Coming to Grips with Jesus

I have read the story of a Unitarian Universalist who pulled up at an intersection behind a car with a bumper sticker that read "honk if you love Jesus." The Unitarian Universalist thought for a moment and then decided, what the heck, she loved Jesus in her own way. So she gave the horn of her car a couple of love taps.

The driver in the car in front of her stuck his head out the window, and shouted, "Quiet down, you jerk! Can't you see? The light's still red!"

Coming to grips with Jesus is not easy. As a Unitarian Universalist, I have always felt a nagging feeling of awkwardness about that fact that my parents and teachers did not teach me a great deal about the Bible when I was growing up. I have discovered that in many situation people who show ignorance about a bible story are considered stupid, ignorant or backward.

Personally, I ignored Jesus for the first twenty-three years of my life. Then I decided I wanted to go to graduate school to study to be a Unitarian Universalist Minister. I wanted to do this not because of Jesus or the Bible but because I had seen ministers do some very important work in opposing the Vietnam war and in supporting the civil rights movement.

It dawned on me that I might need to learn about the Bible when my Unitarian Universalist Minister, the man who served my church, my first model of ministry, said to me in passing, that I was lucky because the seminaries no longer required that every student study ancient Hebrew and Classical Greek so that they could read the Bible in the original. This took me aback. Without notes I could talk about the major events in the civil rights movement from the Montgomery bus boycott to the poor people's march, but I had never read the Bible in English, much less in Greek or Hebrew.

So a few weeks after a theological school had accepted me, I went out to buy my first Bible. I had an old Bible that a relative had given me as a gift when I was a child, but it seemed to me that buying my own Bible was somehow an important symbolic step in my decision to study for the ministry.

The Bible I choose twenty-seven years ago, I selected because I liked the bold modern abstract design on the cover. The publishers named the book The Jerusalem Bible. I tried to read it and I soon got bogged down. Still in the fall I took my new Bible with me to my introduction to the New Testament Class, where I encountered Biblical translation snobbery.

I have forgotten the lecture, but I do remember the conversation I had with an attractive female student in the class. I felt like I was back in grade school or high school, as she sneered at my Bible. "Your reading that Translation!" She said. "Don't you realize that is a Roman Catholic Translation! Why don't you at least have a Protestant translation! Besides," She went on, "The Jerusalem Bible is a translation of a translation. The French Catholics translated the Bible from Hebrew and Greek into French, and then English Catholics translated the French version from French to English. No one considers it a serious translation."

I thought about telling her how I had liked the abstract design on the cover, but then I thought she might have been an authority on the book cover design also. In the future, not wanting to show my ignorance, I kept my Jerusalem Bible in my apartment.

Gradually I began to learn about the Bible and in particular about the New Testament. My own efforts to come to grips with Jesus turn out to be like a detective story. In search of evidence, one of the first things I learned is the word "synoptic." Synoptic is a Greek word that means "having an approximately parallel point of view." Scholars call Matthew, Mark, and Luke synoptic gospels, because they present a common view of Jesus. I learned that the fourth Gospel, John's Gospel, tells an almost completely different story of Jesus, from that of Matthew, Mark, and Luke.

For example Matthew, Mark and Luke all began with John the Baptist or birth and childhood stories. The gospel of John begins with creation and has no birth or childhood stories. Matthew, Mark and Luke describe John the Baptist baptizing Jesus. The Gospel of John does not mention the baptism of Jesus. In Matthew, Mark and Luke, Jesus speaks in stories called parables. In the gospel of John the parables do not appear at all. In the first three gospels, Jesus embraces the causes of the poor and the oppressed. In the fourth gospel Jesus had little or nothing to say about the poor and oppressed. In the synoptic Gospels the public ministry of Jesus lasts one year. In the gospel of John, the public ministry of Jesus lasted three years. I learned that New Testament Scholars believed that nothing in the Gospel of John can be traced back to the historical Jesus.

So in coming to grips with Jesus I found myself focusing on Matthew, Mark and Luke. Looking for evidence, I asked from where did these three manuscripts come? When were they written? None of the Gospels has a copyright date, but I discovered that scholars believe the Gospel of Mark was written in about the year seventy, about forty years after the death of Jesus on the cross. Matthew and Luke were written about the year eighty-five, about fifty-five years after Jesus' death. These Gospels were written in Greek, although Jesus' spoke in a language called Aramaic. Then I discovered something I found very interesting. No gospel manuscripts are dating from the year seventy or the year eighty-five. They have long ago rotted away. A few fragments of the Gospels date to 150 years into the common era. However, the oldest complete copy of the Gospels was found only about 150 years ago. The story of its discovery is like something out of the Antiques Road Show.

In 1844, a German researcher visited St. Catherine's, a Greek Orthodox monastery situated on Mount Sinai more than 5,000 feet above sea level. The researcher was looking for Biblical manuscripts. While browsing around the library, he saw a large basket full of parts of old manuscripts containing fragments of the Old Testament in Greek. They were in a basket whose contents, according to the librarian, monks had already twice burned as fuel in the monastery's stove. Hearing this, the researcher asked permission to take the pages to his room. The librarian said that he might as well have them, because the monks were about to burn them anyway. Later when the librarian saw how excited the German visitor had become, he refused to show the source from which the monks had taken these few pages.

