Wright gives an overview of the argument of the third part of the book, which is basically that Jesus applied to himself the three main elements of his teaching about the kingdom of God: the return from exile, the defeat of evil, and the return of YHWH to Zion. Chapter 11 deals with the first of these claims: ‘Jesus saw himself as the leader and focal point of the true, returning-from-exile Israel. He was the king through whose work YHWH was at last restoring his people. He was the Messiah’ (477). Three things need to be said about this first claim: i) the word ‘messiah’ does not refer to a ‘divine or quasi-divine figure’; ii) there is no reason to think that Jesus was incapable of serious and original theological reflection; and iii) to investigate Jesus’ self-understanding is an historical rather than a psychological exercise.
The concept of messiahship in first-century Judaism is polymorphous, but the royal motif is of particular importance, not least because it is so closely connected with the idea of national restoration. This hope was expressed not only through ‘proof-texts’ but also through symbols and praxis: so the hope included the expectation that the king would both rebuild (or at least refurbish) the temple and defeat Israel’s enemies.
Since, however, Jesus neither rebuilt the temple nor defeated Israel’s name, the historian must ask why Jesus’ followers came to believe that he was the Messiah. This question becomes all the more acute when we consider i) that to announce a messianic movement was to invite trouble from both Rome and the Herodians; and ii) that ‘a messianic movement without a physically present Messiah posed something of an anomaly’ (487).
The ensuing discussion of Jesus’ messiahship has two focal points: the titulus on the cross and Jesus’ action in the temple, which most scholars now consider to have been ‘the proximate cause of his death’ (490).
It has already been argued that Jesus’ action in the temple ‘spoke not just of religion but of royalty… not just of cleansing but of judgment’. It was the true Davidic king, not the high priests, who was ultimate ruler of the temple, so the incident was bound to be interpreted as an explicit messianic claim. Wright then demonstrates how this explains a set of ‘royal riddles’, all of which point back to the temple-action: the sayings about the destruction and rebuilding of the temple and about the mountain which is thrown into the sea; the riddle about John the Baptist; the parable of the tenants with the quote from Ps.118:22-23 about the stone which the builders rejected; the saying about paying tribute to Caesar; and the question as to whether the Christ was David’s Lord or David’s son (493-509).
Wright next re-examines Jesus’ apocalyptic discourse in Mark 13 in order to demonstrate how it also provides an explanation of the temple-action in terms of his messiahship.
So closely do they belong together, in fact, that the destruction of the Temple – predicted already in symbolic action, and here in prophetic oracle – is bound up with Jesus’ own vindication, as prophet and also as Messiah. In the eschatological lawcourt scene, he has pitted himself against the Temple. When his prophecy of its destruction comes true, that event will demonstrate that he was indeed the Messiah who had the authority over it. (511)
In order to understand the passage about the coming of the Son of man (Mk.13:24-26), Wright proposes three ‘guiding threads’. First, apocalyptic language must be understood historically. Secondly, Jesus’ allusion to the son of man figure in Daniel 7 must be understood in relation to Jewish interpretations of this text in the first century. Wright argues that there is strong evidence that Jews at the time found in Daniel 2, 7 and 9 in particular a messianic story of vindication and restoration that, to quote Josephus, ‘more than anything else, incited the Jews to revolt’ (514).
The discourse as a whole then works as follows. Jesus has been asked about the destruction of the Temple. His reply has taken the disciples through the coming scenario: great tribulation, false messiahs arising, themselves hauled before magistrates. They need to know both that Jerusalem is to be destroyed and that they must not stand and fight, but must escape while they can. There will then occur the great cataclysmic event which will be at the same time (a) the final judgment on the city that has now come, with awful paradox, to symbolize rebellion against YHWH; (b) the great deliverance promised in the prophets; and (c) the vindication of the prophet who had predicted the downfall, and who had claimed to be embodying in himself all that Jerusalem and the Temple had previously stood for. (515)
The third guiding thread is the assumption that in private he would naturally have spoken less ambiguously about the destruction of the temple ‘in language which made it clear that he regarded Herod’s Temple, and the regime of Caiaphas and his family, as part of the problem, part of the exilic state of the people of YHWH, rather than as part of the solution’ (516).
