Chapter 3 – The
Person of Jesus Christ
There is, in some
respect, no more controversial a theological topic to write about
than the person of Jesus Christ. This is often not because of any
truth about Jesus Christ Himself, but because of the actions and
attitudes of those who profess to be His followers in contradiction
to what He taught. I have even found in my fiction writing projects
that removing the person of Jesus Christ from His theologically
orthodox and historical context, and dissociating Him from
traditional Christianity can increase the interest shown in getting
to know Him, at least as a character in a novel. This has proven true
in my own fan fiction stories (Warcraft: For Unto Us a Savior
and Warcraft: Kingdom of Light), and also in the Joshua
series of novels by Father Girzone. It has been my experience that,
far from not wanting to know Him, people desperately want to know Him
but are unable to see or experience Him because of those
“gatekeepers” refusing to show Him as He is without their
particular theologies, interpretations, and aforementioned
contradictory actions obscuring Him from view, often making Him
unrecognizable at best.
In
the following discussion, I am assuming at least some familiarity
with the Gospels by the reader, and that the reader will recognize
certain references to events and persons within them. In
it, I will be drawing some conclusions, speculations, and inferences
about the person of Jesus Christ based, not only on Holy Scripture,
but also known history, science, and extra-Biblical accounts and
evidence. It is possible these might disturb a person of a more
traditional Christian background. My intention however is only to
present a portrait of the person of Jesus Christ that, while drawing
from the Gospels, is not confined to a rigid, “Sunday
School” interpretation and
might provide some insight into Him as a human being born in an
unusual manner into a particular time, place, and culture as well as
being fully divine.
With
this last point, I am also operating
under the assumption
of the Orthodox teaching that
Jesus Christ is both fully flesh and blood human and fully divine.
This is the assumption made throughout the New Testament from both
Jesus’ own statements about
Himself as well as those statements made about Him by His followers
who wrote the letters and apocalypse contained therein. It is also
the assumption made by those Christian writers of the following
generations known as the Church Fathers. While
it remains both an Orthodox and Biblical teaching, it is also, at
this point in history, a matter of faith. One either accepts it, or
they don’t.
Jesus
Christ was born some time between 4 B.C.E. and 1 A.D. (there is no “0
A.D.”) at the beginning of the reign of the Roman emperor Caesar
Augustus. According to the only record we have written by His
followers of the period, His
mother’s name was “Mariam” and He
was conceived parthenogenetically, His
adopted father’s name being “Yosef”. It
is most likely that He was approximately 5’7” tall, with dark
brown
hair, dark colored eyes, and
tanned skin like most Middle
Eastern people of the period.
He was born in in the small
town of Bethlehem six miles outside of Jerusalem,. According to the
genealogies they recorded, He physically descended from King David
through his son Nathan (St. Luke’s genealogy), inheriting
the legal royal lineage through His adopted father Yosef who was
descended from King David through Solomon (St. Matthew’s
genealogy). After living in
Bethlehem until about the age of two years old, his mother, adopted
father, and He moved down to
Egypt for a time for the boy’s own protection after King Herod
(Herod the Great),
the Roman appointed ruler of Judea, ordered the massacre of all
infants two years old and under in Bethlehem and the surrounding
villages. He did this after
having learned of His birth from Eastern “magoi” who had come
looking for a newborn Judean king after
astrological signs and
mistakenly assumed that the
boy would have been born in the royal palace in Jerusalem.
After the death of King
Herod, His family and He moved to Nazareth in Galilee where His
stepfather, Joseph, was from and Joseph’s other children from a
previous marriage resided. From here, there is a brief description of
an event which took place likely after His Bar-Mitzvah in Jerusalem
when he was about twelve years old, and then there is an eighteen
year gap in the Biblical record. At the age of thirty, after
being pointed out by His cousin, John the Baptist, as the Messiah, He
began teaching and performing miracles of healing, raising the dead,
and other demonstrations of power commonly understood as only deities
being able to perform. At the age of thirty three He was arrested by
the Judean temple authorities, given
an illegal trial and then handed over to the Roman governor for
execution by crucifixion. He died on April 3rd, 33 C.E. within hours of initial crucifixion
by heart rupture induced by extreme stress, (evidenced by the
appearance of hematidrosis less than twenty fours hours prior) and
blood loss due to Roman scourging. The
Roman guards confirmed His death by stabbing a spear into His side
and piercing His heart. His
body was buried in a tomb just outside the city and, due to the fear
of his body being stolen, the large stone which sealed the tomb was
itself sealed with a Roman legal seal which incurred capital
punishment if broken. The third day after His death, the tomb was
found broken into, the heavy stone used to seal it rolled away and
set to the side. The body was missing and the burial shroud was found
neatly folded. According to
the Biblical record, He was seen and confirmed alive by all of His
disciples to whom He appeared on multiple occasions, speaking and
even eating with them. After a period of several weeks, He returned
with His disciples to Jerusalem where He ascended into the sky and
disappeared from sight.
