The Significance of Jesus's Death and Resurrection in Early Christianity, Study notes of World Religions

Download The Significance of Jesus's Death and Resurrection in Early Christianity and more Study notes World Religions in PDF only on Docsity! REL 100 Lecture 18 1 Today we’re gonna look at the religion of Christianity, at least in this session, and Christianity is always a little more of a challenge to talk about in this class because generally students come with quite a bit of knowledge of Christianity. And so if you’re one of those students, then some of this might seem very elementary, very rudimentary. And so if that’s the case, the intent is not to condescend on your knowledge but just to make sure that some basic knowledge if covered. On the other hand, more and more with even in this culture, students are coming who know very little about Christianity and have not been exposed to Christianity as students were in the past. And often those students feel like they missed a boat somewhere that everybody else caught that talked about Christianity, and you may very well be one of those students. And if that’s the case, then I’m gonna try to make sure that I don’t assume any knowledge on your part and make sure again that you have the same basic understanding of Christianity that you do of all the other world religions that we’re looking at. So hopefully we’ll land in the middle somewhere. Those of you who have quite a bit of understanding of Christianity, I think there’ll be some things that we’ll cover that will be new to you or that will enhance things you already know. And for those of you who know very little about Christianity, then I don’t think that there will be any assumed knowledge so that you won’t be left behind in the tracks of not understanding some basic concepts. So we’re gonna start with Christianity. As I’ve mentioned previously, Christianity, along with Islam and contemporary Judaism, are rooted — is rooted in ancient Judaism. REL 100 Lecture 18 2 And so much of ancient Christian history comes out of ancient Judaism, which we already talked about. Because of that you can see several things that those two religions share in common. If we could discuss that, I could ask you — and now with your knowledge of Judaism and whatever knowledge you might already have of Christianity, you could probably make a list of three, four, or five things that you would see that Judaism and Christianity share in common because of their common roots. Some of those things would include that they’re both monotheistic. Both teach this idea of one God. Christianity is rooted in the monotheism of Judaism. Both Christianity and Judaism discuss the nature of humanity as special. Again, humanity is not some accident. Humanity is not some random result of some random circumstances. But in Christianity as in Judaism, humanity is understood to have been created, purposefully planned, and so the nature of humanity is special. Also the two share a certain text. The Hebrew Bible of Judaism is the Old Testament of Christianity. And that’s saying the order is a little bit different in the Hebrew Bible than in the Old Testament, but the contents are the same. And so there are some texts that they share. Because of their shared text there’s a shared history. Up until the 1st century and into the 1st century, there’s very much a shared history between Judaism and Christianity. It’s when we move into the 1st century that you begin to see some changes, and we’ll talk about that here in a moment. One other element that both share is both understand that humanity’s problem is the same and that’s the problem of sin. That sin is the thing that separates humanity, REL 100 Lecture 18 5 solution for sin and this is where the two differ. Because what 1st century Christianity taught after the life of Jesus and death of Jesus was that Jesus’s death served as a substitutionary sacrifice. That rather than going to the temple and offering these animal sacrifices, people wouldn’t have to do that anymore. But they could accept Jesus’s death as a special death that in some way atoned for their sins. So people that were Jewish could say — or even it came to be that they could be Gentile — and they could say, “I will accept Jesus’s death as the sacrifice for my sins.” And so they no longer had to go to the temple and offer animal sacrifices, and they understood that that belief in Jesus and that belief and the specialness of His death — and they also believed that that specialness of His death was substantiated by a resurrection that was taught in early Christianity and continues to be a cornerstone of Christianity today, is that Jesus resurrected from the dead and that was a substantiation of all that had been said about His life and His death. So these 1st century Christians began to understand that Jesus’s death served as a substitutionary sacrifice for their sins. It replaced the animal sacrifices and enabled them