Jesus, Alexander and the Book

Let me tell you about Alexander The Great

According to the ancient Greek biographer Plutarch, Olympias, on the eve of the consummation of her marriage to Philip, dreamed that her womb was struck by a thunder bolt, causing a flame that spread "far and wide" before dying away. Some time after the wedding, Philip is said to have seen himself, in a dream, securing his wife's womb with a seal engraved with a lion's image.^[11] Plutarch offered a variety of interpretations of these dreams: that Olympias was pregnant before her marriage, indicated by the sealing of her womb; or that Alexander's father was Zeus. Ancient commentators were divided about whether the ambitious Olympias promulgated the story of Alexander's divine parentage, variously claiming that she had told Alexander, or that she dismissed the suggestion as impious.^[11]

In short, Alexander's birth was miraculous and the circumstances faintly echo what we read in Matthew. The stories we read in the New Testament are of this "genre". But there can be no doubt that Alexander actually lived. Whatever the details of his birth may have been, or how historians may disagree about the details of his life, it is certain that he totally re-drew the map of the Middle East and had a pivotal effect on everything that came after him.

The FIRST step in understanding what Jesus actually taught is to treat the issue historically, like we would with Alexander. With all historical texts, you need to ask who the writer is, when he wrote and, above all, what he's trying to say about the issues that were "in the air" at the time he wrote. I've read many of the "apocryphal" Gospels (such as Thomas) which also have the life of Jesus as their theme, but with stunningly different "theology". I've also studied writings from about the same time (The Dead Sea Scrolls), which shed light on the theological ideas "in the wind" in the time and place of Jesus' life. What I think about him (and I only consider it to be an informed opinion) is that he stood out in important ways, while showing continuity of thinking with the other prophets of his day (Such as John the Baptist).

People in the mainstream in contemporary Biblical interpretation, study ancient writings from all the Mediterranean and civilizations of the time. We read the Bible as a collection of historical/theological essays. We hear the voice of the writers distinctly from the voice of the events and people they write about.  People who read the book this way don't escape disputes over muddy issues, but the discussions can proceed as they do on any historical issue with a mixture of evidence, interpretation, theory and pure rhetoric. In such discussions, nobody can escape the strong influence of the time and place of the historian.

Sadly, discussions are pointless with those who approach the issue from a purely religious point of view. These folks actively hostile to the idea that the Bible was written by real people with a real point of view.  People who read the Book as a collections of quotes from the Almighty get into worse trouble by delegating their most important decisions to leaders who don't value the texts enough to actually study them.  Ironically, the voices of hundreds of unique personalities in the Bible (including Jesus) are lost to these people. They cut themselves off from the traditions of their own culture, surrendering their own sense of time and place. 

Of course, you can't discuss any issue with folks who don't care about the issue at all, so I will refrain from attempting to comment on particular issues in this note. Such a discussion would introduce you a few of the other people in the New Testament. These authors never actually met Jesus or even met anyone who did meet Jesus, but these types of account of his life and teachings are all we have. The further you get from first-hand accounts, the more "spin" you encounter.  You can even go so far as to ask how fundamental ideas were spun by Jesus himself, who was, after all, a product of his time and place just like the rest of us.