Professor Crossan, do you know Batman the cartoon character?

Justus Bender

Editor in the politics of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sunday newspaper.

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Yes, I know who that is.

People used to want to see Batman as an idealized hero.

Films are now being made about him that show him as a torn person full of self-doubt.

I haven't seen these films but have heard about them.

They did the same thing with James Bond: they want to make him a mere mortal.

This is the zeitgeist.

They have been researching the historical Jesus of Nazareth for decades and describe him as a political activist from Galilee fighting against Rome and for distributive justice.

Have you ever considered that this also fits in well with our times?

O yes!

But it doesn't quite fit.

Someone like Superman gets along just fine without other people, he just needs the community to save it.

Jesus was very different, that's very important to me.

He had a group and didn't tell her tell everyone about me and tell them to come to me.

He said to his disciples: Do as I do.

Go and heal like me.

Jesus was a community organizer, a political activist.

I sometimes say: John the Baptist had a monopoly, Jesus had a franchise system.

What can you say about this Jesus?

What kind of person was he?

No one should read the New Testament before reading Virgil or Homer.

When you read the New Testament with no training, you think: A man who is God!

Wow!

It must seem to you like some strange, transcendental language.

Once you read Virgil, you will recognize the zeitgeist of the time.

In which a person can be God incarnate by doing something that represents tremendous progress for mankind.

For example, when she brings peace to the Empire, like Emperor Augustus.

So the atmosphere of the time was that leaders, when important enough, revealed themselves as gods.

What is unusual about Jesus is not that he is divine, but whose incarnation he is.

The Roman Emperor brings peace to the people through victory.

Jesus said: I bring peace through righteousness.

And what was he like as a person?

When I picture Jesus, what matters to me is that he was born when Herod the Great died.

That was probably, according to today's designation, in the year 4 BC.

At that time there were uprisings everywhere, the Romans sent their legions south from the Syrian bases to ensure order.

And when the legions marched, you didn't want to be the village that stood in their way.

Men were slaughtered, women raped, and children enslaved.

I can't imagine Jesus growing up without everyone in Nazareth talking about the day the Romans came.

So he knew the price of the “Roman peace”.

Yes, that is often forgotten, but you can read about it in Flavius ​​Josephus.

A legion was sent east towards Sepphoris, a city north of Nazareth, and the legionaries burned it down.

This wasn't precision warfare.

You destroyed everything.

At some point, Mary will have told Jesus about the deeds of the Romans.