The politics of Jesus

[sooda]

Now make a comprehensive list of all the Christian denominations and see if you can include them all in one post.

In the first century AD? This is not a contest of any sort.

We are talking about the political environment in the first century.

Are you OK?

 

[Dawnofhope]

In the first century AD? This is not a contest of any sort.

We are talking about the political environment in the first century.

Are you OK?

I’m really good but thanks for your concern.

Go back to the OP and you will realise the post is about Jesus coming back today and where he would stand in regards politics. I argued he would be more concerned about the state of religion, particularly the one that bears His name. See the parallel?

 

[Vouthon]

As another has said, I don’t believe Jesus would involve Himself in politics at all, rather focus on much needed reform of the prevailing religious institutions. In Jesus’s day Judasim was corrupt and divided. It was too far gone and a New Revelation was necessary.

The strongest criticisms were not levelled at the Romans but at the most powerful and influential Jewish sects. Ironically it was an unholy alliance of Jewish leaders and the Romans that orchestrated Jesus’s execution.

So if Jesus were to step into the world today He would bring religious not political reform. I doubt if He would care too much for the state of the Church that bears His name, yet is divided and unable to care for its flick let alone minister to the urgent spiritual needs of society around them.

Great post Adrian!

While I can certainly see where you are coming from with this, I'm not sure I would entirely agree.

Firstly, in the context in which Jesus found himself - Roman Palestine of the first century - political and religious authority (indeed politics and religion in general) was not divisible. So Jesus would have known that in threatening the high priests of the Temple in Judea, client-rulers alongside the procurator of the Roman imperium and the Tetrarch Herod Antipas in Galilee, he was making politically charged claims against his government.

Likewise, in proclaiming a 'divine kingdom' that was superior to and also in radical subversion of the inequities of Roman society, he was implicitly undermining the sacral foundations of the Empire - Caesar Augustus was a 'god-emperor' and his cult of worship the official state creed, let's remember.

Jesus's forerunner, whose movement he had originally himself been a part of, John the Baptist's, had directly challenged the regime and foreign relations of Tetrarch Herod Antipas in Galilee, by denouncing his marriage. As Josephus informs us:

Josephus on John the Baptist - Livius

[18.116] Now some of the Jews thought that the destruction of Herod's army came from God as a just punishment of what Herod had done against John, who was called the Baptist.

[18.117] For Herod had killed this good man...

[18.118] Now many people came in crowds to him, for they were greatly moved by his words. Herod, who feared that the great influence John had over the masses might put them into his power and enable him to raise a rebellion (for they seemed ready to do anything he should advise), thought it best to put him to death

​

After John's death, Jesus denounced the same Herod - his 'sovereign', Jesus being a subject Galilean - with a slur: calling him a 'fox':

"At that time some Pharisees came to Jesus and said to him, “Leave this place and go somewhere else. Herod wants to kill you.” He replied, “Go tell that fox, ‘I will drive out demons and heal people today and tomorrow, and on the third day I will reach my goal.'” (Luke 13:31-32)​

That doesn't look like political quietism to me. The modern equivalent would be, "you say Trump has sent assassins to kill me and that I need to get outta here real quick, and go to Canada to lie low for a while? Go tell that b****** to.....", ahem.

If transposed to today, therefore, I'm not sure that he would be politically quietist (which is distinct from his pacifism, he would have been a pacifist in our terms and a teacher of non-violent protest) - he definitely wasn't in his own time and evidently wasn't perceived as being either by the chief priests and Roman procurator.

This is demonstrated by the grisly manner of his 'death': what Tacitus, the Roman historian writing about Christ, rightly referred to as the "supreme penalty"; a capital punishment so severe, hideous and public that it was only meted out to two classes of people - for sedition by rebels and bandits that had challenged the imperial order, or slaves who had rebelled against their masters. Jesus was a lower artisan or peasant, not a slave, so we have only one reason left as for why he was executed by crucifixion.

As Professor Helen K Bond explains in a recent study:


E.P. Sanders and the ‘Trial’ of Jesus in: Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus Volume 13 Issue 2-3 Year 2015

A comparison with the case of Jesus ben Ananias is particularly instructive: appearing at the feast of Tabernacles in 62 ce and repeatedly prophesying against the Temple, ben Ananias was arrested by the Jewish leaders and passed over to the Roman procurator, Albinus, who after hearing him concluded that he was mad, flogged him and let him go (War 6.300–309).25

Jesus of Nazareth, in comparison, was much more dangerous: he had a following, talked about a kingdom, and had performed a physical action in the Temple. Both men were heard at the highest level by Jewish and Roman authorities, though the reasons for the harsher sentence in the case of Jesus of Nazareth are clear.​

Jesus ben Ananias had been a prophet of looming apocalypse when he caused a disturbance in the Jewish Temple, falling on his knees and crying out that Jerusalum was doooomeeed, thus disrupting the currency-exchange and market activities.

The High Priests and Romans didn't 'crucify' Ben Ananias. They were calculating machiavellians bent on preserving their complicated imperial bargain of protected privilege through tax returns and the good order necessary to uphold it, but not irrational law-enforcers. They didn't nail people to crosses simply for the fun of it! Jesus ben Ananias was deemed a harmless mystic after questioning, whereas Jesus of Nazareth was deemed a "danger" to the state (both the priestly and imperial regimes).

On the surface they both preached in Jerusalem against the temple. Not the first Jewish apocalyticists to do so, and wouldn't be the last either. What was it about Jesus of Nazareth that made the authorities feel so threatened, that they felt it necessary to execute him under the most severe penalty known to Roman law?

As the New Testament scholar Professor Larry Hurtado has noted in this regard:


Lord Jesus Christ

The outcome of the arrest of Jesus of Nazareth means that he must have been taken as a much more serious threat than the poor wretch described by Josephus, and that probably something more than a disturbance in the temple courts during a tense holy-day period was involved.

​

As has been noted in my references from scholars in the OP, "Jesus' message was controversial and threatening to the established institutions of religious and political power in his society: the message carried with it a fundamental transvaluation of values, an exalting of the humble and a critique of the mighty" ( Professor Richard Hays (Moral Vision of the New Testament, p. 164).

Jesus knew what he was doing - his own predecessor and teacher, John the Baptist, had himself been executed for challenging the moral legitimacy of Herod Antipas' regime as Tetrarch in Galilee. Yet in spite of that, Jesus not only politically insulted Herod once over (demonstrating that he was continuing in John's footsteps with the path he'd laid) but crossed over to neighbouring Roman-occupied Judea itself (Galilee was a client-buffer state under its own puppet monarch and his army, no Roman soldiers patrolled it unlike in Judea), and took the message there to the Jewish Temple at the heart of Roman - priestly order in Palestine (a province, Judea, saturated with Roman soldiers and Temple police): throwing over the tables of the money-changers and calling the entire 'outfit' a den of thieves, while proclaiming his own radically egalitarian "kingdom" that was neither the priestly nor the Roman one.

