What Got Jesus Killed? PDF

# What Got Jesus Killed? ## Sobrino's Historical-Theological Reading of Scripture **DANIEL J. HARRINGTON, S.J.** In the last thirty years hundreds of books on Jesus have been published. The more serious historical studies have often been lumped together under the title "the third quest of the his...

# What Got Jesus Killed? ## Sobrino's Historical-Theological Reading of Scripture **DANIEL J. HARRINGTON, S.J.** In the last thirty years hundreds of books on Jesus have been published. The more serious historical studies have often been lumped together under the title "the third quest of the historical Jesus." But as John P. Meier has suggested, the project is better named "the quest of the historian's Jesus," since the goal is to determine what can be said with high probability about Jesus of Nazareth by using the tools of modern historical research. The first quest took place for the most part in the nineteenth century and was described brilliantly and analyzed critically by Albert Schweitzer. The second quest occurred in the 1950s and 1960s mainly among students of Rudolf Bultmann, who in reaction to their teacher's skepticism about recovering the historical Jesus contended that through the use of various authenticating criteria applied to the sayings of Jesus we could at least grasp the existential self-consciousness of Jesus. The first two quests took place almost exclusively among German Protestant professors. The third quest has been much more ecumenical and international. One strand of the third quest, represented by the Jesus Seminar, has concentrated on the sayings of Jesus and has tended to play down the Jewish context and identity of Jesus. Another strand has focused more on the deeds of Jesus and has stressed Jesus' context within Judaism. The methodology used by representatives of the third quest is historical criticism, which seeks to understand Jesus (or any other figure) in his own historical setting and (where possible) to get behind the literary sources in order to recover with high probability what Jesus said or did. This version of historical criticism is ideologically neutral, and has been declared "indispensable" by no less an authority than the Pontifical Biblical Commission. However, there is a version of historical criticism that is not so neutral. As described in classic form by Ernst Troeltsch, the narrower version of historical criticism operates on three principles: (1) analogy-the past is much the same as the present, and vice versa; (2) cause and effect-historical events must be explained by historical causes, without recourse to supernatural interventions; and (3) probability-historians can arrive at best probable explanations, not certainty. These principles are in obvious tension with the Gospels, which are the only substantial sources that we possess regarding Jesus of Nazareth. Those who follow these principles rigidly must dismiss, ignore, or explain away Jesus' virginal conception, miracles, and resurrection. The name of Jon Sobrino seldom appears in discussions of the third quest of the historical Jesus. He is neither a historian nor a biblical exegete. Nor does he claim to be such. Nevertheless, I hope to show that with reference to his treatment of the death of Jesus in his *Jesus the Liberator,* Sobrino has made an important methodological contribution toward developing a more adequate hermeneutical approach for dealing with the Jesus of the Gospels. The key to his contribution comes in the words "historical-theological" in the subtitle of his work. My point is that while the narrow version of historical criticism is an inadequate tool, the historical-theological approach illustrated by Sobrino is a more adequate and fruitful way of treating the ancient sources about Jesus. ## The Problem In response to publications associated with the third quest of the historical Jesus, I have taught several times a seminar entitled "Jesus and Hermeneutics." The goal is to try to understand what is going on in the new books about Jesus and what we can learn about Jesus and about historical and theological methodology in the process. The course begins with the writings of biblical scholars who identify themselves mainly as historians: Gerd Theissen, John P. Meier, Burton L. Mack, E. P. Sanders, Ben Witherington, and N. T. Wright. Then there is an interlude devoted to the hermeneutical theories of E. D. Hirsch, Hans-Georg Gadamer, and Paul Ricoeur. Finally we move to interpretations of Jesus from various ideological and theological perspectives: Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza (feminism), Sobrino (liberation theology), Geza Vermes (Judaism), John Howard Yoder (pacifism and nonviolence), Edward Schillebeeckx (historical and classical Catholic theology), and so forth. Sobrino has been included as a representative of Latin American liberation theology, and the selections from his *Jesus the Liberator* concern why Jesus was killed and why he died. The two chapters correspond to the historical reasons for Jesus' death and how it was interpreted by early Christians and by the church throughout the centuries. Here I want to focus on Sobrino's treatment on the reasons for Jesus' death, or what got Jesus killed. Many third questers find this