One of the main and essential features of revisionistic views of the historical Jesus is the rejection of the traditional Christian view that Jesus died for our sins.
Since nobody wants to consider himself a "sinner", and the concept of sin is commonly taught (specially in USA) with strong emotional connections of guilt and strong feelings of fear and threats of "hell" or divine punishment, it is not surprising that the first line of attack of revisionistic views about Jesus be precisely the notion of "sin" (and divine punishment). They will deny such notion altogether, or (more astutely) will provide a reinterpretation of it, in order to avoid the emotions of guilt and fear typically connected with such theological notion. This freedom from guilt and fear is precisely what the revisionist wants to hear, and this is the main reason why he becomes sympathetic to revisionisms of Jesus, either in its New Age versions or in its liberal scholarly versions. (Note that this explanation says nothing about whether revisionism is true or false. This is only a preliminary explanation of the emotional causes which motivate revisionism, not to the truth or falsehood of it).
In this post, I'll focus myself in whether the revisionistic scholarly view is likely to be true or false (not in the emotional causes of it, although I'll supplement my arguments with mentions of such causes in order to clinch the argument and suggest a continuity between emotional wounds connected with Christianity (typically suffered by some Americans in an early age), wishful thinking and how it affects the choosing of worldviews and scholarly "conclusions").
In his book The Last Week, liberal scholars and Jesus Seminar's members Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan provide an interesting analysis of the last week of Jesus' life.
There are any things to say to this book, and a full review of it will need several posts to evaluate accurately its positive and negative points. I will focus myself on the topic of the Jesus' death, its Christian meaning as the death for our sins (i.e. the sins of humankind) and Crossan/Borg's "scholarly" intrepretation of it.
In the page 138 of the book, after explaining briefly the traditional Christian interpretation of Jesus' death, the authors comment (please read carefully each of the authors' words):
Hence it is important to realize that this is not the only interpretation of Jesus' death. Indeed, it took more than a thousand years for it to become to be dominant. The understanding sketched above first appeared in fully developed form in a book written in 1097 by St. Anselm.
Keep in mind that the authors' main argument above includes two contentions:
1-That in addition to the traditional understanding of Jesus' death, there are OTHER interpretations of it (note that, by itself, it doesn't refute the traditional understanding of Jesus' death, since several interpretations could be compatible with each other). In fact, the authors suggest the following additional meanings of Jesus' death (see below for the exact reference): 1)the domination system's "no" to Jesus (and God); 2)the defeat of powers that rule the world by disclosing their moral bankruptcy; 3)The revelation of the path of transformation, and 4)The disclosure of the depth of God's love for us.
Note that these four additional meanings (if they did exist) are not incompatible, but fully complementary with the traditional view of Jesus' death. Therefore, all of these meanings, if true, could be true simultaneously, because they refer to different aspects of the historical Jesus (the traditional meaning refers to a theological aspect; the first additional meaning to a socio-political aspect; the second additional meaning to a moral aspect and so forth).
So, this first contention by the authors does nothing to refute or undermine on historical grounds that the traditional view of Jesus' death was a veridical interpretation of the early Christians (and hence, probably rooted, on the historical Jesus himself).
2-That the traditional understanding took more than 1000 years in order to be dominant among other interpretations. (The implication, very common among liberal scholars, is that such traditional view became dominant as consequence of a later development created by hundred of years of theological exaltation and colouring of Jesus by Christians, and hence unlikely to be rooted on the actual historical Jesus. The suggestion is that such understanding is, therefore, non-historical and not grounded on the scholarly evidence about Jesus).
This second contention tries to undermine the historical credibility and reliability of the traditional understanding of Jesus' death, making it a later (and hence probably invented or distorted) view of the historical Jesus, not grounded on the scholarly evidence of the New Testament.
The authors explictly say:
The common Christian understanding goes far beyond what the New Testament says. Of course, sacrificial imagery is used there, but the language of sacrifice is only one of several different ways that the authors of the New Testament articulate the meaning of Jesus' execution. They also see it as a domination system's "no" to Jesus (and God), as the defeat of powers that rule the world by disclosing their moral bankruptcy, as the revelation of the path of transformation, and as the disclosure of the depth of God's love for us (p.139).