If that's not political action in a theocratic priestly regime under an empire ruled by a god-king Caesar....what is?

 

[Dawnofhope]

Great post Adrian!

While I can certainly see where you are coming from with this, I'm not sure I would entirely agree.

Thank you for your response and you argue a case like a true lawyer! In law it is about creating palusible narrative. The story you have provided is certainly compelling and I admire your research and scholarship on the subject which certainly excels any work I have put in by several orders of magnitide. You may be right in much of what you have to say but at this stage it feels like a portrait of Jesus that departs significantly from the Gospels and the New Testament that I know and love. You have recreated Jesus and some important history. I have a theory about why this has happened through out the twentieth century but I'll leave that for now.

Do we have enough information that is external to the New Testament itself that would inform us about Jesus? I don't think we do. Apart from Josephus and Tactitus, which isn't a lot, we don't have too much to go on. I suppose the new sect Jesus created at the time was relatively obscure and just didn't make the news. There is obviously a great deal more that we can know about the Roman Empire and some of that is relevant, for example the types of punsihments they used for criminals and under what circumstances as you have mentioned.

So I suppose with any forensic analysis we start with intent? Did Jesus attempt to subvert the Roman Empire? Was He planning a revolution and to incite His people in rebellion so He could establish a new pattern of social life, the kingdom of God?

Jesus made some important statements that admittedly can be intrepreted in a variety of ways.

1/ The Kingdom of God with within.

And when he was demanded of the Pharisees, when the kingdom of God should come, he answered them and said, The kingdom of God cometh not with observation:
Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you.
And he said unto the disciples, The days will come, when ye shall desire to see one of the days of the Son of man, and ye shall not see it.
Luke 17:20-22

These verses speak of a process of inner spiritual transformation, not of establishing a new socialist type order. The establishment of socialism as we know it wasn't going to happen until the twentieth century. I doubt if the Roman Empire was ready for socilaism back then.

The whole message of Jesus is about spiritual transformation of course.For example:

Jesus answered and said unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.
John 3:3

Does that sound like a rebellion to you or simply giving your life over to the Teachings of Christ and being personally transformed, a new creation! Then he sees the kingdon of God which of course is within.

2/ The kingdom of God is not of this world.
Jesus answered, My kingdom is not of this world: if my kingdom were of this world, then would my servants fight, that I should not be delivered to the Jews: but now is my kingdom not from hence.
John 18:36

This has to be the clearest indication that the kingdom of God isn't worldly. If it was, His followers would be fighting. It wasn't, so they bult the church instead, know as the body of Christ. That's the true meaning of the resurrection.

These words spoken by Jesus were to Pontius Pilate. Pilate doesn't have any clear idea about who Jesus is and wonders about a King. I don't think it takes Him too long to twig that he has an innocent man. If we read the narrative from John 18 we see it is the men and officers of the chief priests and Pharisees that have come to collect Him. They take him to Caiaphas the chief Priest, who finds him guilty of blasphemy as He claimed to be the Son of God.

But Jesus held his peace, And the high priest answered and said unto him, I adjure thee by the living God, that thou tell us whether thou be the Christ, the Son of God.
Jesus saith unto him, Thou hast said: nevertheless I say unto you, Hereafter shall ye see the Son of man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven.
Then the high priest rent his clothes, saying, He hath spoken blasphemy; what further need have we of witnesses? behold, now ye have heard his blasphemy.
What think ye? They answered and said, He is guilty of death.
Matthew 26:63-66

Then Jesus was handed over to Pilate. So no political charges, just a religious charge of blasphemy. No intent to subvert the Roman Empire and Pilate doesn't seem to be saying He's planning a rebellion. But I agree it possible the Pharisees have given the Romans the run around and portrayed him as a trouble maker and risk.

I wonder if we need to look at Luke 13:31-32 again.
The same day there came certain of the Pharisees, saying unto him, Get thee out, and depart hence: for Herod will kill thee.
And he said unto them, Go ye, and tell that fox, Behold, I cast out devils, and I do cures to day and to morrow, and the third day I shall be perfected.

The Pharisees aren't trying to help Jesus out. They are trying to trick Him and out manouvre Him.They are probably trying to scare him off and Jesus simply answers with a riddle (an allusion to his death and resurrection) that goes completely over the heads of the Pharisees. But I concede its possible Herod got wind of this and became suspicious. The Romans sure were jumpy when it came to the Jews and for good reason. They ended up rebelling in 66 AD. I think it was the Jews themselves who found political expediency in the death of one man dying for the people (John 18:14) and used Jesus as a scapegoat.

 

[Samantha Rinne]

In today's terms, where do you think Jesus would sit on the 'political spectrum' (if transferred into our secular thought) and how would you define his politics?

Here's my take on it (please provide your own with justifications!)

Scholarly reconstructions of the biblical data may assist us here:

"...Jesus' message was controversial and threatening to the established institutions of religious and political power in his society: the message carried with it a fundamental transvaluation of values, an exalting of the humble and a critique of the mighty. The theme of reversal seems to have been pervasive in his thought […] This reversal motif is built into the deep structure of Jesus' message, present in all layers of the tradition […] a foundational element of Jesus' teaching."

- Professor Richard Hays (Moral Vision of the New Testament, p. 164)​

"...a ‘revolutionary’ or ‘subversive’ attitude towards empire, wealth, and inequality is an integral part of the earliest [Jesus] tradition and a product of socio-economic changes in Palestine as Jesus was growing up...the Jesus movement interacted with the[se] social upheavals in Galilee and Judea, as well as the Roman empire more broadly. The earliest Palestinian tradition pitted the kingdom of God against Rome, attacked wealth and privilege, supported the poorest members of society, and saw Jesus as an agent of the kingdom in both present and future [in which] rich and poor would be reversed."

- Professor James G. Crossley (Jesus and the Chaos of History: Redirecting the Life of the Historical Jesus, p.163)


"...The kingdom of God is characterized by the active identification and critique of coercive relations of power, and the enactment of new, egalitarian modes of social life. This is seen, perhaps most acutely, in the recurrent, general motif of reversal which is typical of traditions associated with Jesus [....] The socio-political nature of much of this reversal is obvious to a modern reader without knowledge of the specific political, religious and cultural context of first-century Palestine – though such knowledge is necessary for a fuller exploration of its implications.

In Jesus' vision, the kingdom belonged to the poor, not the rich; to the hungry, not those who were full; to the tax-collectors and prostitutes not chiefs priests and the aristocrats; to children not adults; to sinners and not the righteous. Its values were exemplified by foreigners, beggars, and impoverished widows not the religiously, politically and economically powerful. We find this theme in aphorisms, commandments, and sayings ascribed to the historical Jesus, but, perhaps above all, in the parables [...] But perhaps the most compelling evidence of socio-political reversal in traditions associated with Jesus is the recurrent portrayal of his own praxis, as someone who lived with the outcasts and the socially marginal, and in an almost constant state of conflict with those who were not.