a difficult topic. For example, Burton L. Mack, an early member of the Jesus Seminar, suggests that the best source for understanding Jesus is the earliest (wisdom) stratum of the Savings Source O. the collection of sayings used independently by Matthew and Luke. The Jesus of this stratum is a wisdom teacher who sounded and looked like a Cynic philosopher. What he said and did may have been mildly annoying to some, but they were hardly the kinds of things that got Jesus (or anyone else) killed. On the other hand, E. P. Sanders in his study of Jesus within Judaism gives particular attention to the episode customarily called "the cleansing of the temple" (Mark 11:15-19) and interprets it as a prophetic demonstration that aroused the fears and anxieties of the temple officials and their Roman masters. Sanders doubts that they regarded Jesus as a really serious political threat, since although they eventually had Jesus executed they did nothing to his followers. One gets the impression that Jesus was another failed visionary and that his death in Sanders's view was merely a tragic mistake, the result of misunderstanding Jesus the apocalyptic visionary for a political revolutionary. The more times I have taught "Jesus and Hermeneutics," the more convinced I have become that Jon Sobrino's "historical-theological" reading of Jesus of Nazareth offers important methodological contributions to both the historical and the theological study of Jesus and his death. Sobrino makes no claim to be a biblical scholar, nor does he regard himself as being on the cutting edge of academic theology. Nevertheless, he can and does hope to make a distinctive contribution to Jesus research by doing theology among the "crucified people" of Latin America. From that vantage point he is convinced that he can see things in the ancient texts of the New Testament that tenured professors in the great universities of Europe and North America may fail to see. For Sobrino, a "historical-theological" reading of Jesus of Nazareth does not mean the history of theology. Rather, it involves taking seriously the historical data about Jesus and trying to do theology on the basis of and in the light of these data. How he deals with the death of Jesus historically will illustrate, I hope, both the inadequacy of historical criticism narrowly defined and the positive value of his own historical-theological approach. ## Sobrino on Why Jesus Was Killed The question why Jesus was killed is basically a historical question. Why Jesus died is a theological question. But in order to answer the first question, one must approach it not only as a historian but also as a theologian. Sobrino deals with both questions but in separate chapters. What got Jesus killed, according to Sobrino, was the fact that he was a radical threat to the religious and political powers of his time. He insists that Jesus' death was not a mistake, tragic or otherwise. Rather, it was "the consequence of his life and this in turn was the consequence of his particular incarnation-in an anti-Kingdom which brings death-to defend its victims." The standpoint from which Sobrino proposes to understand Jesus' death is that of the crucified people of the Third World, that is, the context in which Sobrino has lived and worked for many years. Whereas the setting for the work of many recent Jesus questers has been "after Auschwitz," he describes his own setting as "in Auschwitz." The implication is that the conditions under which many people in Latin America live is analogous to the conditions in which Jesus lived and died in first-century Palestine. It is the "crucified people" that can best understand what got Jesus killed. According to Sobrino, Jesus had to be killed because he got in the way of the political and religious powers. He traces the offense that Jesus gave to the struggle between "the gods"-between the humanly constructed gods of the Romans (and of some Jewish leaders) and the God revealed in the Scriptures of Israel and in Jesus (who called him "Father"). Both the Synoptic Gospels and John's Gospel portray Jesus as the victim of hostility and persecution from the beginning to the end of his public career. While the opponents represent a wide range of groups and movements-Pharisees, chief priests, scribes, Herodians, and Sadducees, as well as the Roman officials, they all had some kind of religious or political power. The "crowds" are the common people. They are generally well disposed or neutral toward Jesus, though in the end their leaders manipulate them to call for the crucifixion of Jesus. The four Gospels are united in presenting Jesus as the victim of persecution and in suggesting that his death was not merely a tragic mistake but rather the logical consequence of who Jesus was and the circumstances in which he lived and worked. Did Jesus know beforehand that he was going to suffer and die in Jerusalem? Biblical scholars suggest that the three passion predictions (Mark 8:31; 9:31; 10:33-34) in their present forms may reflect the events described later in the passion narratives. In other words, they sound like vaticina ex eventu, that is, predictions drawn from events that had already happened. That may be so. But the question remains, Did Jesus himself expect to suffer and die