The traditional understanding goes far beyond the New Testament, not in the use of sacrificial language (because the authors recognize that it exists there), but in stressing just one meaning of it above all the others, when actually several meanings are available and on a par. (Again, note that it doesn't refute the traditional meaning, because the additional meanings refer mainly to non-theological aspects of the historical Jesus and hence are not incompatible with the distinctive theological meaning of the traditional view).
PROBLEMS WITH THE AUTHORS' ARGUMENTS
The authors' contention that the traditional view of Jesus' death became dominant only after 1000 years is highly misleading, historically irresponsable and telling of the anti-Christian prejudiced methodology of and mishandling of the evidence by many liberal scholars.
In the very early tradition handed down by Paul in 1 Corinthians 15: 3-5, Paul says:
For I passed on to you as of the first importance what I also received-- that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. (Emphasis in blue added).
This early tradition is a dagger in the heart of the authors' contention, because such an early tradition already highlights and stresses as "the first importance" for the early Christian's preaching the view that Christ died for our sins. Therefore, claiming that such view was "dominant" (among other interpretations) only after 1000 years is extremely misleading, dishonest, historically irresponsable and (if done on good will) is evidence suggestive of scholarly incompetence.
Moreover, note that as part of the "first importance" tradition what Paul received, not mention is made of all the other meanings that Borg and Crossan speculate were part of the early Christianity. No evidence at all exists in such tradition for the authors' speculative "meanings" in the early tradition handed down by Paul, let alone for the view that the traditional view was on a par, on importance, to these additional meanings nor that all of them were equivalent in importance.
The authors quote certain texts, by Paul or attributed to Paul, suggestive of the other interpretations; but such texts are later than 1 Corinthians 15: 3-5 and, in any case, fully compatible with the traditional understanding of Jesus' death already present in Paul's "first importance" tradition mentioned above. Moreover, these additional interpretations in the texts are not presented by Paul as being of "first importance" as the tradition in 1 Corinthians 15: 3-5. So, hardly one can make them on a par with that tradition.
The authors quote certain texts, by Paul or attributed to Paul, suggestive of the other interpretations; but such texts are later than 1 Corinthians 15: 3-5 and, in any case, fully compatible with the traditional understanding of Jesus' death already present in Paul's "first importance" tradition mentioned above. Moreover, these additional interpretations in the texts are not presented by Paul as being of "first importance" as the tradition in 1 Corinthians 15: 3-5. So, hardly one can make them on a par with that tradition.
But do Borg and Crossan ignore such tradition in Paul? No, they don't. In fact they mention and quote it in passing and cursorily among other Pauline material (cf p.141), omitting the part in which Paul says that such traditional view is of "first importance" (and hence, not on a par with other putative Pauline or non-Pauline interpretations of the death of Jesus), which clearly destroy their whole argumentation of Borg and Crossan.
Why do these authors try to undermine so crucial evidence? The reason is obvious: they need to undermine such evidence in order to convey the impression that the traditional view of Jesus' death hadn't a major importance among early Christians, but that was just "one among others interpretations" available at the time, and that only became dominant after a later (and hence, less historically reliable) development coloured by Christian theology.
When reading this book, I was already familiar with some of Borg and Crossan's work on the historical Jesus, and was cognizant of how they tend to (mis) handle the evidence for Jesus's life, and teachings, but I confess that reading their arguments in The Last Week made me angry. It bothered me a lot.
They simply and demostrably (but often subtly and astutely) are distortioning the evidence in order to create a view of Jesus which is anti-Christian, and present such view as the most serious scholarly opinion.
They simply and demostrably (but often subtly and astutely) are distortioning the evidence in order to create a view of Jesus which is anti-Christian, and present such view as the most serious scholarly opinion.
This kind of deception has to be fully exposed and intellectually castigated.
I simply has not intellectual respect for these authors anymore.
FACTORS SUPPORTING THE TRADITIONAL INTERPRETATION OF JESUS' DEATH
1-Jesus was a traditional first-century Jew (not an American or californian new age cool teacher of yoga or vegetarianism who comes to preach the "don't worry, be happy" kind of American "soft" spirituality, as some revisionists seem to portray him).
As consequence, Jesus fully accepted the religious-theological categories of Judaism, including the religious notion of SIN and the sacrificial language connected to it. No contemporary religious pluralist ideology nor sophism about "metaphors" is going to change that.
In fact, as the evidence shows, Jesus was himself baptised by John the Baptist (an event which is likely to be historical, because it passes the criteria of multiple attestation and embarrasment).
