Jeshurun - a retelling of the Gospel story

[formergothardite]

This can be moved to Worldly Distractions if needed, I wasn't exactly sure where it would fit in at. Anyway, I'm in the middle of reading this book:

http://www.amazon.com/Jeshurun-ebook/dp/B00138QW5U

It is a telling of the Gospel story except it all takes place in a boy's school. Sound's weird, but it ends up working. The school was founding by the Headmaster, but none of the students have heard from him and despite horrible things happening in the school all under his name, He doesn't do anything to stop it. And then The Special Student (Jesus) shows up and turns the place upside down.

I don't know if this was the aim of the author, but I am coming away from this book totally understanding the Jew's side of the story and why they had such hatred for Jesus. Just reading the Bible, I never really got why most Jews wanted Jesus killed, but something about seeing the word's of Jesus set in a different time period makes me understand. I can't even stand Jesus in this book and a good portion of his part is almost directly quoting the Bible.

I don't know, I just have always viewed Jesus as this nice, kind of hippy guy, but now, I can see how he could be really annoying. Especially towards people who had been following religious traditions for thousands of years. And to have this guy show up and say "Hey you are doing it all wrong." No wonder they didn't like him.

I haven't actually finished the book because Jesus annoys me so much. LOL

[debrand]

I don't think that most Jewish people actually hated Jesus. They probably didn't even know who he was. The New Testament uses the word, Jew to mean the hierachy among the Jewish religious leaders. Even among the Jewish leaders, there were some who seemed to like Jesus.

To be honest, I should probably add that I don't think Jesus existed. There were many Jewish people living in Rome and I've read that there were some conversion to Judiasm among the Romans. My theory(and it is mine alone) is that a Jewish person who was very familiar with the different mystery religions(or a follower of one of the mystery religions who was familiar with Judiasm) wanted to make certain aspects of his faith more palable to the Romans. So, he-or she-combined a Jewish Messiah with some aspects of the eastern religions that were gaining popularity in Rome. Most people think Jesus existed though so my theory is mine alone. LOL

[formergothardite]

Growing up I was always taught that almost all the Jewish people hated Jesus. I really don't think the Bible is the true story of Jesus, even if he did exist. But up until I started reading that book I never really got that the Jesus I was taught existed really wasn't that great of a guy.

[debrand]

Growing up I was always taught that almost all the Jewish people hated Jesus. I really don't think the Bible is the true story of Jesus, even if he did exist. But up until I started reading that book I never really got that the Jesus I was taught existed really wasn't that great of a guy.

The fig tree he destroyed probably wasn't that fond of him. I also was always disturbed by the story of the nonJewish woman begging for help. The one who has to tell him even dogs get the crumbs. A lot of people find that story beautiful, I never did. It used to bother me that the Roman soldier didn't have to beg for help. Jesus just offered to come to his house and praised him when the soldier showed faith.

Jesus stole the two greatest commandments from Hillel. Another Jewish scholar had already said that the two greatest commandments were to love your neighbor as yourself and to love god with you entire being. Hillel did not claim to be a Messiah.

[debrand]

I do like certain parts of the gospel story. Jesus put a lot of emphasis on helping others and feeding the poor. However, I don't think that anything Jesus taught was not already found in Jewish thinking.

[valsa]

But up until I started reading that book I never really got that the Jesus I was taught existed really wasn't that great of a guy.

I know. I hate it when people use that Gandhi quote "I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ", because it always leaves me thinking, "Actually, Jesus could be kind of an asshole too. So... not all that unlike many Christians."