Jesus

Today is Christmas Eve. That means tomorrow is the Christian celebration of Jesus' birth. Of course, if you read the Bible carefully, you can probably guess that Jesus was born in the spring. Furthermore, the reason December 25th was chosen as the day of Jesus' birth was because it coincided nicely with a Zoroastrian celebration of a son of a god who was conceived of a virgin. Stop me when this sounds familiar. Christianity has a tendency to 'borrow' pagan holidays and make them our own. But that is a discussion for another day!

Today, we will focus on Jesus. Because, technically, that is who this time of year is supposed to be a celebration of. But who was Jesus, exactly?

If you read the synoptic gospels (if you don't know this term, this discussion is probably above your head and you should just stop now), Jesus will appear to be little more than a prophet. The whole "Son of God" angle is barely mentioned. Luke is the only one that even tries. Of course, that could be because Mark was writing mostly to early Christians, and his main interest was in giving them hope that their martyrdom would have meaning. Hence why he writes the least and tend sto get straight to the point. Matthew, on the other hand, was writing to Jews and attempting to convince them that Jesus was the Messiah the Jews had been waiting for. Any talk of being the actual "Son of God" would be blasphemous. Luke, on the other hand, was writing mostly to Greeks, but because he was using Mark (among other, older, documents that we no longer have) as his base material, he barely goes beyond it.

John, on the other hand, mucks the whole thing up from a theological point of view. The other three have their differences, sure, but they are mostly reconciable. John is barely reconciable. However, John is the only gospel that focuses on the divinity of Jesus. A reading of just John will convince you that Jesus wasn't human at all. Of course, that is because John is not really a text from the original Orthodox Church that eventually became the Catholic Church and traces its lineage to St. Peter. John is actually a gnostic text, a completely different branch of Christianity, but included in the Bible because it was proof of Jesus' divine nature.

The gnostic belief about Jesus is actually more akin to Buddhism that current-day Christianity; Jesus was far more divine than human, and he was "the way, the truth, and the light" (recall that famous passage from John?) by which gnosis, or knowledge (specifically mystical knowledge), could be obtained. This difference in opinion led to sharp divides in the early church over such issues as: was there a bodily resurrection? Was Peter or Mary the true heir? Is there only one god?

The decisions made by the Orthodox Church at the Council where the very dogma still followed to this day was made for a variety of reasons, many owing to political reasons, rather than religous ones. So where does that leave us? The modern day view of Jesus was crafted by a council of Church elders who were told by the Emperor of Rome that he wanted Christianity to become the main religion of Rome, but to that, they needed one cohesive belief system.

Of course, the various views of Jesus do not end there...

Dostoevsky raised an interesting point in "The Grand Inquisitor," questioning whether the current incarnation of the Church would see Jesus as more of a nuisance than actually useful. Barton in "The Man No One Knows" saw Jesus as a master of marketing, explain his huge popularity. "The Last Temptation of Christ" raised an interesting point about whether there were actually four temptations.

The point is, who is Jesus? Whose birth are we celebrating tomorrow?