So, Jesus was accepting and validating the key theological notions of "sin" (which is directly connected with violations of God's laws), "baptism" and forgiving of sins.
Claiming that Jesus' teachings (which makes reference to sins, salvation, God, and so forth) were wholly disconnected or independent of such theological-religious notions or categories that Jesus accepted in his own life as a Jew is simply false, wrong, contrary to the historical facts.
Try to "reinterpret" such concepts in terms of the secularism, religious pluralism of the 21th century society (specially American society) is clearly misrepresent the specific, concrete, Jewish-religious context and religious philosophy which essentially underly such notions as "sins" and that, as expected, pervades Jesus' teachings.
Contemporary anti-Christian revisionists, thinking from the perspective of a 20th century man living in the highly secularized and pluralist United States, understandbly makes no sense of notions like "sins", "baptism", "forgiveness of sin". But such notions are ESSENTIAL in the religious context in which Jesus lived and taught (and Jesus' teachings are full of them).
The attempt by contemporary anti-Christians to discard, explain away, disregard or "reinterpret" such key concepts from the teachings of Jesus show that their motivation is ideological and emotional: They are trying to make Jesus palatable to the contemporary ideological categories and sensibilities.
2-As proved above, the earliest evidence for the traditional view of Jesus' death shows that it was considered as of "first importance" to Paul and the disciples. Paul met and knew the disciples and checked with them the accuracy of Jesus' life and teachings that they were preaching, in order to avoid misrepresentations of such an important task (this tells us that, contrary to the liberal assumptions, the early Christians were interested in preserving the truth about Jesus and avoiding false teachings connected with him).
Therefore, based on the evidence, we have to conclude that the disciples, like Paul, also considered as of "first importance" the view that Jesus died for our sins. This is NOT a later development, but the information that the first-hand witnesses and followers of Jesus (e.g. his disciples) accepted and preached as of "first importance".
3-Given Jesus' acceptation of the category of "sin", his exclusivistic self-perception regarding salvation, the fact that he put himself often in the position of God (e.g. correcting or qualifying the Old Testament laws), his use of divine-like phrases like "The Son of Man" or "the Son of God" and his resurrection, it seems to suggest (if we think with the minset and religious categories of Jews like Jesus, not with the minset of Wyane Dyer or Ophra Winfrey in the 21th century) that his death was not a mere accident of history, but something with some theological meaning (i.e. a meaning in the overall schema of God's kingdom and salvation regarding which Jesus focused his teachings).
There is no sense in the fact that the Son of God is going to come to Earth and be killed, and that such a major event was not foreseen nor controlled by God nor his Son, nor that the resurrection was a kind of "Well, I'm the Son of God but I couldn't avoid nor anticipate that mere humans were going to kill me. So, I resurrected in order to outbalance such unexpected event of my death and prove that what I was claiming about my divine status and exclusive authority regarding the God's kingdom is true after all."
Obviously, if Jesus was really who he claimed that he was, and the resurrection happened (as his disciples became convinced), then you cannot think that his death was a mere historical accident or brute unexplained fact, without any theological meaning (specially, taking into account that certain kinds of "deaths" were explicitly connected in the Old Testament with sacrifices to God, and Jesus accepted largely the Old Testament). Thinking such a thing is to assume that God or Jesus were stupid, and that their whole project was based on improvising solutions to unexpected contingencies.
The inference that Jesus' death was foreseen (by God or Jesus), and that such death has some kind of connection with the forgiving of sins is, in the context of the religious categories of Judaism in which certain kinds of deaths have a sacrificial meaning, a very reasonable one. If the early disciples (who had first-hand contact with Jesus and learned much more from him of what we know in the Gospels) strongly believed such a thing, then we have absolutely no reason to doubt that what they were claiming was likely to be true. Why should us doubt such a thing?
This is why an increasing number of scholars, including liberal ones (once free from the prejudices of early generations of atheistic and anti-Christian scholars) are open to this conclusion. As James Crossely comments:
Jesus did really practised healing and exorcism; and Jesus really did predict his imminent death and probably thought it had some atoning function." (How did Christianity begin? p.1).
