Jesus and the Rise of Nationalism: A New Quest for the Nineteenth Century Historical Jesus

282 Pages·2011·17.676 MB·English

by  Halvor Moxnes

Halvor Moxnes is Professor of New Testament Studies at the University of Oslo
and a member of the Norwegian Academy of Sciences and Letters. His previous
books include Constructing Early Christian Families (1997) and Putting Jesus in his
Place: A Radical Vision of Household and Kingdom (2004).
Jesus and the rise of nationalism (CE).indb 1 2011-09-08 19.03
‘In a work of stunning originality and insight, Halvor Moxnes has combined the widest learning
and the deepest research to illuminate how the growth of lives of Jesus in the nineteenth
century influenced and was influenced by the assertion and development of European national
identities. His book is remarkably revealing on how understandings of the Holy Land featured
in this process. For anyone interested in the social, economic and religious factors affecting the
rise of European nationalisms, or the way in which biblical interpreters are creatures of their
times and contexts, Jesus and the Rise of Nationalism makes compulsory and compelling reading.’

Philip F. Esler,
Principal and Professor of Biblical Interpretation,
St Mary’s University College, Twickenham

‘Interpreting the biblical accounts of Jesus of Nazareth always demands from the reader a
number of complex analogical strategies. Our present imagination is needed in order to decode
the ancient story. Hence, any vision of who Jesus was and what he proclaimed bears too the
marks of our attitudes to our own world, of our ways of making sense of ourselves, of our
communities, and of our universe. Halvor Moxnes critically unravels the intimate relationship
between an emerging national imagination and the development of new biographical accounts
of Jesus during the nineteenth century. This fascinating examination of the fusion of horizons
of classical German, French and British theological appropriations of Jesus and their respective
social-political hermeneutics not only offers new insights into the development of biblical
studies; it also challenges contemporary interpreters of Jesus to face up to their own particular
contextual premises and subjective imagination and to explore their own hidden collective
agendas and projections.’

Werner G. Jeanrond,
Professor of Divinity,
University of Glasgow

‘In Jesus and the Rise of Nationalism Halvor Moxnes has written a very welcome contribution,
which reminds us that unless we take the hermeneutical context of the interpreters seriously as
a first priority we miss seeing the way in which interpretative preferences have continued
to influence the pictures of Jesus that emerge.’

Christopher Rowland,
Dean Ireland’s Professor of the Exegesis of Holy Scripture,
University of Oxford
J E S U S
RISE
and
of
the

