This booklet comprises a number of essays, in no way sequential, sometimes overlapping.
They are offered to pew-sitters who might welcome an interpretation
other than those normally delivered from our pulpits.
Most of the conclusions are not modern nor do they claim to be original
and may be found within the welter of weightier tomes
which may be outside the normal reading practice of those who endeavour to emulate Jesus.

For over eighty years I have been puzzled by the 'truths' expounded by those steeped in Christian theology.
Increasingly so over recent years. I have learned that I am not alone on this path.
Most regular church-goers are subject to instructions based on selected readings
of Holy Scripture determined by the lectionary,
receive a somewhat skewed exposition of the teachings of Jesus.
You may have wondered why many passages in the Bible are never preached upon,
or questioned why certain reported sayings reveal teaching
which is not consonant with the corpus of his instruction.
You may have come to believe that the four gospels were the only reports of his ministry,
but not been told that fragments of at least twenty others have been unearthed,
or that no original manuscripts have been recovered.
Most of us are unaware that the letters of Paul (he wrote only seven of the thirteen attributed to him)
were written before any of the canonical gospels,
even though the latter precedes them in our New Testament.
Despite over a century of Biblical scholarship,
the instruction we receive every Sunday rarely reflects the new knowledge made available by those scholars,
many of whom the church has done its utmost to silence.
If you belong to the frustrated few who find it difficult to square the Jewish perceptions of 2000 years ago
with the rapidly expanding knowledge available to today's everyman,
I hope you may discover in this booklet another view from the pew.

SHALOM.

2. The wilderness years

When we decide to differentiate between the Christ of faith
defined by the church as an icon and an object of worship and the historic Jesus,
we have to set about the task of identifying the latter.

The Gospels are unreliable sources of information,
but they present us with almost all the available evidence about him.
One of the events in the life of Jesus that is an enigma to me concerns his sojourn in the wilderness .
It does not appear in the earliest Christian writings (the seven authentic letters of St. Paul),
nor in the fourth Gospel.
The aspects of the episode which puzzle me include:-
• Did it actually happen?
• If it did, could any human survive for a long period without food and water?
• How could Jesus be ‘taken’ to the parapet of the Temple in Jerusalem whilst still in the desert?
• What made him undertake this task?
• How did it come to be recorded?
If we discount the fictitious birth and childhood stories of Jesus, his first appearance is at his baptism.
After this we read that Jesus went into the wilderness, a fact which is recorded many times.
Many scholars and clergy believe that, for at least some time, Jesus remained as one of John’s followers.
Then it seems that Jesus experienced a shift in his position, distancing him from some of John’s views.
This may have been a time of re-appraisal, which is usually best done in privacy and isolation.
So here is a possible answer to one of my problems -
Jesus went somewhere to clarify his views and formulate his life’s plan.
Maybe he considered miracle-working.
Complying with the wishes of the masses would also be a sure-fire way to success, both described as temptations.
However, I cannot visualise him relating all these details to his hearers- unless as memories of another event.

We return to the first and chief question - did it really happen?
A mere twenty desert miles away from Jerusalem was the Qumran community,
where people lived a communal life rather like the early Christians described in the Acts of the Apostles.
By the time of Jesus, this settlement had been in existence for between one and two hundred years.
It is believed that these folk, who were ‘zealous for the law’, had deserted Jerusalem,
wishing to have no contact with those who distorted and corrupted their religion.
Further, we have extra-Biblical evidence that a number of religious intellectuals were extant at this time
and may possibly have had connections with the Qumran group.
John himself may have had dealings with them (he is said to spent time "in the desert").
What if Jesus had made his way to this ‘wilderness’ settlement and spent some time in their company.
Some of these folk were all for political action but this was not the way Jesus saw it.
Some of the sayings, which scholars think did not originate from Jesus,
could have been gleaned whilst he lived among them.

Whatever happened after he left the Jordan, he came back to Galilee and began to assemble a group of disciples.
His method and message were obviously at odds with those of John, who, it appears, later questioned his ministry.
We sometimes use the expression “wilderness years” to describe a time of uncertainty and non-achievement.
Those of us who have lost our earlier enthusiasm for church going may feel that we are experiencing wilderness years.
People like us are gathering into, or searching for, groups of like-minded folk,
in order to go deeper into the meaning of life than organised Christianity allows..

