Jesus Christ: Looking through the Lens of History

Jesus Christ: Looking through the Lens of History

Prof. H. Srikanth

History bears witness to great teachers or social reformers who through their ideas and actions have transformed the course of human destiny. As long as they are viewed as human beings, their thoughts and deeds inspire us. But when their teachings get institutionalized as a religion, these teachers no longer appear to us as human beings. They assume separate supernatural statuses. The people attribute miracles to them, draw a halo around their image, and begin worshipping them as gods who would save us from problems. That happened to Gautama Buddha, and also to Jesus Christ.

Unlike mythological gods, Jesus was a historical person who lived in Judea at a point in time. Judea then was an independent state that comprised the present-day territories of Israel, Palestine, Jordan, and parts of Lebanon and Syria. After the death of King Herod, it became a tutelage of the Roman Empire.

The Roman rulers oppressed the Jews. They used to appoint and depose high priests and meddle in Jewish religious beliefs. Corruption became rampant, and the people were forced to pay exorbitant taxes to the state and to religious priests. Class differences appeared, and those who were close to the Roman rulers and religious priests prospered, while the farmers lost their lands and the labourers and tenants lived in extreme poverty. Women were subjected to various types of patriarchal oppression and discrimination. The lepers and prostitutes were viewed as sinners. The miserable life that they had to live made the common people look for a messiah to free them from oppression. Jesus was born and rose to prominence in such a social environment. 

Jesus wrote nothing about himself. All that we know about Jesus’ life was from the New Testament, which is basically a compilation of the accounts of his disciples who wrote about Jesus years after his crucifixion, somewhere between 40 and 100 AD. If we keep aside mythological beliefs, their accounts of Jesus also help us know him as a person. His life was not a bed of roses. After his birth, his family had to flee from place to place. His father was a carpenter, and Jesus learnt the craft from him. It is said that between the ages of 12 and 30, Jesus travelled to different places, acquired knowledge from different sources and prepared himself to preach a new religion of his own. 

How did Jesus spread his thoughts? He did not seek royal patronage, nor did he rely on the established religious platforms. Instead, he created a band of followers from among the ordinary men and women. Most of his disciples and followers–barring some exceptions like Mathews, Mary Magdylene and Nicodemus, were poor, semi-literate, or illiterate persons. He addressed the concerns of the masses, counselled them, and won them over with his qualities of head and heart. They adored Jesus as the Christ, a messiah, and followed him wherever he went. The teacher and his followers led a communal life; worked and ate together and shared what little they had. The life that Jesus Christ and his disciples lived was more like the one that true communist revolutionaries advocate and practice.     

True, Jesus was not a materialist philosopher like Marx. He believed in God and used the religious idiom of the Old Testament with which the Hebrews were familiar. He declared he had come not to abolish the Law or the Prophets, but to fulfil them. But what Jesus actually propagated through his teachings was radically different from the dominant ideas of the time he lived in. The God Jesus spoke of was not an ethnic god of the Jews. He viewed God as the God of all people, cutting across gender, ethnicity and nations. Jesus Christ opposed mechanical rituals and sacrifices associated with the religion. He made it clear: “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath”. Jesus was clear when he preached: “No external rules can make you clean. The heart is the problem. Be born again, receive mercy, and live a new life from the inside out”.

Jesus humanized the idea of God and brought God from heaven to the earth. He declared, the kingdom of God or heaven is among us, within us. God’s kingdom is not a place for the select, rich and privileged; God is accessible to everyone. By claiming that all human beings are sons of God, and hence all are equal in God’s eyes, Jesus democratized the idea of God.

Unlike the earlier representations of God as one who punishes the sinners, Jesus portrayed God as a Dear Father, loving, merciful. God rejects no one; embraces even the sinners who repent. Jesus advised the rich not to exploit the poor; respect them as human beings and to give them what is due to them. His preference for the poor becomes apparent from his words: “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God”. The masses got attracted towards him, as his ideas infused a sense of dignity, and helped them overcome guilt, inferiority, and powerlessness. They saw hope in Jesus and viewed him as the one sent by God to relieve them from pain and suffering. His growing popularity among the masses infuriated the religious elites and made the Romans suspect his motives.

The Roman Republic witnessed several revolts from within. In 73-71 BC, Spartacus led the slaves and revolted against Rome. There were revolts against the Roman rule in the colonies they ruled. Even in Judea, the people hated the Romans, and there were underground groups fighting against the Roman rule. Some such radicals joined Jesus believing that he would lead a violent political revolution to dethrone the Roman rule.

According to sources, Simon, who followed Jesus, was earlier associated with the Jewish revolutionary group. It was therefore natural that the Roman authorities were tracking their activities. Jesus and his followers had to move from place to place to escape the gaze of the Roman authorities and the religious priests. Jesus never endorsed the Roman rule. But he disappointed the revolutionaries as he emphasized a change of heart more than a change of the system. He avoided a direct confrontation with the state. He advocated nonviolence. Apparently, he gave the impression that he was fighting for another world–the kingdom of God. Was that his belief, or was he taking a tactical position?

From the texts, we understand even Jesus got angry and became furious when he saw corruption in the temples. He drove out the merchants and overturned the moneychangers’ tables in the temple. This act of Jesus raises the question of why he chose not to display to the world that side of his personality again. That may be for pragmatic reasons. Jesus probably felt that what was needed the most then was to unite and organize the poor, free them from the clutches of corrupt religious heads, and empower them to face the colonial rule. Although he avoided direct confrontation, the ruling elite was not comfortable with him and his Ministry. They viewed his growing popularity as a threat, and hence got him imprisoned, tried and crucified. After the crucifixion, his faithful disciples gave shape to early Christianity. Many of them were harassed and killed for spreading his ideas. Probable that his disciples felt the need to project Jesus as God to gain legitimacy and withstand the repression. During his lifetime, Jesus preached for only three to four years. But his ideas survived and spread far beyond Judea because of the sacrifices and hard work of his faithful followers.

A couple of centuries later, the Roman rulers, who were once instrumental in the death of Jesus, made Christianity as state religion. What was once the religion of the poor and the marginalized got institutionalized and came under the control of the same classes or groups of people that opposed Jesus when he was alive. Christianity lost its simplicity and became a ritualistic religion. With the rich joining it, Christianity lost much of its emancipatory character and became the apostle of feudal rule in medieval Europe. By turning Jesus, once believed to be a Messiah, into a God, and by playing on the idea of sin more than the idea of love, the institutionalized Church diverted people’s attention from the essential teachings of Jesus. Several progressive Christian reformers and radical groups sought to resurrect the simple and essential teachings of Jesus.

Jesus was a radical humanist who identified with and fought for the emancipation of the poor and the marginalized. Does it really matter whether Jesus is a god? Irrespective of the religion to which one belongs, Jesus deserves everyone’s respect and adoration for the life he spent and for the teachings he left for posterity.

Prof. H. Srikanth, Department of Political Science, North-Eastern Hill University , hskant@gmail.com

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