Jesus the Apocalyptic Preacher

An excellent introduction to the concept of apocalypticism by Bart Ehrman

In this thread I am trying to argue that Jesus understood himself to be the messiah.  So far I have made one of my two main arguments, with the understanding that *both* arguments have to be considered in order to have a compelling case.  So the first prong doesn’t prove much on its own.  But in combination with the second argument, it makes a strong case.  The first argument is that Jesus’ followers would not have understood him as the messiah after his death (as they did) unless they believed him to be the messiah before his death – even if they came to believe he had been raised from the dead, that would not have made them think he was the messiah.   I’ve explained why in my previous post.

The second involves showing that it was not only the disciples who understood Jesus to be the messiah before his death, but that Jesus himself did.  This is even harder to show, but I think there is really compelling evidence.  There are two major points I’m going to make, from two different sets of data.  But before explaining either one, I have to lay out the overarching context for Jesus’ teaching and ministry, the world view known as Jewish apocalypticism.

Jewish apocalypticism was a very common view in Jesus’ day – it was the view of the Essenes who wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls, of the Pharisees, of John the Baptist, later of the Apostle Paul – and almost certainly of Jesus.  I can demonstrate that in some later thread if it seems appropriate.  For now, let me just say that this is a widely held view among critical scholars – by far the majority view for over a century, since the writings of Albert Schweitzer.

What did early Jewish apocalypticists believe?  Let me break it down into four component themes.  I have drawn this discussion from my textbook on the New Testament.

Dualism

Jewish apocalypticists were dualists.  That is to say, they maintained that there were two fundamental components to all of reality: the forces of good and the forces of evil.  The forces of good were headed by God himself, the forces of evil by his superhuman enemy, sometimes called Satan, or Beelzebub, or the Devil.  On the side of God were the good angels; on the side of the Devil were the demons.  On the side of God were righteousness and life; on the side of the Devil were sin and death.  These were actual forces, cosmic powers to which human beings could be subject and with which they had to be aligned.  No one was in neutral territory.  People stood either with God or with Satan, they were in the light or in darkness, they were in the truth or in error.

This apocalyptic dualism had clear historical implications.  All of history could be divided into two ages, the present age and the age to come.  The present age was the age of sin and evil, when the powers of darkness were in the ascendancy, when those who sided with God were made to suffer by those in control of this world, when sin, disease, famine, violence, and death were running rampant.  For some unknown reason, God had relinquished control of this age to the powers of evil.  And things were getting worse.

At the end of this age, however, God would reassert himself, intervening in history and destroying the forces of evil.  There would come a cataclysmic break in which all that was opposed to God would be annihilated, and God would bring in a new age.  In this new age, there would be no more suffering or pain; there would be no more hatred, or despair, or war, or disease, or death.  God would be the ruler of all, in a kingdom that would never end.

Pessimism

Even though, in the long run, everything would work out for those who sided with God, in the short term things did not look good.  Jewish apocalypticists maintained that those who sided with God were going to suffer in this age, and there was nothing they could do to stop it.  The forces of evil were going to grow in power as they attempted to wrest sovereignty over this world away from God.  There was no thought here of being able to improve the human condition through mass education or advanced technologies.  The righteous could not make their lives better, because the forces of evil were in control, and those who sided with God were opposed by those who were much stronger than they.  Things would get worse and worse until the very end, when quite literally, all hell was to break loose.

Vindication

But at the end, when the suffering of God’s people was at its height, God would finally intervene on their behalf and vindicate his name.  For in this perspective God was not only the creator of this world, he was also its redeemer.  And his vindication would be universal: it would affect the entire world, not simply the Jewish nation.  Jewish apocalypticists maintained that the entire creation had become corrupt because of the presence of sin and the power of Satan.  This universal corruption required a universal redemption; God would destroy all that is evil and create a new heaven and a new earth, one in which the forces of evil would have no place whatsoever.

Different apocalypticists had different views concerning how God would bring about this new creation, even though they all claimed to have received the details by a revelation from God.  In some apocalyptic scenarios, God was to send a human messiah to lead the troops of the children of light into battle against the forces of evil.  In others, God was to send a kind of cosmic judge of the earth, sometimes also called the messiah or the “Son of Man” to bring about a cataclysmic overthrow of the demonic powers that oppressed the children of light.

