Your recent e-mail
article, "Jesus for the Non-Religious, Part I," was very
interesting. I have always maintained doubts about the
historicity of Jesus, in particular, how the stories that
comprise the New Testament evolved into the texts as we know them
today in the Bible. In your very fine article, you commented that
the followers most likely used the synagogue to transmit the
story of Jesus. You said in your column that the synagogue
"became the setting in which his followers told stories about
Jesus, recalled the sayings and parables of Jesus and remembered
and shared the developing Jesus tradition. In this fashion, over
the years, the Hebrew Scriptures were wrapped around Jesus and
through them Jesus was interpreted. The content of the memory of
Jesus was thus organized by the liturgy of the synagogue. To
recognize this connection becomes a major breakthrough into the
oral period of Christian history."
Here is my question: wouldn't the Jews, during the time following
the death of Jesus (30 C.E. - 70 C.E.) have rejected his status
as "the messiah," thus discounting Jesus as a messenger from God?
It would seem to me that rather than use the synagogue to
discuss, and possibly embellish his life; the Jews would not
attribute any divine nature to Jesus, thus rejecting him
entirely. I say this because it is my understanding that during
the time of Jesus; the Jews were anticipating a messiah. Prior
to Jesus' death, he was interrogated by Caiaphas, the elder of
the Sanhedrin (John 18:12-33). Caiaphas determined that Jesus
was not the messiah. Wouldn't that suffice to dismiss Jesus and
all accounts of his life as worthy of further discussion in the
synagogues? It is my opinion that the Jews would not have
revered him as the one whom the Old Testament prophesied.
Therefore, I surmise that stories about Jesus would more likely
have originated as folklore among the gentiles.
Your comments suggest a time warp that you have imposed on the
New Testament. You quote John's gospel, which was not written
until around the turn of the first century (100 C.E. or so). You
accept the timeline of the book of Acts, written somewhere
between 90 and 100 C.E. that shows Christians as separate from
and over against the Jews. Neither of those uses of scripture is
appropriate for discerning facts of history. They were written 60
to 70 years after the death of Jesus.
Be aware first that not only Jesus but also all of the disciples
of Jesus were Jews. If the memory recorded in the gospels is
accurate, Jesus and his disciples were frequently in the
synagogue for worship. The first Christians did not cease to be
Jews. They were called, "The Followers of the Way" and
constituted a Jesus movement within the synagogue. It was not
until around the year 88 C. E. that the synagogue and the
Christian movement split. That happened when the increasingly
rigid Orthodox part of Judaism could no longer tolerate what they
regarded as revisionist Judaism on the part of the followers of
Jesus.
Certainly, Jesus was interpreted immediately after his death in
the light of the Jewish scriptures, the liturgy of the synagogue
and the messianic expectations that were alive among the Jews at
that time. The gospels assume and reflect this process, which
obviously had occurred before the gospels were written since they
are all reflected in those gospels.
The Jesus we meet in the church today is a gentile creation
based on harmonizing the human with the divine, which were, in
the Greek perception of reality, thought to be quite distinct and
different. The divine and the human related to each other in
this view only in tension. That was not so among the Jews.
Remember that the first gospel to be written, Mark, portrays
Jesus as having a perfectly normal birth in Galilee and as a
fully human being receiving the gift of the Holy Spirit at the
time of his baptism. That is Mark saw Jesus as a God infused
human being. John's gospel some 30 years later would portray him
as a pre-existent divine visitor from the realm of heaven.
The more I learn about who Jesus was before the gospels were
written, the more I marvel at his humanity, which is what I
believe opened the eyes of his followers to the God claims that
they would make for him. The issue is do we see God through Jesus'
humanity or is his humanity only a mirage to allow God to become
visible to human eyes.
Periodically I will continue to explore these issues through
this column and, if all goes as scheduled, I will publish the
book, "Jesus for the Non-Religious" in April of 2007. Perhaps
with the space available in a book, these ideas will become
clearer.
John Shelby Spong
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