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Chapter 17 Conclusions It matters to some historians of the development of earliest Christianity and to the Christian faith both if Jesus thought about his own death and, even more importantly, how or what he thought of his death. Robert W. Funk, for instance, contends that Jesus is not “the proper object of faith,” that moderns ought to “give Jesus a demotion,” that moderns “need to cast Jesus in a new drama, assign him a role in a story with a different plot,” and that moderns “will have to abandon the doctrine of the blood atonement.”1 J.D. Crossan’s proposal that Jesus offered an unbrokered relationship with God and advocated a sort of social egalitarianism constructs a Jesus whose death had nothing to do with his mission and accomplishment.2 On the other hand, G.B. Caird suggests that the mission of Jesus was to save and to reconcile, in some measure through the very death he died.3 And N.T. Wright presents a Jesus who entered the city in the last week as the return of YHWH to Zion and whose death accomplished salvation for all.4 Hidden in this wide spectrum of views is Heinz Schürmann who, in a variety of writings, depicts Jesus as one whose very life is a Proexistence for the redemption of his people.5 What matters is that for each of these scholars what Jesus himself thought and taught is truly significant. Some may dismiss such a significance, and contend that Christian faith is not based on the vicissitudes of historical conclusions, or contend that what really matters is the church’s canon or tradition. But it boggles to think that Christians could anchor their hope of forgiveness in a Jesus who never thought of his death as atoning. 1 See R.W. Funk, Honest to Jesus (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco [Polebridge], 1996), 304–12. 2 J.D. Crossan, The Historical Jesus (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1991). 3 G.B. Caird, New Testament Theology (ed. L.D. Hurst; Oxford: Clarendon, 1994). 4 N.T. Wright, Jesus and the Victory of God (vol. 2 of Christian Origins and the Question of God; Minneapolis: Fortress, 1996). 5 P. Schürmann, Jesus—Gestalt und Geheimnis (ed. K. Scholtissek; Paderborn: Bonifatius, 1994). 335 336 Jesus and His Death Fortunately, scholarship of the twentieth century (and now with a lead into the twenty-first century) has addressed the question and has argued that Jesus thought about his death and thought about it as having saving benefits. In fact, there is an astonishing variety of perspectives on how Jesus thought of his death—from it being an accident to it being an atonement. Unfortunately, recent scholarship (apart from a scholar here and there) has failed to address this issue in its attempt to determine the mission of Jesus. Most scholars are persuaded now that Jesus’ mission, his aim, was about the restoration of Israel (or something along these lines), but few have asked how Jesus thought of his death in that overall mission. It has been nearly fifty years since anyone dedicated an entire volume to analyzing how Jesus understood his death (Vincent Taylor, Jesus and His Sacrifice, 1955)—not that a plethora of books touching on the subject indirectly or in shorter compass have not followed Taylor’s book. But it is time for the subject to reenter the conversation about the historical Jesus. This book makes an attempt to call our attention once more to the stubborn presence of numerous texts where Jesus anticipates his own death and, at times, he does so with suggestions of interpreting that death. RECAPITULATION FIVE CONCLUSIONS To recapitulate our study, the following conclusions may be noted: first, the bookends of Q 11:4 and Mark 14:36-38 make it patently clear that Jesus’ mission is more than a “mission to die.” In these texts Jesus petitions his Father to be exempted from the last and final ordeal. Second, Jesus knew that he had a temporary presence on this earth—more temporary, that is, than most humans. Texts like Mark 2:19-20; 10:38; 14:3-9 and Luke 13:32-33 evince a Jesus who knew of a premature death. Third, because Jesus believed he was called by his Father to Israel, there is every reason to think he thought his premature death was part, somehow, of God’s providential plan in history. Behind texts like Mark 14:36, Luke 13:32-33, and John 10:15...

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