Jesus—Jewish. Torah-observant. Fully human. No virgin birth. A revered teacher-rabbi. Herald of the long-awaited Kingdom of God. Resurrected. A potential Messiah, who was expected to return promptly to fulfill traditional messianic expectations. That was the portrait of Jesus among his earliest followers and his family. Their beliefs and practices are somewhat unfamiliar to most people today. Some may even ask, you mean Jesus had a brother? In fact, several brothers and at least two sisters? How come we haven’t heard about them?
Like Jesus himself, his earliest followers in Jerusalem were Jewish and Torah-observant. They waited patiently for Jesus to return to carry out his dream of a Kingdom of God on earth in contrast to rule by Rome. That was the political hope they cherished as they went about their daily lives. Christian doctrine today, however, is characterized by beliefs of a very different nature. This includes a special, virgin birth. It also abounds with various titles ascribed to Jesus: Son of God, Christ, Lord, Savior, Redeemer. The Gospel of John calls him the Logos (the Word) that became flesh. He became viewed as a preexistent being who took on human form, combining elements both of divinity as well as humanity. For many, he was God incarnate, the second person of the Trinity. These are all reflective of the cult of personality that surrounded Jesus after his death. These beliefs originated from the Christ Movement led by Paul.
The image of Jesus changed dramatically over the course of just over one hundred years. Jesus became seen as a divine being holding cosmic importance. Along with that development went another: a repudiation of his Jewish heritage. Torah observance was swept away and with it, the Sabbath, Passover, the dietary laws, circumcision, and the whole code of Jewish ethics. Gone, too, were the major festivals. Over time, Christianity separated from Judaism and created its own separate infrastructure with a hierarchy and buildings of its own. No longer did it worship in the Temple or in Jewish synagogues. Its distinctive liturgical cycle of Advent-Christmas-Epiphany-Lent-Easter-Pentecost came, in time, to replace the time-honored Jewish calendar. Sunday eventually replaced the Jewish Sabbath as the day of rest—but not as strictly observed as the Jewish Sabbath, at least not in modern times. The new religion ceased being in any sense Jewish and came to acquire its own unique character, separate and distinctive. How that detachment took place is an interesting story and it can be documented, virtually decade by decade, from writings that have survived. Without giving too much away prematurely, the separation story has to do with the new movement’s rejection of Torah observance and the promotion of Jesus as in some sense divine. Either view would have served to cast the movement out of the Jewish family.
The image of Jesus changed radically, while his roots within Judaism were forgotten. By the midsecond century, Christian leaders were touting Jesus as an incarnate savior who redeemed humanity by his death and resurrection. Who he was thought to be came to obscure what he had taught and practiced. This represents a remarkable shift in emphasis—away from the religion of Jesus and toward a religion about Christ.
The transformation is absolutely dramatic. By the late second century, Christians had composed the basis of the Apostles’ Creed.1
I believe in God, the Father almighty,
creator of heaven and earth.
I believe in Jesus Christ, God’s only Son, our Lord.
He was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit,
and born of the Virgin Mary.
He suffered under Pontius Pilate,
was crucified, died, and was buried.
He descended to the dead.
On the third day he rose again.
He ascended into heaven,
and is seated at the right hand of the Father.
He will come again to judge the living and the dead.
I believe in the Holy Spirit,
the holy catholic church,
the communion of saints,
the forgiveness of sins,
the resurrection of the body,
and the life everlasting. Amen.2
Even for denominations that do not recite this creed, this flagship statement of faith puts Jesus into the conceptual context most Christians today know and recognize. But we need to pause to consider what this creed says—and, perhaps more importantly, what it omits.
What it sets forth is impressive. Jesus is now linked to God the Father and to the Holy Spirit in keeping with the developing doctrine of the Trinity, that Jesus is fully human and fully divine. It positions Jesus Christ as “God’s only Son.” It references his virgin birth and attributes paternity to the activity of God’s Holy Spirit. It skips over his life and moves very quickly to his death, his resurrection, and his status today, in heaven with God. It proclaims that he will return to judge all humanity. It ends with an affirmation of the church as the community of the saints and professes belief in forgiveness, resurrection, and eternal life. This is the image of Jesus shared by Christians today and it is a more recognizable form of the religion than its earliest expression.
In terms of setting forth who Jesus is claimed to be, the Apostles’ Creed was truly a breakthrough document.
But let’s consider what this statement of faith fails to say. What it ignores is substantial, and this is usually not recognized. Where, for instance, are the central teachings of Jesus? Where are the references to the teachings of the parables, that powerful Kingdom of God message? Where is there mention of the long-anticipated Kingdom of God, that political reality expected to replace the Pax Romana? What about the Sermon on the Mount, with its reinterpretation of Torah requirements? What happened to Jesus’ demand that his followers practice a pattern of righteousness stricter than that observed by the Pharisees? Where is the cut-and-thrust vitality of Jesus’ message, that radical challenge to the world power of his time with all its startling impact, enhanced expectations, and newsworthy implications? Moreover, where is its daring subversiveness? Everything Jesus taught in his parables or in the Sermon on the Mount is bypassed.
Why didn’t the creed say something along these lines?
