The Historical Jesus?
Posted: April 28th, 2005, 5:43 pm
A friend of TZF recently sent us this link to an article suggesting that Jesus of Nazareth never existed.
I am familiar with most of the material in the article, but its presentation there is impressive.
The thrust of the article is that one would expect that anyone who performed as many miracles, including healings, raising the dead and his own bodily resurrection, as did Jesus, would have been widely reported by contemporary historians, and yet in fact there are virtually no contemporary reports of Jesus, of his life or death, or of his activities. There is one report from the period written by the historian Josephus, who was a Jew living in Rome, which does include a few lines about Jesus, and which is frequently quoted by Christian authors; but almost all serious scholars agree that it is a later insertion not written by Josephus himself.
This article – and I have seen others like it – concludes that the absence of news about Jesus means there was no Jesus, or at least that there was no Jesus who lived the extraordinary life reported in the Gospels.
Does that make sense? I suppose it does to some, but not to me.
Here’s why.
I am personally familiar with several men and women who are alive today, or who are only recently dead, who are known to be living or to have lived lives equally as extraordinary as Jesus’ life, who perform or did perform miracles similar in nature to those performed by Jesus, and whose life story generally is as remarkable as Jesus’.
And yet, these men and women are essentially invisible to very nearly everyone on the planet. Although books and tapes about them are available in bookstores, and their names are seen and heard in forums and discussion groups like this one, they are virtually unknown outside those circles. And even inside those circles, some of them are unknown.
And I doubt very much that any of them will appear in any of the history books being written now about our time. The only exception may be the Dalai Lama, but I expect that even his appearance in those books will be predicated on his political role in the Tibet/China relationship, and that little will be written about his spiritual nature or activities.
Why is that?
First, my experience is that most people are simply uninterested in spiritual matters. Their life focus is elsewhere, and that's the only direction in which they look. So, they don't see anything else.
More importantly perhaps, as I have written before, I believe that Teachers are quite literally a tear in the fabric of the egoic body/mind reality, a tear through which we see and hear and perceive the Truth as It Is. And in a very real sense, it is we who create the tear ... when we are ready to see through it.
Thus, the tear is not visible to everyone. Not because it is secret or reserved only for specially selected people, but because to see it before we are ready to see it will only do us harm.
So, it is simply not observed.
In my own experience, I can specifically remember, for example, reading “spiritual” books for a second time, and coming across passages that I would have sworn were not there at my first reading. And in a couple of cases, I can think of the same being true on the third reading of such books.
Was I careless the first time? I don’t think so. In several cases, my notes are copious and detailed, and yet make no mention of the “missing” passages.
Obviously (well, I think obviously) the passages were there, but I didn’t see them. Until I was ready to see them. Until I had “eyes that see”.
Thus, I firmly believe that we see what we are ready to see when we are ready to see it.
And so, like so many other Teachers before and since, Jesus walked and taught the earth, but few saw or heard a thing.
The Jesus the world knows now is not that Jesus. The Jesus the world knows now is the Jesus created by political and religious authorities and others that evolved over the centuries. That Jesus is a perfectly legitimate phenomenon, but it is not the same Jesus. The Jesus I am talking about is still not in the history books, and is still unknown except to a few.
My guess is, it is always so.
Back to the article: Although, as I said, the absence of historical reports about Jesus does not prove he did not exist, the question still arises, would it matter if he never existed, if he were in fact a creation of the Gospels writers?
Not to me. For me, once again, this Teacher, like other Teachers, is a tear in the fabric of my ego’s reality. The tear is Real, and for me, that’s what matters.
I am familiar with most of the material in the article, but its presentation there is impressive.
The thrust of the article is that one would expect that anyone who performed as many miracles, including healings, raising the dead and his own bodily resurrection, as did Jesus, would have been widely reported by contemporary historians, and yet in fact there are virtually no contemporary reports of Jesus, of his life or death, or of his activities. There is one report from the period written by the historian Josephus, who was a Jew living in Rome, which does include a few lines about Jesus, and which is frequently quoted by Christian authors; but almost all serious scholars agree that it is a later insertion not written by Josephus himself.
This article – and I have seen others like it – concludes that the absence of news about Jesus means there was no Jesus, or at least that there was no Jesus who lived the extraordinary life reported in the Gospels.
Does that make sense? I suppose it does to some, but not to me.
Here’s why.
I am personally familiar with several men and women who are alive today, or who are only recently dead, who are known to be living or to have lived lives equally as extraordinary as Jesus’ life, who perform or did perform miracles similar in nature to those performed by Jesus, and whose life story generally is as remarkable as Jesus’.
And yet, these men and women are essentially invisible to very nearly everyone on the planet. Although books and tapes about them are available in bookstores, and their names are seen and heard in forums and discussion groups like this one, they are virtually unknown outside those circles. And even inside those circles, some of them are unknown.
And I doubt very much that any of them will appear in any of the history books being written now about our time. The only exception may be the Dalai Lama, but I expect that even his appearance in those books will be predicated on his political role in the Tibet/China relationship, and that little will be written about his spiritual nature or activities.
Why is that?
First, my experience is that most people are simply uninterested in spiritual matters. Their life focus is elsewhere, and that's the only direction in which they look. So, they don't see anything else.
More importantly perhaps, as I have written before, I believe that Teachers are quite literally a tear in the fabric of the egoic body/mind reality, a tear through which we see and hear and perceive the Truth as It Is. And in a very real sense, it is we who create the tear ... when we are ready to see through it.
Thus, the tear is not visible to everyone. Not because it is secret or reserved only for specially selected people, but because to see it before we are ready to see it will only do us harm.
So, it is simply not observed.
In my own experience, I can specifically remember, for example, reading “spiritual” books for a second time, and coming across passages that I would have sworn were not there at my first reading. And in a couple of cases, I can think of the same being true on the third reading of such books.
Was I careless the first time? I don’t think so. In several cases, my notes are copious and detailed, and yet make no mention of the “missing” passages.
Obviously (well, I think obviously) the passages were there, but I didn’t see them. Until I was ready to see them. Until I had “eyes that see”.
Thus, I firmly believe that we see what we are ready to see when we are ready to see it.
And so, like so many other Teachers before and since, Jesus walked and taught the earth, but few saw or heard a thing.
The Jesus the world knows now is not that Jesus. The Jesus the world knows now is the Jesus created by political and religious authorities and others that evolved over the centuries. That Jesus is a perfectly legitimate phenomenon, but it is not the same Jesus. The Jesus I am talking about is still not in the history books, and is still unknown except to a few.
My guess is, it is always so.
Back to the article: Although, as I said, the absence of historical reports about Jesus does not prove he did not exist, the question still arises, would it matter if he never existed, if he were in fact a creation of the Gospels writers?
Not to me. For me, once again, this Teacher, like other Teachers, is a tear in the fabric of my ego’s reality. The tear is Real, and for me, that’s what matters.