3. The misunderstood Magdalene

When Dan Brown's 'The Da Vinci Code' hit the headlines, it provoked strong reaction among many religious people,
particularly Catholics, with the idea that Jesus had been married.

A United REFORMED Church preacher forcefully voiced his condemnation of the novel claiming that it had no historical basis.
He stated quite unequivocally that the Bible says that Jesus was not married,
but there is no direct reference to that.
However, we do find several clues which hint at a possible married state for Jesus.
Mark and Luke both inform us that Mary Magdalene and Mary his mothertook spices to the tomb to embalm his body.
In those days, only female next of kin - mother or wife of the deceased - would be permitted to perform that rite.
So Mary the mother was there and might we assume that the other woman was the wife?

In John's gospel, Mary Magdalene encounters someone she assumes to be a gardenern at the tomb of Jesus.
She responds to him by saying "they have taken away my lord",
which was a normal way for a woman to refer to her husband.
We read also that Jesus was sometimes called Rabbi,and a rabbi would be married with a family.

So who was this Mary Magdalene and why did she become such an irritant in the Christian story
that the Church has made such efforts to underplay her role?

Whilst in Bethany, Mary is reprimanded for neglecting her domestic chores,
but showed a keen interest in Jesus' discourse.
As we follow the course of Jesus' life, we see Mary as a constant.
She may have followed from that first encounter in Bethany,
and become one of the women who supported Jesus 'from their means'.
We are given clear indications that she was never far from the action.
Clearer still is the implication that she was the first person to 'see' the risen Jesus.

It is my conviction that Jesus' resurrection was neither a physical act nor something paranormal.
I sense that at some moment, maybe days, weeks or even months, after the execution of Jesus,
the penny dropped for Mary, -the message and mission of his life suddenly dawned on her.
After all, she had hung on his words from the outset and doubtless had frequently questioned him.
I can imagine the situation developing as she cajoled the disciples back into action,
She had become the chief disciple, the leading exponent of the Jesus movement - indeed, the first Christian.
I am convinced that Mary was the important link between Jesus and the first 'church'.
She was probably the first person to experience the new 'risen' life we call resurrection.
This change in her perception eventually opened the eyes and minds of her fellow disciples,
changing them from cringing, fearful people into emboldened men and women
who dared to follow their Master.

Women have been allowed little influence in what became the church
and male dominance is still fighting a rearguard action,
If the Magdalene has been misunderstood, even misrepresented, so too has the human Jesus of Nazareth.
Maybe we have got it all wrong!

4. Living in a tree

The story of Zacchaeus (Lk 18:1-10) has held enormous appeal for me since I first heard it in my far-off youth.
Apparently he was richer than he ought to have been and had some status, but little popularity in society.
On his own admission, he was not above making a dishonest buck for himself!

Becoming aware of the stir caused by the itinerant preacher Jesus who was passing by on his way to Jericho,
Zacchaeus decided to satisfy his curiosity about this ‘oddball’.
The throng of people surrounding Jesus, coupled with the tax collector’s small stature, presented a difficulty,
A sycamore tree by the roadside presented a lofty yet discreet viewpoint.
Zacchaeus must have been shocked and embarrassed when he was summoned to come down
and join in with the crowd gathered around Jesus.
He must have been dumbfounded when the teacher invited himself to stay at his home
- how could he possibly refuse?
As a result, Zacchaeus publicly declared that he would donate half of his possessions to charity;
further, he offered to refund fourfold to any he may have defrauded.
Can you imagine this scenario happening in our present monetarist regime?

This story inescapably confronts us with our self-serving attitudes.
Is it possible for us to embrace the basic needs of others when we are so focused on our own desires?
When considering the implications of the Zacchaeus story, I cannot help recalling another story in the gospels.
It is probably based on an actual event and tells of a wealthy man
who asked Jesus what he needed to do to gain eternal life.
Having observed all the requirements of the Jewish law all his life,
he was dismayed to learn that what was required was the abandonment of the pursuit of wealth.
He had missed the essence of the law.
This demand proved to be too great; he could not turn his back on his present lifestyle.
How different the outcome from that of the story of Zacchaeus.