in Jerusalem? Here Sobrino wisely points to the fate of John the Baptist. Jesus knew John, accepted his baptism, was mentored by him to some extent, and in many ways carried on his ministry. He surely knew that John had been executed under Herod Antipas, the ruler in Galilee. Whether one accepts Mark's account that John was killed for criticizing Herod's marriages (as in Mark 6:14-29), or Josephus's claim that Herod Antipas feared John as a political rival for the people's affections (Jewish Antiquities 18.116-19), makes no real difference. Jesus was surely familiar with the possible consequences of speaking the truth to power from the case of John the Baptist. Moreover, he was surely also cognizant of the long line of contemporary Jewish religious figures who had suffered fates like that of John the Baptist. And, of course, he knew well that it was the destiny of prophets to suffer rejection and persecution (Mark 6:4 parr.). The fact that Jesus the prophet of God's kingdom went up to Jerusalem, Sobrino observes, was "the measure of his faithfulness to God." He did so out of fidelity to the cause of the kingdom of God, out of confidence in the one whom he called "Father," and out of loyalty to his prophetic calling. At the root of Jesus' resolve to go to Jerusalem, according to Sobrino, was his understanding of his life as service on behalf of others, even to the point of sacrificial service. This is the link between the historical Jesus and the Christ of faith, between Jesus of Nazareth and the early church's interpretations of him (Christology). It is expressed clearly in Mark 10:45: "the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many." It is alluded to in the saying over the cup at the Last Supper: "This is my blood of the covenant which is poured out for many" (Mark 14:24). The allusions to Jeremiah (the new covenant, see Jer 31:31-34) and the Suffering Servant (Isaiah 53) in the so-called words of institution reflect Jesus' self-consciousness as a prophet in the line of suffering prophets. There has been much scholarly debate among legal, historical, and biblical scholars over the character of the "trials" of Jesus before the Jewish council known as the Sanhedrin and the Roman governor, Pontius Pilate. Whatever their precise legal status may have been, the New Testament accounts suggest that the major charges against Jesus involved his threat to destroy the Jerusalem temple and the popular claims that Jesus was the Messiah. Although Mark rejects the temple charge as false (14:59), Jesus' "cleansing" of the temple on entering the city (Mark 11:15-19) and his prophecy of the temple's destruction (13:2) indicate that there was some substance to the charge made at the trial before the Sanhedrin (14:58). The temple action and saying not only fit with Jesus' preaching about God's kingdom (and not the temple) as the focus of Judaism but also posed a threat to the temple officials (chief priests, elders, Sadducees, and so on) and all those who made their living off the pilgrims coming to the temple (providers of lodging and food, construction workers, the purveyors of animals and other material for sacrifices, and so on). Sobrino notes that it is reasonable to conclude that at the "religious" trial Jesus was accused of wanting to destroy the temple not only because he criticized certain aspects of it but also because he offered an alternative (the kingdom of God) that implied that the temple would no longer be the core of the political, social, and economic life of the Jewish people. In treating the "political" trial before Pilate, Sobrino takes as his starting point Luke's summary of charges in 23:2: "We found this man perverting our nation, forbidding them to pay taxes to the emperor, and saying that he himself is the Messiah, a king." While this may well be a Lukan formulation, it is very likely an accurate summary of what got Jesus in trouble with the Jewish and Roman authorities. In this way the Jewish religious officials portrayed Jesus as a political threat to the Roman empire in general and to Pilate as prefect of Judea in particular. The charge that Jesus made himself "the Messiah, a king" would have been especially incendiary in this context. And the Roman policy for dealing with such "messianic" figures was swift and brutal execution. While the Evangelists present Pilate as hesitant to execute Jesus, he finally does sentence Jesus to die and directs that the inscription on the cross should read "The King of the Jews" (Mark 15:26). This title, which was the Roman translation of "Messiah," served as a warning to other would-be Messiahs who might be tempted to lead an uprising against the Roman occupiers and their emperor. Sobrino interprets the encounter between Jesus and Pilate as "a confrontation between two 'mediators'... representing two 'mediations, the Kingdom of God and the Roman empire (the pax romana)." He sees the trial before Pilate as a contest or choice between the God of Jesus and Pilate's god (the emperor and the state gods who maintained the pax romana). Sobrino concludes that Jesus was killed "because of his kind of life, because of what he said and what he did." In other words, the teachings and actions of Jesus provide the point of continuity with the early church's