thedistillers

Some modern readers might like the character of Jesus as depicted in the Gospels, but what the OP said is still true; the reputation of Jesus does not correspond to what is written in the Gospels. But it should not be surprising as the majority of people has never read the Bible.

No Robots

That is all quite true. So, we have to come to grips with how Christ's reputation has become so distorted, so distant from what is actually present in the Gospels. We need also to learn how to read the Gospels correctly. We need to be aware of the 2 millennia of distortion that contaminates our understanding. We need to understand the cultural context in which they were produced. And we need to acknowledge that their profundity is limitless. As someone said of another book, the NT cannot be read, but only reread, its treasures revealing themselves as our own understanding grows.

aa5874

But, what do you really mean by "we need to learn how to read the Gospels correctly?

And where were the Gospels first produced and in what cultural context?

And what is referred to as the character called Jesus, appears to be the work of the authors , a reflection and product of the authors themselves. For that reason, gJohn's Jesus is fundamentally different to gMark's, the latter tries to conceal his identity, while the former establishes very early, that he is the Son of God.

In the very 1st chapter of Mark, the author's character called Jesus admonishes people not to say anything about his miraculous powers and even ask the devils not to reveal his true identity, to the point where gMark's Jesus had to flee the city and operate from desert places.

However, gJohn's character, as early as the 2nd chapter, immediately implies or tells people that he is the Son of God and never forbids anyone, neither devils or those he healed to conceal his identity.

In fact, in John 2, this character goes into his "Father"s house" and beat or chase the merchants out of his "Father's place. gJohn's character did not have to coneal his identity, he wanted everyone to know he was the Son of God.

The character called Jesus is the product of the Gospel authors.

No Robots

Christ does seek to reveal himself, the great prophetic/mystical genius. However, nobody would pay him the slightest heed if he didn't perform wonders, even if these wonders were for him pure charlatanism. His misgivings about performing wonders is evident from his frequent enjoinders to have them kept secret.

PhilosopherJay

Hi Celine,

This is an excellent point. I think modern/postmodern literary/texual criticism has an incredible amount to offer us regarding Jesus. What we have is both a failed character and a failed narrative. John fails to bring the kingdom of God, Jesus fails to learn from John's mistakes. Jesus fails to convince his followers, Jesus fails to convince the Jews and fails to convince the Romans/Pilate.

Only the ghost Jesus succeeds. But the Ghost Jesus is just the God-ex-machina of botched play narratives that even Aristotle recognized as authorial failure. The only advice that Jesus can give to his apostles is to carry on the same mission of failure that he himself went on. One day soon the world will end for everybody else, but will continue for them. God will turn failure into victory. But since God can do anything (another way of saying) anything can happen than the failure just remains a failure. Keep on failing and one day you'll get lucky and succeed. This is a message of hope in the same way that "Buy a lottery ticket" is a message of hope. Kingdom of God rained out today, here's a raincheck for the game if it ever comes.

While the gospels included in the Bible are narrative failures, it is interesting that some gnostic gospels are not. The gospel of Thomas contains no narrative plot, just a listing of bullet points. The Gospel of Mary apparently shows Mary's triumphs over the skepticism of the other apostles regarding her primary position in the story as the beloved of Christ. The best explanation for this is that the gnostic gospels are closer to the successful original source material. The later gospels come from too many mixed contradictorary sources and therefore are narrative failures.

We have seen this type of thing happen in comic books over the last 30 years with "retcons." Retcons are the rewriting of comic book origin stories to create retroactive continuity, to make later character and plot developments match earlier ones. This has generally resulted in more confusion not less.

Far more successful are reboots, where the same character is given a whole new origin story and the old one simply disappears. This is what happened in the 1950's with super-hero comic characters from the 1930's and 40's.