James’
Infancy Gospel (also called the “Protevangelion of James”), which
is considered canonical by some parts of the Eastern Orthodox Church,
records that Mariam was born in much the same way as Samson or Samuel
in the books of Judges and 1 Samuel respectively. She was born of a
mother who was otherwise barren and had, on her trips to Jerusalem
with her husband, prayed to be able to have a child. She was granted
that request by God and gave birth to a girl whom, at the age of
three years old, she gave up as a dedicated virgin to the temple. At
the age of twelve, the priests in the temple understood that they
would soon have a problem on their hands. Knowing that she could
begin menstruating at any time and thus defile the temple according
the the Torah, but also knowing that she was dedicated as a virgin,
they asked a group of devout, elderly Jewish men who had already had
their families to draw lots to be legally betrothed to her on the
understanding that the marriage would never be consummated. Marriage
was frequently done for young widows within families to see to their
welfare and to ensure they didn’t end up out on the street. In this
case, a betrothal was similarly done for Mariam’s future welfare.
Yosef, a widower from Nazareth, drew the lot and agreed to the
betrothal. At some point in time after this, Mariam found herself
pregnant with her virginity intact.
Parthenogenesis
or “virgin birth” is a process that has been documented in
reptiles, birds, sharks, and other species which permits a female of
the species to produce an offspring without a male contribution. In
short, it occurs when an egg cell begins dividing on its own without
the introduction of a sperm cell. With rare exceptions, if a viable
offspring is produced, it is always a genetic clone of its mother.
There are several mechanisms observed which permit this among those
species.
To
date, while technically feasible, it has not been formally documented
in mammals in nature. In 2004, Scientists at the Tokyo University of
agriculture successfully induced parthenogenesis in a mouse producing
an offspring without the introduction of sperm or the male
chromosome. In August of 2007, it was revealed that a Korean
scientist had successfully created human embryos through
parthenogenesis under laboratory conditions as a part of his research
into stem cells and stem cell production.
Human
parthenogensis, according to one research article by graduate
students in Brazil (Gabriel Jose de Carlie and Tiago Campos Pereira.
“On human parthenogenesis”, Medical Hypotheses. 106 (2017)
57-60), is not necessarily a rare occurrence but almost always
results in benign tumors called teratomas. These teratomas may
on rare occasion develop in such a way to where “the basic human
body plan is present” though non-functional and as such develop fat
cells, hair, teeth, and in rare cases, limbs, malformed head, and
“other structures”. The authors of the paper however offer the
hypothesis that human parthenogenesis producing a viable offspring in
nature does occur in extremely rare circumstances due to mutation
resulting in the deletion of two maternal genes that would otherwise
prevent it, but is not noticed because the offspring is otherwise
healthy and normal. Human parthenogenesis then, resulting in a
viable, normal human offspring, can be considered astronomically
improbable, but not technically impossible.
What
is more improbable is the human parthenogenesis of a male
offspring. Biological sex is generally determined by one’s
chromosomes, either “XX” for female, or “XY” for male. The
gene which is responsible for determining whether or not a fetus
develops testes is called “SRY” and is normally contained within
the “Y” chromosome. SRY determines sex by switching on the gene
SOX9 producing a male offspring. In female offspring, SOX9 has been
switched off by the gene RSPO1. This being said, what has been found
is that it is possible for RSPO1 to fail during the developmental
process, leaving the SOX9 gene turned on thus producing testis in the
fetus as opposed to ovaries according to an article by Keri Smith
(“Gene mutation turns girls into boys,” Nature. 15 October
2006, doi:10.1038/news061009-14).
In
this article, the author reference four brothers from a family, none
of whom carried the SRY gene. However,
each brother carried a mutation of the RSPO1 gene.
For
the sake of brevity, I have tried to spare the reader from any more
intense technical details than what I have presented to make my
argument. I encourage you to read the articles I have referenced and
draw your own conclusions. But from the articles and sources I have
read, while requiring a precise series of mutations occurring in
order, that Jesus Christ could have been conceived both male
and by parthogenesis is, while astronomically improbable, within the
realm of what is known to be scientifically possible. In this
scenario, Jesus would have physically been a male genetic clone of
his mother, Mariam, with the XX chromosome but biologically male due
to the failure of the RSPO1 gene at a critical stage in embryonic
development. One consequence of this scenario is that, in modern
clinical terms, Jesus would also have been considered , technically,
intersex regardless of the completeness of His male physical anatomy.
This argument is not made to devalue the Scriptural account of his
virginal conception by the Holy Spirit in any way, only to
demonstrate that the assertion by His followers that He was conceived
by parthenogenesis is by no means impossible or absurd as some have
accused. In fact, the series of genetic mutations required is so
specific that I would argue it is more plausible God was involved in
the process than not, much like the evolution of life on Earth and
human beings specifically. Here I see the hand of God working through
obscure, but natural processes to produced the result He desired; in
this case, a Son.
There
is a question to be had as to why God would go to the trouble of
this. One hypothesis would suggest that the genetic disorder I
described in the previous chapter is passed down through the male
chromosome. There may some reference to this in the passage in
Genesis chapter six which says that the “sons of God” went in to
the daughters of men and took wives from them. In this
interpretation, “sons of God”, rather than referring to “angels”
as is commonly interpreted, refers to the particular family group of
humans that God took a special interest in by interacting with them
directly and placing them in the garden, and who later ate the toxic
fruit which they had been warned not to. (See chapter 2 of this work.
In this way those afflicted spread their affected genes to the rest
of the human population through interbreeding. Accompanied by
intentional extermination of other, different human groups this may
explain why, by the time true civilization arose, there were no
unaffected humans left on earth.) In this scenario, without a human
“Y” chromosome Jesus would have been born without the human
psychobiological disorder, Hamartia, thus making Him “sinless”.
