The Deification of Jesus -Part 3

In the previous posts, I laid a long groundwork for approaching images of Jesus as, "more than human", or Divine.  In this and the following posts I will look at some of these specific images themselves.

In the Synoptic Gospels of Mark, Matthew, and Luke, Jesus is portrayed as considering himself the messiah, the future king of the Jews of the Messianic Age, but not as divine, or somehow equal to God.  There are, however, descriptions of him able to access special favour with God, and that God would perform miracles and mighty deeds at his request.  There is also mention of special abilities due to his intimacy with God.

Let's start with the Gospel of Mark.

MARK 1:

25 “Be quiet!” said Jesus sternly. “Come out of him!” 26 The impure spirit shook the man violently and came out of him with a shriek.

Jesus is shown as being able to cast out an impure spirit.  This is not uncommon to reports of actions attributed to other Rabbis of the time. 

32 That evening after sunset the people brought to Jesus all the sick and demon-possessed. 33 The whole town gathered at the door, 34 and Jesus healed many who had various diseases. He also drove out many demons, but he would not let the demons speak because they knew who he was.

Jesus heals a number of people of various ailments throughout the book of Mark, this being an example.  Again this is not uncommon in writings of the time about other Rabbis and the assumption is not that the individual themselves performed the healing, but their favour with God meant that God did the healing at their behest.

In fact, in the literature of the time, both Jewish and non-Jewish, is filled with healings and other miracles being attributed to important figures.  This seems to be a common literary device to affirm the importance and validity of the figure being discussed.  Pythagoras, the Greek mathematician and philosopher, was "documented" as having performed a series of miracles that rivals anything found in the Gospels.

MARK 2:

5 When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralyzed man, “Son, your sins are forgiven.” 6 Now some teachers of the law were sitting there, thinking to themselves, 7 “Why does this fellow talk like that? He’s blaspheming! Who can forgive sins but God alone?” 8 Immediately Jesus knew in his spirit that this was what they were thinking in their hearts, and he said to them, “Why are you thinking these things? 9 Which is easier: to say to this paralyzed man, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Get up, take your mat and walk’? 10 But I want you to know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins.”

When Jesus tells the paralyzed man that his sins are forgiven, the teachers of the law respond that this is something only God can do.  They are pretty much asking Jesus if he thinks he is God.  Jesus here doesn't agree with them or claim Divinity.  He talks about the "Son of Man" having authority on earth to forgive sins, not God, or the Son of God, the "Son of Man".  What is somewhat confusing here and throughout the Gospels is that he always refers to this, "Son of Man", in the third person.  Is he talking about himself, or someone else?  Given the context, it would seem that he is talking about himself. 

Question: "Why did you put that man in handcuffs?"  Answer: "Because the police officer is given the authority to do that to people he arrests in this country."  I don't think if someone answered a question in that manner that you would doubt that they were talking about themselves.

So, who is this, "Son of Man", and is he Divine?  

The Hebrew expression "son of man" (בן–אדם, ben-'adam) appears 107 times in the Hebrew Bible, the majority (93 times) in the Book of Ezekiel.^[1] It is used in three main ways: as a form of address (Ezekiel); to contrast the lowly status of humanity against the permanence and exulted dignity of God and the angels (Book of Numbers 23:19,Psalm 8:4); and as a future eschatological figure whose coming will signal the end of history and the time of God's judgement (Daniel 8:17).^[2  ]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Son_of_man#Old_Testament

He said to me, “Son of man, stand up on your feet and I will speak to you.” Ezekiel 2:1

The book of Ezekiel has God calling the Prophet Ezekiel, "son of man", ninety-three times.  The Prophet Ezekiel was sent by God to speak to a people of Israel who God states to him would not be willing to listen because they were not willing to listen to God.  So it would seem that Jesus' use of this title was primarily to "dis" those calling his words blasphemous, inferring that he spoke God's word and that the teachers of the law were not listening to him because they were not willing to listen to God.  However, was it also meant to answer the question about whether only God could forgive sins? 

