Distillation of the Historical Jesus
A few months ago I wrote about Christianity. That post was intended to be a sardonic tome that straddled the middle ground between believers and unbelievers, pointing out that one can easily find meaning in Christian scripture while at the same time calling into question its authority by deriding the authenticity of several of its claims.
I began studying the Christian religion because I wanted to answer one fundamental question: why is it that, 2000 years after this man lived, do we all know who he is? Did he plan this legacy? Was it some kind of circumstantial accident? I was curious about the historical set of events that makes him a household name around the world, and a prophet whose face appears on pancakes.
A religious friend of mine asked me what my interest was in Christianity when he caught wind that I was investigating it, and I told him this. How is it his name has stuck around for this long? His reply to me was simple and, dare I say, not unexpected: "Because He was the son of God."
I'm not saying this is the wrong answer, but for my purposes, it was a cop-out. Whether or not Jesus was just a man who has come to be worshipped by the multitudes, or was the actual son of God, I'm curious as to what methods he employed to get his point across. Ordinary fellow or god-fellow, what did he do to leave such an impression on his contemporaries?
For me, things became much more clear after I watched David Batty's The Gospel of John. Early on, I avoided consuming TV versions of biblical accounts, since I didn't want visual interpretations of others to influence my understanding, which I felt should really come from reading what was written. I went so far as to learning some basic koine Greek, and the New Testament I carted around with me was an interlinear Greek-English version. Jesus didn't write a single word of the New Testament, but I'm only pointing out that I made an earnest effort to get as close to what might be called the "original source" as possible.
The Gospel of John was different than other televised interpretations in that its narration is taken word-for-word from John's Gospel. The actors in the film actually look people in the ancient Middle East, they speak Aramaic, and they merely act out the actions of the narration from scripture. It's about as close as you're going to get to having a contemporary rendition of a Gospel accurately portray what's in the writing.
So what did this film make clear to me? The true nature of the dialogues that Jesus has with the Pharisees, the members of the Jewish ruling council of his day. When I read these passages, I somehow envisioned Jesus sitting in a conference room at a table with the Pharisees, calmly swapping opinions. In the film, these are confrontations that take place publicly in the temple in Jerusalem. They are openly hostile debates in which Jesus is verbally rebuking the Pharisees for their hypocrisy, for abusing their power, and for losing sight of what they claim is their very mission, namely, serving the God they purport to worship.
In hindsight, this should have been obvious to me. Most of these scenes end with the Pharisees picking up stones with which to stone Jesus for what he's saying to them, and each time, Jesus somehow manages to escape being stoned. They clearly weren't civil discussions. Parenthetically, it's interesting to me that no account actually describes how Jesus escapes these situations; the details are very handwavy. Perhaps, being the magical miracle man that he was, he dodged their stones like Neo dodged the bullets of the agents in the The Matrix.
Furthermore, there is the story about Jesus and the cleansing of the Temple, the one story in the Bible in which Jesus resorts to physical aggression and violence in order to make his point. If the account can be believed, this is probably the incident for which, above all others, he was killed by the authorities. I find it strange that people regard Jesus as a peaceful person, but this event exists plainly in all four Gospel accounts of him.
I recently read Reza Aslan's book Zealot, which is a book that does precisely what I've been trying to do myself for the last couple of years: reconcile what's written in the Bible with what historians know about the historical Jesus. From my reading of the New Testament, it does seem that the Gospels written about Jesus do reflect some events that might have occurred, and they concern a man who probably existed. But you do get the sense that some of the stuff is embellished or fabricated, simply due to the inconsistencies in how Jesus is portrayed from chapter to chapter, and between the different books.
For people who would like a compellingly readable account of how the events surrounding the historical Jesus lead to scripture being what it is, I'd recommend Aslan's book. I'd surmise that Aslan himself is not a Christian believer; he's an academic. I point this out because I've learned that this distinction matters to people when they're choosing to read one thing or another about Jesus.
