On Jesus as a Jewish Sectarian
by ideology or practice to create its own program for the training of novices, and I certainly have no wish to quarrel over the name given to any such program. All that I am saying is that Christians are guilty of historical error when they represent their “discipling” process as modeled upon or a continuation of the discipleship of the Gospels. Before answering your question, “What would a disciple of Jesus look like?”, I think we need to take another look at who Jesus was and what he himself was doing. When teaching in the synagogues, Jesus astounded the people because, “unlike the doctors of the Law, he taught with a note of authority” (Mk. 1.21-2; also Mt. 7.28-9, Lk. 4.32). Traditional rabbinic teaching is very much like discourse among academics; in regard to any given subject or the interpretation of any particular text, it recognizes the pertinent contributions of scholars and brings them into discussion. Doctors of the Law, like university professors, may be confident in their reasoned conclusions, and yet still bring into consideration the opposing arguments of colleagues and predecessors. Moreover, if they are wise, they are humbled by the realization that neither selfassurance nor loud applause can guarantee any lasting significance to their most carefully deliberated conclusions. Jesus, although familiar with rabbinic teaching, was an outsider to the collegial community. He was a demagogue rather than an academic. His natural intelligence, wit, artistry, modest learning, and Galilean courage were sufficient to foster his pretensions to authority. However, he was also very much aware that, because he lacked not just the credentials but the actual substance of formal rabbinic training, he was vulnerable to having his ignorance publicly exposed. This consciousness of vulnerability, combined with anxiety over sustaining and 58