If Jesus existed, why didn't he choose isolation?

[saltpoint]

If Jesus existed, and he was perceptive enough to know that the Roman Empire's local authorities were corrupt and/or vicious, why did he not remain in isolation with the Qumran community, or another such group in the far deserts, well away from a conflict he knew he eventually would have to confront?

His ministry is given to us as a higher calling than contemplative isolation, but he must surely have known the law of averages did not favor challenges to local authorities, and he was perceptive enough to know that for some individuals, isolative contemplation is the highest calling.

----This question asks into the strategies of the Jesus of History rather than the Christ of Faith----

Any thoughts?

[xchrom]

1. it wasn't rome that was his immediate threat.

it was the native institutions of his country that were the threat.

and those were also the things he was trying to shine a light on -- not rome.

[saltpoint]

3. Yes. But Rome's local authorities ruled the roost under which those

local institutions were maintained.

In the New Testament there's very little of Jesus interacting with the local temples, for example. We get the "Look, this kid is amazing" tale with the elders early on, but as a grown-up Jesus eschews the temples and does a high-speed burn into the desert to hang out with John.

[xchrom]

7. yes -- but in the end -- rome didn't see him as a threat --

the indigenous authorities did.

and eschewed local temples for a reason that he gives re: his statement regarding prophets in their own homes.

and of course he really doesn't want to talk to those folk anyway -- he really does want to talk to the everyday people.

not the established folk.

and as his sermon on the mount shows or his raising of lazarus -- he manages to draw quite a crowd.

[saltpoint]

10. No question about the crowds.

My question was why he did not choose an isolative, contemplative self-ministry when he knew the odds against his persuading anyone in the local authorities to change.

He organized 12 men, plus Mary Magdalen, we're told. That's not a critical mass. It wouldn't, in and of itself, generate substantive reform in the way people lived their lives, at least not on a "national" basis.

It seems like an odd strategy when he surely knew the authorities did NOT care to be challenged.

[xchrom]

11. but post crucification -- his strategy was not entirely unsuccessful.

jerusalem did manage to grow a community of jesus followers.

the apostles did teach in the major temples -- and they weren't crucified.

they were -- at the outset an urban crew -- well urban for those times.

rome's conflicts in the middle east were always messy -- egypt, syria, etc -- but we make more out of the palestine conflict because of our ''different'' relationship with it.

[saltpoint]

14. Rome also drew Christians, a bit later on. Whether they were

Jesus-follower type Christians or Pauline-type Christians, though, is a big question. I'm leaning strongly toward their being Pauline-types, and that's not good. I'm not a fan of Paul at all.

Are we sure the original 12 were "urban"? Were not some of them anglers? That sounds like their livelihood depended on the Sea of Galilee, and I'm not getting a heavy urban vibe there.

We lose the trail of the disciples. We know that Peter was martyred. We know that Thomas may have, or may not have, gone to India. We sense that Mary Magdalen was of heightened significance, although just how is an eternal debate. James seems to have hung on for a spell and either did or did not go to Spain.

There aren't reliable sources.

[xchrom]

20. well jerusalem or tyre or any city was probably a little like peoria.

the minute you are outside the city limits you are in the cornfields.

but that didn't mean that those outside weren't intimately familiar with jerusalem -- and that is where the community began grow -- under mary's and others guidance.

and yes pauline christianity grew up in rome and greece -- and it should be noted that greek conservatism heavily influenced early christian development.

and as far a paul goes -- we really do have to remember that we are very, very different creaturs from the folk then.
as intelligent as paul was -- he didn't a even a tenth of the kind of information you grew up with.

and btw -- i don't really care for paul myself.

[saltpoint]

21. I appreciate what you have to say about Paul, agree with you that he is

not someone I'm drawn to, and agree also that you and I know more than he did in the information game.

At the same time, I don't let him off the hook. His first work involving Christianity was to track Christians down and persecute them. Not so long following we have him extolling the virtues of the Living Christ. Talk about a major career shift. The only modern-day precedent that comes close to that kind of audacity is Chuck Colson. And I'm no fan of Chuck Colson either.

Agree with you that Galilee, which was a major agricultural area, would have harbored well-informed citizens. I guess I meant the emphasis on the green landscapes there, the farming. It's interesting to me that Jesus apparently had some strife with his family and/or the local Synagogue and it's not long later that he's on a boat heading toward Capernaum, which is a much more stark and desert-like climate. He seems drawn to the deserts more than almost anyone in history.

[xchrom]

22. oh i don't let paul off the hook that much -- but i do make some

allowances.

it seems you and i agree about the direction of christianity with paul at the helm.

i don't think jesus was nearly as dour as paul -- and his attitude towards women was certainly light years different.

this is where paul and the greeks were such a good match.

i'm not sure why the greeks at the time seem to be so receptive to such a joyless voice as paul's.

i mean the very notion of pleasure loving people certainly seems to reside in italy -- was it missing in greece at the time of paul?

it gives on a case of the ''what ifs'' that's for sure -- what if christianity had been a more joyful expression than the one we inherited and are working so hard to change now?

[saltpoint]

23. Very good questions. Wilson says that "By contrast with Paul and the early

Christians, Jesus neither feared women, nor treated them as a sub-species."

To me that gets to the heart of that distinction. Paul feared women and thus mistreated them. Jesus had no problem with the idea of a universal self-hood, and Mary Magdalen seems to have been awfully well regarded, and likely justifiably so. Jesus' respect for Mary Magdalen also seems to me to justify apostolic requirements to allow women to be priests in the Catholic Church.

Now if we could just get modern-day Republicans to adopt Jesus' point of view!

Have you ever read Gore Vidal's JULIAN? He raises some of the points you have raised here, and it's a novel you might enjoy. It's about the Emporer Julian's struggle to re-establish the Greek pantheon over the encroaching Christian religion. It's very quotable, moves along really swiftly, and is kind of thrilling to follow.

