Review of Jesus

Abstract

Don Capps has proposed that Jesus grew up as a melancholic depressive with a diffused identity because the quandary about his birth left him with a devalued mother and absent or defamed father. He resolved this trauma through the symbolic assault upon the establishment by cleansing the temple, thus asserting his self-certification and in one psychologically definitive act purified his mother and affirmed God as his father. This article challenges that model, declaring that Jesus was Joseph's son, as is demonstrated by Paul's ignorance of any virgin birth, by the genealogies in Matthew and Luke, and by the testimony of early extrabiblical witnesses. Instead, Jesus is presented in this article as a relatively balanced personality, challenged by a transcendent vision of divine calling.