Date: Mon, 25 Mar 1996 11:40:56 -0800 From: "Marcus J. Borg" To: JESUS2000@info.harpercollins.com Subject: Primary Message: Week Six Dear Luke and Dom, Before I begin my primary message this week, a brief remark/question to Dom which occurred to me after I sent my last response. To Dom: In my last response, I suggested that the two focal points of Jesus' life and public activity were Spirit and compassion (with compassion understood to be a political value as well as a personal virtue). Afterwards, I realized that I could also speak of "Spirit and Kingdom" (or SpiritAndKingdom), as long as Kingdom and compassion are understood to be tightly linked (that is, "compassion" specifies what kind of kingdom). Thus, where you emphasize "Kingdom of God," I would emphasize "Spirit and Kingdom." The point of my suggestion is not so much which is better language (and K of God has, of course, the advantage of being a phrase in the texts), but whether you think we are talkling about the same thing (about equivalent notions). In this week's primary message, I want to speak about how I see the death and resurrection of Jesus. I will treat each with a series of numbered statements. In most cases, I will simply state my conclusion without presenting the supporting arguments. Though it is not up to me to suggest how you might respond, I would find it interesting if each of you described how you see the death and resurrection of Jesus, rather than simply responding to my points. The Execution/Death of Jesus. 1. I see much of the passion story as non-historical at the level of details. Many of the details seem to be "prophecy historicized" rather than "history remembered" (Dom's phrases, though the notion is widely-held by mainline scholars, including Raymond Brown; the differences seem to be of degree), and/or the use of symbolism drawn from the Jewish tradition (e.g., the temple curtain tearing). 2. I do not think Jesus' death was his own purpose or intention. To clarify: I think Jesus was aware that if he kept doing what he was doing, he could get in serious trouble. I consider it possible that Jesus went to Jerusalem knowing that the likely outcome would be his arrest and execution. But I don't think his death was his purpose or intention. I see the statements in the gospels and the rest of the NT which say that it was as post-Easter interpretations of his death: this was how his death was seen in Christian retrospect. This doesn't make such statements uninterersting, wrong, or irrelevant. I can affirm the metaphorical truth in all of the canonical interpretations of his death and resurrection: as defeat of the powers, as embodiment/incarnation of the way of return, as the once-for-all sacrifice for sin. But I do not see any of these as reflective of Jesus' own intentionality. 3. Jesus was killed. He didn't just die. The significant HISTORICAL question about his death is not, "Why did he die?", but "Why was he killed?" I do not think it was random or accidental (as has occasionally been suggested), but was because he challenged what Walter Wink calls "the domination system" of his day. To put that differently and to use the strokes from my sketch: if Jesus had been "just" a Spirit person and teacher of unconventional wisdom, I don't think he would have been executed. Rather, it was because he was a social prophet, with an alternative social vision, who had attracted a following, that accounts for his execuition. He was perceived as a threat by the ruling elites at the top of the domination system. 4. I do not think the trial scene before the Sanhedrin and the hiugh priest is historical. I don't think an "official trial" like this happened (though there may have been a more informal meeting of a small circle of advisors or "cronies" around the high priest). And I don't think the issue was "blasphemy" or any sort of self-claim on the part of Jesus. I see the picture of him as condemned to death by Jewish authorities on a religious charge (blasphemy) as the creation of the early Christian movement. 5. I see the execution of Jesus happening because of collaboration between a narrow circle of the Jewish aristocracy (the Jewish ruling elite) and Roman authority. I have no idea whether Jesus appeared personally before either the high priest or Pilate. The decision to execute him could have been made without an appearance, and in the case of most peasant victims of crucifixion, undoubtedly was. 6. I consider it possible (perhaps even more likely than not) that Jesus was not buried in a tomb, and that his body may have been devoyureed by scavengers or buried in a common/mass grave. I am an agnostic in the technical sense of the word on this: I don't know, and can't see any way the historical judgment could be shifted one way or the other on this question. For reasons mentioned below, burial or lack of burial need not affect one's verdict on the resurrection of Jesus. 