Work in Progress:

Jesus Mortal

jesusstatue

Socrates

“Socrates was a famous Greek teacher who went around giving people advice. They killed him.” —apocryphal high school student

 

Socrates was an Athenian soldier, assemblyman, and philosopher, c. 400 BC. He called on his fellow citizens to examine their lives and to live virtuously. His “socratic method” of questioning revealed others’ ignorance. He exalted intellectual humility and ethical virtue. Partly because of his connection to two unpopular figures, Socrates was tried for impiety and sentenced to drink hemlock.

Socrates is the secular Jesus. Like Jesus, he led a group of disciples and challenged established protocols. Like him, Socrates was executed by his own people for threatening the social order. Socrates even has his own Paul in the person of Plato, the author who tells the rest of the world what Socrates meant. When Nietzsche set out to destroy the foundations of western culture, the two founding figures that he assaulted were Jesus and Socrates. But where Jesus is God-centered, Socrates talks more about justice and excellence than about worship or childlikeness.

Nietzsche wasn’t the first to put Jesus and Socrates in the same category. A first-century pagan pagan philosopher, Mara bar Sarapion, identified Socrates, Pythagoras, and the “wise king of the Jews” (Jesus) as divinely favored men who had been wrongly killed.

 

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contents

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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