About
two years after Jesus Christ was born in Bethlehem, and there is no
legitimate reason to assume other than the Scriptural account of the
location of His birth, His mother, adopted father and He were visited
by a group of men identified in the Gospel of St. Matthew only as
“magoi” in the Greek who had come from the east. The text says
that they had followed a star looking for the birth of a new born
“King of the Judeans” (In the Greek, the words “Jew” and
“Judean” are the same word, “Iudaios”, and indicative that,
much as today, Jewish nationality and religion were seen as one and
the same), and that they had initially gone to King Herod’s palace
looking for Him, only having been directed to Bethlehem after Herod
had consulted with scribes and priests to determine where the Jewish
“Maschiach” (Anointed One, Grk. “Christos”) would be born.
While
Christian tradition has given us a particular image of who these men
were, there is nothing in Matthew’s text to support that image
other than the term “magoi”, often rendered “magi” or the
more vague and slightly euphemistic “wise men”. There is no
account of the number of these travelers to support that there were
only three. The word “magos” (the singular form) in Greek refers
principally to a class of Zoroastrian priests, practitioners of
astrology, centered in the area of Persia. For this reason, it also
refers more generally to someone as a “wizard”, “sorceror”,
or a practitioner of the magical arts. Another example of the word
used in the New Testament is in the Acts of the Apostles referring to
“Simon the Magos” in Samaria. It appears clear that Simon was
neither Persian in origin nor a Zoroastrian priest.
The
Magi were regarded with extreme renown in their own homeland as
scholars, magicians, astrologers, and priests. They were some of the
most educated of their people and heavily involved in politics. But
in all of the reading I have done on the subject, I have not once
encountered a single extra-Biblical account of Zoroastrian Magi
traveling outside of their homeland, much less for two years along
the caravan routes across the Middle East, to honor newborn royalty
they didn’t know (if anyone has such evidence, I would be happy to
look at it).
Furthermore,
the trip on foot across the land trade routes between a location in
ancient Persia (such as Babylon, for example) only runs about 1200
miles, give or take. Figuring 20 miles a day on foot with a caravan,
the trip would take approximately two to three months, not one to two
years as is implicated by the Biblical text. For this reason, the
idea that these were literal Zoroastrian Magi doesn’t fit the
description. In order to fit the time frames involved we must go
farther east than ancient 1st century Persia.
In
fact, there is a religious group also practiced with astrology that
perhaps does fit the scant identifiers given. It is a little
discussed fact among Christian theologians and pastors that Buddhism
not only existed but flourished during this period (having been
established by Gautama Siddharta around 500 B.C.E.) in what is now
Afghanistan, Pakistan, Nepal, and India. More than this, there is
evidence that they regularly sent missionaries west as far as Egypt.
One region and group in particular that seems to fit is that of
Ghandara around what is now Kabul in Afghanistan.
This
region was conquered by Alexander the Great in 327 B.C.E. and later
would become a part of the Indo-Greek kingdoms of the period. It also
became a major center for the practice of Indo-Greek Buddhism,
patronized by the rulers of the period, Menander I and his
successors. One interesting note about Ghandaran Buddhism is its
focus on the boddhisatva Maitreya (this is the Sanskrit form; in the
Buddha’s native Pali it is “Metteya”), the prophesied successor
to Gautama Siddharta (the Buddha), from approximately 30-375 B.C.E.
About
Maitreya, it is written that the Buddha said before he died:
And the Blessed
One replied: “I am not the first Buddha who came upon earth, nor
shall I be the last. In due time another Buddha will arise in the
world, a Holy One, a supremely enlightened One, endowed with wisdom
in conduct, auspicious, knowing the universe, an incomparable leader
of men, a master of angels and mortals. He will reveal to you the
same eternal truths which I have taught you. He will preach his
religion, glorious in its origin, glorious at the climax, and
glorious at the goal, in the spirit and in the letter. He will
proclaim a religious life, wholly perfect and pure; such as I now
proclaim.”
Ananda said: “How
shall we know him?”
The Blessed One
said: “He will be known as Metteya, which means 'he whose name is
kindness.'”
(The Gospel of Buddha XCVII:12-15)
It is a well established fact that to this day, Tibetan Buddhists
will search far afield for reincarnations of previous teachers known
as “lamas”. One of the more sensational occurrences of this is
that depicted in the film “Little Buddha” which was based on the
true story of a group of Tibetan monks who believed they had found
the reincarnation of a great lama in a boy from Washington state in
the United States.
It makes more sense to me, based on the scant details given, that
these “magoi” described in the Gospel of St. Matthew were in fact
Buddhist monks from either Ghandara or somewhere in the surrounding
region. They were actively looking for the coming of the man they
believed to be the Buddha’s successor (and it appears that at least
after 30 C.E. believed they had found him). When the star appeared,
probably after much debate, they set out to follow it from “the
east”. Not being aware of local Judean, much less Roman, politics,
and assuming that the new boddhisatva would be born a prince (which
would be a reasonable assumption since Siddharta was born a prince),
they traveled first to King Herod’s palace assuming that the new
prince would be his son. They would not have known Herod the Great’s
reputation. When inquiring about the new born prince, it is possible
that they might have included in their explanation the Pali form of
the name, “Metteya.” And interesting point about Greek
orthography and pronunciation is that the “tt” and the “ss”
can be, at times, interchangeable depending on the dialect and the
age. It is possible they might have explained in Greek that they were
looking for the new born “Metteya” and those hearing understood
them to be saying “messias”, the Hellenized form of Aramaic,
“meschiach” (“anointed one”, Heb. “maschiach”, Grk.
