The Humanity of Jesus
Bart Ehrman, in his book on the Divinity of Christ, said whenever he has Christians in his classroom, they have no doubt Jesus Christ is God, but to a person, they all seemed to struggle with Jesus' humanity.
Therefore, I put it to you.
Do you struggle with the humanity of Jesus?
Did he have to learn to read--or did he ever read?
Did he have a significant other?
Did he have emotional swings?
What was it like when he grew up?
Did he fear the occupiers?
What was puberty like for him?
Did he have childhood illnesses?
Other problems?
Therefore, I put it to you.
Do you struggle with the humanity of Jesus?
Did he have to learn to read--or did he ever read?
Did he have a significant other?
Did he have emotional swings?
What was it like when he grew up?
Did he fear the occupiers?
What was puberty like for him?
Did he have childhood illnesses?
Other problems?
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Comments
And wrote something with his finger on the ground.
See: https://ehrmanblog.org/could-jesus-read/
All the things you mention were possibilities, even if there is no record.
I would think that attestation in one of the Gospels was more than just "reportedly" -- unless all of the gospels are "reportedly." Which is kind of tautological. Yeah, they are reports. But inasmuch as they are gospels -- the heart of the New Testament -- aren't they something more?
YMMV
Remember, the Gospels are not like modern historical accounts of Jesus. They were testimonials about who Jesus was. While Mark and Luke said Jesus read from Isaiah in the local synagogue, we cannot know for sure he did. Isaiah 61 is a good summary of how the gospel writers viewed his ministry and they likely inserted it as a prologue to their respective stories.
Now, it could be Jesus had learned some passages from scripture either from his mother or in Hebrew school, Still does not mean he could read those passages word for word, but it shows he had an excellent memory.
As Ehrman says, look at the reaction of the listeners. They could not believe what they were hearing. They were asking is not this the son of a carpenter. Carpenters may be able to take measurements, but to read in those days would have been astounding.
We have enough written materials from the Roman Mediterranean to suggest that reading and writing were not purely professional activities. There's graffiti, there are curses and entreaties to deities, and so on.
Outside the Roman Mediterranean there's a settlement from the Viking age in Denmark, where archaeologists have found numerous runesticks with messages on suggesting they come from a tavern. One of them reads something like IIRC 'Gyda is telling you to come home' on one side, and has a drunken and illegible attempt at a reply on the other. I think if there was sufficient literacy among the Vikings that they could send written messages to tell errant husbands or sons to come home from the pub, then absent firm evidence for widespread illiteracy in Galilee there's nothing unlikely in Jesus being able to read and write.
It's all speculation any way, all this opposition between the 'Christ of faith' and the 'Christ of history' - the 'quest for the historical Jesus and so on.'
I'm more concerned with those who don't appear to be able to articulate Christ's divinity - and believe you me, I've even come across cack-handed comments in evangelical settings. 'Jesus was set of like God but he wasn't God ...'
I kid you not.
But yes, having said that, I do think that we all need to take the raw reality of Christ's humanity seriously. Our priest reminded us on Sunday that the infant Jesus had to have his nappy (diaper) changed and his bum wiped.
We can be very squeamish too with the idea that he went through puberty etc the same as everyone else. We have a very Victorian and prissy Christ at times.
I already posted it.
His literacy is only one question. How about other human traits. How about them?
I don't see why it should be so remarkable that Jesus could read. As far as I understand it, carpentry was regarded as a skilled artisanal trade and included house-building and other aspects we wouldn't necessarily associate with carpentry today. It wasn't the lowly trade it is sometimes portrayed as being.
It wasn't 'elite' either of course but I think we should beware of reading our own social assumptions and associations back into antiquity.
We aren't talking late medieval/early modern bourgeoisie nor are we talking about slave labourers or subsistence farmers here.
If you consider the various apocryphal accounts in the infancy gospels, you get a humorous and sometimes terrifying account of the boy Jesus.
On the subject of his literacy - according to one account, his parents took him to a rabbi to begin his education. The rabbi traced the letted "aleph" in the sand and told Jesus "This is the letter aleph". The boy replied "and what means "aleph"?" The rabbi replied "It is not important that you should know the meaning of the letter, now attend. Here is "bet"." Jesus replied "How can you presume to teach me "bet" when you cannot even teach me what is "aleph"?" The rabbi struck Jesus' ear and the boy uttered a curse, and the man fell dead.
