Episode Six
The modern English children’s magazine “Highlights” has long featured a small two panel comic called “Goofus and Gallant”, in which two young boys were shown illustrating examples of good and bad behavior, with the emphasis for the reader on doing the good thing. Goofus would be rude and full of hubris, while Gallant would be kind and polite. While the range of lessons presented have changed over the years to recognize a heightened sensibility, the fundamental structure has remained.
In a similar vein, the Gospels present different men named ‘Jesus’. One is gallant, the anointed Jesus the Nazarene; one is goofus, Jesus the Zealot rebel; and yet another Jesus is characterized as having magical abilities like Pan. The joke was that the Jews didn’t know the difference between them and would get confused.
The anointed Jesus was a high priest of the temple in Jerusalem, and thus “promised to God”, or a Nazarene. Modeled after Jesus of Gamla, he was, like John the Baptist, accepting of Roman culture and a consistent advocate for it. “Give unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s.” This is the Jesus we see in the baptismal scene at the beginning of Mark, and he is thus the anointed Christ. This Jesus teaches from the synagogue, and from his house in Capernaum, the “Good News” of Rome’s arrival as the Kingdom of “God”. He teaches the value of being part of the larger Roman family, and converts Jewish rebels into Roman citizens. He teaches primarily through aphorisms or parables (as did the great teacher Pythagoras), and instructs his students how to understand the hidden meanings within the stories.
Rebel Jesus is not as well educated as Anointed Jesus, and he has to work a lot harder to build up his crowds. The model for this character was a rebel leader like Simon bar Giora. We see him loitering around the Sea of Galilee, gathering to him fishermen of the area, and preaching his message of rebellion, promising self-rule for the Jews – also the ‘Kingdom of God’. When challenged by Pharisees, he replies by recalling Hebrew scripture – often incorrectly – in his defense. His analysis of scripture is also shaky, at best.
The third Jesus is a repeated victim of mistaken identity until he becomes just as popular as the other Jesuses as person after person looks to him to heal them and they find their maladies removed. Each time it happens, he tries to swear those involved to secrecy, but it never works that way for him. He speaks in plain prose and never tries to assume authority that would belong to the Temple. Huge crowds of people grew around each Jesus such that their own followers would find themselves following the wrong one.
By paying attention to the context of the stories, one can begin to see the different Jesuses in the text. They live in different towns, have different friends, and speak in different ways. For example, after Mark’s story of Jesus’ baptism, we are told that he remained in Galilee for some time teaching the word of God. And then we’re told that Jesus arrived in Galilee. It’s really best to recognize that Jesus can’t enter the same province he’s already in and see the second Jesus as another character in the story who is also now in Galilee. You must pay attention to the context.
Much of the context for why certain elements of the Gospel stories occur as they do comes from the book, The Jewish War. In Mark 1:17 Jesus tells Andrew and Simon that if they follow him they will become “fishers of men.” The Jewish War describes battles that took place between the Romans and the rebels on the Sea of Galilee that left the surface of the lake littered with corpses. Afterward, fishermen used their nets to drag the corpses out of the lake and onto their boats. They literally became fishers of men. Piscatores hominum.
When Rebel Jesus does go back to his hometown, he complains that he can’t get the sort of adulation as he would get in other places. From The Jewish War, we learn that the towns many rebels had come from often capitulated to the Romans early, so this complaint in the Gospels may have been a reference to Rebel Jesus not getting a foothold in his hometown.
Modern Christian theology wants to combine all of the stories of all the Jesuses into a single narrative, and as a result, often finds verses that make little to no sense. All the stories from the different Gospels are melted together in a similar way, discarding confusing texts, and resulting in a Jesus that looks and sounds more like the person who assembled the text than anything else. Our culture only wants one Jesus, and it’s the schizophrenic one that comes from an amalgamated character that says “love your neighbor” on one hand, but “I bring not peace but a sword” on the other.
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