Ezekiel was not considered Divine  If this is the reference Jesus is making by calling himself the, "Son of Man", then perhaps he was claiming that special prophets called by God have the authority to forgive sins and that he fits this category.

The Prophet Ezekiel was not portrayed as having the authority to forgive sins in the Tanakh.  In Ezekiel 33, however, God does tell the Prophet that those who turn away from their sin and do what is just and right will live and not die and that, "16 None of the sins that person has committed will be remembered against them."  Might Jesus be referring to this?  Could he be saying that because of his faith in Jesus' words and recognition that they, "came from God", that the paralyzed man had turned from sin to do what was just and right, and this meant that his sin was forgiven?

The other place in the Tanakh where the title, "Son of Man", was used was in the visions of Daniel, in the book of that name right after the book of Ezekiel. 

13 “In my vision at night I looked, and there before me was one like a son of man,[a]coming with the clouds of heaven. He approached the Ancient of Days and was led into his presence. 14 He was given authority, glory and sovereign power; all nations and peoples of every language worshiped him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that will not pass away, and his kingdom is one that will never be destroyed. (Daniel 7:13-14)

 17 As he came near the place where I was standing, I was terrified and fell prostrate.“Son of man,”[b] he said to me, “understand that the vision concerns the time of the end.” (Daniel 8:17)

The, "Son of Man", of Daniel is more likely the image Jesus was referencing,  This figure, described as being, "like a son of man", is given, "authority, glory and sovereign power", as well as, "everlasting dominion".  It would make sense for Jesus to claim that this authority included the forgiveness of sins on earth. 

This Son of Man is obviously not God, but is he portrayed as, "more than human"?  The figure in Daniel's vision is described as, "like", a son of man, literally in the Hebrew, "like", a, "human being".  This might suggest that the figure, rather than being human, is angelic, one of the Heavenly Host.  However, when looked at in the context of the vision and the interpretation of the images given in the vision, this appears not to be the case.

In Daniel's vision, he sees four beasts who are explained to represent four kings.  They are portrayed as various beasts to describe the different qualities of baseness of each; terrifying, crushing and devouring humanity, their victims.  These kings are given authority for a time to wreck havoc on mankind.  They are given authority to rule for a period of time until God strips them of it and gives authority and everlasting dominion to the one like a human being.  It would make sense that, just like the kings are human people envisioned as figures in the form of terrible beasts to describe their base natures, that the fifth king being foretold is also human and his representation, in contrast to the preceding kings, is being described as truly human in nature. It does not make sense to me that if the images of the first four kings are figurative representations of human people, that we would interpret the image of the fifth king as a literal description of a non-human being.

This is my take on the figure.  But, what is important here is how the community and author of Mark perceived him and what they were trying to say about their perception of Jesus' own identity by using this title.  What that view was I believe is telling in the fact that they had him use the title, "The Human Being", and not, "The One Like A Human Being".

The Deification of Jesus - Part 4

In the previous posts, I laid a long groundwork for approaching images of Jesus as, "more than human", or "Divine".  In this and the following posts I will look at some of these specific images themselves.

In the last post I began with images of Jesus in the Gospel of Mark.  In the first chapter of Mark we looked at Jesus' miracles of healing and exorcism.  I discussed the fact that such acts were commonly attributed to great figures in the literature of the times both Jewish and Gentile. This was a  common literary device used to establish the importance and legitimacy of the figure.  As such, we can hardly consider this as a statement by the author of Mark on Jesus' Divinity.

In the second chapter of Mark, we looked at the story of Jesus telling a paralyzed man that his sins were forgiven.  The teachers of the law protest that only God can forgive sins.  Jesus does not respond that his authority to forgive sins comes from a claim of divinity.  Instead, he states that the, "Son of Man", literally in Hebrew, "human being", also has this authority on earth, claiming this title for himself.

Although this title is most often used by God in the Hebrew Scriptures to address one of his Prophets to emphasise the difference between God's divine stature and the Prophet's mortal humanity, Jesus was most likely referring to the description of the final king in Daniel's vision who is described as being" like a son of man" and who is given authority and dominion over the earth.  Some have interpreted this figure as being angelic in nature and as such that the Jesus of Mark is claiming here to be more than human.  However, closer examination of Daniel's vision suggests otherwise.

