Jesus is both a religious figure and a real, historical person who lived in the
first century AD. Scholars have long scoured archaeological and historical
records for evidence of how he really lived. This is the untold truth of Jesus.
Jesus preached a form of peaceful resistance that often gets misinterpreted. He's often
associated with advocating for "turning the other cheek," but he actually taught
powerful lessons about resistance. Jews suffered under Roman rule in Palestine,
and there were different approaches for confronting this situation.
"Peter, turn the other cheek."
Some chose to live by the sword as Zealots or assassins. Others,
like the Essenes , fled to caves where they copied and preserved the Dead Sea Scrolls.
Still others, like the Pharisees and the Sadducees, attempted to maintain
leadership roles and prestige by cooperating with the Roman authorities to various degrees.
Jesus' advice for people living through these tumultuous times was for peaceful resistance.
As noted by biblical scholar Dr. Walter Wink, Jesus specifically references getting slapped
on the right cheek, which implies the slapper used the back of his right hand. But if the
person being slapped turned the other cheek, it would force the person committing the violence to
use the back of their left hand. In other words, it would cause the slapper to admit their action
was unclean, as the left hand was reserved for unclean tasks like going to the bathroom.
Jesus came from a Jewish family and taught as a rabbi. He didn't talk about starting
a new religion, and he kept the Mosaic laws, feasts, and traditions of Judaism,
as his family had for generations. According to religious scholar Shaye J.D. Cohen,
"To say that [Jesus] was a Jew is saying a truism, is simply stating an idea that
is so obvious on the face of it, one wonders if it even needs to be said. But, of course,
it does need to be said because we all know what happens later in the story,
where it turns out that Christianity becomes something other than Judaism."
We also know that historians such as Josephus referred to
the followers of Jesus as being from the "tribe of Christians."
And these believers called themselves followers of "the Way." Therefore, it bears repeating that
the early message of Jesus should be viewed through the lens of first-century Judaism.
As widely known as the name "Jesus" is, if you could travel back to first-century
Roman Palestine, nobody would know who you were talking about if you actually
asked for "Jesus,” because this name comes from the Greco-Roman "Iesous".
But in Hebrew, it's Yeshua. Meaning "to deliver" or "to rescue," it provides an
important perspective on this historical figure. It was a popular name of the time,
as archaeologists have discovered the tombs of 71 people named Yeshua.
There are 30 references to the name in the Old Testament, concerning four different characters.
While some people might see this as a contentious issue, it's really more a matter of a translation
issue. Either way, we ought to cut the first translators of the New Testament some slack.
After all, the modern languages that we speak today didn't exist yet.
And what about Jesus' last name? It wouldn't have been "Christ," a title
that translates as the "anointed one" or "king." Contemporaries of Jesus either
used their father's name or their home region to denote their identity, so when translated
into English, he would be either "Jesus of Nazareth" or "Jesus, son of Joseph."
Jesus ended up being crucified by the Roman Empire on charges of sedition because of his teachings
about the "Kingdom of Heaven." Crucifixion was so brutal that only non-Roman citizens were
punished this way. It represented the Romans' ultimate political weapon, instilling terror in
anyone who thought twice about sedition. As bestselling author Stephen Mansfield
described it in a 2014 article, crucifixion represented, quote, "an act of state terror."
Before stumbling upon this horrific form of punishment,
the Roman Empire tested many other torture methods, everything from stoning, strangling,
burning, and boiling in oil. So what made them settle on crucifixion for
so many Jewish men of this time? It sent a lingering, painful, and very visual message.
How did this nasty practice get started in the first place? It likely began with the Assyrians
or Babylonians. By the sixth century B.C., the historical record shows that the Persians also
practiced crucifixion. But these punishments occurred on trees rather than wooden crosses.
The later development of the wooden cross came about thanks to the Romans.
But how did they stumble across this punishment, especially considering
their lack of interaction with the Assyrians, Babylonians, and Persians? As it turned out,
they encountered it when they fought against Carthage during the third-century-B.C. Punic Wars.
As the saying goes, children are the future. As a society, we tend to celebrate their curiosity,
innocence, and overall cuteness. But growing up in the Roman world remained a
vicious and precarious endeavor. Infants were routinely left outside to die of exposure,
and selling them into slavery and prostitution were also commonplace.
In essence, minors had no rights. Therefore, as The Week argued in a 2015 article,
"Christianity invented children."
This happened not only by protecting their lives, but also by ascribing special worth to them.
And it all started with Jesus' teachings. Besides setting a precedent for how children should be
valued, the New Testament also spoke about the ancient world's preponderance towards overlooking
and mistreating one of the world's most vulnerable populations. This lesson also extended beyond
children, to all individuals facing abuse due to their class, identity, and background.
"You, all of you, are to be special."
Jesus consistently taught about the importance of individual rights,
and he stood up for oppressed members of society. He gained a negative reputation among the
religious elites of the day for rubbing elbows with the likes of sinners, lepers, sex workers,
tax collectors, beggars, and Samaritans. In a time when rabbis wouldn't help an injured person,
for fear of becoming "unclean," Jesus set a rigorous standard for caring
based on the concept that all people are equally important in God's eyes.