to eliminate the sin problem between themselves and God. That was a radical difference. You had families, Jewish families, in the 1st century in Israel or Palestine that some of the family would convert to Christianity. And so you would have — at the time of the sacrifices each year, you would have those that were still Jewish going off to the temple to offer sacrifices and you would have those who were not Jewish saying, “I don’t need to do that because I have a substitutionary sacrifice now.” And that began to cause more unrest between Jews and Christians in the 1st century that REL 100 Lecture 18 6 ultimately resulted in the Romans coming in and destroying Jerusalem because of the unrest that there was within the Jewish community. So as far as differences between Judaism and Christianity, one of the key differences is in their solution for sin. And that’s rooted in a second key difference, is their understanding of the nature of Jesus. Both religions would acknowledge that that there was a man named Jesus who lived in the 1st century. Both religions would acknowledge that he was a pretty popular teacher and preacher in the 1st century throughout Israel, throughout Palestine. But that’s about as far as they could go in sharing their understanding of the nature of Jesus. Because what 1st century Christianity taught was that Jesus was the fulfillment of all the prophecies of the Messiah that had been given throughout history. And so Christians understood that Jesus was this Messiah, the one who would bring spiritual salvation to humanity. Now, Jews did not accept Jesus as the Messiah because the Jewish understanding of Messiahship was that the Messiah would bring not only a spiritual salvation but also a political salvation. If Jesus were the Messiah that Jews understood the Messiah to be in the 1st century, then He would not only in some way have accomplished spiritual salvation but He would have raised up an army, fought against the Romans, overthrown the Roman power, and set up rule, Jewish rule, once and for all in Jerusalem. Established that these are God’s people and this is our land, and no one, like the Romans, has any power over these people. But that’s not what Jesus did. Jesus actually ended up being killed by the Romans ultimately. And so those who held to that Jewish interpretation of the Messiah rejected REL 100 Lecture 18 7 Jesus as the Messiah because He didn’t accomplish this political salvation that they understood the Messiah would accomplish. There were other Jews, though, that began to say, “Well, maybe we misunderstood this. Maybe this is entirely a spiritual salvation and the ultimate salvation that’s more of an earthly salvation will come later on as history progresses.” So there was a big difference in the understanding of the nature of Jesus. Messiah? That’s what the 1st century Christians said. Not the Messiah? That’s what the 1st century Jews said. And so there was a definite distinction there in the solution for sin and understanding the nature of Jesus. So, as I said, Jews and Christians both acknowledge, and actually historically any historian would acknowledge, that there was a man named Jesus who lived in the 1st century. For the lack of literature that there is from the 1st century, relatively speaking there’s quite a bit of literature about Jesus to know that there was this man that lived in the 1st century. So the question isn’t whether there was a Jesus or not, as far as history, but the question is who was Jesus. You find many views of who Jesus was. Just a few of those, as I mentioned earlier, one view of who Jesus was is that he was a great teacher. He was a famous teacher. He was an itinerant teacher. He traveled around, teaching and preaching in different places. That’s pretty widely accepted. Not just among Jews and Christians, but even among people like Buddhists and Hindus: that Jesus was a man who had some great teachings. Some would see Jesus as a political revolutionary, or at least that He attempted to be that. Much of his language was a language of kingdom, kingship, war, taking up REL 100 Lecture 18 10 He doesn’t always look Middle Eastern. He looks more like those within the culture that have depicted him. Even here in the U.S. or in Europe, Jesus looks pretty European, pretty Anglo, pretty American. He wasn’t. He was Middle Eastern. He wouldn’t have had, probably, fair colored skin and lighter colored hair and lighter colored eyes. That wouldn’t fit the Middle Eastern ethnicity. You can look at some Native American tribes and Jesus looks almost like Geronimo. When I’ve been in the country of Haiti, you’ll see depictions of Jesus and often He’s black like Haitian skin. So typically, kind of the extension of this ideal man, is that in cultures people tend to make Jesus look like themselves, that gives more of that idea of the model of the ideal person to emulate in that culture. A final view that we’ll talk about — certainly there would