“Christos”) which comes into English as “messiah”. This would
explain why Herod and those with him inquired as to where the
“Christ” (Grk. “Christos”, Aram. “meschiach”) would be
born upon the monk’s announcement they had come to honor a newborn
king.
I imagine their conversation happened along these lines:
Monks: “We have come to do homage to the newborn king of the
Judeans.”
Herod: “Sorry, friend. There is no newborn prince in my house.”
Confused, the Monks reply: “We have seen his star far to the east.
The Lord Metteya has been born here, we are certain of it.”
Herod, now beginning to shake a little: “Did you just say Messiah’s
been born?”
Monks, not understanding the difference: “Yes.”
I imagine also that Mariam, being one of the few remaining living
witnesses to their presence and St. Matthew’s probable source,
called them simply “magoi from the east” because, in reality, she
may have had little real idea who they actually were or what land
they had come from not having been educated in such things being a
first century woman either still in puberty or barely out of it. It
is easy for me to entertain the idea that a group of Greek speaking
Buddhist monks with heavy accents, educated in astrology and with
their journey possibly backed by an Indo-Greek king, traveling
together might have been described by such a woman as “magoi”.
That they may have been looking for a newborn Buddha might be
suggested by the three gifts they presented as well. Today, Tibetan
monks searching for their reincarnated lamas frequently bring a
series of personal objects belonging to the deceased lama along with
similar objects not having belonged to them in order to test whether
or not the child in question is who they think they are. In this
case, they were looking, not for a reincarnation, but for the birth
of a new Buddha, and so brought gifts that might indicate the path in
life the child would take should he choose them.
Assuming that the two year old Jesus would have passed those tests,
the next obvious thing they would have done would be to invite Him
and His parents to return with them to where they came from to study.
To this day this is Tibetan Buddhist practice. Here however, it is
clear that they did not. Speculating on this further (as this is all
reasoned speculation, to be sure), given Yosef’s advanced age, and
Jesus’ very young age, there is probably a good chance that they
conceded that it would be too far of a journey for them to make at
the moment on foot and survive, and extended an invitation for Him to
take when He was old enough (This is a scenario I described in a fan
fiction work I wrote, Xena: Warrior Princess – Crossroads
available to read on fanfiction.net).
As mentioned previously, there is a time jump of about eighteen years
in the Gospel accounts after the incident recorded in St. Luke’s
Gospel. Much conjecture has revolved around these eighteen years
among Biblical scholars. The generally accepted consensus is that He
spent them growing up in Nazareth as a carpenter. There are at least
two inconsistencies with this however, and one of them is quite
glaring.
The first is that He never married. While not seemingly show
stopping, in traditional Jewish culture it would have been, and
remains, next to scandalous. After his thirteenth birthday (the age
of adulthood in traditional Judaism), it is more than likely he would
have felt the pressure by family members, especially his mother being
raised with a special devotion, to become betrothed and eventually
marry. As the Torah is clear on honoring one’s father and mother, I
don’t see Him willfully disobeying Mariam, or Yosef should he have
still been alive at that point.
The second is that, having seen His innate wisdom and knowledge of
the Torah when He was twelve, and Mariam having grown up in the
temple, the natural path in life He would have been encouraged to
take would be that of a Rabbi. This implies being educated in a
Rabbinical school, either Pharisee or Sadducee, and being known to
the Rabbis of the time. The natural consequence of this would be that
He would have been taught “letters” in a formal setting (the
Scriptures record the religious leaders being shocked that He knew so
much never having studied “letters”), He would have been trained
as either a Pharisee or a Sadducee, and He, once again, would have
been required to be married. As a child, He would have been taught as
a carpenter, probably working with Yosef and his step brothers, but
once He reached adulthood, and knowing His disposition towards
religious matters, it makes no sense that His Jewish mother would
have then encouraged Him to remain a carpenter.
So, where did He go for those eighteen years?
In
the late 1800s, a Crimean Jewish adventurer named Nicholas Notovich
claimed to have broken his leg while visiting the Hemis Monastery in
Ladakh, India. During his recuperation, he described having built up
trust with the abbot of the monastery who then showed him what was
presumably the only copy of a story written in Sanskrit about Jesus,
in the manuscript called “Issa”, and His traveling to and across
India between the ages of thirteen and twenty nine. He later
published a book which was largely lambasted and discredited by
western scholars of the period who made journeys to the Hemis
monastery to see the manuscript for themselves only to be told that
Notovich had never been there and that no such manuscript existed.
Not long after, however, an Indian man named Swami Abhedananda,
having heard of Notovich’s story, went to the same monastery
himself and inquired with the abbot about the story. With him, the
abbot not only confirmed Notovich’s story, but showed him the
manuscript itself which was apparently a copy written in Tibetan. The
abbot added that the original manuscript, written in Pali, was not
there at Hemis but resided in a monastery in Marbour near Lhasa in
Tibet. With the aid of the monks, Abhedananda, was able to translate
a portion of the text and include it in his travelogue, Swami
Abhedananda's Journey into Kashmir & Tibet (still
in publication, and available from Amazon).