As the four preceding kings seen as beasts in the vision are explained within the vision as representing mortal human kings, there is no reason to believe that the fifth king is not also a human being represented in a figurative way.  It was also noted that if the writer of Mark wanted to infer that Jesus was more than human with the use of this title, the title would have been, "The One Like a Son of Man", rather than just, The Son of Man".

Let us to continue to explore the Gospel of Mark for images of Jesus that might suggest the author considered him to be, "more than man".

Mark Chapter 3:

11 Whenever the impure spirits saw him, they fell down before him and cried out, “You are the Son of God.” 12 But he gave them strict orders not to tell others about him.

We will put aside for the moment the whole question of whether Mark and his community affirmed the reality of sentient impure spirits or since they feature in much of the literature of the time, or if they are a metaphorical part of the story.  Instead we will focus on the title the writer has them give Jesus.  This is the same title that the writer gives Jesus in the opening verse of the first chapter:

The beginning of the good news about Jesus the Messiah, the Son of God. (Mark 1:1)

Notice here that the title, "the Son of God", is a repetition or further clarification of the preceding title, "the Messiah".  The title Messiah, means literally, "the anointed one". This title comes with a lot of baggage to the modern reader. What did it mean to this group? In Jewish Scripture the anointed one was a person who had been set apart or chosen by God for a special purpose such as to be king of the Jewish nation. Both Saul and David were anointed by the prophet Saul to announce that they had been chosen by God to be king.  So the Markian community is not only calling him king, they are claiming that he is God's chosen king. 

The title, "the Son of God" has a similar meaning.  It is the title that God gives his chosen king of the people of Israel.  For example, King David reports God as having said the following to him about David's son Solomon:

10: He shall build a house for my name. He shall be my Son, and I will be his Father, and I will establish his royal throne in Israel for ever.' (1 Chronicles, chapter 22:10)

The meaning of this title to the writer of Mark is quite different than that of a similar title used around the same time. 

In 42 BC, Julius Caesar was formally deified as "the divine Julius" (divus Iulius) after his assassination. His adopted son, Octavian (better known as Augustus, a title given to him 15 years later, in 27 BC) thus became known as divi Iuli filius (son of the divine Julius) or simply divi filius (son of the god).^[24] As a daring and unprecedented move, Augustus used this title to advance his political position in the Second Triumvirate, finally overcoming all rivals for power within the Roman state.^[24][25]  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Son_of_God

As we saw above, this was not the meaning of the title, "Son of God", the author of Mark used for Jesus.  However it is understandable if later Gentile Christians not familiar with the Jewish tradition may have got them confused.

Paper Capitalism

Just some musings on my part, but it seems to me that a lot of industry and business productivity is wasted by what I'll call, "paper capitalism".  I overheard some colleagues this morning discussing a neighbouring company's latest corporate machinations: parts were being sold, other sectors and lines were merging with another company, and one part was being set up to stand alone.  A lot of uncertainty and disruption was occurring among the staff and employees.  Having lived through a division, sale, and later restructuring at the industrial site where I work, I have experienced how much time and energy these processes demand of those people who actually make the product and work to make it in a cost effective manner.  These processes are a distraction and disruption for those charged with actually creating value by making a superior and price competitive product.

Now, I'm not an economist, my major in University was in History and my studies of economic theory were somewhat general and limited to their affect on social history.  I've started reading, the French economist Thomas Piketty's, "Capital in the Twenty-First Century", but have only managed to slog so far through the first third of the book.  Despite having a diploma in Engineering Technology, the equations and statistics in his book give me a headache.  However, my experience and instinct suggest to me that the buying, selling, and restructuring of companies or portions of companies does not bring any real increase in value, productivity, or economic growth to the country as a whole.