Whilst I don’t believe that Jesus was implying that one could purchase an entry ticket to a heavenly realm,
he was stating quite clearly that his passion, God’s passion, was for a fairer, more just world.
The current demonstrations against rampant capitalism has faced the organised church with a decision.
whether to be part of the struggle to establish God’s realm
or be drawn along by the unrelenting drive for higher living standards.
With so few of our nation attending church regularly the feeble influence that Christianity has is now evident.
In his day, the truly radical socialist Jesus must have felt that he was dreaming the impossible dream
but his striving for that better world never diminished.
It ultimately led to his murder by the powerful. Surely this was the essence of his sacrifice.
Today we are called to come down out of our tree of accommodation
and decide whether or not to accept the Jesus challenge,
remembering that he is supposed to have said that ‘whoever is not with me is against me’.

5. "Tell me the stories . . ."

We came home from a most tedious service at the small church, slumped into our chairs and said to each other:
"What was that all about?" Having flogged our voices through ten outdated hymns from our Sunday school days, we very senior citizens had nearly reached the point of collapse.
This 'songs of praise' marathon had been anything but uplifting, with all its allusions to 'washing in blood' and little children waiting in heaven for all the other little children.
There appeared to be as much conviction as there would have been when they were sung last century and I could not help thinking if those singing even now realised what the words actually said.

We were told that, at present, there were flourishing Messy Churches for the children and their parents, as well as a sort of Sunday School held on an evening in the week.
The minister obviously hoped that this current re-run of the old days might bring forth fruit in tomorrow's church.
He mentioned one of his mentors, the eminent theologian Karl Barth who, when asked about the essence of his faith simply quoted our next hymn:
Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.
It occurred to me that this is pure sentimentality,
a thought reinforced by his concluding statement that, as a child, he himself had not grasped the reason for Jesus' life and that it was only now,
as a practising minister, that he realised that Jesus died for our personal sins, a fact that we as children had accepted.
Today, the doctrine of Atonement is generally rejected.

I sensed that the preacher had encapsulated the predicament of today's church.
Most adherents accept the Bible as the inerrant Word of God, rather than a collection of human attempts at discovering the meaning of life.
Its contents are too often regarded as historical records, but realised as being unrealistic.
Most have doubted Jonah's sojourn in the 'whale' and have doubts aboutthe stories of Noah and his ark,
Did it rain for 40 days or 150 days? Even the Jehovah's Witnesses cannot answer that.
In the New Testament, some of the stories about Jesus stretch our credulity.
Was he really able to walk on water, calm the storm at sea by oral command, turn water into wine, recover sight and restore to life one whose corpse was already decomposing?
The mistake that the Sunday Schools made in the past was not in telling the stories but in not subsequently explaining them.
Unfortunately many in ministry today are unable to do so, satisfactorily.
If the trained clergy are unable to link religion to the needs of modern society, what hope is there for teachers of the church children and indeed for the future church?

Surely we must continue to tell the stories of Jesus, but we should recognise that they are stories about Jesus, told in a Jewish way.
As far as we know, he never preached a sermon in his life. However, he did call the common folk to challenge the dominating powers who stunted their lives.
Will we ever hear that call again?

