How Old Was Jesus? - Mark 2:5 (xxvi)

Lion of St. Mark, Piazza San Marco, Venice

This posting is the 26th in a series (originally written in 1998) looking at the Gospel of Mark from the perspective of a historian. The first posting in this series is (here).

When Jesus heals the paralytic in Mark 2:1-12, he addresses the man as, "My Son" (TEV). If Jesus was only 30 or so, as Luke 3:23 claims, why would he have addressed this man as "son"? (The Jerusalem Bible translates this verse even more strikingly as "my child"). In a patriarchal society, this address puts the healed man in a relationship of being a generation younger than Jesus. Jesus was claiming to be old enough to be the man's father. Now, it's true that life spans were much shorter, something around 30 years, and it's barely possible that the paralytic was a very young man, a youth of 13-15. Jesus, being 30, could (barely) have been old enough to be his father. It's also possible that Jesus was older than 30. Crosson in Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography (pp. 21-23) points out that Jesus could have been born at any time during the reign of Herod (37-4 BCE) and died at any point while Pontius Pilate was Prefect of Judea (26-36 CE). The general opinion that Jesus was born close to 4 BCE, that is at the end of Herod's reign, is an educated guess. Now, if we speculate that Jesus was born about 10 BCE and that his ministry took place towards the end of Pilate's time, say around 35 CE, then Jesus was about 45 years old at the time of his ministry. Even if we accept the date of 30 CE for Jesus' death, the one most often given by scholars, Jesus would still have been about 40 at the time of his ministry. In this case, it makes much more sense for him to address the paralytic as "son". At 45 Jesus would have been nearly a grandfather figure anyway. All of this is sheer and pure speculation. Note, however, that it fits the general parameters of Crossan's "educated guess" just as well as a somewhat later birth and an earlier death does.

To those who would argue that we can't even know if Jesus said these words or this event happened, I would agree. But, the author of Mark saw no problem in having Jesus address the paralytic as "son," and he must have had some notion of Jesus' age. It's very unlikely that the author himself had any idea of how old the paralytic was, which means that he had Jesus calling a man of indeterminate age "son". The notion of a young Jesus calling another man of unknown age "son" in a patriarchal social context seems unpersuasive and questionable.

It Coulda Happened Just This Way - Mark 2:1-12 (xxv)

Lion of St. Mark, Piazza San Marco, Venice

This posting is the 25th in a series (originally written in 1998) looking at the Gospel of Mark from the perspective of a historian. The first posting in this series is (here).

There's no way of knowing if the event recorded in Mark 2:1-12 actually happened as Mark reports it. It's not likely, historically, that it did, not in just this way. Mark's account, on the other hand, feels very much like the real world that Jesus lived in. My own guess is that the passage is historical to the extent that Jesus did openly and intentionally challenge the over class. They did believe him to be blasphemous, but they didn't voice that opinion too loudly at first. And most certainly the point of tension came over Jesus' incredibly different manner of dealing with the poor and the sick. Modern-day Jesus scholars point out that in the context of first century Palestinian Judaism, Jesus' whole approach was a challenge to religiously-based political authority. The over class held its power, partly, on the premise that they were in God's favor. This, of course, is always the ideological position of those holding power. They deserve their power...because God loves them more...or because they're better at getting votes...or they lead a better past life.

The four men cutting into Jesus' roof is a good story, and it may have its roots in a particular event. There's no way for a historian to know. But, I think we can reasonably accept as historically accurate the larger contents of the story. Frankly, this is another one of those points where the whole interplay of forces and personalities "feels" historical. It wouldn't surprise me at all if the whole thing happened something like Mark's account has it happening.

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2012 comment: Another consideration in the story's favor is that if it was clearly memorable, and it is memorable stories that are retold often and take on something of a life of their own. Skeptical historians, I would add, need to explain their skepticism. The fact that it is improbable doesn't mean that four guys didn't cut a hole in the roof of Jesus' home in order to get a friend healed. Historians constantly deal in improbable events. An additional "hint" that maybe something like this really did happen is the detail about the house in question being Jesus' house. The portrait of Jesus elsewhere in the gospels is that of an itinerant, homeless preacher. The fact that the story contains a detail that ran against commonly accepted views of the day speaks in its favor.  If it was "just made up" it highly unlikely that it would contain such a detail.  Lacking corroborating data, there is no way to be sure this event actually took place as Mark describes it, but we also lack the evidence needed to reject it out of hand.

