Panmankey

-Part One of a greater work in progress . . . . consider it an introduction into my theological rumblings about Jesus and Christianity.

Who was Jesus? My interest in the history of the man Jesus is well known. I’ve read dozens of books which claim to reveal the truth about who he was and the mission he undertook nearly two thousand years ago. I’ve read all kinds of theories too, I’ve never been one to just settle on the theories of “reputable scholars” I’ve read all the books by the crackpots too. While I don’t think Jesus was the last of the great Egyptian pharaohs, it’s still makes for interesting reading.

As I was reading the latest take on the life of Jesus I began to wonder to myself, who do I think Jesus was? That’s probably more important than anything else, since nearly none of the theories about who Jesus was can be proven, no matter how great of a scholar you are. In the last thirty years we’ve been able to put Jesus into greater context, we understand his world a lot better, but that doesn’t mean we’ve come across some ancient list of his sayings. We’re still using the same texts we used sixty years ago to study the guy, but at least we understand some of those texts a bit better.

So here it is, my take on Jesus. After reading a bunch of stuff the past ten years I’m going to attempt to define the man who has occupied such a large space in my world. My relationship with Jesus has certainly changed over the years, I went from worshipper, to skeptic, to critic, and now I find myself skirting all of those worlds. I believe that a man named Jesus once lived in ancient Palestine, and that his teachings inspired a movement after his death. I don’t believe that today’s modern Christian Church was what Jesus had in mind when he was preaching in the wilds of the Galilee. I think faith in Jesus has been beneficial to billions of people, but that the Christ of faith is different from the Jesus of history. I think we’d all be better human beings if we actually listened to the teachings of Jesus today, so maybe that makes me a follower, I certainly believe that following many of Jesus’ tenants would make our world a better place.

There’s a lot of mythological goop attached to the story of Jesus. The men who wrote the gospels were not trying to write biographies when they composed their narratives. They were simply trying to tell a story, and it was commonplace at the time to add mythological elements to the lives of real people. Three of the four gospels start with mythological stories, the most famous one being the story of Jesus’ virgin birth.

The virgin birth is first recorded in Matthew, written nearly fifty years after the death of Jesus. The earliest surviving Christian documents are the Pauline letters, some of which were written within twenty years of the crucifixion. Paul never mentions a virgin birth, and for good reason, it wasn’t something that any Jew was looking for to confirm whether or not someone was the Messiah. The book of Isaiah says that the Jewish messiah will be born to a young woman, which was mistakenly translated into Greek as “virgin.” Mary was certainly a young woman, but I don’t think she was a virgin.

The book of John skips the entire virgin birth story and instead focuses on Jesus as a truly mythological figure, existing since the creation of the world. It’s the book of John that probably led to the adoption of the concept of the trinity within Christianity. It’s a beautiful little passage:
                           In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God,
                           and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God.
                           All things came into being through him,
                           and without him not one thing came into being. (John 1:1-3)
but that entire passage contradicts everything that Jesus said about his relationship with Yahweh in the synoptic gospels.

I’m an anti-trinity guy, and the idea of being “god” would have made a good Jew like Jesus physically sick. Nothing better illustrates the relationship between Jesus and Yahweh better than this line from Matthew "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" If Jesus and God were the same thing, it is incomprehensible for him to utter something along these lines. There are other instances in Matthew where Jesus states the pre-eminence of the Father: No one knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. These same sentiments are expressed in Luke and Mark (often word for word). Certainly Jesus didn’t see himself as part of some holy trinity.

 The early life of Jesus is a giant unknown to most scholars. I’m doubtful that he ever visited India or China; he probably stayed pretty close to home in Nazareth. While Nazareth was a small town, it was very close to a large Greek city named Sepharis. It’s possible that Jesus absorbed all kinds of ideas in cosmopolitan Sepharis, and he might have even learned to read while he was there. In the gospels he’s often called “teacher” or “rabbi” implying some sort of learning. Contrary to the gospel account in Matthew there’s no real reason to believe that Jesus ever visited Egypt. There’s certainly no historical evidence to prove that Herod murdered hundreds of Jewish babies in the year 4 BCE.

There are also varying ideas on exactly what a carpenter was two thousand years ago. When we hear the word carpenter today we tend to think of a skilled craftsman, and it might have been exactly the same during the time of Jesus. Joseph and his family might have been reasonably well off. Some scholars think that the word carpenter in the gospels is a mistranslation of another word, which might have simply meant “skilled craftsman.”

So Jesus grows up in Nazareth and eventually grows unhappy with his life there. Something had to have happened to him in his late teens or early twenties that had a profound effect on him. His public ministry began when he was 28 years old or so, but he may have wandered around with John the Baptist for several years before striking out on his own. Some scholars have suggested that Jesus was simply sickened by the economic conditions in his area of the world, and that he that he blamed the Jewish priests in Jerusalem for the problems in his neck of the woods.

There might have also been some sort of breakdown in the social structure of the Galilee. Jesus’ views on divorce are far more stringent than those of other Jews at the time; perhaps he had seen the consequences of husbands leaving their wives. Matthew 19:8 expresses Jesus’ views on this topic well: Jesus replied, "Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because your hearts were hard. But it was not this way from the beginning. I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for marital unfaithfulness, and marries another woman commits adultery." Many religious crusades start with the idea that the world is becoming more immoral and that people are abandoning traditional values. Perhaps Jesus was reacting to these changes in his region and taking his argument to the people, and eventually to the Temple in Jerusalem.

 So something causes Jesus to leave his life in Nazareth behind and find religion. I’m inclined to believe it was related to poverty and the breakdown of the traditional family. I say this because the words of Jesus’ speak to the impoverished, and implore the assistance of the wealthy. Hard times also bring out the worst in people, and many families have disintegrated when hit with extreme poverty. I’m sure Jesus was especially disgusted with the priests in the Temple who lived a life of luxury and even conspired with the ruling Romans to keep order in their city.

It’s unknown how long Jesus wandered around with John the Baptist. We do know that John the Baptist was a real historical figure, there’s more evidence proving his existence than that of Jesus. Mark 1:9 (In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan) is in my estimation a very real story. Jesus was probably baptized by John in the Jordan River and then broke with John shortly there after.