The theme of reversal functions not just to expose a number of inequitable relationships, but also to make visible and valorise the powerless within them, and their needs and their desires. In addition to the theme of reversal we can see a significant cluster of traditions in which exploitation, whether economic, legal, theocratic, military, or medical, is exposed and condemned, and responses advocated or made available that affirm both the agency of the oppressed and their capacity to resist such oppression."

- Professor Justin Meggitt (Anachronism, anarchism and the historical Jesus, p.18-19)

​

For a comprehensive (and now classic) study of the theme of reversal in the ethics of Jesus see Allen Verhey, The Great Reversal: Ethics and the New Testament (Exeter: Paternoster, 1984)

Personally, in light of the clear evidence, I'd have to place Jesus firmly on the left-wing - at least economically and in terms of the social good - and if pushed to be more precise, probably somewhere between pacifist anarchism and revolutionary socialism.

My rationale runs as follows:

One of the things the majority of historical Jesus scholars can agree on (in spite of the myriad of competing and overlapping perspectives, ranging from apocalyptic prophet, prophet of social change, cynic philosopher, charismatic healer etc.), is that his entire worldview was anchored in the belief in something scholars call a "great reversal" of fortune.

This 'reversal', however conceptualised (and that depends on your paradigm of the historical Jesus), would see the traditional hierarchy of society upended and subverted, with those presently at the bottom of the social order - the poor, the dispossessed, the disabled, prostitutes, the socially marginalised - somehow placed at the top in the 'kingdom', whereas those presently at the highest rungs of society - the rich, the kings, rulers, nobility, priests, teachers of the law - would find themselves cast down to the bottom. (In simplistic terms).

There is basically no scholar trying to reconstruct the historical Jesus who doesn't accept this socio-political-moral belief as being paradigmatic of his worldview. This teaching, one might say basic assumption, is woven into so many disparate logia (sayings), parables and stories in the synoptic tradition, that it has to be accepted as a basic axiom of 'Jesusism'. If we can say at least one thing about what the historical Jesus might have taught, then we can would aver that he taught a great social reversal.

And whatever way you cut it, if transplanted to today, a modern-day Jesus would not be a conservative or defender of the status quo with such a radical ideological standpoint. He would be on the 'left': an opponent of the established institutions of privilege, unequal structures, distribution of resources and power relations / exploitative relationships that preyed on the weak in society. Certainly, if 'conservatism' is nowadays defined by capitalist economics, Jesus would not have supported it. I don't think that's seriously contestable.

Moving on to specifics - what kind of 'leftist' would he be in our contemporary, secular terms? (again just my opinion)

(continued....)

Read an article entitled "Jesus was not a Socialist." Wait, I can find such for you.

No, Jesus was not a socialist - WND

Jesus Was Not a Socialist -

Two articles actually.

Yes, Jesus was a radical against traditional teachings, yes, he did believe in feeding the poor. But do you think that wealthy business ppl donate NOTHING to others? No there are generous people among all social classes (even among the poor themselves) and political parties.

Jesus didn't put the lame on social welfare. He healed them. He also told them to do stuff, rather than coddling them. He said stuff like "the poor are always with us" when someone demanded he help the poor.

In fact, Judas at one point talks about a woman wasting costly ointment that could be given to help the poor and suffering. What does the Bible say happens? Well, first they're quick to point out that this so-called virtue of Judas is an act, that he's treasurer and probably embezzling to spend on himself (a note to would be liberal socialists, we know that you aren't as virtuous as you act, we're okay with it until you pull crap like this). Jesus tolerates this, but has no time for it here, telling him to leave that woman alone.

He also wasn't in with the renegades and radicals like Barabbas. He was law-abiding for the most part, observed all the Jewish customs and holidays (though he saw something wrong with Sabbath).

But as tempting as it would be for to paint him conservative, he wasn't really that either. He would probably in this day and age, have a problem with the church clergy hierarchy, just as he had an issue with the Pharisees. He actually gives the disciples two different messages about swords (not to attack soldiers for they'll die by the sword, tells them when they travel not to carry swords or staff or extra robe, but at another point he tells them to own a weapon) making him neither for nor against gun control.

Sorry, he's not liberal or conservative. Today, he would probably be a nonvoter unless one side or the other became too extreme.

 

[Vouthon]

Thank you for your response and you argue a case like a true lawyer! In law it is about creating palusible narrative. The story you have provided is certainly compelling and I admire your research and scholarship on the subject which certainly excels any work I have put in by several orders of magnitide.

You are too kind Adrian, many thanks for your warm words.

You may be right in much of what you have to say but at this stage it feels like a portrait of Jesus that departs significantly from the Gospels and the New Testament that I know and love. You have recreated Jesus and some important history. I have a theory about why this has happened through out the twentieth century but I'll leave that for now.

Undoubtedly, I'm not approaching this topic with my "believer's hat" on. I'm a Christian. I regard Jesus as the Son of God, the Messiah, the Second Person of the Trinity according to the Nicene creed and the Bible as a written witness inspired by God.

However, those are spiritual and metaphysical beliefs that cannot be proven or disproved on the basis of historical-criticism. They are, thus, left sacrosanct by any honest, secular analysis of the textual, extra-canonical, ancient historical and archaeological research that seeks to reconstruct the historical Jesus.

When one engages with Jesus, not as an object of worship or veneration, but as a historical person in a given context - academic integrity mandates such an approach.

And, unsurprisingly, the results might conflict (somewhat) with the homiletical and apologetic portrait of Jesus we are familiar with from devotional accounts. That's not a 'dent' on their divine origin - Jesus himself spoke in parables! But the gospels are not ancient history in the way Josephus or Tacitus or Herodotus is ancient history. They are often remarkably precise accounts (such as the Johannine gospel's incredible topographical knowledge) and are based on clearly identifiable preceding oral traditions but also highly selective accounts, taking certain 'facts' and oral traditions about Jesus a number of decades after his death (as well as from prior written texts, like the Q sayings source that may underlie the synoptic tradition; the Passion narrative in the Gospel of John which appears to be the oldest of the lot etc.) and skilfully weaving them together with apologetic intent to persuade the reader of the truth of Jesus's mission as understood by the early Christian movement.

For that reason, historical - criticism exposes areas where the gospel accounts are more likely to be faithfully 'historical' (using comparative analysis with the information we do have) and others were there is a clear homiletic going on, as in the accounts of the trial of Jesus before the chief priests and Roman procurator (which does not match up with what we know about these things in some critical aspects). In both cases - history and homily - the gospels are divinely inspired (just as lists of kings in the Old Testament mingled with legends and poetry are both 'inspired', just in different literary senses!)

