The Social Setting Of Jesus And The Gospels [Paperback]

Editor Stegemann is to be commended for assembling a diverse and highly specialized field of writings into a survey which is about as cohesive as it can be given the few facts we have about Jesus and the vast body of Christian apologetics.

This book is a compilation of essays by contemporary academic writers each of whom take a very rigorous and detailed look at a different aspect of "the historical Jesus" and the origins of "the Jesus Movement". Bring your dictionary- this is not a casual read. And while the language sometimes seems almost showy in its complexit, a majority of the contributors present their ideas in an orderly fashion, and all have important conclusions.

What the editor sets out to do is ambitious: help the serious lay reader strip away the 21st century baggage we unwittingly bring to our reading of Jesus and his teachings. There are few conclusions here, and no proofs, but there are some wonderful insights.

The highly erudite approach to the material necessarily makes the treatment of Jesus seem a bit clinical. But I found it both informative and uplifting. This reader, at least, emerged from the labyrinth with the sense that Jesus-Messiah, avatar, healer, radical and yes, savior -survives the dissection and critique to be resurrected more provocative and inspiring than before.

Mr. Stegemann has done Christendom an important service by admitting the community of faith to the kind of discourse that undergirds the continuing Christian revolution.

I would give this book a fifth star if it had a glossary.

This volume is one of the best academic introductions to social-scientific study of the New Testament available. Most key contemporary scholars in the field are represented, and the essays cover a wide range of issues related to the gospels, including miracles, exorcisms, honour/shame etc.

Seeking to answer the question, "What can one, with the help of historically informed social-scientific models, know about the `historical' Jesus from the New Testament that cannot be know by other approaches?" (vii), this volume is the compilation of paper presented at the Fourth International Meeting of the Context Group in Tutzing, Germany in 1999.

This group is dedicated to interpreting the New Testament by means of historiography, utilizing social science research, once of course after they find a "suitable model" (p. 3) to facilitate such research. This group advocates a minimalist to radical minimalist approach to the text of Scripture. In fact their view of Scripture is simply assumed and never defended, the idea of an inspired and inerrant text from which propositional truth derived would be considered nonsensical. In fact this reviewer could not find a single instance where the word Scripture was even used and there is no mention of inspiration at any level.

This reviewer was struck at the beginning of the book by two things: (1) the distain for any approach to New Testament studies that affirms absolutes in terms of theological truth; and (2) the acrimony towards those who disagree with their affirmations. Once such example should suffice where Malina states:

For the most part, social-scientific research in New Testament studies has been concerned with interpreting written documents, not with the general storytelling of historians. In other words, its concerns have been exegetical, not historiographical . . . This is perhaps why, so far, there has been no "life" of the historical Jesus based on social-scientific interpretations . . .Nonetheless, what has been done with the social sciences is significant, much of it important enough to be plagiarized by John Dominic Crossan (4).

This is a technical work, not for the faint of heart. The authors assume conversance with various social-science constructs and they make no effort to explain their models at all, except as over against why their selected model is chosen over another competing model (p. 15). There is a great deal technical jargon from the social science, such as the so-called "forming" "storming" "norming" "performing" and "adjourning" phases of small group development that the authors ascribe to the ministry of Jesus (pp. 11-15). One author speaks of the "public self" the "private self" and the "in-group self" of Jesus (38) and states that if Jesus did think that He was the Messiah no one would have heard about it in His lifetime because to assert such "private self" beliefs would be a shameful practice (39).

Other chapters discuss "Jesus as Fatherless Child" (65-84); discusses Jesus' baptism by John and His walking on water in terms of "altered states of consciousness" models (108-111); demon possession is described as a "socially accepted way to deal with tensions, because it allowed those possessed to do and say what they could not do or say as a sane person (165). There is a chapter entitled "The Jesus Movement and Network Analysis" (301-32) where the travels of Jesus and His disciples are evaluated in terms of an "ego-centered network" (325).

All of this is simply what we might call the "Quest for the Historical Jesus" on steroids. It is the full-scale abandonment of the text of Scripture as inspired and historical-grammatical hermeneutics as a viable methodology for interpreting and understanding the text. Paul's warning that in the last days there would be those who are "always learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth" (2 Tim 3:7) is the best summation possible for this thoroughly useless book.

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