Don't Know Much About the Bible - Kenneth C. Davis [131]
THE WORLD OF JESUS
This map depicts the general area in which Jesus was born and lived.
Part Three
THE NEW TESTAMENT
Then Jesus said to the Jews who had believed in him, “If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples; and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.”
(John 8:31-32)
Jesus Loves me—this I know, For the Bible tells me so.
—ANNA BARTLETT WARNER
“THE LOVE OF JESUS,” 1858
“What if God was one of us?”
—JOAN OSBORNE
* What is the New Testament?
* Who wrote the New Testament?
* Are the four Gospels “gospel” truth?
* If there are only four Gospels, then what are the “Gnostic Gospels”?
Thirteen men get off an airplane arriving from Damascus at JFK Airport. Most are unshaven and their clothing smells a little ripe—there is a pungent hint of fish and sheep. Wearing tunics and dusty sandals, they carry no luggage—just walking sticks and sacks holding a spare tunic. Immediately, red lights go off at Customs. A team of inspectors ushers the group into a room to go through procedures. Suspicious Immigration officers stand nearby, guns at the ready. The edgy inspectors assume the obvious: they have a band of Middle East terrorists in hand.
The men are asked routine questions. But their answers are unusual. They have no passports; they say they recognize no governments. They have no money to declare; God takes care of their needs. Their tickets had been paid for by wealthy friends back home. They have come “to teach America the truth,” they say. Facing detention, they are quite sophisticated about local ordinances; one of them requests political asylum and an immigration hearing—and he wants that hearing to be in Washington, D.C., in front of the American President!
What would happen if Jesus and his twelve disciples flew into a modern airport? Or Paul and some of the other first Christians walked into a typical American town today? Although accustomed to the fair-haired, blue-eyed image of the “WASP” Jesus, some contemporary Christians might recognize their “Messiah,” or the Turkish Jew who founded their church, and welcome them with open arms. But most “believers” would balk at the sight of this motley collection of “foreign,” poorly dressed, homeless men. At best, the ragtag group of thirteen would not be invited into the average home. At worst, the FBI would be called to haul them off to custody.
The second part of the Christian Bible, the New Testament, tells the story of these ragged, homeless men (and women!) who changed history.
What is the New Testament?
Unlike the Hebrew scriptures, which span many centuries, the New Testament story covers barely a century and is only about one quarter of the length of the Hebrew scriptures. The New Testament recounts the story of the miraculous birth, works, teachings, execution, and resurrection from the dead of Jesus. For twenty centuries, Christians have professed faith in this Jesus, even though that is not his real name, who was thought to be a Jewish carpenter, although that is only a guess. Besides telling the story of Jesus’ life, the New Testament also records the founding and growth of Christianity, first as a sect within traditional Judaism and later as a religion reaching out to the non-Jewish, or Gentile, world. As with the Hebrew scriptures, much of this information was passed along orally until set down by hand in commonly spoken Greek well after Jesus’ death and miraculous resurrection.
The central figure in this New Testament drama—one of the most influential people in history—is a good Jewish boy whose name was probably more like Joshua ben Joseph or Yehoshua ben Yosef, the son of a carpenter who, by one account, was a carpenter himself. In the Nikos Kazantzakis novel The Last Temptation of Christ, later made into a controversial film by Martin Scorsese, the fictional Jesus the carpenter is provocatively depicted hewing the rough crucifixes on which Jews are executed by Romans.
Like most Jews of his