Who was Jesus?

[VOguy]

perhaps someone who should be on Coast to Coast?

Who was the historical Jesus?
Biblical scholar Rachel Havrelock weighs in on common misconceptions
By Jennifer Viegas - NBC/Discovery Channel - April 3, 2009

Rio de Janeiro, BRAZIL: The Christ the Redeemer statue is seen 28 June 2007, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The statue, that stands 32m (125 feet) tall and weighs 1000 tons, is a candidate to be choosed as one of the new 7 World Wonders. AFP PHOTO / ANTONIO SCORZA (Photo credit should read ANTONIO SCORZA/AFP/Getty Images)

Biblical scholar Rachel Havrelock is a MythBuster in her own right, dispelling popular beliefs about Christianity. The University of Illinois at Chicago professor traveled to the Holy Land to co-host the Discovery Channel documentary "Who Was Jesus?" which premiers April 5, Palm Sunday.

Havrelock recently sat down to speak with Discovery News' Jennifer Viegas about the historical Jesus, what she feels are some common misconceptions, and the role women played during Christianity's earliest years.

Discovery News (DN): What do you think is the most common misconception today about the Bible and its teachings?

Rachel Havrelock (RH): That it was meant to present a very conservative, traditional viewpoint. You must remember that the concept of God was, and perhaps still is, a radical social idea. Rather than being beholden to an oligarchy, an individual can now answer to a deity. It created the possibility of an egalitarian society.

The core of Jesus' message was directed to the economically downtrodden, the poor farmers, laborers and others who had little power in their own lives. Jesus presented a radical social proposition that meant society could be reconfigured to allow for less inequity and more sharing.

DN: For Christian believers, there is no doubt that Jesus existed. Is there a strong argument for an historical Jesus, though, having lived sometime around the first century A.D.?

RH: Yes, I think there is. The evidence comes from the Bible itself, but not in the way you might suppose.

DN: Please explain.

RH: Certain details of Jesus' life simply don't fit with idealized notions of a Messiah. He's baptized by John the Baptist, a lesser figure according to the Gospels. He addresses women in his teachings and through his actions. He's from a backwater. These are aspects that seem to speak to the historical figure of Jesus of Nazareth.

DN: What information do we have about the "idealized Messiah?"

RH: The prophets of the Old Testament speak of a future king who will restore the Jews to their land and establish order and peace. This savior-king was projected into the future and gave rise to the idea of a Messiah.

Texts that are written in the time between the Old and New Testaments, like the Dead Sea Scrolls, the book of Enoch, and the writings of Philo, develop the messianic idea. There are notions of what people need to do to prepare themselves for the Messiah to arrive and usher in the future.

Due to the prophecies, it was expected that the Messiah would come from Bethlehem and be a son of King David, who was the second king of the United Kingdom of Israel, according to the Hebrew Bible. That perhaps is one reason why the genealogy in Matthew links Jesus to the House of David.

DN: But Jesus is said to have been born of a poor family in Nazareth, and he conducted much of his ministry at the Sea of Galilee?

RH: Precisely. There is no reason why Jesus should have come from Nazareth, which was never mentioned in the prophecies, or that he should have begun his work at the Sea of Galilee. These are just two of the incongruities that did not conform to the preexisting beliefs about the Messiah. It is therefore likely that Jesus actually did exist, since there is no reason for these mismatches.

DN: Why do you think Jesus' baptism by John the Baptist was yet another incongruity?

RH: Matthew has Jesus saying to John the Baptist, "Permit it at this time; for in this way it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness." Jesus was then baptized.

But the wording of the baptism accounts reveals embarrassment. Why should a son of God have to be baptized, since he should have been born without sin? It appears that John the Baptist was involved in creating another movement at around the same time as Jesus.

RH: There were many competing movements during this period. There was the Pharisees social movement, which later was re-established as Rabbinic Judaism, becoming Judaism today.

There was the Dead Sea Scroll community, which may have been a dropout, radical group that preferred to live outside of traditional society. All in one way or another addressed the oppression that the Jewish people felt, being colonized by the Roman Empire. The Jesus movement wound up displacing some of the others at the time.

DN: Is there any direct evidence for Jesus' existence outside of the Bible?

RH: Josephus, a first century Jewish historian, wrote of Jesus in the Greek version of the "Antiquities of the Jews." He described Jesus as a "wise man" and a "doer of wonderful works." The fact that Josephus referenced Jesus reveals that stories about Jesus were already gaining momentum.

DN: What permitted Christianity to spread so quickly?

RH: Paul the apostle was a marketing genius. The notion of conversion targeted everyone, and along the way the message of Jesus was universalized. According to Paul, you didn't have to be ethnically Jewish, or follow the laws of Judaism, in order to follow Jesus.

DN: Who funded and supported Paul?

RH: He was supported mostly by wealthy widows. These were women with both money and autonomy. They bankrolled early Christianity. They also kept the teachings alive by holding services in their homes. Such "house churches" were common before cathedrals and other central meeting places were established.

DN: What were some of their names?

RH: Mary, or versions of that name were popular then, so there were a lot of Mary's! The Bible also mentions Priscilla, Rhoda, Dorcas and so many others.

DN: Were there any female disciples?

RH: Mary Magdalene was one prominent disciple. It's definitely a myth that there weren't any women disciples. And there is nothing in the Bible supporting that Mary Magdalene was a prostitute. For some reason, her story was confused with an anecdote about a prostitute washing the feet of Jesus.

DN: What other Biblical-related myths, in your view, should be busted?

