Zealot - The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth

Perhaps the most famous argument
     made about Jesus as a magician is Morton Smith’s controversial thesis,
Jesus the Magician
(New York: Harper and Row, 1978). Smith’s argument is actually quite simple: Jesus’s
     miraculous actions in the gospels bear a striking resemblance to what we see in the“magical texts” of the time, which indicates that Jesus may have been seen by his
     fellow Jews and by the Romans as just another magician. Other scholars, most notably
     John Dominic Crossan, agree with Morton’s analysis. See Crossan,
Historical Jesus
, 137–67. Smith’s argument is sound and it does not deserve the opprobrium it has
     received in some scholarly circles, though my objections to it are clear in the text.
     For parallels between the miracle stories in the gospels and those in rabbinic writings,
     see Craig A. Evans, “Jesus and Jewish Miracle Stories,” in
Jesus and His Contemporaries
, 213–43.
    Regarding the law for cleansing lepers, it should be noted that the Torah allows for
     those who are poor to substitute two turtledoves or two pigeons for two of the lambs
     (Leviticus 14:21–22).
CHAPTER TEN: MAY YOUR KINGDOM COME
    For a clear and concise treatment of the notion of the Kingdom of God in the New Testament,
     see Joachim Jeremias,
New Testament Theology: The Proclamation of Jesus
(New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1971). Jeremias calls the Kingdom of God the
     “central theme of the public proclamation of Jesus.” See also Norman Perrin,
The Kingdom of God in the Teaching of Jesus
(Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1963) and
Rediscovering the Teachings of Jesus
(New York: Harper and Row, 1967). Perrin refers to the Kingdom of God as being the
     very heart of the message of Jesus: “all else in his teaching takes its point of departure
     from this central, awe-inspiring—or ridicule-inspiring, according to one’s perspective—conviction.”
    According to John Meier, “outside of the Synoptic Gospels and the mouth of Jesus,
     [the term Kingdom of God] does not seem to have been widely used by either Jews or
     Christians in the early 1st century A . D .”;
Marginal Jew
, vol. 2, 239. The Hebrew Bible never uses the phrase the “Kingdom of God,” but it
     does use “Kingdom of Yahweh” in 1 Chronicles 28:5, wherein David speaks of Solomon
     sitting on the throne of the Kingdom of Yahweh. I think it is safe to say that this
     phrase means the same thing as Kingdom of God. That said, the exact phrase “Kingdom
     of God” is found only in the apocryphal text
The Wisdom of Solomon
(10:10). Examples of God’s kingship and his right to rule are, of course, everywhere
     in the Hebrew Bible. For example, “God will reign as king forever and ever” (Exodus
     15:18). Perrin thinks the impetus for the use of the word “kingdom” in the Lord’s
     Prayer can be seen in an Aramaic Kaddish prayer found in an ancient synagogue in Israel,
     which he claims was in use during Jesus’s lifetime. The prayer states: “Magnified
     and sanctified be his great name in the world which he has created according to his
     will. May he establish his kingdom in your lifetime and in your days and in the lifetime
     of all the house of Israel even speedily and at a near time.” See
Kingdom of God in the Teaching of Jesus
, 19.
    Like many other scholars, Perrin is convinced that Jesus uses the term “Kingdom of
     God” in an eschatological sense. But Richard Horsley notes that while God’s actions
     with regard to the Kingdom may be thought of as “final,” that does not necessarily
     imply an eschatological event. “The symbols surrounding the Kingdom of God do not
     refer to ‘the last,’ ‘final,’ ‘eschatological,’ and ‘all-transforming’ ‘act’ of God,”
     Horsley writes. “If the original kernel of any of the sayings about ‘the son of man
     coming with the clouds of heaven’ … stem from Jesus, then, like the image in Daniel
     7:13 to which they refer, they are symbolizations of the vindication of the persecuted
     and suffering righteous.” Horsley’s point is that the Kingdom of God may be properly
     understood in eschatological terms but only insofar as that implies God’s final and
     definitive activity on earth. He correctly observes that once we abandon the notion
     that Jesus’s preaching about the Kingdom of God refers to an End Times, we can also
     abandon the historic debate about whether Jesus thought of the Kingdom as a present
     or as a future thing.