(continued....)

 

[Vouthon]

Do we have enough information that is external to the New Testament itself that would inform us about Jesus? I don't think we do. Apart from Josephus and Tactitus, which isn't a lot, we don't have too much to go on. I suppose the new sect Jesus created at the time was relatively obscure and just didn't make the news.

I wouldn't quite say so, and certainly scholars themselves are far more certain. If I might quote Professer Bart Ehrman, as an example of the scholarly consensus (in his 2012 book, "Did Jesus Exist? The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth"):

MODERN SCHOLARS OF THE New Testament are famous—or infamous—for making claims about Jesus that contradict what most people, especially Christians, believe about him....Despite this enormous range of opinion, there are several points on which virtually all scholars of antiquity agree...There was a historical Jesus, who was very much a man of his time. And we can know what he was like....​

Serious historians of the early Christian movement—all of them—have spent many years preparing to be experts in their field. Just to read the ancient sources requires expertise in a range of ancient languages: Greek, Hebrew, Latin, and often Aramaic, Syriac, and Coptic...

It is striking that virtually everyone who has spent all the years needed to attain these qualifications is convinced that Jesus of Nazareth was a real historical figure...

It is a complete “myth” (in the mythicist sense) that Romans kept detailed records of everything and that as a result we are inordinately well informed about the world of Roman Palestine and should expect then to hear about Jesus if he really lived. If Romans kept such records, where are they? We certainly don’t have any. Think of everything we do not know about the reign of Pontius Pilate as governor of Judea. We know from the Jewish historian Josephus that Pilate ruled for ten years, between 26 and 36 CE. It would be easy to argue that he was the single most important figure for Roman Palestine for the entire length of his rule. And what records from that decade do we have from his reign—what Roman records of his major accomplishments, his daily itinerary, the decrees he passed, the laws he issued, the prisoners he put on trial, the death warrants he signed, his scandals, his interviews, his judicial proceedings? We have none. Nothing at all....And what is striking is that we have far more information about Pilate than about any other governor of Judea in Roman times...

It is also worth pointing out that Pilate is mentioned only in passing in the writing of the one Roman historian, Tacitus, who does name him. Moreover, that happens to be in a passage that also refers to Jesus (Annals15). If an important Roman aristocratic ruler of a major province is not mentioned any more than that in the Greek and Roman writings, what are the chances that a lower-class Jewish teacher (which Jesus must have been, as everyone who thinks he lived agrees) would be mentioned in them? ... I might add that our principal source of knowledge about Jewish Palestine in the days of Jesus comes from the historian Josephus, a prominent aristocratic Jew who was extremely influential in the social and political affairs of his day. And how often is Josephus mentioned in Greek and Roman sources of his own day, the first century CE? Never.

What I do hope is to convince genuine seekers who really want to know how we know that Jesus did exist, as virtually every scholar of antiquity, of biblical studies, of classics, and of Christian origins in this country and, in fact, in the Western world agrees. Many of these scholars have no vested interest in the matter. As it turns out, I myself do not either. I am not a Christian, and I have no interest in promoting a Christian cause or a Christian agenda. I am an agnostic with atheist leanings​

Compared with the majority of ancient, first century peasant-prophets from the obscure Palestinian backwater of the Roman Empire (with Jesus ben Ananias being one of them, but many others like Honi the circle-drawer, the nameless Samaritan prophet who in 37 A.D. staged a major rebellion of Mount Gerizim, Judas of Gamala who led the proto-messianic resistance in 6 A.D. etc. etc.), we have more sources on Jesus than we do for them or any other individual in that region of his social class and even of the socially influential upper classes like Josephus (with the exception of John the Baptist, but he's a prophet as well for us anyway!), if one includes the early Christian texts, rabbinical (Talmudic), and the secular Roman-Jewish sources.

Our earliest sources for the life of Jesus are the authentic Pauline epistles - written about a decade to fifteen years after his death (which is very close in time for an ancient person), in which Paul refers to his conversations with people who knew Jesus directly, including his brother James, the apostles Peter, John and others. In both Galatians 1:18-9 and 1 Corinthians 9:5 the “brothers of the Lord” are mentioned. The existence of Jesus’ brother is further strengthened by the fact he is attested outside of Christian texts – in Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews, XX.200-203, where he is described as well-liked notable of Jerusalem whose stoning to death by the chief priests sparked outrage.

Paul was not writing a biography of Jesus, nor was he interested in doing so. He was writing letters to churches he had founded in an attempt to ensure that they overcame factionalism, were thriving and growing, by pushing his understanding of the Jesus movement.

What's fascinating, is that in spite of this agenda we find scattered references to various elements of Jesus's life and preaching in his letters (which are 'common knowledge' to the audience in the 50s A.D.), which indicates that Paul knew a lot more than he wrote down. Firstly, we learn from 2 Corinthians 10:1 that Paul appealed to his readers by the, "meekness and gentleness of Christ". As a number of scholars have noted: "On a number of occasions Paul appealed to the example of Christ and urged others to imitation. For example, he encouraged the Philippians to have the mind of Christ in humility and service (Phil 2:5-11). Elsewhere he instructed the Romans to put on the Lord Jesus Christ and avoid self-gratification (Rom 13:14). In the midst of Jewish-Gentile discord in the Roman church, Paul told them to welcome each other as Christ has welcomed them (Rom 15:7). The apostle even urged the Corinthians to imitate him since he imitated Christ (1 Cor 11:1). Admonitions to imitate Christ depend ultimately on having authentic traditions regarding Christ’s life. The traditions about how Christ lived would have provided a script for imitation. When, for example, Paul taught the Romans to strive to please their neighbors, he appealed to Christ’s example: “for Christ did not seek to please himself” (Rom 15:3)." (Encyclopedia of the Historical Jesus, ed. Craig A. Evans, Routledge (2008)). Other examples:

1 Corinthians 15:1-8. Paul tells us he received the tradition (paredōka = “I delivered”; parelabon = “I received”), of Christ’s death on a Roman execution stake and burial. He reiterates this in 1 Cor. 2:2, Gal. 3:1, 2 Cor. 13:4, and many more occasions.

1 Corinthians 11:23-26 Paul tells us that he received the tradition that Jesus had a last supper with his disciples before dying, quotes his alleged words "this is my body...blood...do this in memory of me") and then notes that he was betrayed by one of his disciples.

1 Corinthians 15:3-8 Paul tells us that Jesus had a core of inner disciples called "the Twelve".

Romans 1:3 Paul tells us that in "his earthly life [Jesus] was a descendant of David". That is, he tells us about Jesus's flesh and blood ancestry (this could only have come from a family tradition i.e. "do you know, our family is supposedly descended from King David").

