The Invention of Christianity Flashcards
Biblical historian’s basic rule: The less theological sense a claim makes the more likely it is to be true.
- Because, if the Bible’s authors were going to make things up, they wouldn’t write down things that didn’t fit in with their theology.
- Chances are the fact that something doesn’t make sense or fit in means that it really is a fact that cannot be denied or ignored.
- That’s one reason King Josiah’s zealous devotion to Yahweh is credible: He dies an ignoble death and Israel’s fortunes spiral downward; it would have been more convenient for the editors of the Bible to describe him as a polytheist who incurred God’s wrath. In other words, his opposition to polytheism is an inconvenient fact which cannot be left out because it was known to be true.
The Crucifixion of Jesus
- No written reference to it until two decades after his death, but it can be assumed that it really did happen because it makes so little theological sense.
- Today, Christians believe that Jesus’ crucifixion makes a lot of sense because it embodies one of Christianity’s central themes, God’s love for humanity.
- In the ancient world, gods were beings to whom one made sacrifices, but here was a god that made himself a sacrifice, the ultimate sacrifice for his creatures.
- All of humanity’s sins could be wiped out by God’s self-sacrificing redemption.
The Resurrection of Jesus was an equally potent symbol.
- It showed both the possibility of eternal life and the fact that anybody of any ethnic group or social class could qualify for it.
- Universal salvation was being offered from a deeply compassionate and giving God, symbolized by the crucifixion of his son.
the Crucifixion did not seem so convenient when it happened
- For the followers of Jesus, the Crucifixion was not only emotionally wrenching, but also a serious problem.
- Jesus was supposed to be the Messiah. In the time of Jesus, losing your life was not what a Messiah did.
- Messiah: “to anoint”
- Sometimes Israelite kings were anointed and called messiah, “God’s anointed one.”
- At the time of Jesus’ birth, different Jewish sects believed that the coming of a messiah was imminent and that this messiah would enter into the final battle with God’s enemies.
- The common expectation was that this person would be a king.
- The messiah would triumph over evil by exercising leadership here on earth, which meant not dying before the battle began.
Messiah
“to anoint”
The “Historical Jesus”
- Little hard evidence about the “historical Jesus”.
- Gospel account of his life was written sometime between 65-100 CE. By that time the stories circulating about him had been shaped by the needs of his followers.
- The gospel of Mark is considered to be the most factually reliable of the four gospels. Written around 70 CE. During its composition there would have still been people alive who had witnessed the doings and sayings of Jesus, which would limit the authors inventiveness. As this population shrank during the next decade, the other gospel authors had more creative freedom to embellish.
Mark’s stories are less varnished than the later gospels
- The problem of Jesus coming from a small village called Nazareth, when the Hebrew Bible says that the messiah would be born in Bethlehem.
- Mark never talks about how Jesus of Nazareth could have been born in Bethlehem but Matthew and Luke do.
- Luke: Parents went to Bethlehem for a census.
- Matthew: Parents live in Bethlehem but move to Nazareth after fleeing to Egypt.
- This contradiction between the two suggests that Mark, the earliest gospel, is the most truthful: Jesus of Nazareth was Jesus of Nazareth.
The Jesus of Mark is adventurous, 40 days in the wilderness. A “vision quest
A vision quest is a rite of passage in some Native American cultures. When an older child is ready, he or she will go on a personal, spiritual quest alone in the wilderness, often in conjunction with a period of fasting. This usually lasts for a number of days while the young person is attuned to the spirit world. Usually, a guardian animal will come in a vision or dream, and the child’s life direction will appear at some point. The person returns to the tribe, and once the he or she has grown, will pursue that direction in life. After a vision quest, the person may become an apprentice of an adult in the tribe of the shown direction (medicine man, boat maker, etc.). Psychologically, it may have effected hallucinations. It may include long walking on uninhabited, mountainous areas (tundra, inland, mountain); fasting; sleep deprivation; or being enclosed in a small room.
His two-fold mission
- Healing, exorcising, like a classic shaman of primitive society.
- Preaching the arrival of the Kingdom of God, a time when “the last shall be first and the first shall be last.”
Where is the Love?
Criteria for admission in the Kingdom - his authentic moral teachings
- In Mark, the word “love” appears in only one passage: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. And you shall love your neighbor as yourself.”
- The neighbor is one’s fellow-Israelite.
- In Mark, the Jesus we know today is not the Jesus who really existed.
- You should love your neighbors but not necessarily all of humankind.
- You should love God, but there is not mention of God loving you.
- There is no Sermon on the Mount, no beatitudes, no “Blessed are the meek”, or “Turn the other cheek” or “Love your enemy.
The Gospel According to Q
- Matthew and Luke share many stories and they are either found in Mark or they aren’t.
- Scholars infer that these authors had access to another earlier source, “Q”, and Q does contain the Sermon on the Mount: “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy, but I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.”
- This sounds like universal love, but it may just be a mandate to love the enemies among the Jews, not the enemies of the Jews, the Gentiles.
- Luke: The mandate of love is carried beyond the bounds of Israel: The parable of the Good Samaritan.
- It explicitly carries love across ethnic bounds, but it is not found in either Mark or Q.
- There is an Israeli-centric nature to the coming kingdom of God. The twelve disciples are to each rule one of the twelve tribes of the reconstituted Israel once the kingdom of God has arrived.
What Exactly Was New?
Jesus was an apocalyptic prophet and the Kingdom of God was going to be a kingdom here on earth, which would place Israel and Israel’s God front and center.
- This kingdom would fulfill the hope of the Jewish people - a kingdom where Israel was secure and peaceful, and where the Gentiles would serve the God of Israel.
