95-

WHERE WRIGHT IS WRONG: A CRITICAL REVIEW OF

N.T.WRIGHT’S JESUS AND THE VICTORY OF GOD*

Maurice Casey
Department of Theology, Nottingham University
University Park, Nottingham NG7 2RD.

We must begin by welcoming the publication of the book by our col-

league N.T. Wright, Jesus and the Victory ~f G~d.’ In the present
state of academia, obsessed with completion dates of any work to the
detriment of work which matters, it is particularly good to see a new,
thorough and vigorous attempt to locate Jesus in his original cultural
context. Together with the recent work of E.P. Sanders, it must rate
as one of the best books we have had on Jesus so far. At the risk of

seeming to damn it with faint praise, one must add that it is infinitely
better than anything to emerge from the American Jesus Seminar:
good scholarship is sober and vigilant, as well as learned and
ingenious.
As well as the attempt to see Jesus in his original cultural context, a
welcome feature of this book, compared with the majority of older
ones, is the decreased emphasis on christological titles in so doing.
The use of messiahship remains problematical, as we shall see, but
even here genuinely relevant material is carefully gathered together so
that it can easily be used by those of us who are not so convinced that
the term ’messiah’ is an appropriate one for describing Jesus during

*
This is a written-up version of a contribution to the Jesus Seminar of the
British New Testament Conference on 13 September 1997. I am grateful to col-
leagues, especially Dr Wright and Dr C. Marsh, for an interesting debate.
1. London: SPCK, 1996.
2. Cf. E.P. Sanders, Jesus and Judaism (London: SCM Press, 1985); The
Historical Figure of Jesus (London: Penguin Books 1993).

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the historic ministry. Another very useful feature is the lengthy criti-
cal Forsclmngsbericht, which draws attention to the presuppositions
and cultural environment of investigators, and to the drastic effects of
this on their pictures of Jesus.
Nonetheless, there are serious problems with this book, and the
major purpose of this critical review has to be to draw attention to
them. The most overarching is the missing piece of the Forschung.s-
bericht. The scholarly community as a whole has a myth, a story
according to which we live. According to this myth, we live in the
third quest of the historical Jesus. This myth entails the unfortunate
notion that nothing serious happened in the quest between Schweitzer
wrecking the first quest in 1906, and Kdsemann starting the second
quest in 1953.~ Here again we are told of ’the absence of serious Jesus
study in pre-war Germany’, though Wright knows something of the
attempts to show that Jesus was not Jewish.4 I prefer to regard this
phase of the quest as the most crucial because it is the most illuminat-
ing. Here there was an overt attempt to demonstrate that Jesus was not
Jewish, a verifiably quite false position.5 This was done because it was
what German Christians needed. Accordingly, we can see here with
the utmost clarity a hermeneutical circle controlling the work of
scholars who were genuinely expert in the New Testament field.
Equally clearly, we can see that the quest of the historical Jesus is a
quest to avoid him. Avoiding him entails avoiding his Jewishness and
replacing him with a Christ of faith who is to a significant degree a
reification of the needs of a particular Christian community. When we
have seen this, we can better understand radical criticism of the
Gospels in the immediately preceding period, and return to our own

3. A. Schweitzer, Von Reimarus zu Wrede: Eine Geschichte der Leben-Jesu-

Forschung (Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr [Paul Siebeck], 1906). ET The Quest of the
Historical Jesus: A Critical Study of its Progress from Reimarus to Wrede (London:
Black, 1910); E. Käsemann, ’Das Problem des historischen Jesus’, a lecture deliv-
ered on 20 October, 1953, ZTK 51 (1954), pp. 125-53. ET ’The Problem of the
Historical Jesus’, in Essays on New Testament Themes (London: SCM Press,
1964), pp. 15-47.
4. Wright, Victory, p. 23.
5. Cf., e.g., P. Fiebig, Neues Testament und Nationalsozialismus: Drei
Üniversitätsvorlesungen über Führerprinzip, Rassenfrage, Kampf (Schriften der
deutschen Christen, 11; Dresden: Deutsche-christlicher Verlag, 1935); W. Grund-
mann, Jesus der Galiläer und das Judentum (Leipzig: Wigand, 2nd edn, 1941,
[1940]).

