(urth) Who's Right?

[Matthew Weber]

On Fri, Dec 3, 2010 at 11:09 AM, James Wynn <crushtv at gmail.com> wrote:

>
>   We're not talking about christianity. Lee asked what would a 20 AD Jew
>> find special about Jesus.
>>
>
>  That's hard to say, since we have no record of anything Jesus did between
> the ages of 12 and 30.  He doesn't seem to have begun any public teaching
> (besides the episode in the synagogue at age 12) before his baptism by
> John.  Very possibly a 20 AD Jew might not have found anything particularly
> special about him.
>
>
> Time and dislocation have made the Gospels very Wolfean. Jesus was a very
> controversial figure. A lot of people did want him arrested and humiliated
> or just plain dead for what he said--presumably regarding the Temple and
> it's traditions. People are constantly trying to catch him up or talk
> himself into trouble. The disciples considered it suicide for them to even
> enter Jerusalem. But the authorities only wanted to punish him if they could
> avoid direct implication--presumably because most people considered him a
> holy man because of his deeds. It's not until his final insult--driving the
> money changers out of the Court of the Gentiles that the leaders felt they
> had to "fish or cut bait".
>
> But none of this is systematically explained. It's all related in subtext.
> So it's not a straight-forward answer why he was so controversial, why he
> was attacked by mobs at least twice, etc. John's Gospel says we have no more
> than a fraction of all he said.
>
>
I think it's very understandable when you relate the things Jesus was saying
to the prophetic tradition.  The criticisms he was making of the Temple and
its establishment weren't really very different from the things Hosea and
Amos said about it.  And the Temple establishment of Jesus' time (the
Sadducees) were collaborators with an occupying power, which made the
situation somewhat more complex; the Temple authorities were in a rush to
deal with Jesus before the Romans pre-empted them and removed from them what
little power they still retained.

Without question the Gospels and other NT writings are high-context.  But
the context is not unattainable.

-- 
Matt +

Everything is worth what its purchaser will pay for it.
    Publilius Syrus (First century B.C.), Maxim 847
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