“Your Jesus, My Jesus, and the Jesus of History” June 2, 2024 Dr. Roger Ray
Long time listeners will know that I am a huge fan of the work of the 19thcentury Danish philosopher, Soren Kierkegaard. In fact, I have quoted him so often that several church members and a few listeners became intrigued and decided to pick up one or two of his books to read on their own, with almost universal disappointment. They found him to be so dense that his work is virtually incomprehensible as it certainly would have been to me if I had not dug into secondary sources about his life in 19th century Copenhagen.
Kierkegaard wrote in the present moment, without much thought of readers paying attention to him a hundred years and thousands of miles away. So he assumes that his readers are familiar with the state of the church in Denmark in his lifetime, about politicians and popular authors. This is complicated by the fact that Kierkegaard was a very cagy writer who wrote under pseudonyms which, themselves, carried meaningful interpretive skills.
Kierkegaard’s barber once commented on what he thought about Soren’s most recent book which infuriated and insulted him, the very thought that a barber could understand his work, so he doubled down and became more obscure.
Everyone notices that Kierkegaard’s thoughts are rather dark but unless you understand the tragically broken engagement he had to Regine Olsen, and the embarrassing circumstances of his birth, that is that his mother had been his father’s housekeeper, hired to take care of the sick and dying first Mrs. Kierkegaard, but who then had to quickly marry Michael Kierkegaard upon the death of his first wife. Though his mother tried to protect him, Michael was cruelly controlling, demanding intellectual and moral perfection out of Soren. Soren’s one act of rebellion was to visit a brothel and have sex with a prostitute, a moral failing that appeared to haunt him for the rest of his life.
He was a tortured soul who had such a massive case of depression that he once wrote in his journal, “My depression has been my most faithful mistress. Is it any wonder that I return her affection?” So, if you don’t have the backstory clearly in mind, you will have less of a chance of understanding “Fear and Trembling” than Kierkegaard’s barber had.
Still, this is a nineteenth century, western European writer, much closer to us in culture, time, and circumstances, than anything written in the Bible and yet, rather arrogantly, modern people pick up a Bible and read an English translation with remarkable, and may I say, unfounded confidence in their ability to properly interpret it.
You open the cover and begin reading Genesis without any awareness that more than 500 years had passed between the origin of chapter 2 and chapter 1 and that they were written in different nations and markedly different languages. Without secondary sources, a modern reader would have no idea of what the intricate word play between Hebrew and Babylonian myths that carry most of the meaning, nor that many myths, such as the story of Noah, and a lot of Psalms, are virtually plagiarized from previous Ancient Near Easter literature.
Most of us easily accept that we need help to understand the nuances buried in Shakespeare’s plays but still stubbornly insist that we are able to interpret scripture unaided. I would like to suggest that such a belief is both arrogant and self-deceptive.
Most of us who grew up going to church feel like we are at least familiar enough with the gospel accounts of Jesus that they are readily available to us, but I dare say that only a fraction of the members of clergy can easily tell you which of the gospels have a birth narrative. Almost none could tell you which gospel is organized around five sermons the way that Deuteronomy is organized around five speeches from Moses, and that this author is striving to present Jesus as a new Moses. Shockingly, even most seminary graduates could not tell you which of the four gospels does not contain even a single parable or which one does not have a resurrection appearance. All things that I have expected my freshman college students to know by the end of the semester though I would hate for any of them to be tested on this a year after their final exams.
For more than 100 years, biblical scholars believed that there was an undiscovered source that Matthew and Luke both possessed from which they drew many of the Jesus sayings that are not in Mark but are in both Luke and Matthew. In recent years, the Q theory has fallen into some doubt because it is quite possible that either Matthew copied these sayings from Luke, or Luke copied these sayings from Matthew.
A couple of years before his death, I had the honor of hosting Bishop John Shelby Spong at a dinner in my home. The subject of the elusive Q document came up in conversation and for the remainder of the evening Bishop Spong insisted Matthew was Luke’s source, while I insisted that Luke was Matthew’s source. Six guests nearly fell asleep at the dinner table and my friend, Bishop Spong, and I both left with certainty that we were right. While neither of us could claim to be primary gospel scholars, we both had way too much education in New Testament and in spite of agreeing on most things and remaining close friends, we saw this matter very differently. I mention this only to say that both lay members of the church and scholars and clergy, need to approach the subject of understanding an important religious figure like Jesus was some cautious humility.
