For knapt en uke siden ble det kjent at pave Benedikt nettopp er ferdig med den først av to bøker han ønsker å skrive om Jesus – om Jesu liv og virke, om Jesus i Det nye Testamente. Den første boken (på nesten 300 sider) handler om Jesu liv fram til Forklarelsen på fjellet, og så langt har jeg notert meg allert mest, at selv om paven refererer til moderne bibelforskning – som i stadig større grad (mer enn da jeg var student for 25 år siden) skiller skarpt mellom ‘den historiske Jesus’ og Jesus i Det nye testamente – så går han ikke med på denne forståelsen, denne kritikken, og aksepterer selv evengeliene slik de faktisk er skrevet.
Boken er skrevet på tysk, og man regner med at den vil være oversatt til flere språk før utgivelsen, som er beregnet til våren 2007. Deler av Benedikts forord er oversatt til engelsk og følger her:
I have felt the need to give readers these indications of a methodological character so that they can determine the path of my interpretation of the figure of Jesus in the New Testament. With reference to my interpretation of Jesus, this means first of all that I trust the Gospels. Of course I take as a given all that the Council and modern exegesis say about the literary genres, the intention of their affirmations, on the communal context of the Gospels and its words in this living context. Accepting all this in the measure that was possible to me, I wished to present the Jesus of the Gospels as the true Jesus, as the «historical Jesus» in the true sense of the expression.
I am convinced, and I hope the reader will also realize, that this figure is far more logical and, from the historical point of view, also more comprehensible than the reconstructions we have had to deal with in the last decades.
I believe, in fact, that this Jesus — the one of the Gospels — is a historically honest and convincing figure. The Crucifixion and its efficacy can only be explained if something extraordinary happened, if Jesus’ figure and words radically exceeded all the hopes and expectations of the age.
Approximately twenty years after Jesus’ death, we find fully displayed in the great hymn to Christ that is the Letter to the Philippians (2:6-8) a Christology which says that Jesus was equal to God but that he stripped himself, became man, humbled himself unto death on the cross and that to him is owed the homage of creation, the adoration that in the prophet Isaiah (45:23) God proclaimed is owed only to Him.
With good judgment, critical research asks the question: What happened in the twenty years after Jesus’ Crucifixion? How was this Christology arrived at?
DENNE OVERSETTELSEN ER HENTET FRA ZENIT.