Amazing Rando
January 17th 2005, 05:47 PM
For a New Testament class, I was required to view the PBS Frontline documentary "From Jesus to Christ," and to respond to it. Here's the paper I wrote in response to the worksheet. Anybody else seen it? Agree or disagree with my assessment?
1. I would have been glad to pause the viewing for discussion about this key point:
It would have been useful to discuss the nature of the gospels a bit. Too often, we moderns tend to think of them as straightforward, newspaper-like accounts of what happened, when in fact they are documents of faith, written to keep the memory of the Son of God alive even after the first generation of witnesses had died. One thing the video deliberately did well was to help us to see that the gospel writers wrote very different stories about Jesus, and that their historical circumstances necessitated emphasizing different aspects of the Jesus tradition than did the other gospel writers.
To me, one of the most amazing things about our present Bible is that the early church saw fit to preserve for us four very different accounts of Jesus’ life. The early church was well aware of their differences (might one even say discrepancies?), yet all four of them were canonized, discerned to be inspired. Together, they give us a far more complete picture of Jesus (and the early church’s attitudes toward him) than we could ever get from one gospel alone. The four gospels are not to be held in contradiction to each other, with one being more “true” than the others as skeptics are frequently fond of doing, nor are they to be needlessly harmonized and woven together, because each writer had very different purposes in mind when they composed their accounts of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. The film sparks discussion at this point, and I hope that we are able to explore this a bit more in class during the coming months.
2. I think the video did a good job on this aspect of the story:
The film did an excellent job of placing the stories of the New Testament firmly within their first-century context. Its attention to these important details was helpful in several areas. For example, the presentation of the archaeological discoveries at Sepphoris, so close in proximity to Jesus’ home town of Nazareth, helped shed some light on Jesus’ teachings in the gospels. Sepphoris was a large, cosmopolitan, Hellenized Jewish community that very likely would have employed Jesus’ trade skills as a builder. Working in such an environment would have exposed Jesus to a number of competing worldviews within first-century Judaism, as well as put Jesus in extensive contact with wealthy people. Jesus’ critiques of attachment to wealth and worldly possessions become all the more sharper and poignant when understood against this milieu.
The film also did a fine job of exploring the deep significance surrounding the Temple that the Jews of his day would have understood clearly, but which is often obfuscated from readers in the 21st century. The Temple was the center of their world, where the divine met the earthly, and where YHWH, the God of Israel, was encountered in a very special way. The discussion in Part II of the video on the destruction of the Temple and the entire city of Jerusalem really put into perspective the horror of those days and helped me to see more clearly that this was certainly what Jesus would have been talking about in the “Little Apocalypse” of Mark 13 and its parallels.
Finally, the discussion of the “kingdom of God” (especially Crossan’s contributions) was outstanding. It helped me to get inside the mind of the first century Jew a bit more than I was previously able to and to understand how shocking the pronouncement of God’s coming kingdom would have been.
3. I would have disagreed or suggest a corrective alternative on this substantive matter:
The range of scholarly opinions cited in the video on the reconstruction of Christian origins was very narrow in scope. The film series did a poor job of incorporating other dissenting points of view into its presentation. It was far too quick to attribute various elements of the gospel stories to “inventions” of the evangelists. For example, J.D. Crossan’s assertion that Mark “created” the empty tomb went unchallenged, and was presented almost as established fact when, in actuality, that assertion would be highly disputed among the broader spectrum of New Testament scholarship that I’ve read (to say nothing of faithful and intelligent Christians worldwide).
Incorporating a broader range of viewpoints and at least alluding to the scholarly debates that continue to occur to this day on the controversial subject matter presented in the film would have been a bit more intellectually honest. For example, presenting the work of influential scholar N.T. Wright or other more moderate voices among the guild of New Testament studies would have contributed to a more thorough understanding of the subject matter. There is a whole world of rich debate going on concerning the meaning and veracity of the New Testament material, and some acknowledgement of that debate would have been appreciated.
Also- I found the very title of the film series to be something of a slap in the face. The title “From Jesus to Christ” carries with it just as much ideological baggage as does the very name and title it is parodying- that of Jesus Christ. It rather snidely implies that Jesus was not the Christ (and did not think himself to be the Christ), but was only elevated to that status by his followers.
4. Overall, my response to the video series was:
Positive, but with some deep reservations. In short, the evidence presented by the film was first-rate, but the conclusions their scholars drew from this evidence, in my estimation, leave much to be desired. I’m glad I had the opportunity to view this excellent work, but I hope that any future explorations of the subject like “From Jesus to Christ,” which are destined for a wider, popular audience are a bit more balanced in presenting both sides of the debate.