The title of the book comes from a Jewish sect of the day, a group of people who called themselves Zealots. This was a radical movement to incite the Jewish population in Jerusalem to rebel and overthrow the Romans who occupied the city. They were known to carry daggers, and were not opposed to the use of physical force in order to achieve their desired end. One of Jesus' own 12 apostles was Simon the Zealot. That Jesus was a political and / or social revolutionary is not a stretch in my mind, whether you go by scripture as absolute truth or the chronology pieced together from other sources by historians.
The most interesting conclusion in Aslan's book pertains to the Epistle of James. The author of this book in the New Testament may not have been James, but it was at least someone who wrote it in order to honor James and espouse his teachings. So who was James? Jesus had an apostle named James, but historians tend to believe that the James to which this epistle belongs is Jesus' brother, James the Just. After Jesus was killed, the leadership of his movement was likely transferred to his brother James; this would have been consistent with dynasty customs of the day.
Aslan makes a very interesting point: assuming that Jesus and James shared a common worldview, then the Epistle of James might very well be a close link we have to what Jesus believed and taught. The Gospels themselves were composed and constructed with a certain agenda; and inescapably, so too was James' Epistle. But it seems less likely that this lone epistle would have been co-opted and its contents changed or distorted than the accounts of Jesus in the Gospels.
While most of the epistles in the New Testament talk about the importance of love, about belief in Jesus, and the importance of congregating for worship, the Epistle of James is passionate about action to help the poor. "Faith without works is dead!" (2:20) is a passage that summarizes its position. It decries the complacent lifestyles of the rich and famous, and advocates individual responsibility for helping the less fortunate. It is the one book in the New Testament that most parallels the contents of the Jewish Book of Proverbs or the Buddhist's Dhammapada, in that it seems to primarily espouse wisdom that suggests the reader should live a life beyond mere consideration for self.
It's resolutely clear to me that when you cut through the cloud of rhetoric that surrounds the Christian religion, Jesus himself was a man of action. Many parts of Christian scripture seem to portray Jesus as an agitator, a poor Galilean peasant who sought to overturn the established order of his day. There's an oft-quoted aphorism you'll see on car bumpers that reads "Well-behaved women seldom make history." So too is it with men.
I began studying the Christian religion because I wanted to answer one fundamental question: why is it that, 2000 years after this man lived, do we all know who he is? Did he plan this legacy? Was it some kind of circumstantial accident? I was curious about the historical set of events that makes him a household name around the world, and a prophet whose face appears on pancakes.
A religious friend of mine asked me what my interest was in Christianity when he caught wind that I was investigating it, and I told him this. How is it his name has stuck around for this long? His reply to me was simple and, dare I say, not unexpected: "Because He was the son of God."
I'm not saying this is the wrong answer, but for my purposes, it was a cop-out. Whether or not Jesus was just a man who has come to be worshipped by the multitudes, or was the actual son of God, I'm curious as to what methods he employed to get his point across. Ordinary fellow or god-fellow, what did he do to leave such an impression on his contemporaries?
For me, things became much more clear after I watched David Batty's The Gospel of John. Early on, I avoided consuming TV versions of biblical accounts, since I didn't want visual interpretations of others to influence my understanding, which I felt should really come from reading what was written. I went so far as to learning some basic koine Greek, and the New Testament I carted around with me was an interlinear Greek-English version. Jesus didn't write a single word of the New Testament, but I'm only pointing out that I made an earnest effort to get as close to what might be called the "original source" as possible.
The Gospel of John was different than other televised interpretations in that its narration is taken word-for-word from John's Gospel. The actors in the film actually look people in the ancient Middle East, they speak Aramaic, and they merely act out the actions of the narration from scripture. It's about as close as you're going to get to having a contemporary rendition of a Gospel accurately portray what's in the writing.
So what did this film make clear to me? The true nature of the dialogues that Jesus has with the Pharisees, the members of the Jewish ruling council of his day. When I read these passages, I somehow envisioned Jesus sitting in a conference room at a table with the Pharisees, calmly swapping opinions. In the film, these are confrontations that take place publicly in the temple in Jerusalem. They are openly hostile debates in which Jesus is verbally rebuking the Pharisees for their hypocrisy, for abusing their power, and for losing sight of what they claim is their very mission, namely, serving the God they purport to worship.