This final vindication would involve a day of judgment for all people. Those who had aligned themselves with the powers of evil would face the Almighty Judge, and render an account of what they had done; those who had remained faithful to the true God would be rewarded and brought into his eternal kingdom.  Moreover, this judgment applied not only to people who happened to be living at the time of the end.  No one should think, that is, that he or she could side with the powers of evil, oppress the people of God, die prosperous and contented, and so get away with it.  God would allow no one to escape.  He was going to raise all people bodily from the dead, and they would have to face judgment, eternal bliss for those who had taken his side, eternal torment for everyone else.  And there was not a sweet thing that anyone could do to stop him.

Imminence

According to Jewish apocalypticists, this vindicaton of God was going to happen very soon.  Standing in the tradition of the prophets of the Hebrew Bible, apocalypticists maintained that God had revealed to them the course of history, and that the end was almost here.  Those who were evil had to repent, before it was too late.  Those who were good, who were suffering as a result, were to hold on.  For it would not be long before God would intervene, sending a savior — possibly on the clouds of heaven in judgment on the earth — bringing with him the good kingdom for those who remained faithful to his Law.  Indeed, the end was right around the corner.  In the words of one first-century Jewish apocalypticist:  “Truly I tell you, there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see that that kingdom of God has come with power.”  These in fact are the words of Jesus (Mark 9:1).  Or as he says elsewhere, “Truly I tell you, this generation will not pass away before all these things have taken place” (Mark 13:30).

Our earliest traditions about Jesus portray him as a Jewish apocalypticist who responded to the political and social crises of his day, including the domination of his nation by a foreign power, by proclaiming that his generation was living at the end of the age, that God would soon intervene on behalf of his people, sending a cosmic judge of the earth, the Son of Man who would destroy the forces of evil and set up God’s kingdom.  In preparation for his coming, the people of Israel needed to repent and turn to God, trusting him as a kindly parent and loving one another as his special children.  Those who refused to accept this message would be liable to the judgment of God, soon to arrive with the coming of the Son of Man.

Scholars today talk not only about the three Synoptic Gospels, but also their sources (as they did, in fact, in Schweitzer’s day as well).  It is striking that apocalyptic teachings are found on Jesus lips in all layers of our tradition:  they are found in our earliest Gospel Mark.  Read chapter 13!  And Mark’s summary of Jesus’ teaching in 1:15 is thoroughly apocalyptic: the end of this current age is at hand, the Kingdom of God is soon to arrive, people need to repent in preparation for it.

Such sayings are also found in the source common to Matthew and Luke commonly called Q.  They can be found in the material unique to Matthew, from the source(s) scholars call M.  They are present as well in the material unique to Luke, from the source(s) scholars call L.  In other words, they are at every layer of our Synoptic traditions.  (I give lots of examples in my fuller treatment of this matter in my book Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millennium.)

When you arrange the Gospels chronologically, it is striking that the apocalyptic preaching so prominent in Mark and Q later begins to fade (Luke’s Gospel), then to disappear (John’s Gospel), and then to be opposed (the Gospel of Thomas).  Why is that?  Because the expected end of the age never arrived, the Kingdom never came.  And so Jesus’ teaching was modified over the course of time, to accommodate the new situation the Christian story-tellers found themselves in.

The earliest traditions are unified, however: Jesus proclaimed an apocalyptic message.  In my next post I’ll give one other compelling reason for thinking that Jesus must have been principally an apocalypticist, before laying out – possible in just one post! – what I think the core of Jesus’ teaching must have been.  I will then be in a position to argue that he saw himself as the messiah.

Over the years scholars have adduced lots of reasons for thinking that Jesus – like many others in his day – was a Jewish apocalypticist, one who thought that the world was controlled by forces of evil but that God was very soon going to intervene to overthrow everything and everyone opposed to him in order to set up a good kingdom here on earth.  As I pointed out in my previous post, this is the view found in Jesus’ teachings in Mark (e.g., ch. 13), in Q (the source used by Matthew and Luke for many of their sayings), in M (Matthew’s special source[s]), and in L (Luke’s special source[s]).