We revere our teacher, Jesus, who taught us to make the Kingdom of God our highest priority and to prepare for its manifestation on earth, through deeds of compassion and caring backed by an inner spirit of generosity and forgiveness.
We follow the example of Jesus who taught us to be sensitive to the needs of others and to respond appropriately.
We believe in the teachings of Jesus who challenged us to live the life of Torah to its fullest, to embrace correct attitudes as well as right behavior.
We acknowledge with gratitude the Jesus who gave us the hope that God’s rule would eventually be sovereign over all the earth and that the righteous will truly inherit the earth.
We have confidence in God, creator of the universe, who alone can redeem and who, forgiving us our failings, will resurrect us from the dead into life eternal.
Why none of this? There’s a lot missing from the Apostles’ Creed—all of Jesus’ teachings, in fact. This is truly astounding.
Moreover, what happened to the image of Jesus? How did a human, Jewish rabbi, a messianic claimant, suddenly become a divine being robbed of his historical context and Jewish identity? He is now “God’s only Son,” linked to God the Father Almighty and to the Holy Spirit. What are the connections between these aspects of divinity? Clearly the creed wants to affirm that Jesus was a preexistent supernatural being who became incarnate in human form. It commits us, moreover, to one mode of incarnation, taking the virgin birth literally as biology, as a divine being impregnating a young Jewish woman.
What has happened to Jesus? Why this dramatic makeover? How could this have happened? Who was responsible?
Instead of right actions arising out of a right attitude as one would expect from a Jewish teacher, the mandate now centers on correct belief in the person of Jesus: who he was. From orthopraxy—or right action—typical of Judaism, we have been catapulted into orthodoxy—right belief—which came to characterize Christianity. A seismic shift in perspective has taken place. The creed’s exclusive focus is on the messenger, not the message.
There are no overt references to anything Jewish about Jesus. That is eliminated. The creed also effectively abandons the claim that Jesus was the Jewish Messiah—there is no talk of his fulfilling a political role, his claim to the throne of Israel, assisting God in the task of world transformation, or any such requirement that a Jewish Messiah must fulfill. Remarkably, nothing at all is said of Jesus’ messianic status. The whole political thrust of Jesus’ mission is ignored. It is replaced by a cosmic one—Jesus in relation to God the Father and the Holy Spirit.3 That’s a very different picture.
There is minimal linkage between this Jesus, the Christ of faith, and the actual historical human Jesus who lived and taught in the 20s. Only the references to Pontius Pilate and Jesus’ mother, Mary, anchor him within time and therefore in history. The Apostles’ Creed, we find, dehistoricizes the portrait of Jesus, shearing him from his Jewish context and stripping him of his humanity. He is now a supernatural being engaged on a rescue mission, someone who swooped down from heaven to take loyal followers with him back there. We would not think of him as human, debating the Torah, encouraging strict adherence to its requirements, honoring the Sabbath, sharing bread and wine with his followers, engaging in the festivals, planning and plotting his next moves, and delighting audiences with his amazing parables about the coming Kingdom. All of this is lost.
By the time of the Apostles’ Creed, Jesus and his message had become overtaken by a cult of personality, a development foreign to Jewish ways of thinking. For all the impressiveness and importance of Abraham, Moses, Samuel, David, Solomon, or Ezra—or any of the prophets for that matter—no hero worship grew up around any of these worthy and righteous individuals. To a large extent this haloing of Jesus drowns out the vibrancy of his message—so much so that we have trouble even today seeing him as human or even identifying his message.
So the human teacher and Messiah claimant became elevated quickly into a Christ and then into a God. All this occurred suddenly, within just over a century of his death. How did a God come to replace a thoroughly human, Jewish Jesus?
The strength of the image of Jesus as divine is extremely powerful, then and now. The controversy over Dan Brown’s popular book and film, The Da Vinci Code, attests to the overwhelming power of this perspective.4 Part of the appeal of this work lies in its sense of adventure. The clandestine Opus Dei and the secretive Priory of Sion all play a role. There’s a hidden truth that is being ruthlessly suppressed. The provocative feature of Dan Brown’s book, however, lies elsewhere than in this supposed secret. It resides in his portrait of an all-too-human Jesus that challenges our ingrained image of Jesus as divine. Building upon the views of Michael Baigent, Dan Brown puts forward the view that Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene, that they were intimate and had children.5
The affront to Christian sensibilities lies in the picture of Jesus being married, having sexual intercourse, and being a family man. Official Christian doctrine maintains that Jesus, the second person of the Trinity, was fully divine. It also contends that he was fully human. To think otherwise is heretical. So, on the face of it, thinking of Jesus as having a companion and partner in life should not upset anyone. But this is not how Christians of most denominations picture Jesus in their thoughts. A sexual Jesus, married with kids, shatters the usual preconceptions of divinity. There was, in fact, a cover-up, but it was much more powerful than the thesis The Da Vinci Code presents.
So how did we get from the Jewish man Jesus who taught a political message to the divine being who became incarnate through a virgin birth, a supernatural God-man, dying and rising again to achieve salvation for all humanity? This is one of the greatest mysteries of the New Testament and early Christianity: how a Gentile God came to replace a Jewish Jesus.
For the answer to this question, we turn to Paul and his vastly different Christ Movement.