Work in Progress:

Jesus Mortal

jesusstatue

Introduction

Jesus is such a compelling and important figure in western culture that he exerts a tremendous gravitational force, like a massive black hole. Anything in his vicinity is warped, conforming to the pull. Some elements are sucked in and made to be part of Jesus’ story even when they originally were not, such as old testament prophecies. Christian traditions about Jesus have distorted historians’ views of 1st-century Judaism, of early Christian belief and practice, and, naturally, of Jesus himself. A lot of this book involves counteracting the distorting effect of Jesus’ gravitational field and trying to get a straight look at him and everything around him.

 

Translation

In Christian tradition, perfectly normal words have been transferred to other languages, where they take on specific meanings not present in the original. Today’s monarchical “bishop,” for example, was once a humble “superintendent.” “Baptism” originally meant roughly “washing.” When the Pharisees reportedly criticized Jesus’ disciples for not “baptizing” their hands, that term didn’t have the sacramental definition that it carries today. All these jargon terms, such as bishop, baptism, eucharist, church, and hell, had common equivalents for the early Christians, in these cases overseer, washing, thanksgiving, congregation, and underworld. To some degree, this text uses common terms for these religious concepts because that’s what they started as: common terms.

 

Capitalization

This text mostly avoids capitalizing terms that are commonly capitalized. In today’s highly literate society, we used capital letters to differentiate proper names from common terms, but Jesus made no such distinctions. His teaching was by spoken word, not text. Furthermore, even the literate early Christians that composed the new testament did so writing all in capital letters. A modern bible translation that picks and chooses how to use capitals is adding a level of interpretation not present in the original. In some instances, the capitalization changes the meaning of the text, such as when the term “son of man” (meaning, a mortal, or oneself) is written as “Son of Man” (meaning Jesus in his divine role). For this text, I’ve stuck with lower case wherever the term is common rather than proper, such as “son of god.”

 

Sources

In addition to standard references, this text relies on recent work by liberal and critical historians of Jesus.

Marcus Borg. The meaning of Jesus. A liberal Christian, Borg asserts that the visions that the disciples had of the risen Jesus were valid, even if Jesus’ body wasn’t resurrected.

John Dominic Crossan. The essential Jesus. Crossan offers a humanistic view of Jesus and his ministry, emphasizing Jesus’ social program of table fellowship. His paraphrases of Jesus’ sayings are startling, as they were the originally.

Will Durant. Caesar and Christ. Durant is sometime out of date but provides a wealth of detail about major early Christians as well as the pagan environment in which Christianity grew.

Bart D. Ehrman. Misquoting Jesus. Peter, Paul, and Mary Magdalene. Truth and fiction in The Da Vinci Code. Ehrman excels at piecing together the earliest versions of the biblical texts, pointing out where scribes altered the texts to suit the developing orthodoxy.

Stephen L. Harris. Understanding the Bible. In this textbook, Harris covers the Bible book by book. Significantly, he treats each gospel as a separate account different from the others rather than erroneously paraphrasing what “the gospels” say about Jesus.

Jesus Seminar. The five gospels. The acts of Jesus. Several major scholars and scores of other academics spent years poring over Jesus’ words and deeds line by line, and these two books are the result, rating each utterance and deed for its historical plausibility. They describe Jesus as not preaching the fire-and-brimstone apocalypse that the gospels attribute to him, a significant but minority view among mainstream experts.

E. P. Sanders. The historical figure of Jesus. Sanders presents largely the mainstream, majority viewpoint on Jesus as an historical figure. If you want to read one book that best represents modern Jesus scholarship, read this one.

Gerd Theissen and Annette Merz. Historical Jesus. This weighty textbook covers the history and breadth of Jesus scholarship in brain-busting detail and offers a very recent summation of who Jesus was and what he meant.

 

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contents

home

table of contents you're already looking at it

introduction for the inquisitive reader

biographical overview who he was and wasn't

 

afterlife not Jesus' concern

animal sacrifice bloodless religion

apocalypse did Jesus preach hellfire?

baptism sin wash for Jesus and others

beatitudes Jesus' words and others' words

beloved disciple witness for the un-gospel

bible scripture old and new

bishop the unjesus

body focus on the physical

Buddha Jesus' close kin

charity key Christian virtue and legacy of Jesus

The Da Vinci Code secret (and false) messages

divorce women's status

dreams convenient literary device

Elijah Jewish prophet with his own second coming

equality ancient source of modern egalitarianism

exorcist Jesus and demons

failure reinterpreting Jesus as a failure

faith from trust to blind belief

father Jesus on titles of honor

Francis of Assisi the most Christlike Christian

Gandhi the 20th century's most Christly holy man

Galilee Jesus' inauspicious homeland

gentiles Jesus' inadvertent audience

god how Jesus became god

golden rule key to Jesus' success

gospels competing accounts

heaven from sky to spiritual home

hell revenge fantasy

humanism Jesus' legacy

inerrant Christian treatment of scripture

Thomas Jefferson ethics of Jesus

Jewish guilt Christian libel

John's gospel the un-gospel

John the baptist, see John the washer

John the washer Jesus' apocalyptic mentor

Judaism libeled religion of Jesus

kingdom of god what Jesus promised

Lao Tzu poet of the cosmic way

logos jesus as the word of god

C. S. Lewis famous, flawed trilemma

little drummer boy Luke beats Matthew

logos Jesus as the divine word

LORD Yahweh transitioning to the one god of all

Luke's gospel the all-around best gospel

Mark's gospel the gospel that lost its point

Mary of Magdala women, visions, and sex

massacre of the innocents bloodshed starts early

Matthew's gospel best gospel for church reading

Mormon, see Joseph Smith

Moses Jewish lawgiver

Muhammad a prophet who got it right

mystery Orpheus and transubstantiation

oppression origin of Jesus' compassion

The Passion of the Christ Luke as buzzkill

Paul revealer of the revealer

private and public public Jesus and secret Christ

relativism the secret power of the golden rule

sacrifice Jesus' death and Christian sacrament

Albert Schweitzer Jesus as a failure

sheol dark pit of death

show Jesus' deeds as put-ons

slavery abolished by Jesus' efforts

Joseph Smith flesh-and-blood Jesus

Socrates secular Jesus

son of god on close terms with the man upstairs

soul, see body

synoptics three gospels that agree

temple center of Jewish religion

trinity unifying and divisive doctrinre

vision, see dreams

Yahweh, see LORD

Zoroaster Persian dualistic holy man