And though, sadly, Bishop Spong is no longer able to defend his view, given some sincere requests, I am willing to explain why that I am so sure that I am right about this. I believe that I could make it sound more interesting than I have here. Still, we all miss Bishop Spong, no matter how stubborn he could be about some things.
Most mornings I drink my coffee while watching Morning Joe on MSNBC and I often have to suffer through Joe Scarborough’s religious pronouncements of what Jesus said and what the meaning of Christianity is based on his childhood Sunday School classes in a Southern Baptist Church. Scarborough is often unsufferable to me but I really feel it when he quotes the gospels to actual Biblical scholar, Eddie Glaude, Jr. Glaude is always reserved and respectful but I believe that I can see, as in this image, that sometimes he is having to consciously restrain himself from just slapping Scarborough . . . which I am not sure that I could do if I were live on the set.
But I am here using poor Joe Scarborough to represent a host of church folk who way too confidently announce their encapsulated definition of what true Christianity is and who quote way too confidently what they believe that Jesus said. The truth about the historical Jesus is not simple and the best understanding lies buried in the scholarship of those who actually understand the language and culture of 1st century Palestine.
The truth is that none of the four canonical gospel writers had ever met Jesus. All of them were deeply influenced by the writing of Paul and John was certainly influenced, mostly negatively, by Marcion. All four had an agenda for organizing their Jesus quotes and stories based upon their particular circumstances. They gave themselves liberal permission to edit and adapt that material for their own purposes.
Within the scholarly community, we talk about the layers of development of the Jesus tradition. The historical Jesus was a religious reformer who grew up in the synagogue version of Judaism in the first century and who traveled and taught in an effort to offer some correction to his religious peers. He was probably an exorcist and a faith healer, as many traveling preachers were in his day. He probably had some very harsh things to say about the Roman occupation and the Jewish surrender to it.
In his lifetime, there was no talk of a virgin birth nor of him being a son of God, and no one called him Christ or savior.
His entire career probably lasted no more than six or seven months. We only say that he preached for 3 years because there are three Passovers mentioned in John but John is neither linear nor historical and should not be relied upon for any historical resources, especially not a timeline. The historical Jesus was executed by the Roman government for insurrection in the way that they executed many other would-be leaders of a rebellion, by crucifixion.
As happened with many other prophets and religious teachers, his disciples continued to meet in his name after he was dead. This certainly happened to Isaiah, unless you think that he had a preaching career that spanned more than a century, and the same could be said for John the Baptist. There were probably more disciples of John the Baptist meeting in his name at the end of the first century than there were disciples of Jesus . . . which is why the gospels try so hard to put John in a secondary light to Jesus . . . there is more than a little propaganda in the New Testament.
In 1985, former Vanderbilt professor, Robert Funk, called together 50 leading New Testament scholars and about a hundred interested lay people to do a deep dive into a historically critical review of the gospels, the four in the New Testament as well as the Gospel of Thomas which is believed to have had some first century roots. Their task over a period of more than ten years, was to try to reach agreement on which of the sayings of Jesus might have originated with Jesus, himself, and which might have echoes of his thoughts, and which had no connection to the historical Jesus at all.
You can read the results of their research in The Five Gospels, readily available on Amazon and in a lot of used bookstores. The seminar included such notable scholars as Karen Armstrong, Marcus Borg, Jon Dominic Crossan, and my friend, Bishop John Shelby Spong.
Much to the chagrin of many church folks, they concluded that only six or seven of the Jesus sayings likely originated with Jesus and fewer than 20% even reflected his thinking. The rest are the product of the early church which used Jesus as a mouthpiece in much the same way that Plato used Socrates as an interlocular to express his own thoughts. These later authors certainly loved and respected Jesus and because they held him and his memory in high regard, they used him to articulate what they believed that the church and the world needed to hear in their time.
The second and third waves in the evolution of the Jesus tradition probably took place alongside one another. Paul, as I have recently mentioned, had no interest in the historical Jesus, to the point of even refusing to be taught by Jesus’ biological brother whom Paul met in Jerusalem. For Paul, Jesus was an eschatological figure whose death would bring about the end of the current age and usher in a new world which would physically be the Kingdom of God on earth. Paul evidently believed that this would happen any moment, and certainly believed that he would live to see it.
He was clearly wrong about this very important and central aspect of his beliefs, which should certainly help modern readers to place Paul’s version of Christianity into a more honest context. He may have been very sincere, but he clearly was totally mistaken in his eschatological predictions.
