Jesus Remembered: Christianity in the Making, vol. 1

THE QUESTION OF JESUS' SELF-UNDERSTANDING §15.8
and voice of Jesus himself at precisely the points being explored here. 429 Nevertheless,
as we move on to the remaining categories which Jesus rather than others
may have used in speaking of his mission, we are left with two powerful impressions.
One is that Jesus' mission seems to have broken through all the most obvious
categories by which his mission could be evaluated; he evidently did not fit
with any degree of comfort into any of the pigeon-holes by which observers
might have wished to label him. The other is the tantalising possibility that Jesus
deliberately claimed a degree of distinctiveness for his mission, for all its thoroughly
Jewish character, which left both hearers and disciples struggling for
words to express the significance of what they were seeing and hearing — and
remembering.
But if we want to follow up the possibility of probing into Jesus' own selfunderstanding,
there is more directly relevant data to examine.
429. Even so, Sanders does not hesitate to affirm that 'Jesus claimed to be spokesman
for God' (Jesus 271, 281); 'He regarded himself as having full authority to speak and act on behalf
of God'; 'not only spokesman for, but viceroy of, God' (Historical Figure 238, 242, 248).
I. H. Marshall, The Origins of New Testament Christology (Leicester: IVP, 1976) pushed the
point still harder (45-51).
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