6. Is it time to discard religion?

Or, put another way, have religions failed to deliver that for which we created them? This question may shock many who believe that religiosity is a God-given facet of our nature. However, history seems to indicate that from humankind's earliest moments, our lives have been deeply affected by mighty natural forces we are unable to understand and which are beyond our control. Such forces bring death and calamity often without warning. In our primitive ignorance, we attributed these forces to the actions of spirits and their assaults on us were caused by their displeasure at our behaviour. To appease their wrath, sacrifices had to be made. As the nomadic people began to settle in suitable locations and coalesced into tribes, these spirits morphed into gods, who protected them and aided them in conflicts with their neighbouring tribes. As tribes merged to become nations, these gods, sometimes several with differing spheres of influence, became the protectors of nations. Around the world, just as people from various countries looked and spoke in different ways, so too their deities proliferated. The tribal protective element is easy to understand. However, should an intelligent alien from space encounter one group of the world's religions, it was surely be puzzled to discover that the three branches of a belief system with a common root bore such animosity towards each other. Judaism, Islam and Christianity owe their origins to the 'father' figure Abraham, yet in our own time, we still see evidence of anti-Semitism among Christians and violent hostility between Christians and Muslims. Recently, a group representing the Christian Militia rampaged through the Central African Republic murdering non-Christians. Again, television was used to display a video of the leader of the rebels in Nigeria who had abducted several hundred girls from their dormitory, claiming that Allah had called his followers to slaughter infidels. We need no reminder of the Holocaust where the Nazi German regime almost completed its intention to obliterate all Jews (amongst others deemed as flawed - gypsies, homosexuals etc.), this in a Christian country. Serge Halimi, in his article 'The New Cold War' (le Monde Diplomatique, September 2014), contends that the internecine conflict in the Ukraine is the result of the USA's tacit encouragement of that country to cultivate closer links to the European Union, thus providing an outpost for the Western powers on Russia's border. P President Putin has recognised this move and has cleverly wooed the fundamentalist Orthodox Church - drawing it closer to its fellow church in Russia. Here again we see conflict within a faith system. It would appear that the tribal god is still with us. We simply make him the divine, all-powerful supporter of our personal or national cause. This seems always to have been the case. Missionary zeal provided the impetus for world-wide British Imperialism. Whilst it produced bountiful wealth for Britain, it managed simultaneously to uproot local religions. The religious urge derived from the Great Commission, allegedly given by the 'risen' Christ to make the whole world his disciples, resulted in the Crusades, which took their toll of both Muslims and Jews. The desire to Christianise the world also resulted in the Inquisition, not to mention the looting of the gold and treasures of South America, which now adorn religious edifices in Europe. Religions have not served us well, because we have skewed them into warring ideologies. We should not be surprised that more of us are abandoning a lifelong practice of church attendance and preferring to be called spiritual, rather than religious. If we could be bold enough to remove religiosity from our faith, would we be left with a compassionate secular society? In its simplest form, the call to humanity is expressed as the Golden Rule: Treat everybody as you would wish to be treated. This basic requirement lies at the heart of virtually all of the world's great faiths from Buddhism to Zoroastrianism. Christians believe that Jesus put it very succinctly: Love your neighbour as yourself. This surely includes your enemy, as demonstrated in the parable of the 'good' Samaritan. In her most excellent book 'With or Without God', the courageous Canadian pastor Gretta Vosper states that 'divested of their religious elements, most world religions leave us with core values like love, justice, respect, forgiveness and tolerance'. Not a bad starting place for the re-building of society, and one which might even prevent us from rendering our fragile planet uninhabitable.

7. "When I was a child . . ."

So begins one of the most familiar passages in the Bible. It is found in the thirteenth chapter of Paul's first letter to the Corinthian church. The sentence continues " . . . I spoke, thought and reasoned as a child."
In this portion of his letter, Paul sets out to chart his own progress into full maturity. His thoughts and his reasoning informed his understanding and his speech.
Certainly his 'conversion' and subsequent companionship with the early followers of Jesus drastically altered the course of his life and his discernment of what God required of him.

As babies we arrive in the world knowing nothing except hunger, thirst and vulnerability.
Those of us fortunate to be born of caring parents will be fed and cared for.
As we progress through childhood and our needs increase, these too are met.
We are helped to find our feet and propel ourselves, taught how to feed and groom ourselves and given guidance throughout our formative years.
Hopefully, we are encouraged to be good citizens - something noticeably missing today as 'Citizenship' is not on the school curriculum.
We are only now realising that proper care and nurture in our earliest years determine the way in which our brains develop.
Neglect in this area of parental responsibility is all too obvious when one learns of the enormous number of neglected children needing the intervention of specialist social care.
The way we treat our children, particularly the very young, will shape tomorrow's society.
We are all aware of, and distressed by, the abuse suffered by many of them at the hands of predatory adults, some of whom may have been the products of inappropriate behaviour.
The training and treatment of the young begins at home, supplemented by the education system, which in historical terms is a relatively modern institution.
Education is of the utmost importance and owes its existence to the church.

