The Miracles of an Eschatological Prophet
In: Journal for the Study of the Historical JesusSearch for other papers by Eric Eve in
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While it has not been a central aspect of his work on the historical Jesus, E.P. Sanders has contributed to the understanding of Jesus’ miracles. In Jesus and Judaism, Sanders argued that Jesus was an eschatological prophet and maintains that he certainly healed people in ways that his contemporaries regarded as miraculous, but that his miracles were not signs of the end, and cannot be used to determine what type of figure he was. The fuller treatment of miracles in the later The Historical Figure of Jesus emphasizes the exorcisms and dismisses the nature miracles as having made minimal impact, leading Sanders to conclude that Jesus’ miracles were not as spectacular as the Gospels suggest, and that they probably led his contemporaries to view Jesus as a holy man like Honi the Circle-Drawer, although Jesus himself probably understood his miracles as signs of the imminent arrival of the new age, and his disciples may have come to see them as a defeat of evil powers and as a legitimation of Jesus’ claims. After summarizing Sanders’s arguments this article goes on to suggest how some of their foundations may be secured while also suggesting that the case for associating Jesus’ miracles with his role as an eschatological prophet may be stronger than Sanders allowed. It then concludes by indicating how Sanders’s account of the role of Jesus’ miracles might be further rounded out first by exploring their possible symbolism (as Sanders does with the Temple incident) and second through various social-scientific approaches.
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6
E.g. by Burton L. Mack, A Myth of Innocence: Mark and Christian Origins (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1988), pp. 208–45; note that the publication date is between that of Sanders’s two books.
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7
Morton Smith, Jesus the Magician (London: Victor Gollancz, 1978), pp. 8–16.
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25
Rebecca Gray, Prophetic Figures in Late Second Temple Jewish Palestine: The Evidence from Josephus (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), pp. 141–43.
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27
Eve, Jewish Context, pp. 272–95; Meier, Marginal Jew, ii, pp. 581–88.
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28
Jacob Neusner, Judaism: The Evidence of the Mishnah (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981), pp. 307–28.
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42
Hans Kvalbein, ‘The Wonders of the End-Time: Metaphoric Language in 4Q521 and the Interpretation of Matthew 11.5 par’, Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha 18 (1998), pp. 87–110; Eve, Jewish Context, pp. 189–96.
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43
See, e.g., I.M. Lewis, Ecstatic Religion: A Study of Shamanism and Spirit Possession (London: Routledge, 2nd edn, 1989); Vincent Crapanzano and Vivian Garrison (eds.), Case Studies in Spirit Possession (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1977); Eve, Jewish Context, pp. 368–75; Eve, Healer, pp. 51–69.
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48
See John J. Pilch, Healing in the New Testament: Insights from Medical and Mediterranean Anthropology (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2000) and one of Pilch’s chief sources, Arthur Kleinman, Patients and Healers in the Context of Culture (Comparative Studies of Health Systems and Medical Care, 3; Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980).
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51
Octavio I. Romano, ‘Charismatic Medicine, Folk-healing and Folk-sainthood’, American Anthropologist 67 (1965), pp. 1151–73; Bruce J. Malina, ‘Jesus as Charismatic Leader?’, Biblical Theology Bulletin 14 (1984), pp. 55–62.
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52
For a fuller account, see Eve, Jewish Context, pp. 350–60; Eve, Healer, chs. 4 and 7.
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The Miracles of an Eschatological Prophet
In: Journal for the Study of the Historical JesusSearch for other papers by Eric Eve in
Current site
Google Scholar
PubMed
While it has not been a central aspect of his work on the historical Jesus, E.P. Sanders has contributed to the understanding of Jesus’ miracles. In Jesus and Judaism, Sanders argued that Jesus was an eschatological prophet and maintains that he certainly healed people in ways that his contemporaries regarded as miraculous, but that his miracles were not signs of the end, and cannot be used to determine what type of figure he was. The fuller treatment of miracles in the later The Historical Figure of Jesus emphasizes the exorcisms and dismisses the nature miracles as having made minimal impact, leading Sanders to conclude that Jesus’ miracles were not as spectacular as the Gospels suggest, and that they probably led his contemporaries to view Jesus as a holy man like Honi the Circle-Drawer, although Jesus himself probably understood his miracles as signs of the imminent arrival of the new age, and his disciples may have come to see them as a defeat of evil powers and as a legitimation of Jesus’ claims. After summarizing Sanders’s arguments this article goes on to suggest how some of their foundations may be secured while also suggesting that the case for associating Jesus’ miracles with his role as an eschatological prophet may be stronger than Sanders allowed. It then concludes by indicating how Sanders’s account of the role of Jesus’ miracles might be further rounded out first by exploring their possible symbolism (as Sanders does with the Temple incident) and second through various social-scientific approaches.
| All Time | Past 365 days | Past 30 Days | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Abstract Views | 717 | 109 | 11 |
| Full Text Views | 358 | 8 | 0 |
| PDF Views & Downloads | 195 | 21 | 0 |
