Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!aramis.rutgers.edu!athos.rutgers.edu!christian From: mtxinu!sybase!alf!maas@ucbvax.berkeley.edu (Mike Maas) Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian Subject: Re: Missed Point Message-ID: Date: 24 Dec 90 22:28:31 GMT Sender: hedrick@athos.rutgers.edu Organization: Sybase, Inc. Lines: 53 Approved: christian@aramis.rutgers.edu In article Okeefe writes: >In article , >spock@maths.tcd.ie (Tommy Hayes (Thanks Dr.W.)) writes: >> Why can't everybody just realise that Jesus was just an ordinary, >> albeit very ahead of his time, person who had a lot of brilliant >> ideas about how we should live? >Because He _wasn't_ ahead of His time. I am assured by a Jewish friend ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ He wasn't? It would seem to me that he both was and remains ahead of his time in some very meaningful sense. The lessons he teaches are still every bit as applicable today as they were when he taught them. Likewise, for just that reason we can also say that his lessons are always timely. So perhaps the summation is that the teachings of Jesus were in some sense lessons that, at least up to now (and I for one am not confident that things will change in the near future), seem to be for all of time and that he was and indeed remains ahead of his time by virtue of just that quality of his teaching. >that nearly everything Jesus said *except* concerning His own nature and >relationship to G-d and *except* His attitude to the Sages of His time >can be duplicated from the Talmud, and based on my own very limited >reading so far this seems to be true. It's also what a number of >Christian commentators have said. There is a book by Vermes called >"Jesus the Jew" which I mean to buy, but I am *way* over my book budget >this year. This is important point; how could we *possibly* ever have >hoped to get away with saying that Christianity is the continuation of >the true Faith, how could any honest man ever have begun to criticise >any Jew at any time for not following Him, unless His teaching were a >recognisable development from the Tanakh? I hardly claim to be a scholar in this area but I have read Vermes book, and another of his as well _Jesus and the World of Judaism_ Fortress Press ISBN 0-8006-1784-3. Vermes does seem to be a superb scholar but not a particularly sympathetic one. I would like to recommend another book to you which comprehends most of Vermes work and which is much more recent and written from a Christian perspective: _Jesus: A New Vision_ by Marcus Borg. Harper & Row, ISBN 0-06-060914-1. Borg's book is a fascinating vision of Jesus. In it he quotes Martin Buber: "...From my youth onwards I have found in Jesus my great brother. That Christianity has regarded and does regard him as God and Saviour has always appeared to me a fact of the highest importance which, for his sake and my own, I must endeavor to understand...My own fraternally open relationship to him has grown ever stronger and clearer, and today I see him more strongly and clearly than ever before. I am more than ever certain that a great place belongs to him in Israel's history of faith and that this place cannot be described by any of the usual categories." _Two Types of Faith_ I think that what Buber recognizes here, and what I would argue as well is that while Jesus is best understood as a Jew, the way he taught, lived and faithed transcended his background in very significant ways. "Like newborn babies, crave pure spiritual milk..." I Peter 2:2