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time to understand better why the quest is currently going off the rails
altogether. Like the first quest, it is still run by people whose need in
the modem world is to avoid the historical Jesus and replace him with
the Christ of faith, the cultural context within which the other faults
of Wright’s work must be located.
This leads us to the second problem, the misunderstanding of apoca-
lyptic and eschatological language as metaphor. This is done in reli-
ance on Wright’s teacher G.B. Caird, without any proper discussion
of the nature of metaphor.’ So, for example, Mk 9.1 is reduced to a
’clear promise of future victory and vindication’, then expanded to
such things as ’return from exile’ and ’rebuilding of the Temple’.’7
This is a completely unsatisfactory replacement of what the text says
with something more convenient. The most notorious feature of this
text is that it indicates that the kingdom of God would come within a
generation, and this did not happen. This is a natural mistake by a
first-century Jew, but any mistake at all by Jesus is inconsistent with
orthodox Christian Christology.~ The driving force of Wright’s inter-
pretation is a hermeneutical circle with which the mistaken Jesus of
history is replaced by the infallible Christ of faith. The process makes
it difficult to interpret texts that discuss the delay of the end-time (e.g.
lQpHab 7.1-14, with its discussion of i1¡n~iT ¡11iT, j’pn Tn5, and
1’¡n~iT *rl-,),7), and which have any substantial temporal or spatial con-
tent (e.g. Mk 10.35-45, where the request of Jacob and John to sit on
Jesus’ right and left in his glory makes no sense if it is not interpreted
literally).’

6. Cf., e.g., the unsatisfactory attempt to use the work of Max Black by P.A.
Porter, Metaphors and Monsters: A Literary-Critical Study of Daniel 7 and 8 (repr.;
ConBOT, 20; Lund: C.W.K. Gleerup, 1985 [1983]), with my review, JTS NS 38
(1987), pp. 454-57. I cannot discuss here G.B. Caird, The Language and Imagery
of the Bible (London: Gerald Duckworth, 1980), pp. 244-71, which caricatures
scholars who take some language more literally than Caird did, and which appears
ignorant inter alia of the Syrian tradition of biblical exegesis and modem linguistics.
7. Wright, Victory, p. 470.
8. Cf. P.M. Casey, From Jewish Prophet to Gentile God: The Origins and
Development of New Testament Christology (The Cadbury Lectures at the Uni-
versity of Birmingham, 1985-86; Cambridge: James Clarke; Louisville, KY:
Westminster/John Knox Press, 1991), pp. 58-59, 170-74.
9. For a full discussion of this pericope, including a reconstruction of Mark’s
Aramaic source, see P.M. Casey, Aramaic Sources of Mark’s Gospel (MSSNTS,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming), ch. 5.

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Another unsatisfactory aspect of Wright’s attitude to language is the

conventional fault of never discussing genuine sayings of Jesus in
Aramaic, the language that Jesus spoke.’° As so often, this is most
catastrophic with the term ’son of man’, because genuine uses are
virtually untranslateable, with the result that examples of this expres-
sion shift significantly in meaning when attempts are made to translate
them into Greek, English, German or the like.&dquo; Wright declares the
expression ’notoriously ambiguous, even cryptic’,’-’ without any
attempt to reconstruct an Aramaic sentence and explain what is
ambiguous or cryptic about it, and without any attempt to answer the
classic point that the synoptic tradition does not show any signs of
difficulty in understanding this expression. He suggests that those with
ears to hear would understand this term in Mk 2.28 in the light of its
Danielic context. I published a reconstruction of Mk 2.28 some years
ago, with proper critical discussion.&dquo; Wright should have explained
how this could possibly have been intended to call up a particular
Danielic context, or offered an alternative reconstruction which does.
Instead of this, he has read it in the wrong language in the light of his
Christian tradition. His general discussion of ’son of man’ is very
oversimplified and does not respond to recent discussion at all. 14
Apart from the use of ’son of man’, a notable mistake is the decla-
ration that the high priest’s question at Mk 14.61 would be a statement
’in Greek, and presumably in Aramaic’, only becoming a question as
it was spoken at the end:’S but we need an Aramaic reconstruction to
show that it could be said in Aramaic at all. Let us try:

