Jesus of Nazareth: What He Wanted, Who He Was

This is the problem in a nutshell. To use another image: bare “facts” swirl chaotically through the universe in their billions. If no one organizes or interprets them they remain garbage, pure informational garbage. This informational trash has nothing to do with “history,” not in the least. The so-called fact is a prior level, a partial element, but it is not yet history. Thousands of facts, in and of themselves, are not history. History is interpreted event. Historical knowledge organizes and interprets the infinite chaos of facts.

The Interpretive Community

But who does this work of interpretation—interpreting the chaotic factual material that pours out at us every day and every year? Of course it seems obvious to say that this is the work of individual historians, specialists in history, who search the archives, seek out contemporary witnesses, gather material, and then one day produce a book in which they have placed the gathered facts in a larger context, shed light on them from various sides, and so narrated a piece of history.

Oh, if only it were so simple! In reality, individual historians do not work alone. Alone, they are nearly helpless. They presuppose the work of many others; they examine a great number of prior works that have already been produced by others. They have to depend on the statements and interpretations of earlier historians. All by themselves they could never get an overview of the incalculable quantity of factual material, let alone organize it or interpret it. Besides, the documents the historian finds in the archives are for the most part already interpretations from the view and to the purpose of the witnesses of the time.

Thus, as with all serious research, there is something like a research community of historians. We need only think of the many dictionaries and reference works every historian has in her or his library. To put it more bluntly: there is something like an interpretive community of historians. Obviously, in this interpretive community as in all the scholarly professions, outsiders, contrary thinkers, oddballs, and blockheads try to make themselves heard. They too are necessary.

And of course there are struggles between groups, extreme positions, battles over positions, and quotation cartels, that is, groups of scholars who quote each other but persistently keep silence about the results of other groups’ research. But above all, there is endless combat. That is inevitable in every serious field of research.

But despite the never-ending battle among historians, they form something like an interpretive community that, up to a point, even creates consensus. Otherwise the mainstream of historical research and the great scholarly standard works that are used throughout the world would be completely unthinkable.

So what is being called “interpretation” in this chapter does not fall from heaven and cannot be accomplished by lone individuals. “Interpretation” presupposes a community of interpretation. “Interpretation” presumes communication between people. “Interpretation,” finally, in sociological terms, assumes a group that wants to secure its historical identity. And above all, “interpretation” presumes a “cultural memory” within that larger group.⁷

The People of God as Interpretive Community

Everything said so far about historical scholarship is, of course, true also of theology. Here the larger group that makes historical interpretation possible is the people of God. They were a narrative community from the very beginning. They told how God acted among them in ever new ways. And as a narrative community the people of God became a community of interpretation, a community that again and again renewed and purified its memory.

All that, incidentally, is true not only of the past. The church is still an interpretive community today. It is vital for it to look back at its own past, to examine it critically, and to try to understand the present on the basis of this critical retrospect. Only in that way can it take the next step into the future. At present the church, after causing infinite suffering to the Jews over centuries with its theology of Israel, has finally come to the point of revising its relationship with Judaism. This revision will profoundly change the church’s life.

So what has been said in sketchy fashion about every kind of secular historical interpretation is true above all of interpretation in faith: faithful interpretation of history presumes the people of God as the interpretive community. It is not only about perceiving the church’s own guilt but also about recognizing the deeds of God performed in his people and for the world through his people. Such perception and narration is impossible without an interpretive grasp grounded in faith. It is only possible when believers come together in believing communities, in the church.