be others of these major views — is the view that you see communicated through the New Testament. It’s communicated in much of traditional Christianity and that is that Jesus was God Incarnate. The Incarnation is a teaching in Christianity. And what Incarnation means is in the flesh, in carne. And so this belief that Jesus was God Incarnate was the idea that Jesus was God taking on flesh in the form of a human. And this teaching has various theologies about whether Jesus was fully God or fully human, or 50 percent God, 50 percent human, however that works out. There’s a lot of theologies within Christianity about that and a lot of doctrine within Christianity about that. But regardless, the understanding is that in some way Jesus was God when He was here in the 1st century. And again, this is the perspective that you find within traditional Christianity. This is the perspective that you’d find communicated by the New Testament writers: that Jesus REL 100 Lecture 18 11 was God Himself and took on flesh in some way. So how do we know what we know about Jesus? There’s this person in the 1st century. There’s much that seems to be known about Him and a great deal that seems to be speculated about Him, but where do we gain this knowledge? And we could break that up into two categories. That as far as sources of knowledge about the historical Jesus, that there would be sympathetic sources or friendly sources and that there would be some unsympathetic sources or unfriendly sources. Now, those sympathetic or friendly sources would be people who — they were kind of like on Jesus’s side. They were proponents of who Jesus was and proponents of His mission. And then those that would be unsympathetic or unfriendly sources, those would be the people who really had no reason to be a part of some sort of Jesus agenda in the 1st or 2nd century. But from both those areas, we can find out information about Jesus, whether the person or the writers were pro-Jesus or more anti or just ambivalent Jesus. Didn’t really matter much to them who He was. As far as those sympathetic sources, as far as those friendly sources, certainly the largest collection that we have would be the Gospels of the New Testament. The Gospels are four interpretations of the life of Jesus. The Gospels are four interpretations of the life of Jesus. They’re the first four books of the Christian New Testament. The titles are Matthew, Mark, Luke, John. And traditionally in Christianity, the belief is that those were the writers of those books. That Matthew wrote Matthew, and so on. Now, certainly there’s been a lot of discussion in academics among the scholars REL 100 Lecture 18 12 about whether those people truly were the writers or their names were just placed on them, about how much over history has been kind of blending of the different original gospels. But regardless, in the traditional understanding these four were also the authors of those Gospels. And that’s where we find most of the information that we have about Jesus. These four Gospels of the New Testament are called the Canonical Gospels, the Gospels that are in the Canon. That’s with one N, c-a-n-o-n. Because the canon would be the accepted books that have made it into any sacred text. So the canon of Christianity would be the Hebrew Bible, and then the books that we call the New Testament today. And in that canon you have these Canonical Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. But there are also some non-Canonical Gospels. Gospels of Jesus’s life that were written during the 1st and into the 2nd century that did not make it into the Biblical Canon. Over the years, up to today, I believe there’s 35 or 40 different non-Canonical Gospels. Gospels, interpretations of the life of Jesus, that can give us information and much of that information corroborates with the four Canonical Gospels about Jesus. Those Gospels are written by people like Peter, Thomas, even Mary. There’s a Gospel of Mary. But that these non-Canonical Gospels are also sources of information about Jesus even though they weren’t contained in the Biblical Canon. These would still be by people who were sympathetic toward Jesus, who were friends of Jesus, who were followers of Jesus from the 1st century. And again, some of these are written into the early part of the 2nd century. So you have these friendly, these sympathetic sources of REL 100 Lecture 18 15 And so in 49 C.E., the emperor Claudius expelled some Jews from Rome. These were Jews, though, who had become Christians. At this point in the middle part of the 1st century, Jews and Christians were all — there wasn’t really a distinction between them yet. There was a distinction as far as some of the practices and beliefs, but it was more like the Christians were perceived by the Jews as heretical Jews but they were still Jews. And so he was saying that there was unrest and so he expelled them from Rome because of this unrest that there was