These three guiding threads lead to a ruthless repudiation of traditional speculation about a heavenly figure who would descend to earth on a cloud:
This monstrosity, much beloved (though for different reasons) by both fundamentalists and would-be ‘critical’ scholars, can be left behind, appropriately enough, in the centre of his mythological maze, where he will no doubt continue to lure unwary travellers to a doom consisting of endless footnotes and ever-increasing epicycles of hypothetical and unprovable Traditionsgeschichte. The truly ‘apocalyptic’ ‘son of man’ has nothing to do with such a figure. Within the historical world of the first century, Daniel was read as a revolutionary kingdom-of-god text, in which Israel’s true representative(s) would be vindicated after their trial and suffering at the hands of the pagans. Jesus, as part of his prophetic work of announcing the kingdom, aligned himself with the ‘people of the saints of the most high’, that is, with the ‘one like a son of man’. In other words, he regarded himself as the one who summed up Israel’s vocation and destiny in himself. He was the one in and through whom the real ‘return from exile’ would come about, indeed, was already coming about. He was the Messiah. (517)
Wright considers next the messianic implications of the trial narrative and argues that the account moves through four stages on an historically coherent and comprehensible trajectory. There is, first, the ‘false’ accusation regarding Jesus and the temple. Secondly, there is the question of messiahship: Wright reminds us that the term ‘Messiah’ in this context cannot be understood in trinitarian or incarnational terms. Jesus’ response to the high priest, thirdly, is an affirmation both of his messiahship and, by way of reference again to Daniel 7 and to Psalm 110, of his expectation of being vindicated. Wright suggests, moreover, that at this point Caiaphas and his regime have been implicitly recast as the new Antiochus Epiphanes, the fourth beast to Jesus’ Son of man (525-526). The fourth stage, the hardest to understand historically, is the accusation of blasphemy. Four lines of thought point towards the charge: i) Jesus’ opposition to the temple and the high priest; ii) the exaltation of Jesus to the right hand of God (Mk.14:62), not as a ‘transcendent’ figure but as Israel’s king; iii) the symbolism of clouds, signifying a theophany; and iv) the supposition, presented earlier (439-442), that Jesus was regarded as a ‘false prophet’ who was ‘leading Israel astray’.
In this final section Wright is concerned principally to establish the fact that Jesus was consciously following a ‘messianic programme’, in which in some sense he was claiming to represent Israel himself, not only in Jerusalem but throughout his work (528-538). To this end he examines messianic praxis and sayings in Jesus’ early ministry and the ‘call’ that he received at the time of his baptism.
Wright’s explanation of the Roman and Jewish charges against Jesus can be summarized conveniently. As far as the Roman authorities were concerned, Jesus was executed as a rebel against Rome, but matters were complicated by the political situation:
First, Pilate recognized that Jesus was not the ordinary sort of revolutionary leader, a lestes or brigand. If he was a would-be Messiah, he was a highly unusual one. Part of this recognition came, we may suppose, through the prisoner’s own equivocation: ‘the words are yours’, as all four accounts have it. Second, Pilate therefore realized that the Jewish leaders had their own reasons for wanting Jesus executed, and were using the charge of sedition as a convenient excuse. Third, this gave him the opening to do what he would normally expect to do, which was to refuse their request; he tried this, but failed. He failed, fourth, because it was pointed out to him in no uncertain terms that if he did not execute a would-be rebel king he would stand accused, himself, of disloyalty to Caesar. (546-547)
The Jewish authorities condemned Jesus as a false-prophet and would-be Messiah who had committed the further outrage of claiming that he would eventually be vindicated and rule at the right hand of God. He was sent to the Roman governor, therefore, on a capital charge:
i) because many (not least many Pharisees, but also, probably, the chief priests) saw him as ‘a false prophet, leading Israel astray’;
ii) because, as one aspect of this, they saw his Temple-action as a blow against the central symbol not only of national life but also of YHWH’spresence with his people;
iii) because, though he was clearly not leading a real or organized military revolt, he saw himself as in some sense Messiah, and could thus become a focus of serious revolutionary activity;
iv) because, as the pragmatic focus of these three points, they saw him as a dangerous political nuisance, whose actions might well call down the wrath of Rome upon Temple and nation alike;
v) because, at the crucial moment in the hearing, he not only (as far as they were concerned) pleaded guilty to the above charges, but also did so in such a way as to place himself, blasphemously, alongside the god of Israel.