One of our foremost concerns in Britain is the radicalisation of young Muslims, some of whom are converts from Christianity.
Whilst we should be justly critical of this distortion of Islamic teaching, we should be aware that the same concern could be expressed about Christianity.
A few weeks ago, we learned of massacres committed by the Christian Militia in the Central Africa Republic.
Some of the divinely ordained activities related in the Old Testament are not dissimilar to that presently occurring in many parts of our world.
Currently there is some debate about the suitability of promoting faith schools .
One may see, for example, that people who received their education in Catholic convents find it virtually impossible to relinquish the dogma with which they have been indoctrinated.
Such religious certainty resulted in the Crusades and the Inquisition.
Some of us who were sent to Sunday school have taken a lifetime to learn that what we were told as historical truth can be understood in a very different way, as modern Biblical scholarship informs us.
It is very unlikely that the benefit of such enlightenment is to be heard in the average church.
It has long been recognised that given extensive or even exclusive access to a child for the first seven years of its life ensures a firm grounding of belief.
The young, with a clean slate of a brain and everything to learn, will eagerly absorb any new information. Look how quickly they grasp and master new technology.
If magic and mystery is involved, the interest is keener. As we mature, we become more sceptical about magic, trying to detect the sleight of hand.
The more we discover about the cosmos, we realise that mystery is only something for which we presently have no explanation.
Is it possible that Jesus used his 'miraculous' powers to attract naive listeners to hear his message? We'll never know.

So ideas embedded in the young uncluttered mind inform our understanding of life, and being foundational they are almost impossible to modify or erase.
At a recent conference addressed by Canadian pastor Gretta Vosper, based on her challenging book 'With or Without God', a lady in the audience related how she regularly talks with Jesus.
I can only assume that her faith is grounded in the reality of the supernatural Jesus.
It seems that the literal interpretation of the resurrection has made an indelible impression even on 21st century minds, reinforcing the persuasive teaching we received in our tender impressionable years.
The sentence 'whoever does not accept the kingdom of God like a child will never enter it' would appear to grant children special privilege.
However, some Fellows of the Jesus Seminar note that "Jesus' dramatic reversal of the child's traditional status as a silent non-participant, illustrated his sympathy for the marginalised and outcast".
All is not as clear as it sometimes seems!

Jesus may have been saying that no-one has any more value than anyone else and should not be understood as demanding unquestioning acceptance.
He obviously had time for children, women, the poor, the crippled or blind - any whom the religious authorities dismissed.
Perhaps Jesus saw in children something which we adults could profitably learn.
Did he see, as we in Britain today can see, that young children of every creed, culture and class live together without prejudice.
As we mature those divisive prejudices develop and erode societal well-being.

Jesus' life was inspired by a vision of a just and compassionate world, as it would be if God was the supreme ruler.
The way to create that kind of society was quite clearly shown by the way he lived.
That same objective lies at the heart of all the main faiths from Buddhism to Zoroastrianism.
If we think that kind of a world is worth striving towards, we must remember that Jesus did not offer a suggestion.
He commanded us to love one another, even our enemies - a tall order indeed. When are we, as Christians, going to take him seriously?
It's time to put away childish things. It is time to grow up!

8. A FIFTH gospel?

During a group discussion at a Progressive Christianity conference in Oxford, a lady remarked that she had heard of the gospel of Thomas, but knew very little about it.
Whilst everyone with a reasonable knowledge of the Bible is aware of the four gospels, comparatively few have heard of a fifth, because, being excluded from the canon of scripture.

