Next, I analyzed Borg and Wright's Jesus in the context of the relevant profiles of Western masculinity. In the first part, I will look at how Jesus' masculinity is constructed in New Testament texts. In the second part, I will turn my gaze towards the masculinity of Jesus as it is constructed in contemporary science.
I will begin with how the masculinity of Jesus is constructed within the Pauline literature before moving on to the synoptic gospels, John's gospel, and Revelation.
Jesus’ Masculinity in Pauline Literature
In Paul's plan, Jesus' manhood is enhanced by his ability to control his will to suffer an unmanly death on behalf of others. Jesus' death and resurrection are thus firmly placed on the map of Greco-Roman hegemonic masculinity as the means by which Jesus gains power and authority. Conway also notes the way Paul constructs Jesus' masculinity in the context of the royal masculinity of his day.
Instead of affirming Jesus' crucifixion and explaining its masculine significance, the Deutero-Pauline letters erase the memory of Jesus' pierced body and replace it with a cosmic, unambiguously masculine Christ.
The Markan Jesus
According to Conway, Jesus' masculinity is unequivocally elite in the first thirteen chapters, but chapters 15-16 present challenging paradoxes. However, Jesus' manhood takes a terrible turn in Gethsemane, where Jesus is "sorrowful unto death" (Mark 14:34). Liew also emphasizes Jesus' public speaking and understands Jesus' discourses in the context of male contests.
What emerges from a survey of Conway, Liew, and Thurman's discussions of the masculinity of the Markan Jesus is not total agreement.
The Matthean Jesus
For Conway, the Matthean Jesus' status in Matthew seems entirely masculine, even though some of his behavior seems destabilizing of the very masculine categories that Jesus performs. According to Jerome Neyrey, the Matthean Jesus' masculinity is not "mixed" as it was for Colleen Conway. In reading the scholarly material on the Matthean Jesus' masculinity, I noticed two omissions that I suggest further research should emphasize.
Further, scholarly discussions of Jesus' masculinity in Matthew do not consider the effect of Matthew's updating of Mark's ambiguous resurrection.
The Lukan Jesus
D'Angelo's essay contains only a little information about the Lukan Jesus' masculinity, but the information is very important. D'Angelo sees Jesus' relationship with his Father and his flock in the context of Roman household codes. It is fitting that Luke's construction of Jesus' masculinity is tailored specifically to his audience.
Conway argues that Luke reconciles Jesus' death with his masculinity at Jesus' last meal with his disciples.
The Johannine Jesus
According to Conway, Jesus' masculinity in John is elevated far above his masculinity in the synoptic gospels. For Conway, Jesus' missing body is another facet of his heightened masculinity in the Fourth Gospel. For Conway, the highest element of Jesus' masculinity in John is Jesus' divine status in John: “In the Gospel of John, the divine Logos is incarnated, necessarily, as the ideal man.
Not only does John highlight many of Jesus' masculine characteristics, but the Gospel of John also does not contain narratives that may have compromised Jesus' masculinity.
Jesus in Revelation
Rather than transcending gender, God is the perfect example of masculinity.”72 Jesus' rise to a divine figure in Revelation, then, is not a step removed from his manhood, but its ultimate culmination. However, according to Conway, the exalted masculinity of Jesus found in Revelation is a violent masculinity that she argues is “more monstrous” than the masculinity of Jesus elsewhere in the New Testament. Or perhaps the fact that Jesus has a bride is not the result of shame, but a simple fact.
By the end of the canonical development of Jesus' masculinity, Jesus had achieved a masculine status so high that his divine masculinity compels his male subordinates to behave as unmen, like his bride.
Conclusion
However, the Deutero-Pauline letters bear witness to a later part of the Christian movement in which Jesus' manhood developed and grew. As seen by Conway, Thurman and Liew's writing on the Markan Jesus' masculinity, Mark's gospel presents an ambiguous picture of Jesus' masculinity. Most revealingly, both Matthew and Luke make it clear that Jesus' death was not an unmanned defeat, but a manly victory.
The Book of Revelation, like the Pastoral Letters, testifies to a late stage in the development of Jesus' manhood, and it should come as no surprise that Jesus' manhood is elevated to the highest status in the New Testament. Of particular importance is understanding the various ways in which New Testament authors reconciled Jesus' unmanned death with his elite male status. For example, Paul boasts about Jesus' death, but claims that Jesus' death was "for" the cause, making his death a male martyrdom.
