It is if you’re a history buff. 😉
It’s important to understand the past, and that requires facts. It also requires at least a partial disabling of one’s outrage circuits. “How could they believe all this crap!??” Look at the crap we believe now. I’d like to think it’s improved, but I have my doubts sometimes.
One of my professors at CUNY Grad told us point blank, “People don’t change.” He didn’t mean individual people. He meant all of us. We are the same animal we always were, and a change of opinion doesn’t make much more difference than a change of clothing.
A change of heart–well–we can hope. Jesus did.
I understood what you meant, Robert (though I’m a bit fuzzy on what you mean by ‘interpersonal monotheism’). I more or less agree, BUT–we can’t very well appreciate those teachings fully, their strengths and limitations, without knowing the historical and cultural context in which they evolved. It’s so very easy to misunderstand or even actively misrepresent the teachings of any religion or philosophy. And after all, the core ideas evolved independently, in many cases.
It’s never easy to say how much difference this or that person made. We can’t go back, erase somebody from the picture, and play it all out again, see what happens. Jesus was part of a very old religion and a very new movement within that religion, and the ideas he was espousing were not entirely his own–just his particular iteration of them, which must have been exceptionally powerful to have inspired to many to follow in his wake, and produce work of such lasting power. They had to be adapted in order to survive, and in the translation from Apocalyptic cult to stable longterm institution, some things were lost, others gained, and here we are.
All I can tell you is, what matters most to me, personally, is the man at the back of it all.
As to Moses, that story is so deeply mythologized, was written down so long after the events that inspired it, there’s no hope at all of knowing anything about the person or persons who inspired it. That is not the case with Jesus. Scholars of that era–not just of early Christianity–have found immense historical value in the New Testament, and related documents. They are cited in general works about the Roman world, because they tell us things about that world, that era.
The point is self-understanding. Without which nothing matters very much. And what could illuminate our nature better than the story of how a little-educated barefooted Jewish rabbi without portfolio became the most influential human who ever lived?
Stephen said
Care to recommend a good scholarly translation of the Bhagavad-Gita?
The Gītā is the second-most frequently translated text from any Asian tradition into European languages (the Dao De Jing is first on that list). It is usually the first complete text that a second-year Sanskrit student works their way through–and I have fond memories of doing that. It’s very elegantly written in beautiful standardised Sanskrit verses, even though I don’t much care for the moral doctrine it espouses. Anyway, the three scholarly translations I would probably recommend, in descending order of my estimation of them, are by Laurie Patton, Graham Schweig and Georg Feuerstein. There is a very nice one to pick from in terms of readability by Barbara Stoller-Miller too.
Sorry to send this thread tumbling so very far away from Crossan, to which it was supposed to have been devoted. To return to him, even though he constructs an interpretation of the historical Jesus that clearly, and self-admittedly, serves his sense of what the church needs to be now, with sometimes questionable methods, I think he often provides very insightful and helpful larger contexts.
Robert said
‘Interpersonal monotheism’ is a for another day, perhaps.
I’m all about knowing the historical and social context as much as we are able. And, yes, the NT texts are extremely valuable for historical study, but they are primary evidence only for the views of their authors, secondarily of the views of their contemporaries, whether they be the intended audience or adversaries, and at best tertiary evidence for the prior events and traditions that preceded these writings.
Personally, I generally try to situate what we know of the teachings of Jesus alongside what we know of the teachings of the schools of Hillel and Shammai, which are even more difficult to firmly establish in their original historical context. We only have the later traditions, at times highly stylized. To the extent that one can understand Jesus’ teaching in this traditional Jewish context, and with some reference to roughly contemporary texts from Qumran and later texts of Josephus, as well as the writings of the first couple of generations of ‘Christians’. But in the end it all comes down to a matter of interpretation of texts and reconstructed contexts, about which there will never, ever be much in the way of agreement. Just a collection of more or less plausible hypotheses, hopefully well informed by more or less contemporary materials.
What part of ‘Ancient History’ did you not understand? Oh well, clearly your understanding is far above the average, but I’m just saying…..
Yes, if something you read resonates with you, that has innate value, regardless of its provenance. But provenance still matters. A very great deal. And I do think we have made enormous progress in terms of understanding Jesus and the early Christians. Well, some of us have. Okay, hardly anyone, because nobody reads.
What interests me, however, is how across the centuries, you spot various people who looked past whatever they were raised to believe about Jesus’ teachings, and saw the real message, under all the accreted layers between him and us. Some of them were saints, others scholars. Some were both.
He is still talking to us. God knows why he bothers.
One comment–how is it that atheism (in its pure form) never produces anything of lasting aesthetic value? I suppose honorable mention could be made for Frank Zappa’s The Meek Shall Inherit Nothing, but that’s basically riffing on Jesus, and assuming he meant the same thing as the people who coopted him (as happened with Zappa as well, and much quicker).
You can pretend to ignore me, Stephen, but not terribly persuasive if you’re still going to be chiming in. 😉
Judith said
Reminds me of that line from “Something Good” (Julie Andrews Sound of Music): Nothing comes from nothing. Nothing ever could.
Am too lightweight to enter the fray here but maybe it would help you to appreciate one another? (Not that I plan to say anything further!)
Stephen said
Robert I consider the prime innovation of Christianity (analogous to Buddhism in the east) to be that it developed a category of social and religious organization not based on ethnicity.Robert said
I agree, but would still attribute the primary impetus for this to the actualization of an earlier, originally Jewish prophetic ideal.
ok Stephen, and yes Robert there is prior impetus from Jewish prophets
Crossan does attribute to the historical Jesus a possible innovation which he calls commensality or shared egalitarianism , as an indication/implementation of the kKngdom of God
BDEhrman
FreedomBen
evgendob
Robert