The Gospels are like retcons. The writers fix one problem only to find that two more problems have sprung up. For example, an author of the gospel of Matthew apparently wants to respond to the charge that Jesus' body was taken by his followers. He solves the problem of the disappearance of Jesus' body by having a squad of Romans watch the body from Friday Night to Saturday Morning. But this creates the problem that the Romans didn't tell anybody about Jesus' rising. He solves this by adding that they were bribed by the Jews into saying that Jesus' body was taken by Jews. The author does not see that he hasn't solved the problem at all. If the guards accepted bribes to say that Jesus' body was taken away, how can we trust that they actually saw the angel of the lord saying that Jesus has risen. The writer of Matthew has created new witnesses, but has been forced to impeach their credibility himself. Again another narrative failure; this time it is because the characters are driven solely by desire for money and thus cannot be considered credible witnesses. At the same time that the narrative impeaches their credibility, the credibility of the author of Matthew is also impeached. It is obvious that he has neither witnessed or created the material about which he writes. He is only "fixing" it, possibly for the very same reasons as his guards -- money.

In any case, I think that we really need to apply the lessons that postmodern literary theory have taught us and apply them to these texts.


Warmly,

Philosopher Jay

Joan of Bark

No, nor am I interested in anything Bob Dylan sings. I was responding to your claim that

There are many things he says that I -- and the vast majority of humanity -- don't like.

No Robots

Quite true. But that doesn't stop some us from liking everything he says, or at least recognizing that if we don't like something, it is probably because we don't adequately understand it.

ScuzzBuster

The ultimate problem is that we really have no idea what the intentions of ANY of the authors of the Gospels were, but most likely the intentions were not the same from one author to the next.

The NT goes from from tales of Jesus that are vague and allegorical at some points to being an attempt at a seeming accurate recounting of alleged historical events.

In modern times we still don't seem to focus on Jesus the person as a character but still simply Jesus things he said and certain events. When anyone attempts an interpretation of Jesus as a character rather than a collection of events people get offended. Say, the Last Temptation of Christ kind of batshit reaction.

It's almost a pointless argument. As far as I know, there's no criticism of the Bible's portrayal of Jesus or the alleged events that surrounded his life that can claim the NT has any reasonable consistency, literary value, or historical accuracy.

Really for being the only true tangible root of Christianity, it's amazing the belief is as prevelant as it is.

Honestly, is there any evidence whatsoever that Jesus ever existed or is the characterization we have of him simple what one might expect of a multitude of different authors at different times all trying to portray accounts of someone that had no historical record or foundation. Do we even have any feasible evidence to show that all the gospel authors wrote with the intention of having the reader believe in the actual exisitence of Jesus. In the process of trying to portray a human being who was also God, we have this alternating split personality Jesus the preached compassion but threatened violence and damnation. There's no requirement in Christianity to like God...just to love and be subserviant to him.

I doubt that even the gospel authors themselves would have thought that their followers two thousand years later would be so hung up on "Jesus" the person. I think their hope is that people would be hung up the positive messages. But that's human nature, we just don't accept good priniciples, we need a hero to hang our hats on, too. Morality is no good if we can't personify it with an image of a person, which is why atheists allegedly can't be moral.

As so we are reminded of one of George Carlin's long list of "people he can do without":
Anyone who mentions Jesus more than 300 times in a 2 minute conversation. And here we are doing the same thing.

No Robots

Many writers have found in the Gospels' portrayal of Christ a single coherent personality. For example, Joseph Klausner says of Christ's proverbs:

Almost all are stamped with the seal of one great, single personality, the seal of Jesus, and not the several seals of many and various disciples.--Jesus of Nazareth : His life, times, and teaching / by Joseph Klausner. Extract.

Jeffrey Gibson

I'm not sure how you conclude that because Klausner says that that the parables/proverbs in the Synoptic Gospels bear the stamp of a single personality that Klausner thinks, let alone has asserted, or would agree with the claim that there is in the Gospel's portrayal of him a single coherent personality. This is a non sequiteur.

And it's certain that you've never actually read Klausner's Jesus of Nazareth (or if you have, you seen only what you wanted to see). For there he asserts, just as C.G. Montiefiore did in his work on the Synoptic Gospels, that the Gospel portrait of Jesus and his personality in GJohn is radically different from that of the Synoptics -- so different in fact, and so theologically imbued, that it must be rejected as a source for determining what Jesus was like.

BTW, Brunner is never mentioned by Klausner in this book, let alone as one who should be consulted if one wants to know anything about Jesus, even though Klausner was intent to note in detail the major Jewish contributions to Leben Jesu research and our understanding of the teaching and Jewishness of Jesus.

Why is that?

Jeffrey