Creating the picture for the previous post reminded me of how little Jesus, assuming he actually existed, knew of the consequences of his ‘ministry’. Here’s a few of the things he either didn’t do or had no knowledge of while he lived.
- Jesus never read a single word of the New Testament. The earliest of its books, I Thessalonians, was written about twenty years after he died. The New Testament did not appear in its entirety until the end of the 4th century.
- He never read any of the accounts of his life, the first of which didn’t appear until about forty years after his death.
- He had no control at all over what went in any of the gospels.
- He did not endorse them in any way, nor verify their accuracy.
- He never met Paul nor was he aware of the fantastical claims Paul would make about him.
- He had no idea he would come to be regarded as God.
- He did not know that soon after his death, people would worship him as God.
- He would not have anticipated that his teaching would be adapted for a Gentile audience. It is unlikely he would have approved if he had.
- He had no idea a new religion would be created in his name.
- He did not know anything about, nor did he anticipate, the Church. His apparent acknowledgement of it is a fabrication.
- He did not know the damage those who followed him would do in his name.
- He did not know that the Kingdom of God would never arrive on Earth, nor that the Romans would continue to dominate it for a further 400 years.
- He did not know the world would continue pretty much as it was for another 2000 years.
- He did not know of the scientific discoveries that would be made in those years that would invalidate his beliefs and worldview.
- He did not know that, forty years after his ‘ministry’, the Jerusalem temple would be destroyed by the Romans. His ‘prophecy’ of it is a fabrication written after the event.
- He did not know of the world beyond the Roman Empire, if he was aware even of that. He certainly did not know of the American continent.
- He had no knowledge of the United States, founded more than 1,700 years after he died.
- He had no concept of most, if not all, of the concerns of today’s evangelicals: religious liberty, right-wing politics, guns, abortion, ‘the homosexual agenda’.
- He had no idea what his legacy would be: the arrested development of millions and of western society itself; pogroms, persecutions and inquisitions; a corrupt and abusive church; the psychological damage caused to innumerable people; his name hi-jacked for political causes he had never heard of and almost certainly would not have approved of.
None of this is what he saw for himself. He thought he would be ruling the world with his besties on behalf of Yahweh. Like every other mortal, he had no idea of anything that would happen after his lifetime. What does this tell us about him?