Hngerhman said
I personally very much enjoy your alternative view and am grateful you are giving it exercise – both because it is inherently interesting and thoughtful, and because it forces me to think harder about my own intuitions.The back-to-Eden tack is quite intriguing.
Thanks for comment it is helpful to have a forum to throw ideas at wall as they say
all criticism has been appreciated,
I fancy myself a connoisseur of obscure pop cultural references, but Kylling Kluk is a new one on me. Your point is nonetheless taken.
Anachronism is difficult to avoid in history, though I think the more appropriate term (though also anachronistic) would be “Whig Interpretation.” You know it? Herbert Butterfield’s seminal thesis on the false teleology that infected English political historians. The temptation to see every past movement in history as somehow leading up to our moment in time, our supposedly better state of affairs. We do have to try, hard as it is, to understand people in the past on their own terms.
But in doing so, we must understand they weren’t very different from us. Not down deep. As a professor of mine (Russian History and History of Socialism) said, “People don’t change.” We really don’t. Different softwares, same operating system. Which is why the gospels don’t sound the least bit dated. And neither does the Iliad (based, much more loosely, on real events). Or Beowulf. Or the myth of Gilgamesh. Or the Mahabarata. It’s all newer than new, relevant as ever, because we’re still fighting the same battles, and only the outward forms have changed. That which was deeply profoundly true at one time, is so forever. But never without inherent falsehoods. Because people don’t change.
We made Jesus into God. We should see him as brethren. Which is how he’d see us. And yes, I know that of a fact.
Well, I agree with that. Jesus was unquestionably Apocalyptic in his thinking. That isn’t all he was. Nobody is all just one thing. However, again, the point is to try and see what he saw. Not turn it into something we’re more comfortable with. I know Stephen thinks I’m doing that, but Stephen is wrong. I am far from comfortable with this. It’s not meant to be comforting. 🙂
However, again, the point is to try and see what he saw.
But don’t you see, with the historical Jesus this is exactly what you can’t do. All personal traits he may have possessed are completely occluded to us. All we have are traditions from which we might possibly glean some hint of his milieu. And those traditions are mediated by decades of pious accretion. When you try to enter his consciousness and describe what he thought, his motivations or how changed his mind, you can’t help but project your own biases. The writer of fiction can have at it but the historian must come to terms with the blank places on the map.
As far as the larger issue of how the ancients thought, Robert is right.
…human nature or people have not necessarily changed that much, but their worldviews can be drastically different…
In any serious reading of ancient history, even leaving aside the general sparsity of our primary sources, one constantly bumps up against moments of incomprehension where there is an obvious disconnect between our way of thinking and the way the ancients thought. Sure if you punched Socrates in the mouth he would react the same way a modern would. They laughed and cried and got horny and sad. Sure. But if you think they thought the same way we do you’re deluding yourself. And what’s worse you are forever barring yourself from entering their world (to the degree we can do that at all).
From the day after Easter all the way up the Jesus Seminar people have been creating their own Jesus. Christianity itself was created by people who were creating their own Jesus. And then thinking they were looking through a window when all they were doing is looking into a mirror.
Stephen, I studied history for three years, with real historians. Don’t tell me what the serious reading of history is supposed to be. Psychological interpretation, reading motives, is part and parcel of all periods of history. Of course you adjust for different cultures, different perceptions, but that’s no less true if you’re trying to understand people with different backgrounds living today. Anthropologists get into the heads of people still living in the stone age (who believe it or not, are still just people). We’re just doing it through ancient texts here. And through the fact that the same basic mindsets exist today. Otherwise, the ideas of these people would have been discarded by now (when in fact, Christianity is gaining adherents in some parts of the world).
What’s more, you’re telling actual professionals they’re doing it wrong. Even worse, I’ve seen you doing precisely what you say we shouldn’t do! “Jesus was a naive religious fanatic.” Why? Because you grew up with some, and you’re projecting to beat the band. Okay, fine–share those perceptions, those experiences. But get off the damn soapbox.
As to ‘moments of incomprehension’, I concede your expertise on that topic. I’ve told you my educational background–nothing to brag on, but I’m still glad to have it.
What’s yours?
Robert said
godspell said
… We’re just doing it through ancient texts here. …You’re both right, and you’re both wrong. You’re both using texts as a pretext for supporting your own personal view of who Jesus was. Jesus affects people differently, still today, as also during his life and work many years ago. Was Cephas’ view of Jesus right, and Judas’ view wrong? Caiaphas? Pilate? Stephen’s fundamentalist parents or godspell’s former Josephite father? Our views of Jesus have been handed down to us through so many tradents, writers, people, with a million different perspectives on their own world. That says a lot for how influential Jesus was and still is most indirectly, but it also greatly diminishes our ability to know who the real Jesus was. But even if we were to have lived two thousand years ago, met Jesus personally in any of a rather short lifetime of situations and contexts, would any two people have had exactly the same impression of who he was? Many most certainly would have had very similar impressions, but the range of possible interpretations would have been both greater and less than we have today.
