Re: Restored (and a final story for Luke and Daniel)

First of all, trying to discern anything about Jesus or his politics from
John is pure crap. John was the last written, the most insane, and the
least familiar with Jewish politics and traditions. Jesus was a rebel.
Virtually all of his followers were zealots or less respectable "freedom
fighters" against Roman occupation. Judas Iscariot was so called because he
was a "Sicarius", a carrier of an assassin's knife. Jesus, despite the
watering down that the Holy Roman Empire gave him, was a rebel and a defier
of Rome. He was killed because he, as a Benjamite, and also from the house
of David had a legitimate claim to the throne, and was killed for it. A
pacifist, he was not.
tina

>Jim writes:
><< I'd say it's very unlikely that the "turn the other cheek" of Christ has
>any analog in Greek culture. Aristotle's _Ethics_, if I remember right
>(ok,
>it's been years), extolled vengeance as a manly virtue. "Love your
>neighbor
>as you love yourself" is a quotation from Leviticus 19, so I see Christ as
>working more as a reform movement completely within Judaism (in the sphere
>of ethics, anyway) than as someone introducing outside elements.
>
><< I know there are parallels between Philo of Alexandria and Johannie
>theology, at least on the surface, so Greek influences on even 1st century
>Christian theology seem plausible. I wouldn't say they exist in the
>recorded teachings of Christ, though. >>
>
>Aristotle EXTOLLED vengeance in the Ethics? The Nichomachean Ethics? This
>doesn't sound familiar to me.
>
>In any case, there's not much reason to think that Jesus himself was
>introducing much strict Hellenism, or even that he was especially familiar
>with it -- but it wasn't long after him that his movement began a process
>of
>Hellenization that at times and in places was profound.
>
>John's Gospel, which is a book I've been working very closely with for
>about
>two years, is profoundly Hellenic, not just superficially and not just
>parallels to Philo. Being myself very intimate with both Athens and
>Jerusalem, there are places in John where I wonder which tradition it
>favors. If ever there were a book that with complete success married the
>two -- and I do refer to marriage with Kana firmly in mind -- it is that
>one. (The Gnostics, while much more obviously Greek, have nothing like
>John's success or brilliance, and are more confused about Judaica.)
>
>You might be right that "turn the other cheek" itself, or the ethic behind
>it, is purely Judaic. I wasn't drawing a sharp distinction between the
>reported teachings of Jesus and the tradition that they are a part of.
>It's
>especially hard when we also receive statements like "I come with the
>sword."
>
>When I said the degree of Greek confluence is unclear, I didn't mean to
>suggest that Jesus had read Aristotle, but only that it's impossible to
>sort
>out how much of the native culture of the Hebrews and how much of larger
>Greek culture informed the early tradition and perhaps even Jesus' own
>formative thinking. As a carpenter in Galilee, he would certainly have
>worked in nearby Greek towns, must have known the language, and lived on
>the
>edge of mingling cultures. The title on the cross was written in three
>languages, we're told, and the man under it or at least a part of the
>following he soon would have might be said to stand at a sort of crossroads
>between the three.
>
>And:
><< I would say that if "common sense" doesn't lead to the same conclusions,
>then it is no longer "common," and when the conclusions are mutually
>exclusive, one group will think the other is lacking sense. >>
>
>Maybe we're just going to disagree on this. My contention from the start
>was that the common part, together with different premises, can produce
>different conclusions. You are certainly right that one group will often
>think the other is lacking sense, but this is usually an immature position.
>
>-robbie
>-
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Received on Thu Jul 24 01:00:04 2003