In sum, this story provides an accurate historical portrait of Jesus and may recount an actual historical event.

Taking Stock of Mark (xxiv)

Lion of St. Mark, Piazza San Marco, Venice

This posting is the 24th in a series (originally written in 1998) looking at the Gospel of Mark from the perspective of a historian. The first posting in this series is (here).  What I'd like to do in this one is to take stock of the argument that I developed in the original set of studies on Mark so that we don't lose sight of that argument.

For some 16 years, I devoted considerable amounts of my time as a church-based research historian in Thailand to interviewing local church folks about the histories of their churches.  Eventually, I was struck by what I read in the Gospel of Mark, which sounded very similar to the kind of data—stories—that local church folks told me.  Working on intuition more than anything else, I developed the argument that I'm revisiting now, 14 years later, in this series of postings.

The argument is that the author of the Gospel of Mark talked with (interviewed) those who remembered Jesus or others who knew those who knew Jesus.  He collected their stories, and the Gospel of Mark is the result of those interviews.  I don't think that the author treated the data in the ways modern biographers do.  It appears that the author conflated events and arranged the stories in a way that reflected the actual person of Christ rather than the actual sequence in which they happened.  The author may have also assigned dialogue to the actors that was true to what Jesus and others said without them actually having said those words in that particular context.  That is to say, the author was not a modern biographer.  That being said, it seems evident that "Mark" shared a common goal with modern biographers, namely to present a faithful representation true to the subject—as faithful and true, that is, as possible.  The Gospel of Mark is an ancient work of historiography, written at a time when people believed in dreams and witnessed miracles.  It is grounded in and reflects actual events that took place on given days in real places between real people.  To be clear, again, I am not claiming that all of the events in the gospel happened in the way they are presented in it.  I am saying that something like Mark's stories did happen.

The bottom line is that modern-day followers of Christ can trust this gospel.  (I could hardly care less about the judgments of secular historians).  It actually does link us to the historical person of Jesus via the faith of the earliest church in him as the messiah, the one they believed sent by God to redeem Israel.  We have to decide for ourselves whether we put our faith in Jesus of Nazareth as God with us and how we do that, and for those who decide that they do put their faith in God in Christ Mark is an important link to the actual person of Jesus and the faith of the earliest church.

The Gospel of Mark is a faith document that takes empirical realities into account.  The author did not spin these stories out of thin air.  They are based on the memories of those who knew Christ first hand or knew those who did know him first hand.

It Is NOT a Dumb Idea

NASA's Proposed Moon Base

As part of his campaign in Florida, presidential candidate Newt Gingrich has expressed his enthusiastic support for a moon base. (See Politico.Com's commentary here). The space industry is important in Florida, and so the state has a natural constituency for the idea of putting a colony on the moon. In other quarters, however, Newt has reaped little but derision for the proposal. One of his opponents, Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) responded to the idea saying that he didn't think it was a good one but that he'd like to send "some politicians up there." Chuckle, chuckle. The pundits are having a field day with the whole thing, too.

But, hold on a minute. Is it really such a dumb idea? No, I don't think so—not at all. Over the last 50 years, one of the things we've learned is that the exploration of space benefits those of us here on Earth in a variety of ways, beginning with a host of inventions and new technologies. It is good for "pure research," which benefits us all. Nobody today laughs at the fact that we've cooperated with other nations in building the International Space Station (ISS), an proposal that once was seen as a crackpot idea and waste of money. Apart from the technologies and research that a moon base would require, there is the possibility of new sources of minerals. Colonizing the moon, furthermore, is a first step to eventually putting a human colony on Mars and thus getting life from our planet onto at least one other as an insurance policy against a major meteor strike on Earth in the future.  In fact, NASA currently has plans for establishing a moon base, although those plans are "under review" apparently.

Yes, the idea will continue to be ridiculed and clucked over as terribly wasteful and hopelessly idealistic—and silly.  It is none of those things.  It is, in fact, a logical next step in our progression from Sputnik to the Stars.  "Back in the day," the idea that humans could make a flying machine was widely ridiculed and some scientists even argued that it was impossible for us to do so.  A century later, we chuckle, chuckle at the way "they" used to think "back then."  In a hundred years, no doubt, a resident of the lunar city of Armstrong Base will pause for a similar chuckle, chuckle over the election of 2012 and the way we laughed at Newt.

