By current standards of journalism and historical analysis, we know hardly anything about Jesus. The stories in the New Testament were written by people who belonged to the religion that followed him. They had “axes to grind” – they were hardly impartial observers, and it is obvious from the four gospels that much of what they wrote about him was mythological. The only roughly contemporary non-Christian writer who mentioned Jesus was Josephus, a Jewish historian of the first century. One short reference to Jesus in the "Antiquities of the Jews" appears to have been inserted by later Christian editors of Josephus' work, and the other brief reference is to a Jesus who may not have been Jesus of Nazareth at all .
The Jesus Seminar (www.westarinstitute.org) is a big group of eminent scholars of biblical and Near Eastern studies who have spent many years evaluating the early Christian texts in quest of the historical Jesus. They produced “The Five Gospels”, a version of the New Testament stories about Jesus and his sayings, including the early but non-canonical Gospel of Thomas. Taking a cue from the popular “red letter editions” of the New Testament, which put Jesus’ words in that color, “The Five Gospels” uses a color-coding scheme to indicate the likelihood that any particular quotation was that of the real, historical figure of Jesus. Red was for the highest likelihood, pink for some likelihood, grey for low likelihood, and black for virtually no likelihood that Jesus actually said it.
“The Five Gospels” displays very little of the color red, and only a sparing use of pink. The red passages are reserved for the most enigmatic and counter-cultural words attributed to Jesus – those hardest to interpret. The logic of the scholars is strong: the quotations that are least obvious in their meaning, and the most offensive to cultural norms of the time, are the ones that might have set apart Jesus from the other popular rabbis and religious leaders of his era.
The Jesus Seminar’s carefully considered conclusions underscore how very little we know about this historical figure who is so central to Christianity, and to Western and even global civilization. This leads to a corollary: since we know very little about the real Jesus, most of what we say about him is the product of our collective and personal imaginations.
The process of imagining Jesus started in the first century and hasn’t stopped since. The famous creeds of the church that defined Jesus, still recited in Catholic and Protestant churches, were cooked up hundreds of years after Jesus’ death. And the commonplace descriptions of Jesus today, in words and in images, are the product of much more recent flights of fancy. Conservative Christians will protest that there is but one Jesus, the same yesterday, today, and forever, but in fact they revere many distinctly different versions of him. They are in denial of the fact that mostly they created him for themselves – as have all Christians throughout the milennia.
So why not get honest about it? Why not own the fact that the Jesus we follow is mostly a figmentary personality, based on only the flimsiest of factual details? Why not liberate our imaginations to refine a version of Jesus who speaks for and through us today?
I don’t fault the early Christians for inventing the Jesus that they followed. On the contrary, I admire their inspired, visionary creativity. It is a wonderment that such a personality was invented in that time and place. The early Christians had powerful insights, which may or may not have had their source in the historical personality of Jesus. They envisioned a society based on the law of love rather than one based on harsh, rigid rules. They discovered the non-violent power of compassion to bring justice and peace to oppressed, suffering people. They saw beyond the boundaries of gender and race and caste to envision a caring community that would embrace everyone. They wrote all these remarkably progressive, positive values into the character of Jesus in the gospel stories.
So we get to imagine Jesus
for ourselves, in our own historical context. Building on the creativity of the early Christians, we can envision a Jesus for today.
Who is your Jesus? What does he look like, for you? What is he saying, in the context of the world that surrounds you? How does he interpret the old messages attributed to him, for current circumstances? What does he have to say for our time about warfare, medical ethics, sexual morality, and economic justice? What would he do, how would he act, how would he change the world today? Can you envision his mannerisms and expressions, the winks of his eyes and the chuckles between his phrases? Can you see him mixing with the people around you now? How does he fit in, or stand out? Just what kind of character is Jesus – for you, for today?
Who is the Jesus who inspires you to love more than you are able to love today? Who is the Jesus who makes you reverently humble before the Source and Goal of your life? Who is the Jesus who makes you question authority so you can envision a world that is much more humane and divine? Who is the Jesus who gives you courage and strength to work for the greater common good? Invent that Jesus for yourself. You’ll be in the company of all the other saints of the faith through the centuries who have used their imaginations to create a Jesus in whom they could have faith and devotion, a Jesus they could follow in love and service to the end.
