From: Tim.ONeill@utas.edu.au (Tim O'Neill)
Subject: Yeshua the Man (alias Jesus Christ)
Organization: University of Tasmania (Australia)
Date: Wed, 6 Jan 1993 03:54:37 GMT

Some months ago I posted a couple of articles entitled 'Did Jesus Claim
to be God?' which set out to examine the biblical evidence for the
alleged divinity of the jewish rabbi called Yeshua ben Yosef. Despite
the fact that this person is worshipped as a god by millions of people
the world over, I was forced to conclude that there were no clear 
references to his supposed divinity in the synoptic gospels and that the
references to his godhood in the later Gospel of John represented a later
tradition which had evolved out of the beliefs of Yeshua's original 
followers over about seventy years and bore little relationship to what
those first followers seem to have claimed about him.

Not surprisingly, this caused some consternation amongst many 
net.christians, and I whiled away many an idle hour holding interesting
E-mail discussions with various people on the topic of how Yeshua the
Jew was turned into Jesus Christ, God the Son. In the course of these
discussions I promised a post about the nuggets of information in the
earlier gospels which seem to present a Jesus who is very human indeed,
and who seems to act in a way which is entirely in keeping with what we
would expect from a 1st Century jewish preacher and healer, but not what
you'd expect from a omnipotent God incarnate. I'd argue that these
passages represent very old traditions from the oral information from
which the gospels were shaped, and the way in which these human-aspects
of Yeshua are down-played over time is still more evidence of his 
gradual deification.

It is generally held that Mark was the first of the canonical gospels to
be written, followed by the other two synoptic gospels, Matthew and Luke, 
and then by John, which is very different to the other three. It is
useful, therefore, to compare the gospels with this chronological hierarchy
in mind. Consistently, Mark seems to represent an earlier, more 
doctrinally primitive version that Matt or Luke. For example, at Mk 1: 
9-11, Jesus goes and is baptised by John along with everyone else, and
Lk 3: 21-22 gives the same account. The author of Matthew, however, gives
a different story. In his version the Baptist objects to baptising
Jesus since he recognises him as the messiah, but Jesus tells him to 
baptise him anyway. This addition to the story is made suspect by a later
episode in Matt 11:2-6 where John hears about Jesus while he is in prison
and sends some of his followers to find out who this Jesus-character is.
If John had really recognised Jesus as the messiah already, why would he 
be sending these disciples to investigate him? It would seem, therefore,
that the account found in Mark is closest to the truth: Jesus was 
baptised by John in much the same way as anyone else, he was not recognised
by John as the messiah, much less as Yahweh himself.

Similarly, at Mk 6:1-6 we read that the people of Nazareth were less than
impressed with Jesus and that he 'could do no mighty work there'. By the
time Matthew's gospel came to be written the story had subtly changed.
The author of Matt tells the same story in almost identical language to 
his source, Mark, but he says 'and he did not do many great works there.'
This, of course, implied that he *chose* not to on account of their 
disbelief, while Mark indicates that he was *unable* to do so. This does
not sound much like a god in human form, but it does sound a lot like a
charismatic faith-healer confronted with a sceptical and hostile audience.
The writer of Luke avoids the problem by not mentioning miracles, or the
lack thereof, at all in his version.

The writers of Matt and Luke had the same problem with Mark 1 :32-34. 
Here Mark's rather human and fallible Jesus heals 'many of them'. The
author of Matt adjusts this to 'healed all who were sick' and Luke makes
it 'he laid hands on every one of them and healed them' (Matt 8:16-17,
Luke 4:40-41)

A curious element can be found in Mark 5:25-34. Here a woman with a 
haemorrage touches Jesus' robe without him being aware of it, and is 
cured. The writer of Mark tells us Jesus asked who touched him after
'feeling that power had gone forth from him'. It is possible that this
sounded a little like ordinary old folk-magic to the authors of Matt and
Luke, and this element is quietly deleted from their versions of the 
same incident (Lk 8:43-48 and Matt 9:20-22)

Similar elements of folk-magic and traditional jewish faith-healing can 
be found in other stories in Mark. At Mk 7:31-37 Jesus heals a deaf mute
by putting his fingers in the man's ears and putting spittle on his 
tongue. The evidence of traditional sympathetic magic here is pretty
obvious, and it is unclear why the divine Son of God would need to go
through this pantomime, unless of course this is more evidence that 
Jesus was in fact just another charismatic faith-healer. Once again, these
folksy touches did not sit well with the more exhaulted image of Jesus
which had developed by the time Matt and Luke were written, and they
omitt these elements in their version of the same incident.

More folk remedies are in evidence in Mk 8:22-26. Here the omnipotent 
god incarnate takes two attempts to cure a blind man. It is also 
interesting that he puts spittle on the man's eyes. Another version
derived from the same tradition can be found in John 9:1-7, where we are
told he made a paste from spittle and dust and applied it to the man's
eyes. This is a technique used to cure cataracts in the middle east
even today; using an abrasive paste to clear the eyeball. Suetonius tells
of how the Emperor Vespasian 'cured' a blind man using this very 
technique, though unlike the supposed God incarnate, old Flavius 
Vespasianus Augustus got it right first time.

For a deity in human form, the Jesus of the gospels also seems to have
some very strange ideas. He believes, for example, that epilepsy is
caused by demons and can be cured by 'rebuking' them which he does in
Mk 5:1-20 and Mk 9;14-29 and their synoptic analogues. In another curious
episode, the alleged god finds a figtree with no figs, since it was not
the right season, so he curses it and it withers ( Mk 11:12-14). Matt's
author clearly thought this was a bit odd, so he omitts the detail about
it being out of season for figs. Luke handles the problem by turning
this peculiar incident into a parable (Lk 13: 6-9)

There are many other aspects to Jesus' career which make him seem rather
more like a jewish preacher and healer than the Second Person of the Holy
Trinity. A quick flick through the synoptic gospels will find a great
many stories of controversies about the jewish sabbath and other aspects
of interpretation of jewish law, which may well have been of great
significance to people in that little corner of the world 2000 years
ago, but are hardly burning issues to us today. It seems rather strange
that this God in human form who had come to earth on his great divine
mission should spend so much of his teaching arguing with Pharisees
about washing your hands, the right way to get divorced and what to do
on Saturdays, but not a whisper on homosexuality, women's rights or 
slavery. For God incarnate, his concerns seem to have been oddly narrow
and parochial and, strangely enough, more the sort of thing we'd expect
from a simple jewish preacher and reformer.

Perhaps I should end by giving Jesus the last word, or at least, I would
if we could figure out what his last words were. John's gospel tells
us it was a triumphant 'It is accomplished!'. Luke settles for a resigned
'Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.', but it is Mark's Gospel
which gives the account which is closest to the event and which has a 
chilling feel of authenticity:'Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?!' My God,
My God, Why have you forsaken me?! Now that sounds like the cry of a 
simple faith-healer and preacher who got caught up in events too big for
him. Every time I read it I feel sorry for the guy, and I think he
would have despaired even more if he knew that he was going to get turned
into a god. Hope you all had a happy Christmas.

Tim O'Neill
Tasmanian Devil
Xref: sparky alt.atheism:25174 talk.religion.misc:25328