The Last Supper is understood as a ‘deliberate double drama’, which told both the story of divine deliverance from tyranny and the story of Jesus’ life and death (554). Jesus’ actions with the bread and the cup are to be regarded as prophetic symbolism. The relation of the meal to the temple-action strongly suggests that he intended a contrast to be perceived ‘between the Temple-system and Jesus himself, specifically, his own approaching death’ (558, emphasis removed). The meal, however, is also interpreted by Jesus’ words: i) the bread is identified with his body; ii) the cup is made a sign of the forgiveness of Israel’s sins, the renewal of the covenant, the great return from exile; iii) Jesus insists that this will be the last meal with his disciples before the coming of the kingdom; and iv) the disciples are commanded to repeat the meal ‘as a way of remembering Jesus himself’.
If Jesus was announcing that the kingdom of God was in the process of happening, we must ask the question: what did he think would happen next? Two clues emerge from the preceding investigation: i) the expectation of a battle not against the pagan occupying force but against satan; and ii) the ‘revolutionary way of being revolutionary’ that he had taught his followers: ‘At the heart of that subversive wisdom was the call to his followers to take up the cross and follow him, to become his companions in the kingdom-story he was enacting’ (564). Wright argues that Jesus took this story with the utmost seriousness: ‘He would defeat evil by letting it do its worst to him.’ But this can only be grasped if we do not extract Jesus from the world of Jewish apocalyptic eschatology.
Wright next examines the ‘various riddles which circle around Jesus’ awareness of where his work was leading him’: the parable of the tenants, in which the murder of the son precipitates judgment on the tenants; the great commandment saying, with its hint that the sacrificial system would be replaced; the story of the prophetic anointing of Jesus for burial; and the sayings about the green wood and the dry (Luke 23:27-31), the hen and her chicks, and the cup that Jesus must drink and the baptism with which he must be baptized (565-574).
Finally, there are Jesus’ predictions of the passion to be considered, which must be understood in relation to the distinctive vocation that emerges from the ‘riddles’ about his death: ‘The “son of man” – the representative of the people of the saints of the most high – would find the beasts waging war upon him; but he would be vindicated’ (576). In order to pursue this idea further, it is necessary to ask: ‘what resources were available to Jesus for reflecting on how the kingdom might come through the suffering and death of Israel’s representative?’
The controlling story is the now familiar one about exile and restoration, but a particular emphasis is placed on the exodus motif as the ‘clsasic Jewish metanarrative’ that made sense of the hope of restoration. Within this story are two subplots. First, there is the belief that ‘the kingdom would finally come through a time of intense suffering’ – the messianic woes. Secondly, there is the expectation of ‘specific or individual suffering’, found in the tradition of the suffering prophet, in the Qumranic belief that the community would suffer because of their faith in the Teacher of Righteousness, and in the stories of the Maccabean martyrs. ‘According to this tradition, the suffering and perhaps the death of certain Jews could function within YHWH’s plan to redeem his people from pagan oppression: to win for them, in other words, rescue from wrath, forgiveness of sins, and covenant renewal’ (583).
