No Robots

Einstein belonged to a special generation of emancipated Jews living in the rapidly secularizing Europe. The special prevailing conditions gave many of the leading Jewish intellectuals an opportunity to freely inquire into Christ, and many of them came away with conviction not simply in his existence, but in his signal importance to the human condition. With the Nazi catastrophe and the subsequent preoccupation with Zionism, this new spirit was almost completely forgotten. Christians may want to look into these early twentieth-century Jewish appraisals of Christ to help dispel any doubts about his historicity, and to come to grips with his essential Jewishness. Ultimately though, in Constantin Brunner's words:

[i]f Christianity is to become what it wants to be, it must renounce the desire to know anything that pure Judaism in Christ neither knows nor wishes to know: it must renounce symbols, dogmas, articles of faith, liturgy, worship; it must want to know nothing of creation, the Fall, redemption and justification, heaven and hell, the incarnation of God, the Three Persons of the Godhead, the single Personality of God; it must not hold on to a single item of religion's superstition. If Christianity is to come about, Christ must be the Master, revealing to the heathen that they are but men (Ps. 9:21).--Our Christ, p. 374 (in context).

This is a hard pill for Christians to swallow, but, really, what alternative do they have? To hold on to their godman? To embrace mythicism? That seems to be about it.

I was raised as a rationalist skeptic. My father is still a mythicist, or at least an agnostic on the question. I enjoyed complete freedom to explore the subject of Christ. I didn't have any real preconceptions, just a hypothesis that the question of Christ was central to the question of the human condition. I was never really impressed with the mythicist position. Ultimately, I found that the Jews of Einstein's generation, and Brunner in particular, have provided us with the key to understanding Christ.

bacht

Have you read any Geza Vermes? I had to study Jesus the Jew (or via: amazon.co.uk) in university, very entertaining. He sees Jesus as a true Jewish prophet due to be reclaimed by Judaism. Vermes is very knowledgable about Aramaic, and has worked on the DSS.

No Robots

Vermes is great, a careful scholar. Not as compelling as some of his predecessors in the field, but still very useful for providing support for the basic case of the Jewishness of Christ.

Doug Shaver

Shakespeare's contemporaries knew exactly what he was trying to say, and scholars familiar with his intellectual environment can translate his works into modern English so that modern audiences can understand him just as well as his contemporaries did. All that is because Shakespeare knew what he wanted to say and intended to be clearly understood.

That sort of translation is not possible with the words attributed to Jesus. According to the gospel authors themselves, his own disciples didn't understand him, and the very reason for that was that Jesus was deliberately cryptic.

But it doesn't matter whether the obfuscation was intentional. The point remains that a person with clear ideas can, with sufficient intelligence and good intentions, make himself clearly understood to anyone of ordinary intelligence, and Jesus did not do that. Therefore, either he did not want to be clearly understood, or else his thinking was too incoherent to be stated in clearly understandable language.

No Robots

We know nothing at all of Shakespeare's reception among his contemporaries, other than what we have from Ben Jonson. We have no evidence that his great themes, which are still under active exploration, were fully understood during his lifetime. It takes time for genius to work its way into the minds of men.

storytime

Doug said:

"But it doesn't matter whether the obfuscation was intentional. The point remains that a person with clear ideas can, with sufficient intelligence and good intentions, make himself clearly understood to anyone of ordinary intelligence, and Jesus did not do that. Therefore, either he did not want to be clearly understood, or else his thinking was too incoherent to be stated in clearly understandable language."

