Faith is very personal. Belief, by definition, is whatever an individual chooses to believe. The book âIn Search of Jesus of Nazareth and His Original Teachingâ chronicles the research and analysis leading to the formulation of my personal understanding of the Historical Jesus and his Teaching. I do not ask anyone to accept my conclusions, but rather to use the book as a guide in clarifying their own faith and belief.
The book addresses:
⢠The two completely different accounts of the origin of âJesus the Christâ, contained in the four canonical Gospels of the âNew Testamentâ.
⢠The date and place of his birth.
⢠His Father and Family members.
⢠What happened after his death on the cross?
⢠And most importantly, his advanced Spiritual teaching on "The Kingdom of God", that was understood by only a few of the Disciples.
Faith is very personal. Belief, by definition, is whatever an individual chooses to believe. The book âIn Search of Jesus of Nazareth and His Original Teachingâ chronicles the research and analysis leading to the formulation of my personal understanding of the Historical Jesus and his Teaching. I do not ask anyone to accept my conclusions, but rather to use the book as a guide in clarifying their own faith and belief.
The book addresses:
⢠The two completely different accounts of the origin of âJesus the Christâ, contained in the four canonical Gospels of the âNew Testamentâ.
⢠The date and place of his birth.
⢠His Father and Family members.
⢠What happened after his death on the cross?
⢠And most importantly, his advanced Spiritual teaching on "The Kingdom of God", that was understood by only a few of the Disciples.
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .ix
Background . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .xi
The Lost Tomb . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1
From Jesus to Christ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .3
The Historical Jesus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .7
The Spiritual Jesus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .13
Conclusion: The Good News According to This Paul . . . . . . . . .19
The Historical Jesus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .19
The Spiritual Jesus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .20
Notes/References: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .21
The Jesus Seminar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .21
Ossuary inscriptions associated with the âJesus Family Tombâ . .22
Mary Mother of Jesus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .24
The Eye of Horus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .26
The Gospel of Thomas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .26
The Gospel According to Mary Magdalene . . . . . . . . . . . . . .50
Introduction
All of the great religious leaders/teachers (Abraham,
Moses, Jesus, Muhammad, Buddha, Confucius, etc.)
were involved in responding to a special spiritual calling/communication
with a universal power that most people refer to as
âGod.â There are many powerful influences that control the
physical universe, including: gravitational, centrifugal, magnetic,
electrical, atomic, and nuclear forces. Similarly, there are
forces contained within every human being on Earth that influence
the direction and quality of that individualâs life. Among
these forces are self-preservation, ego, and what I will call the
âlife forceâ for good. All of the luminaries above and many
more, including Aristotle, Socrates, Da Vinci, Newton, Bach,
Lincoln, Gandhi, Einstein, Martin Luther King, and Mother
Teresa, were clearly operating on a heightened level of life
force. This life force is also known as: the soul, the Divine Spirit,
the conscience, morality, spirituality, or what the Dalai
Lama identified as âethical compassionâ in a May 5, 2009,
In Search of Jesus of Nazareth and His Original Teaching ix
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speech at MIT. He also indicated, âThereâs potential to increase
that internal force, just as knowledge can be increased by education.â
Jesus of Nazareth declared that the same internal force
that drove him was in every individual, and he called it âthe
Kingdom of God.â
x Paul A. Weekes
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Background
I grew up in Central New York State during the 1940s and
50s. My father passed away when I was seven, and my
mother believed that I would benefit from religious instruction.
So, I attended the required classes and was confirmed as a
member of the Episcopal Church. While I understand that it
has become much more liberal, at that time, the Episcopal
Church was âCatholic-Light.â The only difference was that divorce
was allowed, and the services were not conducted in
Latin. Even at that early age, I was math- and science-oriented
and had a great deal of difficulty buying into the religious
dogma of a flat world, Jonah and the Whale, the Sun revolving
around the Earth, walking on water, etc. My takeaway was, âDo
unto others as you would have them do unto you,â and I erased
religion from my conscious thought. However, there always remained
a vague subconscious sense of void.
