Jesus Darkly: Remembering Jesus with the New Testament

2024

This paper explores the central biblical theme of remembering the Lord as it unfolds throughout the Old Testament narrative. From the Torah through the Prophets, Wisdom Writings, and Persian Period literature, Scripture repeatedly calls God’s people to remember His name, covenant, faithfulness, and mighty works. Yet Israel's consistent failure to do so results in cycles of idolatry, judgment, and exile. Drawing from Hebrew word studies, theological dictionaries, and scholarly commentaries, this study traces the theological implications of the verbs zakar (remember) and shakach (forget), revealing that memory in the biblical sense demands covenantal faithfulness and action. The study also examines the means by which memory is cultivated—through oral teaching, ritual practices, and physical symbols—and how these memory aids are ultimately insufficient without a transformed heart. The prophetic hope of a New Covenant, fulfilled in Jesus Christ, promises a renewed mind and Spirit-empowered memory that enables true faithfulness. The paper concludes with New Testament reflections, emphasizing how believers are now empowered to "remember forward," living in daily communion with God through the indwelling Holy Spirit. This theological exploration affirms that faithful memory is essential to covenant identity and spiritual formation.

Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus, 2014

Despite considerable variation in its details, historical Jesus scholarship has largely depended on refining and employing the criteria of authenticity in order to differentiate authentic from secondary material in the Jesus tradition. Dale Allison has expressed doubts concerning the criteria and their usefulness for producing knowledge of the historical figure of Jesus. His recent volume, Constructing Jesus, sets out to explore a different route for discussing the historical Jesus, one that accounts for recent psychological and sociological discussions of memory. This essay briefly describes the new shape of historical Jesus scholarship and then summarizes Allison's central arguments and asks some questions raised by those arguments.

Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus, 2018

This article interacts with John P. Meier’s view concerning the parables that can be shown to be “authentic,” i.e., shown to have been uttered by the historical Jesus. His highly critical and largely negative result (only four parables remaining parables of Jesus) demonstrates once more that historical Jesus research that is intrinsically tied to questions of authenticity has run its course. Such an approach can only lead to minimalistic results and destroys the sources that we have. By contrast, the so-called memory approach tries to understand the process and result of remembering Jesus as a parable teller. Collective memory requires typification and repetition in order to bring the past to mind in a remembering community. Parables as a genre are such media of collective memory that shape and form not only the memory itself, but also the identity of the remembering community. Thus, the many parables of Jesus in early Christian writings are more than ever an indispensable source fo...

1995

Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus, 2018

In this article it is argued that the concept of cultural memory makes a siginficant contributon to the study of the historical Jesus. Because the past is always perceived from the perspective of the present, historical reconstruction and reception of the past are per se intertwined. Thus, there is no "real" past behind the sources. Instead our view of events and figures from the past is a result of the remains from the past interpreted from the perspective of the present. Moreover, with regard to historical-critical reconstruction, and also to Jesus reserach, it is important to distinguish between the wider category of "reception", which also encompasses fictional accounts, and historical reconstruction proper. The latter aims at an image of the past based on a critical evaluation of the historical material and thus providing a reasonable, plausible access to the past.

2010

This book presents a dynamic picture of Jesus in his majestic Lordship and freedom, his humble servanthood and obedience, his compassion for needy humanity in his public ministry, his courageous entry into Jerusalem and his sacrificial love revealed in his death there, his resurrection from the dead and his universal reign. This dynamic picture is related closely to Jesus’ fundamental and underlying relationship with his Father through the Holy Spirit. The concrete expression of that Trinitarian relationship in Jesus’ life, ministry, death, and resurrection is presented in a unified manner, avoiding the pitfall of majoring on only one of these aspects. This holistic and dynamic picture of Jesus in intimate fellowship with his Father through the Spirit gives the readers a valuable glimpse into the mystery of the Trinity and invites them to reflect on what it means to follow Jesus as individuals and as communities in the context of the twenty-first century with its many challenges. Je...

Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus, 2018

This article interacts with John P. Meier's view concerning the parables that can be shown to be "authentic," i.e., shown to have been uttered by the historical Jesus. His highly critical and largely negative result (only four parables remaining parables of Jesus) demonstrates once more that historical Jesus research that is intrinsically tied to questions of authenticity has run its course. Such an approach can only lead to minimalistic results and destroys the sources that we have. By contrast, the so-called memory approach tries to understand the process and result of remembering Jesus as a parable teller. Collective memory requires typification and repetition in order to bring the past to mind in a remembering community. Parables as a genre are such media of collective memory that shape and form not only the memory itself, but also the identity of the remembering community. Thus, the many parables of Jesus in early Christian writings are more than ever an indispensable source for historical research on the remembered Jesus, a point that is demonstrated in the final section of this article using kingdom parables as a test case. Keywords Jesus-parable-genre-John P. Meier-collective memory-historical Jesus research-history-kingdom parables At the beginning of this essay I will set forth two contradictory statements: First: The historical Jesus did not tell parables. Second: The remembered Jesus told many parables, in particular Kingdom-parables.