interpretations of his death and with the experiences of the "crucified people" throughout the centuries and in our own time. ## Sobrino in Hermeneutical Perspective Sobrino does not claim to be a historical critic in the narrow sense, such as E. P. Sanders might describe himself. He does claim to be offering a "historical-theological reading of Jesus of Nazareth." The criteria by which his work may best be judged come from philosophical hermeneutics and from Gadamer, Hirsch, and Ricoeur rather than from Troeltsch. Here I want to examine his interpretation of what got Jesus killed in the light of some basic concepts in hermeneutical theory: preunderstanding, fusion of horizons, verification, and appropriation. These concepts in turn may better illumine Sobrino's methodology in *Jesus the Liberator* and in particular his chapter on the death of Jesus. ### Preunderstanding Every interpreter brings to the biblical text (or any other text) a set of preunderstandings or prejudices. The challenge is to discern what are true or salutary prejudices and what are false or distorting prejudices. Sobrino's prejudices regarding the Bible include the assumption that it is a classic and even sacred text. That is, it transcends the original circumstances of its production (a classic text) and can be an occasion for encountering God (a sacred text, the word of God). Moreover, the interpreter needs to be aware of the tradition in which he or she stands. In most of these matters Sobrino is not unusual or exceptional. He is from Spain, was educated both in Spain and in the United States and Germany, and has lived and worked in El Salvador for many years. He is a Catholic priest, a Jesuit, and a professor of theology. He has written many books and articles on a variety of theological topics. What sets him apart from most theologians is his conviction that the strong analogies between first-century Palestine and late-twentieth-century El Salvador have enabled him to see aspects of the New Testament that other interpreters in other circumstances may miss. All analogies limp. But some limp more than others. Indian and African exegetes and theologians have often argued that they have more intellectual and emotional kinship with the biblical authors than those who bring to the biblical texts the philosophical baggage of the European Enlightenment. Latin American liberation theologians make a similar case with regard to the sociopolitical conditions in which they live and the cultural assumptions that shape their societies (stratified social classes, patriarchy, hierarchy, honor and shame, and so forth). They observe that the Word became flesh (John 1:14) in this kind of society. Not that this is an ideal world that should be preserved. Rather, it was the world that Jesus challenged and that eventually had him killed. If we want to understand his death, we must try to understand the horizon in which it occurred. ### Fusion of Horizons A horizon is the range of vision that includes everything that can be seen from a particular vantage point. Understanding takes place in the fusion of horizons between the text and the interpreter. Interpretation involves the sharing of common meaning so that there is an interplay or dialogue between the text and the interpreter. Sobrino comes to the Gospel passion narratives as a well-educated Catholic theologian. What makes his approach different from others is his personal and pastoral experiences of life among the poor of El Salvador. He was close to Archbishop Oscar Romero, who was murdered while saying Mass in a hospital chapel in 1980. Several of his Jesuit colleagues at the University of Central America in San Salvador were brutally executed by an army gang in 1989. Sobrino knows firsthand what it means to suffer in an oppressive society. Thus, he is better positioned than most of us to enter into the horizon of Jesus' passion and death, and to explain to the rest of us what got Jesus killed. He has earned a serious hearing, and that is what his work has generally received over the years. In the process his work has become the occasion by which the "crucified people" of Latin America and people all over the world have come to understand and appreciate better Jesus' life, death, and resurrection. He writes neither as a biblical exegete nor as a historian nor as a classic dogmatic theologian. Rather, he deliberately presents a "historical-theological" reading of Jesus of Nazareth. He tries to take seriously and bring together the horizons of first-century Palestine and late-twentieth-century life in Latin America. ### Verification In hermeneutics the interpreter's goal is to show that one reading is more probable than others and preferable to them. The process of verification is always a matter of weighing relative probabilities. The hermeneutical theorist, E. D. Hirsch, offers four criteria for establishing an interpretation as the most probable: legitimacy, correspondence, generic appropriateness, and coherence. To satisfy the criterion of legitimacy, the reading must be permissible in the context in which the text was composed. The events described in the Gospel passion narratives took place in first-century Palestine, in a time and place where there was much political turmoil among the local