1. I would have been glad to pause the viewing for discussion about this key point:
It would have been useful to discuss the nature of the gospels a bit. Too often, we moderns tend to think of them as straightforward, newspaper-like accounts of what happened, when in fact they are documents of faith, written to keep the memory of the Son of God alive even after the first generation of witnesses had died. One thing the video deliberately did well was to help us to see that the gospel writers wrote very different stories about Jesus, and that their historical circumstances necessitated emphasizing different aspects of the Jesus tradition than did the other gospel writers.
To me, one of the most amazing things about our present Bible is that the early church saw fit to preserve for us four very different accounts of Jesus’ life. The early church was well aware of their differences (might one even say discrepancies?), yet all four of them were canonized, discerned to be inspired. Together, they give us a far more complete picture of Jesus (and the early church’s attitudes toward him) than we could ever get from one gospel alone. The four gospels are not to be held in contradiction to each other, with one being more “true” than the others as skeptics are frequently fond of doing, nor are they to be needlessly harmonized and woven together, because each writer had very different purposes in mind when they composed their accounts of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. The film sparks discussion at this point, and I hope that we are able to explore this a bit more in class during the coming months.
2. I think the video did a good job on this aspect of the story:
The film did an excellent job of placing the stories of the New Testament firmly within their first-century context. Its attention to these important details was helpful in several areas. For example, the presentation of the archaeological discoveries at Sepphoris, so close in proximity to Jesus’ home town of Nazareth, helped shed some light on Jesus’ teachings in the gospels. Sepphoris was a large, cosmopolitan, Hellenized Jewish community that very likely would have employed Jesus’ trade skills as a builder. Working in such an environment would have exposed Jesus to a number of competing worldviews within first-century Judaism, as well as put Jesus in extensive contact with wealthy people. Jesus’ critiques of attachment to wealth and worldly possessions become all the more sharper and poignant when understood against this milieu.
The film also did a fine job of exploring the deep significance surrounding the Temple that the Jews of his day would have understood clearly, but which is often obfuscated from readers in the 21st century. The Temple was the center of their world, where the divine met the earthly, and where YHWH, the God of Israel, was encountered in a very special way. The discussion in Part II of the video on the destruction of the Temple and the entire city of Jerusalem really put into perspective the horror of those days and helped me to see more clearly that this was certainly what Jesus would have been talking about in the “Little Apocalypse” of Mark 13 and its parallels.
Finally, the discussion of the “kingdom of God” (especially Crossan’s contributions) was outstanding. It helped me to get inside the mind of the first century Jew a bit more than I was previously able to and to understand how shocking the pronouncement of God’s coming kingdom would have been.
3. I would have disagreed or suggest a corrective alternative on this substantive matter:
The range of scholarly opinions cited in the video on the reconstruction of Christian origins was very narrow in scope. The film series did a poor job of incorporating other dissenting points of view into its presentation. It was far too quick to attribute various elements of the gospel stories to “inventions” of the evangelists. For example, J.D. Crossan’s assertion that Mark “created” the empty tomb went unchallenged, and was presented almost as established fact when, in actuality, that assertion would be highly disputed among the broader spectrum of New Testament scholarship that I’ve read (to say nothing of faithful and intelligent Christians worldwide).
Incorporating a broader range of viewpoints and at least alluding to the scholarly debates that continue to occur to this day on the controversial subject matter presented in the film would have been a bit more intellectually honest. For example, presenting the work of influential scholar N.T. Wright or other more moderate voices among the guild of New Testament studies would have contributed to a more thorough understanding of the subject matter. There is a whole world of rich debate going on concerning the meaning and veracity of the New Testament material, and some acknowledgement of that debate would have been appreciated.
Also- I found the very title of the film series to be something of a slap in the face. The title “From Jesus to Christ” carries with it just as much ideological baggage as does the very name and title it is parodying- that of Jesus Christ. It rather snidely implies that Jesus was not the Christ (and did not think himself to be the Christ), but was only elevated to that status by his followers.
4. Overall, my response to the video series was:
Positive, but with some deep reservations. In short, the evidence presented by the film was first-rate, but the conclusions their scholars drew from this evidence, in my estimation, leave much to be desired. I’m glad I had the opportunity to view this excellent work, but I hope that any future explorations of the subject like “From Jesus to Christ,” which are destined for a wider, popular audience are a bit more balanced in presenting both sides of the debate.