Sublime

In listening to parables and appreciating them within their initial context, we also do well to listen for echoes of Israel’s scriptures, since the parables evoke earlier stories and then comment on them.

If we get the context wrong, we’ll get Jesus wrong as well.

Christian Church has tended to overlook its Judaic origins, but the fact is that Jesus of Nazareth was a Jew of Palestine when he went about his Father’s business,…

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Jesus must be understood as a comprehensible and yet, so to speak, crucifiable first-century Jew, whatever the theological or hermeneutical consequences.

At the same time it would clearly both challenge some prevailing assumptions within that Jewish context and retain a special focus which would be characteristic only of Jesus’ career, not of the work of his post-Easter followers. It must be set within Judaism, but as a challenge; it must be the presupposition for the church, but not the blueprint.

In listening to parables and appreciating them within their initial context, we also do well to listen for echoes of Israel’s scriptures, since the parables evoke earlier stories and then comment on them.

The Seminar announced to its public that the real Jesus was innocent of the wicked apocalypticism with which so many Christians, not least in the conservative American churches against which American academics react so strongly, had for so long associated him.

Such Christological readings that see Jesus as the protagonist of all of his stories are not “wrong”; they are legitimate interpretations in light of church doctrine, and they are often profound.

Christians will, and should, seek new meanings in the ancient texts; otherwise, to use theological language, they will be putting the Holy Spirit out of business.