(Crossley's overall view about Jesus is very complex, and on risk of oversimplification, I summarize it: he thinks that any exclusivistic interpretation or meaning of labels actually used by Jesus like "Son of Man", "Son of God", etc. is unwarranted because such labels were used in Jesus' times, with no extraordinary senses attached to them. As a naturalist, Crossley obviously doesn't accept that such labels have any actual supernatural implications, or that the resurrection actually happened, and he believes that such categories are valid or find parallels cross-culturally, so the historical Jesus is, qua spiritual teacher, nothing special above the others. Religious pluralism again. I'll examine in detail Crossley's views on future posts).
If Jesus predicted his own death, then it is clear that it was part of the plan (not a mere accident). This is what we would expect if Jesus was the Son of God or something of the sort. (Atheists and religious pluralists will disagree, of course, because they don't believe in God or in exclusive ways to salvation).
As Crossley comments, it is probable that Jesus thought that his death had some kind of atoning function. Therefore, it is unlikely that it was an later invention by Christians without any root on Jesus' life, teachings, deeds and person.
This point is a bomb for contemporary revisionists, since what they have feared for years (i.e. that key aspects of the traditional view be correct) find new defenders, even among non-conservative scholars.
Assuming that the belief in Jesus divinity, his resurrection, and the "first importance" teaching that he died for our sins were pure fabrications by the early Christians (without any reason whatsoever provided by Jesus himself) is to suggest that God is stupid, that his plan was misrepresented and destroyed by the same people that Jesus chose (e.g. the disciples), and ultimately, it implies that Jesus was co-responsible of such a theological disaster.
Jesus can be risen from the death, can heal a bunch of serious diseases, can performance exorcism, speaks authoritatively about God's kingdom, and even can predict the future but couldn't predict that the bunch of people whom Jesus himself elected as his disiciples and representatives were going to distortion seriously and falsely his own teachings and keep ill-informed the humankind about the true doctrines of Jesus for almost 2000 years.
If it is the case, wasn't Jesus (and God, if we concede some special connection between them) co-responsible of such misleading falsehood named Christianity? Is not Jesus to be blamed, at least in part, for choosing a bunch of incompetent people who were incapable of preserving accurately even the basic tenets of his doctrine? Wasn't Jesus responsible for the post-resurrection apparition to Paul, who was one of the leading preachers of the idea tha Jesus died for ours sins? Why did Jesus choose such supposedly unreliable person? If all of this is false, is not Jesus (at least in part) responsible for such misleading deception? Was not Jesus actively incompetent in choosing specifically and precisely the people (i.e. the disciples and Paul) who were going to grossly misrepresent his teachings, destroying his whole original project and misleading the whole of humankind? Was not Jesus (and God) incompetent in not predicting, and hence not preventing, that major spiritual disaster from happening? Does it make sense?
The New Age revisionist of Jesus expects that we are going to believe that and, more astonishingly, that Jesus had to return in the 20th century in order to provide his true teachings (teachings which differ seriously of what he taught, or was claimed that he taught, in the first century).
Credulity withtout limits!
FACTORS MOTIVATING REVISIONISM AND MISHANDLING OF THE HISTORICAL EVIDENCE FOR JESUS
There are, at least, 3 factors which motivate revisionism of the historical Jesus:
-Atheism
-Religious Pluralism
-Emotional wounds (specially feelings of fear and guilt) connected with traditional Christianity
Since atheism and religious pluralism have been widely discussed in my blog, I'll skip specific reference to them in this post.
I want to focus my attention in the emotional aspect.
My current position is that (regardless of whether Christianity is true or false), the main reason for anti-Christianity, specially among Americans, is emotional: they don't want a Jesus like that. This is specially true regarding the concept of SIN (and more powerfully, the concept of hell).
When I wrote one of my first articles on the resurrection in this blog, I received dozens of e-mails from people (who mostly, as some of them confessed, know nothing about the technical literature of biblical criticism) trying to explain away the resurrection. They appealed to fraud, the etheric body, Jesus' spontaneous natural resuscitations like documented in some medical cases (which obviously have nothing to do with the resurrection, but that these people conflate due to their ignorance of the literature), Jesus' mastering of yoga or Chi Kung, red herrings about the Inquisition and the Pope and a bunch of other speculatives and irrelevant opinions which have nothing to do with the evidence of Jesus' resurrection. (Speculations that they wouldn's accept if used to explain away the evidence for the afterlife or parapsychology, and the they rightly reject when are used to explain psi away by "professional skeptics" like Randi, Shermer or Wiseman).
