"The quest for the historical Jesus has been going on now for over a century. Recently we have had presented to us Jesus the Magician, the Zealot, the Galilean Charismatic, the Pharisee, the socially radical Wisdom sage, the advocate of antipatriarchal peasant communes, the eschatological prophet, and the peasant Jewish Cynic; more, doubtless, are to come."
Jesus the Healer :
Possession, Trance, and the Origins of Christianity
by Stevan L. Davies. Page 7
(The interpretations listed are those of
Morton Smith,
S. Brandon,
Geza Vermes,
Harvey Falk,
Stephen Patterson,
Richard Horsley,
E. Sanders,
and John Crossan,
respectively.)
"...either Q, Thomas, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and, for that matter, John did not know clearly what Jesus' teachings were; or they didn't care; or they did know but disagreed with him so that they revised what he taught into something else; or that they did know what was said to be his teachings, did not trust those reports, and revised accordingly. Something odd is going on here."
Jesus the Healer :
Possession, Trance, and the Origins of Christianity
page 13
"After the French Revolution, political factions attempted unsuccessfully to construct an alternative to Christianity. One individual complained to the prominent politician Talleyrand, who had been a bishop before he abandoned his faith. Talleyrand's response is telling: 'Surely, it cannot be so difficult as you think. . . . The matter is simple: you have only yourself to get crucified, or anyhow put to death, and then at your own time rise from the dead, and you will have no difficulty'. "
Zing!
quoted at
Is the Bible Reliable?
by Bob and Gretchen Passantino
ref.
Therefore Stand by Wilbur M. Smith,
pp. 586-587
"Using methods similar to those police have developed to solve crimes, British scientists, assisted by Israeli archeologists, have re-created what they believe is the most accurate image of the most famous face in human history. ...
While forensic anthropology is usually used to solve crimes, Richard Neave, a medical artist retired from The University of Manchester in England, realized it also could shed light on the appearance of Jesus. "
No actual physical evidence of Jesus exists, yet nowhere in the New Testament is there any mention of any unusual detail of his appearance -- i.e. he was apparently in every detail a perfectly ordinary-looking man. Researchers therefore reconstructed a perfectly ordinary-looking face from Jesus' time and place: Jesus presumably looked a lot like that.
Hint: He wasn't really Swedish.
I am presenting on this page ideas about Jesus with which many people will disagree (true, of course, of any ideas about Jesus).
I urge you to read these resources for yourself and make up your own mind.
My own notions of the life and message of Jesus are in line with, and indebted to, those of John Dominic Crossan and (Episcopalian) Bishop John Shelby Spong.
Highly controversial and highly recommended.
-- a Bishop John Shelby Spong Unofficial Fan Web Site
My own opinions:
- The evidence for the historical existence of Jesus is pretty bad, but no worse than for other persons and events of antiquity.
- His ethics are no radical departure from the Hellenicized Judaism of his time; his theology may show more strongly the Hellenic influence.
- Accounts of his sayings and deeds have been extensively revised by later thinkers, and especially influenced by Neo-Platonic thought.
- (Therefore) Modern " Christianity" has almost nothing to do with the teaching and example of Jesus.
- Christians, historically and now, "believe in" the "Jesus Christ" of Christianity primarily because they believe he worked miracles, rather than because of his supposed moral teachings by word or deed.
- Most people who claim to be devout followers of Christ today follow his example hardly at all -- Luke 6:46
His name, of course, wasn't "Jesus", but "Yeshua" or "Yahoshua". In the modernizing and demythologizing spirit of Clarence Jordan, I like to call him just "Jesse". I like to think he would have approved.
Personally, I'm a materialist and a secular humanist -- I don't agree with any supernatural ideas Jesus may have preached, or which are attributed to him.
I can't therefore be described as a Christian of any sort, but I'm very happy to call myself a "Secular Yeshuan".
"... faith, like love, must be experienced as unique, absolute, irreplaceable. But we must know that others experience their faith as equally unique, absolute, and irreplaceable. ... No religion can claim an initial monopoly on the holy, the sacred, or the divine. Indeed, in any such monopolistic claim there lies embedded a genocidal impulse. One way I alone can be absolutely right is for all others to be dead. And one way for all others to be dead is for me, us, or our God to kill them.
We have already seen that Jesus lived in a time of social turmoil, and that a phrase like the "Kingdom of God" had social and political meanings for those who heard it. It was, one could say, one hundred percent religious but also one hundred percent political, one hundred percent theological but one hundred percent social and economic as well."
Pages 23, 59
"... according to Stephen Prothero's latest book, American Jesus: How the Son of God Became a National Icon, Jesus is not only a Christian figure. He's also a Jewish rabbi, a Muslim prophet, and a black Moses, a great warrior and a devoted pacifist. He has been an "enlightened sage" in the fashion of Thomas Jefferson and a macho wielder of Teddy Roosevelt's Big Stick. He is brother and confidant, soldier and CEO, yogi and feminist.
Prothero tells us that although the Bible may say that God made man in his own image, Americans have a long and colorful history of making Jesus over in theirs. In a nation that has been overwhelmingly Christian since its beginning, the varied conceptions of Jesus are, in a sense, the answers that Americans, Christian and non-Christian alike, have given to the question, who do you say Jesus is?"
" Together they felt the void of darkness. The sense of meaninglessness was almost like a physical presence among them. The clouds did not lift with the passing of time. The intensity of one person's presence in another person's life is equaled only by the intensity of absence when that person is gone.
