Week 7 Post

This week, we read The Jesus We'll Never Know by Scot McKnight. McKnight claims that the Jewish Jesus and the historical Jesus differ. He says, "Jesus" refers to the Jesus who lived and breathed and ate and talked and called disciples. This Jesus is the Jesus who was crucified under Pontius Pilate and, according to the witness of many, was raised again." He then goes on to say that the historical Jesus is someone or something else. This, at first glance, caught my eye because it made me wonder, how can their be two different types of Jesus? How can the historical Jesus differ from the "Jewish" Jesus? What is his explanation? And as I read on I discovered what he means.

The "Jewish" Jesus is the Jesus we all know; the Jesus we have all heard about and learned about since we were young. This is our basis. Now the historical Jesus, according to McKnight, is the "Jesus whom scholars have reconstructed over against the canonical portraits of Jesus in the Gospels of our New Testament, and over against the orthodox Jesus of the church." Meaning, the historical Jesus has been fashioned together by scholars on the basis of historical methods. However, scholars differ so it can be deduced that their methods differ as well. This leads to differing reconstructions which leads to differing images of Jesus. So he asks, "whose Jesus will we trust? Will it be that of the evangelists and the apostles? Will it be the church's orthodox Jesus? Or will it be the latest proposal from a brilliant historian?" This question intrigues me because it probes me. What Jesus do I trust? Do I follow what every historian has pieced together to make up the figure Jesus? And the answer is no. As a matter of fact, I see Jesus in probably a different way than anyone else does, and that's the essential take of it. We need to see Jesus in our own light, because everyone is different, and different things work differently for others. If we don't allow ourselves to view Jesus as we see him, and rather listen to how others see him, then our belief is not as strong. If we take other people's images of Jesus and try and use them as our own, we are not going to fully capture the essence of what Jesus is for us. This is the main point of Scot McKnight's essay, and reading this has reminded me that I have to stick to what I believe Jesus to be, because that is what works, and will continue to work.