Jesus of Nazareth: What He Wanted, Who He Was

At any rate, Jesus did not see himself as a prophet.⁴ This is abundantly clear from the beatitude he spoke over his disciples: “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). According to this saying, the turning of the age has already happened. Prophets and kings are contrasted to the disciples, the time of prophets and kings to the time of the reign of God. What previously was only longed for can now be seen. In light of these words it is out of the question that Jesus could have located himself within the time of the prophets or the phenotype of the prophet! This matches to the letter “something greater than Jonah is here… something greater than Solomon is here!” in Matthew 12:41-42.

In addition, the beatitude for the disciples just quoted makes it clear what reticence and veiled reference Jesus employed when speaking of the mystery of his own person. We will encounter this reticence again and again, also with regard to the question of whether Jesus saw himself as the Messiah. But first we need to mention another ground for concluding that Jesus could not have seen himself as a prophet. He had Scripture before his eyes. Like every pious Jew he recited a part of it every day. Every Sabbath he heard not only sections of the Torah but also readings from the prophets. Someone who constantly encounters Scripture in this way very quickly internalizes how the prophets speak. All the writing prophets in Israel point out persistently that “the word of the LORD” has come to them and is being communicated to Israel through them.⁵ It is not their own words they are handing on but the word spoken to them.

Jesus makes no such statements. We do not find a single passage in which he says anything like “The LORD has spoken,” or “the mouth of the LORD has spoken it,” or “hear the word of the LORD,” or “thus says the LORD.” In place of these “messenger formulae,” which repeatedly emphasize that the prophet is only a transmitter, Jesus created for himself his own opening formula, one so far not attested in the Judaism of the time: “Amen, I say to you.”⁶ In contrast to the “amen” that responds to someone else’s speech and affirms it, this “amen” begins sayings of Jesus and introduces them as words spoken on his own authority. The result is a dialectic that is hard to describe: on the one hand, Jesus speaks in his own name like a sovereign and on his own authority. On the other hand, he speaks out of the most extreme intimacy with God.

Jesus the Messiah?

In preaching to the crowds, did Jesus make a kind of self-presentation of himself as the Messiah? The answer is clearly no. Jesus proclaimed the beginning of the reign of God but not himself as Messiah. There are not even very many reactions from the people showing that Jesus was regarded as the Messiah. In Mark’s gospel, differently from that of Matthew,⁷ there is but a single text in which someone from the crowd addresses Jesus as Messiah. This is the healing of the blind Bartimaeus outside Jericho. When Bartimaeus hears that Jesus is passing by, he cries out, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” (Mark 10:47). That was a messianic confession, because the messiah could be called “Son of David.”⁸ The appeal shows that there were those in Israel, besides the ones who thought Jesus was a prophet or even a prophet redivivus, who conjectured that he was the expected messiah. According to the narrative, Jesus accepted the appellation and healed the blind man.

On the other hand, Jesus accepted Peter’s confession of him as Messiah, which he himself had provoked, but he immediately emphasized to his disciples that they should not talk about the messiah (Mark 8:27-30). Of course, at that time he was alone with his disciples. If we take the two texts together—the cry of the blind Bartimaeus, his healing, and the previous command to silence in Mark 8:27-30—we may conclude that Jesus did not simply regard the notion that he was the messiah as false, but he did not want it to be applied thoughtlessly and prematurely.

Bartimaeus’s cry then acts as a signal to readers of Mark’s gospel that the situation has changed. At any rate, Jesus, as he approached Jerusalem soon afterward, gave his entry into the city a messianic character. I have already spoken about this at length (chap. 15). Jesus also accepted the messianic acclamation of those accompanying him, but he interpreted his messianic character in terms of Zechariah 9:9.

The crucial and decisive scene takes place before the Sanhedrin. Here Jesus is asked by the high priest himself, the highest religious authority in Israel, if he is the Messiah, and he answers, “I am” (Mark 14:61-62). He refines this confession, however, by saying that he will come in majesty as the Son of Man, the Human One.