Jesus: pocket GIANTS E-Book

Ed Kessler

• Herausgeber: The History Press
• Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016

Beschreibung

Why is Jesus a giant? Because he was the founder of Christianity, the largest religion in the world with 2 billion adherents; because Christianity is one of the five great religions of the world, with followers in every country on the planet and a history stretching back two thousand years; because there remains great interest in the teaching of Jesus, his personality and his life. The origins of a great religion which has filled so immense a place in the history of the world must surely be of interest to everyone.

Leseprobe

Why is Jesus a pocket GIANT?

Because he founded the largest religion in the world.

Because he he is regarded as ‘the most important person in history’ (Time Magazine).

Because 2.2 billion Christians today view him as the saviour of the world.

Because he connects three world religions, representing half the world’s population.

DR EDWARD KESSLER MBE is a leading thinker in interfaith relations, primarily between Jews, Christians and Muslims. He is Founder Director of the Woolf Institute and Fellow of St Edmund’s College, Cambridge.

Cover image: Shutterstock

First published in 2016

The History Press

The Mill, Brimscombe Port

Stroud, Gloucestershire, GL5 2QG

www.thehistorypress.co.uk

This ebook edition first published in 2016

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© Ed Kessler, 2016

The right of Ed Kessler to be identified as the Author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

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epub isbn 978 0 7509 8123 1

Original typesetting by The History Press

eBook converted by Geethik Technologies

Contents

Introduction

1 The Historical Jesus

2 The Teachings of Jesus

3 The Development and Diversity of Christianity

4 Jesus from the Perspective of Other Faiths

Maps

Glossary

Timeline

Further Reading

Acknowledgements

Introduction

It may surprise the reader that we know very little about a man who was ranked by Time magazine and Wikipedia as the most important historical figure of all time and who also topped the list of Google searches for the most well known person in history. (Interestingly, in the Google top ten were three other biblical figures: Abraham [third], Moses [fourth] and Paul [fifth].) Yet, the religion named after Jesus fills an immense place in human history, and civilisation itself is unintelligible without an understanding of Christianity and Jesus Christ.

In today’s interconnected world, we are not only surrounded by Christian civilisation and culture but we breathe it in; it is part of us all – Christian and non-Christian, religious and secular, young and old.

This, it seems to me, refutes the criticism, which dominated Western thinking only a couple of decades ago: religion was a fading entity and secularism would soon push it to the margins and eventually to extinction. This theory of modernisation, based on the theories of Marx, Durkheim and Weber, proposed that as societies modernise they irrevocably grow more secular. Recent history has shown otherwise. Religion is a major driving force in contemporary society and in the words of the American sociologist Peter Berger, ‘the world is as furiously religious as it ever was, and in some places more so than ever’.

According to the 2013 Pew Survey, 85 per cent of the global population belong to a specific religion, the largest of which is Christianity (2.2 billion). Although in some countries such as the UK, an increasing proportion do not identify themselves as religious (25 per cent according to the 2011 census) the world as a whole is witnessing a notable resurgence of religion’s influence including a dramatic expansion of Christianity in China (even though it is officially an atheist state) and new forms of Christianity, such as Pentecostal and Evangelical Christianity which is now the second largest Christian denomination, (estimated at 500 million), after Roman Catholics at 1.2 billion.

Before we begin this exploration of Jesus and explain how he changed the world, I would like to make a confession. Even though there are many scholars who have devoted their life to the study of Jesus and the New Testament, I am not one; nor am I a Christian.

What are the advantages and disadvantages for such a person to write this book? To be an outsider should, in theory, make one impartial but I think it is inconceivable to write an impartial study of Jesus, even if the author is an atheist. Would this book be better, if written by a detached author, without Christian beliefs? Whilst there are advantages to such a position there are also disadvantages. Outsiders too have their own presuppositions, which may make them, unconsciously or not, prejudiced one way or another. Indeed, the outsider may be unable to fully understand a religion or do it justice.

Having engaged in inter-religious conversation and study for more than thirty years, I am aware that one can only truly know a religion from within. Its intimacy does not reveal itself to outsiders, at least not easily. Study is insufficient; one needs familiarity. The secrets of a religion are not simply learned from its literature – they are discovered by encountering its adherents, listening to the stories they tell, reflecting on the art they produce, the deeds they do and spending time in the buildings in which they worship.

At the same time, of course, there are obvious disadvantages from writing within, not least the lack of impartiality. Living within a Christian faith may make the writer blind to reasonable criticism and reluctant to acknowledge incoherence or inconsistency. Perhaps no adequate account can ever be written; if you are within you cannot be impartial; if you are without you cannot know.