This tradition is then traced back to the scriptures. Daniel is an ‘obvious source for first-century reflection on the way in which the fate of nation and martyr hange together’. Behind this we find the Levitical sacrificial code, the Psalms (especially the Psalms of lament), the story of judgment and restoration in Zechariah, Ezekiel’s symbolic experience of the punishment of Israel (Ezek.4:1-6), and above all Isaiah 40-55. Four points are made in relation to this last text; i) the servant passages must be read in the context of the whole story about restoration; ii) the text was an important in the Maccabean period as a way of making sense of the suffering of the righteous; iii) there is evidence that Isaiah’s servant figure was interpreted messianically; and iv) this does not mean that ‘pre-Christian Judaism… embraced a doctrine of a suffering Messiah, still less a dying one’ (590).
What follows from this in terms of the world within which Jesus read the Jewish scriptures, and came to an understanding of his own vocation? There was no such thing as a straightforward pre-Christian Jewish belief in an Isaianic ‘servant of YHWH’ who, perhaps as Messiah, would suffer and die to make atonement for Israel or for the world. But there was something else, which literally dozens of texts attest: a large-scale and widespread belief, to which Isaiah 40-55 made a substantial contribution, that Israel’s present state of suffering was somehow held within the ongoing divine purpose; that in due time this period of woe would come to an end, with divine wrath falling instead on the pagan nations that had oppressed Israel (and perhaps on renegades within Israel herself); that the explanation for the present state of affairs had to do with Israel’s own sin, for which either she, or in some cases her righteous representatives, was or were being punished; and that this suffering and punishment would therefore, somehow, hasten the moment when Israel’s tribulation would be complete, when she would finally have been purified from her sin so that her exile could be undone at last. There was, in other words, a belief, hammered out not in abstract debate but in and through poverty, exile, torture and martyrdom, that Israel’s sufferings might be, not merely a state from which she would, in YHWH’s good time, be redeemed, but paradoxically, under certain circumstances and in certain senses, part of the means by which that redemption would be effected. (591)
Wright next asks the question: ‘How can we understand his predictions of his own sufferings, within his thoroughly Jewish pre-Easter context?’ Some useful summary statements head this discussion:
I propose… that we can credibly reconstruct a mindset in which a first-century Jew could come to believe that YHWH would act through the suffering of a particular individual in whom Israel’s sufferings were focused; that this suffering would carry redemptive significance; and that this individual would be himself. And I propose that we can plausibly suggest that this was the mindset of Jesus himself. (593)
The hypothesis I now wish to advance draws these three together into one. I propose that Jesus, consistent with the inner logic of his entire kingdom-praxis, -story and -symbolism, told the second-Temple story of the suffering and exile of the people of yhwh in a new form, and proceeded to act it out, finding himself called, like Ezekiel, symbolically to undergo the fate he had announced, in symbol and word, for Jerusalem as a whole. (594)
He took upon himself the totally and comprehensibly Jewish vocation not only of critique from within; not only of opposition from within; but of suffering the consequences of critique and opposition from within. And, with that, he believed – of course! – that YHWH would vindicate him. That too was comprehensibly Jewish. (595)
In two respects, however, Jesus differed from his predecessors: i) his aim was not nationalistic victory over the pagans but to make Israel what she was called to be – the light of the world; and ii) Jesus took upon himself the ‘wrath’ of God (‘which, as usual in Jewish thought, refers to hostile military action’) not simply because Israel had compromised with paganism but more importantly because ‘she had refused his way of peace’.
Jesus’ sense of vocation arose from his reading of four main sections of scripture: Daniel, Zechariah, the Psalms, and Isaiah 40-55. Wright demonstrates how each of these texts contributed to the expectation ‘that he would have to suffer, and that that suffering would somehow be redemptive’ (599-604).