This is what I'm defining as, "paper capitalism", short term economic gains through the re-arrangement, restructuring, reorganizing, splitting and unifying, buying and selling of production units, sectors, and lines on paper.  Not only does this not produce any real value, increase in productivity, or economic growth on its own, it actually decreases those things by taking up resources and energy on a non value adding activity within the industry or business.

Changes in ownership or alliance in industry or business often involves taking time to educate staff and employees on the "new" business philosophies, practices, company rules, regulations and processes. It may also involve changes in business systems, processes, and software.  All of which takes up staff and employee time to learn and slows their productivity as they make the transition.

This takes up time and energy that could better be devoted to improving production, finding efficiencies, improving reliability and cost effectiveness, and generally creating lasting value.  It would seem to be the same mentality as shown in some companies that give CEO's ever increasing salaries and bonuses to layoff and reduce worker wages along with production costs cutting in maintenance, repair and other areas that will create a short term increase in stock value in the current quarter for their investors.  Once the short term effects are realized these CEO's collect their bonuses and use their "success" as a stepping stone to negotiate an even higher salary with a different company, leaving the first company behind to deal with the longer term economic fallout of their actions which are generally a decreased ability to create value or generate profit.

These CEO's seem to operate under a primitive philosophy of Taylorism, as in, "what is the absolute minimum I can feed a horse and still keep him alive and get some work out of him".  In this case the purpose is to minimalize short term expenditure to make the short term profitability look good at the expense of long term sustainability or growth. This is not a philosophy that builds value and grows the economy, but starves industry and production until it is no longer viable.

I have to admit that my opinions above are not well researched and are somewhat sweeping and generalized.  They are more my views and observations on what I think is going on and not a well documented and reasoned case looking at specific industries and companies.  If anyone knows of studies or data that either confirms or denies these views, I would be interested in looking at them.

I have pulled together a quick list of sources that explore these questions in more depth:

Harvard Business Review

https://hbr.org/2014/09/profits-without-prosperity

Harvard Business School

http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/the-high-risks-of-short-term-management

The Washington Post

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-ceo-backlash/2015/06/21/8dd31c14-169e-11e5-9ddc-e3353542100c_story.html

Sources on Corporate Restructuring

http://smallbusiness.chron.com/disadvantages-restructuring-organizations-33848.html

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/13140906_Benefits_and_disadvantages_of_corporate_restructuring--the_hospital_view





 

The Deification of Jesus - Part 2

In the previous post, I began an exploration of the images of Jesus as Divine from the perspective of a Christian non-literalist.  The goal is to examine where these images came from and the reasons they were created.  I want to explore their meanings to those who created them and discover what meaning they may hold for myself and others today.

In the first instalment, I looked at the image of Jesus as one with God in the Trinity Doctrine popular today.  The argument was made that this doctrine was not original to the earliest traditions of Christianity or the Gospels of the New Testament, but evolved over time to meet the needs of the Christian community.

 
I investigated the nature of the information we have on Jesus' own ideas of himself and his teachings.  I noted that Jesus himself left no written record of his thoughts and teachings that would identify his view of himself.  Our understanding comes from the letters and Gospels of the New Testament which were written twenty to over fifty-five years after his death.  I also postulated that the images of Jesus given in the Gospels were reflective of who he had become to the individual communities each Gospel was written in and was reflective of what he meant to them and was formed by their needs and circumstances.


I also began to explore the concept that the deification of Jesus in general was not original to the earliest traditions and also developed over time.  As part of this, I investigated the diversity of early Christian thought in writings not included in our New Testament and how these perspectives and beliefs were actively suppressed and mainly eradicated in the latter portion of the First Century and beginning of the Second Century by a Roman Church seeking to impose an orthodoxy and a unified faith in order to face persecution by the Roman Empire.  Many of these traditions did not view Jesus as divine and criticized what are now common Christian beliefs, such as the virgin birth or the bodily resurrection, as naïve misunderstandings.