NATIONALISM

A New Quest for the
Nineteenth-Century
Historical Jesus

Halvor Moxnes
Published in 2012 by I.B.Tauris & Co Ltd
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Distributed in the United States and Canada Exclusively by Palgrave Macmillan
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Copyright © 2012 Halvor Moxnes
The right of Halvor Moxnes to be identified as the author of this work has been
asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patent Act
1988.
All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or any
part thereof, may not be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval
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ISBN: 978 1 84885 080 4
A full CIP record for this book is available from the British Library
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Typeset in Adobe Garamond Pro by Progressus Consultant AB, Karlstad, SE
Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CRO 4YY
from camera-ready copy edited and supplied by the author
Jesus and the rise of nationalism (CE).indb 4 2011-09-08 19.03
In memory of Marianne Gullestad
Jesus and the rise of nationalism (CE).indb 5 2011-09-08 19.03
Jesus and the rise of nationalism (CE).indb 6 2011-09-08 19.03
Contents
Acknowledgements ix
Introduction: Jesus and Modern Identities 1
The Rise of Nationalism and the Historical Jesus 1
Beyond Schweitzer’s Account of the Quest for the Historical Jesus 4
The Historical Jesus and Discourses of Nationalism 8
How to Read this Book 14
I. Writing a Biography of Jesus in an Age of Nationalism 17
A New Form of Writing about Jesus 17
The Function of Biography 25
Jesus as a National Hero 31
Conclusion 37
II. Holy Land as Homeland: The Nineteenth-Century Landscape of Jesus 39
Introduction 39
Between Homeland and Holy Land 40
Imperial Gazes at the Holy Land 44
A Protestant Holy Land 56
Conclusion 59
III. Imagining a Nation: Schleiermacher’s Jesus as Teacher to the Nation 61
Introduction 61
Schleiermacher and His Biography of Jesus 62
The Great Man and His People 69
Jesus as Teacher to the Nation 79
The Kingdom of God and the Nation 84
Conclusion: Jesus as Nation 90
IV. A Protestant Nation: D. F. Strauss and Jesus for ‘The German People’ 95
Introduction 95
A ‘Modern’ Nineteenth-Century Writer 96
Jesus of The Life of Jesus, Critically Examined 98
A German Jesus 103
Last Stage: Jesus as ‘Enthusiast’ 115
Conclusion: A Masculine Nation 118
Jesus and the rise of nationalism (CE).indb 7 2011-09-08 19.03
viii Contents
V. ‘Familiar and Foreign’: Life of Jesus in the Orientalism of Renan 121
Introduction 121
The Orientalist Location of Renan 122
The Two Faces of the Orient 127
Galilee, Kingdom and Nation 132
The Dilemma of Renan and Race 137
Conclusion: After Whiteness 145
VI. The Manly Nation: Moral Landscape and National Character in
George Adam Smith’s The Historical Geography of the Holy Land 149
Introduction: Britain as Nation 149
A Geography of The Holy Land, Nation and Empire 150
The Nation as Moral Character 155
The Moral Landscape of Galilee 159
Places of Temptation: Nazareth 163
Places of Temptation: Caesarea Philippi 170
Imagining a Manly Nation 173
Conclusion 176
VII. Jesus Beyond Nationalism: Imagining a Post-National World 179
Jesus: a Utopian Biography? 179
What Would Jesus Deconstruct? 182
What is a (World) People? 184
Family Values in a Global World 191
A Moral World Geography 193
Notes 199
Bibliography 239
Index of Modern Authors 259
Index of Subjects 265
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Acknowledgements
What are the links between ideologies of nation and national movements and the
nineteenth-century pictures of the historical Jesus? It has taken a long time to de-
velop vague ideas about possible connections into a research strategy that could
result in what I hope is a convincing presentation of interconnections and mutual
influences.
The process that led to this book started with my previous work Putting Jesus in
His Place (2003), which was an attempt to see Jesus in his places, namely his home
and village society in Galilee, that both shaped him and that he also influenced. It
was Leif Vaage of Emmanuel College at the University of Toronto who suggested
that I follow up my first-century study by exploring how nineteenth-century schol-
ars had portrayed Galilee. I realized that their descriptions of Galilee were shaped
by nationalism and colonialism, and I became intrigued to see if this was also the
case with the presentations of the historical Jesus. I therefore decided to study the
pictures of Jesus, placed in Galilee, by four different scholars, from three different
European countries.
Early inspirations for my study also came from Susannah Heschel and Shawn
Kelly and their work in the area of race and anti-Judaism in nineteenth-century and
early twentieth-century studies of Jesus and early Christianity. The research project
‘Jesus in Cultural Complexity’, supported by the Norwegian Research Council and
located at the Faculty of Theology at the University of Oslo, has been most con-
genial. In addition to my collaborator in the project, Marianne Bjelland Kartzow,
and my Oslo colleagues Oddbjørn Leirvik and Dag Thorkildsen, the project has
brought together for seminars, discussions and great fun a group of younger schol-
ars from several universities in the UK, Canada and the USA: William Arnal, Ward
Blanton, Denise Buell, James Crossley, Jennifer Glancey; graduate students such as
Rene Berger and Jonathan Birch; and a wider group, including some of our own
Oslo master students.
This book has taken me into uncharted waters, from the New Testament and
early Christianity to the nineteenth century with all its complex intellectual, politi-
cal and social patterns, and with great diversity between Germany, France and Eng-
land, the nations under study in this book. I could not become an expert in these
areas, but my travels have taken me to universities and libraries that have facilitated
this study. Friends and colleagues have shown their usual hospitality, that is to say,
an extraordinary hospitality, and great interest in my topic, and they have brought
together scholars from a wide range of fields for seminars and discussions of papers
that I have been invited to give. Therefore, it is with a great sense of gratitude that
Jesus and the rise of nationalism (CE).indb 9 2011-09-08 19.03
x Jesus and the Rise of Nationalism
I mention the names of friends and institutions that have made my research pos-
sible: John Barclay and Durham University; Philip Esler and the University of St
Andrews; Alan Segal and Columbia University; Birgitte Kahl, Davina Lopez and
Union Theological Seminary; Wilhelm Gräb at Humboldt Universität; and Ward
Blanton, Heather Walton, Werner Jeanrond, Yvonne Sherwood and Jonathan Birch
and the University of Glasgow.
Finally, once more to bring a book project to completion, I ended up at Em-
manuel College in Toronto, a home away from home, at the invitation of Principal
Mark Toulouse. Here I enjoyed the extraordinary hospitality of Leif Vaage, both
in terms of the physical space of his home and office, and even more in terms of a
mental and social space with conversations about the nineteenth century, Norway
and Canada, and life in general.
These acknowledgements suggest I have been like a medieval wandering student
among universities, a privilege of academic life, but I have always had a home base
at the Faculty of Theology at the University of Oslo, with support from colleagues
and students in New Testament Studies. I am also grateful to the Faculty for grant-
ing me sabbaticals to finish the manuscript.
The libraries and librarians at the Faculty of Theology, University of Oslo and
all the other institutions I have visited have been invaluable resources. Even in the
age of the Internet nothing can substitute for a library where you can browse the
shelves and find books that make your heart jump. Many of the chapters in this
book had their beginnings as papers at meetings of societies such as the British New
Testament Society, the Society of Biblical Literature (SBL), SBL international, the
European Association of Biblical Studies, or as lectures at universities or seminaries
such as Copenhagen, Columbia, Union, Emmanuel, Durham (UK), Humboldt,
Sheffield and St Andrews.
I am especially grateful to several experts, whose works on the nineteenth-cen-
tury theologians under discussion have greatly influenced this study, and who have
been willing to read chapters of the book and give valuable comments (unfortu-
nately, I have not been able to follow up on all of them): Ward Blanton, Friedrich
Wilhelm Graf, Werner Jeanrond and Matthias Wolfes. It is not possible to express
my gratitude to my friend and colleague Leif Vaage wwhhoo iinn tthhee llaasstt ssttaaggeess ooff tthhee pprroo--
duction of the manuscript used all the time he had (and much that he did not have)
to read and reread the whole manuscript with a view to content, language and style.
Alex Wright at I.B.Tauris was the first editor to believe in the value of this pro-
ject, and has supported it with insight, valuable criticism and friendship. I hope that
he will be proven right in his trust in me. I am also grateful for the efficient and
friendly assistance from the staff at I.B.Tauris, the copy-editor Sara Millington, and
I am especially grateful to Christer Hellholm, who with great expertise produced
the camera-ready copy and the indices.
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