10. This well-known fact is occasionally challenged, as recently by S.E. Porter,

’Did Jesus Ever Teach in Greek?’, TynBul 44 ( 1993), pp. 199-235; revised as
’Jesus and the Use of Greek in Galilee’, in B. Chilton and C.A. Evans (eds.).
Studying the Historical Jesus: Evaluations of the State of Current Research (NTTS,
19; Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1994), pp. 123-54. For a brief response, P.M. Casey, ’In
Which Language Did Jesus Teach’?’, ExpTim 108 (1997), pp. 326-28: for compre-
hensive discussion, see Casey, Aramaic Sources.
11. Of the massive secondary literature, cf. especially P.M. Casey, ’Idiom and
Translation. Some Aspects of the Son of Man Problem’, NTS 41 (1995), pp. 164-
82.
12. Wright, Victory, p. 394.
13. P.M. Casey, ’Culture and Historicity: The Plucking of the Grain (Mark 2.23-
28)’, NTS 34 (1988), pp. 1-23.
14. Wright, Victory, pp. 513-19.
15. Wright, Victory, p. 523.

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However Semitic ’Son of the Blessed’ sounds to New Testament schol-

ars, nr’7r is not a recognized circumlocution for God in Hebrew or
Aramaic.’~ It must therefore be regarded as an attempt by a Greek
writer to imitate a Semitic expression: hence its virtual uniqueness.
The use of ~n&dquo;¡ja is not satisfactory either, as we shall see. There are
also well-known problems with the sequence of events, and Jesus’
reply. We must infer that the high priest’s question is secondary, and
commenting on what would happen in Aramaic without looking to see
what does happen in Aramaic is not a satisfactory procedure.
The next serious problem is almost a leitmotiv of the whole book:
the notion that Jews believed that they were in exile. At the time of
Jesus, many Jews lived in Israel. Some lived permanently in
Jerusalem. Jews came to Jerusalem from all over Israel and the dia-
spora for the major feasts. In the Temple, the Tamid was sacrificed
twice a day, a special symbol of God’s presence with Israel. As Jesus
put it, ’And he who swears by the sanctuary swears by it and by Him
who lives in it’ (Mt. 23.21). We would need stunningly strong argu-
ments to convince us that these Jews really believed they were in exile
when they were in Israel. All Wright’s arguments for this view, how-
ever, seem to me to be quite spurious. For example, in a somewhat
exaggerated discussion of Jesus’ offer of forgiveness of sins, he
roundly declares that ‘Fongiveness of sins is another way of saying
&dquo;return from e.’dle&dquo;’, and brings forward texts ’in which the point is
crystal clear’.&dquo; None of the texts quoted demonstrates anything of the
kind, because of a non sequitur at the centre of the argument. All the
texts (e.g. Jer. 31.31-34; Ezek. 36.24-26, 33) concern the period when
Israel genuinely was in exile, a different situation from that in the
ministry of Jesus. They genuinely do announce that Israel’s sins would
be forgiven when Israel returned from exile. From this it cannot pos-
sibly follow that Israel was in exile whenever Jesus, during the course
of a ministry which took place entirely in the land of Israel, offered

16. R.H. Gundry, Mark: A Commentary on his Apology for the Cross (Grand
Rapids: Eerdmans, 1993), pp. 909-10, finds a precedent at I En. 77.2, but this is
not found in the (defective) Aramaic, and the corrupt Ge’ez text may not have meant
it either. He also suggests ? at m. Ber. 7.3; b. Ber. 50a, but here ?
qualifies the name of God, it is not a circumlocution as in Mk 14.61, not even in the
wrong language at a much later time.
17. Wright, Victory, p. 268, his italics.