We think that most of the rest of the gospels reflected the early church’s reaction to the growing threat brought on by the occupation of Palestine by Rome. An occupation which eventually ended in the destruction of the Jewish temple in Jerusalem and the near annihilation of the Jewish people. The association of early followers of Jesus with Judaism and the obvious fact that their primary prophet had been executed by Rome for insurrection put them in a position for persecution themselves.
Rome allowed their subject states to keep their own religions as long as they accepted emperor worship as being both mandatory and primary in all of the empire. This is when the Jesus community began to present Jesus as an alternative to the emperor.
The well documented tradition of requiring everyone to show fealty to the emperor by throwing a pinch of incense in the flame in front of the statue of Caesar and announcing that “Caesar is Lord” was being replaced with the affirmation that Jesus is Lord. Caesar was called king, savior, he was said to have divine parentage and was born of a virgin. All of these accolades were taken from Roman emperor worship and applied to Jesus. Though there is some crossover here with the language of Paul’s letters, the intent is certainly quite different.
The historical Jesus was probably a revolutionary against the occupation of Rome and much of the early Christian tradition only furthered that revolutionary perspective. Paul didn’t worry about politics like overthrowing Rome. He didn’t even worry about changing social institutions like slavery. For him, the world as we know it was coming to an end and his interest was in bringing as many people into the kingdom with him.
Apocalyptic communities continued into the second century and certainly continue into our own time. But, for the most part, the Christian community eventually evolved into an other worldly salvation cult that took its place in the Roman culture. By the time of the Council of Nicaea in the early 4th century, the Christian church had grown in number but it had distanced itself from the historical Jesus. By that time, the preacher, Jesus, had become the preached, Jesus, the Christ, the only Son of God.
The task of the Council of Nicaea was to define Christianity to help bring unity to the movement. Look at the creed that they wrote. It says:
I believe in one God,
the Father almighty,
maker of heaven and earth,
of all things visible and invisible.
I believe in one Lord Jesus Christ,
the Only Begotten Son of God,
born of the Father before all ages.
God from God, Light from Light,
true God from true God,
begotten, not made, consubstantial with the Father;
through him all things were made.
For us men and for our salvation
he came down from heaven,
and by the Holy Spirit was incarnate of the Virgin Mary,
and became man.
For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate,
he suffered death and was buried,
and rose again on the third day
in accordance with the Scriptures.
He ascended into heaven
and is seated at the right hand of the Father.
He will come again in glory
to judge the living and the dead
and his kingdom will have no end.
Please note that this early 4th century definition of Christianity does not include even one reference to what Jesus said, what he taught, what his purpose, his mission was. They reference him only as being of divine parentage, born of a virgin, executed under Pontius Pilate, and raised to rule from on high. At this point, Jesus is hardly even a historical footnote to the religion that claimed to worship him.
I attended my first Jesus Seminar meeting shortly after I had finished my fellowship at Harvard. I was introduced to Bob Funk with lots of accolades from some of my friends, but that meeting didn’t go very well. Funk was dying of cancer and was possibly feeling an uncommon amount of urgency, but he lit into me in front of a number of my peers, berating me for going back to being a church pastor after my time at Harvard. Funk felt that the church had become hopeless, and that the only way for me to be useful was to become a university professor.
Honestly, I was offended, and I thought that his cynicism about the church was unfounded. It was only a few months later when I began to feel like I should have taken him more seriously. I don’t know if the church, broadly speaking, is unredeemable. But, folks, I am standing here alone in a recording studio making a video and podcast for listeners scattered around the globe in part because no bricks and mortar church would tolerate the content of my sermons.
I am old enough to be retired and I am enjoying my freedom in my life with only a sermon to record every two weeks but if I wanted to return to a public pulpit, I seriously doubt that even a Unitarian Church would accept the kind of unvarnished content that I offer, though it is what they would find in a legitimate academic seminary.
Is the modern church hopelessly mired in magical and superstitious thinking or is there a chance that we might return to a more revolutionary, anti-empire mission that might offer the world a new reason for hope? Well, it obviously is up to you, isn’t it?
So, let me end as I began, with a quote from the Great Dane, Soren Kierkegaard:
This has to be said; so let it now be said. . . . by ceasing to take part in the public worship of God, as it now is, you have constantly one guilt the less, and that a great one: you do not take part in treating God as a fool by calling that the Christianity of the New Testament, which is not the Christianity of the New Testament... the official worship of God...is, a counterfeit, a forgery."
I still don’t want to give up on the church. I am eager to find reason to believe that it can change. I hope that some of you also hope for this transformation with me.