population and vigorous repression on the part of the Roman officials and their local allies. Richard A. Horsley has aptly described this situation as a "spiral of violence" in which oppression led to uprisings, which in turn led to further repression, which issued in full-scale rebellion and the ultimate destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70. Mark's Gospel, which is regarded as the earliest Gospel, was very likely composed in Rome around A.D. 70, when the local Christian community there had undergone persecution and martyrdom under Nero and expected more to come. In both the Judean and the Roman contexts the perception that Jesus and the early Christians were somehow dangerous to the sociopolitical and religious status quo along the lines suggested by Sobrino would certainly have been legitimate. According to the criterion of correspondence, the reading must account for each linguistic component in the text. Sobrino's major source is Mark 14-15, with some elements (especially the trial before Pilate) taken from John 18-19. Of course, both Mark and John wrote from the perspective of Easter. They and their first readers knew that Jesus' story did not end on Good Friday but rather continued (and continues) through Jesus' resurrection from the dead. Sobrino too comes to the events described in the Gospel passion narratives with full knowledge about how Jesus' story came out. Nevertheless, if we try initially (as he does) to approach the Gospel passion narratives as to some extent historical sources and to read them while bracketing temporarily the Evangelists' more obvious post-Easter theological interpretations, then Sobrino's account of what got Jesus killed fits well with the picture of Jesus as the prophet of God's kingdom who made himself inconvenient to both the Jewish and the Roman authorities in his time and place. Indeed, the ways in which Jesus is presented in the passion narratives has made him the archetype of the rejected prophet throughout the centuries. The Gospels do not describe Jesus' death as simply a tragic misunderstanding or a mistake. Rather, the Evangelists describe Jesus as someone who was very much "in the way" of the political and religious authorities and whose death was the natural outcome of who Jesus was and what he stood for. Sobrino's reading of the Gospels is surely more plausible than those of Mack and Sanders in this regard. According to the criterion of generic appropriateness, the interpretation must fit with the literary genre of the text. To most people in antiquity, the Gospels would have looked like biographies. However, ancient biographers were not as interested in chronological details and brute facts as they were in the moral significance and exemplary value (positive or negative) of their subjects. All the Evangelists emphasize that from the beginning of his public ministry (and even from his infancy according to Matthew) Jesus was the object of hostility and plotting from various groups. In this matter there is no reason to doubt their historical accuracy. Without such growing enmity it is impossible to understand the passion narratives. Moreover, the Evangelists portray Jesus as the prophet of God's kingdom and as fundamentally a religious teacher. Just as it is impossible to understand the ministry of Martin Luther King Jr. without attending to its biblical foundations, so Sobrino correctly emphasizes that it was Jesus' religious message about God's kingdom that especially got him into trouble and eventually put to death. It appears that Sobrino's historical-theological reading of Jesus of Nazareth is appropriate to the genre of the Gospels that are the primary sources for his interpretation of Jesus' passion and death. When examined in the light of Hirsch's criteria for verification, it appears that Sobrino's historical-theological interpretation of what got Jesus killed is legitimate and permissible in its original historical setting, accounts for the data presented in the primary sources, and is appropriate to how the Evangelists told their stories of Jesus. His historical-theological reading of Jesus is certainly more coherent with regard to the sources and more plausible with regard to history than the narrow historical-critical readings are. ### Appropriation The hermeneutical theorists whose insights I am using to explain and assess Sobrino's interpretation of Jesus' death insist that the reading of a classic text should have a real effect on the reader. To express this point, they use different terms: significance (Hirsch), fusion of horizons and effective history (Gadamer), and appropriation (Ricoeur). In some circles this element is called actualization. While Hirsch regards significance as a separate step beyond determining the most probable meaning of a text, both Gadamer and Ricoeur consider it as an integral part of the interpretive process itself.. Sobrino's concluding meditation on the death of Jesus and the crucified people provides an excellent example of biblical actualization and appropriation. In it he shows that this process is integral to the Bible itself and is carried on in the life of the church throughout the centuries and today. Sobrino first reaches back to the description of the Suffering Servant in Isaiah 53 