Church

If the church is not a place where we not only learn something about what it means to be human but also a place where seeds of a fuller humanity are planted in us and watered, to grow, then all our hymns and prayers and preachments are vanity.

Frederick Buechner

Source: Now and Then

From: inward/outward

Trees Are People Too

The Senator

The Orlando Sentinel  posted a news item (here) on January 17th reporting the burning of one of the world's oldest trees, a cyprus called the Senator, which was severely burned under what at first seemed to be suspicious circumstances.  The Senator was estimated to be about 3,500 years old, making it not only one of the oldest trees in the world but also one of the world's oldest living beings.  It was 118 ft. (36 m.) tall and about 18 feet  (5.5 m.) in diameter.  For more details about the Senator and the fire see this news posting at the Mail Online (here).

After the fire, the tree now stands only 20-25 feet tall, but it isn't clear to me that the fire has actually killed the Senator although some of the language in the news postings suggests that it is dead.  While living in Thailand, I once witnessed the death of a grand old tree, surely more than 100 years old, at the hands of an over-zealous administrator who wanted its spot on the planet for something else (which was never built).  It's sad to see these tries die.  They connect us to the past, a living past.  It is incredible to think that something could live as long as the Senator did.

The death of the Senator, I suppose, also reminds us of our own mortality.  Even if medical science will eventually be able to extend our life spans into the hundreds of years, which now seems not only possible but likely—even so, we but delay an end that in one way or another must come.  The hope for eternal life promised by most religions doesn't change the fact that what we are now is no more than a passing moment and we must die.  It's what we do with the years we're given that matters.  And, for us at least, the Senator did a very good thing simply by being one of the Earth's oldest living beings.

Anger in America

It was a moment not to be taken lightly when presidential candidate Newt Gingrich angrily turned on the moderator of the last Republican debate before the South Carolina primary for bringing up an interview with Newt's ex-wife.  Newt was at his best—at once professorial, accusatory, self-righteous, vibrating with palpable emotion, and pandering to a cheering, equally angry audience.  Newt the giant slayer faced down the evil dragon of the left-wing, elitist media.  This was high political theatre, which mirrored a reality of our nation in 2012: there are a lot of angry people in America today and not just on the Right.

The sources of anger are many, and to a degree they reflect hard economic times.  In the political arena, there seem to be two major currents of anger and angst.  The tea party movement represents the right wing of our anger, and the occupy movement the left wing, although they are not mutually exclusive and both express the deep-seated feeling that things are not right with America.  At the heart of the occupy movement is the fact that income disparity is growing and has become a serious social ill.  We have a system where the rich are really, really raking in the dough while more and more families are falling into the dark well of poverty.  The tea party movement is a reaction to another fact, namely the "browning of America."  The social commentators love to  point out that we are rapidly becoming a majority of minorities and that soon enough white Americans will be but one more minority in a nation that used to be theirs.  Economic disparity and rapid social change create anger.

As a member of a gloriously "brown" family, my sympathies do not lie with the tea party nor do I share their fears.  That being said, we should all be painfully aware of the fact that anger and fear are not just emotions.  They are spiritual states as well, ones that have a profound impact on behavior and well-being—mostly a negative impact.  Angry people do angry things.  They cannot listen.  They find it impossible to compromise.  They provoke angry responses.  Demagogues pander to their fears in order to gain power.  Their anger thus poisons the political landscape in a way that makes it all but impossible to address the root causes of anger.  Their anger creates dangers that don't exist and enemies where there are none.

And when movements and politicians build their base on anger, they are doing exactly that thing that Jesus warned us not to do.  They are building their house on sand (Matthew 7:24-27), and as Jesus said, "The rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell—and great was its fall!" (7:27).  Whether it be the tea party folks or the occupiers, if they cannot move beyond their anger to something positive and creative, their movements are doomed to failure, a failure that could have ugly ramifications for the whole nation.  Angry people habitually destroy the very things that matter most to them because anger, even if originally justified, always and rapidly turns destructive if not transformed into something positive.

First Challenge - Mark 2:1-12 (xxiii)

Lion of St. Mark, Piazza San Marco, Venice

This posting is the 23rd in a series (originally written in 1998) looking at the Gospel of Mark from the perspective of a historian. The first posting in this series is (here).

