Jesus Remembered: Christianity in the Making, vol. 1

§15.4 Who Did They Think Jesus Was?
The answer is No because Jesus is never once recalled as using the title
'Messiah' of himself or as unequivocally welcoming its application to him by
others (Mark 14.62 is the sole exception). 174 It is also sufficiently clear from
several, though not all, of the episodes reviewed above, that Jesus ignored or refused
or rejected the dominant current understanding of the royal Messiah as a
royal and military power like Herod the Great. This answer is consistent also
with Jesus' remembered response to his disciples' ambition to share in royal
power and privilege: that should not be the model for discipleship (Mark 10.35-
45 pars.). 175
The qualification is necessary, however, because there is a legitimate query
as to whether the then current understanding of the royal Messiah's role was the
only one possible from Israel's prophetic texts. The fact that the first Christians
took over the title 'Messiah' so speedily and so completely (§15.2) suggests that
there were other strands of Israel's expectation which had what might be called
'messianic potential'. 176 It is certainly striking that the first disciples did not
abandon the title in the light of Jesus' failure to realize any of their own hopes for
a share in royal power. And we ruled out of play at an early stage the alternative
suggestion that they had never entertained the thought of Jesus' messiahship
prior to their Easter experience. The only plausible option remaining is that they
had in fact been convinced that Jesus was Messiah, son of David, during his mission,
but that their conception of his messiahship was radically transformed by
the events of Good Friday. In that light they in effect emptied the title of its traditional
content and filled it with new content provided by the law and the prophets
and the psalms; Luke 24.25-27, 44-46 is one version of that process and strongly
suggests the abruptness with which the transformation took place. In so doing,
we could say that they were taking up the pointers Jesus had provided in his talk
of eschatological reversal and suffering (§12.4c-d), but that does not quite validate
the corollary that Jesus believed and taught his role to be that of a suffering
royal Messiah.
Fascinating as the debate on Jesus' royal messiahship is, therefore, the term
itself, royal Messiah, is too contested to allow a satisfactory conclusion. Either
174. The term 'Christ' does not even appear in the Q material.
175. Cf. Barrett: 'I do not see how the gospel material, critically evaluated, can lead to
the conclusion that Jesus publicly stated the claim, "I am the Messiah"; or even that he thought
privately in these terms' (Jesus 23); Theissen and Merz: 'Jesus had a messianic consciousness,
but did not use the title Messiah'; he reshaped messianic expectations into a 'group
messianism' — referring to Matt. 19.28/Luke 22.28-30 (Historical Jesus 538-40).
176. This was one of my main points in 'Messianic Ideas' (particularly 366, 369-70).
Reading the Jesus tradition in the echo chamber of his controlling story, Wright concludes confidently
that Jesus thought he was 'Israel-in-person, Israel's representative . . . the Messiah'
(Jesus 538).
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