Jesus Remembered: Christianity in the Making, vol. 1

§17.3 Crucifixus sub Pontio Pilato
ers. But as with the other main part of Wright's 'controlling story' (return from
exile), the thesis that Yahweh's return to Zion was a major factor in persuading
Jesus to go up to Jerusalem would be more persuasive if the echoes were stronger,
clearer, and more persistent. And the further suggestion that Jesus saw his
own journey to Jerusalem as itself enacting Yahweh's return to Zion has no single
firm point of support within the Jesus tradition. Wright's hypothesis is a fascinating
retelling of that tradition, quite in character with subsequent varied
retellings, but it can hardly be attributed to the core tradition as that was formulated
in the beginning.
c. To Replace the Jerusalem Cult?
The hypothesis that Jesus intended to make a fundamental challenge to the Jerusalem
leadership has been extended further by correlating Jesus' word and action
in regard to the Temple with his words and actions which we call the last supper.
Theissen and Merz argue that Jesus intended the latter (the last supper) to replace
the former (the Temple). He intended a showdown not just with the leaders of Israel,
but with the whole Temple and cult as such. His word and action in the Temple
declared the end of the Temple. 172 His words and actions in the upper room
declared the beginning of the Temple cult's replacement, bread instead of a sacrificial
animal, a new covenant without sacrifice. 173
Rather similar is Chilton's extension of his thesis about the fundamental
importance of purity for Jesus. Chilton focuses on Jesus' meals with his disciples,
but argues that they saw a distinctive shift in the ideology of the meal fol-
172. Similarly Crossan: Jesus' action '"destroys" the Temple by "stopping" its fiscal,
sacrificial, and liturgical operations' (Historical Jesus 357-58); Legasse, Trial of Jesus 27-35;
and the earlier argument of F. Hahn, The Worship of the Early Church (1970; ET Philadelphia:
Fortress, 1973) 23-30.
173. Theissen and Merz, Historical Jesus 432-36; similarly Adna concludes that the
death of Jesus 'replaces and supersedes the sacrificial cult in the Temple once for all as the
atoning death for the many' {Jesu Stellung 419-30 [here 429]; see also his 'Jesus' Symbolic Act
in the Temple (Mark 11:15-17): The Replacement of the Sacrificial Cult by His Atoning
Death', in Ego et al., eds., Gemeinde ohne Tempel 461-75); cf. Tan, Zion Traditions 218-19.
Holmen follows suit: 'Jesus' action was directed against the cult itself (Jesus 319-23, 328-29),
though he confuses prophetic criticism of insincerely offered sacrifices with criticism of the
cult per se (321-23); but he is right in noting that one of Israel's fundamental identity markers
was being put in question in some degree, so that the reappearance of the accusation (that Jesus
would 'destroy this place') in the charge against Stephen (Acts 6.14) becomes that much more
understandable. However, Casey's argument seems overdrawn, that Jesus' life and teaching
embodied Judaism as a religion; 'Jesus offered people the spiritual centre of Judaism' (From
Jewish Prophet to Gentile God [Cambridge: Clarke, 1991] 72-74).
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