Thomas R. Yoder Neufeld - Recovering Jesus: The Witness Of The New Testament

Here is a trustworthy guide through the theological thicket in which Western culture encounters Jesus. Readers wearied by the recent parade of Jesus-de-bunkers will find clarity and inspiration for new understanding. With the mind of a scholar and the heart of a believer, Yoder Neufeld surveys a wide range of perspectives in language a non-specialist can understand.

J. Nelson Kraybill, Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminary

For too long, students of the New Testament were forced to choose between the Jesus of scholarship and the Christ of faith. In lively and accessible prose, Dr. Yoder Neufeld skillfully integrates both courses into a helpful road map for those serious about negotiating the tortuous turns on their way to rediscovering Jesus. He presents all possible historical and theological options available to his readers with competence, never shrinking back from questions that might scandalize the believer or embarrass the scholar. His greatest virtue, however, is that though he is quite clear about his personal convictions on Jesus, he never imposes his views on his readers, content with leaving them with enough directions to find their way home. This is the text I will use next time I teach a course on Jesus.

Sze-kar Wan, Andover Newton Theological School

A superb guideunmatched for clarity and accessibilityinto an encounter with the Jesus of the New Testament and other early Christian writings, offered in gentle, engaging prose by a seasoned teacher whose scholarship and faith complement each other, to the benefit of believers and inquirers/seekers alike. Thanks to its comprehensiveness, sound scholarship, and excellent organization, with subsections clearly labeled, it will also serve as a valuable reference work after the first engrossing read.

Harold Remus, Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo, Ontario (Emeritus)

Respected scholar, masterful teacher, man of faithTom Yoder Neufeld has combined these qualities to produce a solid, eminently readable, and informative study of the New Testament witness for the man, Jesus, and for the early development of christological reflection in the second century. Using the analogy of archaeology, Yoder Neufeld examines carefully the different layers of New Testament evidence, giving particular emphasis to the historical context of the world of the first century and then following the biographical framework of Jesuss life from birth to death and resurrection. He puts at the center, as well it should be, Jesuss proclamation of the kingdom of God, and in successive chapters he treats Announcing the Kingdom, Teaching the Kingdom, Enacting the Kingdom, and Living the Kingdom. His is a sensitive and nuanced handling of such difficult issues as the virgin birth and the challenges of understanding well the meaning of resurrection. As every good teacher does, he provides an abundant use of analogies and explanatory examples. Never have I read a more skillful presentation of the organic growth of New Testament Christology from low to high, with fine treatment of the origin and function of the various titles applied to Jesus in the New Testament and beyond. The text is unencumbered by laborious footnotes, while clearly reflective of the diverse, ongoing scholarly dialogue of which this book is part. Each chapter concludes with a summary box of Key Terms and Concepts and suggestions for further reading. This is a superb textone I will surely use with seminary students to their certain profit and delight.

Barbara E. Bowe, Catholic Theological Union

A lucid, engaging treatment of Jesus and the Gospels, attending well to sources and methods. Yoder Neufeld laudably combines faith and scholarship. His lists of reading sources at the end of each chapter are valuable for further study. This book is well designed for introducing Jesus and current scholarship to university students, and to laypeople who want to understand how we know what we know about Jesus.

Willard M. Swartley, Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminary

RECOVERING
JESUS

THE WITNESS OF THE
NEW TESTAMENT

Thomas R. Yoder Neufeld

2007 by Thomas R. Yoder Neufeld

Published by Brazos Press
a division of Baker Publishing Group
P.O. Box 6287, Grand Rapids, MI 49516-6287
www.brazospress.com

Printed in the United States of America

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any meansfor example, electronic, photocopy, recordingwithout the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.

Unless otherwise indicated, Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright 1989, by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Neufeld, Thomas R.
Recovering Jesus : the witness of the New Testament / Thomas R. Yoder Neufeld.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 10: 1-58743-202-1 (pbk.)
ISBN 978-1-58743-202-6 (pbk.)
1. Jesus ChristBiography. 2. Bible. N.T.Criticism, interpretation, etc. I. Title.
BT301.3.N48 2007
232.901dc22

2007001798

For my companion for life, Rebecca, and our children, David and Miriam, with whom to follow Jesus together is a gift too great to measure.

Contents

T HIS BOOK GROWS out of years of teaching undergraduate students about Jesus. Sometimes they have been religious studies majors, but more typically their fields of study have been some other area of the arts, science, computer science, or engineering. For many the course on Jesus has been the one religion course they have taken while at university. Most, whether or not Jesus has figured in a personal faith, have been primarily interested in learning about Jesus and not in learning about the problems of learning about Jesus, least of all in learning about one particular scholars take on Jesus. The pedagogical challenge in this is how to enter into the academic study of Jesus while responding to the primary interest of students to learn about the Jesus the New Testament presents. How do I as an academic, trained in critical scholarship, who has at the same time a deep faith and trust in the biblical witnesses and who himself confesses Jesus as Lord, present the fruit of scholarship hospitably, inviting students to engage the data for themselves, all in the interests of facilitating an encounter with the Jesus to whom the New Testament writers give witness?

This book is the fruit of attempting to respond to those demands and to work within such constraints. Pedagogical rather than methodological interests predominate. Those wishing for a carefully argued historical reconstruction of the Jesus of history or for a literary critical study of the gospels may be frustrated. And those wishing for an explicitly faith-centered Bible study may be equally frustrated. I empathize with both as one who is himself active within both contexts. At the same time, I have discovered that the teaching of Jesus within a pluralistic context such as the university classroom, in which I may not privilege any particular set of students, whether religiously indifferent, highly skeptical, or passionately Christian, does not 10 prevent an encounter with the Jesus presented in the New Testament. More, it encourages such an encounter.

I thus wish to thank those many students, whether at the Bienenberg Seminary outside Basel, Switzerland, who sat through German versions of these chapters during a sabbatical in 2001, or at Conrad Grebel University College at the University of Waterloo, Canada, who have road tested this book and given sharp and gracious feedback. I am most grateful too for the attentive care the good folks at Brazos Press have given this project, most especially Rodney Clapp and Rebecca Cooper, but also Steve Ayers, who many years ago planted the seed of writing this book during a typically friendly visit to my office.