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anyone forgiveness of sins. There are many circumstances in which

individuals and nations may be thought to need and/or be offered
forgiveness of sins: these circumstances should not be identified with
each other by means of such associative treatment of texts.
Again, Wright asserts that the parable of the rich man and Lazarus
(Lk. 16.19-31 ) ’is not... a description of the afterlife, warning people
to be sure of their ultimate destination’. He reinterprets ’resurrection’
as ’return from exile’ and comments that Jesus ’invited his hearers to

see themselves as the true Israel, returning at last from exile, and

turning back to their god as an essential part of the process’.&dquo; Here

again, while the text genuinely does concern Jesus’ hearers turning
back to God, ’return from exile’ is imposed on the text by Wright.
This reinterpretation also has the effect of removing evidence that
Jesus believed that people went straight to an afterlife without their
tombs being empty, a mode of survival contrary to that needed by
Wright to support his conviction that Jesus rose bodily from the
dead.’9y
This takes us to further hermeneutical circles, by means of which
aspects of Jewish culture are shifted in a Christian direction. Perhaps
the most serious example is messiahship. This is a traditional Christian
category in which to see Jesus, and one that has traditionally been
interpreted in terms of Davidic kingship. It is however very improb-
able that the term (t~)~T,tit~/~1’~t~(~ 1) had already become a title, which
undermines the traditional understanding of some key passages. For
example, Wright treats Peter’s confession at Caesarea Philippi as a
significant historical event, ’the quasi-formal acknowledgement of
Jesus as king, as Messiah’ .20 As usual, however, Wright does not treat
this in Aramaic, the language in which it would have been spoken if it
had been genuine. However, only a sentence like the following one
could have been translated to form the confession as we have it in Mk
8.29:

18. Wright, Victory, pp. 255-56.

19. Cf. N.T. Wright, The New Testament and the People of God (London:
SPCK, 1992), pp. 321-34; idem, Who Was Jesus? (London: SPCK, 1992). pp. 61-
63, which could mislead many people into maintaining a traditional form of Christian
belief.
20. Wright, Victory, p. 470, and further pp. 528-30.

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This is not enough be a major confession, nor indeed to form a

to

complete utterance at all. It merely says that Jesus is anointed, and

fails to specify which anointed figure he might be. It does not tell us
that he is being hailed as king, rather than high priest, prophet or
more generally someone appointed by God to do something significant

(cf. e.g., Lev. 4.3; 1 Kgs 19.16; Isa. 45.1). The high priest obviously
excluded, the context does not tell us this either. It follows that this
confession originated in Greek, and there was no original Aramaic.
We must infer that it is not part of the oldest tradition that came down
to Mark. It is due to the editorial work of the evangelist, working in
Greek.
Again, Wright describes the triumphal entry as ’clearly messianic’,
alleging that Jesus’ action ’spoke more powerfully than words could
have done of a royal claim’.~’ Yet the earliest account does not use the
term Xpt<J1ÓÇ, nor #aJiXe6g, the term so conspicuously inserted by
Luke (19.38) and independently by Matthew in a quotation of Zech.
9.9 (Mt. 21.5). Wright finds the allusion to Zechariah ’obvious’. This
illustrates beautifully the extent to which Wright is controlled by the
Christian tradition to which he belongs, in which it is indeed obvious.
In Mark’s narrative, this allusion is not obvious; it is conspicuously
absent. Moreover, this use of the term ’messianic’ usually generates
unfruitful debate, as if those of us who do not use it really believe that
Jesus’ ministry was ’non-messianic’, and consequently undervalue its
importance and the centrality of Jesus himself to it. It is not that Jesus’
ministry was non-messianic. It is merely that the category of messiah-
ship had not yet crystallized out, and the term ’king’ did not emerge
until Pilate ordered it put on Jesus’ cross, crucifying Jesus as a sort of
brigand with two other brigands, not as ’Messiah’, a term which Pilate
is not likely to have known.
This shifting of evidence in the direction of later Christian tradition
runs through several matters of importance. For example, it is gen-

uinely important that John the Baptist offered a baptism of repentance

in a culture where God was believed to forgive the sins of people who
repented, thereby leading a renewal movement within Judaism, which
caused many people to believe that he was a genuine prophet. In
Wright’s hands, however, this becomes ’water-baptism for the for-
giveness of sins’, and its significance is paraphrased as ’you can have,

