Introduction Part 2: Jesus was a Jew, his name was Yeshua, and he was a poor person of color.

Jesus was a Jew, and his name was really Yehoshua in Hebrew, and his everyday name in Aramaic was Yeshua!  Aramaic was the language closely related to Hebrew that the Jews came back from the Babylonian captivity speaking.  Therefore, Hebrew/Aramaic proper nouns will be used in this Gospel. First off, to respect and understand Yeshua we have to know him for who he was, and his whole identity was that of being a Jew.  Everything he understood about God was as a Jew.  He did not pull his good news out of thin air.  It was from his heritage as a Jew, from reading the Torah, the Prophets, the Psalms and Proverbs, which, all combined, is what the Jews call the Tanakh (pronounced Ta-nax).  [We should call it the Hebrew Bible, not the Old Testament which infers that they need an upgrade.  And we should call the New Testament, the Christian Scripture.] Yeshua’s concepts of the Kingdom of Heaven were particularly formed by the prophet Isaiah.

A second reason to acknowledge him as a Jew and to use Hebrew/Aramaic names is to help reverse the unwarranted two thousand years of Christian anti-Semitism that have caused untold suffering for the Jews.  Along these lines Judas of Iscariot will not be portrayed as Yeshua’s betrayer since he is most likely a fictional Jewish scapegoat.  His name, Judas, literally means Judean or Jew.  So he symbolizes for the early Christians the Jewish rejection of Yeshua, even to the point of betrayal, and personifies anti-Semitism.

A third reason is for proper understanding of meaning in the Gospels.  When going to root words, we should, whenever possible, go to Hebrew/Aramaic--NOT Greek! (I will post a Hebrew/Aramaic-English glossary.)

If he was a Galilean Semite, then Yeshua was a person of color, olive to swarthy brown in skin color. So he was brown and poor, joining most of the human race then and today, rather than of white Anglo-European lineage.  Below is an illustration from the BBC Photo Library.  It is a forensic anthropology portrait of a 1^st century C.E. Galilean Semite.  Yeshua probably looked similar to this.  This portrait was produced by Richard Neave, a renowned medical artist, retired from The University of Manchester in England.  Using CT scans of skulls from the locale and era, forensic techniques to reconstruct facial features, art and historical descriptions from the time period, he was able to render what the average peasant would have looked like then.  The portrait is shown below.

Here is the link to an artcle about the process of producing the above portrait: The Real Face of Jesus - What Did Jesus Look Like?

For a more in depth, but very layperson readable treatment of this topic, I highly recommend the article "Jesus the Jew" by William Loader, Emeritus Professor of New Testament at Murdoch University, Australia and a Minister of the Uniting Church in Australia. Link to article: "Jesus the Jew" by William Loader

Next post is Introduction Part 3.

Introduction Part 1: How dare I? and Why I am writing an updated Gospel.

Greetings Dear Reader,

Thank you for taking the time to read this modern revision of a gospel of Jesus the Nazarene.  I hope you will return feedback about what you truly think of it.  Below are several issues I think need to be mentioned for you to understand this gospel. Thank you.

How dare I?  Well, because the original gospel writers did same the same thing.  They collected oral and written sayings and stories and wrote narrative gospels that addressed concerns of their communities.  I embarked on this endeavor by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit as encountered in my wife, my home Eucharist group, prayer, meditation, and New Testament study.  I am writing this for the following reasons:

• To make the story of Jesus' life, death, and resurrection more accessible to post-modern people, given their world view.
• To highlight the human Jesus of the earthly ministry against the God-Man presented in the canonical gospels (especially in John).
• To highlight that Jesus was a Jew.  This will entail using Hebrew/Aramaic proper names and terms for God.
• To redefine the traditional Kingdom of God/Heaven in inclusive concepts and terminology.
• To assert the role of women in Jesus' ministry and the early Church.  This role was certainly not represented well in the gospels because of the patriarchal prejudice held by those in Jesus' day and in the second or third generation Christians who wrote the gospels.
• To set the record straight, that the Pharisees were not “the bad guys" and why they were portrayed that way.
• To set the record straight, that the Sadducees were “the bad guys," who had Jesus killed and why they were not picked on as much as the Pharisees.
• To set the record straight, that Pontius Pilate was a brutal governor, portrayed as reluctant to kill Jesus because early Christians did not want to anger Rome.

The original gospels projected a post-Easter resurrected Christ onto the human Jesus of the earthly ministry.
This made sense for their time, trying to prove Jesus was the Christ, the Son of God, in a pagan world with many God-Men myths.  Today however, for many post-modern people it presents problems. We can without argument assume Jesus was human, but to assume that he was self-aware of his Father’s entire plan or, more difficult yet, that he had the awareness of God, interferes with us hearing Jesus’ real message—the good news of the kingdom of heaven.  My guiding principles for discerning scriptures are found in the preeminent New Testament scholar, Günther Bornkamm’s book Jesus of Nazareth (1960) written for layperson and scripture scholar alike.  I highly recommend it; you can buy it for less than $10 at Abebooks.com.

So, to try and “draw back the veil” on that more human Jesus, who was certainly a prophet and Rabbi of the kingdom of heaven, I will make several changes to the gospel texts without changing the nature of the message Jesus is delivering about the kingdom of heaven.  Yeshua was about the kingdom of heaven, not about himself!  After the resurrection the first followers see that he “embodies” the message of the kingdom, and that is why he becomes the primary focus.  But to quote Günther Bornkamm*, “the Messianic character of his being is contained in his words and deeds and in the unmediatedness of his historic appearance.”  So we don’t need to constantly point out what his ultimate identity becomes after the resurrection.  Therefore, I will delete passages that indicate that he knew he was the Messiah, the Christ, Son of Man, Son of God, or I AM.  Statements that he knows he will be resurrected on the third day will be deleted.  Does he see himself as special?  Yes.  A prophet and Rabbi?  Yes. Annointed by the Holy Spirit?  Yes.  Does he anticipate his death?  Yes.  Does he trust in God’s vindication by resurrection?  Yes, but in the larger context of Jewish expectation that the just servant will be resurrected.  Does he think the Holy Spirit is his Mother and the heavenly God is his Father? Yes, but he sees all people as children of the Holy Spirit Mother* and heavenly Father.  And NONE of these things is the same as him thinking himself to be the Messiah who will lead Israel to political power again, Son of Man who judges the world at the end of ages, Savior of the world, THE Son of God, and certainly not God made flesh!

*Note: You'll understand the Holy Spirit Mother part in a few posts. I don't know if his fellow Jews all saw it this way or not.

More introduction to come in the next several posts. And I want to thank my wife, Annette, for her feedback and editing.