among the Jewish community. Another unsympathetic source in the 1st century, 1st and 2nd centuries, would Hebe Lucian. He was more of a satirist, a comedic writer, during the 2nd century but looking back on the 1st century. And in his writings he criticized the Christians that were in that area and he criticized them for things like voluntary self devotion, denying the Greek gods — which we find that going along with what you see in the New Testament. That they shared their possessions as a community. Again, in the New Testament you find that particularly in Acts 2 and Acts 4 where people brought their possessions and shared those so that no one had need. That they lived after the laws of their crucified sage — again, Jesus. That they frequently read sacred writings. You know, the Hebrew Bible was still significant for them. And that they called one another brothers, that there’s this familial aspect. One other unsympathetic source which might be one of the more famous ones if you’ve heard of any of these sources — would be Josefus. Josefus was Jewish, purely Jewish. He didn’t accept the message of Christianity, of Jesus, so he was Jewish. No reason to really support Jesus. And, secondly, he was employed by the Romans so he REL 100 Lecture 18 16 also had no reason to really support this movement from that perspective. So he was an employee of the Romans who was hired to write about the histories of what was going on in Israel in the 1st century. And so he said some of these things in his writings. He talked about how Pilate had put Jesus to death. He talked about Jesus’s reputation as a miracle worker, Jesus as a teacher. Jesus was charged as a criminal by the Jews. That Jesus was crucified as a result of that charge. That there were Messianic claims of fulfilled prophecy by these Christians. That he began a movement called Christianity. That the movement was still in existence at the end of the 1st century. That the followers of that movement were called Christians and that there were claims by these Christians that Jesus had resurrected from the dead. Now, Josefus wasn’t saying he believed all these things, but in his writings he would talk about — you know, again the Christians’ claim that Jesus had resurrected from the dead or the Christians’ claim that He was a great miracle worker and that He healed people. So he was just reporting what this little subculture there within Israel was doing in the late part of the 1st century. So we have these pieces of information — and there would be others, but these pieces of information that are both sympathetic to and unsympathetic to the early Christian movement and to Jesus as something beyond just a person and a teacher. You have these different sources that make it difficult to say any other thing except that there was an historical Jesus and there was a significant impact within at least a certain subculture of the Jews in the 1st century. Again, anything beyond that — there are various interpretations of who Jesus was and what He did. REL 100 Lecture 18 17 But most of our knowledge of Jesus comes from the Gospels in the New Testament, the Canonical Gospels. And so to kind of set up a resume of Jesus, just to make sure we know basic facts of him just like you know basic facts of the other religious leaders that we’ve looked at, Jesus’s name — he was generally called Jesus of Nazareth. That was very common to talk about people based on where their hometown was — you know, Lora of Pleasant Hill, Illinois. So Jesus was from Nazareth and that was the name given Him. Yes, he was eventually called Jesus Christ by Christians, but He would not have been called Jesus Christ by Jews, by the Greeks, by any other group but Christians. Because that’s what Christians were saying, is that Jesus was the Christ which is the same as saying he was the Messiah. But broadly speaking, culturally speaking, He was called Jesus of Nazareth. He was born — actually, because of various changes in the calendar over the years — actually, on the current calendar His birth would be 7 to 4 B.C.E. So even though traditionally there’s the understanding that the calendar that we have, the Roman calendar, was based around the life of Jesus and that may or may not be the case, but the way that that calendar is set up today, Jesus wasn’t actually born in the 0 year. It was probably more like 7 to 4 B.C.E. And he was born in Bethlehem which is also in Palestine or in Israel. His parents were there, as the Gospels tell us, taking care of taxes that they had to pay in their region. So His birthplace was Bethlehem but again his hometown was Nazareth, as we’ve said earlier. The religion that Jesus was taught and that He practiced and that He moved REL 100 Lecture 18 20 the central topic of Jesus’s teachings. Now, what is the Kingdom of God? Generally, when I ask that in class people say, “Well, it’s Heaven.” And certainly in the Gospels, when Jesus uses that terminology, there are