From Jesus to John: Essays on Jesus and New Testament Christology in Honour of Marinus De Jonge

370 Pages·17.473 MB·English

by  Martinus C. de Boer

l i b r a ry o f n e w t e s ta m e n t s t u d i e s

from jesus to john
essays on jesus and new testament Christology in
honour of marinus de jonge

edited by
martinus c. de boer
JOURNAL FOR THE STUDY OF THE NEW TESTAMENT
SUPPLEMENT SERIES
84
Executive Editor
Stanley E. Porter
Editorial Board
Richard Bauckham, David Catchpole, R. Alan Culpepper,
Joanna Dewey, James D.G. Dunn, Craig A. Evans, Robert Fowler,
Robert Jewett, Elizabeth Struthers Malbon, Dan O. Via
JSOT Press
Sheffield
Marinus de Jonge
From Jesus to John
Essays on Jesus and New
Testament Christology
in Honour of Marinus de Jonge
edited by
Martinus C. De Boer
Journal for the Study of the New Testament
Supplement Series 84
Copyright © 1993 Sheffield Academic Press
Published by JSOT Press
JSOT Press is an imprint of
Sheffield Academic Press Ltd
343 Fulwood Road
Sheffield S10 3BP
England
Typeset by Sheffield Academic Press
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
From Jesus to John:
Essays on Jesus and New Testament Christology
in Honour of Marinus de Jonge.—
(JSNT Supplement Series, ISSN 0143-5108;
no. 84)
I. Boer, Martinus C. De II. Series
232
EISBN 9781850754220
CONTENTS
Preface 7
Acknowledgments 13
Abbreviations 14
List of Contributors 17
H.J. DEJONGE
The Historical Jesus' View of Himself and of his Mission 21
WAYNE A. MEEKS
Asking Back to Jesus' Identity 38
DIETER LUHRMANN
Marinus de Jonge's Shaffer Lectures: Where Does Jesus 51
Research now Stand?
JOHN J. COLLINS
The Son Of God Text from Qumran 65
GEORGE J. BROOKE
4QTestament of Levid(?) and the Messianic Servant High 83
Priest
JAN WILLEM VAN HENTEN
The Tradition-Historical Background of Rom. 3.25: 101
A Search for Pagan and Jewish Parallels
J. LOUIS MARTYN
On Hearing the Gospel both in the Silence of the 129
Tradition and in its Eloquence
From Jesus to John
JAMES D.G. DUNN
How Controversial was Paul's Christology? 148
E. EARLE ELLIS
Xpiaxog in 1 Corinthians 10.4, 9 168
J. CHRISHAAN BEKER
The Christologies and Anthropologies of Paul, 174
Luke-Acts and Marcion
GRAHAM N. STANTON
The Two Parousias of Christ: Justin Martyr and Matthew 183
CHRISTOPHER M. TUCKETT
The Son of Man in Q 196
MORNA D. HOOKER
'Beginning with Moses and from all the Prophets' 216
DAVID R. CATCHPOLE
The Anointed One in Nazareth 231
D. MOODY SMITH
Historical Issues and the Problem of John and the 252
Synoptics
PEDER BORGEN
John 6: Tradition, Interpretation and Composition 268
MAARTEN JJ. MENKEN
The Christology of the Fourth Gospel: A Survey of 292
Recent Research
LEANDER E. KECK
Toward the Renewal of New Testament Christology 321
Index of References 341
Index of Authors 359
PREFACE
The essays in this volume are offered to Marinus de Jonge, Professor
of New Testament and Early Christian Literature at the University of
Leiden from 1966 until his retirement at the end of 1990. He is per-
haps best known outside his native land for his provocative and foun-
dational work on the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, about
which he has published numerous books and articles, beginning with
his doctoral dissertation in 1953. However, he is also much admired
for his New Testament scholarship, especially in the area of
Christology, and for that reason the present volume of essays in his
honour is devoted to this theme.1
Particularly in his work as a New Testament scholar, de Jonge has
consistently regarded himself not only as a historian but also as a
theologian. In his inaugural lecture at Leiden in 1966, De Nieuwtesta-
menticus als Historicus en Theoloog? he eloquently maintained that
the New Testament scholar must be both, if justice is to be done to the
nature of the documents themselves and to the humanity of those who
wrote them and now interpret them. To allow biblical authors to
speak their own minds in their own language, de Jonge here argued,
the New Testament interpreter has to acknowledge the cultural and
linguistic "distance9 between people living today and the biblical
writers. The very particular situations in which the documents were
composed can also not be ignored. For such reasons, the New
Testament scholar must be a historian making rigorous, scientific use
of the historical-critical tools requisite to historical reconstruction and
1. A full bibliography of his writings has been compiled by his close associate
and successor, H.J. de Jonge (no relation). This bibliography, containing 286
items (!) and still counting, is appended to a collection of M. de Jonge's scholarly
articles, Jewish Eschatology, Early Christian Christology and the Testaments of the
Twelve Patriarchs: Collected Essays of Marinus de Jonge (ed. H.J. de Jonge;
NovTSup, 63; Leiden: Brill, 1991), pp. 314-26.
2. Leiden: Brill, 1966.
8 From Jesus to John
understanding. But the New Testament scholar must also be a theologian
who recognizes that genuine 'listening' to the New Testament authors
