I’m not sure whether this “5 Myths” feature in each Weeks Post Outlook is desired to elucidate or to shock. I’m afraid it’s the latter. I pulled out of the paper pile and looked at it again. In case anyone is shaken by the contents, don’t be. • First, there are at least two ends of the spectrum (maybe more) of people who study “Christology”. (I didn’t invent this term.) At the far right end might be the more faithful than even faithful believers. For the truest believers every word in the Bible is a true record of events exactly as they happened – even if the words sometimes disagree with each other. At the other end of the spectrum are the analysts, often atheists, who are drawn by the enigma that is the “Christ event”. (I didn’t invent this term either.) • Serious scholars would mostly concede “myth” status for “1. Jesus was born in Bethlehem.”, “2. Jesus was an only child.” and “3. Jesus had 12 disciples.” But that doesn’t mean absolute certainty that these are not accurate. • I might argue about “4. Jesus had a trial before Pontius Pilate”. In brief (because this could get long) the Gospels mention crowds and multitudes. I think the gospels leave out some tedious legal details that don’t advance the main story. The gospels do mention that the Romans first tried to defer to the Jewish system who threw it back on the Romans who probably would have been happy not to have to have gotten involved, except it was too big to ignore. There was probably an initial Roman trial before a lower magistrate (I think the term was “iudicus”) over rebellion or treason if not for inciting a public disturbance. My hunch is that the Romans tried to reduce the charge and had Jesus scourged to satisfy the crowds. Scourging was an extremely severe penalty and probably would have satisfied the Romans. It didn’t satisfy the crowds. It is not hard to imagine the Governor himself getting involved at some point if only for political reasons. The true believers time line would have this all occurred between the Thursday night arrest and a Friday morning condemnation. Realistically the process could have taken several days. • As far as “5. Jesus was buried in a tomb.” Hollywood gives us a distorted view of history. Romans are portrayed as arrogant (they were) and profligate (they weren’t). They learned, sometimes the hard way, to be able administrators and to deal with other cultures. Another source (I forget where) I read years ago talked about Roman concessions to the Jews. For example, the Jews did not have to worship the Emperor, it was sufficient only that they asked God’s blessing on the Emperor. Another was covering up the “naughty bits” of those who were crucified, and not leaving corpses rotting on the crosses afterwards. In the gospel, there is even a reference to not leaving the body on the cross for the Sabbath. So taking the body off the cross would have been a reasonable Roman concession to Jewish sensibilities. Placing the body in a tomb in accordance with Jewish custom is also not hard to believe. • The analytical Christologists have brought us a long way towards discovering the rabbi, Yeshua Ben Yusif, as a real flesh and blood person. I don’t think it requires an act of faith to believe (without getting into some heresy) that he existed as a man. • I am curious about how Reza Aslan figures Jesus to be a Zealot, as I understand the Zealots. I could make an argument about Jesus or John the Baptist being Essenes – especially since Essenes referred to themselves as “sons of light” which term also appears in the gospels (Facebook doesn’t do Greek characters anymore so I won’t write the Greek), but gets translated in the King James version as “children of light”. Numerous other books claim to explain Jesus. My favorite of these is “Jesus Lived in India” which presents a very good argument that the “missing years” were spent in India absorbing Hindu and Buddhist teachings. It’s an interesting book, but I don’t buy the conclusion. I’ve added “Zealot” to my “to be read” list, just not next.
Posted on: Sat, 05 Oct 2013 21:45:17 +0000