Both advantages and disadvantages are increased when a Jew writes about Jesus. I am familiar with the environment in which Jesus lived and taught. His thought is not so ‘other’. I stand outside the sanctuary of Christianity but live and teach so much among those within that I can appreciate their feelings and their sensibilities. During my teaching career, at least a third of my students have taken positions of leadership in the church and from them (and my Christian colleagues) I have learned, and continue to learn, a great deal. I am familiar with the New Testament accounts of Jesus because in a certain sense, the New Testament is a collection of Jewish writings, much of which was written by Jews; all of it about a Jew. In sum, I claim Jesus as one of my own.

But, the very fact Judaism and Christianity have so much in common and are so closely related makes this book no less challenging to write. Indeed, just where some of the intimacies begin so the two religions differ. The Cross of Christ is indeed a stumbling block for Jews – no less a stumbling block than the Torah for Christians.

The challenge is made more demanding because this book is about a person upon whom is based the religion that has an intimate yet traumatic relationship with my own. I write about the person after whom Christianity was named, which has often claimed to have superseded Judaism and has persecuted my forebears. Yet, the same religion has also rediscovered a close relationship with its ‘elder sibling’, expressing both admiration and desire for reconciliation. Among Jews themselves there has also been a rapprochement, epitomised by the comment of Jewish philosopher, Martin Buber, who called Jesus his ‘elder brother’ and also by the publication of Dabru Emet (Speak Truth) in 2000, a document comprising the most positive affirmation of Christianity ever written, signed by over 200 rabbis and other Jewish leaders.

For those readers who start this book with a healthy dose of doubt and cynicism about whether we can know anything about the historical Jesus, in the spirit of Buber I suggest the historicity does not, from one point of view, matter. It is not a question of true or false. There are degrees of historicity, and even kinds, of truth. (As Niels Bohr once said, ‘there are trivial truths and there are great truths. The opposite of a trivial truth is plainly false. The opposite of a great truth is also true.’) What intrigues me about Jesus is the meaning of his teachings rather than Christology, the stories taught by and about Jesus rather than the theology itself. In other words, I focus on the narrative not only on what Jesus told his disciples but what that tells us today about what John Templeton called the ‘Big Questions’: who we are, where we came from, what is our place in the universe and what, therefore, we are called on to do.

One reason why Jesus and his followers changed the world is because the narratives about Jesus contained multiple points of view. There are many sides to Jesus. He is open to more than one interpretation and more than one level of interpretation. The stories Jesus told enabled Christians to offer the world a multitude of meanings and interpretations. For 2,000 years, the world has received these stories with an outstretched arm.

At the same time, however, one common theme running alongside these multiple meanings has been a strong, sometimes violent, desire among Christians to search for the single ‘true’ Jesus, often in conflict with other Christians (as well as followers of other religions). Should Christians encounter Jesus more in the pages of scripture (Protestant) than through mass (Catholic)? I suspect that Jesus himself would suggest that the truth of one does not entail the falsity of others – indeed the very words ‘true’ and ‘false’ seem out of place. Unfortunately, until recently, the desire to discover the ‘true’ Jesus has resulted in a narrative of displacement – of fellow Christians as well as Jews, Muslims and other non-Christians.

The first half of this book focuses on the narratives about Jesus, his teachings and his life, for it is the teaching that abides and the imitation of his life by his countless followers that have changed the world. Chapter 1 explores his life, from birth to death. Whilst there is a limited amount we know about historical Jesus I provide a general outline of what we do know, focusing on his brief ministry in Galilee, which lasted between one and three years, before concluding with the pilgrimage to Jerusalem, controversial action at the Temple, trial(s) and eventually, crucifixion by Roman imperial decree.

Chapter 2 reflects on the most important teachings of Jesus. It begins with a discussion of his use of parables and ways of teaching, including an often-overlooked feature of his ministry – his use of humour. Much of the rest of this chapter examines what Jesus meant by announcing the ‘Kingdom of God’, his most well known teaching, which is closely associated with his call for repentance.

In the second half of the book I focus on the development of Christianity, from the experience of Jesus by his followers soon after his death to the modern day. Chapter 3 describes the growth of Christianity and why it not only survived the death of Jesus but also flourished. I consider both the continued Jewish practice by the Jewish followers of Jesus, as well as the incredible success of the mission to the Gentiles, initiated by the apostle Paul. Within a few centuries Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire under Constantine, not only becoming a global religion but also the largest of all.

Chapter 4 explores views of Jesus from beyond Christianity, beginning with the religion of Jesus, Judaism, before considering its ‘sister’ religion Islam, which contains many similar teachings about Jesus in its own Scriptures. The Eastern religions, Hinduism and Buddhism, also have a number of similarities and differences with the teachings of Jesus and the chapter concludes with the influence of Jesus in unexpected places – Communism, which is normally associated with atheism, and capitalism which for some prioritises the worship of Mammon above the divine.

I hope this book helps readers, whether Christian or not, to understand how Jesus changed the world: humans can be one thing or another but Jesus can be more. It is the diverse applicability of his teachings, as well as the malleability of the figure of Jesus, that enables me to claim him as the person who changed the world more than any other.