Jesus was not who you think he was

I grew up as a devout Christian. My Baptist church had a heavy influence on me. Jesus died for my sins, and I was forever indebted to him. I was a “red letter” Christian who hung on every word from Jesus. My faith was focused on making certain that I end up in heaven. The stories Jesus told were earthly stories with heavenly meanings. Jesus was a teacher of spiritual truth and divine wisdom.

Then came seminary. I was exposed to a different kind of study of the Bible. It was while I was in seminary that I learned the Bible is like every other book in that every word, every sentence, every paragraph was written by a human being and in a context. Everything that is reported about Jesus had a context.

Early in the effort to understand Jesus in context, scholars concluded that Roman soldiers, not Jews, crucified Jesus. Jesus was killed because he was a social and political rabble-rouser. Roman rulers could not have cared less about Jesus’ ideas about heaven. They killed him for political reasons. The idea that Jesus was a universal sacrifice for the sins of the whole world is a theological construction of Paul, who never knew Jesus and had little knowledge of his life.

Paul became the early church’s theologian. He was a brilliant thinker. He had unbound energy. He was literate and wrote voluminously. In his many writings, Paul never indicates any awareness of the life of Jesus or his teachings. He had an experience of the resurrected Christ on the road to Damascus, and he developed theology to fit his experience and his background in Judaism.

Everyone acknowledges that Jesus was a historical figure who grew up in Galilee in Northern Palestine. We have few verifiable facts of his life. His disciples were not writers and none of the gospel writings can be traced to them. The gospels that we have in the Bible are collections of oral traditions reduced to writing and enlarged by unknown writers two generations after the death of Jesus.

In the early 20th century, Albert Schweitzer wrote one of the most important books of the century. The title, “The Quest of the Historical Jesus,” clearly states the purpose of his study. Schweitzer and everyone else agree that Schweitzer’s quest was unsuccessful, but Schweitzer kicked off a search that will not go away.

We are now in the third wave of the quest of the historical Jesus. New tools have been developed and a different kind of Jesus has begun to emerge.

The methodology of the third wave is interdisciplinary. Historians, archaeologists, sociologists and anthropologists along with Biblical scholars have been enlisted in the effort to construct a context in which to understand Jesus. The context that has been developed includes politics, economics and social structures. First-century historian Josephus has been a bonanza of information that has helped construct a context for understanding Jesus. Jesus cannot be understood apart from the advanced agrarian society in which he lived, the growth of aristocratic empires in the first century, and the power and presence of Roman rule.

New attempts are being made to understand the Judaism of the first century and the tortured relationship between temple leaders and Roman rulers. The temple practices of Jews were tolerated by Roman rulers as long as temple rulers controlled their people. Temple rulers effectively controlled the Jews of southern Palestine, but were not able to control the Jews of Galilee.

Galilee has always been a special place in the social, religious and economic life of Palestine. Even the Romans could not control Galileans. The Romans built Sepphoris and Tiberius from which to control the Galilean areas. Galileans despised the two cities and avoided all contact with the cities. Unjust rulers and greedy aristocrats lived in the two cities. There is no record that Jesus ever went to either city, even though Nazareth was a mere four miles from Sepphoris.

Rural Galilee was a hotbed of the Zealots. The Zealots of Galilee made no secret of their contempt for Roman rule and advocated re-establishment of the nation of Israel through violent overthrow. They despised the Jews who had become cooperators with an evil empire.

The emerging picture of the context of Jesus includes the dominant influence of the Zealots among the poor. A Zealot of Galilee was always armed with a weapon, typically a sharpened knife. The gospels identify Peter as a Zealot. By tradition, Jesus told Peter, “Put away your sword.”

Jesus challenged the rule of the Romans, their aristocrat economic oppressors and the Jewish rulers of the Jerusalem temple. His concerns for the poor and the disenfranchised were an echo of the Zealots. The material that we have in the gospels strongly suggests that he parted company with the Zealots over the tools of revolution.

Our best evidence is that Jesus was a social and political radical. He was an advocate for the poor and had no regard for the rich. Those who today want to separate politics, social ethics, wealth and poverty from religion are not following the lead of Jesus from Nazareth.

The Rev. Howard Bess is a retired American Baptist minister, who lives in Palmer. His email address is hdbss@mtaonline.net.

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