Israel's God and Rebecca's Children: Christology and Community in Early Judaism and Christianity

Chapter 10: When Did the Understanding of Jesus’ Death as an Atoning Sacrifice First Emerge?

169 Chapter 10 When Did the Understanding of Jesus’ Death as an Atoning Sacrifice First Emerge? In his valuable study of The Genesis of Christology,1 Petr Pokorny follows a well marked path in sketching the emergence of atonement theology in earliest Christianity. He notes the several “older formulaic expressions which articulate the meaning of the death of Jesus”;2 he sees in them indication of influence from the Septuagint version of Isaiah 53:10-12, and, consequently, counts them “as reflection on the events of Easter on the part of Greek-speaking Jewish Christians.” Nevertheless, he adds that “in their intention, however, they may reach back to the time before Easter and reflect the self-understanding of Jesus indirectly.”3 This is a briefer and more nuanced conclusion than that reached by Martin Hengel in his classic study of The Atonement, whose subtitle indicates that he was asking more or less the same question as that posed in our title.4 After a much fuller examination of the data, Hengel concludes that “there is nothing from a historical or tradition-historical point of view which stands in the way of deriving it (the soteriological interpretation of the death of Jesus) from the earliest (Aramaic-speaking) community ,” and he goes on to press behind to Jesus’ own representation of his own death in the light of Isaiah 53.5 The discrepancy between Hengel and Pokorny may not be very great, but there is, nonetheless, a tension: on the one hand, the agreed probability that Paul was echoing confessions of the Greek-speaking Christians; on the other, the differing degrees of confidence about the possibility of tracing the thought back to the Aramaic-speaking Jerusalem believers or even to Jesus himself. This tension seems to me reason enough to justify a fresh look at the question. James D. G. Dunn Three areas require attention: the formulaic expressions drawn upon or alluded to in our earliest sources (Paul’s letters); the problem of what may and may not be deduced from the Synoptic tradition regarding Jesus’ own understanding of the matter; and third, the often neglected evidence provided by the account in Acts of the earliest Christian community in Jerusalem. The pre-Pauline Formulae This section need not detain us long. By far the most significant passage here is 1 Corinthians 15:3b. Paul states that the message he received (o4 kai\ pare/lebon), that is, no doubt, at the time of his conversion, contained as its first article “that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures.” The fuller formula is well structured and evidently the product of some careful, agreed, and mature consensus.6 Since Paul’s conversion dates to within two or three years of Jesus’ death, we can date this already settled conviction regarding Jesus’ death to within a year or two of Christianity’s own emergence. That early formula attests that Jesus’ death was already valued positively because it dealt with “our sins.” In a religious tradition for which it was axiomatic that sins required atonement by sacrifice, a formulation like this can only mean that Jesus’ death was already being understood in sacrificial terms. The same implication can be drawn from the final phrase, “in accordance with the scriptures.” It is true that the scriptures provided various precedents or models on which an understanding of Jesus’ death as having a positive outcome could be based—covenant sacrifice or Passover sacrifice (neither properly described as “for sins”), righteous sufferer or martyr. But the “for our sins” pushes the allusion firmly towards the scriptural regulations for sin offering and Day of Atonement, or to other models insofar as they absorbed or merged with sacrificial imagery.7 An allusion specifically to Isaiah 53 is neither obvious nor necessary for the sacrificial allusion to be loud and clear.8 The understanding of Jesus’ death as sacrifice is evidently an article of faith that Paul took over wholeheartedly.9 It is obvious from the way he refers to the theme that the understanding was widely shared and little disputed in early Christian circles.10 For instance, he frequently draws on other earlier formulae, whose wide acceptance and resonance he evidently could take for granted.11 Furthermore, Paul never found it necessary to expound in any detail his own belief in Jesus’ death as atoning sacrifice.12 Paul, it would appear then, did not regard the teaching on...