In this post, I will look at the progression of images of Jesus as more than man in the Gospels of the New Testament.  The main division in thought in the Gospels on the person of Jesus is between the Synoptic Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, and the much later Gospel of John. Matthew, Mark, and Luke are known as the Synoptic Gospels because they share many of the same stories, often in the same sequence, and using the same wording.  It is contended that the Gospels of Matthew and Luke drew on material from the earlier Gospel of Mark.  It is also viewed that Matthew and Luke, where they have shared material that does not appear in Mark, both drew from an additional lost document, called 'Q'.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synoptic_Gospels 

A number of books have been written about how Christianity changed to a view of Jesus as God:

 “How Jesus Became God” by Bart D. Ehrman. Copyright © 2014 by Bart D. Ehrman.

"How on Earth Did Jesus Become God?" by Larry Hurtado (Eerdmans, 2005).

The Synoptic Gospels portray a Jesus who identifies himself as the future king of the coming kingdom of God, the messiah of God yet to be revealed, and in no way divine, or in someway God himself. In these Gospels, Jesus is referred to as the, "Son of God", the title sometimes used for the king of Israel endorsed by God. Like the kings of Israel who were given this title in the past, there is no indication that this was meant to imply that the person was a god, or in someway supernatural. The same holds true of the Epistles and the other books of the New Testament written before the Gospel of John.
The Synoptic Gospels were written in the 60's A.D., 30 to 40 years after Jesus death, while the Gospel of John was written around 85. With that in mind, Bart Ehrman, makes the following point about the Gospel of John's assertions about the divinity of Jesus;

Look at the matter in a different light. As I pointed out, we have numerous earlier sources for the historical Jesus: a few comments in Paul (including several quotations from Jesus’s teachings), Mark, Q, M, and L, not to mention the finished Gospels of Matthew and Luke. In none of them do we find exalted claims of this sort. If Jesus went around Galilee proclaiming himself to be a divine being sent from God—one who existed before the creation of the world, who was in fact equal with God—could anything else that he might say be so breathtaking and thunderously important? And yet none of these earlier sources says any such thing about him. Did they (all of them!) just decide not to mention the one thing that was most significant about Jesus?

http://www.salon.com/2014/03/23/did_jesus_think_he_was_god_new_insights_on_jesus_own_self_image/

John stands alone among the Gospels in portraying Jesus as God, but these images in John also begs the question of what the author meant by these images.  Did John and his community take them literally, or were they engaging in symbolism and metaphor?  The civilizations of the Near East were masters of literature and sophisticated nuanced thought.  It is only our modern arrogance that views ancient civilizations as less intelligent and more simple-minded than our own.  This is the same mindset that postulates that aliens must have helped construct the pyramids of Egypt and Central America because "primitive" earlier civilizations would never be able to produce feats of engineering unmatched by our own.  The cultures of the time in the Near East, however, held a level of sophistication in literature that surpassed ours.  While today we have a general mindset that focuses on the literal, on science, data, and experimental knowledge to make sense of our world, ancient peoples were masters in the use of literary tools such as metaphor and symbolism to gain insight into the world they lived in.

Having laid this long groundwork for approaching images of Jesus as, "more than human", or divine, in the next post I will look at some of these specific images themselves.

The Deification of Jesus

As a non-literalist Christian, someone who views the anthropomorphic images of God as a sentient being as metaphor, I want to explore the images of Jesus as divine.  I want to examine where these images came from and the reasons they were created.  I would also like to investigate the meaning they held to those who created them and what meaning they may hold for myself and others today.

The field of study within Christian Theology concerned with the nature and person of Jesus in the New Testament is called Christology.  Traditional Christology in most denominations identify Jesus as being a divine aspect of the threefold nature of God, what is known as a Trinitarian Doctrine. This identification of Jesus as part of the Divine and "true God", can be seen in the Nicene Creed which was adopted by the First Council of Nicaea in 325 and later In 381, amended at the First Council of Constantinople into the form recited in many Churches today. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicene_Creed

We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ,
the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father,
God from God, Light from Light,
true God from true God,
begotten, not made,
of one Being with the Father.
Through him all things were made.
For us and for our salvation
he came down from heaven:
by the power of the Holy Spirit
he became incarnate from the Virgin Mary,
and was made man.

