Life After Death_ A History of the Afterlife in Western Religion - Alan Segal [237]
Whether or not we can take this known fact back a few years and posit that Daniel figured prominently in Jesus’ own personal teachings is more speculative, just as it is difficult to tell even today, when a known figure is quoted by a newspaper, much less a well-meaning friend, what exactly the figure said. Jesus wrote nothing down so everything we know about him was reported by his hearers. We know that the identification of the Christ with Daniel 7:13 is an early and strong tradition and it is impossible to explain without an apocalyptic-not just eschatological-content in Jesus’ preaching, a fact that also passes the criterion of dissimilarity. Jesus must have preached repentance for the coming end of the world and recommended a radical change of behavior as the only way to cope with these events. He was, in the words of my colleagues Markus Barth and John Dominic Crossan, an eschatological Jesus-but I think, given these beliefs he must have been even more, an apocalypticist.38
Relying on the method of the criterion of dissimilarity, the discoverable core of Jesus’ message must have been apocalyptic and millennialist. The reasons for this are strong: First, some of Jesus’ statements were predictions that imply that the end of time was coming soon. Second, they talked about an event that did not happen. None of those who heard Jesus’ message actually witnessed the Son of Man coming in power:
“For the Son of Man is to come with his angels in the glory of his Father, and then he will repay everyone for what has been done. Truly I tell you, there are some standing here who will not taste death before they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom.” (Matt 16:27-28; see also 10:23)
The passage seems to meet the criterion of dissimilarity. There is only one convenient way to explain why such sayings remain part of the corpus of Jesus’ work: Jesus actually predicted the end fairly quickly. This prediction has a very clear context within Judaism and was understandable in the social world that Jesus inhabited.
But it is another thing to say that apocalypticism was the only content of Jesus’ teaching. That is not necessarily so; indeed, what was core and secondary might depend entirely on the ancient or modern listener. Apocalypticism is only the central fact in our understanding of Jesus’ historicity because of the scholarly filter that we have had to use to demonstrate the historicity of Jesus. No one who only teaches about the end would have garnered Jesus’ following. Apocalyptic prophets are the stuff of comedy and New Yorker cartoons. Jesus must also have had a teaching and example which won converts. Jesus must have been a charismatic figure. From this apocalyptic core, we may suspect that resurrection of the faithful and their transformation could not be far behind.
Jesus spoke of the Son of Man and the resurrection of the dead, both apocalyptic prophecies found in the book of Daniel. Before the fateful events of Jesus’ Passover pilgrimage to Jerusalem, these notions could hardly have been fully distinguished from more political expectations of the coming of God’s kingdom, with the possible help of the Messiah. That is to say, although early Christianity was a religious revolution, its political aims were yet inchoate. Some of Jesus’ followers seem to have had revolutionary expectations, though passive revolution (maintaining ethical and cultic purity so that God and His angels could bring about political change) was the stronger tradition in Judaism, as the Qumran community showed us.
We also know, by the criterion of dissimilarity, that Jesus was an apocalypticist who had strong feelings of scorn for the putative rulers of his country. The overturning of the moneylenders’ tables at the Temple is an important datum for his feelings. The message of Jesus that, with repentance, all are equal before God was typical of most sectarian apocalypticism of the time. Christian practices of public repentance, baptism,