The Revolutionary Jesus the Right Is Trying to Hide
Whether you’re a devout Christian or a diehard atheist you have to read John Crossan’s book Jesus, A Revolutionary Biography. This book is more than a portrait of a man who rose up from the lowest ranks of society to fight for social justice; it’s a testament to the ironic obsession of men to obscure great human acts, cloaking them in allegory and divinity. After all, Jesus’ fame was not the result of his being immaculately conceived or his being the son of God; nor did it stem from his association with magi, shepherds, or the morning star. Those are pedestrian qualities he shares with the likes of old gods like Mithras, Attis, Dionysus, Osiris, and countless other dying and resurrecting gods.
With Crossan as our guide, Jesus, A Revolutionary Biography leads us to discover that it was Jesus’ human works and his radical vision of unfettered equality[1] that helped exalt him into the celestial annals of this world. Concentrating on the vision that made him immortal, rather than the immortality resulting from such a vision, Crossan produces a historical Jesus whose ideals seemed lost upon the very religion that bares his name. Jesus’ purpose, explains Crossan, was the negation of “the hierarchical and paternal normalcies of Jewish religion and Roman power,” via “the combination of free healing and common eating.”[2]
After two-hundred pages of tearing away the opaque shades, drawn down by Christian orthodoxy, Crossan poses this question: “Is it time now…to conduct, religiously and theologically, ethically and morally, some basic cost accounting with Constantine?”[3] When one considers the often insidious application of the religion of Jesus the Christ: crusades and inquisitions; support of the inferiority of the races as late as the 1960s; and anti-gay legislation, indeed, it is clearly time for a reassessment of the teachings of Jesus. At the heart of Christianity lies an irreconcilable chasm between the teachings and mission of Jesus, and the institution of God, largely birthed by the Roman Emperor Constantine.
Evidence of the gulf between Jesus and what we now call Christianity, begins largely with the institutionalization of Jesus’ word. One can not overlook the absurdity that it was through a military victory Constantine discovered Jesus, not as a sage reproaching the warring ways of men, but rather as an ally in arms.[4] More importantly, it’s Constantine’s decision to make Jesus’ religion the preferred faith of the empire that belies the true vision of Jesus. Constantine does much more, in calling together the Council of Nicea, than commissioning elite men comforted by fortune and plenty, to take up the task of painting an impression of this revolutionary man and his religion.[5] Despite Jesus’ vision of the Kingdom of God, complete with its negation of “that terrible abuse of power that is power’s dark specter and lethal shadow,”[6] Constantine commands the creation of the authoritative masterpiece, reinforced by power that would become Christian orthodoxy.
Though many may credit Constantine’s conversion with helping to bring Jesus’ word to the Western world, Crossan’s account of Jesus insists that we ask us to consider what was lost in Jesus’ transition from condemned rebel to enshrined God. The inherited Christian cannon, and the authority associated with specific interpretations and books is too polished, too complete: its finished glow, its angular perfection, its comforting solidarity; its sweet pastures of relieved tensions and concluded debates; its finality seems to convolute rather than clarify the real Jesus. And this convulsion seems to almost purposefully concentrate on Jesus’ physical death and sacrifice, rather than the spiritual ideals that drove him to begin his work in the first place.
The very notion that Christianity became the enforced faith of the masses, shortly after Constantine sadly defiles the purity and purpose of Jesus. Just consider that Emperor Theodosius instituted the death penalty for those practicing religions outside of Christian orthodoxy in 435 A.D.. The nature of his revolutionary movement required that its followers and believers, those partaking in the Kingdom of God, challenge the supreme authority; so when Jesus’ life and works were fitted into a religion, which then became that supreme authority, the veracity, the spiritual honesty of Jesus’ drive to bring forth the Kingdom of Heaven, was compromised. Jesus was the savior, not of all humankind, but rather he defended those that had been “squeezed out deliberately as human junk from the system’s own evil operations.”[7]
When one measures his ideals with those of any uniformed government, it is impossible that the two could be properly married: for Jesus negated “patriarchal chauvinism…in favor of blessedness open to anyone who wants it, without distinction of sex or gender, infertility or maternity.”[8] Even today, such a position is radically unorthodox. And Crossan admits this truth: “What he was saying and doing was as unacceptable in the first century as it would be in the twentieth--there, here, or anywhere.”[9]
In his conclusion Crossan writes, “Christianity must repeatedly, generation after generation, make its best historical judgment about who Jesus was then and, on that basis, decide what that reconstruction means as Christ now.”[10] And if we conclude that Crossan has provided a true depiction of Jesus, and his radical egalitarianism, then it is necessary that we restore this revolutionary man to his former greatness by taking him back from any institution using his life to provide bulwark for classism, sexism, nationalism, and spiritual authoritarianism.
You read the first chapter of the book here: http://www.johndcrossan.com/files/Chpt1_JesusRevolutionaryBiography.pdf
[1] Crossan, Jesus, A Revolutionary Biography (New York: HarperOne, 1995), 74.
[2] 198.
[3] 201.
[4] 201.
[5] 201.
[6] 60.
