Archetypal Orientations of Mind in Historical Jesus Thought

Abstract

In the current paper a previously developed theory of fundamental orientations or modalities of mind is presented, together with a condensed overview of the nature and characteristics of historical Jesus thought. The aim is to demonstrate the applicability of the theory to various depictions of the historical Jesus. The paper focuses on historical Jesus research representative of each of the four archetypal orientations of the mind (types I, II, III and IV). For this purpose appropriate Biblical evidence and the ideas of some leading figures in the field of historical Jesus research are briefly surveyed. The general tendency in the scholarly literature, in which recourse is also taken to how Jesus thought about himself and how he was regarded by his contemporaries, indicate four distinct roles pointing to him as prophet (type I), teacher-Rabbi (type II), healer (type III), and Messiah/king (type IV).

DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2014.v5n23p2035