The one thing that can be said about Jesus without fear of contradiction is that he was a teacher. Even those who deny his divine nature and his work of salvation regard Jesus as a remarkable teacher. Whether it was due to his dynamic personality or his persuasive speech, Jesus was a teacher par excellence.
Indications are that Jesus was trained in the Jewish Law in the rabbinic tradition of the Pharisees, and that he received some sort of Hellenistic education. Ever since the invasion of Alexander the Great, Greek culture and the Greek language had been an important part of Palestine, especially Galilee. Jesus' method of teaching and its content is indicative of an amalgam of the Jewish and the Hellenistic worlds. Even for those of us who believe in his deity, we understand that as the God-Man he developed physically, emotionally, and mentally as any other person. As God, he had the ability to heal and to affect natural forces, but he also possessed a supernatural wisdom that made proper use of the knowledge he gained. I also believe that Jesus not only understood his role as teacher and prophet to the nation, but also had a higher perception that he was Messiah and Savior.
Some scholars of Jesus have come to the conclusion that Jesus was only a wise teacher. The method used in the early twentieth century was demythologization. Remove the mythological, it was thought, and you end up with Jesus' teaching. It just so happened that, when this demythologization is carried out, Jesus’ teachings sounded a lot like the existentialist philosophy of the day. Another approach focused on Jesus' social consciousness out of which came the social gospel. A recent approach has been to reexamine the sources for the gospels and not to give the canonical gospels a privileged position relative to other gospel literature of the first few centuries.
You might ask, “What sources for the gospels? Has there been some new discovery of a manuscript in a museum somewhere? Have archaeologists unearthed some ancient document the predates the gospels? Nothing like that. What has happened is that scholars have decided that portions of the Gospels collectively look like they might have come from an earlier document.
There are large portions of our gospels that appear in all three of Matthew, Mark and Luke. The theory goes that Matthew and Luke made use of the earlier Gospel of Mark. There are places, however, where Matthew and Luke have similar material that is not in Mark. Therefore, it is believed that Matthew and Luke both copied from another source which German scholars dubbed Q. When this reconstructed document was examined, scholars noticed that it was mainly a collection of sayings. The early church Father, Papias, referred to some document as the “logia” or “sayings” of Jesus. That there could have been a collection of sayings of Jesus was given additional credence when in the 1940s they discovered an ancient document from Egypt written in Coptic called the Gospel of Thomas. Although the Coptic version dates to the middle of the second century (50-75 years after the canonical gospels), some scholars hypothesize that it is a translation from an early Greek text that predated the canonical Gospels. When compared to the Gospel of Thomas and other non-canonical gospels, supporters of this source theory have theorized that Q was an early written source of the sayings of Jesus. They further conclude that since it does not contain miracle stories and expressions of Jesus' divinity (not to mention the lack of an infancy or passion narrative), Q must represent the early teachings of the followers of Jesus before the myths and theology of Christianity began to develop.
But there are some problems with the theory. First, we do not have any manuscript evidence for this reconstructed document called Q. Therefore, we do not know that it only contained what Matthew and Luke both used. It is just as likely that some of the material that is only in Matthew was part of that source and Luke didn't happen to include it, or vice-versa. To say that Q only consisted of what Matthew and Luke have in common that’s not in Mark is built on an argument from silence. The fact that Q does not contain information about Jesus' death and resurrection could simply be due to it being an unfinished work or to the common fate of ancient manuscripts: the beginning and the end become detached from the roll leaving only the middle portion. This could account for the lack of any birth narrative or passion narrative in this hypothetical document Q. Secondly, we are not able to develop a theology of a group based on a reconstructed document without knowing what else it may have contained or what else they may have believed. Third, no one can prove that the document is earlier than Mark apart from the presupposition – a presupposition that stems from a nineteenth century rationalism that rejected all supernatural claims as mythology -- that Jesus was just a martyred teacher who was later built up as a resurrected God by weak-minded anti-semites out to bolster their own power and position.
Another method of searching for the historical Jesus is to establish a rigorous method of testing every saying of Jesus. This includes favoring the Q source document but claims greater authenticity for sayings which have multiple attestation in dissimilar settings. These stringent principles exclude much of what Jesus said or did.