However, this gospel, written by Didymos Judas Thomas,was deemed sufficiently important by the Jesus Seminar that it has been included in Robert W. Funk's book The Five Gospels.
The Seminar, composed of pre-eminent Biblical scholars, meets twice a year in order to try to determine from the most ancient texts, which of the recorded sayings of Jesus may reliably reflect his words,
bearing in mind that as far as can be ascertained he spoke in Aramaic and possibly some Koini Greek. The passage of time has seen his words translated into Greek, Latin and ultimately English.
Since this Gospel according to Thomas exists, how did it escape inclusion in the scriptural canon?
The reason for this omission is that when the writings contained in the New Testament were selected, there was no evidence of this gospel.
Towards the end of the nineteenth century, some small fragments of papyri were found in a rubbish dump at Oxyrhynchus by the River Nile in Egypt.
These small pieces, not then identified, contained Greek script dating from about 200 CE and were published in 1897.
In 1945, an Egyptian farmer discovered a number of leather-bound papyrus books at Nag Hammadi, some 150 miles up the Nile from this site.
One of these books eventually proved to be the text of the Gospel according to Thomas, but written in Coptic. This seems to have been written around 350 CE.
Subsequent research revealed that the gospel in its present form probably dates from around 100 CE and yet an earlier version to about 50-60 CE.
If this is an accurate assessment, the original text would predate all of the New Testament's gospels and place it contemporaneous with Paul's letters.
If these sayings were heard by Thomas, this would make them more genuine then those remembered and passed down in the oral tradition to the evangelists - none of whom were eyewitnesses.

Thomas' gospel contains no narrative, no miracles and no debates with the opponents of Jesus. It is purely a sayings record.
Many of the sayings are similar to those quoted in the synoptic gospels, whilst some echo words deemed to have come from the assumed lost sayings document Q,
which are used to supplement the contents of Mark's gospel in those of Matthew and Luke.
In their examination of Thomas' gospel, the Fellows of the Jesus Seminar have conjectured that only about one third of the one hundred and fourteen sayings can be accepted as authentic.
This gospel brings to light a number of Jesus' sayings not previously recorded.
It is interesting to note that, for example, the well-known parable of the sower differs only slightly from the synoptic rendering, but lacks the allegorical interpretation of the canonical author.
The theme of constant searching for meaning in life runs very strongly throughout the gospel.
Equally strong is Jesus' insistence that God or the Kingdom is within us, that everything is open to us if we will only persist in our search.
Whereas the canonical gospels seem to interpret Jesus' life as prologue to his death, the real reason for his existence (hence the church's insistence that he died for our sins),
the Jesus we see in Thomas' words is one who is urging us to live fully.

In his book The Gospel of Thomas, Martin Meyer says that this gospel
'spares us the crucifixion,
makes the resurrection unnecessary and
does not present us with a God named Jesus'.
When we perceive Jesus as revealed by Thomas, we see someone fully human, totally free of the dogma of religion,
imbued with the calm of someone who has learned the secret of contentment which comes from the awareness of the immanence of God.
Whilst we have often stressed the mantra of Jesus to 'love one another, even our enemies', we have understated, perhaps even overlooked, the non-egoistic imperative,
that our concern, our compassion must be unconditional. Any thoughts of reciprocity must be totally absent.
We have to adopt the philosophy of giving utterly selflessly, never thinking of any return, love when that love is never returned. Jesus said even the Gentiles can love those who love them.
The words of Jesus that come down to us from Thomas show us perhaps more clearly than the writings of the evangelists that the kingdom of God which completely filled his vision is within us,
that we can live the life of eternity here and now.
Somehow, this gospel has avoided the contamination of the veneers of convenient theology, which is apparent in the synoptics but most obvious in John's gospel -
unfortunately the one which has been chosen as the bedrock of the religion promoted by nearly all branches of organised Christianity.
The further the writing of each gospel was from the events described, the more distortion is discernible.

The creeds, dogmas and doctrines of all churches, all of them human creations for the establishment and maintenance of ecclesiastical power,
have made religious understanding and observance over-complicated, particularly in the Catholic church.
This becomes very obvious when one sees in Thomas' gospel the simplicity of the life and calling of Jesus.
It might be advantageous to abandon the gospels of the New Testament and rely on the brevity of the 114 verses of the Gospel according to Thomas - the FIFTH Gospel.