The discrepancy between the two reactions
by the abbot, total denial to the western inquiries while giving full
cooperation to the Indian swami has been and can be attributed to the
plundering of eastern antiquities by western scholars and researchers
during the time period. The abbot simply did not trust that, if he
produced the ancient manuscript, the westerners would not steal it
from him like westerners were frequently doing. There was no such
fear of this with the Indian swami who
spent much of his days living in the same manner as the monks
themselves and existing off of alms,
but more of a professional or spiritual courtesy.
The
Notovich manuscript states that at the age of thirteen Jesus
discreetly left
home and traveled east because He was being pressured to take a wife,
and with the express intention of studying the teachings of the
Buddha (the Dharma). This would seem to corroborate my speculation
that the magoi were Buddhist monks who may have extended an
invitation for Him to travel east to study the Dharma when He
was old enough to make the trip on His own.
The
manuscript goes on to describe a young Jesus learning Pali and
studying Buddhist texts in various holy cities, and arguing with
Brahmans, the Hindu priestly caste, about the existence of an
“Eternal Creator” and the hypocrisy of the priestly and warrior
castes. Much of the teaching attributed to Jesus in this document has
the ring of something perhaps that the Jesus depicted in the Gospels
might say in the context of a Hindu audience. After spending many
years in India,
He returned home by way of Persia, and while in Persia also taught
and argued against the Zoroastrian priests.
Another
point of consideration is the foundational
orthodox teaching that
Jesus Christ is Yahweh incarnated as a flesh
and blood human being. It
is fairly clear from the Gospel of St. John, as well as traditional
Christian belief, that Jesus Christ claimed implicitly and explicitly
to not only be the Son of God (Grk.
“huios tou theou”, lit. “son of the God” and
in Greek writings philosophy referring to Zeus/Jupiter or the
Platonic demiurge, but in Jewish writings, and in
this case, referring to
Yahweh, the
only God the Jews would acknowledge)
but also an incarnation of Yahweh Himself.
This
is not a concept found in either 1st
century Jewish belief or Greek philosophy. There
is simply no precedent for it found in the Hebrew Scriptures or
Jewish belief. Even in the
New Testament Scriptures, the mere suggestion that Yahweh might be
Jesus’ Father was held by Pharisees and Sadducees both as
blasphemy.
In Greek mythology, the
gods occasionally seduced human beings with the result of demi-god
(“half god”) offspring, but did not lower themselves to be born
with human flesh and blood.
Eventually, Roman emperors
would be elevated as living gods deemed
worthy of worship by
the Roman Senate, but not
generally understood that
they were incarnations of existing gods. There
had, perhaps, been a similar, though not identical, concept
surrounding the worship of the Egyptian Pharoah in the New Kingdom
around the 11th
century B.C.E. associating
Pharoah with Ra and later Amun,
but this was over a thousand years prior. The Egyptians of the 1st
Century C.E. were largely Hellenized due to the reign of the
Ptolemies after Alexander the Great, and subjugated by Rome after the
death of the last Ptolomy Pharoah, Cleopatra. To
my understanding, it is
not likely to have been a widely held or understood concept that this
might be possible in first century Judea.
Incarnation
is
however a concept found in Hindu, Buddhist, and Sikh belief
originating in India known
as an avatar.
An avatar in these belief
systems is a god or “deva”
who has descended to earth and taken form as a human being. There is
some debate as to whether this involves taking the mere form or
facade of a human being, or whether this means adopting true flesh
and blood as in the orthodox Christian doctrine of the incarnation.
This debate aside, it is
the only belief system during the period which appears to express
this possibility.
I
would here posit
that Jesus, being the human
incarnation of Yahweh, in
His total, flesh and blood humanity did
not fully understand who or
what He was at first,
and might
not have understood
it had He remained where He was in Nazareth of Galilee. It
may have been necessary for Him to be removed far from any
Mediterranean Jewish theological or philosophical influence in order
for God to reveal to Him His true nature without contradiction, and
for Him to come to terms with who He was. The
theological and
philosophical belief structures
which were the prevailing views of the period simply wouldn’t have
permitted it.
Consider
the previously mentioned reaction to Jesus’ claim that God was His
Father by the Judeans. Similar
to the beliefs of Islam,
the argument from Judaism of
the period would have been
made that God could neither have a Son, nor would He have incarnated
Himself as a human being,
or in the form of any created thing for that matter.
From a Greco-Roman
worldview, He might have
been seen as
a demi-god at best. They
might have admitted, within their world view, that He had a divine
father similar to perhaps Hercules or Perseus in mythology, or even
Alexander the Great who had been told and believed that Zeus/Amun-Ra
was his real father by Egyptian priests.
In
either case, He would have possibly been confused and frustrated (and
yes, it is clear that Jesus did at times get frustrated in the Gospel
accounts) about Himself as
He tried to reconcile what He perhaps
subconsciously knew about
Himself with what belief
structures were considered
true or possible.
Consider the
aforementioned incident in the temple when He was twelve. He appeared
confused that they didn’t know where He would be, because He just
assumed that they would know He would be in His Father’s house.
Even then, He knew that
Yahweh was His Father, and yet this would have been irreconcilable
with contemporary teaching by the Rabbis. Had He gone on to be taught
or trained by the Rabbis, at best they would have tried to
metaphorically (or perhaps
not) beat that idea out of
His head, at worst they would have excommunicated Him from the temple
and possibly stoned Him when Rome wasn’t looking (as
they tried to do on numerous occasions in the Gospel accounts).