Understandably excluded from the canon but an interesting story nonetheless.
AFF
Or the time he made small birds out of mud, or was it clay?, and then allowed them to take flight.
Wasn't there also a story that once some boys were teasing him and he cursed them and they all died too? If so, I don't think he had many childhood friends.
Yeah he seems like he had some problems in the 'hood. But I feel certain he had friends nonetheless.
There's the other one where he and a friend were playing on the roof of a house, his friend slipped and fell off the roof and died. The parents of the dead child accuse the boy Jesus of having pushed him and he says "Ask him yourself what happened", His playmate gets up and tells his parents it's not Jesus' fault, he was playing too close to the edge.
AFF
If so?! If God, you know love, incarnate were psychotic? Like the kid in that ghastly Twilight Zone episode?
Yeah I thought about that too. Good thing these are only stories. And stories that got edited out for, well, same reasons. Psycho Jesus - not a good look.
AFF
Chris Keith in Jesus' Literacy: Scribal Culture and the Teacher from Galilee: 413 (The Library of New Testament Studies) notes both that farmers were generally not literate, and that literacy is not binary, but a spectrum.
I reckon it is not that much of a surprise that Jesus should be reading-literate, even if not writing-literate – between one in ten and one in twenty men were. And clearly it was not that remarkable that Jesus should read, else why would he have been handed the scroll. I agree with Nick Tamen that Bart Ehrman is plainly misreading the text in saying that people were astonished at the mere fact of Jesus reading.
Hostly beret on
@Martin54, psychosis is a serious, distressing and highly stigmatised mental health condition. Please do not misuse the term in ways which contribute to this stigma for people affected by it.
Hostly beret off
la vie en rouge, Purgatory host
But as I said above, I don’t really struggle with Jesus’s humanity. And I’m afraid I don’t see much point in speculating about aspects of his humanity beyond what the Gospels report.
Jesus is not some random person for whom it makes sense to apply an overall average literacy rate to determine the supposed probability that he was literate. It would be more relevant to ask what the average literacy rate was for people who became world-famous spiritual and moral teachers.
Also, the record of the Gospels is that he had a keen interest in the Torah and would have had particular motivation to learn to at least read it.
My mileage is that the gospels are claims of what happened 2000 years ago. I don’t believe that they’re lies.
Because we didn’t think they were true.
That’s largely my position as well. I mean I would really be keen to know, genuinely curious about so many things, but I think that’s the best position to take on this stuff. He was and is fully God and fully man. He may have been subject to various illnesses, or not. He certainly experienced pain and death.
(The only one that I would generally quibble about would be whether or not he had a significant other in the romantic sense—I’m not sure how I can see that as not leading them on, since I don’t think He had wedding plans, apart from the one with all of us as the Bride of Christ at the end/beginning of time someday. He might have had the emotions of a teenage crush, of course.)
I don't think they are lies, but I don't think they are literal/historical/ biographical accounts.
I think they used the literary genres of their time, that their intended audience would have understood, but with which our modernity has mostly lost touch.
I don’t know what genre you are referring to that would make the material in the Gospels not true in the “really happened” sense that the Christian Church has understood it to mean in the last 2000 years—including, as far as I have ever read, the people very close to that time following after, who would also have known those ancient genres. That doesn’t mean there might not be interesting things that those genres might reveal, but that’s not the same as saying they did not truthfully report what really happened.
I see no reason to believe that they are not true in what they report of what happened in Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection. There could even be human errors, but I don’t think they simply made things up. As St. Paul says, if Christ is not raised, our faith is in vain.
Which mountain top did God allow him to go up to?
Did he see the Promised Land?
Where did he get the idea that his eyes had seen the glory of the coming of the Lord?
Would his audience have made the connection to the Moses story: the Moses that lead his people out of slavery, who went up the mountain, saw the promised land, but was not allowed to go there?
Or do you think these are lies because they did not truthfully report a literal visit and ascent?
They resemble a modern midrash.
Matthew presents Jesus as the expected prophet like/greater than Moses.
Did Jesus do all his teaching in five discourses, or are they presented that way because his audience would make the connection? The first discourse starts with the beatitudes. Are these the improvements on the Ten Commandments for Matthew's audience?
(time to take a break)
When the Gospels tell us that Jesus died and came back to life, I don’t think that’s a metaphor the way that MLK’s references to the mountain top are.