Hoping to find more, the German researcher returned in 1853. The librarian again refused him access to the source of the pages. In 1859 he returned again. At first he found nothing remarkable. However, one day he was walking around the monastery garden with one of the monastery residents, and they discussed the Greek Bible, and the various texts they had seen. When they returned to the monastery, the man invited the visiting researcher into his room for refreshments. From a corner he took an object wrapped in a cloth, which he placed before the researcher on a table. The researcher unwrapped the cloth and before him lay the oldest complete copy of the Bible in existence. The whole New Testament was there. The researcher received permission to take the book to his room. He was so excited he could not sleep or even lie down on the bed. In the cold room, by the light of a small lamp, he spent the night reading this ancient account of the life of Jesus.

Eventually Czar Alexander the II bought the manuscript from the Monastery for about $7,000, and the book went to Russia. In the 1930s the Soviet government was in need of funds, and was not particularly interested in biblical manuscripts. The British government bought the manuscript for about half a million dollars. In 1981 on a trip to London I saw this Bible in a glass case in the British Museum. It was in the same room with the Magna Carta.

How old is this manuscript? It was written in about the year 350. What this means for my effort to come to grips with Jesus, is that the accounts of the life of Jesus, who spoke in Aramaic, were written down in Greek, between about the year seventy until about the year ninety, and then they were copied and recopied by hand for two hundred and fifty years, before they were written down in a book that lasted, that has not turned to dust. In other words, many people could have changed and altered the Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke before the year 350. And they are the only sources of information about the life of Jesus.

Well almost our only source. A few references to Jesus appear in both ancient Roman and ancient Jewish literature. And in my efforts to come to grips with Jesus I learned about one other source. In December of 1945, two Egyptian farmers went out to the cliffs that skirt the Nile as it winds its way through Upper Egypt. As the two brothers searched for a naturally occurring form of fertilizer to spread on their fields, they came across an earthenware jar. When they broke open the jar, they discovered inside thirteen leather-bound papyrus books. They guessed that such a collection of crusty ancient books would have some value in the marketplace. So they took them into Cairo and sold them to an antiquities dealer.

Some three years later a French scholar and dealer in antiquities made an inventory of the books. In one of the books the scholar found a text called "The Gospel According to Thomas." The manuscript was written in the Coptic language in about the year 350. However, the first Gospel of Thomas may have been written between the years fifty and sixty, making it at least ten years older then Mark's Gospel, which was written in about the year seventy.

The Gospel of Thomas is a collection of one hundred and fourteen sayings of Jesus. It was one of the most important archaeological finds in the history of New Testament scholarship and the study of early Christianity. The Gospel of Thomas is every bit as revolutionary for the study of the New Testament as the Dead Sea Scrolls are for the study of the Old Testament.

So these four Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and Thomas, are virtually all I have to go on in coming to grips with Jesus. I discovered that from these accounts modern scholars have tried to decide what they can say with confidence about the life of Jesus. They have come to these conclusions:

• John the Baptist baptized Jesus and the beginning of his ministry was in some way linked with that of John the Baptist.
• Jesus proclaimed the coming of the Kingdom of God, also translated as the coming of God's imperial rule or the coming of God's domain. What Jesus meant by that is in dispute. Some believe that it was a political statement about ridding the country of the Roman conquerors and the temple priests and replacing then with a just and fair society.
• Jesus had a reputation as a healer. People believed he could help some who were suffering from illnesses.
• Jesus brought together a unified group of followers with little concern for their sex, or their previous background. A central feature of the life of this group was eating together, sharing a meal in common.
• Jesus told stories, he spoke in parables, and he called God by the Aramaic word for father.
• Jesus challenged the tendency of the Jewish community of his day to fragment itself and to reject certain of its members. This aroused opposition to him, which reached a climax during a Passover celebration in Jerusalem when he was arrested, tried and crucified.

This, or something like it, is what responsible scholars generally agree that we know of the actual historical facts about the life of Jesus. I believe that studying both the words of the New Testament and thoughtful New Testament research, will yield the highest combination of religious and spiritual maturity.

So to come to grips with Jesus, like a good detective, I turn to the best scholarship. I learn all I can. However, when I have gone as far as I can with New Testament research, there is another step to take. As I would with any other story, I look at the writings of the New Testament in terms of my own experience. Do the parables enrich my life? Are the sayings useful advice in my own day to day living? Can the example of Jesus' life serve as a model for me? When I am finished with my reading and my studies, in the end, the value of the Gospels depends on whether they give more depth and meaning to my life. For me the answer is yes.

• When I read "a prophet is not without honor except in his own country," I learn about the difficulties of Social Action.
• When I read "To him who strikes you on the cheek offer the other also," I learn about the nature of nonviolence.
• When I read "Do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you," I learn about the nature of love.
• When I read "Where your treasure is there will your heart be also," I learn about the danger of greed.
• When I read "How can you say to your brother, 'let me take the speck out of your eye' when there is a log in your own eye?" I learn about the nature of counseling.
• And when I read "Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep's clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves," I learn about the nature of the potential evil within us.

There are parts of the New Testament that I reject. It is like all human creations, good and bad. Nevertheless, it seems to me that one definition of maturity is the ability to see that nothing us ever totality good or totally bad.

And if I find myself at an intersection behind a car with a bumper sticker that reads "honk if you love Jesus," I may toot my horn, even at the risk of being yelled at. For in my own way I love Jesus. And each year at Easter I join in celebration of the fact that his stories and sayings survive and give guidance to millions of people around the world.

Primary Sources:

Throckmorton, Burton, Gospel Parallels, Fifth Edition, Thomas Nelson, Nashville, Tennessee, 1992.
Funk, Robert, and Hoover, Ray, The Five Gospels, Macmillan, New York, 1993.

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