Block 6 - Jesus, Teacher of Wisdom, Borg, Pages 191-223

In his Chapter 8, Borg places Jesus within the Jewish wisdom tradition as a way of explaining the proper setting for understanding the teachings of Jesus. New Testament scholarship has always used some version of Jesus as a teacher of wisdom to explain the significance of a good number of Jesus' teachings. Much of the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5-7 has often been interpreted as Jesus providing new wisdom teachings. But more recently some scholars have used wisdom as a means to explain the totality of what Jesus was teachings (and Borg and Crossan are the best examples of this). To understand the implications of this designation we must first realize that in the Old Testament the prophetic writings and the wisdom writings constitute two very different ways of understanding Israel's relationship with God.

The wisdom writings are represented by the following Old Testament books: Proverbs, Ecclesiastes and Job (and in the Jewish apocrypha there are the books of the Wisdom of Solomon and Sirach (also referred to us Ecclesiasticus or Ben Sira). The prophetic writings are represented by Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and the 12 shorter prophetic writings, including Daniel, Hosea, Amos, etc. The basic line of thought in the book of Proverbs is: Live well and you will prosper. This assumes a stable society and a direct line of cause and effect between one's actions and the outcome. Job and Ecclesiastes question some of the basic assumptions in the way of thinking found in Proverbs, but they are still operating very much within that particular way of thinking. The prophetic literature presupposes a dynamic relationship between God and the people of Israel. The prophets question social inequalities. The prophets verbally attack the mindset that allows for worshiping the God of Israel and worshiping pagan idols at the same time. The jealousy of the God of Israel comes to fore in the writings of the prophets and the prospect of punishment for disobeying the law given to Moses is the drastic punishment of the loss of land and even life.

The prophets continually call the people to repentance with the offer of forgiveness being held out to them, but the people stubbornly refuse to return to God. This is a much different way of looking at the religious world compared to what we find in the Wisdom tradition, which assumes that people will have enough common sense to know to obey God's laws. Wisdom teaching tends to be "common sense" ideas offered within a particular world view in which they make sense. The Hebrew prophetic teachings are continually calling the Israelites back to a way of life and worship they have carelessly abandoned.

The point of all this Old Testament information is to demonstrate that Borg clearly intends to place Jesus within the perspective of the Wisdom tradition, and NOT in the prophetic tradition. However, as we have seen, both Ehrman (and many other scholars) views Jesus primarily as a prophet, not a teacher of wisdom. I personally disagree with the focus on Jesus as a wisdom teacher, though many modern critical New Testament scholars are in favor of it. I prefer the emphasis on Jesus as a prophet of the Kingdom. With this in mind, I offer a bit of a critique of Borg's chapter 8.

In the "Dead though Alive" section, I find it strange that he would have recourse to the Gospel of John, since most modern historical critical scholars find little or no historical value in John's Gospel, Borg included. And since this is the Gospel that uses the dead-versus-alive imagery the most, perhaps Borg's emphasis on it does not fit well with his methodology and he is forcing the issue, that is, making the concept a larger part of Jesus' teaching than the evidence warrants according to his methodology.

Secondly, the sections on "Exile" and "Bondage" (pages 200-204) explore concepts that do not strike me as important for understanding Jesus' message. Borg is representative of a move by many New Testament scholars toward the use of sociological categories to explain Jesus and the Jesus movement. However, I am of the (older) opinion that it is purely religious considerations that motivate Jesus. There might be sociological dimensions to Jesus' message, but I seriously doubt he was motivated by purely social concerns, or concerns arising out of the social problems of Palestinian Judaism of his time.

Borg is on much more solid ground in his discussion of the conventions of family relationships and "Wealth" (pages 205-211). These are topics for which there are numerous passages that Jesus certainly spoke that give us a fairly clear picture of Jesus' views on these topics. One of the reasons why the family oriented sayings have such a prominent place in the synoptic gospels (in my opinion) is because they were important to the early Christians because for many (I am sure) their Christian friends became their substitute family. What I mean by this is that for many people in both Jewish and pagan society, adopting the Christian faith probably meant disinheritance from their family and disowning by their family. A good example of this is found in the parable of the Prodigal Son who travels and immerses himself in a pagan society (they have pigs so they cannot be Jewish) and when he returns the father refers to the son as having been dead, which is how Jewish people would think of family members who left the faith to go live like pagans. Becoming a Christian often meant severing one's family ties. Therefore the Christian community would have played the role of a substitute family. And thus we find the reason for the enduring value for the early Christians of Jesus' sayings that advocated a distancing from one's biological family.

With regard to Wealth and possessions Jesus clearly takes a position of this subject that does not fit well with modern western materialism. In fact Jesus' message is very anti-materialism. What Borg has to say on the topic in the last paragraph on page 211 (I think) is an excellent summary of what Jesus taught on this topic.

Borg on "Honor" (page 212) makes an important point. Honor and shame were significant factors in Middle Eastern society (and this is still very true today in the Middle East). One would avoid at all costs doing anything that might being dishonor or shame to one's family. While Jesus rarely addresses this issue directly (Borg give the few places in the Gospels where Jesus directs his comments against this way of thinking), much of what Jesus says clearly implies that he has no concern whatsoever for protecting the honor of his family's or his village. In other words, Jesus does not expect his followers to be at all concerned about protecting their honor, but rather (to the contrary), to give it no thought. The expectation is that the emphasis of concern would be on the needs of others, not family honor.

Borg's section on "Purity" (pages 213-217) is really good and the information is well worth knowing. Now some scholars see the purity debates in the Gospels as reflecting the debates the early Christians had with the Pharisees over what a Jew could or could not do (many early Christians thought of themselves as Jews who believed the Messiah had arrived). But the topic comes up so often in the Gospels, it seems it would have to have originated with Jesus. As Borg says, the key for Jesus is the distinction between outside and inside. The rules of the Pharisees (oral law) focused on one's actions, how a person behaves in certain situations, how a person treats the outside of his body. Jesus was much more interested in the motivation behind a person's behavior than the behavior alone. Jesus' emphasis on motivation behind the action is referred to as what is in a person's heart, that is, the interior life of the individual. In the process Jesus does make statements that demonstrate he has little regard for the rules of ritual purity regarding food and "unclean" people. But Jesus (and all early Christians) continue to accept as valid the rules in the Law of Moses on moral purity. The basic moral teachings of early Christianity (as found in the New Testament) are adapted from Jewish moral codes with some adjustments based on the change in emphasis in Jesus' discussions of moral issues.

Under the heading of the "Narrow Way" Borg mentions repentance. New Testament scholars have historically seen this call to repentance as a central feature of Jesus' teaching. However, highly regarded New Testament scholar E.P. Sanders (interestingly enough) questions this whole emphasis on repentance in New Testament scholarship and suggests that repentance was such an important part of early Christian preaching that it is retrojected back onto Jesus by the gospel writers, and by the author of Luke/Acts in particular. He makes an interesting case for his position, pointing out that most of the references to repentance in the New Testament come from the hand of one writer - Luke. Repentance becomes a significant aspect of the message of early Christianity. But the concept rarely occurs in the any Gospel other than Luke. Which makes Sanders think it may not have been part of Jesus' own teaching and preaching. I am not sure if I am convinced by it, but it is an argument worth considering.