[xchrom]

29. well more and more mary m is becoming regarded as the apostle she was.

more -- the guy who delivered the sermon on the mount didn't dislike people -- and i don't think jesus disliked the body.
he slept with john -- breast to breast, so to speak -- let women touch him, in very intimate frowned upon ways for the time -- didn't seem to mind a good time.

i'm not saying he wasn't serious -- but i'm guessing he was not a gloomy gus.

yeah i've been meaning to read vidals book -- i find this stuff pretty fascinating.

[saltpoint]

32. xchrom, I'm really enjoying the way you say things. And yes,

finally, Mary Magdalen is getting the respect she deserves.

I'm serious in suggesting that a truly excellent film could be made about her. It would be a boost to her standing in the public mind. She's often dismissed as "a prostitute," even now, in 2007, after it's clear from the NT that no evidence exists to convict her of this.

And for that matter, Jesus wouldn't cast her away even if she WERE a prostitute, which is downright revolutionary when you come to think of it. Whoever that woman was in the pit whose townspeople were about to stone her to death for adultery, it was dramatic and right-on for Jesus to step in front and make them stop. We don't need to know her name to know she was no more and no less human than we are.

Not a "gloomy gus" !! I love it.

And the love he had for John. I bet that doesn't get mentioned much on Jerry Falwell's Sunday schedule.

[xchrom]

36. oh they steer as FAR AWAY from john and jesus relationship

as possible. it was physical after all -- how could they expain it?

no, mary was ''the money'' for jesus and for the early community -- she was a business woman -- and knew how to manage.

you can see how when her story met up in greece -- it would not have been well received - let alone in a patriarchy like palestine.

however it's obvious that allowances were made for women there that weren't made in greece.

to the credit of the eastern orthodox church though -- she isn't a prostitute.

i think mary m as movie is GREAT idea -- there is a real story there and yes would go along way to filling in the picture.

you know another thing -- peoples lives were hard -- if jesus was an unhappy joyless guy -- who was going to come hear him?
they had that stuff in spades from the religous authorities and angry prophets enough.

jesus must have been something rich and wonderful to people. extravagant even -- with his water into wine and feeding people -- and if he really hated the body and creation -- he would have said lazarus was better off dead and left it at that.

jesus loved the world as he found it.

[saltpoint]

37. It seems physical to me, definitely. And it's hardly even whispered

about, nevermind discussed in full.

Too hot to handle.

But it's a glimpse of a human there - not a transhuman wizard-type, but a human -- and a human finding beauty in a barren desert of a world, a human talking smart to power, and a human treating other humans LIKE humans instead of the way they were ordinarily treated.

Not a bad spiritual resume.

Thank you for the acknowledgment of the Eastern Orthodox there . . . there is something very attractive to a pre-denominational Church.

In a lot of the narrative of the New Testament, Jesus really does accept things as they are. Or he sees them and offers forgiveness. His difficulties seem to be with his family back in Galilee and of course with the local authorities who are very threatened by him.

[xchrom]

38. indeed -- the ONLY people worried about jesus --

were pretty petty people if you stop and think about it.

worried about their own intrigues and power.

jesus was not threat to them. -- but like falwell and robertson -- anyone who comes with a message of freedom, fogiveness and love is somehow deemed subversive.

[saltpoint]

41. It is amazing how the modern-day folks like Falwell and

Robertson are so threatened by individual freedoms, and to the extent that Jesus of Galilee urged compassion and understanding -- and inclusion -- of the disenfranchised, the downtrodden, and the marginalized, he threatened these petty powermongers who comprised the local authorities of his time.

In Martin Scorsese's THE LAST TEMPTATION OF CHRIST, the role of Pilate is played by David Bowie. When I saw this prior to going to the film, I had my doubts about the casting. Then I saw Bowie in that role and he blew me away. An outstanding performance, and it captures the position Pilate must have been in. And in the soundtrack of JESUS CHRIST, SUPERSTAR, the guy who plays Pilate is tremendous. He has a voice like I've never heard before, and he's given a brief but beautiful song to sing.

Those are contemporary glimpses into the New Testament narrative, but they are telling in their way. I agree with you that people in power cling to it shamelessly, and pettily, even as innocent others are hurt or killed in the process.

[xchrom]

42. i love both of those movies -- and i find them

refreshing and thought provoking looks at the faith.

for robertson and falwell and others of their ilk -- christ = power -- power now.

it's a perversion of the worst kind.

[saltpoint]

43. I'm grateful for your endorsements of those films -- a lot of people

don't care for them, or are offended by them, and I've loved both films for a long time. It's hard to find agreement sometimes.

Harry Dean Stanton plays Paul in THE LAST TEMPTATION OF CHRIST, and I have to say, he does a fine job. I would NEVER have dreamed of casting him as Paul, but then I'm not Martin Scorsese. What a genius Scorses is. That cast is just terrific.

In JESUS CHRIST, SUPERSTAR, the guy who sings "Pilate's Dream" says: "I dreamed I met a Galilean/A most unusual man/ He had that look you very rarely find / -- the hunted, haunted kind." For me, that gets to the mystery of Jesus -- the motivation for his leaving Galilee in the first place, the odd (and beautiful) obsession with the sea and with boats, those rich parables that left half or more of his disciples scratching their heads, and the cryptic answers he gave to the local authorities when they challenged his authority to have a ministry.

And it frames the mystery in my OP also. If you know who is hunting you but perhaps not who is haunting you, your choice between isolative contemplation and a very political ministry is very important.

[xchrom]

49. but see -- you're sounding like you're not a ''literal'' person.

and i think that's a great thing.

when it comes to faith -- i don't see how you can be literal.

faith is a different space -- a completely different space.

it's metaphor and allegory -- not rock like certainty -- i don't even see the good in that.

i guess that's why i am a very happy episcopalian.

i love liturgy -- and smells and bells -- and all that crap.

and i come out of the regular protestant services/theology -- very conservative -- it was such a dead thing to me.

imagination, sensuality, tactile expressions -- all the stuff that puts us in a different space and lets us contemplate our world.

so movies like temptation and superstar help feed all that -- to me.

