Carol, I watched all the episodes. However, I was falling asleep and waking up again. A friend taped it for us, so that my husband can watch it later--he gets up way too early in the morning to stay up until eleven. I have no such excuse, since nice naps seem to be my favorite treat at the moment, but I digress.
The Jesus show reflects a lot of what I have found out about Jesus already, because when I looked up all those books for my post to Shalom on recent books on Jesus, some of the theologians on the show were the same ones who wrote the books. It was a very beautiful, well-done program, and I am going to look at the url you provided when I have time. I understand it has a section about early Christian women, and I am always interested in them.
One of the very interesting things the show reiterated was that Jesus was a Jewish, left-wing rabble rouser, a social activist who was crucified because the Romans got tired of his civic protests. I also thought it was wonderful that the Roman pagans were very accepting of all religions, and only gave people a bad time if they didn't act appropriately as citizens. The pagans were were inclusive, not exclusive, and seemed very full of life.
I was fascinated by how all of the Gospels are very different because they were not trying to be literal stories at all (and should absolutely not be taken that way). They represent, simply, four followers of Jesus writing "good news" for tiny sects to keep them interested as time passed, and embellishing the story as they went.
It was very appropriate to some of the discussions we have had here, particularly at Ask God, that the Christians were a tiny little group of JEWS for several hundred years, and that the later writings that were very negative about Jews were because some of Jesus' followers were upset that the Jews wanted to keep Abraham as their titular head, instead of accepting Jesus as the King of the Jews. So all the gospels are extremely political in their nature, should not be taken as fact because they were stories, and the image of Jesus changes--becomes much more heroic--as time goes on. Anything that was added later to make it seem like the Jews were evil or should be scorned was written be ordinary MEN who were expressing anger because they could not get the Jews to go along with their agenda. Certainly, the very early writings on Jesus are much more accurate historically than the subsequent ones.
I was falling asleep during this part of the show, but remember something about a big conference a couple of hundred years down the road, where the church leaders got together and decided which things about Jesus to reject, and which to elaborate and exaggerate so they would gain more followers, and how many pagan symbols were tacked on along the way to make pagans more interested in Christianity. Marketing, very definitely. Of course, this happened all over the world every time the Christians wanted more followers. They created Christian celebrations and then slipped them into the big pagan holidays, and gradually the different traditions blended together.
When you think, after what you discover watching the series, that Jesus was really depressed and afraid when he died, and all of the embellishments about faith in God come later, and also that Jesus was the leader of an apocalyptic Jewish messianic sect that thought God would come right after he died, and that over time when the followers realized the end was not as near as they expected, and needed to create some more legends considering a longer time line, it is obvious they had a belief system, and faith, but were making up the Christian belief system, and the Bible, as they went along.
To me it really did capture the spirit of Jesus as I have always understood him--a compassionate, forgiving being who really stirred things up because of the injustices he saw, particularly in regard to Roman rule, but also in the social pretensions of his followers. He really wanted outcastes to be more accepted.
I think if he were alive today, he would be just sickened by much of the entire course of Christianity--the fights, the killings of millions, the witch burnings, the forceful conversion of so many pagans, and now the narrow-minded prejudices of some members of the religious right. I know he would be fighting in the trenches for the rights of homosexuals, abhorred at the long Christian history of persecution of the Jews, of who he definitely was one, and that he would send anyone away from the temple who hated blacks and other minorities, or hurt or rejected or murdered anyone at all in his name. |
