Jesus Remembered: Christianity in the Making, vol. 1

THE QUESTION OF JESUS' SELF-UNDERSTANDING §15.8
thing greater than Jonah' motif. For now we have observed its presence not only
in the sayings tradition (Matt. 12.41-42/Luke 11.31-32) but also implied in Jesus'
success as an exorcist and in talk of Jonah('s preaching) as a sign and integral to
the story of the stilling of the storm, probably from its first telling. What should
we take from this for Jesus' own evaluation of the category of 'healer, exorcist' as
descriptions of his mission?
In all this we are touching on what Bultmann described as 'the immediacy
of [Jesus'] eschatological consciousness' coming to expression in such material,
385 somewhat surprisingly given Bultmann's overall reaction to Liberal
attempts to penetrate into Jesus' self-consciousness. Today, when eschatology
is being reinterpreted in more social and political terms, Bultmann's description
has been largely left behind. But if self-awareness can legitimately be detected
behind certain assertions (and ways of acting), 386 then Bultmann's observation
remains valid. We are unlikely to appreciate Jesus' kingdom teaching
and his mission as a whole unless we are willing to recognize that Jesus
claimed (was remembered as claiming) a distinctive, and distinctively eschatological,
empowering for his mission, as evidenced particularly in his healings
and exorcisms.
15.8. Teacher
In many ways this was the most obvious category for audience and onlookers to
'fit' Jesus into. 387 At the same time, it was the least overtly messianic and eschatological
of the categories so far reviewed. To bring out the point we may as well
follow the same procedure as before.
a. Jewish Expectation
Can we even speak of an expectation of an eschatological teacher? There certainly
seems to have been an explicit expectation in these terms cherished at
385. Bultmann, History 126.
386. J. H. Charlesworth notes that 1QH 16(= 8).4-ll reflects the self-understanding of
the Teacher of Righteousness ('The Righteous Teacher and the Historical Jesus', in W. P.
Weaver and J. H. Charlesworth, Earthing Christologies: From Jesus' Parables to Jesus the Parable
[Valley Forge: Trinity, 1995] 46-61 [here 48-50]; cf. also Wise, First Messiah).
387. 'The earliest sources portray Jesus as a teacher of wisdom, a sage' (Funk, Honest
143). On the relation between Jesus' healings and his mission Keck comments: 'he was not a
healer who found he had something to say but a teacher who found it necessary to heal' (Who Is
Jesus? 83).
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