9. Breaking news

Imagine reading this headline in your morning newspaper. Astonished, you read on: Archaeologists excavating in Jerusalem have discovered what they claim to be the remains of Jesus of Nazareth.
How would the world react to that announcement?
What would be your response?
Undoubtedly, there would be many people surprised, but whose lives would be unaffected. Some might almost have expected the possibility of such a discovery.
Adherents of faiths other than Christianity have always regarded Jesus as simply another prophet, not as God embodied in human form and returned to Heaven at the completion of his earthly mission.
Again, some who have a half-hearted acceptance of Christianity find it difficult, or even essential, to believe in a literal physical resurrection.
Such would be relieved to learn that their scepticism might have a foundation.

Many have given up wrestling with the Doctrine of the Trinity - many preachers dodge it - of which Jesus seems to have had little knowledge.
To them, this breaking news would dispel the image of the universal judge sitting at God's right hand.
Jesus' exhortation to his followers to 'go to all nations baptising converts in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit' was obviously a Matthean creation.
There are people who questions the historical reality of Jesus of Nazareth, since both his beginning and ending are highly problematical.
Almost all of the information of him that we have is contained in the New Testament, and some of that is contradictory.
Apart from that, the only contemporary references to Jesus are found, indirectly, in the writings of the historians Tacitus and Josephus.
The more scientifically minded might well request some reliable evidence about the validity of the archaeologists claim.

The possible reaction of the growing number of Christians who interpret the resurrection as the revelation of the purpose of the life and teaching of Jesus to those who are confronted by him.
It may be said that the gospels depict Jesus' life as an extended prologue to his death, an action required by God to enable sinful humans to regain their original perfect relationship to him.
However, modern thinking concludes that the crucifixion was the summary execution of a Jewish peasant subversive who had to be removed before he encouraged an unstable mob to explode into violence.
Jesus had to be eliminated because of his opposition to the domination system - the sin of the world then as now.
We should remember that Jesus' friends and supporters were drawn from the impoverished and disposable majority of society.
We may be sure that he found no sponsors among the wealthy and powerful. Even Nicodemus is thought to have been an imaginary figure.
The situation today, similar as it is to that of Jesus' day, calls for the same critique. His pursuit of equality and justice must be that of his present day followers.

The ugly truth of crucifixion may be far less palatable than most of us would wish to imagine.
Those who carried out the execution would also be responsible for the removal of the corpse, usually before sundown.
In some cases, the body was left as a stern warning to other would-be miscreants - and often as food for carrion.
When the body, or what remained of it, was removed, it would be placed in a shallow grave and lightly covered with loose soil, leaving it easily accessible to scavenging wild dogs.
It is possible that there was no body to be entombed, embalmed or resurrected, but the prospect of such an ignominious ending to the beloved master was utterly unthinkable to his erstwhile friends.
The theology of the organisation which officially propagates the Christian faith, the Church, is totally built and reliant on the resurrection of Jesus ,
either bodily, or as Paul explained it, in a transformed spiritual body, in either case leaving behind no human remains.

The largest and most important foundation block of organised Christian belief is the fourth gospel, that according to John.
Written at least 65 years after the crucifixion, it is burdened by the accretion of years of evolving theology, much of it heavily influenced by Greek thought,
giving us a descending, dying and rising God, quite familiar to Greek and Roman understanding.
Should such logic be introduced today, it would be treated with utter derision and one wonders why the Christian church clings to it.
The philosophy of a continuation of human life into a continued, possibly spiritual life after mortal death now permeates all western thinking.
Even people who don't feel a divine imperative to attend places of worship subscribe, maybe tacitly, to the idea that a life reasonably well lived will guarantee something better and more permanent afterwards.
When we attend a Christian funeral service, we are comforted by the promise of a reserved place in our Father's house with 'many mansions', a promise that Jesus almost certainly never made.
If 'no man comes to the Father except by me' as Jesus is supposed to have said, one wonders what will happen to all those faithful to other religions.
If there is some special reward awaiting all of us or at least those deserving that to me is a bonus.
This future life is not something assured, nor should it be the spur to better living.
I simply don't know and I fail to see any relevance with this life which I do know and for which I alone am responsible.
I share the view of Bishop John Shelby Spong who says we should live it now, live it fully, live it with wasteful love, make it all it can be.