times when it seems He is talking about something future, something apocalyptic, something that would be Heaven possibly. But there are other times when Jesus seems to be indicating that it’s something now. So when you look throughout the New Testament for this terminology the Kingdom of God, sometimes it refers to Heaven, sometimes it refers to now, a collection of people now who are followers of God through Jesus’s teachings. Sometimes it seems like it refers to an individual person, that the individual person can be a kingdom in and of him or herself. The literal meaning of that phrase, Kingdom of God, would be — it’s wherever God rules, wherever God’s in charge. That would be God’s Kingdom. So, in that sense, Heaven, by Christian teachings — Christianity’s teachings would be a place that God’s in charge. The church ideally would be a place that God’s in charge, and even certain individual lives would be a place that God is in charge. And so this topic of the Kingdom of God is really a very broad topic and not always real clear in the Gospels what Jesus is referring to, but it seems like it’s more than just something in the future like Heaven. So as you look through the Gospels, over and over and over Jesus used this phrase. So much that for many of you, if you’ve read the Gospels often, you might not even realize that because it’s there so much that you’re almost like desensitized to that phrase. But if you are a reader of the Gospels — and I would encourage you as you REL 100 Lecture 18 21 read to open your eyes a little bit and you’ll see that phrase all the time about Jesus’s teachings and the things that He focused on. Just a few examples from the Book of Matthew. “Jesus went through all the towns and villages, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the good news of the Kingdom and healing every disease and sickness.” The focus of his teaching? The good news of the Kingdom of God. Also from John, Chapter 3. “Nicodemus, a Jewish religious leader, comes to Jesus and asks Him about following Him, about being a part of this movement that seems like he’s pulling together. In reply, Jesus declared, “I tell you the truth. No one can see the Kingdom of God unless he is born again.” Whatever Jesus meant by that, but His focus was the Kingdom of God. In Mark 10, people were bringing little children to Jesus to have Him touch them, but the disciples rebuked them. When Jesus saw this, He was indignant and He said to them, “Let the little children come to me and do not hinder them, for the Kingdom of God belongs to such as these. I tell you the truth. Anyone who will not receive the Kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it.” The focus here again, this is what people in the Kingdom of God are like and becoming like these children is how you can enter into the Kingdom of God. Whatever that meant, but that was the focus of His teaching over and over and over. And you can see why there were some who thought that meant that He was going to bring some sort of political revolution if His focus was this Kingdom. And so it seems He would be a ruler in that Kingdom. Then you really can’t criticize those who thought that Jesus was probably going to try to establish some sort of political Kingdom REL 100 Lecture 18 22 because that was the focus of His teachings. So he taught this idea of the Kingdom. He got a lot of people behind him. He got a lot of people that were threatened by this idea. A lot of people that were against whatever that meant. And so eventually that resulted in some of the Jewish religious leaders, as the Canonical Gospels record, coming together with the Roman leaders and having Jesus executed, again by crucifixion. He was around 30 to 33 years old when he was killed. But then Christianity makes a unique claim. Christianity claims that Jesus resurrected from the dead. This is very unique. Islam doesn’t claim that Muhammed came back from the dead. Judaism doesn’t claim that Abraham did. There are a few people in Judaism that — the claim is in Hebrew Bible that they didn’t die like Enoch. Buddhism doesn’t claim that Buddha resurrected from the dead. And yet Christianity does. And so that’s probably the most unique claim of Christianity. All these religions claim certain sacred texts. They might claim a great teacher as the originator. But none claim resurrection and Christianity claimed that resurrection. So following that resurrection the movement began to grow. It really didn’t — wasn’t that strong of a movement during Jesus’s life, but, at least according to the Canonical Gospels and certainly as far as what we see worldwide today, that movement has gone from a very small sort of sect or heretical movement from the middle part of the 1st century to now being a significant movement worldwide. And the teaching that was given following Jesus’s life about being a Christian were things like this. From John 3, Jesus Himself said God loved the world so much