The Jesus Seminar is one small, limited group of scholars who have built their careers on developing this reductionistic method of describing Jesus and his earliest followers. What is left of Jesus when they get done can fit into a slimline, pocket-sized book, if you use a lot of spacing, put only a few lines on each page, add numerous images, and plenty of notes (John Dominic Crossan, The Essential Jesus: Original Sayings and Earliest Images, 1994). The claim is that this is the historical Jesus. According to them, we don’t know much of what he did, but this is what we can be pretty sure that he said. What is left of Jesus’ teaching when they have finished their work just happens to go along with what liberal Catholicism and Protestantism has been advocating for the last generation. Isn’t that convenient? What I want to say here is that, even if we only look at the sayings of Jesus found in Q or other “well-attested” sayings, what we learn of Jesus fits better with what orthodox Christianity teaches than with the conclusions of those whose agenda is to strip Christianity of its Christ.
Part of this reconstructed Q document is a section about John the Baptist (The Complete Gospels, p. 263). John sends several of his disciples to Jesus to get clarification. The question is almost word for word the same in Matthew and Luke, "Are you the coming one or should we look for someone else." The expression "coming one" is a messianic title, something the critics deny Jesus claimed. Jesus then affirms that he is "the coming one" based on his deeds: "the blind receive their sight and the lame walk, lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear, and the dead are raised up, and the poor have good news preached to them" (mt 11:2-6; lk 7:18-23). If this is not a clear claim to miracles, I don't know what it is. You can take it or leave it, but you can't say that the earliest documents don't have it. These Jesus scholars do “leave it.” Even though it is in Q, they discard it when they construct their “proto-Q” or their “essential Jesus.” Jesus goes on in this passage of Q to teach that John was the messenger who was to prepare the way, another indication that Jesus perceived himself in a messianic role (mt 11:7-19; lk 7:24-35).
In another portion of Q, Matthew and Luke relate Jesus' words explaining his relationship to God (Lk 10:21-22; Mt. 11:25-27). It contains a prayer of Jesus in which he addresses God as his Father and in which he designates himself as "the son." Knowledge of the Father is restricted to the Son and to whomever the Son chooses to reveal him. The language here is reminiscent of the Gospel of John, a document critics place as the latest of the gospels since it describes Jesus in such developed theological terms (jn 3:35; 17:2; 13:3; 7:29; 10:14-15; 17:25). Also, the context is apocalyptic, something else critics recently deny about Jesus.
They say Jesus was described in terms alluding to the personification of the wisdom of God in some of the Jewish literature. They do not think that Jesus prophesied the judgment of the end time similar to the apocalyptic literature of that period. But the context of Jesus' prayer is apocalyptic. He refers to "revealing" - the central notion of apocalyptic -- "these things." The "these things" must refer to a previous section. In Matthew the previous section is also a segment from Q in which Jesus is teaching about the day of judgment in which the cities which rejected him will receive greater punishment than the pagan cities of Tyre and Sidon or even Sodom. In Jesus' words, Capernaum will go to hell (mt 11:20-24; lk 10:12-15). In Luke the previous section is a portion which only is contained in his gospel, one of those sections that possibly could have been in Q, but Matthew just didn't include it. It tells of when the seventy disciples report back to Jesus about their urban ministry. Jesus tells them, "I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven." As the proper context for Jesus saying, "I thank thee that thou hast hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to babes," Jesus acknowledges that revelation is restricted within his own authority as Son, contains a warning against the day of judgment, and combines both his teachings and his deeds. This is another section of Q which supports orthodox teaching about who Jesus was.
Critics believe that Jesus was mainly a story-teller and one who used aphorisms, witty little one-liners. These types of sayings seem genuine to scholars and those which appear in multiple sources (and don’t seem too “Christian”) they consider genuine. One of the examples they give as authentically Jesus (mt 9:14-17; mk 2:18-22; lk 5:33-39) is "No one puts a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old garment, for the patch tears away from the garment, and a worse tear is made.” And also "No one puts new wine into old wineskins; if he does, the wine will burst the skins, and the wine is lost ” (Essential Jesus, p. 47). The context of these sayings, in all three of the gospels, is Jesus saying, "The days will come, when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast." Why don't your disciples fast? is the question. The answer is that while he is with them they rejoice like at a wedding banquet. The day will come when he is taken away, then they will fast. If we accept the critics' premise then we take the aphorisms as authentic, but deny the other because it is suggestive of what happened to Jesus in the end. There’s no good reason for taking the one without the other except that they privilege sayings that present a Jesus that fits their preconceived notions.
One thing that Jesus scholars agree on is that Jesus taught his followers with parables. The Kingdom (“reign” or “dominion”) of God is a common theme in the parables. We should be able to look at the parables and their teachings about the kingdom of God, and through them learn about the teachings of Jesus.