Jesus believed that his death would accomplish the two crucial messianic tasks: the restoration or rebuilding of the temple and the defeat of Israel’s enemies. The parallelism between the temple-action and the last supper suggests that he ‘saw his own approaching death in terms of the sacrificial cult’, and specifically in terms of the Passover: ‘the one-off moment of freedom in Israel’s past, now to be translated intot he one-off moment which would inaugurate Israel’s future’ (605). The battle against the forces of darkness (the real enemy behind his visible opponents) was to be fought on two fronts: the confrontation with his ‘accuser’ Caiaphas and the confrontation with the might of Rome.
Jesus therefore took up his own cross. He had come to see it… in deeply symbolic terms: symbolic, now, not merely of Roman oppression, but of the way of love and peace which he had commended so vigorously, the way of defeat which he had announced as the way of victory. Unlike his actions in the Temple and the upper room, the cross was a symbol not of praxis but of passivity, not of action but of passion. It was to become the symbol of victory, but not of the victory of Caesar, nor of those who would oppose Caesar with Caesar’s methods. It was to become the symbol, because it would be the means, of the victory of God. (610)
The final chapter addresses the question of what Jesus believed about the return of YHWH to Zion, which leads to a further question: why was Jesus worshipped ‘in early, very Jewish, and still insistently monotheist Christianity’? Wright’s proposal is that Jesus’ final journey to Jerusalem was, like the temple-action and the last supper, a symbolic action that embodied the reality. ‘Jesus went to Jerusalem in order to embody the third and last element of the coming of the kingdom. He was not content to announce that YHWH was returning to Zion. He intended to enact, symbolize and personify that climactic event’ (615).
The Jewish background to this question has three components: the hope of YHWH’s return, speculation about an agent who would be exalted to share the throne of God, and the symbolic language used for YHWH’s activity in the world.
The hope of YHWH’s return: Wright quotes a large number of biblical passages that express this hope (616-621). Although there was a geographical return from exile, there is no accompanying manifestation of the glory (as with the exodus), Israel’s enemies go undefeated, and there is no ‘universally welcome royal dynasty’. It is unsurprising, therefore, that the tradition of YHWH’s return to Zion is maintained in the post-biblical writings.
Sharing the throne of God: the point is that ‘according to some texts from this poeriod, when YHWH acted in history, the agent through whom he acted would be vindicated, exalted, and honoured in a quite unprecedented manner’ (624). The two main texts that Wright has in mind are Ezekiel 1 and Daniel 7. He points out that whereas in Ezekiel’s vision there is only one figure on the throne, Daniel implies that there are two. According to the Septuagint translation of Dan.7:13 the Son of man figure comes not to but as the Ancient of Days, suggesting that the Son of man took upon himself the form and character of God. A brief survey of how this tradition developed in second Temple Judaism leads to the following conclusion:
Out of a much larger and highly complex set of speculations about the action of Israel’s god through various mediator-figures, one possible scenario that some second-Temple Jews regarded as at least thinkable was that the earthly and military victory of the Messiah over the pagans would be seen in terms of the enthronement-scene from Daniel 7, itself a development of the chariot-vision in Ezekiel 1. (629)
Symbols for God and God’s activity: Jewish monotheism used the symbols of Shekinah (glory), Torah, Wisdom, Logos and Spirit to affirm YHWH’s active involvement in the world and especially in the life of Israel. The fact that the Messiah was also closely associated with these symbols signifies that he ‘would be the agent or even the vicegerent of Israel’s god, would fight his battles, would restore his people, would rebuild or cleanse the house so that the Shekinah would again dwell in it’ (630).
Stories of YHWH’s return to Zion: Jesus’ final journey to Jerusalem is the ‘symbolic enacting of the great central kingdom-promise, that YHWH would at last return to Zion, to judge and to save’. This action is interpreted by a number of stories and riddles that Jesus told that involved the return of a king or master. Wright rejects readings of these texts that find in them prophecies of Jesus’ ‘second coming’ and sketches an alternative approach:
First, I reiterate my earlier point. Jesus did speak of ‘the coming of the son of man’, but that this whole phrase has to be taken quite strictly in its Danielic sense, in which ‘coming’ refers to the son of man ‘coming’ to the Ancient of Days. He is not ‘coming’ to earth from heaven, but the other way around.
