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Jewish writings. In here, Jesus is identified as the "possibly illegitimate son of a man named Panther. Jesus worked magic, ridiculed the wise, seduced and stirred up the people, gathered five disciples about him, was hanged (crucified) on the eve of passover." And recently archaeologists discovered the tomb of Caiaphas, the high priest who helped engineer the death of Jesus. But accepting Jesus' historical existence does nothing to explain who he was.
Jesus has been characterized as an uneducated peasant by some groups. In an article titled "Sepphoris" in the May/June issue of Biblical Archaeology Review, Richard Batey proposes that Jesus probably had been in the city of Sepphoris often, and may have even worked there as a carpenter since Sepphoris is only about an hour's walk from Nazareth. Batey says that archaelogogists have determined that Sepphoris was a "Greco-Roman metropolis boasting upwards of 30,000 inhabitants..." and for three decades was the capitol of Galilee and Perea. In a footnote to this article Batey mentions that many scholars now accept that Jesus spoke Greek as well as Aramaic, and that some of the parables may have been composed originally in Greek. These ideas are in harmony with the account of Jesus' life in The Urantia Book. The evidence points to a Jesus who was multi-lingual and well educated for a man of his time, not an illiterate peasant. The ideas about Jesus seem as numerous and varied as pebbles on the beach.
A Jesus for Everyone
To the Christian fundamentalist, Jesus is God allowing himself to be crucified to save unworthy and sinful humanity from everlasting punishment. While most Christians of mainline Protestant churches would accept that Jesus is a divine being, they would be likely to see him as a bridge to God, rather than a sacrificial lamb. To the liberal Christian, Jesus may be only a great moralist and teacher. To the Moslem, Jesus is a prophet, an equal of Mohammed but not the Son of God. To the Hindu, Jesus may be an Avatar, a Hindu deity who incarnated on earth. To the Buddhist, Jesus might be a Bodhisattva, one who in mercy forsakes the release of Nirvana to return to earth and minister to humankind. To the Jew, Jesus might be either one of a group of false messiahs who worked the crowds around the time Jesus lived, or a good Jewish teacher who got in trouble with the authorities. To the agnostic, Jesus is a possibility; to the atheist, much ado about nothing. Rev. Bill Hammond, a Unitarian minister, in his sermon "Jesus, What Manner of Man?" sees Jesus as a man who started out as a magician but who later came to be seen as the Messiah by his followers. In a recent book, The Historical Jesus, John Dominic Crossman portrays Jesus as a teacher of peasant equalitarianism. He asserts that the Last Supper, Jesus' resurrection and Ascension weren't real events but "dramatic visualizations." So many books! So many Jesus's! As I read all this, I am reminded of an old saying: What Peter says about Paul tells more about Peter than it does about Paul. Likewise, perhaps what is written about Jesus tells more about the writer than about Jesus. Why is this so?
There are several things that make research of Jesus' life so difficult. First, except for one incident, the life of Jesus as depicted in the Bible is a blank from the time he is a few years old until he starts his public ministry at 30. There have been many speculations as to what he did during this time, but none are provable. Another problem is that unless you agree that the scriptures are infallible, you have a hard time separating what Jesus really said from the words that were put into Jesus' mouth by the writers and revisors of the scriptures. There is a group of scholars who have been trying for years to determine what Jesus really said. They feel that Jesus said less than a third of the words attributed to him. Their work uses the techniques of critical scholarship to winnow the words of Jesus from the added chaff. Unfortunately, the sayings of Jesus thought to be genuine form a very small part of the New Testament, hardly enough material with which to resurrect the historical Jesus. Another problem scholars have in putting together a picture of Jesus is that he did not reveal what he believed about himself except by his reactions to others. He simply called himself the Son of Man. He apparently accepted the title of Messiah rather reluctantly. It seems that he had a different notion of himself, but he couldn't overcome the preconceived Messianic expectations of his Jewish apostles. Scholars have therefore been free to put all sorts of notions into the mind of Jesus, some profound, some foolish, and all perhaps in error. So what are we to make of this Jesus if the experts can't agree?
What Did Jesus Really Say?
While we can't always be certain what he did say, there are some things we can be sure he didn't say, ideas that are not among his words in the Bible. He never taught that humankind once lived in a state of innocence in some garden paradise until the Gods felt threatened and threw them out. He never taught that we inherited the sins of someone called Adam. He never taught that he was born of a virgin. He never taught that his mother, the Apostles or some priest could be an intercessor between us and God. He never taught that he was God. He did say, "I and the Father are one," but this can be interpreted in any number of ways. He never taught that his purpose in coming here was to die on a cross to satisfy the justice of a stern God-judge. While he didn't condemn the concept of a church, he didn't require that we should gather once a week in large ornate buildings to repeat words and sing songs written hundreds of years ago, and listen to someone give a half hour talk. It was Paul, not Jesus, who taught the doctrine of the depravity of man. Jesus condemned the sin, not the sinner. There is much in Christian theology and practice that Jesus never taught.
Despite the distortions and additions in the New Testament, perhaps enough of the spirit
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