[saltpoint]

50. There are metaphorical places, no question. I believe I follow what

you are saying also on the "smells and bells" -- the tactile and visual rituals that lead humans into those metaphorical spaces.

Sacred space comes into play in many people's lives, whether they are "religious" or not. I've known Buddhists who value that concept very highly. And they don't compromise it for anything.

It's possible that Jesus had the concept of sacred space as a young man and was unable to persuade those in his local synagogue to understand it, or even get them to listen to it. He may have outgrown the local synagogue in Galilee and headed out to Capernaum in the boat. Sacred space would have been a very expanded thing out on that boat. All that unmitigated space and a few vulnerable human beings in a wooden boat... I think that might have been one of the possible explanations for his leaving his home town.

Agree with you that film feeds the metaphoric self. And yet it's interesting that in a way it is a contemplative act. (Depends on which film's showing, of course -- what a wide sea between THE LAST TEMPTATION OF CHRIST and DUDE, WHERE'S MY CAR?)

The conservative Protestants lost you to the Episcopalians. It sounds to me as if you made the right move.

[struggle4progress]

45. Uh, the Romans crucified him.

[styersc]

2. You are asking questions from the context of earthly politics

when Jesus' kingdom and interests were of another realm. In fact, Jesus never did "confront" Rome. Jesus did, eventually, take advantage of the corruption of the worldly political scene to engineer his martyrdom but it was never a confrontation of Rome.

You are right, in that isolated contemplation is an avenue for spirituality, one that I often practice in pursuit of my Chrisitianity, however Christ came to spread a message to the masses and encouraged communal celebration of the message. This required rubbing elbows with the masses.

[saltpoint]

4. Jesus was involved in earthly politics himself -- in a pretty big way.

If you run up against the local Palestinian authorites, you're running up against Rome. I don't think you can separate the two.

Certainly by 70 A.D. Rome had had enough of the uprisings and revolutionary talk in Palestine and moved in to raze the Temple.

I believe in the realm of earthly politics, that would have been a tension Jesus was well aware of.

[jebediah]

5. His purpose was to die...

The gospels make it clear that he knew who he was and what his fate would be. He did what would accomplish God's purpose.

One can't discuss Jesus as if he were a character separate from the sources of information we have about him. The gospels are pretty clear that he knew what he was doing. He wouldn't have been the Christ had he retreated into isolation.

[saltpoint]

6. With respect, jebediah, you are doing just that -- discussing Jesus as if

he were a character separate from the sources of information we have about him.

I put in a subordinate clause in my OP -- "If Jesus existed" -- to indicate that I'm talking about the Jesus of history and not the Christ of faith. You can ascribe any transhuman powers to him you wish -- I'm not standing in your way -- but the New Testament clearly shows him to be intelligent and perceptive.

My question involves why someone that intelligent and perceptive would choose to take on authorities he couldn't overcome.

I'm not going for a transhuman explanation of it all.

[jebediah]

8. Do you have an alternative source from the Gospels

that quote him to determine his own stated identity, purpose and motivation? Is there a resource that supports the bifurcation of Jesus of history as distinct from the Christ of faith? Insofar as I know there are precious few references to him outside of those that identify him as the Christ.

"why someone that intelligent and perceptive would choose to take on authorities he couldn't overcome" can be answered by the gospel narratives-- He thought it was his purpose to die at their hands.

[saltpoint]

9. I'll welcome you to DU but I'm not persuaded that you are being

fair with the distinction I'm making.

There is in fact a body of work on the Jesus of History as opposed to the Christ of Faith. Some scholars are more direct and insistent than others.

I began with A.N. Wilson's JESUS: A LIFE. And in particular, the third chapter, "The Cooked Fish, Or How To Read A Gospel."

It's excellent. It's imaginative and fair and imaginative and fair. I repeat the claims because it's that good. I recommend it to you.

[jebediah]

12. thanks. K, I'll check that out.

I'll take a look at the book to get your reference that I'm obviously missing here. I'd suggest though, as a general condition of investigation, that scholarly reconstruction cannot trump either direct evidence or historical record for authority on the matter. As it currently stands I'm only aware of the gospels as the record when discussing Jesus... but now I have some reading to do :).

[saltpoint]

13. If you want, also investigate Wilson's work on Paul, PAUL: MIND OF THE APOSTLE.

But that third chapter of JESUS: A LIFE is just a humdinger. Wilson is energetic and respectful -- I think you'll like his writing.

All good wishes.

[JerseygirlCT]

53. But from a believer's point of view, it's nearly impossible to

separate the historical Jesus from the Christ.

For example, with your question, the first question I'd have is what was his purpose.

If it were to simply live as long as possible, then laying low and hiding out would certainly have made sense.

If it were to make as big a demonstration as possible, then hiding would have been counter-productive to his aims. And to a believer, the necessary end result of his life on earth was the resurrection -- which wasn't going to happen if he was safely holed up somewhere, you know?

Taking on those authorities was part of the larger demonstration, in my view -- which culminated in his death and resurrection as a messsage to people far from the immediate area and time.

[saltpoint]

55. Hi, JerseygirlCT. I may not have been as clear as I should have

with the notion of isolative contemplation. I didn't mean to imply that he would hide from the authorities. Only that he might have selected an isolated life which would have allowed him an unfettered spiritual path.

It's uncomfortable for us to say it out loud, but I wonder if during several points in the days he spent in his 3-year ministry Jesus asked himself the same thing. A lot of the people he would have encountered simply did not appear to have his insights, his brilliance. He strikes even an ardent non-believer as being extremely bright.

The authorities generally let people in the far caves do their thing, so long as they didn't come into Jerusalem and begint to stir the rabble. I don't see a convincing claim in the NT that would have elevated an interactive ministry with an individual pilgrimage. Neither path is "wrong." I'm only asking why someone as bright as Jesus of Galilee would have chosen one rather than the other, especially given the odds against overthrowing the authorities who so often made life so unbearable.