Second, I propose that Jesus did speak of a ‘coming’ figure in the more usual sense of ‘one who comes to Israel’. This coming figure was YHWH himself, as promised in the texts we have set out above. Jesus, I suggest, thought of the coming of YHWH as an event which was bound up with his own career and its forthcoming climax.
On this basis he examines at some length the parable of the talents or pounds, drawing from it two main points of interpretation: i) ‘it was a warning that, when YHWH returned to Zion, he would come as judge for those in Israel who had not been faithful to his commission’; and ii) ‘it was the further warning that his coming of YHWH to Zion was indeed imminent’ (637-638). Other parables of return are interpreted in a similar fashion (640-642).
Riddles of exaltation: Jesus makes a number of statements to the effect that he will be not only vindicated but ‘enthroned’, bringing together Psalm 110 and Daniel 7. This claim lies at the root of the charge of blasphemy against him.
The trial scene, which we have already studied from several angles, now comes into complete focus. At stake was the whole career of Jesus, climaxing in his journey to Jerusalem, which itself exploded in his action in the Temple, and was further explained by his Last Supper. The trial opened, as it was bound to do, with the question about the Temple. Jesus had claimed authority over it, authority indeed to declare its destruction. This could only be because he believed himself to be the Messiah? Yes, answered Jesus: and you will see me vindicated, enthroned at the right hand of Power. The whole sequence belongs together precisely as a whole. The final answer drew into one statement the significance of the journey to Jerusalem, the Temple-action, and the implicit messianic claim. Together they said that Jesus, not the Temple, was the clue to, and the location of, the presence of Israel’s god with his people. Sociologically, this represented a highly radical Galilean protest against Jerusalem. Politically, it constituted a direct challenge to Caiaphas’ power-base and his whole position - and, of course, to those of Caesar and Pilate. Theologically, it was either true or it was blasphemous. Caiaphas wasted no time considering the former possibility. (644)
This last section attempts to outline, within Jesus’ understanding of his prophetic and messianic calling, a ‘deeper vocation’, manifested supremely in the ‘peculiar appropriateness’ of designating Israel’s god as ‘father’.
By way of conclusion to this chapter Wright summarizes Jesus’ aims and beliefs.
I have argued that Jesus’ underlying aim was based on his faith-awareness of vocation. He believed himself called, by Israel’s god, to evoke the traditions which promised YHWH’s return to Zion, and the somewhat more nebulous but still important traditions which spoke of a human figure sharing the divine throne; to enact those traditions in his own journey to Jerusalem, his messianic act in the Temple, and his death at the hands of the pagans (in the hope of subsequent vindication); and thereby to embody YHWH’s return. (651)
Jesus’ beliefs remained essentially those of ‘a first-century Jew’ (ie. monotheism, election and eschatology), but a first-century Jew ‘who believed that the kingdom was coming in and through his own work’.
I suggest, in short, that the return of YHWH to Zion, and the Temple-theology which it brings into focus, are the deepest keys and clues to gospel christology. Forget the ‘titles’ of Jesus, at least for a moment; forget the pseudo-orthodox attempts to make Jesus of Nazareth conscious of being the second person of the Trinity; forget the arid reductionism that is the mirror-image of that unthinking would-be orthodoxy. Focus, instead, on a young Jewish prophet telling a story about YHWH returning to Zion as judge and redeemer, and then embodying it by riding into the city in tears, symbolizing the Temple’s destruction and celebrating the final exodus. I propose, as a matter of history, that Jesus of Nazareth was conscious of a vocation: a vocation, given him by the one he knew as ‘father’, to enact in himself what, in Israel’s scriptures, God had promised to accomplish all by himself. He would be the pillar of cloud and fire for the people of the new exodus. He would embody in himself the returning and redeeming action of the covenant God. (653)