The way I read it is that Jesus did not want to be clearly understood by some, because he said "it is given unto you(his disciples, those whom he had chosen, the twelve), to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven[God], but to them(the multitude of people that may have consisted of Gentiles and unqualified Jews), it is not given." (Mt.13:10-11)

The priesthood was given sole authority in inheritance to the Levites. Read OT account of Levites being separated unto God. As overseers of the kingdom of God[heaven], the Levite priests acted as spokespersons[mouth of God], as interpreters of law (Malachi 2:7), also as judges in the law in the gates of tribal cities. The so-called "mysteries" might be explained as lawful judgements, and whereof Jesus told his disciples "ye have heard that it hath been said (do this and do that), but now I say this unto you." Connect this with how Jesus made argument with and against the Pharisees and Sadducees. Jesus called the Pharisees children of their father the devil, and told his disciples to observe the Pharisee rule but not be hypocrits in the law; because the Pharisees spoke the law but did not observe[obey] it themselves.

Jesus is seen dividing his student from those students of the Pharisees and Sadducees. He is not proposing peace, but division. Jesus wants control of Jerusalem. How does he plan on casting out "Satan"[Pharisees]? Had he spoke openly and plainly his planned takeover would have been squashed much sooner. Jesus "ministry coded in parables to deceive, thus a conspiracy, lasted a short three and one-half years, enough time to stir an uprising, cause death and destruction, and divide Jew against Jew. Other prophets before Jesus had done the same thing. The only difference, Jesus made himself God in the flesh. Was this blasphemy?

This NT story has no application to non-Jewish people. Jesus the Jew is on a power trip, and portrays himself as a savior in rightness[righteousness] for the people of Israel.

Jesus excluded non-Jewish people and deceived "the multitude". And his reason is seen in his self-serving ambition. "I will draw all men unto myself".

PhilosopherJay

Hi No Robots,

Thank you for this reference to the Amazon site with the Brian book on it. It saved me a lot of time.

"Princeton Theological Seminary prepares men and women to serve Jesus Christ in ministries marked by faith, integrity, scholarship, competence, compassion, and joy, equipping them for leadership worldwide in congregations and the larger church, in classrooms and the academy, and in the public arena."

(from http://www.ptsem.edu/About/mission.php)

Princeton Theological Seminary is affiliated with the Presbyterian Church. James R. Blackwood is a graduate of the Princeton Theological Seminary.

It is James R. Blackwood who, in Brian's book "Albert Einstein, a Life" apparently claims that he personally saw Einstein attest to the accuracy of Viereck's article. Brian does not identify Blackwood as the eyewitness, but from the context, it is clear, nor does he inform the reader of Blackwood's background as a theologian, which is certainly relevant.

In 1980, Blackwood wrote an article called The Einsteins as Princeton Neighbors for The Princeton Seminary Bulletin. In 1986, Blackwood wrote an article for the same magazine called Growing up on Campus.

One would expect in both these articles that if he heard Einstein make any pronouncements on Jesus Christ or on material related to Christ, that Blackwood would have published them in these articles. In the 1986 article, Blackwood gives a detailed description of the dinner party that Einstein attended in his house on his seventeenth birthday. All the incidents at the dinner party that Brian records are included in the that report, but it does not contain the incident of Einstein's confirmation of the Viereck article. This is the incident that would certainly have been of most interest to the readers of the Princeton Seminary Bulletin in 1986.

Thus, in 1986, 49 years after the dinner party for Einstein given on his seventeenth birthday, the 66 year-old theologican, Blackwood, did not remember that Einstein had expressed his views concerning the Viereck article (and thus his views on Jesus Christ and the Bible). Apparently, it was only sometime between 1986 and 1997 that Blackwood remembered that Einstein had expressed an opinion on the article.

Given what we know about the human mind, it is much easier to believe that this incident was imagined by Blackwood rather than forgotten and remembered by him fifty plus years later.

Therefore, we may dismiss this alleged confirmation of the Viereck article by Einstein as reported by Brian.

We are left with the word of Viereck, a colorful, imaginative novelist and convicted Nazi propagandist, that Einstein held such views as expressed in the Saturday Evening Post article.

All the other quotes by Einstein appear to run counter to such views.

Warmly,

Philosopher Jay