional doctrinal equation between Jesus as the Son of God and Jesus as divine probably was not true in the minds of the Gospel writers and certainly was not true in the mind of Jesus. Therefore, they are inclined to represent Jesus as a prophet, or someone who thought he was a prophet in a mode similar to John the Baptist.

Even though Borg denies the divinity of Jesus, he emphasizes the unmistakable close relationship that Jesus had with his God (at least there is no doubt that Jesus believed he had a close relationship with God). It is this feature which Borg chooses to focus on. It seems to me that what is appealing to Borg in this discussion is Jesus as a model of experiencing God. I suspect the reason Borg focuses on this experiential side of Jesus' relationship with God is because it resonates well with modern people for whom various types of experiential religion have an appeal to them (without a lot of doctrinal baggage), and this appeal of experiential religion may be due to the lack of the perceived presence of God in modern everyday life.

To find a contemporary of Jesus with this same kind of spirituality that Jesus exhibits, Borg mentions Jewish wonder workers Honi the Circledrawer and Hanina ben Dosa (on page 116). It is true there are some parallels, but I think the record of Jesus far surpasses what is related in Rabbinic writing regarding these two, both in terms of the quality of Jesus' relationship with God and the fact that Jesus suggests that others should aspire to the same type of relationship with God. In fact, I cannot help but wonder if Jesus may have been the first person in history to advocate that it is possible for the average person to have a close personal relationship with God. In antiquity, such experiences were limited to those unusual individuals considered prophets, shamans or mystics.

Borg interprets the personal experiential aspects of the stories at the beginning of Jesus' ministry (baptism, time in the wilderness) in terms of charismatic Judaism, with echoes hearkening back to the experiences of the Old Testament prophets. And the connection that Borg makes with the prophets of old, may have been in the background of the presentation of these stories by the Gospel writers (in the sense of the renewal of divine prophecy in their time, even though they certainly believed Jesus to be more than a prophet). But you can be sure wherever there are events and sayings that Borg interprets as placing Jesus within charismatic Judaism, Ehrman will use the same sayings to place Jesus within apocalyptic Judaism, under the assumption that where one is most likely to find charismatic Judaism in Jesus' time is among people who had apocalyptic expectations. Borg is defining charismatic Judaism in the sense of a renewal of the Spirit of prophecy as found in the Old Testament prophets. Ehrman goes in a different direction believing that the Jesus tradition follows the trend found at the end of the Jewish Biblical period of a shift from classical prophecy to apocalyptic predictions (especially the Biblical book of Daniel). Ehrman sees both John the Baptist and Jesus as examples of apocalyptic prophets. See my list of Characteristics of Apocalyptic Literature on Blackboard at Course Documents for a complete description of shift from classical Jewish prophecy to Jewish apocalyptic.

In the section on Jesus and the Spirit (page 125) Borg sees Jesus as a man filled with the spirit of God and uses this as the lens through which he will interpret much of the ministry of Jesus in order to have a way of speaking about the spiritual dimension of Jesus' ministry in language that is already found in the Gospels but also meaningful for modern Americans. This is a way of speaking about Jesus' ministry that Borg believes is credible to a modern reader as well as being useful as an organizing principle for understanding how concepts such as "authority," "presence," prayer and "intimacy with God" can all be connected within the religious experience of Jesus. These same themes are also important in understanding the experiences of the Old Testament prophets, which serves to help bolster (in my mind) the contention that the best way to view Jesus is the way that his disciples viewed him, as a prophet (though Borg prefers Jewish mystic as the unifying principle for understanding Jesus' ministry).

Beginning on page 131 Borg explains what he means by labeling Jesus a Jewish mystic, and he does a good job of explaining how mysticism is understood by modern scholars, but also this definition is quite close to the understanding of mysticism within the Roman Catholic tradition. Whether or not you buy into Borg's use of the category of mysticism to explain and unify Jesus' religious experiences, I believe Borg makes the a good case for his viewpoint, mentioning everything I can think of that would apply to this topic.

In Chapter 6 (page 137), Borg moves on to explain how this Jewish mystic Jesus functions within the context of his earthly ministry. As you may have discovered from the readings so far, there are really only two geographical dimensions to the portrayal of Jesus in the Gospels: Galilee and Jerusalem, and Galilee is dominated by events around Capernaum and Jerusalem is dominated by the events of the last week of Jesus' life. (Pet peeve: Capernaum should be pronounced as Kafar-Nahum, village of Nahum, but the "h" sound got lost in the process of rendering it into Greek and Latin, and then the "f" sound got lost in rendering it into English.) What we cannot know for certain is how closely this geographical picture fits the reality of Jesus' ministry. Did Jesus really spend most of his time in Galilee? Probably. Why are there not more stories included about Jesus that took place outside the environs of Capernaum? Good question. Were these stories not available to the Gospel writers, or was there some reason to exclude them? Are the stories in the Gospel of John about Jesus in Judea (in Bethany and near the Jordan river) pure fiction or do they represent something of a tradition of events about Jesus that were unknown to the writers of the synoptic Gospels?