How has the Breaking News affected you? Has it brought a release from a nagging worry that whilst you try to live a Christian life, you feel guilty because your common sense seems to conflict with the supernatural you are asked to accept? Or has it undermined your sense of security about what will happen when this life is over?

Should we not do better at living what we know in the most loving and compassionate way? Robert Funk proposed that Jesus deserves and even asks for a demotion, from the Christ of faith, laid on him by the church he never intended to create, to the Jesus of ministry. We owe him no less and in that demotion, we suddenly see at our own level our brother and are better able to use our time and our talents for the good of our world.
May the breaking news break open your world to new possibilities and the vision that we can share with Jesus.

10. Progressive Christianity - Quo Vadis?

Many years have passed since Robert Funk, the originator of the Jesus Seminar, and Jack Spong launched upon Christendom their theses for a new reformation in the Christian church.
Fifty years ago, the foundation-shaking work by John A. T. Robinson in 'Honest to God' appeared to open the flood gates
allowing a plethora of books by Marcus Borg, Don Cupitt, Dominic Crossan, Karen Armstrong and others.
Some clerics, including Richard Holloway and Andrew Furlong, have departed the ministry.
The increase in numbers attending progressive Christianity conferences bear witness to the dissatisfaction of many adherents of the faith.

Many of us travelling home from a church service have wondered 'what was that all about?'.
Some of us have tried unsuccessfully to lead our fellow worshippers into a fresh approach which we hoped might be more relevant to our times.
Our efforts were usually blocked by the professional clergy who, on occasion, forbade any serious Biblical enquiry.
We are forced to wonder if the church has reached a dead-end - and despair of being able to breathe new life into its dry bones. Has Christianity reached its sell-by date?
The older generation, now a dwindling few, grew up with the notion that Sunday was a non day, when nothing happened and everything except the Church was closed.
A middle aged man was recently surprised to learn that nowhere in the Bible does God insist on regular Sunday worship.
According to the Ten Commandments, a useful regulatory social document invented by the inspired Moses, we should use every seventh day as one in which we do no work.
It was the religious control system which imposed the strait jacket of a rigorous worship regime.
Jesus ignored that restriction, explaining that the holy day was for mankind's benefit.

What purpose, then, does the church serve in our society?
Christianity is supposedly built upon the teachings of Jesus, the Jew, whose life was defined by the spirit of the Mosaic law.
Yet in his day, he was not perceived as a particularly religious man. He was more concerned about social justice and compassion than observance of the minutiae of that law.
Robert Funk believes that he may have been 'irreligious, irreverent and impious' and the deprivations of the outsider and dispossessed was of more importance than religious observance.
Christianity gained its present status when Jesus became God, a process begun around the end of the first century by the interpretation placed upon his life by the writer of the fourth Gospel.
This was consolidated by Constantine's Nicene Creed in the fourth century. Since then, the dying/rising God image has been reinforced by layers of dogma and doctrine right up to the last century.

Stripped down to its barest essentials, the purpose of the Christian church is the instruction of its members/adherents and the exhortation to strive toward the establishment of a caring and egalitarian society.
Once we discover the Galilean peasant, struggling to be seen in the synoptic gospels, we may find someone whose complete humanity surprises us.
A social deviant (that's why he was executed) and more political than priestly, he was more human than any of us.
He laid no claim to divinity; that status was attributed to him because he was, in hindsight, too good to be human.

All this, the fruits of historical-critical research over several centuries, has been available to the professional clergy, but they have failed to inform the laity.
In fact, sometimes they have denied their congregations the opportunity of accessing Biblical research.
In his book 'The Dishonest Church', Jack Good, a clergyman for 40 years, accuses his erstwhile fellows of withholding from their hearers what they have been taught in the seminaries.

Sadly I am forced to conclude that if there is to be a new Reformation, it will not involve the organised, hierarchical church.
Blind as it is, it sees no need to change. Bound by creed, dogma and doctrine, straightened by slavish adherence to the lectionary, it slows to a position of impotence and irrelevance.