Thursday, January 22, 2015
Sunday, January 18, 2015
Friday, January 09, 2015
This, from yesterday's New York Times, might be my favorite correction ever. HT @NYMag. pic.twitter.com/3f0zUzzKRo
— Kathryn Schulz (@kathrynschulz) January 8, 2015
Friday, January 02, 2015
More about Jesus...
Jesus lived in Palestine - name of the land used by such Jewish authors contemporary to him like Philo of Alexandria - so he was a Palestinian, just like he was a Middle Eastern, Asian, Eurasian and so forth.
We need to also remember that Jesus would not have been what "insiders" of the Jewish religious hierarchy and political elite of his time would have foremost meant when they spoke and wrote about Jews. Same goes for the apostles except Paul, who of course was on his own way, as a Hellenistic Jew from outside Palestine, representative of a different kind of Judaism, but more acceptable to conservative religious hierarchy.
Jesus came from an area only recently converted (with some use of force) to Judaism. He was a member of 'fringe' Judaism in this meaning. The family trees showing supposed descent from mythical king David are just standard feature of the post-humous social elevation of religious figures known from all organized religions - and perhaps an attempt by the community of his followers to claim a 'link' to Jewish religious past beyond the guardians of that legacy, the Jerusalem priesthood.
He was also of lower class status and these together blocked any realistic chance of 'religious advancement' to a man of his background in Jewish society of the time, which would have expected him to be pious and know his place and stick there. He is in this way very much like the founders of later Christian heresies, whose only place to act as religious teachers was outside the orthodox religious hierarchy.
Sure, followers would have called him 'rabbi', but no rabbi in Jerusalem would have been likely to do such a thing. He did not come from a priestly family, had not been taught by rabbis and his knowledge of Jewish religious scripture might have been suspect. (A man of his background would have been likely to be illiterate, at best able to read but not write, and far more likely to have been able to read Aramaic than Hebrew.)
The story of him supposedly amazing the priests of the Temple as a boy is likely to be nothing more than a myth intended to show the superiority of the movement he founded, and perhaps 'fringe' Judaism overall, to the established religious hierarchy. This too is typical of all new religious movements which start as heresies - they need to show their superiority and thus justification to exist in comparison to the older religion from which they are separating.
Jesus came from the margins of Judaism and the Jewish society of his time, challenged the political, social and religious Jewish order of his time (perhaps much more than he could have understood himself), eventually in the heart of it, in Jerusalem, and paid with his life for it.
He was a representative not of the whole Judaism of his time, but of a one, new slice, of what was the larger, changing Judaism of that specific time. So he was not some "standard Jew" you could have met at any place or time during the history of Judaism. His Jewishness and Judaism are tied to the context of his time and society.
So, when people want to claim Jesus to Judaism or Israel or Christian Zionism instead of Palestine, people should remember that his Judaism would have been both quite different to any Judaism of today or the kind of official Judaism which the religious and political elite in Palestine of his time thought proper Judaism to be and which that elite claimed and wanted to represent and propagate.
Jesus was an outsider standing up to existing social and political order which was ready to give him only a marginalized role, just like native Palestinians today in historic Palestine against Israel.
In this view, I think that declaring Jesus to have been a Palestinian has an important and illuminating message for today.
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