How might the historical Jesus differ from the Jesus presented by Church traditions?

(given as a tutorial presentation)

I wanted to give you a hypothesis to consider as I am giving you this talk today. I want you to imagine that you are the jury at the Crucifixion of Jesus. It is A.D. 30 or round about, and there are thousands screaming for his death. I will present a summary of the case from the position of both the prosecutor and defense. I am going to give you both the historical evidence for the life of Jesus, and the position taken by the Church, and from the information I give you, and your own knowledge, you must make the choice: Lunatic or Lord? Do we crucify him for a crazy heretic, or do we fall at his feet and call him our Lord?

The search for the historical Jesus has been the topic of much debate for many centuries. In the 19th century alone, no less than 60,000 books on the life of Jesus were published. This is a huge area, that one could easily devote an entire lifetime of study to. I will attempt to outline what little I have managed to learn in the last few weeks, but this is by no means a definitive guide, and I am no expert.

As we all know, there is no one Christian Church. So, for the purpose of this argument, I will attempt to outline the Jesus of faith, popular culture and popular belief that I have gleaned from my own research and experiences. There is one document, however, that I think most Christians would agree is their truth, and that is the Nicene Creed. I'd like to read that to you now as an introduction into the Church's view.

I'm aware that I may possibly step on a few toes during this talk, as I was not brought up in the Church, some of you no doubt know more about the Church's viewpoint than me, so feel free to interject or ask questions at any stage.

The Characteristics of Jesus

Did Jesus Exist?

There is no doubt whatsoever in the Church that Jesus lived, and that he was the Son of God. He was born of immaculate conception through the Holy Ghost to his mother, Mary, and the Gospels provide a full and true account of his life and teachings. Other sacred texts both within and outside the New Testament also provide insight into his life and works.

Some skeptics will inevitably claim that Jesus was just a myth, but the amount of historical evidence that supports his existence moves the vast majority of historians and scholars to admit that yes, there was a man called Jesus of Nazareth who lived between 7&8B.C. and 36A.D, who undertook a ministry for a few years and died on the cross under the governership of Pilate. Within a century of his death, Jesus was mentioned by Suetonius, Tacitus, Josephus and Pliny the Younger. The earliest writing was St. Paul's Epistle to the Thessalonians in about 50 A.D. The Gospels, of course, provide fuller accounts of his life, but they are coloured by theological interpretations, which are less historically verifiable.

What Did Jesus Look Like?

Jesus was a Jew, a member of that ethnic race, and this is plain to see from the Gospels. He was born a Jew, he lived as a Jew, celebrating Jewish festivals etc. even though he did not belong to a certain sect of Judaism (as it was at the time), although some say he was a Nazarene, and he died as a Jew. So, it is most likely that he would have had dark hair, eyes, and dusky skin. Evidence points to the fact that he was most likely a carpenter before he was baptized and began his mission, so he was probably a strong and muscular man.

Most Church images of Jesus portray him as brown-haired, blue-eyed and bearded, emaciated and aesthetic in build, who tends to have a serene or suffering look upon his face. In relation to what I have just said of the historical Jesus, this is obviously a type of appropriation by the white Anglo-Saxon Christians to make Jesus appear more like themselves in order that they may relate to him more easily and also that they might more easily "forget" and deny his Jewish heritage. And the Western Church is by no means alone in this appropriation. In the Christian Church in China, paintings and drawings of Jesus and his followers all show them to be Asian.

Was Jesus Truly Divine? And Was He REALLY Resurrected?

In the Church, there is, of course, no doubting the divinity of Jesus. He was the only begotten Son of God, sent to Earth to redeem the sinners. He was, however, a full human being, and this is very important to the Church. There is a constant tension between seeing Jesus as a man and Jesus as God. Today, in Christianity, we worship him as if he were God, and we worship him in the Holy Trinity. In the words of the Eucharist of the Church I attend, the Liberal Catholic Church: "Christ is our foundation, our chief cornerstone." He is Christianity. You cannot call yourself a Christian if you do not believe in Jesus the Christ. Therefore, to the faithful, there is no question. It is the same with the resurrection. This event is what proves to the faithful that Jesus was who he said he was. He foresaw his death and resurrection, and he mentions it a few times, for example, in Mark, 9:31: "The Son of Man is delivered into the hands of men, and they shall kill him; and after that he is killed, he shall rise the third day." When Jesus was resurrected, and spoke to his disciples, the true and mystical foundation of Christianity was laid down.

Although historians and scholars will readily admit the existence of Jesus, they are less likely to admit to his divinity. There is no solid historical proof to the claim that Jesus was the divine Son of God, nor that he was resurrected. And even if we were to say that yes, Jesus did rise and talk to his disciples, there are other explanations apart from him dying and coming back to life. The shroud of Turin provokes some interesting speculation. This book "Jesus Lived in India" by Holger Kersten, provides some fascinating speculation about the shroud and what it means to Christianity if it were proven to be authentic.