Nicene Creed from the Common Book of Prayer 

The New Testament contains no explicit Trinitarian doctrine.  The Tanakh, or "Old Testament", explicitly contradicts it with multiple assertions that God is One.  The prime example can be found in the opening words of the Shema, the central prayer in the Jewish prayer book from Deuteronomy 6:4-9 which contains what Jesus called the Greatest Commandment.
 

29 “The most important one,” answered Jesus, “is this: ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. 30 Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. (Mark 12:29-30 NIV)

Despite this, Christian theologians and apologists through the ages have claimed that the doctrine can be, "inferred", from what the New Testament teaches about God, and where logical explanation fails, categorize it as a, "mystery of the faith".

This doctrine was the result of an "evolution" in Christian thought over time and partly a move by Emperor Constantine to unify Christian and Pagan beliefs.

The Trinity doctrine did not come into existence as its own piece of theology. Rather, it evolved over time as the orthodox (or Alexandrine) Christian response to the Samosatene/Arian doctrine. In order to condemn Arius and the Gnostics as well, the Council of Nicaea determined that Christ and God were separate yet unified, each fully God. This was merely a statement of belief, not by itself a theological concept. http://www.earlychristianhistory.info/trinity.html

Up until the rule of Emperor Constantine, the Christians of the Roman Empire were persecuted. Constantine, however, in the early fourth century saw a chance to help restore the former glory of the Empire by bringing about religious unity. In exchange for the cooperation of the Roman Christian Bishops he made Christianity the official state religion. However, this came at great cost to the true gospel of Jesus Christ. From this time forward Christianity became a mixture of the Christian faith and Paganism.
One of the most common beliefs among Pagan cultures was in a trinity of gods. We find this among the Egyptians, Indians (of India), Japanese, Sumarians, Chaldeans, and of course, the Babylonians, to where historians trace the roots of trinitarism.http://www.biblicalunitarian.com/articles/pagan-roots-of-the-trinity-doctrine-ed-torrence-2002

The leading religious competitor in Rome was th cult of Isis which was based on a triad of gods, Osiris, Isis, and Horus.  Christianity adopted this trio of gods aspect as part of their compromise with Constantine in order to gain backing as the state religion.

The Myth of Osiris, with its central Dying and Reviving God figure, became central to the Cult of Isis which traveled to Greece after Alexander the Great conquered Egypt in 331 BCE. From Greece, worship of Isis was taken to Rome where her cult became the most popular religious belief in the Roman Empire before the rise of Christianity and its most stubborn opponent afterwards.

The Abydos Triad of Osiris, Isis, and Horus became the Trinity of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost in the new religion which had to destroy the old belief in order to achieve supremacy.

Joshua J. Mark, “Gods & Goddesses of Ancient Egypt - A Brief History,” Ancient History Encyclopedia, last modified April 17, 2016, 
http://www.ancient.eu/article/884/

The same can be said for the deification of Jesus in the Gospels.  It was a progression in thought that moved away from the earliest understanding of Jesus and changed that understanding to meet the needs of the later Christian communities.


At this point in this investigation, I would like to make clear that I am not condemning the doctrines of Trinity or the Divinity of Christ.  I am not saying that because they are later concepts and not authentic to the initial message that they fail to be legitimate, or that they can not be useful, or meaningful, or give us insight into "truth".

As I've mentioned in other posts, I try to approach religion following the maxim attributed to George Box about science:

Essentially, all models are wrong, but some are useful.

Our theologies and doctrines, and even the metaphors found in Scripture are only models and not the thing itself.  As long as we don't stretch them too far by literalizing them, these models are often useful and are a vehicle for greater understanding of the truth.  In this way they are "True".  When we strip away the literalization and view them as models, we can start to figure out the meaning and experience what they are meant to point towards.  There is much "truth" and meaning to be found in the doctrines of Trinity and the Divinity of Christ.

What I do object to, however, are attempts to claim these doctrines as "fact" rather than metaphors and to dictate a literal interpretation of these models by falsely giving them the credibility of being authentic to original Christianity and the teaching and understanding of Jesus himself.

