{"id":579,"date":"2005-01-30T14:47:00","date_gmt":"2005-01-30T14:47:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/2005\/01\/30\/579\/"},"modified":"2005-01-30T14:47:00","modified_gmt":"2005-01-30T14:47:00","slug":"579","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/?p=579","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

WAITIN\u2019 FOR THE END OF THE WORLD:<\/span> Remember that tune from Elvis Costello? Remember Elvis Costello? OK, so I\u2019m showing my age.<\/p>\n

Nonetheless, I thought of that song the other day after listening to some CD lectures about Jesus. The Historical Jesus<\/span>, that is. If you\u2019ve been reading my web log, you know that I\u2019m a sucker for those \u201cGreat Courses\u201d from the Teaching Company. (No, this is not a paid ad!! Being an eternal student, I just happen to like them!) Since I have a deep interest in the life and times of Jesus of Nazareth, the course about The Historical Jesus was a must for me. It\u2019s by Prof. Bart Ehrman<\/span>, a scholar who is trying to give John Crossnan a run for the money in terms of public popularity.<\/p>\n

I haven\u2019t seen Ehrman on TV yet (although I have seen Prof. Crossnan interviewed on various documentaries about Jesus and First Century Palestine, e.g. From Jesus to Christ<\/a>; then there\u2019s Prof. Paula Fredriksen<\/span>, who I think gets on these shows mostly because she\u2019s a babe<\/span>). However, it probably won\u2019t be long before Ehrman faces the camera, as he has a number of books that you can now find at the local Barnes & Noble. His magnus opus would be Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millenium, published in 1999.<\/p>\n

Well anyway, Ehrman\u2019s big idea is this: the main, primary, numero uno<\/span> thing about Jesus is that he was an apocalypticist. Jesus definitely believed that the world as he knew it was coming to an end<\/span>. He really thought that the day of reckoning was imminent. He wasn\u2019t making any plans for retirement. He was totally serious in what he said in the Bible about God coming into the world and establishing His Kingdom on Earth, gathering forth the elect to live in a real living Paradise while casting the evil ones into some kind of fiery realm. Jesus was totally convinced that his disciples and followers were going to live to see it. He wasn\u2019t just saying that to get attention, or referring to some cosmic after-life event or something that might happen thousands of years in the future, or what you might experience during meditation. Jesus actually figured that the mighty, haughty Romans and the corrupt Jews who ran the Temple Establishment of his day had finally gotten God\u2019s dander up beyond the boiling point, and it was up to him to sound the alarm<\/span>.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve read quite a number of books about the various viewpoints that different scholars have about Jesus. Some say he was a liberation theologist, some say he was a proto-feminist, some paint him as an anti-establishment hippie, others say he was a Buddha-like spiritual wise man. I myself pictured Jesus as a religious reformer who wanted to universalize Judaism and turn the struggle for the Promised Land into a quest for inner peace. As Ehrman says, we all would like to believe that Jesus was thinking of us and our modern world. But no, sez Ehrman, actually he wasn\u2019t<\/span>. He was doing something that we\u2019d now throw you in an institution for . . . . i.e., going around telling people to repent, for the Day of Judgement is near!<\/p>\n

I hate to say it, but Ehrman makes an awfully good case about that. His theory seems to snugly fit around the factual and conceptual structure that surrounds what is known about Jesus and the world he lived in. Ehrman seems to explain a lot more things than most of the other pop scholars do. He puts a trunk load of things into perspective and gives you a whole rash of \u201cah-ha!\u201d moments.<\/p>\n

Well, I\u2019m not finished with the lectures yet, but I\u2019m already thinking that I may have to change my web site article about Jesus. I may have to see Jesus in a somewhat different light. Not that the apocalypse stuff makes Jesus totally irrelevant to us. But it does limit just how seriously we should take some of his words (and also justifies the fact that we never really took his words all that seriously anyway). I mean, if God is not gonna be taking charge of things next week, then maybe you can\u2019t just give all you own to the poor<\/span>. If Jesus and his followers really did believe that the time had come, then doing radical stuff like that wasn\u2019t so crazy or difficult for them. But if the world is gonna just keep schleping on pretty much the same as it always has, then maybe we shouldn\u2019t feel so guilty about not living up to Jesus\u2019 lofty ideals. Those ideals have made a lot of people feel guilt<\/span> over the past 20 centuries, including myself. But if Jesus really thought that it was only a matter of months until Utopia arrived, then maybe we\u2019ve been too hard<\/span> on ourselves.<\/p>\n

The thing that gets me is, how did so many people in ancient Palestine come to literally accept and believe in what Jesus was saying about the upcoming Parousia? We know that it wasn\u2019t just Jesus and his followers. The idea of apocalypse was in the air throughout Jesus\u2019 ministry, and had been for some time. There were other prophets of the apocalypse in the region, both before and after Jesus \u2013 John the Baptist was one, but then there was also Theudius, and the Egyptian, and probably lots of others who were never mentioned on a written scroll that survived to the modern era. And then of course, there was the Essene community at Qumran. They were expecting an apocalypse big time; but unlike John and Jesus they just huddled together in the desert and didn\u2019t go around preaching about it. How did such an idea, which today we\u2019d call \u201cwishful thinking\u201d<\/span>, come to be accepted as fact by so many people?<\/p>\n

Well OK, it was a pre-scientific era, when myth and magic were the main events. Life was very different then. And so, I guess, were the minds of people. Does this mean that Jesus is totally irrelevant to modern times as a moral and spiritual guide? No, of course not. Even if Jesus had died for a mistaken cause, the fact remains that he died out of love for his people. He gave up what may have been a relatively comfortable life as a village craftsman for an uncertain and ultimately fatal mission to save people from doom once the Son of Man appeared in the clouds. He did what he did out of love and passion<\/span>. I don\u2019t think that even the most skeptical of academians and rationalists (like myself) can ever take that away from Jesus.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

WAITIN\u2019 FOR THE END OF THE WORLD: Remember that tune from Elvis Costello? Remember Elvis Costello? OK, so I\u2019m showing my age. Nonetheless, I thought of that song the other day after listening to some CD lectures about Jesus. The Historical Jesus, that is. If you\u2019ve been reading my web log, you know that I\u2019m […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/579"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=579"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/579\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=579"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=579"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=579"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}