And they aren't in the well attested early accounts....
You need to show that the gospels are a sufficiently similar genre to Martin Luther King's speeches before this is relevant.
Jesus's parables are a similar genre: I think only the most doctrinaire fundamentalists would assert that the Good Samaritan reports a historical incident (though they will insist that references to Hell in the parables are factual). But to say the Gospels as a whole are a parable seems to be a step motivated by the desired conclusion.
The best analogy for the argument would be Plutarch's Lives; historians concur that Plutarch tweaked events in the service of his moral lessons. But even there Plutarch is adapting things that actually happened.
My understanding is that Jews find the invocation of Midrash by modern Christian writers profoundly misleading.
The Sermon on the Mount and the Sermon on the Plain are two of Jesus' most famous teachings, recorded in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, respectively. Here are the key differences:
Location
Sermon on the Mount: Delivered on a mountainside (Matthew 5-7).
Sermon on the Plain: Delivered on a level place (Luke 6:17-49).
Beatitudes
Sermon on the Mount: Includes eight Beatitudes that emphasize spiritual blessings (e.g., "Blessed are the poor in spirit").
Sermon on the Plain: Includes four Beatitudes and four corresponding woes, emphasizing both blessings and warnings (e.g., "Blessed are you who are poor" and "Woe to you who are rich").
Audience
Sermon on the Mount: Mainly addressed to Jesus' disciples but also heard by a large crowd.
Sermon on the Plain: Addressed to a great crowd of disciples and a large number of people from all over Judea, Jerusalem, and the coastal region of Tyre and Sidon.
Length and Content
Sermon on the Mount: Longer and more detailed, covering topics like the Lord's Prayer, the fulfillment of the Law, and teachings on anger, lust, divorce, oaths, retaliation, love for enemies, giving to the needy, fasting, judging others, and more.
Sermon on the Plain: Shorter and more concise, with a focus on blessings and woes, love for enemies, judging others, the parable of the blind leading the blind, and the parable of the wise and foolish builders.
Scholars have debated whether the Sermon on the Mount and the Sermon on the Plain describe the same event or if they are distinct sermons given at different times. Here are the two main perspectives:
Same Sermon
Some scholars believe that the Sermon on the Mount and the Sermon on the Plain are two different accounts of the same sermon, with variations due to the perspectives of the Gospel writers, Matthew and Luke.
Different Sermons
Other scholars argue that they are separate events. They point out that Jesus often taught similar messages in different locations, tailoring his teachings to the specific audience and context. The differences in location, audience, and some content details support the idea that Jesus delivered these sermons on different occasions.
Ultimately, whether they are the same sermon or different ones, both the Sermon on the Mount and the Sermon on the Plain convey central aspects of Jesus' teachings and ethics. They share common themes such as love, mercy, humility, and justice.
Now I am of the opinion they are the same sermon just told in different ways. Actually, more like a series of sayings of Jesus with different emphasis. The blessings are close, Matthew has eight, Luke shortens it to four. Luke also adds for woes which Matthew does not include.
Matthew says Jesus spoke from a mountain. I think because he wants to show that Jesus is a new Moses. He is not changing the law but Jesus does expand on some of the commandments.
Luke has the sermon on the plain because his emphasis is on how the Gospel has a leveling effect. I like to say it is an example of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. Jesus is speaking to a large number of people from all over the region, everyone is equally addressed, and the Gospel is inclusive
The follow on sayings are different because Matthew has his own interests, and Luke wants to emphasize something slightly different.
Now someone can literally take these two accounts and say they cannot both be true unless they may be given at different times. Yet, given their place in the order of the Mathew and Luke accounts, I would say they are one and the same sermon.
Is one of the stories a historical account of what actually happened and the other not so accurate? That is not the question we should be asking. Rather, the question is what are the truths that are presented in both accounts/
True. But it is very hard to determine the human side of Jesus. The gospels emphasized the divine side. We catch glimpses. We know he got tired from time to time. We know he wept at the death of his friend. He had friends! We know he was discouraged. We know he became angry, we also know he feared death, Beyond that, it is speculation.
Really, you see his humanity all over the place. What about his reaction to the death of John the Baptist--when he was desperate to get away for some time alone, only to find a huge crowd awaiting him and clamoring for healing and feeding? You can argue whether his compassion was human or divine, but the need to get away is purely human. And that continued when night came and he finally succeeded in getting some quiet time to pray.
