Block 1 - Fredriken, Pages 3-41

Fredriksen does well to acknowledge early the indebtedness of modern historical critical biblical scholarship to "the university faculties of post-Enlightenment Germany" (page 4). This lets you know right away not to expect her to believe that miracles can happen or that predictive prophecy is possible. Modern biblical scholarship is marked by varying degrees of skepticism and an unwillingness to take the biblical texts at face value. Fredriksen also does us a service in pointing out early the one unifying feature of many studies of Jesus written since (about) 1985: it's all about answering this question, "Why did the Romans kill Jesus?" (page 4) If Jesus was a great moral teacher there is no reason to execute him. Many scholars reject the oft presented explanation that Jesus was killed because he claimed to be the messiah and the Romans misinterpreted that as aspirations for an earthly kingdom. Suffice to say that most historical critical scholars do Not believe Jesus considered himself any kind of messiah or son of God. But we will have to wait until later to get her answer to this question.

On pages 6-7, Fredriksen makes the point that the particular questions we ask of the texts will in part determine the answers we find there ( as she puts it: "how we see is really what we get" page 7 top). Therefore, the particular interests of a scholar will play a large role in what kind of Jesus is found in the Gospels. It is interesting that Fredriksen speaks of the "Facts about Jesus" that we have as our starting point, because many scholars will say that assured facts are few, and then they disagree about what these assured facts actually are (page 7 bottom). But it is promising that she actually wants to discuss facts and then work from there.

I do not know if you found it odd, but I found "Prelude 1" on Jerusalem to be an interesting choice of introduction to the topic. I suspect her point is that the Jewish revolt of 66 CE and the ensuing destruction of Jerusalem in 70 when the Romans returned to Palestine to "pacify" the Jews is important background for the composition of the Gospels, since historical critical scholars believe all the Gospels were written after 70 CE, and the destruction of the temple transformed the landscape of Jewish religious life (no more sacrifices as prescribed in the law). This therefore also changed the way that Christians viewed Judaism. After the Romans overran Jerusalem,the Jewishness of Christianity was a thing of the past.

As an Aside: the relief panel shown on page 16 of Titus' victory parade reminds me of two interesting aspects of this event. A recent theory noting the coincidental timing between the destruction of the Jerusalem temple and the beginning construction of the Roman coliseum suggests that perhaps there really was all that gold in the temple that the Jews bragged about and the Romans used it to finance the construction of the coliseum. The other piece of trivia is that the hardware of the temple worship was placed on public display in Rome and remained there until the barbarians hauled it off to melt down the bronze for weapons 400 years later.

On page 19 Fredriksen makes a point that is important (for historical critical scholars) to understanding the transmission of Jesus' words from his lifetime to the form in which we find them in the Gospels. The difference in language, Jesus spoke Aramaic and the entire New Testament was composed in Greek, and the difference in setting, rural Jewish Palestine and urban pagan cities of the Roman empire. Because of the transmission of Jesus' words across cultures and across time (40-50 years), many modern scholars are skeptical of assigning any historical accuracy to the Gospels.

On page 22 when she speaks of the synoptic Gospels having a common narrative chronology, she is simply stating an observation about the composition of these narratives. There is no reason to assume that Fredriksen thinks there is anything truly historical about this narrative framework shared by the first three Gospels. Many New Testament scholars consider the narrative framework simply part of the plot devised by author of the earliest Gospel (Mark) as a narrative vehicle to tell his story about Jesus.

In the section, pages 24-27, Fredriksen is stating some widely agreed upon conclusions held by historical critical scholars. Such as: the sayings of Jesus were passed on individually by word of mouth for several decades before being collected into a group of sayings, which is long before they were incorporated in written form. Another assumption is that the widely divergent versions of the "passion" (Latin word for suffering) narrative (as found in the 4 Gospels) suggests that their composition was governed more by theology than history.

In the section, pages 28-34, Fredriksen focuses on a topic that was very popular in Gospel studies in the 1970s-80s, the theological tendencies of the Gospel writers. The assumption is that each Gospel writer had a particular understanding of Jesus that he wished to convey and so crafted the narrative to present Jesus in the desired light. Therefore, many scholars will say that the variations in the Gospels and their differences are based on theological considerations and has less to do with what they found in their sources. It is important to remember that No historical critical scholar (I know of) ascribes any historical value to the Gospel of John.

Definition: The "Septuagint" refers to the Greek translation of the Jewish scriptures, which is the version of the Bible quoted by almost every writer of the New Testament.

In the section, pages 34-41, Fredriksen seems most interested in making the point that much of the Jewishness of Jesus is drained out of the Gospels. Her discussion of Paul makes the point that the thought forms used by Paul reflect a mind that thinks in Jewish categories. Whereas in the Gospels, all that remain of Jewish thinking is that which is retained by Christianity (most obvious is the retention of Jewish morality, as well as Jewish ways of thinking about God). In the references to the temple in Luke, chapters 1 & 2, we find a Christian portrayal of the temple as a place of prayer (what Christians did there). Whereas the most important function of the temple was the ritual slaughter of animals. But you would never know this from Luke's Gospel. Since Jesus death was a sacrifice, the ritual sacrifice of animals was no longer necessary. Thus all that is mentioned about the temple is that part which continues to be meaningful for Christians.