The statement that “Jesus was not Christian” means that many of the doctrines and beliefs held by mainstream Christianity cannot be traced to Jesus. Furthermore, the statement is not trivialized by the fact that he was a Jew. No one was ever more Christian than Paul and he was a Jew, too. Jesus actually departed from many Jewish views and customs (see part 1). Paul was a much stricter Jew than Jesus ever was. In fact, Jews have been ostracized by Christians for over a thousand years for merely clinging to their religion. For most Jews, fidelity to their religion and acceptance of Jesus constituted cognitive dissonance. It required a heavenly rebuke and a miraculous cure for Paul to manage the feat, and even then he only accomplished it because he never actually knew Jesus. Christianity was invented by adherents to the Jesus movement in order to justify their position, solidify their identity, and to differentiate them from other Jews. It would be incredibly naive to suppose that early followers did it without a slant.
Jesus was hard to accept. Really hard. That’s one of the things that I love about him. He suits my iconoclastic nature perfectly. One slant that early followers imposed on Jesus was to soften his teachings in their favor. For example (from Mark 10:25-27):
[Jesus said] It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God. And they were astonished out of measure, saying among themselves, Who then can be saved? And Jesus looking upon them saith, With men it is impossible, but not with God: for with God all things are possible.
In this passage, Jesus is quoted softening his own harsh statement, but Jesus did not do that; his followers who struggled with the saying did that. Then they attributed it to him in order to justify themselves in pursuing their ambitions. Comic distortion was characteristic of Jesus. Again, in Matthew 20:16, Jesus said, “the last will be first and the first last,” but Mark softens the statement to say, “many that are first,” and so on.
One of the hardest things to accept was Jesus’ disregard for Hebrew teachings. The Old Testament is chock-full of dreadful predictions and curses for the wicked. Matthew fabricates a lengthy diatribe for Jesus (chapters 24 & 25) to match any of the old Prophets. Obviously we can’t ever know the reason that Matthew did this, but one theory suggests that because it was Jesus’ fifth major sermon recorded in that book, it bears special significance to the five books of the Torah. If so, this was done to tie the new movement into the ancient one. However, the fifth sermon is quite uncharacteristic of Jesus. For instance, in the Sermon on the Mount, he congratulated the poor in spirit and spoke of salting the earth, letting one’s light shine, agreeing with one’s enemies, not swearing oaths, not pursuing violence, not withholding from those in need (even if they sue unfairly), and being generous with all mankind even as God is with the evil and the unjust. By contrast, Matthew’s fifth sermon focuses on nasty predictions and curses. The majority of it (except the parable of the talents) was falsely attributed to Jesus. During the oral period which lasted about twenty to thirty years, only parables, aphorisms and witty retorts would have survived in memory.
Sadly, in an attempt to justify Jesus, his early followers actually betrayed him and his teachings. Jesus was often quoted as saying that he did such-and-such to fulfill scripture. This is inconsistent with the Jesus “who taught as one having authority, and not as the scribes” (who constantly quoted scripture). Again, this was done by early Christians to add legitimacy to their movement. Jesus simply didn’t care. Paul taught doctrines that had a flavor of religious exclusion compared to Jesus’ open acceptance of nearly everyone (except religious folk, hahaha). The gospel of John depicts Jesus constantly talking about himself like a megalomaniac. This is totally inconsistent with the humble and laconic sage of the synoptic gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke).
If it seems that I’m a little obsessed with Jesus, I am. In this series I have tried to portray an image of Jesus which is hopefully a little closer to the truth. This does not mean that I don’t love the Christian version of Jesus. I do. It’s a beautiful and gripping story! This December I am going to celebrate both versions with all the cheer and exuberance that I can muster. The Christmas Rock Opera attempts to honor the historical Jesus while putting a modern and sometimes whimsical twist on the mythological Jesus. I hope you’ll join me in celebrating the life of this special hero of mine. I love Jesus and LOVE lasts forever!
Ariel Hammon
Author of JACK
Here is the link to Jesus Was Not Christian (part 2).
I am happy to credit The Jesus Seminar for much of the scholarship that these essays are based on.
Nice recap of items I’ve read!