The resurrection comes to us as pure belief and not as part of the Jesus-of-History file. Scholars have no choice but to separate History and Faith. Their job is to scrutinize a text, say Mark or Luke, and determine what portions of it are historically verifiable, and which are historically plausible within the context of those times.

[JerseygirlCT]

56. Well, I'd say because his goal wasn't about his own spiritual

path, but about sharing his teaching with others.

There were certainly times when he needed that solitary time and took it. But an isolated life would not have accomplished what he wanted to accomplish.

It's maybe the difference between a scholar whose goal is simply to learn and a teacher, whose goal is to impart knowledge to others.

Does that make sense?

[saltpoint]

59. Certainly it makes sense. When do you not make sense? I've

read your posts for a while now and you are always on point.

I wish the writers of the four Gospels -- especially the first three -- were as focused as you are. Their goal is more clear to me than Jesus' goal. They are themselves believers and wish to inspire belief in others by recording a spiritual biography of sorts. That isn't the right term, but they aren't writing pure biography, and there are no extant sources to rely on. They illuminate snapshots of a vivid, brilliant man, but there are gigantic sections of the narrative lost to us. It is regrettable that Reynolds Price or Margaret Atwood -- someone with that caliber of talent as a recording witness -- did not have the opportunity to be an author of one of the four gospels.

I should even say one of the many gospels, since the early bishops burned several of the others in use at the time. I resent that. I did not know any of those bishops, of course, but I'm angry with them just the same. What right do they have to burn a book? What right does anyone have to burn a book? That really frosts my cookies.

Because in those other gospels may be pertinent information -- even if it is just in more snapshots. I want as many people digging in the dirt as possible to unearth whatever there may be to unearth. Jesus "goal" could well have been exactly as you state. I'm not quarreling with that assertion. But it is not definite. We simply do not have the snapshot in Galilee where he says, "Ok, that's really the last straw...I'm out of here." And he gets in the boat and sails to Capernaum. And we don't have the name of the person or persons who arrange the donkey (which is already in place). We don't know the name of the water-pitcher. We don't know where the cash came from to rent the upstairs dining room during the Feast of the Passover. And these are not small things. It suggests a broader network of information lost to us. It wasn't even made clear to some of the 12. Some evidently knew what was happening, but not others. It's very mysterious.

I love your scholar/learner vs. scholar/imparter construction. It's not only a great working model to think about the ministry of Jesus, it's also very effective as a frame of reference for everybody as an individual. We come to our knowledge of the world usually by one or the other -- or both -- of those paths.

[JerseygirlCT]

60. Aw shucks

I love your eagerness for information, and your ability to take it in, and make such interesting observations from it. You've obviously spent a great deal of time and study -- I could only aspire to such!

Boy, it sure would be great to have those other gospels -- to have a great deal more information!

My first thought reading your comment about Margaret Atwood (I've loved what I've read of her. Someone gave me a copy of "Surfacing" many years ago, and boy have things from that stuck with me over the years!) was "why would God have chosen those particular people to write about Jesus' life on earth and ministry?" But of course, there are undoubtedly many others -- they've just been either lost or intentionally destroyed and removed from our consciousness by men with agendas of their own...

But perhaps the constant search for more information -- at least from searchers like you -- is part of the plan, too? Maybe if we're continuing to actively seek understanding, that keeps the teaching alive, as it were? Nothing like a mystery to hook people's attention!

[saltpoint]

61. On Margaret Atwood: She's so talented it's ridiculous.

No human being needs to be that talented!

Anyway, the authors of the 4 gospels were no match for her gift. Same with Reynolds Price, a North Carolinian. He's done a re-working of the first three gospels, called simply Three Gospels. I think you can track it down on one of the on-line used book places for just a few bucks.

Keen point about the on-going search for information. You're right -- it's fed by the mystery. If Jesus existed (I'm the first to admit I have no concrete evidence to prove if he did or didn't), he reportedly said things that inspired loyalty in the masses and dread and fear and irration in the authorities. Roman authorities, no matter where they were on the Empire's ladder, didn't like being questioned or outwitted. So whatever Jesus' exact motivation was, they didn't like it. And they killed him.

And we're left with this vivid presence, which we never quite "see." A.N. Wilson says we encounter Jesus as a presence only, as if we've just walked into the room and there's a cigarette burning in the ashtray, as if there's an indentation on the sofa. There is the plausibility of a physical presence just missed. He says that's the experience of reading the first three gospels.

[JerseygirlCT]

62. Ah! All these great recommendations! I will

have such a lot of reading to do.

Someone's remarks here spurred me to finally pick up some Borg.

Geez. How weird to read someone write about conclusions that nearly perfectly match the ones I've come up with on my own? Heck, I could have read him years ago and saved myself all that thinking, lol.

I'll have to put Price on "the list"... thanks!

[saltpoint]

63. 'Appreciate the exhange of considerations with you as always, JerseygirlCT.

And I will look forward to your posts on DU.

[JerseygirlCT]

64. Thanks, Old Crusoe. Same to you! nt

[JoDog]

15. what was his goal?

Presuming that Jesus did exsist, the best answer the the "How" question you present could be looking at the "What"--what exactly was Jesus' goal in his ministry.

Was Jesus looking to start a new religion, with a new form of self contmeplative ministry? I don't think so. I've always interpreted Jesus' original mission was one of reforming contemporary Judaism, where the priests had become corrupt and joined forces with the occupying Romans. God didn't approve of this, and sent Jesus to clean things up. Clues to that mission can be found in the Sermon on the Mount and the story of the money changers in the temple.

Jesus' mission was then one of rebellion--against the political and religious orthodoxy of his country, which were truely one and the same. And when you're rebelling, I don't think you can be isolated and be successful. You must go toe-to-toe with the institutions you want to change and the people trapped in those institutions. Otherwise, you will fail.

