(Here's a modern liberal view of who Jesus was: it's not - in the main - my view. But I happen to like the way Harry Cook thinks/writes. For those who want their more traditional view of Christianity challenged, it's worth subscribing to Harry's email list and he'll send you something interesting/ provocative each week. Rowland).


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September 17, 2006






By Harry T. Cook







Mark 8: 27-38


Who do people say I am? That's the question the writer of Mark imagined Jesus asking his closest associates. So they told him what people were saying. If Jesus was as smart as he is depicted by Mark and others as having been, he would have known better than to take "what people say" seriously. It doesn't in the end matter what "people say." It's what you say to me, and I to you. That is what marks a healthy relationship.


So you, my hearers and readers, and I have a relationship. I prepare and deliver sermons; you hear them and respond to them. In theory, I'm supposed to be telling you or helping you to understand what Matthew, Mark, Luke and John said about Jesus, about who he was. "The bible says . . ." is what I am supposed to be telling you. The bible says Jesus was this or the bible says Jesus was that.


That is not how a healthy relationship works. So today I'm going to tell you who and what I think Jesus was. It's not my just-thought-of-it-this-morning opinion. It's not an "opinion" at all. Who and what I think Jesus was comes out of more than 40 years of living with the texts that center around the various characterizations each given the name "Jesus."


This "living with the texts" thing has entailed translating and re-translating them from the Greek language of the New Testament, but, before that, a thorough immersion in the language itself, its vocabulary, its grammar and syntax. It has entailed ongoing research of the history of the two or three centuries on either side of the B.C. - A.D. millennium divide. It has entailed voluminous reading of the work of scholars, some far better versed than I. Moreover, I have drawn deeply from the well of biblical archaeology, though I am not an archaeologist.


Out of all of that, this is who and what I think Jesus was:


1) Jesus was a name. The Aramaic name Yeshuah was a common male given name in the time the Jesus we meet in the gospel narratives would have lived. Is the name significant? It means "he who saves." But the name "Harry" means "great warrior," and Harry's middle name "Theodore" means "gift of God." So, as was fatefully asked by Juliet Capulet of Romeo Montague, "What's in a name?" Where the Jesus of the gospels is concerned, we do not know.


2) Jesus seems to have been one of a type that was well-known in and around the First Century. One of my mentors in New Testament studies calls them "itinerant sages" whom we might favorably compare to modern-day commentators and public intellectuals who have ideas to share and arguments to make. Absent newspapers, television, radio and the Internet, that type in and around the First Century walked about from hamlet to hamlet, city to city and, Hyde Park-like, sounded off to whatever crowd they could attract.


3) What did Jesus sound off about? We only have a record of what the compilers of the gospels, four of which appear in the New Testament, say he said. A lot of it is confusing, but my research has centered on a number of consistent sayings attributed to Jesus that have everything to do with what we call ethics, with how human beings can best order their relationships. The central theme of those sayings was first enunciated by a Jewish sage named Hillel whose life straddled the millennium divide. Hillel said approximately, What you hate, do not do to another. Those who attempted to pass on the wisdom of the one they called Jesus put it this way: Do to others as you would have them do to you. Jesus, then, may have been a teacher of ethical wisdom.


4) The character of Jesus seems to have been developed as the First Century rolled out and beyond as a kind of mythical figure. Just as there were those itinerant sages out and about in those days dealing with the real world, most of the popular religions trafficked in mythology with dying and rising warrior sons of the gods, and so on. With the help of Paul and later of the gospel writer/editor John and his successors, the ethical wisdom teacher dealing with the here-and-now was morphed into a larger-than-life figure of myth.


5) Withal, Jesus of Nazareth - if that is where he was really from - remains so compelling a figure in the public imagination that ambitious novelists and moviemakers continue to turn him and his storied life into blockbuster books and movies.


That's what and who I think Jesus may have been.



© Copyright 2006, Harry T. Cook. All rights reserved. This article may not be used or reproduced without proper credit.


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