and what they have to say inevitably leads to 'engagement' with the
theological subject matter. It cannot be overlooked that the various
New Testament documents were written to elicit, strengthen, defend
and correct faith in Jesus as God's final emissary and representative.
Furthermore, the New Testament authors and their audiences were
living, breathing human beings, and the New Testament scholar is no
different. He or she is no mere cataloguer of interesting bits of
historical information. For such reasons, the claims of contemporary
relevance cannot finally be evaded or suppressed. In de Jonge's eyes, a
New Testament scholar claiming to be either a historian or a theologian
brings sure distortion to both historical and theological understanding
of the New Testament.1
De Jonge's stance is exhibited not only in his writings on the New
Testament, but also in his professional career. Prior to taking up an
academic appointment at Groningen in 1962, he was for many years a
full-time preacher and pastor within the Reformed Church of the
Netherlands. De Jonge pursued his scholarly interests while still a full-
time pastor and continued to serve the church throughout his full-time
academic career. His work as a historian and a theologian converged
most visibly in his efforts as a translator with the Dutch Bible Society
from 1962 to 1973, a task that took advantage of his considerable
philological skills as well.
Indeed, de Jonge evidently regards all his activity as an exercise in
appropriate 'translation'. He has described himself as someone 'who is
occupied in scholarly work on the Bible, especially the New
Testament, and who constantly tries to ask how he must now put into
words and can translate into deeds what is found in the Bible'.2
Regrettably if understandably, apart from the volume just quoted, his
written efforts at 'translation' are mostly available only in Dutch.3
1. More recently, de Jonge has written that 'research in early Christianity
requires the tools and abilities of the philologist, the literary critic, the historian and
the theologian' (Collected Essays, p. xvii).
2. Jesus, Inspiring and Disturbing Presence (Nashville: Abingdon Press,
1974).
3. Here we may highlight two brief volumes: Taal en Tekeru Ontmoetingen met
Jezus in net evangelie van Johannes, with H.M. J. van Duyne (Nijkerk: Callenbach,
1978) and Van tekst tot uitleg: Luisteroefeningen in het Nieuwe Testament, with
Preface 9
There are, however, numerous people in many lands speaking diverse
languages who can testify from personal experience to his successful
'translation' in word and in deed of 'what is found in the Bible'. I
myself first met Rien de Jonge in the autumn of 1986, at the beginning
of six months of research in Leiden. Rien became my proverbial
Dutch uncle, dispensing sage and frank, even blunt, advice in his char-
acteristically open and friendly manner. My wife, Paula, and I shall
always be grateful to him and his lovely wife, Vera, for the generous
hospitality extended to us during our stay.
Beyond the boundaries of his native land, de Jonge has had particu-
larly close contacts with scholars in England and the United States.
With two exceptions, the contributors to this Festschrift reflect that
fact. When I began work on it a few years ago, I did not know that in
1991 I would be leaving the United States and taking up a post at
Manchester University where forty years earlier, 'during an inspiring
year' (1951-1952), de Jonge wrote his doctoral dissertation under the
supervision of J. de Zwaan and T.W. Manson.1 De Jonge's connection
to Manson and Manchester, as well as to the United States, has been
visible more recently as well. His Shaffer Lectures at Yale University
in 1989 took place exactly fifty years after Manson's. The title of de
Jonge's Shaffer Lectures, Jesus, The Servant-Messiah,2 is a clear evo-
cation of the title of Manson's, The Servant-Messiah: A Study of the
Public Ministry of Jesus? Furthermore, de Jonge's Shaffer Lectures
provided the theme for a farewell symposium in his honour at Leiden
University on 25 January 1991 and were the basis for a series of lec-
tures at English universities, including Manchester, in March 1991. It
thus seems fitting that this Festschrift, devoted to the christological
issues that have recently engaged de Jonge's erudite attention in public
forums in the United States, England and the Netherlands, should also
be edited at Manchester University by someone who is both a native of
the Netherlands and an American!
The scope of these essays, epitomized in the volume's title, From
Jesus to John, reflects what Martin Dibelius regarded as the crucial
H.M.J. van Duyne (The Hague: Boekencentrum, 1982).
1. De Jonge, Collected Essays, p. xi.
2. New Haven: Yale University, 1991. Also available in Dutch under the title
Jezus als Messias: Hoe Hij zijn lending zag (Boxtel: Katholieke Bijbelstichting;
Bruges: Tabor, 1990).
3. Not published until 19S3 by Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.