Q & A with Ben Witherington: Part 9
June 27, 2012
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“Jesus was not primarily identified as Wisdom in the earliest traditions about him, but …, as the Messiah …. they called him the messiah anyway.”
Considering the time and place in which those “early Christians” lived and and were taught to believe and worship, could they (in their proto-orthodox way of thinking) think of Jesus in any way other than as the “power … wisdom” (1 Cor. 1:24) and the long sought messiah (John 1:41) of the tribal God of Israel? As I understand his argument, Wells was and is just as mistaken in his opinion of Jesus of Nazareth both before and after his most recent research as were those first century Judeo-Christians who believed and taught that Jesus was the power, wisdom, and messiah of YHVH.
I am no doubt going to bore you with my opinion but I feel compelled to express it anyway because to me this is by far best explanation for the creation of “Jesus Christ”.
In his Antiquities, Josephus describes a character of considerable interest:
“But of the fourth sect of Jewish philosophy, Judas the Galilean was the author. These men agree in all other things with the Pharisaic notions; but they have an inviolable attachment to liberty, and say that God is to be their only Ruler and Lord. ”
[Josephus: Jewish Antiquities 18:1:6]
In the Jewish War, Josephus describes Judas as chiding the people:
“… a certain Galilean, whose name was Judas, prevailed with his countrymen to revolt, and said they were cowards if they would endure to pay a tax to the Romans and would after God submit to mortal men as their lords.
This man was a teacher of a peculiar sect of his own, and was not at all like the rest of those their leaders.”
[Josephus: Jewish War 2:8:1]
In the Antiquities, Josephus also states:
“And it was in Gessius Florus’s time that the nation began to grow mad with this distemper, who was our procurator, and who occasioned the Jews to go wild with it by the abuse of his authority, and to make them revolt from the Romans.”
[Josephus: Antiquities 18:1.6]
It seems clear to me that Judas the Galilean was an anarchist and it is the philosophy of anarchists to reject external authority.
The “hoped-for” Messiah or Christ, of course, represented the liberator of the Jews. It is my belief that the early Christians were anarchists who appropriated the term “Christ” for themselves. The early Christians looked for Christ in their own hearts.
Unfortunately, anarchist societies do not persist. They tend to collapse with internal disputes and conflict. James created “Jesus Christ” as the fusion between Joshua and Christ. Joshua representing the external authority, the one who took the Law to the Gentiles and Christ representing that internal authority.
In the letter of James, Jesus Christ is never referred to as an historical figure.
In his “life of Claudius”, Suetonius writes that in CE 49:
“As the Jews were making constant disturbances at the instigation of Chrestus, he expelled them from Rome.”
That action was shortly followed by the Council of Jerusalem where no doubt those Jews of influence, concerned at the impact that these Jewish anarchists would have on Jewish communities asked for a Christ with whom Gentiles could identify like the God Horus or Tammuz or Attis or Adonis. This is what Paul provided – a flesh and blood Jesus Christ, personifying the Logos.
This is the Jesus Christ that we worship.
Kind Regards
DominickG