My friend, Rabbi Dan, thinks that the character of Jesus in the NT is a compilation of several Jewish rebels and reforming rabbis who lived in the region at the time. That's a pretty solid way of looking at it, I think.

[saltpoint]

16. Hi, JoDog. I think your Rabbi has a very imaginative way of

interpreting the NT.

I understand the impulse to reform a corrupt clergy. I think Martin Luther saw the problem and decided to put his hindend on the line to fix it. IMO, he made things much worse, although in different ways of course, and while the northern German princes seized the moment for a land grab, his descendants in Protestant thought did not offer a superior replacement.

Jesus, if he existed, might well have offered a superior replacement, especially if there was collusion between the local temples and the Roman authorities.

In such a perceptive man, though, there must be at some point the realization that you can't undo the atrocities of Roman tyranny with 12 guys and Mary Magdalen. The crowds are shown to be attentive for the most part, but we don't get the feeling that things are changing. We get the clear impression that the local authorities are getting pissed off. And words tends to make its way back to Rome that "the Palestine problem is heating up again." In 38 years after the crucifixion of Jesus, Rome orders the Temple blasted off the face of the earth.

Tell your Rabbi I love his interpretation of the NT Jesus. That is genuinely creative and heroic for it.

[Rageneau]

17. After 2000 years, the whole world still knows His name. So maybe Jesus knew what he was doing.

[saltpoint]

18. There are people in every era who know what they're doing, whether

History brings them to us centuries later or not.

Shakespeare knew what he was doing, and we have his works in our libraries, but we don't know a whole hell of a lot about him. It doesn't lessen my appreciation for his Sonnets and plays.

Jesus wrote nothing down. At least we have no extant text or source. We have secondary-at-best sources, and the Gospels were penned at the very earliest a generation after his crucifixion, probably later than that, and the interpolations just kept on coming thereafter. The Gospel of John doesn't even sound like a Gospel. It's more of a theological tract, absent the narrative detail of the other three.

That Jesus is known to us in 2007 is not in and of itself evidence of his knowing what he was doing. I claim that the Jesus we are given is visibly perceptive and intelligent. But he surely would have known that Galileans challenging local Roman authorities did not usually have a happy ending.

[JoDog]

27. Thanks

I've sent your compliments his way via e-mail. :hi:

And you're right. The political situation didn't really change all that much immediately after Jesus or during his life. The reformers of Judea were up against a particularly brutal force in the form of the Roman army. They ruled with the kind of rigid iron fist that's hard for us to imagine today. Even after Constantine converted and took the empire Christian, that didn't change. The only thing that changed was who centurians prayed to before going out on patrol. They viewed Jesus as a warrior who did battle with the ultimate foe (death itself) and won.

Not to mention the tall, stone wall of thousands of years of Jewish law and tradition.

It wasn't until long after the events of the NT that the changes Jesus wanted started happening, and even then it was only little by little. I think it's unfortunate that those critical years are not talked about more in modern Christianity outside of scholarly papers and the discussions of armchair historians. Followers don't really get the true scope of what was going on, exactly how it came to be that this Jewish sect founded by the guy(s) we now call Jesus has evolved. People who go to church on Sundays often have little idea of how their faith and doctrine compares with those of the first Christians, and how it has changed. It might put the idea of the "unchangeable word of the Lord" into perspective.

[saltpoint]

31. Agree. Several good points there, too. I'm often struck by

fundamentalist Christians in particular, who seem to know very little about their own faith. Certainly many of them don't get its history at all, or never bothered to worry about it in the first place, and they often don't even seem to have read the New Testament.

I quote passages from it to them and have frequently gotten a befuddled look back. And I'm not doing anything extraordinary -- just quoting from their own books. But it's often enough to short-circuit their concentration.

I'm hoping the fundamentalist hold on things has peaked and will begin to crumble to bits soon. I realize it will take time, but when people like Jim Dobson hold sway over so many people, I hardly know where to aim my frustration -- at Dobson for being a cunning monster or for the millions of people who let him do their thinking for them. It's frightening.

From your posts here I'm guessing your Rabbi values you as part of your community.

[saltpoint]

19. From Wilson's JESUS: A LIFE:

"If Jesus had chosen to be a member of some monkish and exclusive sect such as the community at Qumran, he could have opted out of painful and muddled scenes and refused to face up to the problems besetting his fellow Jews at the time. by a similar token, if he had not been a person of religious genius, addicted, suicidally addicted, to paradox, he might have chosen to ally himself to one of the existent causes, sects or groups available to him in his day. For the last hundred years, there has been no shortage of books attempting to show that, in spirte of all the existent testimony, this is what Jesus did do. We have read of Jesus the revolutionary, Jesus the Zealot, Jesus the Essene, Jesus the supporter of the Pharisees. All these ideas have the vice of simplicity. They 'make sense' of Jesus, and the only evidence which we possess in the Gospels would suggest that his contemporaries found it impossible to make sense of him; which is why they accused him of being mad, or possessed by the Devil."

(A.N. Wilson, JESUS: A LIFE, p. 128-129)

-------

"Suicidally addicted to paradox" is strong talk.

And interesting, given the difficulty in understanding huge swaths ofthe New Testament.

[Evoman]

24. Because he was a fundie who was sure about his religion and wanted to prosetlyze to everyone.

If he was alive today, he would probably be knocking on my door.

"Fuck off Jesus, your interrupted my love making session. Quit with your Christus-interruptis"

[saltpoint]

25. My guess is that he would apologize if he'd rung your bell during

an intimate physical moment.

In some ways, he was a fundamentalist Jew. It would have been his upbringing, and although we get almost nothing of his earlier years, we can guess that he must have had some life in the Synagogue of Galilee. He would have been steeped in the Jewish laws.

On the other hand, he left Galilee for one reason or another. Possibly strife with his family, possibly disagreements with the local Rabbis -- who knows what it was? Not me. But something drove him out of his home town and he sailed to Capernaum.

