Re: [Marxism] What was Jesus?

[wytheholt--- via Marxism]

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This post ignores the tremendous recent spate of scholarly historical (and even 
archaeological) research and writing about the historical Jesus, for which one 
should turn to the several books published in the last quarter century by 
American scholars and academics Bart Ehrman, John Dominic Crossan, and 
especially Richard A. Horsley, a Marxist.  They agree that Jesus was no 
Christian, nor was he divine either; they see him as a Jewish revolutionary, 
but cast in the mould of the Hebrew prophets, attempting to restore the 
primitive egalitarianism that can be read into the various covenants 
(supposedly between god and his "chosen" people, but probably worked out by the 
Hebrews themselves) which established the land of the Jews as a peasant 
agricultural state wherein each peasant family was guaranteed a workable plot 
of farmland despite, and in the teeth, of moneylenders and the wealthy Jews who 
backed the moneylenders in an increasingly unegalitarian Jewish community in 
Israel.  

Note, for example, that neither Jesus nor his father Joseph is depicted in the 
Bible as owning or farming land, nor even as being fishermen like several of 
Jesus's comrades, even though, historically speaking, the overwhelming number 
of Jewish peasants engaged in farming (and in fishing).  Joseph is said to be a 
carpenter, which was among the most lowly and looked-down-upon categories of 
landless Jews at the time, much lower than farmers, and he probably got work 
participating in the construction of new Roman cities such as Tiberias which 
went up in Israel during the years of the first two Roman emperors, Augustus 
and Tiberias.  Like many Jews who toiled away on these showy, expensive, 
nonJewish Roman towns near Galilee, they had lost their lands to debt and were 
in many senses enslaved and extremely poor; Jesus saw himself as a prophet, 
bringing back and enforcing the democratic and redistributive covenants (as 
required by the concept of jubilee) and restoring an economic basis for 
 independence for poor Jewish peasant farmers -- like his own family.  Of 
course he opposed the wealthy Jews of his time, who were economically allied 
with the conquering Romans (and had been allied with the previously conquering 
Greeks of Alexander's time).  But his goal -- as he repeatedly said -- was to 
restore the covenants.

The three historians I have cited use excellent, widely-accepted techniques of 
historical criticism, which find much that is in the New Testament to have been 
added on later by the True Believers, the followers of Jesus and others who 
wanted to claim Jesus as divine, as some part of god (unlike what Jesus 
actually said of himself).  They find much of the New Testament to be quite 
suspicious, and in varying ways they interpret many passages as not reflecting 
much of the truth of Jesus's life and prophetic career.  They discard these 
from the canon, and arrive at a very different image of Jesus than is given in 
the post below.  They are certainly worth reading, more (in my view) than the 
two authors cited in the post below.

Wythe Holt


 Philip Ferguson via Marxism  wrote: 
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> At Xmas time, an interesting piece:
> Jesus wasn't a Christian; he was a Jewish revolutionary:
> https://rdln.wordpress.com/2015/04/03/jesus-wasnt-a-christian-he-was-a-jewish-revolutionary/
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[Marxism] What was Jesus?

[Philip Ferguson via Marxism]

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At Xmas time, an interesting piece:
Jesus wasn't a Christian; he was a Jewish revolutionary:
https://rdln.wordpress.com/2015/04/03/jesus-wasnt-a-christian-he-was-a-jewish-revolutionary/
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