The Man and the myth

I mentioned last week that I was ordering the book Jesus for the Non-Religious by John Shelby Spong, the retired bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Newark. I thought I should pass along my impressions.

This book is incorrectly titled. It’s about Jesus, but it is not written so far as I can tell for the non-religious. It appears to be directed to the very religious in fact, to convince them to take a harder look at what we actually know about Jesus.

Spong takes that look and concludes — surmises would be more accurate — that most of what we think we know about Jesus is simply untrue. He explains that much of what is found in the New Testament is based on writings in the Torah and other books of the Old Testament. He argues that Mark, Matthew, Luke and John, writing 40 to 70 years after Jesus died, were convinced that Jesus was the messiah and so elaborated on what little they actually knew by relying on Old Testament prophecy and Jewish liturgy to fill out the story. Spong doesn’t believe, for example, that Jesus was born in Bethlehem (he says Nazareth), that Jesus had a father (or stepfather) named Joseph (who knows), that Jesus was crucified at Passover (more likely later in the year), that Barabbas existed (in Hebrew the name means son of God) or that any of the miracles ascribed to Jesus make sense (get real people).

Clearly the story of the ascension is not history. When one rises into the sky, one does not get to heaven. One either goes into orbit or escapes the gravitational pull of the earth and drifts into the infinity of space.

The gospels were interpretative, not historical.

The question for Bishop Spong then becomes, what was it about this man Jesus that made him so special that a few decades later the gospel writers were telling his story embellished with the most profound Jewish liturgy?

The issue that this analysis has raised over and over again is that there must have been something about this Jesus that was so powerful that it seemed appropriate for his disciples to wrap around him the sacred symbols of their worship, the myths of their messianic expectations, the most sacred heroes of their tradition, magnified to supernatural proportions. There was something about him that caused them to conclude that the God in whom they believed was present in and somehow with the Jesus they had known.

Spong’s answer is that Jesus overcame the tribal, racial, sexist and religious prejudices of his time, preaching an acceptance of all, a forgiveness to all, a “he who is without sin” approach to the human community. The goodness of his words, and his life, were overpowering to those that knew him. He wasn’t God, but he was made into a god.

The primary problem I had with this book are the leaps of faith Spong makes in his reasoning. Just because certain things are counterintuitive or unlikely does not mean they did not happen, however improbable. Just because certain passages in one text mirror those in an earlier text does not mean the later story must be untrue. To my thinking, if an individual arguing the opposite points made the same type of weak-tea arguments, I’d reject them. The same should apply here. Spong’s briefs would be thrown out of any court.

Nonetheless this is an interesting and provocative book that believers and non-believers alike might wish to read.