Jesus Remembered: Christianity in the Making, vol. 1

THE QUESTION OF JESUS' SELF-UNDERSTANDING §15.7
the argument is not so different from the argument about Jesus as a Cynic. In
both cases there are parallels which can be pressed to affirm Jesus as magician,
Jesus as Cynic. 374 But is either case a good example of sober historical evaluation?
I think not.
h. Eschatological Significance
If we are looking for the most distinctive feature of Jesus' exorcisms and healings,
it is most obviously to be found in the eschatological significance which he
is recollected as attributing to them. Here we need simply refer to the same two
passages already mentioned above and discussed in §12.5c-d, Matt. 11.5/Luke
7.22 and Mark 3.22-29 pars. Most striking is the fact that Jesus seems to have regarded
his successful exorcisms as the defeat (or evidence of the defeat) of Satan,
as the plundering of his Satan's possessions (§12.5d[3]). This must have
seemed an extraordinary claim to those who expected the destruction of evil and
the defeat of Satan as the climax to God's purpose and the presupposition for a
new age of restored paradise (chapter 12 n. 79). But it is a claim of that order
which Jesus' disciples recalled him as making.
The significance of the key saying, Matt.l2.27-28/Luke 11.19-20, has already
been noted (§12.5d[2]). It was the fact that Jesus achieved his success by
the Spirit/finger of God which demonstrated or proved that the kingdom of God
had come to them. 375 It was this which distinguished Jesus' exorcistic success
from the success of his Jewish contemporaries (Matt. 12.27/Luke 11.19): 376 he
laid claim to a plenitude of power which, by implication, these other exorcists
did not experience. 377
Thus to recognize that tradition's testimony that Jesus was laying claim to
a special anointing by the Spirit (Isa. 61.1) helps explain the puzzling saying
with which Mark climaxes his collection of exorcism sayings (Mark 3.29) and
'the clearest evidence of Jesus' knowledge and use of magic is the eucharist, a magical rite of a
familiar sort' (Jesus the Magician 34, 104, 111, 152); Twelftree has an extended review of
Smith {Jesus the Exorcist 190-207). Meier (Marginal Jew 2.558 n. 16) cites A. F. Segal, 'Hellenistic
Magic: Some Questions of Definition', in R. van den Broek and M. J. Vermaseren, eds.,
Studies in Gnosticism and Hellenistic Religions, G. Quispel FS (Leiden: Brill, 1981) 349-75:
'The early charge of magic against Jesus is not so much clear proof that Jesus was a magician
as a clear example of the social manipulation of the charge of magic' (369).
374. Crossan does not hesitate to use both terms for Jesus (Historical Jesus 305,421).
375. On the echo of Moses' triumph over the Egyptian magicians in talk of 'the finger of
God', see above, chapter 12 n. 366.
376. Twelftree was unable to find any evidence to suggest that the 'Spirit' was appealed
to as a source of power-authority for exorcism (Jesus the Exorcist 109 n. 50).
377. See further my Jesus and the Spirit 46-49, 60-62.
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