In hindsight, this should have been obvious to me. Most of these scenes end with the Pharisees picking up stones with which to stone Jesus for what he's saying to them, and each time, Jesus somehow manages to escape being stoned. They clearly weren't civil discussions. Parenthetically, it's interesting to me that no account actually describes how Jesus escapes these situations; the details are very handwavy. Perhaps, being the magical miracle man that he was, he dodged their stones like Neo dodged the bullets of the agents in the The Matrix.
Furthermore, there is the story about Jesus and the cleansing of the Temple, the one story in the Bible in which Jesus resorts to physical aggression and violence in order to make his point. If the account can be believed, this is probably the incident for which, above all others, he was killed by the authorities. I find it strange that people regard Jesus as a peaceful person, but this event exists plainly in all four Gospel accounts of him.
I recently read Reza Aslan's book Zealot, which is a book that does precisely what I've been trying to do myself for the last couple of years: reconcile what's written in the Bible with what historians know about the historical Jesus. From my reading of the New Testament, it does seem that the Gospels written about Jesus do reflect some events that might have occurred, and they concern a man who probably existed. But you do get the sense that some of the stuff is embellished or fabricated, simply due to the inconsistencies in how Jesus is portrayed from chapter to chapter, and between the different books.
For people who would like a compellingly readable account of how the events surrounding the historical Jesus lead to scripture being what it is, I'd recommend Aslan's book. I'd surmise that Aslan himself is not a Christian believer; he's an academic. I point this out because I've learned that this distinction matters to people when they're choosing to read one thing or another about Jesus.
The title of the book comes from a Jewish sect of the day, a group of people who called themselves Zealots. This was a radical movement to incite the Jewish population in Jerusalem to rebel and overthrow the Romans who occupied the city. They were known to carry daggers, and were not opposed to the use of physical force in order to achieve their desired end. One of Jesus' own 12 apostles was Simon the Zealot. That Jesus was a political and / or social revolutionary is not a stretch in my mind, whether you go by scripture as absolute truth or the chronology pieced together from other sources by historians.
The most interesting conclusion in Aslan's book pertains to the Epistle of James. The author of this book in the New Testament may not have been James, but it was at least someone who wrote it in order to honor James and espouse his teachings. So who was James? Jesus had an apostle named James, but historians tend to believe that the James to which this epistle belongs is Jesus' brother, James the Just. After Jesus was killed, the leadership of his movement was likely transferred to his brother James; this would have been consistent with dynasty customs of the day.
Aslan makes a very interesting point: assuming that Jesus and James shared a common worldview, then the Epistle of James might very well be a close link we have to what Jesus believed and taught. The Gospels themselves were composed and constructed with a certain agenda; and inescapably, so too was James' Epistle. But it seems less likely that this lone epistle would have been co-opted and its contents changed or distorted than the accounts of Jesus in the Gospels.
While most of the epistles in the New Testament talk about the importance of love, about belief in Jesus, and the importance of congregating for worship, the Epistle of James is passionate about action to help the poor. "Faith without works is dead!" (2:20) is a passage that summarizes its position. It decries the complacent lifestyles of the rich and famous, and advocates individual responsibility for helping the less fortunate. It is the one book in the New Testament that most parallels the contents of the Jewish Book of Proverbs or the Buddhist's Dhammapada, in that it seems to primarily espouse wisdom that suggests the reader should live a life beyond mere consideration for self.
It's resolutely clear to me that when you cut through the cloud of rhetoric that surrounds the Christian religion, Jesus himself was a man of action. Many parts of Christian scripture seem to portray Jesus as an agitator, a poor Galilean peasant who sought to overturn the established order of his day. There's an oft-quoted aphorism you'll see on car bumpers that reads "Well-behaved women seldom make history." So too is it with men.