A Credible Jesus: Fragments of a Vision - Book Review

A Credible Jesus: Fragments of a Vision. By Robert W. Funk. Santa Rosa, CA: Pole-bridge Press, 2002. 184 pages. Paper. $18.00.

Robert W. Funk has made a powerful impact on New Testament scholarship, especially perhaps for his studies on the parables of Jesus as metaphor. As secretary of the Society of Biblical Literature (1968-73), his influence on the growth of collective American New Testament scholarship was immeasurable. Now he is better known as the founder of The Jesus Seminar. His most recent presentation of the Seminar's work, Honest to Jesus, is a forerunner for A Credible Jesus, which is a popularization--or, in modem publishing parlance, a "reader-accessible" version--of Honest to Jesus.

Speakers, teachers, and the interested public will find this book easy to follow and quite stimulating. Using the Jesus Seminar's translations (The Complete Gospels), he assembles "fragments" that illuminate basic categories of Jesus' vision, such as the realm of God, trust, celebration, social transcendence, and kinship. In the chapter "An Alternative Reality" Funk pulls together in a remarkable way all of Jesus' teachings about the domain of God. He lists (in short form) all the admonitions and injunctions of Jesus (i.e., love your enemies, turn the other cheek). This is followed by a list of all the pronouncements (i.e., God's domain is present but invisible; the first are last, the last first). And finally he discusses briefly God's rule as seen in the parables. For readers who attend to the teachings of Jesus, this assembly of short pithy sayings will create a deep impression. Funk has done us a fine service.

Scholars who share the convictions of Funk and the Jesus Seminar normally struggle with at least three supposed elements of the received Jesus tradition: apocalypticism, demonology, and growing ecclesiasticism (see pp. 137-39, 103-7, and 125-31). From the beginning Funk makes it clear that the real problem in such a study was to move between the Jewish background of Jesus and the church's use of Jesus tradition (p. 4). Many readers find the Funk solution unsatisfactory. Jesus did come out of an apocalyptic background and did deal with de mons and unclean spirits. How should we understand the Jesus tradition at that point? Funk is happy that the Enlightenment did away with belief in demons (p. 105). That hardly does away with the function of demons in the narratives of Jesus' healings. We might well wonder why Funk doesn't acknowledge his own remythologizing of apocalypticism (e.g., as reversal of expectations; see pp. 96-102) and demonology (e.g., intense individualism; see p. 160). In short, Funk has produce d a book both stimulating and frustrating.

COPYRIGHT 2002 Lutheran School of Theology and Mission
COPYRIGHT 2003 Gale Group