Jesus Remembered: Christianity in the Making, vol. 1

§15.3 Who Did They Think Jesus Was?
of itself to give rise to belief that Jesus was/had become Messiah; messiahship
was not an obvious, far less necessary, corollary of resurrection. The thought that
the Baptist had been raised did not carry that corollary (Mark 6.14). 61 Others
were thought to have been exalted to heaven (Moses, Elijah, Isaiah) with never
any thought of their consequent messiahship obtruding; 'exaltation does not imply
Messiahship'. 62 The messiahship of the crucified Jesus is the presupposition
of the scriptural apologetic mounted by the first Christians, not its achievement;
'the title "Messiah" was inseparably connected with the name of Jesus because
Jesus was condemned and crucified as a messianic pretender'. 63 In short, the
only obvious reason why the risen Jesus was hailed as Messiah was that resurrection
was seen as a vindication of a claim which had been in play before Jesus'
crucifixion and resurrection. But if the question of Jesus as Messiah was an issue
during his lifetime, then the whole logic underpinning Wrede's central thesis begins
to go into reverse.
One of the major problems in the discussion on this subject has been
that the issue of Jesus as Messiah has been made to depend too much on the
messianic secret theory and has been too much skewed into a discussion of
the latter, whereas 'the messianic secret' is primarily an issue of Markan theology
(Wrede's chief point). What we need to do here, then, is to step back
from the diverting and narrowing subject of the messianic secret and to ask
again the historical question: Was the issue of messiahship raised during Jesus'
mission, if so, to what extent, and are we able to tell from the tradition
how he reacted to it?
15.3. An Issue during Jesus' Mission
It is a priori likely that an individual who spoke memorably of God's kingdom,
who gathered disciples around him, and who created something of a stir would
have raised in many minds the equivalent to the modern question 'Who does he
think he is?' It should now be clear that 'claimant to royal messiahship' was one
possible answer to be considered. If Simon, one of Herod's slaves, and
Athronges the shepherd could aspire to kingship (Josephus, Ant. 17.273-74,
278), we can hardly assume that Jesus' lowly birth would have ruled him out as a
potential candidate. He may well have been known to be a descendant of David,
61. Schweitzer, Quest 1 343 = Quest 1 309.
62. Weiss, Earliest Christianity 1.31.
63. N. A. Dahl, 'The Crucified Messiah' (1960), most easily accessible in his Jesus the
Christ: The Historical Origins of Christological Doctrine (ed. D. H. Juel; Minneapolis: Fortress,
1991) 27-47 (here 39-40).
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