You would think that Jesus used parables as a way of better illustrating truths so people could understand better. Quite the opposite is the case. When asked why he taught with parables, Jesus told his disciples, "To you it has been given to know the secrets of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it has not been given" (mt 13:10-17; mk 4:10-12; lk 8:9-10). It’s also interesting to note that Jesus explained his parables to his disciples when they were alone (mt 13:34-35; mk 4:33-34).
The kingdom of God (Matthew substitutes God with "heaven" out of deference for the name of God) describes the sphere of God's influence. It is related to the kingdom that God formed with Israel and its culmination in the end time, but goes beyond it since it is said to be here, but not yet. It is associated with the physical kingdom as something that can be entered and that can grow, but it also is spoken of in terms of the heavenly sphere where God exists or as being within a person.
In a simple parable in Q, Jesus compares the kingdom of heaven/God to yeast. "It is like leaven which a woman took and hid in three measures of flour, till it was all leavened." The kingdom then has a hidden nature and it is something that grows unnoticed (mt 13:33; lk 13:20-21). In the same way, Jesus tells of a man who scattered seed on the ground and does not know how it grows, but eventually it becomes a full plant and is harvested (mk 4:26-29). The kingdom is also like a treasure that is hidden in a field which the man purchases after selling all his possessions, or a pearl of great value that a merchant sells all to buy (mt 13:44-46). Jesus also compared the kingdom to a mustard seed that is tiny, but when it is grown it becomes like a tree (mt 13:31-32; mk 4:30-32; lk 13:18-19).
In another parable about seeds, a man sows seed in his field and, when he is asleep, the enemy comes and plants weeds. His servants want to know if they should pull the weeds. The farmer does not want them to pull the weeds for fear that they will pull up the wheat as well. They are to let both grow until harvest time. Then the reapers will gather the weeds first into bundles to be burned, and the wheat is to be gathered into his barn (mt 13:24-30). In Matthew, Jesus explains the meaning of the parable to his disciples: it is a picture of the judgment of the end time in which the angels will gather the sons of the evil one and throw them into the furnace of fire and the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father (mt 13:36-43). In the same way, the kingdom is like a net that gathers all kinds of fish. At the close of the age the angels will come to separate the evil from the righteous (mt 13:47-50).
Jesus often talked about being willing to listen to his words and to obey them (mt 5:15;10:26;7:2;13:12; mk 4:21-25; lk 8:16-18). Jesus tells of seeds that are scattered and fall in different types of soil, some on the path, others on rocky ground, others in the thorns, and some on good soil that produced much grain (mt 13:1-9; mk 4:1-9; lk 8:4-8). Jesus then tells his disciples what the parable means. The seed is the word of God and the ground represents people's receptivity to the word (mt 13:18-23; mk 4:13-20; lk 8:11-15).
Jesus also taught his disciples about their life together. Jesus warned them about the temptations of life and the dire judgment for failing and for causing someone else to fall (mt 18:6-9; mk 9:42-50; lk 17:1-2;14:34-35). God cares for his people no matter their status or stature. He is like the shepherd who leaves the ninety-nine to go in search of the one lost sheep (mt 18:10-14; lk 15:3-7). A disciple should be willing to confront a brother who sins against him, but also willing to forgive him (mt 18:15-18; lk 17:3). In answer to Peter's question, Jesus states that one must always be willing to forgive no matter how many times wronged (mt 18:21-22; lk 17:4). Matthew relates the parable of the unforgiving servant who, although he was forgiven his great debt, was unwilling to show mercy to a fellow-servant. Therefore, his pardon was revoked until he should pay his debt. Jesus told his disciples that God would do the same to them if they did not forgive from their heart (mt 18:23-25).
What do we learn about Jesus’ teaching even when we only look at the types of texts scholars favor? The sayings as found at the earliest levels of our sources for Jesus bear testimony to the fuller disclosure of his life and the meaning of his ministry. One cannot divorce Jesus' teachings from his role as Messiah or Savior. Jesus' work is not limited to teaching, but has a higher purpose in God's kingdom, just as his ministry is not confined to Galilee, but points toward Judea and Jerusalem. The criticism that people have made of Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ is that it leaves out the teaching ministry of Jesus. The suffering of Jesus doesn’t make sense apart from his teaching. It’s just as true that his teaching alone tells us who Jesus is. Jesus’ teaching culminates in his rejection, death, and resurrection.