You see him reacting humanly every time he has an argument with someone--which is pretty much ALL the time--because can anyone argue with God? Not an easy thing to do, unless that God has become human, and made himself available to argue with. And with Jesus, some even manage to WIN that argument.
You see him exasperated, as he was when they came down from the Mt. of transfiguration, only to find his disciples unable to satisfy a crowd by casting out a demon, and Jesus has to step in and fix the problem.
You see him teasing his disciples on occasion--once, when he asks them to provide a solution for the problem of 5,000 plus hungry people, and their eyes bug out; once, when he takes a stroll on the lake, and "acted like he was going to pass them" in their boat; once, when he sends Peter to pay the temple tax (probably with the tax collectors standing right there watching!) by catching a fish and looking in its mouth for the money; once, when he meets up with the two on their way to Emmaus, who refuse to believe the testimony of the women regarding his resurrection, and Jesus allows them to make fools of themselves speaking to the very one who was crucified and risen, as if he had no idea what had happened in Jerusalem last week.
Do I need to go on?
Either way, the Sermon on the Mount vs the Sermon on the Plain seems like a totally different conversation about how the Gospels are put together. I’m not really seeing what it has to do with the humanity of Jesus.
Well, that’s not quite true. I have no problem at all supposing that Jesus’s teachings—sermons, if you will—in various places had core commonalities with localized differences. That seems quite human.
The point is that we don't have to take them literally in order to find truth, even today with the obsession with literal truth by both Christians and anti-Christians.
How do we understand the witness of the Church, or perhaps the different witness perspectives of the different Gospel authors and the understandings of the different communities to which they were written?
Why does Matthew alter what he found in Mark. Apart from the perhaps added ending , Matthew has Jesus' mission and the mission he sent his disciples on as being primarily to te Jews on Jewish territory, though through faith some gentiles might be accepted. E.g. Both his feedings of the crowds were on Jewish territory; the Syrophoenician woman is changed to a Caananite woman. The gospels are theological constructs rather than biographies.
My response was to the general question of whether we can take the gospels has historical accounts. To me, not really. They are testimonials which present eternal truths. That's why I compared the two sermons.
Sure, I get that, but when it comes to the OP theme it seems to me that most of us here appear to accept both Christ's humanity and his divinity. Unless something in the varied Gospel accounts can alter that perception in some way then I'm not sure why we are discussing textual differences and variations in this specific thread.
Why not have a more generic thread on why Gospel accounts differ and what particular emphasis or 'agenda' each of the Gospel writers had?
As interesting and illuminating as it might be to undertake close textual analysis of that kind, I'm not sure what the point of it would be in this particular context - unless it was either to reinforce or challenge our particular beliefs.
'Hey, having compared the Synoptic accounts I'm even more convinced that Christ is fully God and fully human...'
Or, 'Heck! There are so many contradictions or anomalies here that I can't understand how the Church ever came to believe that Christ is fully God and fully man ...'
Perhaps I'm being simplistic.
What can we say about the gospels', and then the epistles', character Jesus' humanity? Up against his divine nature?
There is no question for me that the latter is fiction, not lies, good will is fully extended to all, and the maximum possible natural historicity of the person. But we can put that to one side.
How quickly was the man of sorrows motif of Deutero-Isaiah attached to him?
He was a publicly emotional man: Jesus wept. Moved by and for people every time. Angered by cruelty and injustice. All most human.
It's no stretch for me to accept the version of Jesus that is 100% human and 100% divine.
What I struggle with is the redefinition of "human" this implies for the rest of us, because He Himself said "All I have done, you will do, and more", and I don't think He was blowing smoke up our whatsis.
Well, I don't struggle that much, but I do wonder how to live into the potential of such an implication. Like how exactly do I live into the "divine" part of being "human"?
I've had a few pointers along the way and have experienced moments of what I can only describe as transcendent full-waking awareness of the power source that animates this version of me. So I perceive that it's not an impossibility to glimpse that far shore, but how to gain the toehold and dwell both there, and here, as He did? I just wish there was a manual or something.
Maybe there is a manual and I'm just reading it wrong, like upside down or backwards or in the wrong language. I think though, from the slim-to-no experience I have, the starting point is definitely with The Great Commandment.
AFF