His argument goes that there are bloodstains on the shroud which point to the fact that Jesus must have still been bleeding when he was wrapped in the shroud. Also, a French biologist, Prof. Paul Vignon in 1924 proved a possible cause of the image on the shroud, which no one had been able to figure out until then. Apparently, when a sweating body comes into contact with linen that had been soaked in a mixture of light oil and a tincture of aloes, it leaves the same sort of impression that was left on the Shroud, and it states in John 19:38-40 that Jesus was wrapped in a linen with myhhr and aloes.

Now, a Carbon dating test done in 1988 "proved" that the Shroud was a forgery, from somewhere in the middle ages, but in his book, Kersten shows that he was able to prove that the fragments analysed did not actually come from the shroud, but from a medieval garment that the Vatican possess.

This seems to point to a cover up by the Vatican, and from their point of view, a very sensible one, for if it could be proven that Jesus was not actually dead when he was entombed, but instead perhaps in a coma or some similar state, it would utterly shatter the foundations of the Christian Church.

What Did Jesus Teach, and What Was He Like?

The popular image of Jesus as portrayed by the Church today is that of a sinless, peaceful and just individual. He teaches that there is only one true God, and that we all must repent to save our souls, in order that we may enter the Kingdom of Heaven. This is Jesus the Christ, the Messiah, who died for our sins so that we may be forgiven. This man taught the people through parables, so that they might understand how to live their lives, to teach them what is important. His primary principle was: "You shall love the Lord God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment." (Matt. 22:37-38). He routinely performed miracles and forgave those who repented. This was unheard of in his day, and probably a large part of what got him crucified. The Pharisees and Sadduces could not believe the gall of a man who would claim divinity and the right to forgive sins in the place of, and with the full authority of, God. And all that he taught is held as holy truth by the Church.

Since the New Testament is the only really good source of what Jesus was purported to have said, we can only really glean who he was from those texts, and as the following quote states:

"It is shattering to find just how little [of what the New Testament says about Jesus] can be described as authentic... All that can be attributed with some degree of confidence to the historical Jesus himself is a few words of the Sermon on the Mount, some parables, the confrontation with the Pharisees, and a few other odd phrases here and there." (Ernst Kasemann)

So, none of what Jesus was purported to have said can be taken as "Gospel" truth (pardon the pun), since it can not be know what Jesus actually said, as opposed to what the authors of the Gospels may have added, embellished or subtracted. Therefore everything recorded in the Gospels has an air of historical uncertainty about it, and a historian must take the view that all the details of Jesus' life, apart from the crucifixion, cannot be known for sure.

However, there are a few instances in the Gospels when we can argue that Jesus was not as completely pure as the Church claims he was. For example, he often preached the commandment "Honour thy father and thy mother" (Ex. 20:12) but in the few instances where Jesus spoke to his mother, his speech was curt, in the least, as shown by his response to her mentioning that the wine was running low at the wedding in Cana: "Woman, what have you to do with me?" (John 2:4). His family relations were not in a good state, and at one stage he preached that "the brother shall deliver up the brother to death, and the father the child: and the children shall raise up against their parents, and cause them to be put to death" (Matt. 10:21). He evidently held no esteem for the family life, which was so important to the Jews, nor any care for worldly possessions or the future, which of course was in keeping with the fact that he preached that the Kingdom of God was soon to reign upon the earth. A disciple must renounce all they had, and anyone who rejected his teaching would receive severe punishment, in the form of Hellfire.

Also, it may be interesting to note that Jesus did not have any really unique ethical teachings. The Ten Commandments of course come from the Old Testament and the "Golden Rule" i.e. "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you" was defined by the Chinese philosopher Confucius five centuries earlier.

An alarming piece of scripture to most Christians would surely be this: "I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel" (Matt. 15:24) which would seem to imply that Jesus was only here to redeem the Jews, not the Gentiles, and his exchange with a Gentile woman in Matthew 15:21-28 also illustrates this:

Jesus "It is not meet to take the children's bread, and to cast it to the dogs." Woman "Truth, Lord: Yet the dogs eat of the crumbs which fall from their master's table." Jesus "Oh woman, great is thy faith, be it unto thee even as thou wilt.

So here, in the words of Anthony O'Hear "Jesus seems to concede that only the 'dogs under the table' (the Gentiles) may eat 'the crumbs of the children's bread' (what is left over from the Jews' salvation). " This would surely be troubling to most Christians, as most are Gentiles, if it weren't for another passage, where Jesus speaks of laying down his life for his sheep, including those "which are not of his fold" (John 10:16). But this may still raise questions about his true motives.

This and other evidence has lead some, most noticeably C.S. Lewis, in the quote I first showed you, to believe that this is not the behavior of a good human moral leader. His teachings were enigmatic, sometimes contradictory, and he had no full and coherent ethical system.

We must keep in mind that if he were alive today, he would be likely seen as a crazy man, akin perhaps to David Koresh and Jim Jones in the extremity to which he was preaching.

Now, if he were crazy, we could pass off these erratic failings, and his claims to be the Son of God easily. Conversely, if we were to believe that he were the Son of God, there would be no arguing with him, and everything would be said for a purpose, and perhaps there was a method to his seeming madness, a larger scheme of planting the seeds of a great religion for the future.

All right, now that I have told you what I know, I want you to make the choice from the evidence at hand. If Jesus were outside right now, and you were the jury at his execution, what would you decide. Do we crucify him, or do we worship him?