Jesus Was a 1st Century Jew

No, seriously… he was

Here’s the thing. Christians have traditionally believed that Jesus of Nazarath is the God-man: fully divine and fully human. No one can possibly fathom or explain what that means, and I don’t hesitate to tell you that I struggle with this whole notion intellectually and spiritually, but that’s for another time, and I digress.

But to get to my point, in my experience, it’s that “fully human” part that gets short shrift. Christians are sometimes very quick to affirm “Jesus was God,” especially in some heated debate. But Jesus’s humanity? Much less so, even though that aspect is essential. 

To say it, however, is easy. More difficult is fielding the implications of Jesus’s full humanity.

My friend and colleague, Kent Sparks, makes quite a point of this in his wonderful book Sacred Word, Broken Word (which I can’t recommend highly enough). On page 28 he writes, 

A good case can be made for the idea that Jesus expressed his theology using imagery (sometimes violent imagery) that was shaped and bounded by perspectives prevalent in his own day. (my emphasis)"

I am drawn to those bolded words: that Jesus had a theology and that it was shaped and bounded by this cultural time and place.

I know few Christians who would disagree with this, at least not at first, until you begin scratching the surface. 

Jesus had a theology–like all other Jews he had a set of beliefs that he inherited and made his own. Was Jesus’s theology handed to him by virtue of his divine nature, or was it shaped and bounded by when and where he lived? Perhaps both? I’m not sure, but the implications of Jesus having a theology shaped and bounded by his existence cannot be brushed aside as a peripheral issue.

This is the scandal of the incarnation. It is not that “God became human” in some generic sense, but that God enmeshed Godself with a particular human–with DNA passed down for generations, who picked up his parents' habits (good and bad), and thought about things like others of his time.

How deep down does Jesus’s humanity go? All the way down, if “fully human” means anything. Sure, “fully human, but without sin” (though what that means and implies can be debated), but “without sin” cannot be used to distance Jesus from his humanity.

Did Jesus know French? Is not knowing French “sinful”? No, it is what it is to be a 1st century Jew. Could Jesus have offered the world a cure for cancer, or at least some wisdom about disinfecting wounds or the benefits of boiling water before you drink it? No. How could he? He was a 1st century Jew, shaped and bounded by his time.

“But…HE WAS GOD.”

OK, but is Jesus’s divinity ever at the expense of his full humanity? I don’t think so. Jesus may not have been merely human, but he was definitely not less than human. That is part of the mystery of the incarnation

The list of topics to discuss here go on and on. 

Did Jesus believe in the imminent inauguration of the kingdom of God, as the New Testament writers certainly did? If he did, how do we account for it not having happened yet? How do we fold that into our Christology?

Jesus seemed to believe God was “up” somewhere, even though our understanding of the cosmos at present makes that notion impossible. (There is no absolute “up.”) But who can fault a 1st century Jew for thinking that?

I don’t want to belabor the point, but I wish that question had been addressed more deliberately in my Christian education, especially in seminary. There, Jesus’s full humanity was posed essentially as the necessary qualification for him being a sacrifice for our sins (and hence the relentless focus on Jesus’s sinlessness).

But now I am interested in cogitating more deliberately on the theological implications of Jesus as a 100% encultured human being–and how knowing that more deeply could actually connect me more meaningfully and intimately to my Creator.

I find it a bit amusing and also hopeful that at my stage of life I find myself still asking afresh, “Who is Jesus, really?” I don’t think that’s a question that should ever be shelved, for we are talking about the mystery of God.