He also earned a reputation for hanging out with the people that society cast aside.
According to Brad Chilcott, writing for The Guardian in 2017,
"Jesus was overtly on the side of the poor, the excluded, the ignored, the disenfranchised,
and the exploited. He was on their side when it damaged his reputation, his earning potential,
and any hope he had of moving up the ranks of religious or political power. "
Jesus set a rigorous standard for the downtrodden and how they should be treated.
No wonder then that he ended up running afoul of
the religious and political authorities of the region. As further argued by Chilcott,
"[Jesus] was on their side when he drove out the price-manipulators
and rent-seekers in the temple courts, and he was on their side when it cost him his life."
Like children, women occupied the bottom of the social totem pole during Jesus' time.
Nowhere did this prove more true than within the confines of first-century Judaism,
where women were stoned to death for little more than accusations of adultery.
But Jesus operated against this norm, as he regularly addressed women in public at
a time when they remained generally ignored by men and were treated as second-class citizens.
In the way that Jesus spoke to women, he afforded them spiritual equality with men,
and he treated them as individuals with a degree of self-determination over their own lives.
As Liberty University Professor James A. Borland wrote in Crossway in 2017,
"Jesus' regard for women was much different from that of his contemporaries [...] For Christ,
women have an intrinsic value equal to that of men."
The reason that Jesus treated women so radically differently than his first-century peers was
because he saw them as people first. His actions exemplified his belief system. He conversed with
women in public, something many Jewish religious leaders would've avoided, and he made them a vital
focus of his healing ministry. He also collected a massive following of female believers and treated
his mother with a level of respect and care not typical of his day. Inspired by his life
and teachings, the New Testament also placed a significant focus on women. The Book of Luke,
for example, often explores Jesus' ministry from the point of view of the women around him.
At this point, it's not an exaggeration to say that compassion didn't abound in the Roman Empire.
In a world where fathers killed their kids and even their wives without repercussions, it's
no stretch to say that there existed a general lack of concern for those who suffered. The same
goes for how the Roman government responded to times of plague and other catastrophic events.
But Jesus turned this paradigm on its head, advocating for rigorous care of fellow human
beings independent of the categories that so often condemned people in the ancient world, like class,
gender, and religious beliefs. Jesus' teachings even led to the establishment
of treatment centers for lepers, which in turn became the forerunners to hospitals.
Through his teachings and the examples that he set working among the needy,
Jesus paved the way for charitable organizations.
What's more, in his teachings he demanded a new vision of society concerning the Kingdom of God,
which placed a premium on the value of human life and the celebration of fundamental civil rights.
"Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the Earth."
Toxic masculinity is a hot topic of conversation today, but it's safe to say
that most contemporary men have nothing on those who lived thousands of years ago. Ancient Greeks,
Romans, and Jews prized values like wisdom and courage. Humility fell nowhere in the mix. Men
of the ancient world bragged about their accomplishments, whether the exploits of
warriors or religious theatrics. Against this unbridled braggadocio, Jesus' exhortations to
humility proved countercultural. As historian John Dickson has argued,
"It is unlikely that any of us would aspire to this virtue were it not for the historical
impact of his crucifixion […] Our culture remains cruciform long after it stopped being Christian."
The lessons that Jesus taught his disciples, and the world, regarding how to treat others
have had lasting repercussions. His name remains synonymous with forgiveness, so it's easy to
forget that he preached to a society where forgiveness had no real utility. After all,
the ancient world ran on the principles of rewarding friends and punishing enemies. This
approach to life dominated everything. No wonder that political theorist Hannah Arendt wrote,
"The Discoverer of the role of forgiveness in the realm of human affairs was Jesus of Nazareth."
While other examples of forgiveness exist before
Jesus, it's safe to say he made the concept both famous and commonplace.
"Go, and sin no more."
Although many people associate Jesus exclusively with Christianity, he's also an important figure
in Islam, along with his mother Mary and the angel Gabriel. Jesus is the son of the Virgin Mary,
the only woman mentioned by name in the entire Quran. As for Jesus himself,
he's a celebrated prophet who's mentioned 25 times in the Quran. For this reason,
when his name is spoken, it's followed by the phrase "peace be upon him."
In these stories, Jesus is portrayed as performing miracles and healings. What's more,
the Quran prophesies that he will come back at the end of the world to defeat al-Masih ad-Dajjal,
whom Christians know better as the Antichrist. Of course, these
connections shouldn't minimize the fundamental differences between Christianity and Islam.
After all, Muslims don't consider Jesus the son of God, a distinction that shouldn't be ignored.
Nevertheless, the importance of Jesus to the Quran shouldn't be underestimated either.
As the imam Dr. Omar Suleiman wrote in Religion News Service in 2020,
"It is not an exaggeration to say that I could not be a Muslim without believing in
Jesus [...] While we Muslims fundamentally differ with our Christian brethren on the Trinity,
crucifixion, and salvation, our belief in Jesus is fundamental to our faith."
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