Narratives of Jesus

One narrative that influences our view of the Old Testament is our narrative about Jesus himself. Who was Jesus? Where did his insight and knowledge come from? Can we have the mind of Christ?

It is extremely easy to hold a false narrative about Jesus; in early Christianity they were called heresies, while the faithful held to orthodoxy-correct thinking. Some of us hold a narrative of Jesus’ life that reflects an early heretical strain. Among the earliest heresies was Docetism, a belief that Jesus only appeared to have been human. This perspective shows itself today when we forget the infancy narratives of Jesus’ birth and of his childhood. Such forgetfulness has powerful implications. From this angle our narrative envisions Jesus as a superhero similar to Superman or Captain America. At some point in his life Jesus magically and instantaneously took on the divine powers and was omniscient, omnipotent and somehow omnipresent! Although surrounded by humanity, Jesus himself was not actually nor fully human.

Yet Luke tells us “Jesus kept increasing in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and men.” (Luke 2:52, NAS95) We might ask where Jesus received his “wisdom” if not from the teachings current among his people-what we today call the Old Testament. The other question is how did Jesus’ grow in favor? Favor is a concept that appears over 100 times in the Old Testament, but none more critical than the first time,
The LORD said, “ I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the land, from man to animals to creeping things and to birds of the sky; for I am sorry that I have made them.” But Noah found favor in the eyes of the LORD. These are the records of the generations of Noah. Noah was a righteous man, blameless in his time; Noah walked with God. (Genesis 6:7-9, NAS95)

This short summary of Jesus’ life before Luke introduces the adult John, son of Zacharias, crying out in the wilderness points us toward the importance of the Old Testament in shaping Jesus’ narratives. Yet, for some reason, many Christians’ attitude toward the Old Testament reflects to some degree a second early heresy, Marcionism. Marcion was the son of a Christian leader on the coast of the Black Sea sent to Rome in the second century for more training in the faith. His understanding of Paul’s teaching was that in Jesus the Old Testament had been abolished and declared null and void. He ultimately decided that the Scripture should be limited to certain, but not all, writings of Paul and an edited form of Luke’s gospel. This practice today can be seen when a church has relatively few sermons during the year on Old Testament passages or seldom reads publicly from the Old Testament in a worship service. This Marcionite understanding of the Old Testament is confirmed in the words and actions of those who dismiss the teachings found therein or fail to read anything from it except Psalms or Proverbs for devotional purposes.