Jesus (thoughts)

To clarify: this post is not about my thoughts on Jesus himself. But rather on Marcus Borg’s book Jesus. I was trying to decide which of the three awesome books I’ve read this week I should review today, when I suddenly remembered that it’s Good Friday. So, Jesus it is!

I first discovered Marcus Borg last year, when I picked up The Heart of Christianity while browsing Barnes & Noble’s Christian section*, and adored the bits I read so much I put it on hold at the library right away. Since then, I’ve been wanting to read more by him, so I thought I’d try his book on Jesus for the World Religion Challenge. And it just confirmed my deep love for Borg and his style of Christianity. Seriously, if he ran a church, I’d attend in a heartbeat. The book is subtitle Uncovering the Life, Teachings, and Relevance of a Religious Revolutionary, and its focus is on looking at the ‘historical Jesus,’ evaluating what he said in the context of his culture, and looking past the factual debates re: stories in the New Testament to get at their deeper, mythic truths.

He does a fantastic job with all of this. I am definitely not an expert on Jewish culture in the early AD period. So I didn’t have a ton of independent knowledge to judge Borg’s writing there. But I have read a lot of comparative religion stuff over the years, especially with regards to mythology, and everything he said in those bits was spot-on. Not to mention, he’s well-respected in his field, a professor, and has quite the backlist. And the book just feels scholarly; there’s a lot of passages from the New Testament, there’s an extensive notes section & index in the back, and Borg is careful to state when he’s explaining things that are ‘accepted as truth’ by the scholarly community and the reasons for that acceptance. I say all of this, because I know some people are wary of any nonfiction written by Christians, while others are wary of any book written about Jesus. Borg just never gets bogged down in a ‘did the miracles really happen’ debate, which is key to how successfully the book works.

I feel like I could have flagged every other page, because it was all so full of interesting, important context! Towards the beginning, Borg explains how to approach the different gospels, and what scholars think of them as historical documents, which I found really neat. Of course, I’m a nerd! ;) Then, he looks at Jesus and the world he lived in…while he’s obviously an academic, his writing doesn’t feel stuffy. He vividly conjured up ancient Jewish towns, to the point that I could pretty much picture Jesus wandering around, telling his stories, urging people to change. Many of the ‘sayings’ that anyone growing up in a Christian home would recognise have a different meaning once you know the traditions Jesus was accustomed to. Since his original audience was Jewish like him, living in the same time and place, it makes sense to me that knowing what they knew enriches all of Jesus’ points. Throughout the book, Borg does a marvelous job of conveying his deep respect and love for Jesus, especially the historical ‘pre-Easter,’ Jesus who was really an incredible person if one thinks about it. He does talk about post-Easter Jesus as well, and how things changed, but that’s a small part of the book towards the end, which one would expect in a biography!

While I wish I could just share the whole book with you (seriously, go read it! Whether you’re Christian or not!), instead I’ll just share one of the parts that struck me most. Borg is building his case that Jesus was all for nonviolent social change (as opposed to passively accepting things). And he’s looking at the idea of ‘turning the other cheek.’

The second statement says: “But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also.” The specification of the right cheek and the awareness that people in that world used their right hand to strike somebody provide the key for understanding the saying. How can a person be hit on the right cheek by a right-handed person? Only by a backhand slap (act it out and see for yourself). In that world, a slap with the back of a hand was the way a superior struck a subordinate. The saying thus presupposes a situation of domination: a peasant being backhanded by a steward or official, a prisoner being backhanded by a jailer, and so forth. When that happens, turn the other cheek. What would be the effect of that? The beating could only continue if the superior used an overhand blow-which is the way an equal struck another equal. Of course, he might do so. But he would be momentarily discombobulated, and the subordinate would be asserting his equality even if the beating did continue.

Isn’t that fascinating?!

In the epilogue, Borg veers from his historical analysis of Jesus to look at how the rising power and public persona of the far Christian right has affected American Christianity, and how progressive Christianity might fit into that picture. Not to mention, what Jesus might have thought of that, based on the gospels Borg examined in the rest of the book! I’m sure you can imagine his conclusions. ;) He ends things on a more hopeful note, however, and honestly I feel Borg does so much to make Christianity seem like the wonderful, fascinating, revoluationary religion that it is. I highly recommend him, and Jesus (note the italics there!), to anyone.

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Footenote One: This was when I was looking for a church, attempting to become a Christian again (I was raised Catholic but have been agnostic/’spiritual’ for years). Eventually, I found an awesome church full of really friendly, honest people, with a neat program for adult seekers. But after attending it, I realised that the church was waaaay too ‘traditional’ for me. I don’t really find it necessary to pray for Muslims during their Ramadan. Especially since they believe Jesus was a prophet anyway. So now I’m holding off the search for a *progressive* Christian church until I move later this year and am no longer in one of the ten most conservative cities in our country!