Jesus Remembered: Christianity in the Making, vol. 1

THE MISSION OF JESUS §12.6
God' is involved? The most promising way to handle such questions is probably
to pose again the three key questions outlined above (§12.3).
c. A Grand Narrative?
One solution to the riddle has been to read the Jesus tradition as a whole within
an overarching hypothesis, a meta-narrative. Indeed, many would say that without
such a grid into which to fit the data, the evidence is capable of too many divergent
readings. Halvor Moxnes reminds us that Protestants were for a long
time attracted by the master narrative of a decline from the age of spirit and freedom
to the age of institutions and control ('early Catholicism' as a negative description).
402 And as noted earlier, the grand narrative of modernity actually provided
the key for the old Liberal questers: a non-miracleworking, moral teacher
affirmed a European optimistic individualism born of self-conscious cultural supremacy,
industrial might, and imperialistic conquest. A century ago the paradigm
shift occasioned by Weiss and Schweitzer made Jewish apocalyptic eschatology
the story within which Jesus' kingdom proclamation was to be read. And
though the apocalyptic paradigm was challenged at various points, for most of
the twentieth century it retained its paradigmatic sway over Jesus questers, as it
continues to do over a significant number. 403 But now that paradigm in turn has
been undermined for many, and other hermeneutical keys are being sought. 404
Those Jesus questers unwilling to align themselves with postmodernism's pluralism
and concomitant rejection of all grand narratives still look for the grand narrative
which will provide the key to resolve the riddle of Jesus' kingdom preaching.
Two such have been worked out most fully during the final decade of the
twentieth century — by Dominic Crossan and Tom Wright.
(1) In his Birth of Christianity, in which he provides, as it were, the footnotes
lacking in his Historical Jesus, Crossan makes clear that he operates with a
grand narrative drawn from cross-cultural anthropology ('the Lenski-Kautsky
model') — the grand narrative of 'peasant society', or egalitarian peasant society,
405 exploited by and resistant to the ruling classes. 406 On this broad template
402. H. Moxnes, 'The Historical Jesus: From Master Narrative to Cultural Context',
BTB 28 (1998) 135-49 (here 138).
403. Sanders, Jesus and Judaism 10; also Historical Figure 183; Allison, Jesus of Nazareth
36-44; Lüdemann, Jesus, passim.
404. See also Moxnes's critique of other 'master narratives' on offer ('Historical Jesus'
138-48).
405. Historical Jesus 263-64.
406. Birth 151-59, 166-73; 'Peasant is an interactive term for farmers who are exploited
and oppressed' (216).
470