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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 February 2009
Many scholars employ a different kind of criterion of coherence from the standard, i.e., the criterion that Jesus’ authentic sayings hold together in a coherent whole; yet Jesus scholars differ regarding the nature of this coherence. When we then understand that Jesus was a charismatic leader of a new religious movement, and when we examine how such persons in general behave, we see the importance of randomness for charismatic leadership, and we understand that we cannot expect systematic coherence among the sayings of Jesus. Jesus may have said things that appear contradictory, but they will have enhanced his charismatic authority.
1 Perrin, Norman, Rediscovering the Teaching of Jesus (New York/Evanston: Harper & Row, 1967)39–45.Google Scholar
2 Rediscovering, 40.
3 The History of the Synoptic Tradition (revised ed.; New York: Harper & Row, 1963) 22.Google Scholar
4 Bultmann, , Jesus and the Word (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1958) 74–5.Google Scholar
5 Jeremias, Joachim, New Testament Theology. The Proclamation of Jesus (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1971) 205–6.Google Scholar
6 Sanders, E. P., The Historical Figure of Jesus (London: Allen Lane; Penguin, 1993) 224.Google Scholar One can imagine, in the face of this almost universal acceptance by scholars of the authenticity of the Great Commandment, my shock on having an article rejected by a scholarly journal some years ago because, so the editor wrote, his reader had pointed out that I had accepted this quotation of scripture as an authentic saying of Jesus, when according to Perrin's criterion of dissimilarity it could not be! (I assume that the editor just wanted an excuse.)
7 Paula Fredriksen, in an address to the AAR, ASOR, and SBL, November 1994.
8 Rediscovering, 107.
9 Rediscovering, 152.
10 Rediscovering, 205.
11 Theology, 67–8.
12 Theology, 244–5.
13 Theology, 247.
14 Theology, 248.
15 Theology, 275–6.
16 Jesus the Jew. A Historian's Reading of the Gospels (Phildelphia: Fortress, 1973) esp. 18–82.Google Scholar
17 Jesus the Jew, 83–212.
18 The Religion of Jesus the Jew (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993) 206–7.Google Scholar
19 Jesus, and Judaism, (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1985) 91.Google Scholar
20 Jesus and Judaism, 61–76.
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23 The Historical Jesus. The Life of a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1991) xii.Google Scholar
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25 From Tradition to Gospel (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, n.d.) 244.Google Scholar
26 The Five Gospels. The Search for the Authentic Words of Jesus (new translation and commentary by Robert W. Funk, Roy W. Hoover, and the Jesus Seminar; New York: Macmillan, 1993) 178.Google Scholar
27 Jesus and Judaism, 92.
28 Theology, 82–3.
29 Theology, 30.
30 Jesus the Jew, 32–3.
31 Historical Jesus, 236–8.
32 Religion of Jesus, 144.
33 Synoptic Tradition, 50.
34 From Tradition to Gospel, 47.
35 Jesus the Jew, 33–4.
36 Historical Jesus, 299.
37 Synoptic Tradition, 199.
38 Form Tradition to Gospel, 227–8.
39 Five Gospels, 55.
40 Jesus the Jew, 27.
41 Rediscovering, 37.
42 The references are to the following pages, respectively, of Theology:31, 61, 120, and 256–7.
43 Synoptic Tradition, 199–200.
44 Theology, 152; and similarly on pp. 134–5.
45 Rediscovering, 115.
46 Religion of Jesus, 107.
47 Five Gospels, 358.
48 Synoptic Tradition, 199.
49 Five Gospels, 368.
50 Religion of Jesus, 108, 112.
51 Rediscovering, 129–30.
52 Theology, 120 (emphasis mine).
53 Theology, 137.
54 Theology,140.
55 Theology,191.
56 For evidence that the Greek verb ύπωπιάζω carries a nuance similar to that of my English translation, cf. Liddell-Scott-Jones, s.v.
57 Synoptic Tradition, 26.
58 Synoptic Tradition, 48.
59 Five Gospels, 102.
60 Theology, 72.
61 Jesus the Jew, 36.
62 Jesus and Judaism, 292.
63 Synoptic Tradition, 278.
64 Five Gospels, 117.
65 Jesus and Judaism, 332.
66 Religion of Jesus, 141,147.
67 Theology, 96,100, and 137, respectively.
68 The Kingdom of God in the Teaching of Jesus (London: SCM, 1963) 183Google Scholar; Perrin does not discuss the saying in Rediscovering.