His association with John in the desert opened him to association with a lot of folks the local Roman authorities did not approve of and eventually hunted down and killed.

At some point Jesus decided to take a more public and more fiercely individual road than the one laid out for him back home.

The interpretation of Jesus as a rebel is stronger than the interpretation of Jesus as law-giver. I'm not sure I'd call him a fundie.

[Evoman]

26. Yeah, but he keeps sharing his beliefs and opinions with everyone.

That is the definition of fundie here on the R/T forum. Therefore, Jesus was a fundie.

[saltpoint]

28. When I think of the term "fundie" I think of Jerry Falwell or Jim Dobson,

or one of their several million anonymous minions and messengers out there, trying to yank controversial books off library shelves and ban certain classes in schools, and so forth.

People who don't think, in other words, and only react predictably and prohibitively against others' lives.

Jesus, as he's presented, is not really a fundamentalist except perhaps in the stark discipline of a member of the desert communities. Certainly he was no pansy if he could take cave-living and the strict disciplines of those communities. And he got around, but didn't pound on people's doors. Either folks showed up to listen, or they didn't.

[Evoman]

30. Yeah, but then again

He would always brag about how he was the son of god and how you had to go through him to get to heaven. Basically, there is no other way...excuse me, but that sounds like something Dobson would say.

And your arguing with the wrong guy about fundies, lol. I get somewhat incensed when people say things like atheist fundamentalist or even refer to christians they don't like by that term. Fundamentalist MEANS something specific, and its like everybody here is ignorant about it.

I thought that I might as well be ignorant too.

[saltpoint]

33. You couldn't convince anybody here that you are ignorant when you

express yourself as clearly as you do.

And I'm really serious -- if you were interrupted in an intimate moment at hour dwelling I think most people would be more embarrassed to have discover you at that moment than you would be to have been discovered.

I think most people would quietly walk away and go down to the 7-eleven for a slurpy. Maybe phone you up later just to check in.

[Evoman]

34. You don't know Jesus as well as I do.

"I think most people would quietly walk away and go down to the 7-eleven for a slurpy. Maybe phone you up later just to check in."

Not Jesus...he would probably corner my gf and go into some long, drawn out parable about buying cows and free milk.

[saltpoint]

35. Well, during said intimate moments, maybe that would be a turn on.

Admittedly, I've never tried it.

Actually, I bet Jesus has a very difficult time walking past a grape Slurpee. I know I do. I love those things.

[JerseygirlCT]

54. I think it's safe to say he was anything but a fundie, Evoman

As a Jew, he spent a good amount of time pissing the very observant, law-following to a "T", "fundamentalist" Jews of the time.

He was a radical, testing all the common notions of religion and belief.

I rather doubt he'd be knocking on your door. Reading the gospels, that wasn't his way at all. If you weren't interested enough to come hear what he had to say, he just moved on to speak with those who were interested.

(But I didn't intend to ruin the build-up to your joke...)

[Evoman]

57. Lol, thanks.

Ruining my jokes are probably the only way too offend me :rofl:

[JerseygirlCT]

58. Egad! Now I've *really* stepped in it! nt

[Lydia Leftcoast]

39. Because unlike the Desert Fathers a few centuries later, he wanted to share

his message. By the way, he did slip away from would-be killers a couple of times.

[saltpoint]

40. That he wished to share his thoughts and message to others seems

entirely plausible to me, but only because he knew they had perhaps a great need to hear him speak on these things.

The Messianic archetype was very, very strong in Palestine generally at the time of Jesus.

But he took absurd political risks in knowledge of their consequences. At some point he decided to press on anyway, to continue to break all the rules. When the disciples are arrested in Gethsemane, they are armed. An armed dozen or so men around a Galilean preacher with a following of thousands could not have been comforting to local authorities. Jesus must have made the decision to carry it to a violent end a while back, perhaps when he left Galilee the first time. No text gives us any hint. We get the props and the context, and even something of a good narrative, but not the original impulse or its timing.

There were ascetics by the score in that part of the world at the time. Of various stripes. Jesus would surely have encountered some of them along the caves and crannies of the Jordan River.

[struggle4progress]

44. Because the gospel is about love, which is not practiced alone

[saltpoint]

46. Love would have to be a motivating factor in the Beatitudes,

for example, but it's not the Synoptic Gospels sole theme.

While we don't know if Jesus and Mary Magdalen were lovers, it is at least a possibility. Certainly she enjoys a greater status than other women around Jesus. She appears to be a confidant and is named as a desciple. Their love could include carnal love, but doesn' have to to be legitimate or powerful -- or historic.

There was also a Beloved Desciple. My guess is that there was more than a casual reason for him to have been so-called.

Jesus is often shown drawing the circle wider, either for the sick and disabled, the lonely and disenfranchised, the unheard, and so forth. And for children: in more than one of the Gospels, including apocryphal books, he asserts that children are closer than grown-ups to the Kingdom.

Love, certainly. He would have likely valued it in and of itself, and maybe even more emphatically for its absence in the governing authorities of his time.

[On the Road]

47. I Believe He Thought God Would Intervene

and defeat the Romans if he opposed them. That's the only way I can interpret the triumphal entry and the cleansing of the temple -- symbolic acts that put Jesus' life in jeopardy, but which he felt were necessary as the first steps toward taking power.

At Jesus' arrest, he is quoted as saying "Do you think I cannot call on my Father, and he will at once put at my disposal more than twelve legions of angels?" The Dead Sea Srolls are full of images of believers surrounded by angels, often in a military context.

His cry of "my God, my God, why have you forsaken me" shows that Jesus expected something that did not happen.

Jesus came from a family generally thought to be descended from David (the desposyni), and appeared to believe that he was the rightful king of Israel. In fact, the entire nation needed to be liberated from the Romans. Under those conditions, a life of contemplation would not put him into touch with God, since he believed God wanted him to act.