7. For obvious reasons, it is crucial that Christian preaching and teaching not continuie to create the impression that it was "the Jews" who crucified, or that it was "the Jewish people" who rejected him. Our gospel texts, to varying degrees, create this impression. Jewish involvement in the death of Jesus included at most a narrow circle of the ruling elites who, rather than representing the Jewish people, are more accurately understood as the oppressors of the great majority of Jews living in the Jewish homeland at the time of Jesus. To put this in a statement which echoes but differs from Luke's shorthand summary of Jesus, "Out of obedience to God, Jesus challenged the powers that be because of his social passion for `the least of these,' even to the point of death." The Resurrection of Jesus Before beginning my numbered statements, I wish to put my position in a sentence: "I affirm that the resurrection of Jesus really happened, and that need not involve anything happening to his corpse." Strongly affirming the resurrection of Jesus does/need not involve saying that his physical body came out of the tomb. One other preliminary. When I use the word "Easter," I am most often not referring to a particular day. When I use the word "resurrection," I am not saying anything about physical bodies or empty tombs. Unless context clearly indicates otherwise, I use both terms as "large umbrellas" to mean the experience of Jesus after his death. 1. When I say, "I affirm that the resurrection of Jesus really happened," I mean: The followers of Jesus continued to experience him as a living reality after his death (though in a radically new way). Jesus is a figure of the present, and not of the past. After his death, they experienced him as a spiritual(non-material, but actual) reality. These experiences were not confined to a few weeks or years or decades after Easter, but have continued through the centuries to this day. Thus the truth of Easter is not grounded in what did or did not happen on a particular Sunday, but in the on-going experience of Christians throughout the centuries. 2. I think there were a variety of resurrection experiences in the early movement(s): visions, mystical experiences, experiences of a presence, experience of power/empowerment. 3. I do not think that resurrection experiences were confined to one or only a few persons. 4. The resurrection of Jesus did/does not mean simply, "Jesus lives," but also "Jesus is Lord." That is, there was something about these experiences that led his followers to speak of him as "one with God" or as having been raied to "the right hand of God." Thus resurrection experiences did not mean simply that people had post-death experiences of Jesus (as, for example, often happens in intense grief reactions when a bereaved person has a vivid sense of "seeing" the deceased). Such an experience might feel radically uncanny, but it would not lead to the exclamation that the deceased had become "Lord" or was "divine." 5. Because of the distinction between resuscitation and resurrection, and because the earliest accounts speak of visions, there is no need to think that Easter necessarily involved an empty tomb, or that anything happened to the corpse of Jesus. 6. My own strong hunch: Nothing happened to the corpse of Jesus (except what happens to all corpses); and this in no way undermines the truth of Easter. 7. When I say, "Easter means that the followers of Jesus continued to experience him, even though nothing happened to his body," I do NOT mean any of the following: The spirit of Jesus lived on (as the spirit of Martin Luther King may be said to live on); or that his memory lived on; or that Jesus lived on in the birth of Easter faith among his followers. All of the above are true, but they are not, in my judgment, the meaning of easter. They are too weak, pallid, and reductionistic. Some comments on my understanding in relation to Luke and Dom. Luke, I re-read your section on the resurrection of Jesus in The Real Jesus. It sounds to me like you and I see this very similarly; we even use a number of similar phrases (which I also used in Jesus: A New Vision, and Meeting Jesus Again). Does it sound that way to you? Dom, a question. As I understand your position, you see all of the GOSPEL stories of Easter as essentially "authority-establishing narratives" (with the exception of the Emmaus story). Is that correct? Or do you see them as having another intention/function/purpose in addition to establishing (or discrediting) authority? Well, the time has come to bring this to a close. Best wishes to you both from Oregon.