Or, if not to your liking, try this one:
I agree with what you’re saying–what you fail to see is I’m saying the same thing.
You don’t listen well.
Fatal for a student of history.
I think Stephen’s perspective is too–for want of a better word–jaundiced. And it’s not very hard to divine why that is. Very far from an uncommon perspective. He is at least acknowledging Jesus existed. That’s something.
Some want to put Jesus up on a lofty pedestal, make him greater than themselves; others want to throw him off it, make him inferior to their supposedly more evolved state.
I just want to see him. As clearly as possible. But you can’t see any other human being, dead or living, without using yourself as a reference point. You are the only sentient you are ever going to know from the inside. I hold that truth to be self-evident.
Well we can both be wrong of course but we can’t both be right.
I think Stephen’s perspective is too–for want of a better word–jaundiced. And it’s not very hard to divine why that is.
Of course…if you can read Jesus’ mind over two thousand years then mine shouldn’t be difficult at all. But you can’t.
My perspective is pretty straightforward (if you ask instead of guess). I am what I suppose could be called a historical minimalist. I accept the basic skeleton of the narrative. An itinerant Jewish apocalypticist runs afoul of the Roman authorities and is crucified. His followers come to believe he rose from the dead and is favored by God. But I don’t think any of the actual narrative details of the stories recorded in the gospels are historical in the slightest. It’s literature and theology. And we certainly don’t have access to the personal psychology of the historical Jesus. Any motivation we ascribe to Jesus is guaranteed to be a projection. How could it not be? There’s no “there” there. We know some details about the apocalyptic mindset from our sources so we extrapolate that he might have shared some of those notions but that’s it. “My” Jesus stands in the shadows of what came after. HIs essence is occluded to us. And yes, from a 21st century secular perspective (which is mine surprise surprise) he was a naïve religious fanatic.
godspell you can’t even get my motivations right. How the hell are you going to get Jesus’ right? Why would you want to imagine that you can do this?
ps: you have no idea how stupid the “fundamentalist atheist” trope is to someone who has been both.
I also think it is not unreasonable to think that he most probably was a remarkable person.
I have said he was possibly a religious prodigy and was doubtless personally charismatic. But the doctrines and ethics ascribed to him come from his Jewish tradition.
As long as we realize we are only trying to reconstruct plausible portraits, what is the harm in trying to imagine as many of the various scenarios as we can?
But what is the purpose here? Seems like we are migrating into the realm of the novel or the movie script. The historian must eventually come to terms with the blank spaces on the map. I realize “we don’t know and will never know” doesn’t generate too many PhDs but it is after all the truth.
Stephen said
I also think it is not unreasonable to think that he most probably was a remarkable person.I have said he was possibly a religious prodigy and was doubtless personally charismatic. But the doctrines and ethics ascribed to him come from his Jewish tradition.
As long as we realize we are only trying to reconstruct plausible portraits, what is the harm in trying to imagine as many of the various scenarios as we can?
But what is the purpose here? Seems like we are migrating into the realm of the novel or the movie script. The historian must eventually come to terms with the blank spaces on the map. I realize “we don’t know and will never know” doesn’t generate too many PhDs but it is after all the truth.
The doctrines and ethics described to everyone, ever, are adapted from what came before. Without exception. But to argue Jesus made no modifications–or that his modifications did not prove more influential than everything that came before–is just self-delusion, because you need to make him smaller.
You’re not arguing with anyone here. You’re arguing with him. Because he still intimidates you, after all these years. That’s not his fault, man. Nothing you experienced was anything like what he had in mind.
Robert said
I don’t think there should be PhDs for Leben Jesu Forschung. It is for me a hobby, almost a game, perhaps best played by those with actual expertise in real disciplines, but a game nonetheless. If one knows the languages, texts, and traditions of the era, one might be a little better equipped to play the game, but it is still a game, for some a very serious game, but a game nonetheless. For those who know well what can be known, we may guess at what we don’t know, but we cannot know what we can only guess at. There is such a thing as educated guesses, but the truly educated know these are only guesses. Wow, that must sound very arrogant. OK, guilty as charged. Yes, absolutely, the doctrines and ethics ascribed to him definitely come from his Jewish tradition.
Who said otherwise? I’ve never seen a single person on this forum say he made it all up himself.
So somebody (not you, Robert) is definitely going for his PhD in Strawman Assembly. 😉
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