Constructing Jesus: Memory, Imagination, and History

Written by Dale C. Allison Jr. Reviewed By Michael J. Thate

By his own count, Allison's latest book, Constructing Jesus, is his fourth and final attempt to make sense of the “hypnotic” problem of the historical Jesus (p. ix.). The book is as fascinating for its chronicling of Allison's own development as it is for the contents inside. Those who have followed his work will notice that the book, along with his earlier The Historical Christ and the Theological Jesus (Eerdmans, 2009) and various recent articles along the way (e.g., “How to Marginalize the Traditional Criteria of Authenticity,” in Handbook for the Study of the Historical Jesus, 1:3-30), marks a significant departure from and dissatisfaction with the canons of criteria that adjudicate this or that bit of material as “authentic.” This work testifies to Allison's mounting conviction “that the means that most scholars have employed and continue to employ for constructing the historical Jesus are too flimsy to endure, or at least too flimsy for [himself] to countenance any longer” (p. x).

The first chapter follows the recent and promising stream of memory studies as a tool for making sense of the Gospels as authentic sources of Jesus material. Though Allison does not enter into a sustained discussion of what the Gospels are (though cf. pp. 441-44), his wider concern is that they are gathered remembrances that are “neither innocent nor objective” (p. 1). That is, “memories are a function of self-interest” and a significant step in the process of making sense of self-identity (p. 6). Allison advances nine theses that serve to unsettle any sense of the stability of memory and how memory is always in the service of meaning-making and is present-orientated (pp. 2-8). One problem with Allison's approach might be his high confidence in the principle of accommodation; that is, that people remember now as they always have in the past (though see pp. 222n1; 253-54). Allison is surely correct in pointing out the deficiencies and fallibility of human memory, but the charge of anachronism could be leveled against his rather impressive detailing of recent memory studies being retrofitted for ancient material (Allison does attempt to counter this on pp. 27-30). A greater emphasis on the social forces of memory might have been a better fit for the Gospels as communal remembrances for communal formation (though see p. 25n101). These qualms aside, the chapter is a brilliant step forward from-or at least out of-the textual impasse of this or that saying going back to the historical Jesus (p. 10). Allison instead favors giving attention to the “larger pattern” of material (p. 19) and formulations of “recurrent attestation” (p. 20). In other words, “a topic or motif or type of story [which] reappears again and again throughout the tradition” (p. 20). In Allison's mind, “we are more likely to find the historical Jesus in the repeating patterns that run throughout the tradition than in the individual sayings and stories” (p. 23). Again, Allison's approach is laudable for its rigor and sense. Nevertheless, it is difficult to see what exactly changed in terms of his earlier reconstructions other than a few tempered “maybes” or “perhapses” inserted along the way. Though Allison and other recent studies on the historical Jesus and memory (e.g., Dunn, Rodriguez, and Le Donne) are certainly welcome advances that problematize the simple theories on reception and transmission, for all their fury and fervor it is difficult to notice any real results in terms of conclusions of the historical or theological sort. In the end, memory serves a rather fiduciary approach in taking the Gospel sources as reliable memories of the historical Jesus. For some this will be welcome; for others, it will feel disingenuous. In either case, Allison's approach will certainly cause serious engagement for anyone attempting future work in this field.

The second chapter, “The Eschatology of Jesus” (pp. 31-220), represents the best case for reading Jesus as a prophetic figure dominated by apocalyptic expectations to date. Here Allison falls within the paradigm set by Johannes Weiss and Albert Schweitzer (p. 31), and refocuses the tertium non datur of Schweitzer to new extremes: “our choice is not between an apocalyptic Jesus and some other Jesus; it is between an apocalyptic Jesus and no Jesus at all” (pp. 46-47). Allison's survey of the literature is, as is always the case with his work, exhaustive, creative, and rigorous. He sees the pertinent apocalyptic material as “sufficiently abundant” and that a removal of it from any construction of the historical Jesus could be fueled only by a “thoroughly skeptical” approach to the “mnemonic competence of the tradition” (p. 47). Eschatological remains are too early and pervasive in the fossil record of the tradition for any other story to be told without “tearing him from his century” (here citing Walter Bundy, p. 47).