The literalization of these models as "fact", as verbatim and complete descriptions of the physical universe, does disservice to the search for "truth".  It tells us that there is only one right view, that all others are wrong and should be dismissed and can give us no insights.  Can you imagine if we approached science that way?  The planetary model of the atom used to be helpful in our understanding of physics.  This model pictured the atom like a planetary system with the neutron and proton being similar to a star and electrons orbiting around like planets.  This model outgrew its usefulness as new information showed ways in which this analogy did not fit the data.  The model, although incomplete and not consistent with current information, continues to be popular and is still used in representations and logos for atomic energy.  It is probably what most people would identify as being what atoms, "really are".  Could you imagine if we told scientists that this model is the truth, the one factual understanding of physical reality, and that any differing models to explain new experimental findings and data will not be allowed, that to contradict this model is a heresy?

To counter this, we need to investigate what the earliest Christian views were and how they changed over time.  Ideally it would be nice to know who Jesus thought he was himself.  However, like Socrates, he never recorded his own words and thinking.  We only know of the teaching of Socrates through the writing of his student Plato.  We only know of the teaching and actions of Jesus through the letters of Paul and others and the writers of the Gospels. 

Jesus Christ
Superstar
Do you think you're what they say you are?

(Lyrics from the Andrew Lloyd Weber musical, Jesus Christ Superstar)

In the song, "Superstar" in Andrew Lloyd Weber's musical, "Jesus Christ Superstar", Judas questions why Jesus did the things he did and the chorus replies with the line, "Jesus Christ Superstar - Do you think you're what they say you are?"  Of course, we don't really know who he thought he was, we only have a record of what others said he was and of the words put into his mouth by others.
Jesus' death was sometime between 30 and 33 A.D. Paul, who never met Jesus while he was alive, experienced his conversion around 35. He wrote his letter to the Galatians sometime between 48 and 58. The Gospel of Mark was written in the 40's and the Gospel of Matthew in the 50's. The Gospel of Luke and the book of Acts were written in the early 60's. And the late comer, the Gospel of John, was written around 85, a full 52 to 55 years after Jesus' death.http://www.newtestamenthistorytimeline.com/

This, however, does not cover the extent of early Christian writings, some just as early, or earlier.  We tend to have the false impression from our reading of what we have included in our, "New Testament", that early Christians all shared a unified message with the same thoughts and beliefs.  According to the research of scholars like Elaine Pagels in her study of the Gnostic Gospels, this couldn't be further from the truth.  The discovery of a trove of early Christian texts near Nag Hammadi show a wide diversity in Christian thought and traditions, some much earlier than the Gospels of the New Testament

...some fifty-two texts from the early centuries of the Christian era--including a collection of early Christian gospels, previously unknown. Besides the Gospel of Thomas and the Gospel of Philip,the find included the Gospel of Truth and the Gospel to the Egyptians, which identifies itself as "the [sacred book] of the Great Invisible [Spirit]." Another group of texts consists of writings attributed to Jesus' followers, such as the Secret Book of James, theApocalypse of Paul, the Letter of Peter to Philip, and the Apocalypse of Peter.
...sayings in this collection criticize common Christian beliefs, such as the virgin birth or the bodily resurrection, as naïve misunderstandings. Bound together with these gospels is theApocryphon (literally, "secret book") of John , which opens with an offer to reveal "the mysteries [and the] things hidden in silence" which Jesus taught to his disciple John.
(The Gnostic Gospels by Elaine Pagels
Vintage Books, New York: 1979)
http://gnosis.org/naghamm/Pagels-Gnostic-Gospels.html

Much of this diversity in early Christian tradition was lost due to efforts to suppress and eradicate them by the Roman Church. Before the rule of Emperor Constantine, in the face of persecution by the Roman Empire, the Roman Bishops moved to unify and codify the Christian faith. The Bishop Irenaeus, in the early Second Century, insisted that the four Gospels which we now see in the New Testament of today were the only legitimate ones. In his, Adversus Haereses, he writes:

The Gospels could not possibly be either more or less in number than they are. Since there are four zones of the world in which we live, and four principal winds, while the Church is spread over all the earth, and the pillar and foundation of the Church is the gospel, and the Spirit of life, it fittingly has four pillars, everywhere breathing out incorruption and revivifying men. 

