Jesus in History by Howard Clark Kee

First published: 1970

Edition(s) used:Jesus in History: An Approach to the Study of the Gospels. New York: Harcourt Brace College, 1996

Genre(s): Nonfiction

Subgenre(s): Biblical studies; church history; critical analysis

Core issue(s): Church; Gnosticism; Gospels; Jesus Christ; scriptures; the Word

Overview

Howard Clark Kee is known for his numerous publications on the social and cultural study of emergent Christianity. His work should be understood in the context of two centuries of critical historical study of the Bible, which has developed methodologies for evaluating and interpreting evidence concerning Jesus. Kee maintains that differences in the Gospels must be understood in terms of the diverse sociocultural settings from which they emerged.

As modern biblical criticism developed, scholars tended to eliminate or explain away irrational and mythical accounts of the life of Jesus, retaining only his teachings on universal ethical ideals and high moral principles. However, nineteenth century scholars such as Ferdinand Baur and Heinrich Holtzmann reacted to these tendencies by showing that a careful comparison of the Synoptic Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke would reveal evidence about the life of a first century Jew who was crucified. This critical work established, among many discoveries, that Mark was the earliest of the gospels (c. 65 c.e.), that John came from another tradition, and that Matthew and Luke used a common source for the sayings of Jesus (referred to as Q).

Study of nonbiblical, Jewish, and pagan texts clearly established the existence of Jesus. In Antiquitates Judaicae (93 c.e.; The Antiquities of the Jews, 1773), Flavius Josephus refers to Jesus as a Jewish nationalist and troublemaker. Indirect references to Jesus in Jewish sources tend not to deny his existence, observes Kee, but to discredit his claims. Allusions to Jesus can also be found in the works of Roman historians Pliny, Suetonius, and Tacitus. However, Kee concludes, on balance, noncanonical or apocryphal sources of the life of Jesus add very little to what can be learned from the Gospels.

In spite of positive evidential achievements in critical methodology concerning Jesus, twentieth century rationalists brushed aside the narrative of his life—including the miracles he performed, the Crucifixion, and the Resurrection—to concentrate on his teachings. Scholars with liberal humanitarian values separated Jewish apocalypticism—the belief that God’s purpose in history had been revealed only to his chosen people—to find more universal human values. Some devout scholars focused only on the Word of Jesus, the Logos, which demanded an existential, faith-based choice of ethical life. All these interpretive theories were served by Gnostic documents found at Nag Hammadi, Egypt, in 1945, containing only the sayings of Jesus, and were formulated in the tradition of itinerant Cynic-Stoic philosophers. Kee is critical of such interpretations as “prior judgment about how to make Jesus acceptable to late twentieth century intellectuals.”

Similarly, the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls at Khirbet Qumran around 1947 encouraged some scholars to conclude that Jesus was a particularly revered Essene teacher of righteousness, whose followers created a dramatic fiction about his actual life and death. Kee objects that while the Essenes insisted on a strict interpretation of Jewish law and restricted admission to their community, Jesus gave an inner, spiritual value to the law and welcomed even publicans and sinners among the faithful. What sources outside the Bible do make clear is the existence of a widely spread community of Jewish dissenters, who were intensely opposed to the religious establishment in Jerusalem and who eagerly awaited apocalyptic vindication.

Jesus in History reclaims the apocalyptic dimensions of the life of Jesus but interprets subtle variations in the eschatological message in terms of the different sociocultural settings in which each gospel arose. Modern techniques of literary analysis known as form criticism are used to unweave stories, poems, legal texts, and oral traditions, revealing particular cultural concerns of each religious community. For instance, although in Q, Jesus alludes to his anticipation that he will be put to death, Q gives no explicit theological meaning to the Passion of Christ as found subsequently in the Gospels and the Pauline account. The apocalyptic message of Jesus in Q is not messianic nationalism, but neither is it simply an inner philosophical ethic; Jesus preaches, in Kee’s words, “eschatological wisdom of an apocalyptic type.” Similarly in Mark, the apocalyptic good tidings of Jesus do not depend on his destiny as the crucified-exalted Lord. In contrast, the epistles sent to Christian communities by the apostle Paul convert the Passion of Christ itself into divine eschatology.