1 Thessalonians. 2:14–15 Paul tells us that Jewish leaders participated in the killing of Jesus

Then we have quotations of Jesus in Paul's epistles. In answering the Corinthians' questions about marriage, Paul cites Jesus' ruling on divorce as binding on his followers. "To the married I say, not I but the Lord, that the wife should not separate from her husband but if she does, let her remain single or else be reconciled to her husband and that the husband should not divorce his wife" (1 Corinthians vii. 10 f.).

Paul's tells the Corinthians that "the Lord [Jesus] commanded that those who proclaim the gospel should get their living by the gospel" (1 Corinthians ix. 14). This "command" appears in our synoptic tradition in the Matthaean commission to the twelve (Matthew x. 10), "the labourer deserves his food", and in the Lukan commission to the seventy (Luke x. 7).

As Bart Ehrman notes, "Paul's first letter (1 Thessalonians) is usually dated to 49 CE; his last (Romans?) to some twelve or thirteen years after that [...] In addition to data about Jesus’s life and death, Paul mentions on several occasions the teachings he delivered. Where did Paul get all this received tradition, from whom, and most important, when? Paul himself gives us some hints. he tells us, he made a trip to Jerusalem, and there he spent fifteen days with Cephas [Peter] and James. Cephas [Peter] was one of Jesus’s twelve disciples, and James was his brother."

Now, that's before we even get to the biographical Christian sources - the earliest being the Q saying sources underlying Matthew & Luke, the Markan gospel and then the Johannine material (itself based on an early Passion narrative and a 'signs' gospel), and then the non-Christian sources (Tacitus, Suetonius, Josephus, the Talmudic traditions etc.).

Between all that, scholars can discern strong 'kernels' of early Palestinian tradition through multiple attestation, criterion of embarrassment and many other analytical tools.

(to be continued...)

 

[metis]

Yes, Jesus was a radical against traditional teachings, yes, he did believe in feeding the poor. But do you think that wealthy business ppl donate NOTHING to others? No there are generous people among all social classes (even among the poor themselves) and political parties.

But it also appears likely that he more than fully supported Jewish Law on this, namely that the government [in absentia, the Great Sanhedrin and the Temple priests] had the mandated role of helping with taking care of the poor and widows.

In Jesus' Parable of the Widow's Mite, he doesn't negate the Law on this but actually praises the poor widow for giving more than what was required by the Law.

Jesus' strong emphasis on sharing, per the Sermon On the Mount (Matthew ch. 12-14) and his Parable of the Sheep & Goats (Matthew ch. 25), definitely put him on the more socialistic half of the continuum. And this was accompanied by the Apostles sharing their possessions based on what's said in Acts. But it's more a matter of degrees since individual initiatives very much are allowed as well.

IOW, it's not either/or.

 

[ChristineM]

New Jesus was a lot like Trump:

Are you saying the jesus of the bible was an orange, lying, money grabbing sexual predator, with no empathy and not much more Intelligence?

 

[whirlingmerc]

Well, there's also a lot of evidence of Jesus chastising the Jewish proesthood... So I would say, Jesus had no problem speaking his mind from his own authority, exclusive from politics.

Jesus seems to emphasized personal change as a fruit of God working in your life.
and that should be be salt and light for the rest of the world.

I don't see Jesus as an external political activist, more an internal activist, change from the heart.

He took heat from both the left wing Saducee and right wing Pharisee.

 

[Vouthon]

Third part of my post (apologies for the lengthiness, this is a complicated topic!):

So I suppose with any forensic analysis we start with intent? Did Jesus attempt to subvert the Roman Empire? Was He planning a revolution and to incite His people in rebellion so He could establish a new pattern of social life, the kingdom of God?

Not in the sense of wanting to actively "regime-change" the priestly-Herodian Tetrarchy-Roman order in Judea/Galilee through temporal means. There are some prominent scholars, a significant minority of them typified by Professor Dale Martin, who do actually contend that Jesus was an outright revolutionist in 'intent'. Here's a link to one of his peer-reviewed studies:


SAGE Journals: Your gateway to world-class research journals

This article highlights the significance of Jesus’ disciples being armed when he was arrested just outside the walls of Jerusalem, linking that fact with other details from the sources, such as Jesus’ opposition to the temple, the presence of Samaritans among his early followers, the absence of lamb at the last supper, and the fact that he was executed by the Romans as a ‘social rebel’. Jesus led his followers, armed, to Jerusalem to participate in a heavenly-earthly battle to overthrow the Romans and their high-priestly client rulers of Judea.
​

This is a perfectly defensible scholarly position, and Martin argues for it well. I am not going to labour over the fine points of his argument (although I do recommend a read-through of his thesis) because I'm not of the "social rebel / armed rebellion" school of thought myself, as the majority of historical Jesus scholars aren't either. But its not a pariah standpoint, serious scholars do advocate for it.

The interpretation that most scholars adopt is far more nuanced though (and takes seriously the pervasive theme of 'turn the other cheek / do not resist an evildoer / live by the sword, die by the sword' pacifism in the gospels and early Christian writings). Quite simply, Jesus is understood to have been an eschatological prophet of prefigurative social change, preaching a realised enactment of the values and subversive lifestyle of the future kingdom to come (by divine intervention) in the 'here and now'; accompanied by a series of physical, symbolic acts (such as the 'temple' cleansing) that proclaimed the arrival of the new age in the figure of Christ - as a kind of hierophant of God - and in his community, the church.

Thus, E.P. Sanders states that Jesus, in addition to expecting the impending arrival of the Kingdom as a future epoch, also "spoke about the kingdom as a present reality into which individuals enter one by one".

Bart Ehrman concurs, noting in his book "Misquoting Jesus?":

"Jesus' disciples were not to engage in acts of violence now . In the Kingdom there would be no more poverty. Jesus' disciples were to give away all they had and give to the poor now.

In the Kingdom there would be no more oppression or injustice - Jesus' disciples were to treat all people equally and fairly now- even the lowest classes, the outcasts, the destitute; even women and children. In the Kingdom there would be no more hatred. Jesus' disciples were to be living examples of God's love now, giving of themselves completely in the service of others.

The ways Jesus' disciples were to live in the present in preparation for the coming Son of Man reflected life as it would be when the Kingdom fully arrived. They had not, obviously, yet begun to experience the Kingdom in its fullness. But they had experienced a foretaste of the glories that lay ahead... In a small way -a very small way- they had begun to see what it would be like when God once and for all established his Kingdom on earth

[...] What mattered was the new thing that was coming, the future kingdom. It was impossible to promote this teaching while trying to retain the present social structure." (p. 181)​

Professor Richard Horsey argues the same: "it was the conviction that God was now driving Satan from control over personal and historical life, making possible the renewal of the people of Israel. The presence of the Kingdom of God meant the termination of the old order".