There is another very good argument for thinking that Jesus must have subscribed to some kind of apocalyptic view (I’ll lay out what his exact views apparently were in a future post).  In fact, this argument is so good that I wish I had thought of it myself!  But alas, credit goes to others.  The argument, as I usually phrase it, is that “the beginning and the end are the keys to the middle.”

We know with relative certainty how Jesus began his public ministry: it was by associating with and being baptized by John the Baptist, an apocalyptic preacher of doom.   And we know with relative certainty what happened in the wake of Jesus’ life and death: the establishment of apocalyptically minded communities of those claiming to follow him.   The beginning was apocalyptic; the aftermath was apocalyptic.  What came in between must almost certainly have been apocalyptic. I’ll flush out the argument later.

For now, let me begin to explicate.   First, the baptism.   There are some aspects of Jesus’ life that are about as certain as ancient history can be certain.  It is virtually certain, for example, that he was a Jewish preacher from Galilee; that in his last week he made a trip to Jerusalem; that he was there arrested and crucified on order of the Roman prefect Pontius Pilate.   All that is virtually beyond dispute, except among people who on principle dispute everything because they prefer conspiracy theory to historical argument.   But historically all that is pretty certain.

Other things in Jesus’ life are also pretty certain, even if not quite *as* certain as, say, the fact he got crucified.  Among those other really certain things about him is the fact that before he began his own preaching ministry he associated with John the Baptist and was baptized by him.   This is all highly significant.

Before exploring its significance, I need to explain why it is so certain.   When trying to establish what happened in Jesus’ life, historians do what they do with *every* figure from the past.  They look for what our sources of information say.  We don’t simply trust our sources because they say something, even if they say something that we want to think.  We critically examine our sources with highly skeptical eyes, in order to differentiate between fact and fiction.

Historians who want to determine what happened to a person in the past look for multiple sources of information (not just one – since one source may have made something up) that are all independent of one another (so that they aren’t simply getting their claims from one another) that basically corroborate each other’s accounts and that are not simply giving information that accords with their own personal biases.

And that’s precisely what we get when it comes to reports of Jesus’ association with John the Baptist.   Take all our Gospel sources: Mark, Q, M, L, and John.   And what do you find?   Jesus’ connection with John is attested, independently, all over the place (at the *least* in Mark, Q, and John).

Moreover, the story of Jesus being baptized by John is not the sort of thing that later Christians would have been likely to make up, for a pretty obvious reason.   The early Christians believed that a person who baptized another was their spiritual superior.  What Christian would make up the idea that John the Baptist was Jesus’ spiritual superior?  Moreover, John was baptizing people for the “remission of sins.”  Who would invent the idea that Jesus needed to have a remission for his sins?  We’re talkin’ the Son of God here….

And so the story of Jesus being baptized by John is almost certainly told in all our Gospels because it is a historical fact (even if the details in this or that story are later embelleshments).

And why is that significant for understanding Jesus as an apocalypticist?  Because of what John stood for.   We get the clearest expression of John’s views in our earliest account of his preaching, in Q.  Here John is shown to be a proclaimer of imminent apocalyptic destruction.  As he says, in urging people to repent:   “The axe is already laid at the root of the tree; every tree that does not bear good fruit will be cut down and cast into the fire” (see Luke 3:9).

This is an apocalyptic image of coming destruction.  People who do not live worthily of God by “bearing good fruit” will be cut down and destroyed by fire.  And when will that happen?  The axe is already laid to the root of the tree – in other words, the chopping is now ready to begin.  Judgment is here and will soon take place.

This is the message Jesus associated with.  It is important to recognize that Jesus had all sorts of religious options in his day.  He could have joined the Pharisees.  He could have committed to the views of the Sadducees.  He could have joined a political revolutionary movement.  He could have simply minded his own business and gotten on with life.  But what he did instead was go to John the Baptist, a preacher of imminent apocalyptic doom, and join his movement.

There can be little doubt that Jesus began his ministry on an apocalyptic note.   In the aftermath of Jesus’ life apocalyptic communities of his followers emerged.  Jesus was the historical connection between that beginning and that end.  His life and ministry must have been apocalyptic as well, as I will be arguing further.