Setting the stage early on
to remove Him far from those rigid influences for a large part of His
life to a worldview which would free His mind to the explanation
about Himself He perhaps already subconsciously felt would make sense
in this context.
If
Jesus did spend much of His life in the east learning from Buddhist
writings and eastern worldviews, it is clear that those influences
never caused Him to abandon the fundamental principles taught by the
Hebrew Scriptures with which He demonstrated intimate familiarity in
His teaching, quoting freely from them.
But it may also be argued
that He used similar
versions of stories and
parables found in early Buddhist writings in His teachings, and the
emphasis He put on detachment from
material possessions, familial relationships,
as well as the emphasis He
placed on absolute
forgiveness, and loving (or having compassion on) everyone regardless
of who they were or what they did to you
is, alongside much that is
implied in the Hebrew Scriptures, directly stated in Buddhist
writings and practice in similar language to that which Jesus Himself
used. When one compares
essential Buddhist teachings from early writings to the Gospels, the
influence of Buddhism on Jesus’ teachings is evident, the former
predating the latter by five hundred years.
To be perfectly clear, however,
I am not stating that the
teaching of Jesus Christ in the Gospels is identical to Buddhist
teaching or the eastern worldview that produced it, but
rather appears to be a
secondary influence,
the primary being the
Hebrew Scriptures and Hellenistic Jewish worldview.
It
is clear that, for example, the descent into the underworld and
eventual resurrection at the end of days according to first century
Jewish belief is in view rather than the multiple reincarnations
understood by eastern societies. It is clear, even from the Notovich
document, that Jesus never abandoned
the understanding that His Father created the world and everything in
it, making all of His
arguments from this starting point, stating clearly that everything
He taught and did was directed by His Father, Yahweh, and did not
originate from His own person.
Strict Buddhism
on the other hand
is indifferent to the existence of gods, and the Buddha argued
against the idea of a personal creator (in the writings termed
“Isvara”), though accepted
the existence of Brahma (whom in the writings requested him to teach
his “dharma” to the people) and the Hindu devas.
It is clear that Jesus not
only performed miracles but gave that same ability to His disciples
and expected them to continue performing them after He was gone. The
Buddha on the other hand forbade his disciples from performing
miracles, though was on the rare occasion known to perform them. It
is clear that Jesus maintained the understanding of the existence of
a human soul (Grk. “psyche”, Sanskrit, “atman”, “soul,
self”), while the Buddha taught that the human self was a delusion
and did not actually exist. Jesus, being of Jewish origin, understood
humanity’s problem to be Hamartia and the death which resulted from
it. The Buddha, being of Hindu origin, understood humanity’s
problem to be the delusion of self and the karma (actions, or
consequences of actions) which forced continuous suffering
through endless reincarnations.
Jesus’ solution was
joining those who believed in Him with Himself through baptism,
dying, confronting Hades and Thanatos in the underworld and
resurrection from the dead. The Buddha’s solution was teaching
others to pursue the achievement of enlightenment which freed one
from karma and ended the cycle of suffering brought on by
reincarnation (In Gautama Siddharta’s view, true Buddhas have
escaped the cycle of suffering and thus do not reincarnate). There is
also an argument to be made that Jesus’ solution of union with
Himself in immortal resurrection would also solve the Buddha’s
recognized
problem. A soul cannot die and reincarnate if it is resurrected in an
immortal body.
The one exception to a possible influence of a reincarnation
worldview in Jesus’ teachings appears to be when He speaks of John
the Baptist after his beheading by Herod Antipas:
Mark 9:12-13 (my translation):
“And He said to them, ‘On the one hand Elijah, coming first, will
restore everything; and how is it written concerning the Son of Adam
[Grk. “anthropos”, functional equivalent of Heb. “’adam”)
that He would suffer much and be treated with contempted? But on
the other hand I tell you also that Elijah had come and they did
to him what they wished, just as it had been written concerning
him.’”
Matthew
11:14 (my translation):
“And
if you wish to accept it, he is Elijah who
is intended to come.”
Matthew
17: 12-13 (my translation)
“‘Yet
I say to you that Elijah has already come, and they didn’t know him
by observation but did with him what they wished; so also the Son of
Adam is intended to suffer by them.’ Then the students comprehended
that He spoke to them about John the Baptist.”
In
this He is referencing the
prophecy found in Malachi
4:5-6 (WEB):
“Behold,
I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and terrible day
of Yahweh comes. He will turn the hearts of the fathers to the
children, and the hearts of the children to their fathers, lest I
come and strike the earth with a curse.”
It
was the common interpretation of this prophecy in Malachi during the
period that the
prophet Elijah,
who
had not died but had been bodily assumed into heaven
according
to the Hebrew Bible, would
return
before Messiah came.
When
John the Baptist began teaching and baptizing those who came to him,
he was directly asked if he was Elijah according to the Gospel of
John. He directly answered the question, “no”. Jesus appeared to
be of a different opinion, but phrased His wording carefully,
directly
identifying John the Baptist with Elijah (“he is Elijah”) but
then adding “If you are willing to accept it” as though assuming
they wouldn’t understand how that might be possible. Whether
or not this is proof of Jesus’ allowing for the possibility of
reincarnation is and has been up for debate, but I would have been
remiss to not address it.