The primary issues found in Matthew are scriptural authority and covenantal membership in the emergent church, problems facing a Greek-speaking, Jewish community of the eastern Mediterranean, according to Kee. Here Jesus was understood as the final agent of power within the Judaic tradition of the law of Moses. Jesus stems from the tree of David, and his healing powers are amplified by Matthew as evidence of his divine authority. However, Jesus’ moral commands transcend the ancient law of Israel and give his disciples a worldwide evangelical calling, stirring up rabbinical debates.

By interweaving references to first century pagan rulers, Luke—author of both the Gospel and Acts—uses Hellenistic historical methods to establish the life of Jesus. In Acts, the history of Christianity is taken beyond the Crucifixion and suggests that the destruction of Jerusalem (70 c.e.) is God’s punishment on those who did not accept Christ. The urgency of Mark concerning the end of days is replaced in Luke, however, by a patient faith in the ultimate return of the Son of Man. Perhaps to facilitate the survival of the infant Christian community, Luke stresses that Roman involvement was minimal in the trial of Jesus. In an apt phrase, Kee states, “Whereas Matthew placed Jesus in the history of the church, Luke placed the church and Jesus in the history of the world.”

In John, linguistic analysis reveals a community in which both Greek and Semitic languages were in use, possibly Syria, where itinerant preacher-teachers flourished during the Hellenistic age. The Holy Spirit becomes more important in John as a conduit to esoteric knowledge found in the Logos. For the faithful, mystical communion with the spiritual existence of Christ is more important than knowing the exact details of Jesus’ life or following the wisdom of his utterances. Nevertheless, Kee argues that greater historical accuracy can also be found in John, such as in the recognition of the temporal priority of John the Baptist, the ordinariness of Jesus’ birth, and the placing of the Last Supper before Passover.

Christian Themes

Kee is critical of reductionist efforts to minimize divergence in the Gospels by relying primarily on one, as Friedrich Schleiermacher did by focusing on John, Heinrich Holtzmann did by using Mark, or Albert Schweitzer did by targeting Matthew. Hinting at a religious position somewhat beyond historical criticism, Kee suggests that focusing on a unitary exegesis “deprives the church of the richness of interpretive diversity that is a proper part of its heritage. . . .” While some contemporary scholars, such as in the Jesus Seminar, have abandoned the historical narrative of Jesus’ life for philosophical interpretations of the meaning of Christianity, Kee accepts the contradictions and inconsistencies of the Gospels and argues that rationalist analysis should not force preconceived interpretations on Scripture. Kee offers conclusions—ultimately probabilities—about the life of Jesus and subtly argues that “the gospel tradition is not objective historical evidence that has become overlaid with the claims of Christian faith, but [is] evidence that in its entirety stems from the witness of faith at various stages of development, beginning with the original hearers of Jesus.”

Sources for Further Study

Catchpole, David. Jesus People: The Historical Jesus and the Beginning of Community. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Academic, 2006. Critical and theological examination of the Jewish community in which the Jesus movement of the Gospels arose.

Dunn, James D. G., and Scot McKnight, eds. The Historical Jesus in Recent Research. Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 2005. An anthology of modern scholarly essays about the historical Jesus.

Kee, Howard Clark. Knowing the Truth: A Sociological Approach in New Testament Interpretation. Minneapolis, Minn.: Augsburg Fortress, 1989. A concise statement of the sociological, historical, and linguistic methodologies Kee uses to develop his theories of community-based belief.

Neusner, Jacob, et al., eds. The Social World of Formative Christianity and Judaism: Essays in Tribute to Howard Clark Kee. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1988. A festschrift dedicated to Kee of essays placing Judaism at the time of Jesus and early Christianity into their social setting. Includes an extensive Kee bibliography.