This is all surely probable, but to read everything through eschatology detracts the evidence away from subtler concerns. For example, Allison is certainly correct in pointing out that the early Jewish imagination was dominated by the geographic conviction that the world emanates from Jerusalem and that the end-time scenario would be played out there (for textual support, see p. 51). But Allison reads this as evidence that the early followers of Jesus, who were northerners, relocated to Jerusalem because they expected an imminent end and wanted to be at the center of the party. This may well be true, but such a reading misses the strategic missiological subtleties of this relocation. If the missional vocation consisted of the “Jew first,” it would make sense to relocate the movement to the omphalos of Judaism (indeed, the world!), namely, Jerusalem. In other words, this move would not be so much eschatological as strategic. Later Allison, backed by his recent foray into the vast literature on Millenarian movements, tempers his earlier statements on the tertium non datur by stating that eschatological movements are “never reducible to their eschatologies” (p. 134). He even states, rather astutely, that others outside the eschatological approach such as Marcus Borg reproduce the errors of Schweitzer by reading everything either as for or against eschatology. But if he wants to state that “Weiss and Schweitzer set us on the right path” (p. 157), that path cannot be removed from their own cartography. Others before Schweitzer pointed out the eschatological currents within the Gospel material (e.g., Semler and others), but Schweitzer raised these “currents” to the singular criteria of judging material as authentic or blurred by the church's “shifting of perspective” this side of the Easter event. Allison keenlypoints out that mental boundaries are not so fixed and can handle “contradictory” notions (p. 135). He even brilliantly states,”Nothing in the tradition—besides the person of Jesus himself—coordinates everything” (p. 135). But functionally, after all of these concessions and fine-tunings, he re-coordinates all apocalyptic outliers within the tradition as eschatological. This approach of apocalyptic without apocalyptic strikes me as going back on his earlier concessions. Under this line of thought, why not simply call Jesus a sage of subversive wisdom who occasionally draws on apocalyptic themes? In any case, the chapter brilliantly collects and assesses the relevant primary and secondary literature. His grasp of texts and historical sense is simply breathtaking.

The third chapter on the Christology of Jesus attempts to make sense of Jesus' own understanding of his vocation. Allison maintains throughout the chapter that “Jesus thought of himself as a king, destined to take center stage in God's eschatological drama” (p. 288). But this kingship was in terms of a messias designatus: “he saw kingship as a hope or a destiny, not an accomplishment” (p. 290). Wrapped up with this is a fascinating set of reflections on the infamous son of man sayings (pp. 293-303). Though he remains noncommittal, Allison ponders Jesus' third-person speak of the son of man and the possibility of its unity with his own person through a reading of heavenly doubles (pp. 300-303). The precedent is certainly present across varying traditions and the thought seems to hold together ideas that otherwise seem in tension (e.g., preexistence, the future son of man sayings, and traditions of Jesus having an earthly twin [e.g., Acts Thom. 1, 11, 31, 34-35, 39, 45 57, 147-53]). In any case, Allison rightly calls for serious attention to be given to the exalted views of Jesus originating with himself (p. 304).

The fourth chapter, “The Discourses of Jesus,” attempts to bring to bear the first chapter upon the speeches attributed to Jesus in the Gospels and how though they may contain “secondary elaborations, artificial composites made up of what were once much smaller pieces” some of the texts in the Synoptics lay beyond this generalization (p. 308). In other words, simply because the Synoptics place sermons or longer speeches on his lips does not necessarily mean that they are inauthentic. The fifth chapter on “Death and Memory” seeks to render the dichotomy of either “prophecy historicized” or “history remembered” as a silly rendering of the scripturalizing tendencies in the Passion accounts. The appearance of scriptural quotations and themes at the Passion does not disqualify it from being counted as authentic memory. “A memory can be told in many languages, including the language of Scripture” (p. 389). What is more, Allison sees Jesus as going to his death with purpose and intention (p. 433). The final chapter, “Memory and Invention,” exegetes the working assumption of the first five chapters, namely, the Evangelists were working with traditions informed by the past (p. 435). Here he flirts with the genre question and aims to demonstrate that, regardless of whatever we make of the Gospels, “our Synoptic writers thought that they were reconfiguring memories of Jesus, not inventing theological tales” (p. 459). Nevertheless, “the evangelists, it appears, [were] far more interested in the practical and theological meanings of their stories than in literal facticity” (p. 442).

Reviewing Constructing Jesus is difficult for at least two reasons: (a) a few hundred words of “review” would hardly do justice to the care and craft that Allison has demonstrably put into this exceptional volume, and (b) any sustained critique would require more space than afforded here. It is interesting to me that Allison closes his book precisely where Schweitzer begins his Geschichte: stating the negative nature of the quest for the historical Jesus (pp. 461-62). Some reviews have lauded the book with high praises of it ending the so-called third quest—as if history were so neatly paradigmatic. I actually think Allison does something far more beneficial and impressive: he makes us all question the ways we have approached the sources so that we may return to the sources themselves and see what has been there all along. The so-called quest for the historical Jesus will happily continue—even under the guise of past approaches. But any quester's future construction will have to reckon seriously with Allison's breathtaking Constructing Jesus.


Michael J. Thate

Michael J. Thate
Durham University
Durham, England, UK

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