In a speech last Friday at the Rockefeller Center entitled "The Face in the Mirror: Recent Studies of the Historical Jesus," Father John R. Donahue addressed the ancient question: Who was Jesus?
Donahue, who was invited to speak by the Aquinas House Catholic Student Center and the Jewish Studies Program, is a professor of New Testament at the Jesuit School of Theology at Berkeley, as well as a Catholic priest and scholar.
He highlighted the importance of the question by pointing out the recent explosion of "Jesus" books written by Jewish, Protestant and Catholic scholars. These books reflect an ongoing quest to discover the "true" Jesus, which began with the four authors of the gospels of the New Testament in the 1st century AD.
According to Donahue, the four Gospels represent at least four distinct portraits of Jesus, each significantly different from the others. These perspectives mirror the gradual evolution of Christian belief and practice in the 60 years following Jesus' death.
According to Donahue, after the first century AD, the next great search for the historical Jesus began with the Enlightenment in the 19th century.
The enlightenment theologians had a decidedly misogynistic but compassionate view of the "fatherhood of God and brotherhood of man," Donahue said.
Among the events that shaped the search for the historical Jesus was the advent of World War I, which created a deep religious pessimism. Since then, various modern scholars have described Jesus as an illiterate "Mediterranean Jewish peasant," a "marginal Jew" and a "Hellenistic cynic."
Throughout his lecture Donahue emphasized the importance of inter-faith study, especially between Christians and Jews.
"If we want to understand each other's cultures, we have to read each other's texts," he said, claiming "the most dangerous thing we can do is say Jesus was not a Jew."
Donahue also said, "The continuing existence of Judaism is evidence of a covenant never revoked," adding that Jews and Christians are united by their shared "unfulfilled messianic hopes."
At the end of his lecture Donahue offered his own vision of the historical Jesus -- a first century Jewish man who was totally immersed in the culture and history of Israel.
He described Jesus as a "spirit possessed prophetic figure" in the tradition of "reformist prophets" like Jeremiah, one who was not merely a predictor, but rather a mediator between the divine and the human.
According to Donahue, Jesus probably began as a follower of John the Baptist, but experienced a conversion that lead him to break with John's teachings and spread the message of God's compassion.
It is Donahue's opinion that Jesus' trial, as described in the Gospels, does not represent a strictly historical report, but is a product of later reflection. "The Sanhedrin [the Jewish council of elders that accused Jesus] may not have existed in the form described in the Gospels," he said.
Ultimately, Donahue explained, the search for Jesus is "a discovery of who we are," and is part of a "process of self-definition." A society's picture of Jesus reflects its own religious values and conflicts, perhaps better than it reflects the actual historical Jesus.
Donahue concluded by saying, "There is hardly an evil in this world that the Bible hasn't been used to justify," therefore necessitating critical examination of the Bible.