This passage, Mark 2:1-12, contains the delightful story of the four friends who carried a paralytic to Jesus to be healed and had to break into the house through the roof. We should note here something modern day preachers never mention, namely that in Mark it was Jesus' own home they broke into. That puts an interesting twist on things. The story, more largely, highlights Jesus' deep compassion for human suffering. The commentaries point out that his compassion was focused primarily on spiritual rather than physical suffering, hence Jesus at first forgives the man's sins and only secondarily heals him physically.

One of the central themes of the Gospels concerning Jesus is the fact that he came into deep, eventually fatal tension with the over class. According to Mark, Jesus went out of his way to provoke that tension, as we can see in this story of Jesus' first confrontation with members of that class. In full view of these powerful individuals, Jesus makes statements that they couldn't possibly have judged other than blasphemous. Even so, they keep quiet, maybe because they were guests in Jesus' own home or maybe they feared speaking up in front of the crowd. So, Jesus doesn't leave well enough alone but brings the confrontation out into the open and criticizes the teachers of the Law in public and to their faces. Not only that, but he almost seems to heal the paralytic physically out of spite. It's as if he felt he had to do it or lose face. One could even accuse him of showing off.

Why would Jesus do this? Mark's Jesus is clearly a perceptive individual. He must have known the consequences of challenging the over class in this way. Was he betting he could ride this particular tiger? Did he think he had the crowd on his side and so could challenge power with impunity? That's hardly likely. Historians point out that there were plenty of messiahs running around in those years and that violent death was their common lot. Jesus was nobody's fool and only a fool would have thought he could get away with what Jesus was doing. Maybe Jesus was so overcome with compassion for the paralytic that he spoke without thinking. But, why would he then compound the mistake with an open critic of the teachers of the Law? On the face of it, Jesus knew exactly what he was doing and calculated that the possible advantages of challenging authority outweighed the risks involved.

The Ideal Christian Life Re-examined - Mark 2:1 (xxii)

Lion of St. Mark, Piazza San Marco, Venice

This posting is the 22nd in a series (originally written in 1998) looking at the Gospel of Mark from the perspective of a historian. The first posting in this series is (here).

The idea that Jesus may have owned a home (see posting 21) and used it as a base for conducting his ministry is striking. It gives us an entirely different model for living the Christian life from that of Luke and Matthew, where Jesus is a classic wandering itinerant teacher and healer. The Jesus of Mark is a model much more reasonable and obtainable for the overwhelming majority of Christians who lead lives according to the ways of their society. The idea that Jesus had a home could also put the manner in which his earliest disciples just walked off to follow him in perspective (Mark 1:14-20). He called them to be his companions when he was on the road, not to leave their homes and families permanently.

New Testament historians point out that the early church included a class of wandering evangelists who dedicated their whole lives to their task. They were homeless. And their form of Christian ministry, as reflected in Matthew and Luke, became an important model for other Christians. There was, evidently, a certain amount of tension between the itinerants and the rest of the earlier church because the itinerants took themselves to be the "true followers' of Jesus. I'd like to offer the possibility that the author of Mark stood outside the itinerant tradition and used sources that reflected something more closely akin to the actual way in which Jesus worked. This is speculation. Only two things commend it: first, Mark points to it. Second, it's the way evangelists in Thailand conducted themselves, in conditions in the 19th century not entirely unlike those in which Jesus lived.

A couple of further thoughts. If Jesus had a house, he had to have an income of some sort for upkeep. Undoubtedly it was a small house and probably didn't cost much to maintain. (Utilities were really, really cheap in 1st century Galilee). Still, Jesus had to be involved in the everyday economic and social life of a neighborhood and a community. So, where did his income come from? It's also worth reflecting that a home-owning Jesus was more fully incarnate in his world than the no hole, no nest, and no home Jesus (Luke 9:58). It's fun to play with the idea that Jesus the Christ, the Fully God Second Person of the Trinity, owned a home. Finally, Mark changes our view of what it means to live a Christ-like life. If Jesus was a home owner, we are more (not less) challenged to live the Christian life within the every day structures of society. And living such a life can be an ideal Christian life, such as it can never be if we accept the homeless Jesus as our ideal.

The Miracle Comes Through Us

The miracle of God comes not only from above; it also comes through us; it is also dwelling in us. It has been given to every person, and it lies in every soul as something divine, and it waits. Calling, it waits for the hour when the soul shall open itself, having found its God and its home. When this is so, the soul will not keep its wealth to itself, but will let it flow out into the world. Wherever love proceeds from us and becomes truth, the time is fulfilled.

Eberhard Arnold

Source: When the Time Was Fulfilled

From:  inward/outward