as a model of both the passion of Jesus and the passion of the crucified people of Latin America. The Servant seeks to establish right and justice, is chosen by God for salvation, bears the sin of the world, is a light to the nations, and brings salvation. Next he makes connections between the Servant, Jesus, the Body of Christ, and the crucified people. He defines martyrdom as not only dying for Jesus but also dying like Jesus and for the cause of Jesus. The martyrs bear witness to the God of the kingdom proclaimed by Jesus. They include Archbishop Oscar Romero, his own Jesuit and lay colleagues, the many Christians who struggle politically and religiously, and the innocent and anonymous victims of murder. Here Sobrino's methodology is more hermeneutical and homiletical than in other chapters in *Jesus the Liberator*. But such an actualization is an integral part of his historical-theological reading of Jesus. The story of Jesus had already begun in the figure of the Servant of the Lord in the sixth century B.C. And it continues in martyrs like Oscar Romero and Martin Luther King, as well as in the less obvious sufferings and deaths of the anonymous crucified people. In his meditation Sobrino illustrates the biblical dynamic of appropriation and actualization that is present in the Bible itself and that provides the impetus and inspiration for preachers, theologians, and all of God's people who constitute the Body of Christ. ## Conclusion Sobrino's treatment of what got Jesus killed is a good illustration of his "historical-theological" methodology in approaching Jesus. He is neither a historical critic in the narrow sense nor a dogmatic or systematic theologian in the classical sense. Rather, he tries to take seriously the data of Scripture and at the same time to respond to the dynamism within the biblical sources that pushes us forward beyond establishing historical details into theological reflection. In doing so he finds analogies and models in the Scriptures for people in the context in which he has taught and worked. On the other hand, he discovers in his own present-day context a vantage point from which to read and interpret both the Jesus of history and the Scriptures more appropriately. He also challenges those of us who live in other contexts to read the Gospels in fresh ways and to recognize the crucified people among us in our world and in our own neighborhoods. ## Notes 1. John P. Meier, *A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus. Volume One: The Roots of the Problem and the Person* (New York: Doubleday, 1991), 25. 2. Albert Schweitzer, *The Quest of the Historical Jesus: First Complete Edition* (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2001). 3. For example, Burton L. Mack, *The Lost Gospel: The Book of Q & Christian Origins* (San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1993); and Robert W. Funk, *Honest to Jesus: Jesus for a New Millennium* (San Francisco: HarperSan Francisco, 1996). 4. For example, E. P. Sanders, *Jesus and Judaism* (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1985); and N. T. Wright, *Jesus and the Victory of God* (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1996). 5. See the Pontifical Biblical Commission's 1993 document "The Interpretation of the Bible in the Church," in *The Scripture Documents: An Anthology of Official Catholic Documents*, ed. Dean P. Béchard (Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical Press, 2002), 249. 6. Ernst Troeltsch, *Der Historismus und seine Probleme* (Tübingen: Mohr, 1922). See also Robert Morgan and Michael Pye, eds., *Ernst Troeltsch: Writings on Theology and Religion* (London: Duckworth, 1977). 7. Jon Sobrino, *Jesus the Liberator: A Historical-Theological Reading of Jesus of Nazareth*, trans. Paul Burns and Francis McDonagh (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1993), 195-211. 8. John P. Meier criticized Sobrino's claims as simplistic and naïve ("The Bible as a Source for Theology," *Catholic Theological Society of America Proceedings* 43 [1988]: 1-14). However, everyone writes from somewhere, and that "somewhere" influences the product. Sobrino is more forthcoming and creative about this than are most authors of recent books about Jesus. 9. Sobrino, *Jesus the Liberator*, 210. 10. Ibid., 201. 11. Ibid., 209. 12. Ibid. 13. Sanders, *Jesus and Judaism*, 319-27. 14. Hans-Georg Gadamer, *Truth and Method* (New York: Seabury, 1975), 235-45. 15. Ibid., 269-74. 16. E. D. Hirsch, *Validity in Interpretation* (New Haven/London: Yale University Press, 1967), 236. 17. Richard A. Horsley, *Jesus and the Spiral of Violence: Popular Jewish Resistance in Roman Palestine* (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1987). Horsley's approach to Jesus' death seems so political as to obscure the religious dimensions of Jesus' actions and teachings. 18. Gadamer, *Truth and Method*, 267-69; Hirsch, *Validity in Interpretation*, 211; and Paul Ricoeur, *Hermeneutics and the Human Sciences* (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), 131-44, 182-93. 19. See the Pontifical Biblical Commission's 1993 document "The Interpretation of the Bible in the Church," in *The Scripture Documents*, ed. Béchard, 303-6. 20. Sobrino, *Jesus the Liberator*, 254-71.