There are hints in the Gospels that Jesus' activity was much greater than what we find recorded in the Gospels (see Matthew 11:20-24). This passage is a word of judgment for unbelief found in the towns of Capernaum, Chorazin and Bethsaida. We have plenty of examples of stories of Jesus placed in Capernaum, but only one in Bethsaida (Mark 8:22-26), and none for Chorazin. So, it would seem that there were numerous miracles Jesus presumably performed in Chorazin and Bethsaida that are not recorded in the Gospels. For some reason only a small slice of the words and deeds of Jesus have been recorded and included in the written Gospels as we have them. If there is any historical value to the first four chapters of the Gospel of Mark, it would seem that the author is primarily interested in those events that occurred in the near vicinity of Capernaum. While it is clear even in these few chapters Jesus did much elsewhere, the author's interest is what occurred in or near Capernaum.

Borg's point of "not about heaven" is well put (page 143-144). It is later Christian theology that connects the kingdom of God/Heaven with the traditional Christian concept of heaven. Excluding the Gospel of John, Jesus is much more interested in the way that the Reign of God will come upon earth, than what will happen in heaven. Also Borg's reference to the peasant class as the primary recipients of Jesus' ministry places the events in their proper social context. Borg also speaks briefly of the importance of the healings and exorcisms of Jesus. While it is common for us to read the stories of the exorcisms as healing stories(pages 148-150), I believe they are intended to be understood as a form of spiritual warfare, in which Jesus as the proxy for God combats the proxies of Satan, the demons. I will discuss this in more detail in a later posting on Jesus' miracles.

Borg's section on Jesus' sayings, parables and aphorisms in particular, while limited, gives a very good overview of how these two categories of Jesus' teaching are understood in modern scholarship (pages 150-157). Much of what Borg says on this topic would hold true for conservative scholars as well as liberal scholars. The role that Jesus' meals played in Jesus' ministry is still a topic of debate (pages 157-160). The members of the Jesus' Seminar tend to view this dimension of Jesus' ministry as a central feature in which his dining with "sinners" is an indication of the presence of the Reign of God within the ministry of Jesus. Conservative scholars are not always sure how much weight to give the meals with "sinners" in understanding Jesus' ministry. Certainly they indicate Jesus' love for the outcasts of society, but whether they should be seen as a sign of the presence of the Kingdom (Reign) of God is an open question.

For John Dominic Crossan (key member of the Jesus Seminar) these meals that Jesus partakes of with "sinners" tend to be a central focus of Jesus' ministry and an organizing principle for Crossan in his interpretation of Jesus, that helps explain the significance of what Jesus is saying in his parables that can be connected with embracing the outcasts of society. That message becomes a reality in these meals where Jesus (as God's representative) is dining with the outcasts ("sinners"), and thereby the Reign of God that embraces all people becomes a reality in Jesus' ministry. But it is not so much a central theme for Borg because he uses Jesus the "spirit person" or Jesus as "Jewish mystic" as his organizing principle for comprehending the ministry of Jesus.

ASIDE: An enduring question among scholars is: what did Jesus do that got himself killed? Was he simply misunderstood? Did he use inflammatory rhetoric? More on this when we get to the topic of the death of Jesus. But a common put-down among scholars to disrespect the views of another scholar's reconstruction of the life and message of Jesus is to say: If that's how Jesus lived, it's hardly enough to get himself killed. Bottom line is: Jesus had to have done something brash enough to warrant the death penalty.

On page 163 Borg offers his summary of the chapter. As I mentioned before, it seems to me that for Borg, Jesus the Jewish mystic encompasses the other categories. However, I am not so sure that is the best way to envision this. I think it makes more sense to combine the categories of Jesus as mystic and Jesus as prophet, and maybe even put prophet first, because in the Old Testament, it is the prophets who have what we would call mystical experiences. I do not think the two can be separated. Then the other categories would be dependent upon that understanding of Jesus as a prophet/mystic, especially as that pertains to Jesus as healer and teacher, as one who has the authority of a prophet in the sense of one who speaks for God. Borg limits his definition of prophet here to fit his own personal religious agenda and this offers a perfect example of recasting Jesus in a way that makes him relevant to modern concerns that Borg would support. To say that Jesus' critique of the "domination system" is the reason he was executed is probably too thin, and (in my mind) does not meet the criteria of something "brash enough" to warrant the death penalty. That is, in order to get killed, Jesus must have been perceived as a threat to the system, not just be a nuisance.