Irenaeus dedicated himself to establishing an orthodoxy and refuting the dissenting views of the Gnostics, who said that they possessed a secret oral tradition from Jesus himself.

Irenaeus maintained that the bishops in different cities are known as far back as the Apostles and that the bishops provided the only safe guide to the interpretation of Scripture. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irenaeus

All writing, particularly that which purports to report historical events, contains the bias of its writer.  When we look at the Gospels of the New Testament, we do well to remember that these are testaments of who the person of Jesus had become to the individual communities of the writers.

How then can we determine what is most faithful to the original teachings and thoughts of Jesus?  I would contend that those books written closer to the time of Jesus are probably more authentic to his actual teaching and words than those written later. As well, where material is held in common between the Gospels, it also suggests authenticity.

In my next post, I will continue this study by looking at the difference in thought on who Jesus was in the Gospels of the New Testament.

 

Easter Has Been Cancelled

A Facebook friend of mine who lives in Japan is an amateur photographer.  Looking through his Facebook photo album I found a picture that he had taken of an advertisement in the window of a store in Japan that said in big letters, “Jesus Body!” (I think there must have been something mixed up in translation because it seems to be an advert for some kind of medication, or vitamin supplement).   Looking at this photo I jokingly said to myself, “Well then, if the Japanese have found Jesus’ Body, I guess Easter will have to be cancelled!”

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“What if it was proven that the tomb wasn’t empty?”

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But then my imagination began to stir; “What if”.  What if, we could imagine some impossible scenario where it was “scientifically proven” beyond a shadow of a doubt that Jesus did not rise from the grave, change physical states and “ascend to heaven”.  Let’s just pretend for the moment that some sort of DNA or CSI type scientific evidence was found to show that the tomb in fact wasn’t empty that first Easter morning.  What would that mean for your understanding of your Christian faith and your relationship with Jesus?

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The message is greater than the miracle

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The Pharisees and Sadducees came to Jesus and tested him by asking him to show them a sign from heaven.  ² He replied, “When evening comes, you say, ‘It will be fair weather, for the sky is red,’ ³ and in the morning, ‘Today it will be stormy, for the sky is red and overcast.’ You know how to interpret the appearance of the sky, but you cannot interpret the signs of the times.^[a] 4 A wicked and adulterous generation looks for a sign, but none will be given it except the sign of Jonah.” Jesus then left them and went away. (Matthew 16:1-4 NIV)

¹⁶ Jesus answered, “My teaching is not my own. It comes from the one who sent me. ¹⁷ Anyone who chooses to do the will of God will find out whether my teaching comes from God or whether I speak on my own." (John 7:16-17)

The Gospel writers may well have borrowed the already popular theme of a dying and resurrected god from the various mystery cults and religions which would have been well known in their time and location. Tammuz, Osiris, Dionysus, Adonis, Attis, and Baal all had the same story.  However, for the Gospel writers and Paul to portray Jesus as having been raised from the dead and seated at the right hand of God was also the ultimate affirmation of both Jesus and his message.  This story states that God validates Jesus' teaching and affirms that it, "comes from God", the symbol of legitimacy and authority.

For me, a world where Jesus' Resurrection was disproven would not change the Truth of Christianity and of “who Christ is” as the “Son of God” and “my Savior”, would not change.  Jesus, the humble king who shares our sorrows, would still be my Lord over Caesar who staked his claim for divinity on the right of power and brutality.  The story of Jesus as the picture of God’s true nature and love for us would still ring True.  It would still be True because I have experienced that God, and that love, and recognize it.

Going to Sunday School as a child in the United Church of Canada, one of my favorite songs from the, "Alfred Ackley Sunday School Favorites", was, “He Lives”.  The end of that chorus, just like it did for me back then, still today says it all.

You ask me how I know He lives?

He lives within my heart!