Jesus Christ and Contemporary Bible Teaching: Questions about the Jesus of History

Biblic al Studies Wrocławski Przegląd Teologiczny 28 (2020) 1, 7–22 Wrocław Theological Review Stefano Tarocchi Facoltà Teologica dell’Italia Centrale, Florence, Italy ORCID: 0000-0002-5254-059X Jesus Christ and Contemporary Bible Teaching: Questions about the Jesus of History* Jezus Chrystus i współczesne nauczanie Biblii. Kwestia Jezusa jako postaci historycznej Abstr act: When defending the divinity of Christ, it is very easy to highlight and criticize the tendency to reduce or transform Jesus into a mythical symbol or a timeless archetype, and thus to slip into crypto-monophysitism. There is a risk in this approach of obscuring or neglecting the true and full humanity of Christ, including His Jewishness. The Gospels are a necessary source when investigating the historical person of Jesus, in order to, as J.P. Meier said, “prevent a bourgeois form of Christianity from domesticating Jesus (…). The reader who wanted to know the real Jesus should close this book immediately because the historical Jesus is not the real Jesus or the easy way to Him. The real Jesus is not accessible and will never be” (English transl. by WTR). This quotation confirms the importance of an accurate study of the New Testament texts. Through the witnesses of the events transmitted to us, we are able to meet the real Jesus Christ, the one who is the subject and the object of the Gospel. Keywords: Gospel, Gospels, evangelist, historicity, monophysitism, witness, witnesses, biblical sciences Abstr akt: Broniąc boskości Chrystusa, łatwo podkreślać i krytykować tendencję do redukowania lub przekształcania Jezusa do postaci mitycznego symbolu czy ponadczasowego archetypu, co prowadzi na terytorium kryptomonofizytyzmu. Podejście, w którym przesłania się lub zaniedbuje aspekt prawdziwego i pełnego człowieczeństwa Chrystusa, w tym Jego żydowskie pochodzenie, niesie za sobą pewne ryzyko. Ewangelie są niezbędnym źródłem podczas prowadzenia badań nad Jezusem jako * The article is based on the text of the speech delivered during the International Scientific Conference on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the Pontifical Faculty of Theology in post-war Poland “Theology in the World of Science,” which was held at the Pontifical Faculty of Theology in Wroclaw on 22–23 June, 2018. DOI: 10.34839/wpt.2020.28.1.7-22 © Papieski Wydział Teologiczny we Wrocławiu 8 Stefano Tarocchi postacią historyczną. Jak ujął to J.P. Meier, mają „zapobiegać udomowieniu Jezusa przez burżuazyjną formę chrześcijaństwa (…). Czytelnik, który chce poznać prawdziwego Jezusa, powinien natychmiast zamknąć tę książkę, ponieważ Jezus jako postać historyczna nie jest ani prawdziwym Jezusem, ani łatwą drogą do Niego. Prawdziwy Jezus nie jest dostępny i nigdy nie będzie” (tłum. wyd.). Ten cytat potwierdza znaczenie precyzyjnych badań nad tekstami Nowego Testamentu. Patrząc oczami świadków przekazywanych nam wydarzeń, możemy spotkać prawdziwego Jezusa Chrystusa, przedmiot i podmiot Ewangelii. Słowa kluczowe: Ewangelia, Ewangelie, ewangelista, historyczność, monofizytyzm, świadek, świadkowie, biblistyka Many people in the Western world, highly educated, including many sincere non-believers, often raise questions about the historical reality of the Jesus announced by the Church… Not to engage with these serious historical researchers at the academic level would be to fail in our duty to them and would leave many educated Catholics to question the historical foundations of their faith. T his is how the American scholar J.P. Meier expressed himself at a conference at the Faculty of Theology at the Pontifical Lateran University on the theme of the historical Jesus.1 This premise introduces new perspectives on the study of the figure of Christ in the disjointed panorama of secularization and de-Christianization in the present day. We must ask ourselves what impact this issue of engagement can have on the way we teach about Jesus Christ in biblical science subjects. Christ and the witnesses2 First of all, I believe that we should wisely resume the assumption that the Gospels were not born in test tubes. All the Gospels, both those that ended 1 2 It should be added, however, that if “the Jesus of history [unlike prophets such as Amos and Isaiah] refuses to be involved in today’s political or economic programs” this shows that “when the Word was incarnated, it was not incarnated in an astorical or aseptic way.” Cf. J.P. Meier, La distinzione tra cristologia e ricerca sul Gesù storico, [in:] Ricerca storica su Gesù. Bilanci e prospettive, N. Ciola, A. Pitta, G. Pulcinelli (eds.), SB 81, Bologna 2017, pp. 199–216, cf. 212. Cf. J.D.G. Dunn, Gli albori del cristianesimo. 1. La memoria di Gesù. 1. Fede e Gesù storico, Intr. St Bib Suppl. 29, Brescia 2006; idem, Gli albori del cristianesimo. 1. La memoria di Gesù. 2. La missione di Gesù, Intr. St Bib. Suppl. 30, Brescia 2006; idem, Gli albori del Jesus Christ and Contemporary Bible Teaching… 9 up in the New Testament canon and the apocryphal ones, reveal an important relationship with the object to which they refer: Jesus Christ. It is a relationship constantly linked to faith in Him, although expressed in completely different ways. However, we can also say that “when we open an ordinary Gospel, the first person we meet is not Jesus, but the writer/evangelist, who plays a role as a witness of faith.”3 Consequently, “what we have today are the memories of the first disciples, not Jesus Himself, but Jesus remembered.” And this is no minor point. There is the potential here to immediately highlight the tendency to reduce or transform Jesus into a mythical symbol or a timeless archetype, and thus slip into crypto-monophysism.4 Further, in defending the divinity of Christ, there is a risk of obscuring or neglecting the true and full humanity of Christ, including His Jewishness. Therefore: It is not enough to confess that Jesus is a true man: it is too general a statement. Man means that the personality of each person can be defined by the individual cultures that make up diversity. Now Jesus is not only a man, He is a Jew, a fact of reality that needs to be strongly reaffirmed: He whom we call Our Lord is a Jew. Incarnation is humanization, but it is also historicization and 5 inculturation. So, this is the incarnation that is to be taken seriously. Thus, the Gospels are a necessary source when investigating the historical person of Jesus, in order to “prevent a bourgeois form of Christianity from 3 4 5 cristianesimo. 1. La memoria di Gesù. 3. L’acme della missione di Gesù, Intr. St. Bib Suppl. 31, Brescia 2007; idem, Gli albori del cristianesimo. 2. Gli inizi a Gerusalemme, 1. La prima fase, Intr. St Bib Suppl. 52, Brescia 2012; F. Manns, L’ebreo di Nazareth. Indagine sulle radici del cristianesimo, Milano 2019. R. Penna, La fede cristiana alle sue origini!, Cinisello Balsamo 2013, p. 93. With regard to monophysism, I deliberately choose the definition given by the Treccani Encyclop (...truncated)