So Jesus's teaching about the "kingdom" was both future-oriented towards an eschatological, spiritual reality and socio-politically activist in the here and now as a prefigurative reality within and among the disciples. This is the meaning behind Jesus's seemingly enigmatic saying that: "The kingdom of God cometh not with observation: Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you." (Luke 17:20-22).

The Greek word translated as 'within' is entos. Its an adverb or noun used here in Luke and also in Matthew 23:25-26. In the latter passage it means “inside/within” referring to the inside of a cup, which stands for a person's heart, and contrasting this with the outside appearance of the cup (i.e. the distinction between an inner spiritual-moral state of heart / mind and external actions). However, when used in conjunction with a plural noun, entos means "among" or "in the midst of" and this is the translation used by the NRSV, with a footnote that it could equally be read as "within".

What this means, is that the kingdom is not simply some future divine glory in the next age / world to come (although it is, and this will be the kingdom in its fullness) but it is also a prefigurative spiritual - moral - social reality within and among Jesus's disciples in the here-and-now, inasmuch as they live the life of the kingdom and implement it within their society, the church.

This is why I and Meggitt, among others, would compare the Jesus movement to contemporary pacifist anarcho-syndicalists. On this, consult the work of the anarchist scholar Murray Bookchin in his book, The Ecology of Freedom i.e.


Murray Bookchin: the legacy of freedom

Early Christian communities, in many ways, fit Bookchin’s anarchist ideal. Early Christians came together voluntarily and as equals. They not only came together for worship, but to provide for each others’ needs, since the Roman government’s functions were mainly limited to collecting taxes, suppressing disorder and waging war.​

Like them - while Jesus was excoriating in his denunciation of the 'powers-that-be' in society, as the model not to follow - he did not advocate armed regime-change (unless you follow Dale Martin's argument!) but rather a lifestyle that modelled the values of the kingdom now in his community of followers, already within this corrupt and fading order of the priests and Romans that God would in time overturn. Meggitt, echoing the other scholars cited before, correctly describes this as:

"...The kingdom of God is prefigurative. As we have noted, the kingdom motif is not just associated with judgment but also with new forms of social life, and these are not just advocated but practiced. It can therefore be usefully understood as prefigurative [...]

The historical Jesus modelled a form of social interaction that ignored expectations of deference, probably rooted in the expectation that the behaviour of those in the kingdom should reflect the character of the God, and God was for Jesus, and other Jews of the time, “no respecter of persons”. This was something both egalitarian in itself but also revealed and challenged the structures and presumptions of power symbolised by such deference; to those who were beneficiaries of stratification and hierarchy, it presented a disruptive rhetoric of impoliteness [....]

The kingdom is already present, and being enacted, even if in an initially insignificant way, in a manner that resembles and is related to its final form. One thinks, of example, of the Parable of the Mustard Seed or the practice of open commensality (table-fellowship) we have touched upon [...] The prefigurative ethics of the kingdom necessitat[ed] a form of direct action." (Meggitt, p.24-25)​

In the "kingdom of God", only God would reign - no human being was to exercise dominion or hierarchical lordship over another human being.

(continued....)

 

[Vouthon]

As an example of another 'kingdom value' that was also a prefigurative social practice to be practised now, take Jesus's precept of 'apostolic poverty', Luke 14:33 : "So therefore, none of you can become my disciple if you do not give up all your possessions". In light of the kingdom of God, private possessions become elachistos (Luke 16:10), they belong to the passing age. Later in the same gospel account, Jesus contends that worldly assets are "the belongings of another" (Luke 16:12), clearly implying that we do not properly 'own' any private property in the absolute sense, because we are really 'stewards' of goods which, in point of fact, belonged originally to God and by his will everyone who lives on earth prior to our appropriation.

And the earliest Christian community, according to the New Testament, literally implemented this vision:

The community of believers was of one heart and mind, and no one claimed private ownership of any possessions, but everything they owned was held in common. With great power the apostles bore witness to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great favor was accorded them all. There was no needy person among them, for those who owned property or houses would sell them, bring the proceeds of the sale, and put them at the feet of the apostles, and they were distributed to each according to need. (Acts 4:32-35)

And all who believed were together and had all things in common; and they sold their possessions and goods and distributed them to all, as any had need. (Acts 2:44-45)​

Extra-canonical Christian sources from the first century also attest to this way of life / social structure / welfare system in the early church i.e. The Didache , known as The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles (circa. A.D. 50 - A.D. 80), makes this clear: “share all your possessions with your brother, and do not claim that anything is your own (cf. Acts 2:44-45) ” and Roman pagan sources too, such as the Roman satirist Lucian of Samosata (c. 125 AD – 180 AD), who wrote about Christian beliefs extensively in his Death of Peregrine, likewise confirmed that the Christians of his period still held to communal ownership of goods, writing:


The Death of Peregrine | De Morte Peregrini | The Lucian of Samosata Project

In some of the Asiatic cities, too, the Christian communities put themselves to the expense of sending deputations, with offers of sympathy, assistance, and legal advice...

It was impressed on these misguided creatures by their original lawgiver that they are all brothers, from the moment that they are converted, and deny the gods of Greece, and worship the crucified sage, and live after his laws.

All this they take quite on trust, with the result that they despise all worldly goods alike, regarding them merely as common property​

Now, Jesus did not call for the Judean / Galilean state or the Roman Empire to abolish the system of patriarchal, elitist patronage and class (patricians, plebians, proles and slaves) with his non-hierarchical, communalist system of mutual service, welfare redistribution and social benefits for the poor (nor did he strive to orchestrate a rebellion that would implement this 'regime') but he did lay the groundwork for such a communalist-mutualist social order within his community of disciples - prefiguring a state that he preached would become the norm / general in the kingdom of God when it came in its fullness, and which the disciples must therefore live and practice now because the kingdom had began 'within' and 'among' their fellowship, as a prefigurative reality of the "world to come".

Another such 'kingdom social ethic' was Jesus's practice of 'open-commensality' or inclusive table-fellowship.

Sharing meals - meant to create bonds of friendship - with “outsiders” and inviting, as well including them, was for Jesus key to breaking down barriers:

"Go out quickly into the streets and alleys of the town and bring in the poor, the crippled, the blind and the lame." (Luke 14:21)

Jesus said also to the one who had invited him, “When you give a luncheon or a dinner, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbors, in case they may invite you in return, and you would be repaid. But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind. And you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you" (Luke 14:12-14)​

Walter Burkert defines a quite-different kind of meal - the Greco-Roman Symposium - with deep roots in the history of Hellenistic culture, one that was explicitly exclusionary:

The [Greco-Roman] symposium is an organization of all-male groups, aristocratic and egalitarian at the same time, which affirm their identity through ceremonialized drinking...it guarantees the social control of the polis [city] by the aristocrats. It is a dominating social form in Greek civilization from Homer onwards and well beyond the Hellenistic period​

(Walter Burkert, “Oriental Symposia: Contrasts and Parallels,” in Dining in a Classical Context (ed. William J. Slater; Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1991))​

As the scholar John P. Meier explains:



https://www.dialoguejournal.com/wp-content/uploads/sbi/articles/Dialogue_V30N04_13.pdf

Jesus instead emphasized the joyful message that the eschatological banquet was at hand, a banquet anticipated in the meals he shared with the religiously marginalized. No doubt this offended those who identified the renewal of Israel with stringent observance of the laws of ritual purity.​

(to be continued....)