Jesus' life bears certain similarities to others such as Judas Maccabeus, Simon bar Kosiba and Judas of Galilee, all of whom rebelled against foreign rule. We think of his life far differently because of:

--His teachings (although who knows which parts are really his)
--The fact that his political plans were never carried out,
--His brother, who continued his memory and his movement, and primarily because
--About fifteen years later a former enemy saw him in a vision and was inspired to create his own version of Jesus' teachings.

[saltpoint]

48. Hello, ribofunk. What a rich post. Multi-layered and very rich. Thank you.

Yes. The donkey ride into Jerusalem suggests advanced notice and preparation. How is it that the donkey is made available to him -- especially with thousands and thousands of people in the city for the Feast -- and who is the man with the pitcher of water, and how was it that an upstairs dining area could be had unless it was paid for in advance? If at this point Jesus is ready to be the Messiah, he might well have decided God would intervene. It's a strong point, because he appears to resist the role in the first part of his journey in Galilee and Capernaum. But it's hard to mistake the ride into Jerusalem.

In one variant of the Messianic legacy the Messiah is a twin. In (I believe) the Acts of Thomas, one of the apocryphal texts that Jim Dobson doesn't like, Jesus is shown coming into a small dwelling (or possibly a garden) where Peter and Thomas await him. Oddly to traditional ears, Jesus says, "Greetings, Peter. And greetings, Thomas, my twin, my second Messiah." The date of the text is in dispute.

It could be an interpolation by a fringe gnostic Christian author or an actual quotation faithful to its source. I have no idea. But it's interesting, especially, as you say, if Jesus' family was descendant from the House of David.

There's reason to believe that Jesus and the 12 may have been planning to act the week of the Feast in Jerusalem. The 12 were armed and women, including Mary Magdalen, were separated from the group I believe before the Last Supper began. The plan may have been to trigger a revolution with thousands of the faithful in the city for the Feast.

[On the Road]

51. Thank You, Crusoe.

There are some similar posts in my journal if you found that stimulating. You started a good discussion because you asked a good question.

It's amazing how people seem to assume that Jesus acted alone and things just fell into place magically. The passion narrative makes much better sense as the record of an eyewitness with partial information who was operating in an environment of secrecy.

In Matthew 21, Jesus instructs his disciples to "Go to the village ahead of you, and at once you will find a donkey tied there, with her colt by her. Untie them and bring them to me. If anyone says anything to you, tell him that the Lord needs them, and he will send them right away." Understanding "the Lord needs them" as a prearranged phrase eliminates the need for the miraculous and makes the event comprehensible.

In Mark, Jesus instructs his disciples "Go into the city, and a man carrying a jar of water will meet you. Follow him. Say to the owner of the house he enters, 'The Teacher asks: Where is my guest room....'" Since carrying water was woman's work, a man carrying water would be unusual but not incriminating -- a way of hiding from the Romans in plain sight. Whose house it is we don't know. But who would be the most likely person for Jesus to have prearranged the passover with? Probably his brother, who lived in Jerusalem as a priest, became the leader of the movement after Jesus died, probably shared Jesus' opinion of himself and his mission.

At the last supper itself, Jesus' is quoted as saying to Judas "What you must do, do quickly," at which point Judas gets up and leaves to betray Jesus. (I understand that "hand over" or "deliver up" are better translations than "betray.") Now if you were Judas and your secret plans were publicly unmasked, what would you do -- just go about your business anyway? The response isn't psychologically realistic. It makes more sense to assume that Jesus was giving a private order to Judas to turn him over to the authorities. Which means that Jesus himself arranged for his own arrest.

Why would Jesus do this? Jesus either accepted that he had to die to fulfill his mission, or believed that God would rescue him. If he expected to die, he obviously expected to return in a more powerful heavenly form: "And you will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven..." Or he expected that God would not allow him to die and would rescue him if he took the extreme measure of getting arrested. Hence the references to legions of angels and the cry of "why have you forsaken me" when no angels showed up.

The difficulty with all this is that so much of the gospels is questionable that this may be reading too much into minutiae. It is entirely possible that Jesus' arrest was not planned and that he did intend to lead a revolt.

I had never heard of Thomas being called the second Messiah. He may have been Jesus' twin. "Thomas" means twin, and Thomas Didymus (as he is sometimes called) means "Twin Twin." I don't put too much stock in most apocryphal texts, although the Gospel of Thomas and the Clementine Act and Recognitions may contain some original material.

[saltpoint]

52. That is a startling theory -- James as arranger of the room, the

arranger of the man with the water pitcher, and the arranger of the at-the-ready donkey.

I knew James and the others carried on with things in Jerusalem after the cruxifixion of his brother but had not considered this angle at all. It's a refreshing option in the narrative.

What I would not give to have been at the meeting between James and the others and Paul, over circumcision and gentiles-in-the-kingdom and so forth. That would have been either a very tense meeting, or a very lively one, maybe both. A case could be made for Paul as the founder of "Christianity," but my instinct tells me that James and the others may have been closer to the kind of vision Jesus held for the people of Palestine.

At least one scholar has Paul as being present in Gethsemane, perhaps even as the man whose ear Peter lops off. My first take on that was that it was highly unlikely. But as the years go on I'm not sure why I was so vehemently opposed to the idea. It is possible, certainly. And for all I know could explain Paul's conversion. It's one of the most famous 180s in history, and there is no evidence for or against its inspiration being the arrest of Jesus. Paul was nothing if not a master of tracking down Christian trouble-makers.

You will have to overlook my fascination with the apocryphal texts. It's more than a romantic lark, though. If the early bishops opposed a text, that alone recommends it to me. Whether Thomas was the literal or figurative "twin" of Jesus is less interesting to me than the idea that the Messiah archetype, in some tellings, involved a twin. "Twin twin" doesn't SEEM to make sense to our modern ears, unless that archetype of the Messianic twin was contemporaneous to Jesus and the 12. In that context, it has explosive potential. No wonder the early bishops wanted those texts burned.

