Anthony Le Donne - Jesus: A Beginners Guide

Jesus

A Beginners Guide

ONEWORLD BEGINNERS GUIDES combine an original, inventive, and engaging approach with expert analysis on subjects ranging from art and history to religion and politics, and everything in-between. Innovative and affordable, books in the series are perfect for anyone curious about the way the world works and the big ideas of our time.

A Beginners Guide

Anthony Le Donne

A Oneworld Book

First published Oneworld Publications, 2018

This ebook published 2018

Copyright Anthony Le Donne 2018

The moral right of Anthony Le Donne to be identified as the Author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs, and Patents Act 1988

All rights reserved

Copyright under Berne Convention

A CIP record for this title is available from the British Library

ISBN 978-1-78607-144-6

eISBN 978-1-78607-145-3

Images 127 and 30 are courtesy of Wikimedia. Images: Incantation bowl Marie-Lan Nguyen; Magdala Stone Hanay; Jesus Boat Travellers & Tinkers; Sermon on the Mount Yelkrokoyade; Moscophoros Ricardo Andr Frantz; The Good Shepherd mosaic Petar Miloevi; Christ Pantocrater mosaic Dianelos Georgoudis; Tim Tebow Ed Clemente Photography; Homeless Jesus Anthony Le Donne. The publishers are grateful to Timothy Schmalz and Tony Frey for their permission to use the images 323.

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For my father, Gary,
who has an open mind and
an open heart.

My colleagues and students at United Theological Seminary contributed in many ways to this book. Class discussions, doctoral focus groups, and even passing conversations in the hallway planted seeds. Special gratitude is owed to my research assistants, Ayad Attia and James Mallory. Many conversations with Tom Dozeman helped me think through the topic of ritual purity. Justus Hunter pointed me to a few invaluable resources related to pre-modern Christian thought. Dr. Hunter also read through an early draft of the manuscript and improved it. I am also grateful for the collegiality and generosity of Chris Keith, Joan Taylor, and Shadi Doostdar who helped me revise portions of this book.

This book is dedicated to my father. The dedication page notes that he has an open mind and an open heart. I thought about his open mind often as I imagined him reading this book. Much of the ground covered in this book was new to me and (perhaps) will be new to many readers. My father is the type of person who embraces new ideas; his intellectual curiosity makes him the ideal interior voice for this project. As to his open heart, just ask anyone who knows him. I am blessed to count myself among them.

In these pages you will meet the many faces of Jesus. You will meet the small day laborer with short hair, no beard, and missing teeth. You will meet the symbolic, sacrificial lamb of Johns imagination. You will meet the god-man of early Christian disputes. You will meet the warlord of Viking poetry. You will meet the muse for artistic exploration. In short, you will meet Jesus incarnated and reincarnated over the past 2,000 years.

Where to begin? Shall we begin with Jesus the political preacher? Jesus the resurrected holy man? Jesus the bannered icon of the medieval crusades? Jesus the personal savior of almost three billion Christians worldwide? So great is the impact of Jesus that his legacy is many and manifold.

From the very first, Jesus wears various masks. Even if we only focus on Jesus in the Bible, we are confronted with multiple portraits. Early Christianity placed four stories of his life side by side: the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Or should we as many scholars have attempt to mine the gospels for the earliest recorded sayings of Jesus? This might provide an interesting mosaic of Jesuss career as a preacher, but we are confronted again by the lack of a singular portrait.

Any robust study of Jesus must acknowledge the many impressions of his legacy. This is not to say that historians cannot nail down several facts about his life, public career, and ideas. But these facts must always relate in some way to how Jesus was honored and distorted in retrospect. Jesus, both theologically and metaphorically, continues to be revitalized in the lives of those who remember him.