Journal: Southern Baptist Journal of Theology
Volume: SBJT 22:2 (Summer 2018)
Article: Jesus as Priest in the Gospels
Author: Nicholas Perrin

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Jesus as Priest in the Gospels

Nicholas Perrin

Nicholas Perrin is the Franklin S. Dryness Chair of Biblical Studies at Wheaton Graduate School and the former Dean of Wheaton Graduate School at Wheaton College. He earned his PhD from Marquette University. Most recently, he is the author of Jesus the Priest (SPCK/Baker Academic, 2018) and will also be publishing The Kingdom of God (Zondervan) in early 2019. A husband and the father of two grown sons, Dr. Perrin is a teaching elder in the Presbyterian Church in America.

To the extent that New Testament (NT) theology is concerned to convey the theologies of the NT writings as these have been critically interpreted, the project by nature entails a good deal of interpretative retrieval, that is, an up-to-date recounting of standard arguments and familiar paradigms for understanding the discrete canonical texts. One such “familiar paradigm,” easily demonstrable from the past hundred years or so of scholarly literature, holds that the Epistle to the Hebrews is unique by virtue of its emphasis on Jesus’ priesthood. From here, especially if one prefers to date Hebrews after the destruction of the temple, it is a straightforward move to infer that the concept of Jesus’ priesthood was entirely a post-Easter theologoumenon, likely occasioned by the destruction of the Jerusalem temple, and almost certainly limited in importance so far as first-century Christian belief was concerned. Whatever factors “in front of ” the biblical text may have helped pave the way for this recurring interpretative judgment (here one may think, for example, of the fierce anti-sacerdotal character of so much nineteenth and twentieth-century Protestant theology), it almost certainly mistaken. Although I believe a case can be made for a broad interest in Jesus’ priesthood across the NT canon, in this essay I will take up a more focused task by arguing that the authors behind the canonical gospels, as well as the hypothetical hand

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behind the equally hypothetical text of Q, were not only convinced of Jesus’ priesthood, but also—though to varying degrees—concerned to lace their texts with narratival arguments along the same lines. By exploring different strands of the gospel tradition, so it is hoped, we will be in position to draw some fresh historical and theological inferences regarding the significance of Jesus’ priesthood in early Christianity.

Gospel of Mark

That Mark’s gospel is vitally concerned with the theme of temple is now virtually beyond question.1 The narrative’s very plotline bears this out. No sooner does Mark’s Jesus s...