69 Historical Jesus, 366.
70 Historical Jesus, XXXi–XXXiii, 427–9.
71 Anthony J. Blasi has kindly pointed out (in correspondence) that the coherence that I am discussing here is verbal, not social. That is of course quite correct. In spite of a lack of coherence in Jesus’ teachings, in the sense of a consistent theology, there had to be a social coherence to the Jesus movement, otherwise it would have faltered and failed early on. Thus Weber referred to ‘a unified attitude toward life gained by a deliberate meaningful stand taken toward it’ (quoted in Parsons, Talcott, The Structure of Social Action [New York: The Free Press of Glencoe, 1949] 568)Google Scholar. Parsons clarifies Weber's position by adding that, if the teaching of the charismatic leader is ‘efficacious he gathers about him a community of disciples’ (Structure, 569). Such efficaciousness, however, need not – and probably does not – imply logical coherence in the charismatic leader's teaching; cf. further below. Parsons also notes (Structure, 669) that it is the leader's charisma that legitimates the movement – charisma, not an intellectually coherent theology.
72 Jesus, : A New Vision. Spirit, Culture, and the Life of Discipleship (San Francisco and elsewhere: Harper & Row, 1987) 16.Google Scholar
73 Jesus: A New Vision, 21.
74 Jesus the Jew, 69–82. Vermes also refers much more briefly to other Galilean holy men.
75 Vermes seems to have been, at least in part, led astray by an article by Green, William Scott (‘Palestinian Holy Men. Charismatic Leadership and Rabbinic Tradition’, ANRW 2.19.2 [1979] 619–47Google Scholar), to which he refers in Religion of Jesus, 6. In spite of Green's title, however, he does not deal with leadership at all and presents no evidence that Honi was a leader of any thing.
76 The Charismatic Leader and His Followers (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1981)Google Scholar. Sanders, E.P. also roundly endorses Hengel's approach in this regard (Jesus and Judaism, 237–9).Google Scholar
77 Charismatic Leader, 3–15.
78 Charismatic Leader, 34. In Religion of Jesus, 71, Vermes also quotes other statements of Weber's on charismatic leaders, but this was after he had read Hengel's book (cf. n. 28). Malina, Oddly Bruce J. (‘Jesus as Charismatic Leader?’, Biblical Theology Bulletin 14 [1984] 55–62)CrossRefGoogle Scholar has sought to show that, according to Weber's principles, Jesus was not a charismatic leader. Malina focuses on the authority aspect of charismatic leadership and asserts, among other things, that Jesus was not an extraordinary healer, that he was not a political revolutionary but rather a ‘staunch conservative revivalist’, and that ‘his leadership … contained no authoritarian elements’ (p. 58). Malina seems not to have read Weber, but rather to have drawn his knowledge (in this instance) of Weber's ideas about charismatic leadership from an article by Miyahara, Kojiro (‘Charisma: From Weber to Contemporary Sociology’, Sociological Inquiry 53 [1983] 368–88)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Had he read Weber, Malina would have discovered that Jesus is one of Weber's main examples for the charisma of authority in Economy and Society (see below, n. 83), and that Weber frequently elsewhere refers to Jesus as a charismatic figure. Malina also overlooks much of the Jesus tradition, such as the saying that provides Hengel's starting point.
79 Charismatic Leader, 21.
80 Charismatic Leader, 25.
81 I owe the wording of the axiom to my colleague and mystagog into the field of sociology of religion, Marion S. Goldman.
82 It is revelatory of the insulated nature of academic disciplines that biblical scholars will quote a couple of sentences from Weber– especially on a topic like charismatic leadership, on which he had a variety of sometimes contradictory things to say, and by no means all in one place – and will think that they have thereby cited the relevant sociological literature!
83 Weber, Max, Economy and Society. An Outline of Interpretive Sociology 3 vols. (ed. Guenther, Roth & Claus, Wittich; New York: Bedminster, 1968) 3.1117.Google Scholar A very helpful digest and analysis of Weber's theory of charismatic leadership may be found in Wallis, Roy (with Steve Bruce), ‘Charisma, Tradition, Paisley and the Prophets’, Sociological Theory, Religion and Collective Action (by Wallis, and Bruce, ; Belfast: The Queen's University, 1986) 83–113Google Scholar; cf. further on this point Parsons, Structure, 663.
84 Weber, , Economy and Society, 1.243.Google Scholar
85 Weber, , Economy and Society, 1.244.Google Scholar
86 Weber, , Economy and Society, 3.1115.Google Scholar
87 Garrett, William R., ‘Maligned Mysticism: The Maledicted Career of Troeltsch's Third Type’, Sociological Analysis 36 (1975) 218.CrossRefGoogle Scholar In a study with a slightly different focus, Douglas Barnes, F. (‘Charisma and Religious Leadership: An Historical Analysis’, JSSR 17 [1978] 1–18Google Scholar) studied fifteen charismatic leaders of NRMs from different times and places throughout history and found that, if their movements were to become institutionalized, they had ‘to live in periods of radical social change or be cut off from the mainstream of society, perceive religious tradition as relative, and have innovative teachings’ (p. 1). The latter two points are related to the evidence concerning randomness.
