© 2003 Ken Glasziou
© 2003 The Brotherhood of Man Library
What follows is an e-mail critique by an ordained minister of the Anglican Church in Australia (herein called AA) of a recently published work by a bishop elect of the Anglican Church in England (herein called AB). The archaeology upon which the critique is based derives from Israeli scholars who, after the 1967 war, sought to verify biblical evidence supporting Israel’s territorial acquisitions.
"In his writings, AB puts forward the following profile of the historical Jesus (i.e. this is what he thinks Jesus was actually like in the first century and not just in the later faith of the Church). So Jesus saw his life as:
A first century Jewish prophet announcing God’s kingdom/empire
God breaking into history in and through him
Summoning other Jews to adopt his vision
Forewarning that God would destroy both city and temple
Engaged in a profound clash with the dominant symbol systems
Understanding himself to be the Messiah
Such a reconstruction of the historical Jesus is actually very close to the Johannine Christ (and thus suspect as the outcome of a historical reconstruction), but it depends in a large measure on the historicity of the Old Testament since AB affirms that Jesus understood himself as the embodiment of biblical hopes and the hope of the ancient prophets.
The problem is (as AB knows very well) that the Old Testament account of ancient Israel and Judah just does not hold water any more.
It is not just that the early chapters of Genesis have had to be discarded as literal events, but so has almost every shred of seemingly historical narrative in the Hebrew Bible–along with most of the Gospels, and the Passion narrative in particular, in the New Testament.
There are no longer serious historical debates between biblical scholars on any of the following:
Patriarchs
Exodus
Conquest/Settlement
David and Solomon
Detailed Israeli archaeological work has shown–doubtless to their chagrin–that Jerusalem was a small walled village prior to the 9th century BCE, and that Judah did not have sufficient population to have any political or military influence in the region.
The action was in the North, but even there it was nothing like as glorious as the Bible would have us think. And in any case, there is nothing to suggest that a new people moved into Palestine in the Late Bronze Age. The so-called “Israelite” settlements in the highlands about 1200 BCE are simply Canaanites with a new zip code.
The current trench warfare between the Bible and archaeology involves the minimalists who suggest no history of Israel/Judah is possible prior to the exile (in Babylon), and the maximalists (who concede everything up to and including the Solomonic empire, but argue for an emerging Judah/Jerusalem in the 9th to 8th century BCE).
If the historical truth lies somewhere between the minimalists and the maximalists, as good Anglicans will be inclined to expect, there are profound theological implications. One of them, as AB must or should know, is that Jesus is not the embodiment of ancient covenant hopes or the fulfillment of divine promises made to Abraham, Moses, David, et al. Those guys did not exist and God never made any such promises to them.
There is nothing you need do to become worthy. You are alread worthy. And you are worthy simply because you “are.”
Increase your self-esteem? Easy—do good things and remember that you did them.
We therefore have to make sense of Jesus as people who know something that his earliest interpreters did not even imagine.
The way forward does not lie in defending a pseudo-history just because it is sacred Scripture. We have to face the shocking facts that most of the Old Testament is late Judean propaganda. Second temple Judaism, like Christianity and every other human religion, is a human construction by people seeking to respond to the God whom we recognize in the person of Jesus.
We can debate whether Jesus had a bodily resurrection, but what is gained by that, since none of us thinks that Jesus’ mortal remains were assumed into a heaven “up there.” And a bodily resurrection implies that they must be disposed of in some other, possibly miraculous, manner!
The prior question to the resurrection is, “What happened to Jesus’ cadaver?” If we ever solve that, we can begin to ask just what a bodily resurrection might mean in the 21st century as distinct from the 1st–in which dead people were believed often to come back to “this world” or to pass on to “the next world.”
On this point, I am with Saul of Tarsus. In 1 Cor. 15 he makes it plain that Jesus was dead and buried (i.e. gone) but then became a life-giving spirit. Paul’s own encounter with the Risen Lord did not involve a bodily resurrection but instead, (like all the other such episodes) an appearance–thus asserting the theological principle that flesh and blood do not inherit the kingdom of God.
How one can insist on a bodily resurrection in the face of 1 Cor. 15, and given the empty nature of the empty tomb stories baffles me.
If AB wishes to invest his energy into defending such castles of straw, then I wish him well. I prefer to embrace the new information emerging from archaeology, historical research, and the sciences, and then to work at developing a new theology that sings the Lord’s song in this strange land called the third millennium.
For me, as for many others, the focus falls on forming and sustaining communities where God’s righteousness is now experienced in justice, equal opportunity, empowerment, forgiveness, and healing.
Miracles are great, but they are so darned unpredictable.
A journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step.
Given what they knew, Christians in the first century made sense of God and Jesus as best they could. The result is the new Testament.
Given what they knew, Christians in the fourth century made sense of God and Jesus as best they could. The result is the Trinity.
Given what we know, Christians in the twenty first century must make sense of God and Jesus as best we can. The results are yet to be seen.
Mark’s gospel at least had something right when he had the angels tell the women to stop hanging about the empty tomb looking for a body that was not there. They would find Jesus was already ahead of them–in Galilee. He is still way ahead of us, if we have eyes to see and ears to hear.
AA
[Note: From the above remarks, and particularly from the Finkelstein and Silberman, and Herzog references, Urantia Book readers will see that, beyond rational doubt, any literal interpretation of the Bible is now unsustainable].
But this also indicates that a literal interpretation of sections of the Urantia Papers is also unsustainable–which is in accord with what the revelators tell us:
“No revelation short of the attainment of the Universal Father can ever be complete. All other celestial ministrations are no more than partial, transient, and practically adapted to local conditions in time and space.” (UB 92:4.9)
A key statement from the AA article is, “Given what we know, Christians in the 21st century must make sense of God and Jesus as best we can.”
What do Urantia Book readers know that will help to make sense of God and Jesus? There is one critical item of knowledge that Christians already knew well in the first century, C.E., but have since lost–despite there being more than twenty New Testament verses to remind them.
Presently, from the point of view of humanity, the single most important item of knowledge existent on our planet concerns the facts of the how, what, and why of our indwelling by the very spirit of our Father-God himself. And because it is lost or forgotten almost everywhere else, by default, such knowledge is close to becoming exclusively the possession of Urantia Book devotees.
What are we to do with this knowledge? Each individual must discover this for him or her self. For certain though, if we put our faith in our God-Spirit-Within and, like the human Jesus, always seek to do the Father’s will as it is revealed to us by the Spirit-Within–then “all else necessary will be added unto us.”
And perhaps finally:_ “When men see you so love them, and how fervently you serve them, they will perceive you have become faith-fellows of the kingdom and will follow after the Spirit of Truth which they see in your lives. . . .”
[Does the Spirit of Jesus shine forth in my life? In your life?]