An Inconvenient Truth?

[PaulS]

Who is more worth following, the historical Jesus or the gospel Jesus? If it's the former, there are many authors who vary on who that was. How do you pick one to believe? It might be the latter, no matter how far the authors of the gospels went to construct words and events. What does God intend for us? If that's nothing, then what difference does it make?

 

According to Borg and Crossan, Paul was received best by the Gentiles who attended synagogues, but hadn't converted fully. It wasn't Paul who chose the Gentiles as much as the other way around. Also Paul claimed to have been told by the Spirit to preach to Gentiles. To dismiss that is to again say God has no place in this. Maybe not, but then again what difference does it make, if not?

To me it seems pretty explicitly clear in the NT that Paul had no intention of taking his message to the Jews, but rather only chose non-Jewish people to take his message to. I don't know if there were synagogues in Rome when Paul went there to set up camp only to find Stephen had beaten him to the punch, but it is clear that he had no interest in hanging around Jerusalem.

 

Who is worth following is a good question. Or more to the point, why restrict the choice to historical Jesus/Gospel Jesus? Does one have to 'pick' somebody to follow, or can we take various excellent teachings from the many excellent, yet only human teachers, and continue to evolve?

 

Maybe God intends something for us that isn't Jesus? Maybe that's why only now scholars and theologians are able to present such compelling arguments concerning what Jesus was actually all about vs the Gospel version.

 

Who knows.

[BillM]

From my point-of-view, because I don't believe that Jesus was either God or omniscient, I think he grew in his understanding of his mission as time passed.

 

It seems that he initially joined John the Baptist's Essene movement that expected the messiah's mission to entail re-establishing Israel as the central nation on earth and burning up God's enemies.

 

And it seems that his inital mission was "go only to the Jews, don't go to the Gentiles." Yet he kept running into Gentiles who came to him in faith or the "unclean" who were not supposed to be part of the reconstituted Israel. And I think this run-ins had an effect on him that broadened his horizons.

 

Whether the end of Matthew is original to Jesus or not, I do not know. But in the Great Commission, he tells his disciples to go into all the world (not just to the Jews) and to teach other nations what he had taught his disciples. If the Great Commission is legit, then it seems that Jesus' understanding of the gospel was enlarged by his experiences during his ministry. He refused the kingship role that John the Baptist said the messiah would have. And he came to preach forgiving one's enemies instead of burning them up like chaff.

 

Plus I have heard dispensationalist use the "go only to the Jews" to support that notion that nothing Jesus said in the gospels applies to the church, that Jesus' gospel and Paul's gospel are two completely different gospels (Jesus' being works and Paul's being grace). I'm not convinced this is a very good hermanuetic to use on the NT, although, yes, I do see differences in Jesus' gospel and that of Paul.

 

But I suspect that, just like us, Jesus' own understanding of God, of humanity, of the role of the scriptures, of his "mission" changed over time, as he encountered people and situations that challenged his initial "Jews only" understanding.