Jesus Remembered: Christianity in the Making, vol. 1

§15.6 Who Did They Think Jesus Was?
patchy but builds up to a more positive answer than in the case of the royal
Messiah. 212
To be noted at once is the proverb recalled as Jesus' response to the negative
reaction he received at Nazareth: 'a prophet is not without honour except in
his home village (patris)' (Mark 6.4/Matt. 13.57); 'no prophet is acceptable in
his home village' (Luke 4.24/GTh 31); 'a prophet has no honour in his own home
village' (John 4.44); 'a prophet is not acceptable in his home village' (P.Oxy. 1
lines 30-35). Evidently the memory of Jesus saying something along these lines
was well rooted in Christian tradition. 213 As the non-Synoptic versions indicate,
the proverbial character of the saying meant that it could be retold apart from the
Nazareth context of the Synoptics. The evidence certainly strongly suggests that
Jesus saw the negative responses he received as of a piece with the tradition of rejected
prophets. 214 At the same time, the talk is of 'a prophet'; there is no suggestion
that Jesus saw himself as 'the prophet'. Since the post-Easter believers certainly
regarded him as more than a prophet, it is not without significance that
they have retained this more lowly self-estimate in the tradition.
The same considerations weigh in favour of the solely attested Luke 13.31-
33:
At that very hour some Pharisees came and said to him, 'Get away from here,
for Herod wants to kill you'. And he said to them, 'Go and tell that fox, "Behold,
I cast out demons and perform cures today and tomorrow, and the third
day I finish my course. Nevertheless I must (dei me) go on my way today and
tomorrow and the day following; for it cannot be that a prophet should perish
away from Jerusalem'.
Although the saying is certainly in service to Luke's Christology, 215 the introduction
to it has some unique features: the warning from friendly Pharisees, the
news that Herod intended to act against Jesus as he had against his mentor John,
and the highly political dismissal of Herod ('that fox'). 216 Why would Luke at-
212. In what follows I again draw on and revise the fuller discussion in my Jesus and the
Spirit 82-84.
213. There is a general willingness to recognize a saying of Jesus (see, e.g., Funk, Five
Gospels 63; J. R. Michaels, 'The Itinerant Jesus and His Home Town', in Chilton and Evans, Authenticating
the Activities of Jesus 177-93). Here as elsewhere, the presence of a proverbial saying
need not imply that it was drawn from Jewish wisdom; an inspirational teacher like Jesus
presumably coined his own epigrams as well as his own versions of similar sayings (Bultmann,
History 31 n. 2 cites an Arabic proverb: 'The piper has no friends in his own town').
214. See above, chapter 12 n. 184.
215. See, e.g., Fitzmyer, Luke 1.213-15.
216. The term 'fox' (alöpex) is presumably a metaphor for craftiness (BDAG, alöpex;
Fitzmyer, Luke 2.1031).
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