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‘The Changing Faces of Jesus
Geza
Indeed, the unanimous testimony of the evangelists leaves one in
no doubt that sympathetic Galilean folk regarded Jesus as a
prophet. This was not on account of his ability to teach or foretell
the future. The popular definition, ‘the prophet Jesus from
Nazareth of Galilee’ (Matt. 21:11), was based on the miracles and
wonders ascribed to him. Witnessing the re-awakening of the
young man in Nain, the crowd exclaimed: ‘A great prophet has
arisen among us!’ (Luke 7:16). The same observation is expressed
in the closer circle of the followers of Jesus; the two disciples on
the way to Emmaus described the dead Jesus to the unrecognized
risen Christ as ‘a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and
before the people’ (Luke 24:19). Even Simon the Pharisee, though
personally unconvinced, knew that Jesus had the reputation of a
prophet (Luke 7:39). Furthermore we are told that the deeply
hostile chief priests hesitated to arrest Jesus because they feared
the reaction of ordinary people for whom the charismatic Jesus was
a messenger of God (Matt. 21:46).
At this point we may venture one step further and note that
according to the evangelists Jesus perceived himself explicitly as a
miracle-working prophet. The famous Nazareth episode is
profoundly revealing. ‘A prophet is not without honour except in
his own country, and among his own kin, and in his own house’
(Mark 6:4; Matt. 13:57; Luke 4:24). The context of the story
makes it plain that Jesus’ disillusioned declaration was sparked off
by the dislike of the locals for his charismatic teaching and ‘mighty
works’ (Mark 6:2; Matt. 13:54). Conversely, since people of his
home town had no faith in him, the spiritually paralysed Jesus was
incapable of curing and exorcizing among them
According to Luke’s version, the Galilean Jesus saw a link
between his charismatic deeds and those of Elijah and Elisha, the
two foremost wonder-workers active in the northern kingdom of
Israel, when he remarked: ‘No prophet is acceptable in his own
country. But in truth I tell you, there were many widows in Israel
in the days of Elijah... and Elijah was sent to none of them but
only to Zarephtah, in the land of Sidon, to a woman who was a
widow. And there were many lepers in Israel in the time of the
prophet Elisha; and none of them was cleansed, but only Naaman,
the Syrian’ (Luke 4:24-7).
It is impossible to prove the verbal authenticity of these sayings,
but as far as their substance is concerned I have no doubt that it
was not in the interests of the evangelists or of the primitive church
to invent them. They definitely went against the grain. Indeed the
tendency revealed in both the Acts of the Apostles and John was to
enhance the stature of Jesus from miracle-working prophet to
ultimate mouthpiece of God through the correcting prism of the
church’s faith. Unsurprisingly, Paul preferred to disregard the
issue, and one observes throughout the centuries a definite
coolness on the part of Christian New Testament exegetes towards
that very Jewish concept of the prophet Jesus, perfectly at home in
the world of unsophisticated Galilean Jews of his age.
Consequently the vignette of Jesus, the Elijah-like charismatic
prophet, enjoys all the credentials of truth.