This was an eye-opener to me, because I was watching a bunch of bad pseudoskeptical objections coming, ironically, from people who strongly believe in ghosts, haunted houses, psychic healings, reincarnation, extraterrestial reptilians controlling the world, mysticism, orbs, mediums, psychics, 9/11 and Moon-Landing conspiracies, instrumental transcommunication, Deepak Chopra's teachings, and New Age spiritualities. Some of these same "skeptical believers" even used Hume's argument against miracles against the resurrection (when the correct and consistent application of Hume's argument would destroy a large part of the beliefs that they hold)!.
That some of the people even conceded that they know nothing about the technical literature related to the topic, that is, they conceded that they were making an opinion from ignorance, a point that they castigate in "skeptics" who feel qualified to criticize parapsychology from an arm-chair.
They same bad and prejudiced arguments from skeptics that I and other are refuting continuously, were coming against Jesus' resurrection.
Such irrationality cannot have any other plausible basis than ignorance, emotions and wishful thinking.
A second eye-opener to me was discover that most contemporary New Age revisionistic views of Jesus come from the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.
A third eye opener to me was to discover an atheistic background among the people behind such revisionism. Almost all of them were atheists (or were hostile to Christianity) in the moment in which they received the putative "revelation" about Jesus from some superior paranormal source (dreams, automatic writing, hearing voices, channeling, putative alien contacts, etc.) Also, often these people were previously Christians, very often of the most dogmatic kind, and left such position with an axe to grind against Christianity. Now, they "discover" the truth about Jesus.
Ironically, when you study the evidence for these New Age view about Jesus, you find almost no scientific or historical evidence. As consequence, and as a rule, no scholar takes these sources seriously.
Moreover (and this was another eye-opener to me) the believers in such New Age view of Jesus give more credibility to these 20th century sources about Jesus than to the earlier, first-century sources like Paul and the Gospels, which is (from a historical point of view) just mad. No historian would prefer a 20th century source about the teachings of person who lived in the first century over a first century source about him.
When you confront these people with these obvious objections, they appeal to the view that Jesus revealed himself in the 20th century, hence the source in question is a reliable and direct one. When you press the point and ask them how do they know that such source is Jesus himself, they simply say that the "source" has identified himself like that (or given hints in that direction), or that they feel subjectively and in their hearts that such source is telling the truth.
The problem with this kind of reply is that exactly the same was claimed by Paul and the disciples, who claimed that what they were teaching came from the Holy Spirit, not from their own opinions or experiences alone. Moreover, Paul knew the disciples, who had first-hand personal contact and continous interaction with Jesus before and after Jesus' death, making them the most reliable source of information about Jesus (more than the putative Jesus who is revealing himself in the 20th century through atheists who were inspired by "dreams", "voices", "channelings", "automatic writing" or alien messages... specially when such Jesus has little to do with the first-century data about him and more to do with the contemporary American culture, and clear key doctrinal inconsistences can be discoveried in the sources in question).
So, it is astonishing (or perhaps, not so much after understanding the American culture) that many people in USA prefer to believe in Conversations with God, the Urantia Book, A Course in Miracles, The Aquarian Gospel of Jesus the Christ , and other sources of a putative paranormal or spiritual origin about the historical Jesus and God.
So, it is astonishing (or perhaps, not so much after understanding the American culture) that many people in USA prefer to believe in Conversations with God, the Urantia Book, A Course in Miracles, The Aquarian Gospel of Jesus the Christ , and other sources of a putative paranormal or spiritual origin about the historical Jesus and God.
Such kind of "soft" spirituality, irrationalism, double standards, wishful thinking and anti-Christian prejudices is possible in America, because USA is country culturally influenced by a certain kind of dogmatic Christianity (although some of the most brilliant minds like Alvin Plantinga, are Christians) and, simultaneously, this country is dominated in academy by hard-core atheists, skeptics and secularists with an purely negative, hostile, ego-based, destructive social agenda.
In the context of this cultural war in USA (and hence, in the countries culturally influenced by USA, that are many) is that we have to understand the contemporary versions of Jesus' revisionisms (like the Jesus Seminar) and most specifically the New Age "soft", "don't worry, be happy", "we'are all one and we're cool" kind of misleading versions of Jesus.
ONLY IN AMERICA!
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