As I approached the age of 60, my employment had taken
us to Austin, TX. At my wifeâs urging, we joined the First
Unitarian Universalist Church. The minister, Davidson Loehr,
was a Biblical scholar, educated at the University of Chicago,
and a member of Jesus Seminar. He not only introduced me to
the work of the Jesus Seminar (1), but to the concept of the three
different aspects of Jesus, upon which this analysis is based. For
the record, I will define the three faces of Jesus as follows:
1) The Theological Jesus â The religions about Jesus, as
defined by the various Christian theologies.
2) The Historical Jesus â The physical Jesus, as defined
by historical records and archaeology.
3) The Spiritual Jesus â The Religion of Jesus, as defined
by his spiritual teaching.
Since my retirement in 2001, I have been developing a personal
understanding of the âHistorical Jesusâ through subscription
to the Jesus Seminar Newsletter, reading books, Internet
(Google) research, watching TV documentaries about Jesus,
and DVD lectures.
The Lost Tomb
In November of 2008, I completed the reading of The Jesus
Dynasty (James Tabor, Simon & Schuster, April 4, 2006,
ISBN-978-0743287234) and was very impressed with the scope
and readability of this work. It has greatly augmented and clarified
my own understanding of the âHistorical Jesusâ, his family
and original followers. Of particular interest was the reference
to a Discovery Channel documentary The Lost Tomb of Jesus,
first broadcast in 2007. This is a highly controversial/religiously
incorrect documentary that both the Israeli (Jewish) Government
and the conservative Christian establishment are trying
to suppress/refute. It therefore has only been aired once. I immediately
ordered a copy of the DVD online. Briefly, during
the excavation for an apartment complex between Jerusalem
and Bethlehem in 1980, a family tomb was unearthed. The linguistic
forms of the names/nicknames on the ossuaries correlated
with the biblically identified extended family and
Disciples of Jesus of Nazareth/Son of Joseph, with a probability
of 99.997 percent (2). Unfortunately, the significance of this archeological
find was not understood before one of the ossuaries
was stolen. The genetic material was returned for burial in accordance
with Jewish tradition. The ossuaries were contaminated
by being placed in the Jerusalem ossuary warehouse.
Basic forensic and DNA analysis of potentially the greatest archeological
find of all time could have resolved some of historyâs
most important mysteries. However, we now know beyond a
reasonable doubt that:
⢠The physical remains of Jesus were interned in a family
tomb, probably having been moved from the temporary
tomb where he was placed after his crucifixion.
⢠The tomb also originally contained the remains of his
brother James who was executed in 62 CE. He was the
last known leader of the direct followers of Jesus in Jerusalem.
Also of interest is the chevron over circle that appears
above the entrance to the tomb and the
cruder chevron over dot symbols that have been
found incised on contemporary âEarly Christianâ
ossuaries including that of Simon bar Jonahs, who helped
Jesus carry his cross.
From Jesus to Christ
The most critical input to both the âHistoricalâ and âSpiritualâ
Jesus stories is an analysis of âThe Baptism of Jesus in
the Gospel of Mark,â an article on the Ebionites in the Fourth
R (Westar Institute) Volume 18 Number 5 September â October
2005, where Sakari Hakkinen, a Lutheran pastor and Diocese
officer with a PhD in Theology, cites this Biblical passage:
Jesus came from Nazareth in Galilee and was baptized
in the Jordan by John. And just as he got up
out of the water, he saw the skies torn open and the
Spirit like a dove descending into him. There was
also a voice from the skies: âYou are my favored son
- I fully approve of you. (Mark 1:9-1 1)
Hakkinen then asserts:
âIn contrast with later evangelists, Mark here uses
the Greek preposition eis (âintoâ) to describe the descent
of the Spirit into Jesus, not upon him, like most
translations have it. The posses sion of Jesus by the
Spirit was an early view of Jesusâ significance. He
was seen as a prophet who acted in the power of the
Spirit.