RH: It's commonly thought today that the heterosexual family, with a mother, father and children, was the only family unit sanctioned by the church. The early Christians instead put more emphasis on community that allowed for gender equality and where everyone was equal in the eyes of God.


© 2009 Discovery Channel

[axl]

Not trying to wind you up the wrong way or touch parts that seem to go off on a tangent away from thread subject but i can only give you what i know and have researched .

1st things 1st .

Religion has perposly confused Jesus of nazerath with Christ , and Christ with the real masire .

funny that ah ? a trinity of complete perposly built muckups ?

The original masire is of an age that goes beyond all written acounts of history and is only echoed briefly in ancient texts ..

The Christ was a figure that can be found and mentioned in both Egypt and on Mayan texts .

Jesus was a son of a chippy ( carpenter ) and nothing more !

everyone called him the masire or king , yet jesus never once ever said he was "the son of God".

It is all reruns of repeats , passed down from age to age , replayed and then altered to fit the bill .

jesus story from what I have researched , is just a copy of a copy of a copy , made simple to keep folks stupid and out of the big picture .

Jesus was murdered by romans at the command of the jews and get this ------------Jesus was never a christian . he was a Jew !

christians ( so called christians ) follow the idea of jesus as christ , there for jesus cannot be a follower of him self and there for could never be a christian .

All christians are an acult that rose during the following of a son of a carpenter .

Now I am not saying that he wasnt in touch with a God like life force , im saying , what we know , is not true and all religions are born of a beast that needs adoring , worship and sacrifice , mostly , human beings .

[Delphine]

I thought I'd lighten it up a bit. This is an interesting radio show.

Inside KFI-AM, the face of this Jesus looks nothing like familiar images of Christ. Bald and goateed sans moustache, he wears a hoop earring and bears the tattoos of a rebellious youth.

The voice of KFI Jesus - a strong, smooth bass - belongs to Neil Saavedra, who does not believe he is the Messiah, yet he assumes the godly persona during a three-hour call-in show that airs Sunday mornings.

His tone is not sarcastic but loving, his aim not to deceive but to reach Christians in need of support, encouragement and pastoral advice.

For Saavedra, a lifelong Christian who had his born-again moment at age 17, it’s a calling. Serving as marketing director for KFI-AM (640) pays his bills. Hosting “The Jesus Christ Show” is how he gives back.

[MuseNoir]

Delph-
I occasionally listen to The Jesus Christ Show on KFI --- it is a really fascinating show --- sometimes quite emotional. The host of the show is pretty great.

[Delphine]

Delph-
I occasionally listen to The Jesus Christ Show on KFI --- it is a really fascinating show --- sometimes quite emotional. The host of the show is pretty great.

I listen, but not often, because I forget that he's on on Sunday nights. I listened for a while tonight, but a girlfriend came over, so I had to turn it off. I agree it's fascinating...even if the questions aren't that unusual, the answers are always worth a listen. He comes on here on the same station as George.

[VOguy]

History Channel had a show on last night when I went to bed. I ended up saying WAYYYY up too late because it was interesting.

The one fact that they were able to draw upon was that the path Jesus took with his cross is actually different from what had been reported.

[Figtree]

One way to describe Jesus of Nazareth would be to say that he was a character in a cartoon which is imagined by the ultimate originator [UO] of this and all other cartoons; but that would be an incomplete description because Jesus was used by the UO as a sock puppet. That is, Jesus appeared to be merely Jesus but was actually controlled by the UO.

Some people might advance the argument that everybody and everything is controlled by the UO. Although that is logically the case; our observations of the cartoon, of which we are a part, have led us to believe that the UO pretends that there are random events.

When this idea is mentioned, some people become anxious because one of the implications is that the UO is insane, if insanity were to be defined to be pretending that something were real while being aware that it were not real.

Even if that were to be the case, it would still be moot because we are still cartoon characters whose only existence is in the imagination of the UO; so a discussion about the sanity of the UO is moot. That is to say, so what if the UO were to be considered insane by our standards? What difference in our situation would that make? It would make no difference because we would still be in this same situation: cartoon characters in an imaginary cartoon.

When this idea is mentioned, some people have wondered the reason that the UO would imagine people, and would imagine that they have free will. In other words, what's the point? Many answers have been alleged to have been provided by the UO in the past. Each of these alleged answers has become the basis for a different religion.

Among the different religions are three which are more closely related than any of the other religions. Those three are Judaism, Christianity, and Mormonism. A review of their scriptures led to the discovery that a message from the UO had been hidden in parts of their scriptures in such a way that the message could not be clearly seen until and unless the parts were put together.

Although not all parts of the message have been discovered yet, all of the parts in the first four books of the New Testament have been discovered and have been put together. That portion of the message is displayed at the homepage of http://www.thisgoodriddle.com

Some people have glanced at the portion of the message on the homepage and have failed to notice that it is different in an important way from the contents of the three scriptures on which it is based. The crucial difference is that the portion of the message consists entirely of riddles which could and should be solved in order to understand it. Hints and clues about solving the riddles have therefore been provided on the site. Good luck in solving them.

[RedDog]

"The hearing ear and the seeing eye, The Lord has made both of them" (Proverbs 20:12).

"He who has ears to hear, let him hear."

Something about the automous free will of us existing here, now, while having these meme's ciculating around us waiting for us to become focused or open to the intent and meaning, makes this place most interesting.

These messages or meme's imparted by, what you call the UO, are similar to the seeds cast about by the wind, with the exception that we can control our own personal state of fertileness.

"Take heed what you hear. With the same measure you use, it will be measured to you; and to you who hear, more will be given" (Mark 4:24).

p.s. Welcome to the IW forums

[Judee]

Figtree, welcome to IW!