[7] 62
[8] 59
[9] 196
[10] 200
Whether you’re a devout Christian or a diehard atheist you have to read John Crossan’s book Jesus, A Revolutionary Biography. This book is more than a portrait of a man who rose up from the lowest ranks of society to fight for social justice; it’s a testament to the ironic obsession of men to obscure great human acts, cloaking them in allegory and divinity. After all, Jesus’ fame was not the result of his being immaculately conceived or his being the son of God; nor did it stem from his association with magi, shepherds, or the morning star. Those are pedestrian qualities he shares with the likes of old gods like Mithras, Attis, Dionysus, Osiris, and countless other dying and resurrecting gods.
With Crossan as our guide, Jesus, A Revolutionary Biography leads us to discover that it was Jesus’ human works and his radical vision of unfettered equality[1] that helped exalt him into the celestial annals of this world. Concentrating on the vision that made him immortal, rather than the immortality resulting from such a vision, Crossan produces a historical Jesus whose ideals seemed lost upon the very religion that bares his name. Jesus’ purpose, explains Crossan, was the negation of “the hierarchical and paternal normalcies of Jewish religion and Roman power,” via “the combination of free healing and common eating.”[2]
After two-hundred pages of tearing away the opaque shades, drawn down by Christian orthodoxy, Crossan poses this question: “Is it time now…to conduct, religiously and theologically, ethically and morally, some basic cost accounting with Constantine?”[3] When one considers the often insidious application of the religion of Jesus the Christ: crusades and inquisitions; support of the inferiority of the races as late as the 1960s; and anti-gay legislation, indeed, it is clearly time for a reassessment of the teachings of Jesus. At the heart of Christianity lies an irreconcilable chasm between the teachings and mission of Jesus, and the institution of God, largely birthed by the Roman Emperor Constantine.
Evidence of the gulf between Jesus and what we now call Christianity, begins largely with the institutionalization of Jesus’ word. One can not overlook the absurdity that it was through a military victory Constantine discovered Jesus, not as a sage reproaching the warring ways of men, but rather as an ally in arms.[4] More importantly, it’s Constantine’s decision to make Jesus’ religion the preferred faith of the empire that belies the true vision of Jesus. Constantine does much more, in calling together the Council of Nicea, than commissioning elite men comforted by fortune and plenty, to take up the task of painting an impression of this revolutionary man and his religion.[5] Despite Jesus’ vision of the Kingdom of God, complete with its negation of “that terrible abuse of power that is power’s dark specter and lethal shadow,”[6] Constantine commands the creation of the authoritative masterpiece, reinforced by power that would become Christian orthodoxy.
Though many may credit Constantine’s conversion with helping to bring Jesus’ word to the Western world, Crossan’s account of Jesus insists that we ask us to consider what was lost in Jesus’ transition from condemned rebel to enshrined God. The inherited Christian cannon, and the authority associated with specific interpretations and books is too polished, too complete: its finished glow, its angular perfection, its comforting solidarity; its sweet pastures of relieved tensions and concluded debates; its finality seems to convolute rather than clarify the real Jesus. And this convulsion seems to almost purposefully concentrate on Jesus’ physical death and sacrifice, rather than the spiritual ideals that drove him to begin his work in the first place.
The very notion that Christianity became the enforced faith of the masses, shortly after Constantine sadly defiles the purity and purpose of Jesus. Just consider that Emperor Theodosius instituted the death penalty for those practicing religions outside of Christian orthodoxy in 435 A.D.. The nature of his revolutionary movement required that its followers and believers, those partaking in the Kingdom of God, challenge the supreme authority; so when Jesus’ life and works were fitted into a religion, which then became that supreme authority, the veracity, the spiritual honesty of Jesus’ drive to bring forth the Kingdom of Heaven, was compromised. Jesus was the savior, not of all humankind, but rather he defended those that had been “squeezed out deliberately as human junk from the system’s own evil operations.”[7]
When one measures his ideals with those of any uniformed government, it is impossible that the two could be properly married: for Jesus negated “patriarchal chauvinism…in favor of blessedness open to anyone who wants it, without distinction of sex or gender, infertility or maternity.”[8] Even today, such a position is radically unorthodox. And Crossan admits this truth: “What he was saying and doing was as unacceptable in the first century as it would be in the twentieth--there, here, or anywhere.”[9]
In his conclusion Crossan writes, “Christianity must repeatedly, generation after generation, make its best historical judgment about who Jesus was then and, on that basis, decide what that reconstruction means as Christ now.”[10] And if we conclude that Crossan has provided a true depiction of Jesus, and his radical egalitarianism, then it is necessary that we restore this revolutionary man to his former greatness by taking him back from any institution using his life to provide bulwark for classism, sexism, nationalism, and spiritual authoritarianism.
You read the first chapter of the book here: http://www.johndcrossan.com/files/Chpt1_JesusRevolutionaryBiography.pdf
[1] Crossan, Jesus, A Revolutionary Biography (New York: HarperOne, 1995), 74.
[2] 198.
[3] 201.
[4] 201.
[5] 201.
[6] 60.
[7] 62
[8] 59
[9] 196
[10] 200
Labels: Jesus, revolutionary
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