88 Cf. Economy and Society, 2.444: ‘Jesus was not at all interested in social reform as such.’
89 Wilson, Especially Bryan R., The Noble Savages. The Primitive Origins of Charisma and Its Contemporary Survival (Quantum Books, Berkeley/Los Angeles/London: University of California, 1975).Google ScholarWilson, refers to ‘charismatic demand’ (p. 78Google Scholaret passim); cf. further, for example, Tucker, Robert C., ‘The Theory of Charismatic Leadership’, Daedalus 97 (1968) 737–8Google Scholar; and Spencer, Martin E., ‘What Is Charisma?’, British Journal of Sociology 24 (1973) 347.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed Weber was hardly unaware of this side of the charismatic phenomenon; cf. Economy and Society, 2.631: Jesus’ ‘self-esteem involved the conviction that his power to exorcise demons was operative only among the people who believed in him’. In this respect, cf. Anthony J. Blasi's very interesting discussion of charisma, Paul's posthumous in Making Charisma. The Social Construction of Paul's Public Image (New Brunswick and London: Transaction, 1991) 85–9.Google Scholar
90 Cf. Parsons, Structure, 572: ‘The problems of the meaning of the world will not be entirely the same for all classes of society’.
91 In addition to his article cited above, cf. also ‘Charisma and Explanation’, Secularization, Rationalism, and Sectarianism. Essays in Honour of Bryan R. Wilson (ed. Eileen Barker, James A. Beckford, and Karel Dobbelaere; Oxford: Clarendon, 1993) 167–79Google Scholar; ‘Charisma, Commitment and Control in a New Religious Movement’, Millennialism and Charisma (ed. Wallis; Belfast: The Queen's University, 1982) 73–140Google Scholar; and ‘The Social Construction of Charisma’, Sociological Theory, Religion and Collective Action (above, n. 82) 129–54.Google Scholar
92 ‘Charisma, Commitment and Control’,
93 Routinization is, according to Weber, the normal pattern of development after the period of the prophet's leadership of an NRM. After Jesus there was the Apostolic Council.
94 ‘Charisma, Commitment and Control’, 121.
95 ‘Charisma, Commitment and Control’, 134.
96 ‘Charisma, Tradition’, 107.
97 ‘Charisma, Tradition’, 107. Berger, Peter L. has also made the same point about the prophets; cf. his ‘Charisma and Religious Innovation: The Social Location of Israelite Prophecy’, American Sociological Review 28 (1963) 940–50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
98 The Theory of the Two Charismas (Washington, DC: University Press of America, 1981) 4.Google Scholar
99 I emphasize that this is not a statement of faith, but a realization of historico-sociological reality.
100 Cf. Joshi, Vasant (Swami Satya Vedant), The Awakened One. The Life and Work of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh (San Francisco and elsewhere: Harper & Row, 1982) 112.Google Scholar
101 Charismatic leaders of all types are routinely stigmatized; cf. Lipp, Wolfgang, ‘Charisma-Social Deviation, Leadership and Cultural Change. A Sociology of Deviance Approach’, The Annual Review of the Social Sciences of Religion 1 (1977) 59–77Google Scholar; Ebertz, Michael N., ’Le stigmate du mouvement charismatique autour de Jgsus de Nazareth’, Social Compass 39 (1992) 255–73.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
102 Palmer, Susan J. (‘Charisma and Abdication: A Study of the Leadership of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh’, Sociological Analysis 49 [1988] 119–35CrossRefGoogle Scholar) has proposed that these aspects of Rajneesh's leadership, along with his final abdication, indicated a ‘dislike for the responsibility that leadership entails’ (p. 121). In this case, then, he will have been further unlike Jesus.
103 Awakened One, 90.
104 Emphasis mine.
105 Strelley, , with Souci, Robert D. San, The Ultimate Game. The Rise and Fall of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh (San Francisco & elsewhere: Harper & Row, 1987) 106.Google Scholar
106 Bhagwan, . The God That Failed (New York: St. Martin's, 1986) 65.Google Scholar
107 God That Failed, 108.
108 Fredriksen, above n. 7.
109 Schweitzer, Albert, The Quest of the Historical Jesus (London: Adam & Charles Black, 1954) 396–7.Google Scholar
