Jesus of Nazareth: What He Wanted, Who He Was

For Jesus the word did indeed play a major role: he instructed and taught, he corrected and warned, he interpreted events prophetically, he preached the Gospel of the reign of God, and more than that: he proclaimed it publicly. And yet Jesus did not just talk. He not only announced the reign of God. His work was not merely a “word event.” His whole public activity from beginning to end was shot through with action the evangelists call “deeds of power” (dynameis) and “signs” (sēmeia).¹

For centuries the church has called these “miracles.” Anyone who wants to say anything about Jesus cannot avoid engaging with his miracles. This chapter will have to show what that word can mean.

Testimonies

Even if the gospels had not contained a single miracle story we would have known that miracles were an integral part of Jesus’ activity. For example, the Jewish historian Josephus (first c. CE) includes in his Antiquities of the Jews a note about Jesus (Ant.

18.63-64) that speaks of his miracles. This note was previously suspected of being a Christian interpolation from start to finish, but today most scholars believe that Josephus really did speak about Jesus at this point, though his statement received some Christian editing. There is much to favor this redactional hypothesis. It is true that we can scarcely reconstruct the whole of the original wording, but the substance of the note probably included the words, “He was a doer of startling deeds [paradoxōn ergōn poiētēs].” Josephus was referring to Jesus’ miracles.²

Luke 13:31-33 also speaks of Jesus’ deeds. In this little composition Luke takes up some of the oldest pieces of tradition. We can see this in the fact that here Jesus—contrary to post-Easter Christology—is called a “prophet.” What is it about? Pharisees are warning Jesus about Herod Antipas, suggesting he leave the region because Herod wants to kill him. In his response Jesus describes Herod with sharp irony as a “fox.” In antiquity the fox was regarded as sly but also as a creature that constantly overestimated its own cunning.³

Besides that, it smelled bad. We have to read Jesus’ answer to the Pharisees against that background:

Go and tell that fox for me, “Listen, I am casting out demons and performing cures today and tomorrow, and on the third day I finish my work. Yet today, tomorrow, and the next day I must be on my way, because it is impossible for a prophet to be killed outside of Jerusalem.” (Luke 13:31-33)

This saying shows how realistically Jesus viewed his own situation, but at the same time it illustrates his determination. He will go on doing as he has done. Someone like Herod will by no means turn him aside from his path. For our context, what is important is that the discourse names Jesus’ central activities as driving out demons and healing. Both were the reason why news about Jesus spread rapidly and people ran after him.

We have other sayings in which Jesus speaks of his miracles, for example, the “woe” on the Galilean towns: “Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the deeds of power done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago, sitting in sackcloth and ashes” (Luke 10:13). In this connection we should also refer to the beatitude Jesus spoke over his disciples, cited earlier: “Blessed are the eyes that see what you see! For I tell you that many prophets and kings desired to see what you see, but did not see it, and to hear what you hear, but did not hear it” (Luke 10:23-24). What do the disciples see? Obviously, the mighty deeds now being done for the sick and the possessed, the outcasts and the socially isolated. But it was not only the disciples who saw all that. Jesus’ opponents did too. They were in no position to deny Jesus’ healings and exorcisms of demons. They had no recourse except to reinterpret them, which they did, with perverse results: “And the scribes who came down from Jerusalem said, ‘He has Beelzebul, and by the ruler of the demons he casts out demons’” (Mark 3:22).

Who is Beelzebul? We find the name in the second book of Kings (2 Kgs 1:2), where it is the name of the god of the Phoenician city of Ekron.⁴ The word is made up of Ba’al and zebul (= ruler). So this is the pagan god Ba’al, who is given an honorific epithet, zebul. Obviously, this Beelzebul was a horror to the Jews, like all pagan gods. For them he was a demon, and evidently they regarded him as the chief demon.