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The way of "death:" The "way of death" did not mean physical death. Rather it was a metaphor for an internal process. On the one hand it is a dying of the self as the center of its own concern. On the other hand it is a dying to the world as the center of security and identity. The path of transformation entails a dying to both. The "world" to which one must die is the world of conventional wisdom. The self that must die is the self-preoccupied self. Then can be born a self which is centered in God, in Spirit, and not in culture.
However, the central movement in such dying is a handing over, a surrendering, a letting go, and a radical centering in God--the path of transformation is a "dying" to the self and to the world. (TUB 153:3)
From The Urantia Book: "Thus did the Master elect to discuss and expose the folly of the whole rabbinic system of rules and regulations which was represented by the oral law--the traditions of the elders, all of which were regarded as more sacred and more binding upon the Jews than even the teachings of the Scriptures. And Jesus spoke out with less reserve because he knew the hour had come when he could do nothing more to prevent an open rupture of relations with these religious leaders."
Jesus as a Transformative Sage
Jesus was not the first in Jewish history to criticize conventional wisdom. The authors of Ecclesiastes and Job protested against the concept from Proverbs that the righteous would prosper and the wicked wither. They were subversive sages who challenged the popular wisdom of their day.
Jesus stood in this tradition of subversive wisdom, using the conventional forms of the wisdom of his day to subvert their own reality. For example his picture of God as gracious undermined the conventional belief that God rewarded the righteous and punished the wicked--which easily became a snare enticing the self to become preoccupied in external material matters. (TUB 4:3;
Jesus taught an alternative way of being shaped by one's relationship to God. He was thus not only a subversive sage but also a transformative one.
There is a connection between Jesus' experience as a Spirit-filled person and the path which he taught. His intensity of perception and conviction together with the vividness of his language surely have their origin in Jesus' personal experience as a Spirit-filled person. And unlike the subversive sages of the Old Testament who tended to carry out their criticism in scholarly circles, Jesus carried his criticism of conventional wisdom directly to the public. He founded a revitalization movement which sought the transformation of the historical path of his people.
Jesus as revitalization (transformation) movement founder: Jesus was political in the important sense of the shaping of a community living in history. His concern was not simply the individual and the individual's relationship to God--though obviously he was concerned about that. But the way of transformation he taught included the particularities of his social world and the crisis which was convulsing it (Rome). He challenged both the conventional wisdom of his social world and its politics of holiness--dedication to the Law and the Torah.
We commonly think of Jesus as the founder of Christianity but strictly speaking this is not historically true. His immediate purpose was the transformation of the Jewish social world. Christianity as a religion separate from Judaism came into existence as the result of a historical process over several decades following Jesus' death and resurrection. As a transformation movement within Judaism, it failed. Though most of its members were Palestinian Jews, it did not capture the allegiance of the majority of the Jewish people.
The major factor leading to separation was the success of the Jesus movement in the Mediterranean world outside of Palestine. There it quickly became a mixed community of Jews and Gentiles, and the more Gentiles the movement attracted the more it became distinct from Judaism.
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