 

[Vouthon]

Fourth part of my reply to @adrian009

I wonder if we need to look at Luke 13:31-32 again.

The Pharisees aren't trying to help Jesus out. They are trying to trick Him and out manouvre Him.

The popular understanding of the 'Pharisees' is out-of-keeping with modern scholarship of their portrayal in the gospels and as they actually were in reality.

The word 'Pharisee' has become a byword for smugness and judgementalism in societies with a Christian heritage. A term of abuse, really.

And yet if one studies an extra-biblical historiographical source from the first century A.D., like the Antiquities of Josephus, it does become evident that the Pharisees were by no means - as a class - so morally reprehensible as many modern Christians assume.

As such, to 'exceed their righteousness' as Jesus commanded, actually demands a higher standard of ethics than one might expect if reliant upon the careless, popular stereotypes.

On the authority of Josephus, we learn the following with regards to the "righteousness" of the Pharisee sect:

The Pharisees simplify their standard of living, making no concession to luxury. They follow the guidance of that which their doctrine has selected and transmitted as good, attaching the chief importance to the observance of those commandments which it has seen fit to dictate to them. They show respect and deference to their elders, nor do they rashly presume to contradict their proposals...

Because of these views they are, as a matter of fact, extremely influential among the townsfolk; and all prayers and sacred rites of divine worship are performed according to their exposition. This is the great tribute that the inhabitants of the cities, by practicing the highest ideals both in their way of living and in their discourse, have paid to the excellence of the Pharisees.

–Antiquities 18:12-15, c. 90 CE.​

Taking this into consideration, it becomes apparent that Jesus was holding his disciples to a uniquely rigorous ideal of personal morality, when he instructed them to surpass the Pharisees in virtue.

It has been noted by many scholars that Luke-Acts in particular presents a generally sympathetic view of the Pharisees as a rival sect (along with severe criticism of individual groups of 'hypocritical' Pharisees), with not all of them presented as uniformly hostile to the Jesus movement. Consider this study (which summarises some of the recent scholarship):


https://helda.helsinki.fi//bitstream/handle/10138/217494/Hakola_Friendly_Pharisees.pdf?sequence=1

“Friendly” Pharisees and Social Identity in the Book of Acts

Raimo Hakola University of Helsinki

The portrayal of the Pharisees in Luke-Acts

Some scholars say that Luke is, in both parts of his double work, sympathetic to the Pharisees...In this essay, I approach the portrayal of the Pharisees in Acts from a social identity perspective. I focus especially on the surprising appearance of some “friendly” Pharisees in Acts (Acts 5 and 23) and claim that they make an important contribution to the validation of the social identity of early Christians. The social identity perspective explains how Luke can present these non-Christian Pharisees as fairly sympathetic to early Christians...

In recent decades scholars have been more willing than they were earlier to admit that there are important positive images of Jewish people and Jewish religion in Luke-Acts alongside more or less overt criticism.

Those who hold that Luke is favorable in his overall presentation of the Pharisees find support for their case especially in the Acts narrative. In Acts 5, Luke tells how the apostles were brought before the members of the council who, after listening to Peter and other apostles, “were enraged and wanted to kill them” (Acts 5:33). In this context, Luke tells how Gamaliel, a Pharisee, stands up to put a stop to the execution of the apostles. Gamaliel’s intervention for the apostles is successful, inasmuch as they are released after being flogged and ordered not to speak in the name of Jesus (v. 40). After this, there appear in the apostolic meeting in Jerusalem “some believers who belonged to the sect of the Pharisees” (Acts 15:5). The Pharisees as a group appear for the last time in Acts 23 where Paul defends himself in front of the Jerusalem council (Acts 22:30-23:10). The high priest and his allies are eager to convict Paul, whereas “certain scribes of the Pharisees’ group” defend Paul by saying, ‘We find nothing wrong with this man. What if a spirit or an angel has spoken to him?’” In this context, Paul himself testifies that he once was a Pharisee, a theme that is developed further when Paul defends himself in front of the king Agrippa (Acts 26:5)​

Many scholars have proposed that the fairly positive roles assigned to the Pharisees in Acts are suggestive of Luke’s intent in the gospel as well.

In this wider context, I do not read the Pharisees in that Lukan passage about Herod wanting to kill Jesus as "trying to trick Him and out manouvre Him". It does not cohere with Luke's overall ambiguous and subtle portrayal of the Pharisees as a group not uniformly hostile to Jesus, like the chief priests of the Sadducees, but as a potential source of future converts. Jesus takes their information about the threat to his life seriously and tells them to give Herod a message in return.

Likewise, going beyond the Lukan gospel, we have evidence in the Gospel of John of another sympathetic leading Pharisee who tried to protect or advocate for Jesus - Nicodemus was a Pharisee and a influential member of the Sanhedrin who struck up a genuine dialogue with Jesus and became a secret follower.

So that's my response to your excellent counter-thoughts @adrian009 many thanks for reading through it!

 

[Vouthon]

He took heat from both the left wing Saducee and right wing Pharisee

I think you've got this 'topsy-turvy' if I might say - the Sadducee party were the ancient Judean answer to our modern day "right-wing" conservatives, in that they represented the aristocratic, priestly upper-echelons of society (the 1%) - the landed, urban elite whose sons controlled the temple cult and were appointed by the Roman occupiers in a grand bargain of power. In Pesachim 57a, the Talmud preserves an ancient, first century 'populist' grievance against the priestly houses of the Sadducees that competed for power in Judea:

"Woe’s me on account of the house of Boothus, woe’s me on account of their spears; woe’s me on account of the house of Hanun (Annas), woe’s me on account of their serpent brood; woe’s me on account of the house of Kathros, woe’s me on account of their pen; woe’s me on account of the house of Ishmael ben Phabi; woe’s me on account of their fists. They are high priests and their sons are treasurers of the temple, and their sons-in-law, assistant treasurers; and their servants beat the people with sticks." ​

Thus popular wisdom identified the chief priests, mainly the Sadducee party, as the 'enemies of the common people'.