21. Wright. Victory, pp. 490-91.

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102

here and now, what you could normally get through the Temple cult’,
so that John ’presented a clear alternative to the Temple’ .2 This is

precisely what is not in the primary source material. It may, however,

be congenial to people within the Christian tradition, for whom it is
very important that they have forgiveness of sins, who think of the
Temple cult as obsolete, and Christianity as superseding Judaism.
Again, Wright presents Mk 7.15 as ’a cryptic invitation to abandon
one of the most cherished boundary markers of Israel’, the ’food-

taboos’. 23 But it is Christians who need to live without the dietary laws
of Judaism: Jesus’ historic ministry took place within the framework
of obedience to the Torah. Describing the ’invitation’ as ’cryptic’ does
not remove the major objection that it caused no dispute, as a genuine
attack on the food laws would have done. Moreover, Jesus the Jew had
no motivation for attacking the dietary laws in the Torah. He was,

however, very opposed to scribes and Pharisees, who were so con-

cerned to keep their insides clean that they thought Jesus and his dis-
ciples should follow the tradition of washing their hands before meals.
His general statement at Mk 7.15 implies that unclean food does not
make one’s insides unclean, a reasonable interpretation of the fact that
the Torah only forbids eating unclean food, it does not tell people how
to cleanse themselves if they have been sinful or mistaken enough to
do so. This frame of reference is also necessary for understanding
why the leader of the Twelve needed a vision after Jesus’ death and
resurrection to persuade him to eat unclean food, which Luke records
him as saying he had never done (Acts 10.9-16; 11.5-10). If anyone
had understood even a ’cryptic invitation’, it would surely have been
he. We must infer that Wright’s interpretation is again controlled by a
hermeneutical circle.
Another example is provided by Wright’s comments on Jesus’ final
meal with his disciples. Our oldest source makes it quite clear that this
was a Passover meal (Mk 14.12, 14, 16 1tå<Jxa).24 Wright, however,
prefers to think of ’a special quasi-Passover meal a day early’, so that
Jesus was not ’dependent upon the Temple for the necessary sacrificial

22. Wright, Victory, pp. 160-61.

23. Wright, Victory, pp. 179, 396-98.
24. For detailed discussion, including reconstruction of Mark’s Aramaic source,
see Casey, Aramaic Sources, ch. 6. On the
secondary nature of the Johannine
account, see P.M. Casey, Is Juhn’s Gospel True? (London: Routledge. 1996),
pp. 18-25.

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 103

lamb’, with Temple-system (ind

’an intended contrast between the
Jesus himself .2’ This is the Christian imagination again, from the
main point of having Jesus separated from Judaism to the little detail
of assuming that even an absent Passover victim must have been a
lamb, rather than a goat. Jesus himself, however, went to Jerusalem
with entirely Jewish disciples for the major feast of Passover, com-
manded in the Torah. Jesus the Jew and his Jewish disciples were
bound to celebrate the Passover. It also provided the symbolic context
in which he could offer an innovative interpretation of the bread and
wine.
Ironically, therefore, I must end with criticism that is almost the
opposite of the praise with which I began this critical review. It is
therefore especially important to repeat, and to stress, that one of this
book’s great virtues is its attempt to locate Jesus in his original cul-
tural context. That I have had to point out where it does not succeed is
not so much a measure of weaknesses in this book, but a sad reflection
on the current state of scholarship and a measure of how far the quest

still has to go. Several of the points that I have sought to dispute were
inherited from G.B. Caird, many of them are widespread in scholar-
ship. If, therefore, we are to end the quest of the historical Jesus by
finding him, we have a mammoth task before us, one which must
include handling genuine material in Aramaic, the language that Jesus
spoke: how much easier to complete hermeneutical circles with
whichever community makes us feel most ourselves! As we contem-
plate this task, this book must be seen as a genuine step forward, albeit
on a path where there is still very much further to go.

25. Wright, Victory, pp. 554-59.

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