Was Jesus a Unique Teacher?
What follows is a draft excerpt from my forthcoming book Whisper of Revolution: Jesus and the Coming of God as King.
Leander Keck said, “To a considerable degree the history of the quest [for the historical Jesus] is the quest of Jesus the teacher.”[1]
Strewn across the Jesus tradition is the memory of Jesus of a teacher of arresting authority as well as the memory of his actual instruction.[2]
Jesus is addressed as “teacher” and “rabbi”[3] and his teaching was notable for its novelty and authority in contrast to the scribes.[4] Jesus was a teacher of charisma and conviction, provocative and poignant, his words courted controversy, and felt different to many of his contemporary pedagogues.[5] Jesus’s teaching was notable in his “Amen, amen” sayings and the “I say to you” formulas. Jesus’s teaching reinforced scriptural paradigms, but also challenged the pieties of the powerful, threatened to unleash a fiery blaze, and was deliberately issued to the marginalized with promises of a great reversal.