How much did Jesus talk about himself?

Is it possible to quantify what percentage of the time spent talking about himself? How much of Jesus' teachings had himself as the subject? How would I use Logos to answer a question like that? I have some ideas of how to start but I wanted to poll the community to see how you all would approach using Logos to answer this question.

Often people talk about Jesus as merely a great teacher. I'd like to get a more solid idea of how much Jesus himself was the subject/content of his own teachings.

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Lew Worthington

I don't have any ideas on how to answer your question, but it's intriguing. I'll follow this thread. I may steal your idea and investigate, say, the differences in John between Jesus' references to himself in the first person, and his references to himself in the third person. I appreciate your bringing this up.

John Fidel

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1273789#Comment_1273789

Just as a starting point, I used the Bible Browser and selected Jesus as speaker and topic "Son of Man". It provides 89 verses:

John Fidel

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1273790#Comment_1273790

From there you can go into the Systematic Theology section and select subject such as Jesus as Mediator etc. I am certain there are some searches that can be developed that combine several of these selections from the Bible Browser. Anyway, that is the way I would start this study.

Beloved Amodeo

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1273789#Comment_1273789

This is indeed a thoughtful question. I'm away from my rig, but my first instinct is to build a query off of one of the "I am" statements which I believe can be found in John's gospel. Another source for reflection would be the "Son of man" material. Lastly, there is grist in the statements regarding his impending death.

I too will enjoy tackling this study once I return home.

Allen Browne

Is it possible to quantify what percentage of the time spent talking about himself?

Intriguing question. To research this in Logos you may need to narrow the question somewhat

Arguably, everytime Jesus taught about the kingdom of God without mentioning whom God had annointed as king (the Christ), that fits your question. When someone finally realized who was the appointed king (Peter's "You are the Christ!"), it's clear that Jesus was waiting for Heaven to reveal it rather than making the power claim for himself.

The conflict in John 8:12ff is another example. So are the "son of man" sayings where Jesus speaks in the third person of being the human to whom the Ancient of Days restores the authority hegave humans in the beginning before those who act like beasts claimed it (Gen 1; Psa 8; Eze etc, as the backstory of Dan 7).

You might also want to trace how often Jesus' identity in John's Gospel is the one sent from the Father.

Please post your response if you figure how to turn this into a percentage.

Dave Hooton

Is it possible to quantify what percentage of the time spent talking about himself?

Not accurately e.g. is "the time" an occasion spent totally talking about himself, or an occasion where he spoke somewhat about himself?

We can find the verses where he spoke about himself, but it will include the duplicate accounts in the Gospels .e.g.

speaker:Jesus INTERSECTS (person:"Son of Man" OR person:Jesus OR "I am") NOT INTERSECTS ("I say" OR "I tell" OR person:God)

By verse 791/2044 = 39% (ESV NT)

It gets tedious if you want to discount verses covering a single occasion e.g. the Beatitudes

Speaks about self: Mt 5:11, 17, 6:9-13, 7:21-26 (11 verses)

5.11 is likely an indirect reference, rather than talking directly about himself. He is not the subject.
5:17 is talking directly about himself. But he is not the subject.
6:9-13 should be ignored (tagging!)

Speaks (total): Mt 5:3-7:27 (46+34+27= 107 verses)

Christian Alexander

Hi Kiyah

I think this is a wonderful question and very elegant in nature. I do not think you can answer it quantatively unless you hit and miss it like Dave did. Dave did a wonderful job of answering the query. By using the term “Son of Man” Jesus could publicly teach what the Messiah would do and let the audience draw their own conclusions and base their thoughts on valid facts. I cannot wait to see how this forum turns up.

Dave Hooton

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1274027#Comment_1274027

speaker:Jesus INTERSECTS (person:"Son of Man" OR person:Jesus OR "I am") NOT INTERSECTS ("I say" OR "I tell" OR person:God)

speaker:Jesus INTERSECTS (person:"Son of Man" OR person:Jesus) NOT INTERSECTS ("I say" OR "I tell" OR person:God) is more accurate.

By verse 783/2044 = 38% (ESV NT)

Kiyah

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1274082#Comment_1274082

Yeah, this is tricky. Not every verse with Jesus speaking is Jesus actively teaching. And him using a personal pronoun to refer to himself doesn't mean he's actively teaching something about himself. He may have just said, "Get up, let us be going. See, my betrayer is at hand." (Matt 26:46)

I was hoping I could find a scholar who had already done this work and showed their work. Then I could try to recreate it with Logos. But scholars are content to say Jesus taught about himself, in the words of one scholar, "a lot." lol

But thank you Dave for the search suggestions. At least it gives me some content to start with.

Kiyah

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1274211#Comment_1274211

I'm thinking FL should create a dataset and interactive for this. We need a "Teachings of Jesus Explorer".

Christian Alexander

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1274212#Comment_1274212

I created a suggestion on FeedBear. https://feedback.logos.com/boards/logos-desktop-app/posts/teachings-of-jesus-dataset-explorer