I concur with your overall judgment of his character
@Nakosis
Jesus comes across to me as a rather remarkable figure, especially when viewed in his own cultural and historical context - very much a "
radical Jew" as you say.
One of the things I personally like most about him, is that even when self-identifying followers - in the name of institutional Christianity - have effectively acted as oppressors of humanity,
so many marginalised and discriminated groups of people have been able to use the legacy of Jesus to indict them in response for betraying the spirit of his teachings or use his social radicalism as a vehicle of empowerment.
Examples of that kind of dynamic abound, from:
- descendants of Black Africans enslaved by empires under the rule of European Christian monarchs, ultimately using the figure of Jesus and his parable of the Good Samaritan as their symbol of resistance to racial segregation (most notably through the Civil Rights Movement led by Baptist clergyman Martin Luther King in the 1960s);
- Mahatma Gandhi condemning British colonialism in India with the pithy statement: "
I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ";
- German peasants in the 16th century revolting against their feudal lords, as well as the very institution of serfdom, by appealing to Jesus's social egalitarianism i.e. "
Until now it has been practice that we have been treated like serfs, which is deplorable, since Christ redeemed all of us with his precious blood, both the shepherd and the nobleman, with no exceptions. Accordingly we hereby declare that we are free and want to remain free." (
Twelve Articles of the German Peasants [1525]) and
- nineteenth-century Chinese converts responding to their first reception of the Gospel by "
offer[ing] equality between men and women as well as reform to the hated system of land ownership where landlords exploited poor tenant farmers" in the Taiping Rebellion:
Taiping Rebellion - Wikipedia
The Taiping Rebellion, which is also known as the Taiping Civil War or the Taiping Revolution,[7] was a massive rebellion or civil war that was waged in China from 1850 to 1864 between the established Manchu-led Qing dynasty and the Hakka-led Taiping Heavenly Kingdom.
Led by Hong Xiuquan, the self-proclaimed brother of Jesus Christ, the goals of the Taipings were religious, nationalist, and political in nature; they sought the conversion of the Chinese people to the Taiping's syncretic version of Christianity, the overthrow of the ruling Manchus, and a wholesale transformation and reformation of the state.[8][9] Rather than simply supplanting the ruling class, the Taipings sought to upend the moral and social order of China.[10]
Taiping Rebellion | Causes, Effects, & Facts
Under the Taipings, the Chinese language was simplified, and equality between men and women was decreed. All property was to be held in common, and equal distribution of the land according to a primitive form of communism was planned. Some Western-educated Taiping leaders even proposed the development of industry and the building of a Taiping democracy
As can be seen from the foregoing, the figure of Jesus really has quite a powerful cross-cultural and trans-social appeal.
His
Jewishness is ultimately crucial to any appraisal of him, since the historical Jesus lived his entire life as a practising adherent of his ancestral Jewish religion in dialogue/debate on halakha with other Jews. He would not have anticipated that his message or actions could have gone on to birth an entirely distinct religious system from Second Temple Judaism (as transpired many decades following his death).
To me, Jesus represented the very best values that the religious tradition he was raised in had to offer; albeit in a highly unique fashion that made him a '
marginal Jew' without parallel in his time and place, to cite the description of him given by one scholar (E.P. Meier). In this manner, he also transcended his own religious context in ways that he himself would not have foreseen.
If I may ask, though, what do you mean by saying: "
Who if not God himself could be the only one to make this promise?" Is that posed as a hypothetical?
