CTC4 Jesus Under Suspicion

Jesus is still under suspicion. Although he is a historical figure who lived two thousand years ago, he continues to be an object of both devotion and controversy, just as he was when he preached in the lands of Palestine. Many people today hail him as their Savior, just as his followers did in the first century. But many others among our contemporaries continue to reject him and consider him a danger to the political and religious establishment, exactly as the religious and political leaders of Israel and Rome saw him.

But today's enemies are different. Today, some claim that Jesus never said most of the words attributed to him in the Bible. Others even dare to say that he did not do the things the Bible records as his deeds.

They suggest that Jesus of Nazareth was someone very different from the figure the Church has believed in. So if we want to be intelligent people, even intelligent religious people, we should not simplistically accept what the Bible says about Jesus' claims, nor what the early Church taught about him. If, even in our religious or spiritual quest, we want to be modern, we cannot believe that the deeds of Jesus that appear in the Bible actually happened, much less that they are relevant to us now, in the present. We must forget all the myths that have been created around his person—even what the Church teaches—and only then can we hear his true message. We must bring him down from that pedestal where the early Church placed him, to truly understand who that character who roamed Palestine was and to understand what relevance he may have today, if any relevance at all. Today, the Jesus of Nazareth we find in the pages of the Bible is a fictional character created by the early Church, and what we have to do is forget all that legend, and try to discover who he really was, so we can see whether or not he has any important elements to consider now, in the 21st century.

Together with this presentation of Jesus, we must consider whether in our scientific era there is room for the biblical worldview, for reasonable faith. The advent of historical verification has forced us to classify past events as objective and fictitious. Just as discoveries in Medicine, Astronomy, Agriculture, and Physics debunked old superstitions and myths, it is normal that the application of scientific methods to the investigation of the person of Jesus of Nazareth would end all archaic religious beliefs. Thus, the Christ of medieval creeds can no longer serve those of us who have witnessed the scientific revolution.

These criticisms are nothing new. They have been the main subject of debate and critical/liberal research since new approaches to the study of the person of Jesus appeared during the so-called Enlightenment. But now Jesus not only has enemies among scholars, because they have left the solitude of their offices to wage this war in the media.

One of the groups at the forefront of this fight against Jesus calls itself "The Jesus Seminar." It was created in 1985 to examine what, according to the New Testament and other Christian documents, were Jesus' words. The academic purpose of this group is: "to see what agreement there is among experts on the historical authenticity of each of Jesus' sayings." But behind that academic purpose lies another objective: to influence believers. This group of scholars has decided "to update two hundred years of research and debate around a topic of public interest, and then leave their conclusions as a legacy."

They want to free the true Jesus and thus free believers from "theological tyranny and the dark age in which they have forced us to live." In the words of Robert Funk, co-founder of "The Jesus Seminar": "We want to free Jesus. The Jesus most people know is a myth. They don't want to know who Jesus really was. They simply want a Jesus they can worship. A cultic Jesus."

Refuting this false idea of Jesus with academic and reliable arguments is the purpose of this book.