CHRIST, A CRISIS
"The world is a great crime, and someone must be made to pay for it." Page 12
In that famous sentence, Jack Miles sums up the moral of Christ, a Crisis.
I particularly wanted Jack Miles's book for my Christian students's sake. His book balances my highly humanistic, secular, scientific analysis of the New Testament. Jack was also for many years a Jesuit studying to be a priest. He is still a believing Christian. Jack Miles is a Pulitzer Prize winner, Mac Arthur Genius Award winner, etc., etc., who is a lot smarter than I am and who, indeed, "discovered" my book Into the Light of Things and developed it. He has been a mentor of mine since. I stayed up nights reading every page of Christ a Crisis while Jack was writing it. Christian students don't have to come out of this course as atheists! They can emerge, like my respected teacher, freer to choose from a much wider selection of gospels and Christianities than before.
I should point out that the analyses in The Five Gospels were also written by Christian believers, not a Jew among them. I try to inform you-- not indoctrinate you.
Christ, a Crisis is a thriller. Only someone as respected and educated as Jack dares to write so simply. To start, take a look at what he does with the Woman Taken in Adultery on pp 152-160.
And be sure, before class, to glance at:
109-112 the Roman Shoah; the ghastly events that were going on while the Gospels were being written must be taken into account while you read them! You'll discover they were composed during an era of Revolt (66-135AD) which can only be imagined by thinking about the Nazi Holocaust (Shoah). While Mark was being written, its author saw 1.1 million Jerusalem Jews die in 70AD alone, during Emperor Titus's siege of the city!
58 For Jack's sense of humor, and a great text to read at Thanksgiving or Easter dinners with family (Just kidding-- DON'T.)
257-263 On the Documentary Hypothesis, and why there are four gospels.
308 The name Yeshua (his real name. Jesus is Greek for it.)
Read pp 1-63, concentrating on these:
1-12 The crucified god.
42 How to read the Bible.
62 Why are priests celibate?
51-63 sex in the OT and NT.
68 History between the time of OT and NT brief survey.
92-99 Jack Miles accepts that Jesus is God. So what does it mean that it he "repudiates his warrior past" in the OT this way? How merciful is God, anyway? Relates to Nietzsche in our lectures.
229-245 As convincing a case for Christianity and why Jesus allowed the crucifixion as anyone has ever made. Did the Romans actually win? Did he make them expose themselves and defeat them, in the long run? There's been a cross over the Coliseum for fifteen hundred years, after all, and all their best buildings were converted to churches. All our Christian students should read this.
300 The Devil enters, from Persian religion.
After this, we enact our own Turn East, and go on to Confucius.