Mike Bird embarks on a daring task with this book. Birthed out of a series of articles originally intended for theJournal for the Study of the Historical Jesus, the present volume addresses the so-called “messianic self-consciousness” of Jesus, a topic long abandoned by most scholars. Bird opens his first chapter by providing a concise summary of the ebbs and flows of scholarship on this subject, carefully carving out his own place among the major scholars. Bird shies away from “self-consciousness” language in favor of “messianic self-understanding.” By this he means Jesus’ identifying himself “in a messianic role and couching his activities as messianic in character and purpose” (p. 29).

Chapter 2 overviews the essential factors and general characteristics of messianic expectations from Second Temple Judaism. For all its diversity, Judaism was united to a degree in its identification of its messiah(s?) as eschatological figures raised up to the liberate Israel from its perceived travail and suffering. This requires Bird to navigate through and beyond the simple title meshi’ach to delineate criteria that “takes into account the texts that were read messianically by Jews and Christians” (p. 43). The thrust here seems to be Bird’s advocacy for movement beyond mere titular ascriptions as the sole, or even primary, category for determining subsequent messianic claims.

Chapter 3 confronts objections to the historical Jesus as a messianic claimant. Here Bird shows commonly posited reasons are lacking. Instead, evidence indicates that while Jesus as the Messiah has a definite pre-Easter history among his disciples and opponents, his response to his Messianic identification remained ambiguous from the very start. This is because Jesus “refused to conform to any particular mold or to any one set of eschatological expectations” (p. 76). Yet, importantly, Jesus acted in such a way as “to quite deliberatelyarouse messianic hopes” (Bird’s emphasis, p. 76). The question, then, is why messianic hopes arise in the pre-Easter period at all if Jesus repudiated the messianic role? Bird addresses this question in the next two chapters.

In chapters 4 and 5, Bird describes and evaluates all the arguments both for and against regarding the historical Jesus as a messianic claimant. First, in chapter 4, the author proposes that Jesus deliberately acted out and played on messianic motifs in the course of his ministry and teaching. Bird is looking for a “smoking gun” that explains the rise of messianic beliefs in the pre-Easter period and finds persuasive evidence that Jesus’ career was “performatively messianic” as opposed to being messianic in the titular sense (p. 78; though, presumably he means exclusively titular here). He examines Son of Man language, the depiction of Jesus as the Anointed One of Isaiah, and his “I have come” statements. Bird finds that Jesus was “defining his own role in the saving reign of God that was already bursting in among the political and religious realities of Galilee and Judea” (pp. 114–15). Next, in chapter 5, Bird tries to account historically for the origins of messianic ascriptions at various points in the Gospels (Peter’s confession, the anointing at Bethany, the Triumphal entry, the Trial, even the origins of the term “Christians” [Christianoi]). Bird opts for a holistic analysis of the origins of these disparate traditions. He finds in Jesus’ messianic claims, messianic actions, evocation of messianic hopes, a career that could be designated as performatively messianic. In Bird’s estimation, “The only plausible explanation is that a very large number of them, including eyewitnesses and personal contacts, actually believed in the historical reality of these claims” (p. 159). This is followed by a final chapter (ch. 6) where Bird evaluates what is at stake in this debate for modern theology and what significance can be attached to the confession “Jesus is the Christ.”

This is a very sensible book. Frequently Bird draws attention to the most glaringly obvious holes in long-held arguments and leaves them absurdly inexplicable. At the end of the day, the sayings of Jesus cannot be treated in isolation from the deeds of Jesus when answering the question of Jesus’ messianic self-understanding. Bird shows this must take seriously historically verifiable actions of Jesus, which he finds to be profoundly messianic. The author relentlessly goes back to the authenticity question. Admittedly, some of his arguments are more plausible than others, and it is not always clear that Bird has established the pre-Easter origin or historical authenticity for the traditions he cites. But the cumulative effect of the evidence mulled over in this volume makes a very compelling case indeed. In general, the book is concise yet sufficiently thorough, accessible yet astute, engaging and informed.

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