We haven't had the Dead Sea Scrolls in hand all that long. Perhaps the "Q" document -- the source thought to exist prior to Mark and Matthew -- will still be found, plus other full copies of the apocryphal gospels and texts in use in various communities of that era. We need copies the adherents hid from the bishops' hit men. Let them still be out there someplace, stuffed into an earthen jar along the Jordan River in a cave.

Because I want to see them.

[On the Road]

65. Once You Envision

the possibility of an underground movement of some kind in which Jesus and James were the leaders, it makes it hard to think of a scenario in which James would not have been involved in some way in the passion narrative.

It also makes greater sense of statements like "I have flocks that ye know not of." Historically, this verse is thought to refer to the Gentiles, but as far as we know, Jesus had no Gentile followers to speak of during his lifetime. He apparently did have secret followers among nationalistic Jews.

There are tantalizing hints of this movement that surface from time to time. Eusebius says that the Ebionites had a physical throne which they preserved. We do not know if this existed in Jesus' lifetime, but it suggests the possibility of a government-in-exile of some sort led by an acknowledged Son of David. Presumably it would have been used in some type of meetings and ceremonies.

And *if* the Dead Sea Scrolls were used by this messianic movement, it fleshes out a lot of details very quickly. For example, they probably would have followed the ceremonial purity guides in the Community Rule. And regardless of whether the group was planning on a violent revolution, they would have approved of the “jihadist” sentiments of the War Scroll. It forms a stark contrast to the picture of the early church depicted in Acts.

[saltpoint]

66. Superb. In the two or three days since we began this subthread, ribofunk,

I've been allowing the idea of James and a small-but-loyal band of loyalists as below-radar operatives. It has been refreshing. It does make the narrative far more political, but I confess to being an incurable political junky anyway. It is rich in intrigue, too, and I love the way you connect the remarks like "I have flock that ye know not of."

Perhaps the man bearing the water-pitcher was also the mysterious youth who appears in Mark 14:49-51. The narrative timing and the local geography might be right for a match, or it could be James. Or someone I haven't even considered, or COULD not consider. There's a tangle of danger and delight. I love being lost in it.

A stark contrast to the picture of the early church indeed.

Agree with you on the Gentiles remark. I have often heard Christian ministers interpret the "flock ye know not of" as future Christians, but I'm not a predestination thinker, and I like the notion of an underground quite a bit better. And it appears to support the mysteriousness and parable-based responses to many of Jesus' quotations. He clearly didn't want to spill a lot of beans on the kitchen table.

Western culture is somewhat obsessed with the Second World War. I'm a bit of an addict myself, but I've often considered that had I been a citizen of Berlin or another German city in that dark time, the only real ethical path to take would be to resist the Third Reich via the Underground. One could not walk into SS headquarters and reverse the direction of their tyranny. One could not stop the bombing of London. But one could arrange for a donkey to be tied to this post, for a man to be carrying a water pitcher, for secret upstairs dining rooms, and so on. There is a strong resonance that that's what was going on in the Passion story.

Yes.

[On the Road]

67. Crusoe, I Strongly Recommend That You Read

"James the Brother of Jesus" by Robert Eisenman. It opens up an entirely different way of approaching early Christian history. Eisenman's major contributions IMO are:

--His personal battle for open access to the Dead Sea Scrolls (which took decades to bear fruit)
--His argument that Acts and the Gospels are 'malicious overwrites' of earlier material that often reverses the original intent (this is critical and very compelling).
--His view that the Dead Sea Scrolls are central to 1st century Judaism and come from the same tradition as the early Jesus movements.
--Paul's relationship to the family of Herod and his tenuous relationship to Judaism, and
--His synthesis of material normally placed on the back shelf and forgotten, including patristic biographical material on James and the conversion of Agbarus and Helene to Judaism or Christianity.

Eisenman is a lightening rod with many enemies and detractors. Unfortunately, he is one of the worst writers and debaters I have ever read, and his prose, disorganization, and whimsicality do not help his cause in academia. But the material he introduces and the vision that he creates with it are absolutely unique.

One of his more controversial theories is that the 'Teacher of Righteousness' in the Dead Sea Scrolls is in fact James, and the Spouter of Lies is Paul. Since the DSS are normally dated two centuries earlier, this interpretation is often dismissed out of hand. After all, there are many teachers of righteousness. But the Lying Spouter, who denies the Law in the midst of the congregation, is a very unusual figure and fits Paul to a T. And Eisenman argues that internal themes and references place the scrolls squarely in a Roman and Herodian setting.

Per your love of apocryphal literature, he draws repeatedly on the Clementine documents (the Recognitions and Homilies), which he believes preserve some ancient Ebionite material. Although they largely fiction, they have a different perspective and some wonderful passages, such as the apostles wedged together sleeping on the floor of Peter's house.

It's considered a truism that what we consider Christianity today was invented by Paul. But for some reason no one seems to follow that where it leads. And when you actually try to reconstruct what existed in the decade or two before Paul came along, it's eerily unfamiliar.

[saltpoint]

68. This is the first time I've heard of Robert Eisenman, and I've never

heard of this book. Thank you for the recommendation, and for the comments about the author's contributions. I will track it down and give it a close look.

As for the fact that Eisenman has detractors, that's not going to scare me off. Navigating through objections to one's goals is one of the great thrills of our lives, and I'm not frightened by unorthodox interpretations of events, whether they're in Palestine two thousand years back or last week.

Plus, I have a hunch I'm going to be nodding my head a lot in the passages about Paul. No one suggested to me in my high school or college years that Paul was anything but virtuous. But the more I read, the less of him I thought, until the novel THE LAST TEMPTATION OF CHRIST, which paints Paul in the light I had come to suspect he occupied.

Give me just a bit of time to find the title (I'll likely hunt it down using one of the on-line used book services), and I will plunge into the text with an open mind.