Jesus of Nazareth: What He Wanted, Who He Was

But the justified hunger for historical reconstruction has been associated for a long time with a radical critique of the gospels that seeks to discover the real Jesus not with the gospels but against them. In this very context there is constant talk about overpaintings and exaggerations of the person of Jesus by early Christian tradition. But this confuses two different things: what the gospel critics call dogmatic exaggerations are nothing other than “interpretations” of Jesus, and interpretation is not the same as exaggeration. Many Christians rightly reject such words as “exaggeration,” “overpainting,” “overdrawing,” “mythologization,” and “idolization.” They should not be defensive, however, against the word “interpretation.”

For the gospels must not be regarded as mere collections of “facts” about Jesus. They are not an assemblage of documents from a Jesus archive in the early Jerusalem community. Obviously the authors of the gospels had a multitude of traditions about Jesus at their disposal, but they used these traditions to interpret Jesus. They interpret his words, they interpret his deeds, they interpret his whole life. They interpret Jesus in every line, in every sentence.

May we take texts that are interpretation from beginning to end and filter them through the sieve of criticism in the hope that the “facts” will remain behind? May we—like people panning for gold—wash away the useless sand of the interpretations to get at the heavy gold of the facts? May we derive strata from narratives whose whole purpose is interpretation, in order to get at the “original”? In the end, after the removal of all secondary layers, would we arrive at pure facts? The questionable nature of such an interpretive technique in reality is revealed by a simple question: where is the truth—in the facts or in their interpretation? Or, to use the image of the gold panner again: are the facts the gold, or is it the right interpretation of the facts?¹

Fact and Interpretation

What, after all, is a “fact”? The word is usually used with great confidence and without reflection, as if its meaning were obvious. But so-called facts are not that simple.

Of course the world is full of facts, and often we can speak of them as a matter of course. When, for example, an earthquake happens we can certainly call it a fact. But even such facts are already interpreted. The event of the earthquake is, of course, established by seismographs, its strength measured by the Richter scale, and the earthquake observers compare their measurements. But then geophysicists investigate the kind of quake it is, and distinguish between “collapse earthquakes” (when subterranean caves collapse), “volcanic earthquakes” (connected with volcanic eruptions), and, finally, “tectonic earthquakes” (when shifts take place within the earth’s crust). The “fact” of an earthquake is thus fairly clear. It can be described in straightforward terms. And yet even such a description already contains more than a fair amount of interpretation—correct interpretation, we may suppose.

But not all facts are on this level. What does it mean when there is something like an “earthquake” in politics?—when, for example, a social landslide occurs or a political scandal becomes public? What does it mean when a politician is toppled—and no one wants to take responsibility? What is the fact here? What really happened, and what were only sham maneuvers staged for the public? What was mere opinion making, and what was deliberate disinformation?

Political events require interpretation, and a great deal more interpretation than purely physical phenomena. What really happened must be painstakingly researched, analyzed, and interpreted. But the recovery of the course of events always involves interpretation from the very start. Beyond all these difficulties there is ultimately also the question: who is the authoritative interpreter? And which interpretation will triumph in the end? Hence the quandary: is there any such thing as pure fact when the real actors are people, with their desires, interests, and passions? Is it not true that here every fact that appears is already bathed in interpretation from the outset, drenched in it through and through?