Saturday, December 27, 2014

To be developed:

Jesus was a heresiarch, perhaps unknowingly so coming outside the established religious order and perhaps stranger to it's codes. Certainly we can see his fate as a result of failing to observe and follow existing religious hierarchies, channels and positions available to a man of his rank - lower class man from a recently (forcefully) converted area, with no claim to heritage in the priestly caste and thus lacking any chance of advancing among the hierarchy, finding no accepted way of channeling his religiosity after refusing to accept the role of a humble pious man, a hermit in the desert -figure.

Deciding to take up religious calling, to make sermons in the open and take up and teach followers was, in it's essence, his death sentence. Everything else was just following the path ordained at that month, the typical story of a heresiarch in conflict with established religion and those who controlled it and drew their social position from it.

But, Jesus as a man from recently converted area came outside the core of hierachical, deep-rooted Judaism in more than one way. He represented the forces in Judaism at that moment that sought (more or less) universality instead of closed status quo. We might make the claim that he was a representative of a Hellenistic working class Judaism, driven by insticts and needs alien to the priestly caste and the Jewish elite.

The needs of the individual, in this life and the next, microhistory of one's own soul, were being in place of the grand macrohistorical drama where the Jewish people - and especially it's leaders, political and especially religious (guardians of the legacy of the mythical political rulers of the supposed past golden age of Judaism) went through their dysfunctional relationship with their god with the world they know as the stage.

Although the New Testament makes claim of royal descent for Jesus, we can disregard any thought of authencity for these. These are the usual claims made for a hidden link to the sources of the religion, typical of heresies (in Christianity heresies and reformers have always claimed theirs to be true Christian religion and both them and the inquisitors coming up with unlikely historical links spanning centuries), and in the aftermath of a major religious figure's passing they are always made into scions of royal houses, no matter the religion in question. We can look at Buddha, Boddhidharma and the Irish monks establishing monasteries in heathen lands during the darkest Middle Age. A century after their deaths and each and everyone was a prince in death, although probably not in life.

It's unlikely that Jesus would have made such a claim, as it would have moved him directly into political arena where only armed rebellion would have been an option. Herodean kings and priestly caste would have seen any Davidian pretender as a threat extraordinaire and he would have been put to death immediately. So, such claim comes after his death, from among believers exalting their lost master.

So, the role Jesus chose for himself was a religious one. We can see him as the "voice of the people", the people being outsiders from the fringes of Jewish society of the time in Palestine: The recently converted, the underclass, the ones lacking 'proper' religious training and thus a right to teach in public. So typical of heresies of later times in Christianity.

Jesus was an outsider, but probably more to the priestly hierarchy than in his own eyes. We can assume the typical naivety of the heresiarch, expecting to be praised and accepted by the priestly elite, at least at some point was his mindset and possibly until almost to the end. The heresiarch, after all, starts, in his or her own eyes, as an insider or someone at least wanting to be an insider, seeking both a channel to pour out their religious devotion and to seek the acceptance (and perhaps social uplifting by) of their supposed 'superiors', both in religion and society.

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