It
is recorded in the Gospels that Jesus Christ performed demonstrations
of His
divine power, at first in private so as not to be made known
publicly, and then publicly when it could no longer be hidden. These
demonstrations mostly took the form of the healing of medical
conditions and diseases which were otherwise untreatable and
incurable such as true leprosy, total blindness, crippled limbs, and
deafness including the inability to speak. Frequently,
He performed exorcisms of evil spirits by merely commanding them to
leave, often ordering them to be silent because they would begin
begging for mercy and shouting that He was the Son of God. During
the period He actively taught, this is what He was best known for.
He
also several times demonstrated the ability to restore a dead body to
life, even three days after the time of death occurred. In addition
to this, Once at a wedding party He privately transformed a large
quantity of water into wine. On another occasion He walked on the
surface of the Sea of Galilee as though it were dry land. On still
another occasion He quelled a vicious storm at sea by merely speaking
to it. One of His most famous demonstrations of power was when He was
able to feed a group of more than five thousand people with five
loaves of bread and two small fish and have twelve baskets full of
leftovers when they were done. The foundation of the Christian faith
is and remains however the demonstration of power He displayed when,
the third day after His death by crucifixion, He restored His own
brutally murdered body to life and left His tomb alive.
I
have
found it interesting that each one of these demonstrations of power,
aside from confirming His legitimacy as a powerful prophet of Yahweh
in the tradition of Elijah and Elisha in the Hebrew Bible to the
people of Judea and Galilee, also appears to target the exclusive
domains of the Greco-Roman Olympian and
lesser gods
and demonstrate His supremacy over them. This
is reminiscent of how each of the ten plagues of Egypt in the Exodus
appeared to demonstrate the supremacy of Yahweh over each of the
major Egyptian gods.
For
example, His returning dead bodies to life demonstrates His supremacy
over Hades, the god of the underworld. His quelling of the storms and
walking on the surface of the sea demonstrates His supremacy over
Poseidon and Zeus, the gods of the sea, sky, and storms respectively.
His changing water into wine demonstrates His supremacy to Dionysius,
the god of wine, parties, and vineyards. His healings demonstrated
His supremacy over the god Apollo who, aside from being the god of
light, was also the god of medicine and healing. The
feeding of the five thousand and
the withering of the fig tree by just speaking to it could
have been seen as His superiority over Demeter, the goddess of the
harvest. The exorcising of evil spirits (Grk. “daimonion”,
“demon, lesser god”) and their submission to Him was a clear
demonstration of His superiority to those otherwise powerful lesser
gods or spiritual beings. With
every demonstration of power He performed, His assertion, either
implicit or explicit, that He was
Yahweh, the God of gods that humiliated
the gods of Egypt, incarnated as a human being was reinforced again
and again.
That
He actually did perform these demonstrations of power doesn’t seem
to be questioned by those opposed to Him in the Gospel narratives.
Rather
than deny their reality, they accuse Him of breaking the law because
He frequently performed healings on the Sabbath. According to St.
John, when He raised Lazarus from the dead, He did it in full view of
a large number of funeral guests. After this, those opposed to Him
plotted not only to murder Jesus but Lazarus as well because no one
could deny that his resurrection happened due
to the number of eyewitnesses.
Around
the age of thirty three, Jesus Christ was arrested at night by
officers of the temple priests, brought to the house of Caiaphas, and
illegally tried at night with the use of false witnesses to accuse
Him.
It
is recorded in the Gospel of St. Luke that, prior to His arrest in
the garden known as Gethsemane, Jesus Christ sweat blood. This is a
medical condition known as Hematidrosis. It can
occur when a person undergoes an extreme amount of stress.
Capillaries near the skin burst and leak into the sweat glands.
From
there, they took Him to the Roman governor, Pontius Pilate requesting
the death penalty.
The
governor,
upon hearing that He was from Galilee, sent Him to be tried by Herod
Antipas who was the governor of Galilee. Herod Antipas found Him
innocent of any crime and sent Him back to Pilate. Pilate ordered Him
scourged (whipped at least thirty nine times by a lash with multiple
ends, a sharp piece of metal at the end of each), and then otherwise
intended to have Him released. However, the temple priests had paid
agitators to stir up the crowds to demand that He be crucified and
threatened to start a riot if Pilate didn’t give in to their
demands. For his part, a riot in Jerusalem was the last thing Pilate
wanted having been warned several times prior by his own superiors
that if there was another riot or uprising in Jerusalem there would
be severe consequences for him personally. In the Gospel narratives,
it appears that Pilate did not want to be responsible for Jesus’
death, but feared the consequences of another riot. As a result,
famously, he then told the crowd he washed his hands of it and that
Jesus’ blood was on their hands and not his, but then gave the
order for Jesus’ crucifixion, death by being hung from a wooden
cross. The charge nailed to His cross was “Jesus of Nazareth King
of the Judeans.” His
death was confirmed by a Roman soldier thrusting a spear into His
corpse’s side and piercing His heart producing a stream of blood
and water (indicating
that the serum had already separated from the red blood cells),
indicative of death by stress
cardiomyopathy (also known as “Broken Heart Syndrome”).
If
you have not seen it, I recommend viewing The
Passion of the Christ
directed by Mel Gibson, as this is a remarkably accurate portrayal of
Roman crucifixion and Jesus’ trial and execution specifically.
