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Chapter 9 The Script for Jesus We enter here into a “mindfield.” Buried under the mental surface of our concern is the following set of issues: Jesus’ intentions, Jesus’ vision for a restored Israel, and Jesus’ use of the Old Testament as a source for finding a script for his life. That Jesus searched the Tanakh to understand his mission is a commonplace ;1 that in so doing he went directly to, or even later found himself drawn to, the servant passages of Isaiah is not beyond doubt. We should remind ourselves that it was C.H. Dodd who dramatically impressed upon New Testament scholarship that it was not a book of isolated testimonies but instead a set of passages to which Christians first appealed as they sought to understand Jesus, explain their identity, and then construct the basis of early Christian theology.2 Dodd saw behind this reflection a set of primary passages: Genesis 12:3; 22:18; 1 On Jesus’ use of Scripture, the literature is vast and increasingly complex. The following represent the spectrum: L. Goppelt, Typos (trans. D.H. Madvig; 1939; repr. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1982); C.H. Dodd, According to the Scriptures (London: James Nisbet, 1952); J.A.T. Robinson, “Did Jesus Have a Distinctive Use of Scripture?” in his Twelve More New Testament Studies (London: SCM, 1984), 35–43; R.T. France, Jesus and the Old Testament (London: Tyndale, 1971); R. Longenecker, Biblical Exegesis in the Apostolic Period (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1975), 51–78; C.F.D. Moule, The Origin of Christology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977), 127–34; D.J. Moo, The Old Testament in the Gospel Passion Narratives (Sheffield: Almond, 1983); B.D. Chilton, A Galilean Rabbi and His Bible (GNS 8; Wilmington: Michael Glazier, 1984); E.E. Ellis, The Old Testament in Early Christianity (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1992), 125–38 (on scholarship, cf. pp. 53–74); B.D. Chilton and C.A. Evans, “Jesus and Israel’s Scriptures,” in Studying the Historical Jesus (ed. B. Chilton and C.A. Evans; Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1994), 281–335; D.C. Allison, Jr., The Intertextual Jesus: (Harrisburg: Trinity Press International, 2000). An independent study, but still useful, is E. Schweizer, Lordship and Discipleship (SBT 28; Naperville, Ill.: Alec R. Allenson, 1960), 42–55. I make no assumptions about Jesus’, or Jewish, literacy; on this cf. W.V. Harris, Ancient Literacy (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1989); A. Millard, Reading and Writing in the Time of Jesus (The Biblical Seminar 69; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 2000). 2 Dodd, According to the Scriptures. 189 190 Jesus and His Death Deuteronomy 18:15, 19; Psalms 2; 8; 22; 31; 34; 38; 41; 42–43; 69; 80; 88; 110; 118; Isaiah 6:1–9:7; 11:1-10; 28:16; 40:1-11; 42:1–44:5; 49:1-13; 50:411 ; 52:13–53:12; 61; Jeremiah 31:10-34; Daniel 7; Hosea; Joel 2–3; Zechariah 9–14.3 The more important conclusion for our purposes is that Dodd saw these as behind the entire Christian reflection. I quote: This [set of passages and the conclusions drawn from them] is a piece of genuinely creative thinking. Who was responsible for it? The early church, we are accustomed to say, and perhaps we can safely say no more. But creative thinking is rarely done by committees, useful as they may be for systematizing the fresh ideas of individual thinkers, and for stimulating them to further thought.4 It is individual minds that originate. Whose was the originating mind here? Among Christian thinkers of the first age known to us there are three of genuinely creative power: Paul, the author to the Hebrews, and the Fourth Evangelist. . . . What forgotten geniuses may lurk in the shadows of those first twenty years of church history about which we are so scantily informed, it is impossible for us to say. But the New Testament itself avers that it was Jesus Christ Himself who first directed the minds of His followers to certain parts of the scriptures as those in which they might find illumination upon the meaning of his mission and destiny . . . . To account for the beginning of this most original and fruitful process of rethinking the Old Testament we found need to postulate a creative mind. The gospels offer us one. Are we compelled to reject the offer?5 These words of C.H. Dodd, some of the most memorable in biblical scholarship , set the tone for the important studies...

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