Heretical Jesus Research Page

[ Christ the Jew | Saints' Lives | Apocrypha | Historical Jesus ]

By way of starting off with an apology, I would like to state that my intention with this page is not to offend anyone. Basically, although I began practicing Tibetan Buddhism several years ago, but I cannot seem to leave my interest in Jesus Christ behind. Every once in awhile, I find something which renews my interest in him, and in the truths that I believe are contained in the Bible (also, His Holiness the Dalai Lama teaches us explicitly that in giving up one religious tradition for another we must never fall into the trap of disparaging other traditions). 

Christ the Jew
By way of example, the following is excerpted from a recent interview I read on Beliefnet with James Carroll, author of Constantine's Sword (a book about Pious XII's involvement in the Holocaust). Emphasis is mine:

Unlike Cornwell, who focuses on the WWII era, you're urging a broader reconsideration of Christianity.
An apology for the Holocaust, an apology even for centuries of anti-Semitism, is not enough. We have to look at very, very basic questions. We have to ask if the way Christians have read the Scripture has been in some fundamental way flawed in casting Jesus against the Jews, in forgetting that Jesus was profoundly Jewish, in forgetting that the Christian message can only be understood in the context of Israel. Until we recover that basic sense of our origins, we won't leave anti-Judaism behind.

And that effort includes a look at the Gospels.
The mistake is embedded in the way the Gospels portray Jews, not only as the perpetrators of the crucifixion, but as the ontological opposite of Jesus, and of God. That problem cries out to be confronted more directly than we have.

I don't advocate rewriting the Gospels. I believe the fact that the Gospels are flawed is part of the Good News. It suggests that God comes to the earth through the contingencies and the finitude of all creatures, including the Church. I don't think that's a scandal at all. There's some basic questions like this we have to ask, how we read our Scriptures, how we proclaim Jesus, how we understand Jesus and so forth.

The Shadow of the Cross

I know this gets me into trouble, but, like Carroll, I really feel that there are (and have been for quite a long time) deep misconceptions about Jesus' message, which have (necessarily) warped our interpretation of the Gospels. Also, like Carroll, I feel we can ask these "basic questions" without necessarily creating controversy or scandal, or having to resort to an attempt to rewrite the Bible (as some of the more extreme proponents of Q theory would have us do).

The Lives of the Saints
What I would like to see happen (in my own little dream world :-) is an apolitical, nonobjective-oriented re-reading of the Bible, based more on the teachings of Jesus than on the dogma of the historical church. This does not mean, however, that like the Protestant revolution, that I am willing to throw away 2,000 years worth of religious thought and analysis. On the contrary, I am loath, in my quest to rediscover Christ, to throw out Thomas A Kempis' Imitation of Christ (for more inspiration to give it a re-look, read Eknath Easwaran's commentary on it, Seeing with the Eyes of Love) or what I know of the lives of the saints (Francis and Martin of Tours, in particular). For me, perhaps do to my Catholic upbringing, or perhaps more due to my current Buddhist ideas, the lives of the saints are the best sign posts on the path to rediscover Christ. I often say that I am currently practicing Buddhism due to the present example of the efficacy of its methods, incarnate in His Holiness the Dalai Lama. So to be fair then, where examples exist to provide the proof in the pudding for other traditions, I think we owe to ourselves to study their examples.

St. Francis
St. Martin of Tours
Mother Teresa
St. Hildegard

Apocrypha
Some of the more radical points of interest for me have been researching other texts, left out of the "Bible", that seem to have clues about Christ and what he taught. The Tomb of Christ web site documents a Russian man who claimed to have recovered a text, held by Tibetan Buddhists, that is a teaching of Christ. The Gospel of Thomas is perhaps my favorite Gospel, beloved among Gnostics, and tells quite a different sort of tale that your regular Gospels...

The Tomb of Jesus Christ
The Gospel of Thomas

Historical Jesus
I was recently encouraged by one of my Buddhist teachers not to focus on doctrine; it's always when we narrow our vision to doctrine and dogma that we get into trouble. Which I completely agree with. Nevertheless, there are two doctrines that are taught today in many Christian churches that really bother me. One is the belief that all non-Christians go to Hell. The second has to do with the Book of Revelations.

Now I've read critical inquiries, counter-arguments to critics of the Apocalyptic literature that state that merely the reason why such beliefs have fallen out of favor is that they do not fit in with our feel-good, "he's okay, she's okay" modern American culture. And I can see where they're coming from with this. But I really think there's more to it than this. Take this statement from John Dominic Crossan, a Professor Emeritus of Religious Studies DePaul University, on the differences between John the Baptist and Jesus:

Can you define what, in your opinion, the difference between them was?

The difference I see between John the Baptist and Jesus is, to use some fancy academic language that, John is an apocalyptic eschatologist. An eschatologist is somebody who sees that the problem of the world is so radical that it's going to take some kind of divine radical solution to solve it. One type, for example, is John. God is going to descend in some sort of a catastrophic event to solve the world. There is another type of eschatology. And that's what I think Jesus is talking [about]. I'm going to call it ethical eschatology. That is the demand that God is making on us, not us on God so much as God on us, to do something about the evil in the world. In an apocalypse, as it were, we are waiting for God. And in ethical eschatology, God is waiting for us. That's, I think, what Jesus is talking about in the Kingdom of God. It's demand for us to do something in conjunction with God. It is the Kingdom of God. But it's the Kingdom on earth of God.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/religion/portrait/john.html

Now, I'm sure everyone has their own opinion, but I think it's easy to see how, in the years following Christ's death, some of the teachings of John the Baptist, a very charismatic teacher himself, could have got incorporated into the main body of Christ's teachings. I don't think it takes much of a leap to see someone putting the words of John the Baptist into Christ's mouth, to lend them greater weight and/or credibility.

But the point is I think that Jesus' view, that of not waiting for God, but one of God (ethically) waiting on us, is very important. From a Buddhist perspective, ethics is the foundation on which all of our practice is based. Without it, we have nothing. So I, of course, prefer this view. :-)

I have made some effort, however, to try and see or discover on what basis would the other view, that of the apocalyptic eschatologist, would be helpful. In Tibetan Buddhism, it is that that there are 3 scopes: small, middling, and great. The small scope is only focused on avoiding a lower rebirth; i.e. falling from a human rebirth into one of the 3 lower realms: animal, preta (hungry ghost), or hell being. The middle scope practitioner is concerned with escape the endless wheel of rebirth entirely; escaping being forced to be reborn at all. Then the highest level of practitioner, following the view of the great scope, is working not only for their own escape, but for everyone else's as well.

So I think maybe this sort of gradation of goals might also exist within the Christian paradigm: those of lesser capacity, who respond only to fear of punishment, are taught the apocalyptic eschatology, which emphasizes ethics by way of punishment and reward. Then maybe the next level of practitioner is one who responds to Jesus' ethical eschatology; which places the responsibility for our ethical behavior on us, without the emphasis on fear and reward.

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