On
the third day after Jesus Christ’s execution, He resurrected from
the dead. This, more than anything else, is the
fundamental statement of Christian faith. Every one of His original
twelve disciples went to their deaths swearing that they had seen Him
alive. All twelve of them were tortured with the demand that they
recant. St. Paul, though not one of the original twelve, who
had also been repeatedly tortured and eventually executed by
beheading also
swore to this as well and recorded that he too had seen him alive
after His
execution. He writes in his first letter to the Corinthians that
Jesus was seen alive by over five hundred people at once after his
execution.
Aside
from their testimony, He also left His burial shroud behind according
to the
Gospel account.
Today, this piece of cloth is known as the “Shroud of Turin.” It
is a fourteen foot piece of linen
cloth
depicting a photographic negative of the image of Jesus’ corpse
which it had been wrapped around. That the image is that of Jesus
Christ is easily identifiable by the number and position of the
wounds on the body and the blood stains on the cloth which match
point for point with the description of the wounds inflicted on Him.
That
it is a photographic negative and not a painted image has been
confirmed numerous times. The image appears to only be imprinted on
the very surface fibers of the cloth and not deep into the weave of
the cloth. It has been confirmed within the last twenty years, having
been reproduced under controlled conditions, that the only way the
image could have been imprinted on the cloth is by an extremely
bright flash of light emanating from the body in
a thin slice
moving like a laser scanner starting
from one side of the corpse
to the other. For
a better explanation of this, I would highly recommend the work of
Ray Downing as detailed in the excellent documentary The
Real Face of Jesus?
produced by The History Channel and available from shop.history.com.
The
important takeaway
from this information about the creation of the image on the shroud
is that the only thing which could have produced the image on the
burial shroud is the mechanism of the resurrection itself.
Finally,
Jesus Christ, several weeks after His resurrection, ascended into the
sky from the hill in Jerusalem known as the “Mount of Olives”.
Speculating, this event may be to what St. Paul was referring when he
recorded that Jesus was seen alive by over five hundred people at
once. It stands to reason that in so open and public an event He
would be seen by more people than just His followers.
Some
further thoughts. The circumstances of His birth may have contributed
to His death by heart rupture. Jesus
died within hours of His initial torture and being nailed to the
cross. Under normal circumstances, a crucified victim would die
slowly over a period of two or three days from dehydration and
asphyxiation. Because the day after Jesus’ crucifixion was a
Sabbath, out of agreement with the Jewish leaders the executioners
were ordered to remove the bodies before sundown, the start of the
Sabbath. However, the condemned men would still be alive. This was
the reason why the Roman soldiers were ordered to break the legs of
the crucified victims in order to speed up their deaths, and were
surprised to see that Jesus was already dead, thus the reason why
they chose to stab His heart to confirm death rather than break His
legs to induce it.
If
he was, in fact, a male XX clone of His mother due
to parthogenetic conception,
this may have led to some physical weakness which a normally produced
XY male would not experience. A similar syndrome where the SRY gene
is located on the male X chromosome instead of the male Y chromosome
resulting in a male XX offspring can result in decreased libido,
physical weakness, decreased stature, and malformed or hermaphroditic
genitalia. While an argument can be made for decreased libido in the
Gospel accounts of Jesus’ life through
His own statements (see
Matthew 19:11-12) as
well as that He never married, He is very clearly identified as male
in the Gospel accounts by His mother
and
all those who knew Him, thus suggesting no ambiguous or
hermaphroditic genitalia. It
is also recorded by St. Luke in chapter two of his Gospel that He was
circumcised on the eighth day according to Jewish custom. If
there was any ambiguity in His genitalia the circumcising Rabbi would
have noticed.
Also, His height as recorded by the image on His burial shroud
indicates that He was of an average height for a Judean born man of
that period. But
that under extreme stress He suffered from hematidrosis and less than
twenty four hours later died from what
looks like stress cardiomyopathy where a typical man wouldn’t
may seem to suggest that He might have suffered from an inherent
genetic weakness in His physical system. Many
people who are born with chromosomal disorders such as Down’s
Syndrome also suffer from heart problems, for example. It could be
that, due to His parthogenetic birth, He too suffered from a weaker
heart muscle
which
could not endure
the combination
of extreme
stresses
He underwent during His torture and crucifixion
and
causing Him to die much
earlier
than a typical human being might.
I
know there are some who may take issue with the idea of a physically
weaker
Jesus Christ in
any way.
However, it
must be remembered that though fully divine, He is also fully human
with every possibility that implies. It
is never recorded that He was particularly physically strong or
even “heart healthy” as it were.
It is recorded that He attributed everything He did, not to His own
strength or ability, but to His Father’s. It is also recorded that
those observing the demonstrations of power He performed were
constantly amazed, in particular that they should be performed by
Him.
In
this, I am reminded of St.
Paul who
writes
in his first letter to the Corinthians (1:27-28,
WEB):
“but
God chose the foolish things of the world that he might put to shame
those who are wise. God chose the weak things of the world, that he
might put to shame the things that are strong; and God chose the
lowly things of the world, and the things that are despised, and the
things that are not, that he might bring to nothing the things that
are: that no flesh should boast before God.”
It
occurs to me that nowhere does Yahweh demonstrate this principle more
than in the flesh and blood body of His Son who Himself stated that
He could do nothing from Himself.
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