Mark obviously believed that Jesus received the
Spirit only at his baptism, not before. The Spirit in
fact possesses him at the moment of his baptism and
immediately afterwards takes him to the desert.
Jesus then preaches, heals, and exorcizes in the
power of the Spirit. His true identity is recognized
only by those possessed by spirits. The Gospel of
Mark thus represents possessionist Christology in its
most typical form: Jesus was an ordinary manâânot
divineââbefore he was filled with the Spirit at his
baptism. Both the authors of the Gospels of Matthew
and Luke rejected this kind of Christology, as
can be seen in their nar ratives of Jesusâ baptism (in
which the Spirit descends upon, not into, Jesus) and
in their addition of the birth and childhood stories
of Jesus. For them, Jesus was the divine Son of God
already from his birth.â
Mark is the earliest Gospel writer that overlaps (in time) the
original followers of Jesus. Markâs Gospel begins with the Baptism
of Jesus and, in its original form, ends with the empty temporary
tomb. We must assume that any part of the story that
he left out was either because:
He considered it unimportant and irrelevant to the readers
understanding of the âGood Newsâ; or
He was unaware of those details, possibly because they had
not yet been created.
It is interesting to note Godâs quote, âYou are my favored son - I fully
approve of you.â This would imply that God has other children.
After all, we are all children of God. Here, he is selecting Jesus as
the favored one and, as we will see later, literally giving him the
âKeys to the Kingdom.â They didnât have cars in those days.
I always love to read books that aim to look at Jesus outside of the solely Christian lens. I love books that try to uncover who he truly was before man tainted his image and filled his words with judgment and hate, and so I was excited to delve into this book which the author kindly prefaced with writing that he doesnât need readers to accept his conclusions, he just wants to share where research brought him.
The books begins with: âJesus of Nazareth declared that the same internal force that drove him was in every individual, and he called it âthe Kingdom of God.ââ - as a spiritual person, I always reference the Kingdom of God as the God-energy and the author, being a Scientist, also refers to this as energy (rather than a literal kingdom), so right off the bat, Iâm interested to see where this is going. I had never heard of the âThree Faces of Jesusâ but was excited by the concept. Unfortunately, I thought by the description that this would be looking at just the âSpiritualâ face, but it begins with the âHistorical faceâ - Iâm very interested by the tangible history of Yeshua.Â
I was pleased to see this wasnât another âmake everyone Divine Christiansâ book disguised as an âinformation on Jesusâ book. This was stressed with quotes like, âThe divinity of Jesus is most likely a device of the later Gospel authors to elevate Jesus above the gods/prophets/ leaders of the other beliefs, from which they wished to gain converts.â I do believe the humanness of Jesus is no less important than his (potential, as I do believe) Divinity.Â
I really love all the investigative trips the author makes to get specifics. He mentions he has a business background and that solutions are meant to be simple, and the way he lays out historical âfactsâ (I use quotations because there are many who may doubt them as fact), make figuring out Jesus seem really easy.Â
When we get to the section speaking to the Spiritual Face of Jesus, the author prefaces it with: â Unfortunately, 2,000 years of transcription errors, poor translations, editorializing, misattributions, and outright fabrications (Fake good News) have seriously clouded the record of Jesusâ spoken words.â -- I was glad to read this. I also loved this section. It is so approachable and not coated in the junk that often follows Jesus around.Â
I know a lot of this book will be hated by By-The-Book Christians, but as a Spiritual individual who likes to learn more and improve her understanding of Jesus and his love-centered spiritual leadership, I appreciated this book a lot. At just 20 pages (because the other thirty are references - speaking directly to the amount of research that went into this - and Iâm super grateful for those as well as they contain endless valuable information), it was a super quick and easy read despite being written like an academic paper (which makes it a bit cold at times). I feel lucky to have stumbled upon this.