JESUS: WHAT HE WAS & WHAT HE WASN'T

About the Book

Jesus: What He Was & What He Wasn't!

• There is a difference between the historical Jesus and the Christ of faith.
• There were many more gospels written in the first two centuries about the historical Jesus than the NT gospels.
• Mary Magdalene may have been one of Jesus' 24/7 disciples.
• Jesus may have spent three years or more under the tutorage of John the Baptist.
• Upon his return to Nazareth from training with John the Baptist, Jesus' family thought Jesus was out of his mind.
• Jesus had no intension of starting a new religion to replace Judaism.
• The church through its bishops decided what would be the content of the New Testament.
• The apostle Paul wrote all of his epistles and had been martyred before the first gospel was written.
• Matthew and Luke had Mark to use as a guide in the writing of their gospels.
• The Bible can be interpreted literally, symbolically, figuratively, contextually, metaphorically, mythologically or in other ways conscious of its historical background.

This book is written specifically for lay-people in understanding the historical Jesus. With Biblical and non-biblical sources this study has been undertaken to assist Christians in furthering their knowledge of Jesus of Nazareth. This Jesus interpretation begins questions about his birth and ends with the mysteries surrounding his death and resurrection. In between—his life with John the Baptist, his family conflicts, his concept of kingdom, his teachings, his miracles, his 24/7 disciples' requirements, his conflicts with the religious establishment are explored. This book does not have all the answers but it is a beginning to comprehending what Jesus was like and how his life came to a tragic end.

When I say there is a difference between Jesus of Nazareth and the Christ of faith, I mean Jesus was a human being in his environment who walked the trails of Lower Galilee proclaiming God's love to mostly the poor and outcasts of Jewish society. Later as the church wrote the travels and experiences of Jesus, there was concerted effort to make Jesus fit into Jewish salvation history with the title of messiah or Christ or Savior of the world. Obviously this attempt did not work since the majority of first century Jews rejected Jesus as Christ. But Jesus as the Christ did became the worship center and Savior of a Jewish-Christian cult within Judaism. However, my concentration in this book is upon the historical Galilean and not what he became after his death.

The process I have employed to discover what Jesus of Nazareth was really like has been to use all the first and second century sources available, both canonical and non-canonical scriptures as well as secular sources of the period. In researching the scriptures involved I have utilized symbolic, figurative, rational, contextual as well as literal interpretation of these sources. Too often in the past, clergy and lay-people have been led down a blind alley of non-sensible interpretation of scriptures in using only the literal interpretation methodology. As is pointed out in this book, Jesus often taught with hyperbole and metaphor. He wanted his listeners to decide for themselves how to resist evil and thus love their enemies. His never to be forgotten hyperboles at this point were turning the other cheek and giving to everyone who begs from you. Taken literally these directives could lead to severe physical distress and by continually giving to beggars one would become a beggar himself or herself.

Using all the available sources of the first and second century there is a conscious endeavor to understand historically and rationally what Jesus said and did with specific criteria that separate what Jesus was from what the early church said he was. Sometimes it appears that the New Testament was more the church's book than