The Pharisees were, conversely, the party of the 'masses' as Josephus tells us they were "extremely influential among the townsfolk" who judged the priestly-class, the Sadducee party, as being out-of-touch elites. They were not (for the most part) clergy, like the Sadducees and took little directly to do with the operations of the Temple cult, but rather the predecessors to what we call rabbis: learned elders, experts in the Mosaic law and the morals of the prophets, who taught ordinary Jews about Torah in synagogues. The chief priests of the Sadducee sect, by contrast, took nothing to do with the common people.

Religiously, Jesus was ideologically aligned with a great deal of Pharisaic thought - like Josephus in his Antiquities, the Book of Acts in the NT refers to the Pharisees' belief in disembodied spirits and angels, the day of judgment and resurrection of the dead pared with the Sadducees rejection of these concepts. From Josephus, we learn that the Pharisees and their doctrines were "very influential among the body of the people", something that the New Testament and the later Talmudic authors both attest to as well.

Much of Jesus's criticism of the Pharisees in the gospels is that they failed to practise what they preached - but he did agree with much of what they preached. In terms of theology, Jesus was essentially a very radical "far-left" Pharisee. He believed in the essentials of what would became Rabbinic Judaism - such as the resurrection of the dead, the World to Come, an intermediate disembodied state in Hades, wisdom like that in the Pirkei Avot, freedom of the will and even the Mosaic authority of the Pharisees courtesy of their guardianship of the Oral Torah.

He was, in essence, a rebellious son of the Pharisee theology, since, on the other hand he told people:

Then Jesus spoke to the crowds and to His disciples: 2“The scribes and Pharisees sit in Moses’seat. So practice and observe everything they tell you. But do not do what they do, for they do not practice what they preach" (Matthew 23:2)​

So he gave the Pharisees that much, whereas he had not one positive word to say about the priests - the Sadducees - who were the ones who actually conspired to have him killed under High Priest Caiaphas and his father-in-law Annas.

But Jesus did seem to be possessed of the idea that some of the Pharisees were placing intolerable burdens upon the common people in their interpretation of the Torah, and likewise exploiting them. He had a strong dislike for the hierarchical structure of the Judean religious establishment (i.e. "Don't let anyone call you 'Rabbi,' for you have only one teacher, and all of you are equal as brothers and sisters" (Matthew 23:8) and "But you shall not be like them. Instead, the greatest among you should be like the youngest, and the one who leads like the one who serves." (Luke 22:26)).

So, if we were cast it in modern terms: the Pharisees would be akin to 'establishment' Democrats like Joe Biden, whereas Jesus is like Bernie Sanders and AOC!

 

[julianalexander745]

Are you saying the jesus of the bible was an orange, lying, money grabbing sexual predator, with no empathy and not much more Intelligence?

It's possible. The Bible is both unreliable and unclear about a lot of things pertaining to Jesus.

 

[julianalexander745]

It's possible. The Bible is both unreliable and unclear about a lot of things pertaining to Jesus.

But with regards to his colour, he was most likely very brown; not orange.

He probably looked like the kinds of Persian guys who walk out of sorority houses high fiving each other at 430am.

 

[pearl]

Is I were to rely solely on historical methods there is certainly the possibility of a very different Jesus from the one presented in the New Testament.

And this is where belief in the guidence of the Paraclete promised in John's Gospel comes in.

 

[Samantha Rinne]

How can you possibly assert that?
The Romans executed Him for treason. They didn't just do that for fun.

I can understand why His followers didn't write it down. If they did, they'd be likely to get crucified as well. But you cannot credibly claim Jesus didn't do something, just because decades later nobody had a written claim about it. Of course they didn't write that sort of thing down.
Tom

Actually they DID write it down. It was just in very Jewish language.

"Whose image and inscription is on this coin?"
"Render unto Caesar that which is his. And render to God that which is his. "

These things don't mean collude with state authorities. A misreading implies them, but the IMAGE part refers to not worshipping a graven image (all coins were stamped with a notation that Caesar was effectively a god to his people) and the Shema Yisrael tells that God is One and to write an INSCRIPTION on the door and a bunch of other places. In other words, these coins and their payment are idolatry, and btw, what does Caesar have according to Jewish law and what do Jews owe God? Nothing, and everything.
Btw, who had the coin of the Romans? The Jewish priests (despite it being a profane item, that they shouldn't have, Jesus basically had shekel not denarii and had to ask THEM for it).

This works in print because Jesus sounds to be publicly declaring support for Romans, but he's basically being a quiet anarchist. And in fact, when Christian people left Jewish lands, they made trouble with Rome a great deal. And got persecuted for it.

Unlike Jewish nationals like Barabbas, he did not directly do violence or theft against Rome, but his people made a great deal of trouble for Rome and have taken down a few despots in the past.

 

[Samantha Rinne]

But it also appears likely that he more than fully supported Jewish Law on this, namely that the government [in absentia, the Great Sanhedrin and the Temple priests] had the mandated role of helping with taking care of the poor and widows.

In Jesus' Parable of the Widow's Mite, he doesn't negate the Law on this but actually praises the poor widow for giving more than what was required by the Law.

Jesus' strong emphasis on sharing, per the Sermon On the Mount (Matthew ch. 12-14) and his Parable of the Sheep & Goats (Matthew ch. 25), definitely put him on the more socialistic half of the continuum. And this was accompanied by the Apostles sharing their possessions based on what's said in Acts. But it's more a matter of degrees since individual initiatives very much are allowed as well.

IOW, it's not either/or.

It's not an either/or. But in the Parable of the Talents, he shows that nobody helps the poor guy with only one talent. We don't have the guy who turns 10 talents into 20 give his excess to the poor suffering one with one talent. Nope, take from that guy as he did poorly with it, and give to the rich guy.

Now, Jesus could be telling us that life isn't fair, and should be otherwise, but it seems in line with his other teachings about the maidens who didn't bother bringing enough oil and had to go back. Also, he supposed personal charity, he never said "give all you money to priests and leaders because I'm sure they can be trusted to feed the poor, clothe the sick, and welcome the stranger." No, the emphasis is on " You do it. "

Every now and then, liberal socialists stop hating on Jesus long enough to suggest that he was a socialist. But I'm okay with them continuing to hate him. The fact is, we can see a clear picture of what good the Romans and Jewish leaders did. Ummm, let's see. We had possessed people (basically those wirh psych disorders), lepers, poor, etc, etc, etc. And this leadership was doing such a great job of helping others, right? Uhhh no. They were staying at arms length.

Jesus wasn't a socialist. But he wasn't conservative either. Strictly speaking, he was a religious type who believed government was bad, whether it was state or temple government.

 

[Shad]

"And on the seventh day god built a wall, a beautiful wall, a tremendous wall, you would not believe! And Satan is going to pay for it! And it was so." (Trump 13:23)

You need to add a "Yuge" in there.