Jesus, the "Marginal Jew" [is what God vindicated in the Resurrection]

 

Easter as God Vindicating Jesus

I'm writing this during the 2026 Easter season! Let's go beyond a basic "Jesus is risen!" way of understanding Easter. The following is one of my favourite ways to describe Easter: Easter means, the earliest Jesus-followers realized and came to trust that God vindicated Jesus who was nailed on the cross! In what way? By not allowing him to remain dead after the crucifixion but instead by raising him to life.

If that is so, the next question then is: What was it precisely that God vindicated? A more complete answer would be: God vindicated Jesus's person, his actions, his message. Here let me emphasize something often overlooked: What God vindicated--according to Christian faith--was a historical person with a ministry and teaching that were located in a definite historical and cultural milieu.

Christianity has that deep link with historical and cultural realities. That's actually the reason why understanding Jesus within his historical and cultural context is CRUCIALLY IMPORTANT!

What follows below is the fruit of my continual efforts to deepen my knowledge about 'that which God vindicated'. Every year during the Lenten-Easter season, I try to learn more about Jesus (since Jesus-studies is, after all, my specialized field). This year (2026), I once again delved into and reviewed a lot of what New Testament scholar John Meier (d. 2022) researched about Jesus. I respect Meier deeply because his analysis of the historical Jesus is one of the most exhaustive and thorough in recent memory although I may not agree with some particular conclusions he draws.

[RESOURCES] In the notes below, I use as a framework Meier's summary of his Jesus scholarship as presented in a 2008 YouTube video. There he asked and tried to respond to the question: “Jesus, the Jew: OK, But What Sort of Jew?” Link HERE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxeKunPwmp4&list=PLYBYxA4Zc6O7sDp_fbhFZGBAu05BaEGYb

When I make reference to Meier's major opus on the historical Jesus called, A Marginal Jew ( 5 volumes), I will indicate that as MJ, volume number, page.

[Premise] JKK's Approach and Christology| First of all, allow me a comment on how I treat the question of Jesus within historical-critical studies in relation to Christian faith. 
At the beginning of every semester, I always challenge my students (especially those raised as Christians) to take Jesus very seriously as a historical figure, even to the point of forgetting (for a while at least) his divinity. In this I'm inspired by the following insight of South African biblical scholar Albert Nolan who said, "Jesus is an underrated man [human]. When we deprive him of his humanity, we deprive him of his greatness." 

But, yes, I myself identify as a Christian. Because I am also a Christian (and not just a secular scholar of biblical literature), I wrestle with the relation between Jesus as a historical figure and the Christian confession of Jesus's divinity. For you, my students who are Christians, you may rightly wonder: If we are going to treat Jesus just as we would any historical figure, where does that leave the Christian belief that Jesus is also divine?

Taking Incarnation Seriously |  Here's what I can share about that. For many years now, I've considered myself--what I call--a "radical incarnationalist." Recall that "incarnation" is the Christian teaching that God became human in the person of Jesus of Nazareth and embraced everything human in order to save humanity. I take that notion in a radical way. What that means, for me, is: Jesus, as a historical human, should be considered as having no advantages over other humans by virtue of his divinity. It is as if God "erased" his divine memory from his humanity (à la Men in Black "neuralyzer" [memory-eraser] way.) The Christian principle of the incarnation enables Christians to treat Jesus like other humans in history: limited by his historical and cultural milieu.

Let's us also recall that Jesus' divinity is, strictly speaking, a Christian interpretation about who Jesus might have been. It is something that cannot be proven conclusively though. It is a teaching that Christians hold in trust as a good way of explaining who Jesus may have been. 

Back to my position, I understand and apply incarnation in a radical way. As mentioned, I treat Jesus as a human in every way with no advantages over other humans because of--what Christians believe to be--his divine nature coexisting with his humanity in the same person. My interpretation of the incarnation as a Christian is that God made Jesus go through a genuine human experience by subjecting him in everything to the limitations and glories of being human: human knowledge, culture, mentality, bodily functions ... everything! This stance enables me to study Jesus as a historical figure within all the limitations of humanity and of Jesus' particular contexts. 

Of course, radical incarnationalism does not preclude the human  capability of deep insight into spiritual things which--I believe--was present in a heightened level in Jesus, who was--as a human--a spiritual master who let his deep spirituality flow out to change the world. More on that HERE. 

 

--Jesus, the Marginal Jewish Teacher-Healer--

With that we can go to a serious dive into Jesus as a historical figure, this time mainly through the scholarship of John Meier who called Jesus, "a marginal Jew."

[1] Jesus within the Judaism of His Time and Place

Meier offers a central thesis: Jesus must be understood entirely within the diversity of Second Temple Judaism, never as someone standing outside it.

·       It's not helpful to consider Jesus as a generic religious figure or even "the founder of a new religion" (Christianity) during his lifetime.

·       Rather, he was a first-century Palestinian Jew (one who lived all his life in the land of Israel itself as opposed to a diasporic Jew like Paul).

·       Jesus was crucially formed and shaped by:

o   The Jewish Law (Torah)

o   Jewish eschatological expectations: the common expectation at the time that God was going to intervene directly in the history of Israel to solve its most pressing problems

o   Jewish sectarian diversity: the various influential groups within the Judaism of Jesus' time (late Second Temple Judaism)

o   the impact of Roman imperial rule

👉 Therefore, the correct question is not so much “Was Jesus Jewish?” because that is a plain historical fact, but rather: “What kind of Jew was Jesus within his own historical period and culture?”