Mark, I argue, allows Jesus' death to stand as it is and does not emphasize that Jesus' death was somehow masculine or victorious. In closing this literature survey, I must note that the scholarly material I have scanned is not intended to be the definitive statements about the way in which Jesus' masculinity is constructed in canonical texts. Although there may not be one definitive explanation of how Jesus' masculinity is constructed in canonical texts, there is scholarly agreement that Jesus'.
The scholars I researched may differ on exactly how Jesus' masculinity was constructed by canonical writers, but there is firm agreement that Jesus' masculinity was. Thus, even the earliest surviving memories of Jesus are inherently gendered, emphasizing Jesus' masculinity in their own Greco-Roman context.
20TH CENTURY WESTERN MASCULINITY AND HISTORICAL JESUS STUDIES I. Introduction
Historical Jesus Studies in Context
Thus, the roots of historical Jesus studies are inextricably linked to the history and achievements of Western masculinities. Central to historical Jesus studies is the belief that the Jesus of the New Testament canon cannot be taken for granted as the Jesus of history. Spinoza,84 eroded the Western world's confidence in biblical narratives, which laid much of the groundwork for Hermann Reimarus, the eighteenth-century German, to open up the field of research now known as historical Jesus studies.
Reimarus is often considered the founder of historical studies on Jesus, as he popularized the scandalous idea that the canonical gospels were fraudulent fantasies rather than historical biographies of the life of Jesus.85. 84 Gregory Dawes, The Historical Jesus: Landmarks in the Search for the Jesus of History (Louisville, KY: . John Knox Press, 2000) 4. Bultmann believed that most of the Gospels testify to early Christian belief in the Christ of faith. as accurate stories about the Jesus of history.92 While Bultmann's lack of interest may have smothered the fire of historical Jesus research, his (male) students only fueled the flames.
After nearly thirty years off from historical research studies, Ernst Käsemann, a student of Bultmann's, presented a lecture in 1953 on the historical Jesus. In 1971, Joachim Jeremias conducted a second research emphasis on the teachings of Jesus focusing on Aramaisms in the Gospels and arguing that they went back to the historical Jesus. Norman Perrin, another important second research scholar, also expressed disbelief in many of Jesus' teachings based on his dissimilarity criteria, which argued that the various teachings of both Second Temple Judaism and later Christianity should originate from the historical Jesus.
The third quest for the historical Jesus is the movement within which we currently live and has been noted for sharp methodological disagreements.94 The Jesus Seminar, founded in 1985, constructed a Jesus who was primarily a teacher of non-eschatological wisdom, while scholars such as EG N.T. 96 Crossley, James, "Some Futures for Historical Jesus Studies." Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus (2016) 7.
Profiles of Masculinity in the Late 20th Century
Perhaps Wright's most challenging characterization of Jesus to associate with the Rational Patriarch (or any form of dominant masculinity) is Jesus' suffering and death. This is another point where Wright's Jesus resembles the Rational Patriarch, but the Borg do not. I find Borg's rendition of Wild Adventurer Jesus to be less elite and perfect compared to N.T.
Jesus' suffering and death are not the only points of comparison between Wright's Jesus and political masculinities. However, when compared to Wright's Jesus, Borg's Jesus is not nearly as elite of a politician.
Results and Discussion
Despite a relatively new and growing body of work investigating Jesus' sexuality and the possibility that Jesus had an intimate, sexual relationship with a man,179 I can find no similarities between Wright's Jesus' masculinity and gay masculinity . Wright's Jesus shares characteristics with a traditional pastor, while Borg's Jesus' pastoral masculinity appears to be more revisionist. As the literature survey in Part I revealed, contemporary scholarship is currently revealing the way in which Jesus' masculinity was constructed in canonical texts.
In the canonical material, Jesus' masculinity is embellished and constructed in relation to elite men from the Greco-Roman world. Thus, Wright has asserted a historical essence of the exalted masculinity of Jesus as found in the canon. As seen in Part I, the synoptic gospels emphasize Jesus' identity as an elite man, so Wright's assertion of the synoptic gospels as primarily historical also functions as an assertion of Jesus' elevated masculinity.
Thus, scholars who affirm the historicity of the synoptic gospels also affirm the superior masculinity of Jesus found in the synoptic gospels. As seen in Part I, Jesus' physical resurrection and intentional, atoning death served the purpose of strengthening. Wright affirms the physical resurrection of Jesus and believes that early theories of the atonement go back to the historical Jesus.
Thus, Wright affirms the two most significant parts of the canonical masculinity of Jesus, while Borg does not. I believe that my meta-analysis of Wright and Borg's work has shown that narratives about Jesus—even scholarly ones—.