.... conflicting thoughts about Jesus preoccupied Simon. How could the messiah be killed? ....How could God say no to a message of love and forgiveness and still be God? "
pages 248, 251
a page on / Gnosticism / on this site
a page on / PKD / Philip K. Dick / on this site
"The central doctrine of Christianity is that Christ was punished for the sin of Adam."
Copyright © 2003 by John J. Reilly
Mr. Reilly's copyright and reposting information.
John J. Reilly retains all rights in the material which appears on his Web pages.
"Readers are invited to download this material for their own use.
Persons wishing to repost it on the Internet may do so if they include my copyright notice."
Mr Reilly writes of himself,
"I am what is known as an "orthodox" Roman Catholic.
This means that, while my views are conservative,
I do not think I am any more Catholic than the Pope."
"Among those who do not already have rigid views on the subject, this film is likely to inspire more serious thought on the nature of Jesus than any other ever made. That is the irony about the attempts to suppress this film; it is a sincere, thoughtful investigation of the subject.... Scorsese and Schrader have not made a film that panders to the audience--as almost all Hollywood religious epics traditionally have. They have paid Christ the compliment of taking him and his message seriously... I cannot think of another film on a religious subject that has challenged me more fully. The film has offended those whose ideas about God and man it does not reflect. But then, so did Jesus."
"This "FAQ", often referred to as the "Historicity of Jesus" FAQ, is neither exhaustive, nor does it attempt to answer the question of whether Jesus of Nazareth really lived or not. .... In fact, one can be a completely orthodox Christian, perhaps even a fundamentalist, and agree with virtually everything in this document. The purpose of this document is to partially answer the question, "To what extent are the events described in the New Testament corroborated by contemporary non-Christian texts?" I argue that the answer to this question is "not much"... They do not prove that he performed any miracles, rose from the dead, or did anything else ascribed to him in the New Testament. At worst, ancient texts tell us nothing new, and provide no independent support for the New Testament accounts."
"This period in America resembles the Hellenistic era, when Rome rose to rule the ancient Mediterranean. It was a sprawling, cosmopolitan, polyglot world of sexual permissiveness and spiritual anxieties. Mystical, New Age-like cults sprang up everywhere, and major deities like Isis, Cybele and Juno were syncretistically merged.
The Heaven's Gate doctrine of a helpful spaceship whirring along in the tail of Hale-Bopp is neither more nor less substantiated than central Christian teachings about the resurrection of Jesus..."
"By Ramaraja I do not mean Hindu Raj (Rule of Hinduism).
I mean by Ramaraja Divine Raj, the Kingdom of God."
The Mind of Mahatma Gandhi
Prabhu and Rao, editors
12:67 "Ramaraja"
-- See a page on this site on
/ Basileia /
"The first rabbis were not professional clergymen at all, but men superior in character, probity, learning, whom the community respected. ... The great names of the Talmud are the names of workmen-scholars: Hillel was a woodchopper; Shammai, a surveyor; Ishmael, a tanner; Abba Hoshaiah, a launderer."
"Judas Iscariot, the disciple whose name has become a byword for betrayal, may have been entirely innocent of selling out Jesus Christ, according to new historical research.
Judas, who is alleged to have handed over Christ to the Jewish authorities in return for 30 pieces of silver, was in fact merely attempting to arrange a meeting between them at his master’s behest, according to experts at the Ecole Biblique in Jerusalem."
"Yes I believe that Judas’ act could well have been an act of obedience to Jesus. I have more evidence to support that view than there is for any act of betrayal. Consider that Jesus commanded him “to do quickly what you are going to do” (John 13:27); according to many scholars this was an order. Moreover when he met him at the time of the arrest he fervently kissed him (so the Greek, Matthew 26:49; Mark 14:45). According to Matthew he said: “Friend, do what you are here to do” (26:50). Finally according to Luke, Peter described what Judas did as being a guide to those who arrested Jesus, “for he was one of us and was allotted his share in this ministry” (Acts 1:17). Can you imagine Peter describing what Judas did as a ministry, a diakonia, one of the noblest words in the New Testament, if Judas actually had betrayed Jesus? Is there even one word of rebuke from Jesus about what Judas did? Why should I not take it then as an act of obedience?"
Academia -- gotta love it.
The book: Judas : Betrayer or Friend of Jesus?
by William Klassen
search keywords Bible verse Bible quote Bible quotes
I'll tell you about Jesse.
His mother was unmarried when he was conceived.
--
(Mat 1:18)
-- and a refugee
-- (Mat 2:14-21)
He was born homeless.
-- (Luke 2:7)
Lived homeless.
-- (Luke 9:58, Mat 8:20)
Called a blasphemer,
-- (Mat 26:65)
a winebibber and a glutton.
-- (Mat 11:19, Luke 7:34)
friend of prostitutes and sinners,
-- (Mat 9:10, Mat 11:19, Mark 2:15, Luke 5:29)
the enemies of his country,
-- (John 4 1:42)
and the diseased
-- (Mat 8:1-4, Mat 9:20)
Mark 1:40-45, Luke 5:12-16
Sometimes considered mentally unbalanced
-- (Mark 3:21)
Tried as a traitor and a criminal.
-- (Luke 23:2)
Refused to make a case in his own defense.
-- (Mat 26:63, Mat 27:14, Mark 14:61, Mark 15:3, Mark 15:5)
Died of torture.
-- (Luke 23, John 19)
Some other things are said of him as well.
Of the truth or falsehood of any of these I do not know,
but I think it well to
look to his example
when we consider those who society despises.