Jesus outside of Christianity

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Jesus of Nazareth is also assigneda special meaning outside of Christianity . The writings of early Christianity also influenced the images of Jesus in some other religions , modern philosophy and literature . This cultural reception ranges from high esteem to emphatic rejection and is co-determined by one's own belief or thought requirements as well as by historical conflicts with churches and Christians.

Judaism

The Judaism does not see Jesus of Nazareth, the son of God, as a person according to the Jewish view can not be divine. Nor does it see him as the Messiah , since he did not bring about the final transformation of the world that the Jews expect from the Messiah according to biblical prophecy.

New Testament (NT)

Jesus' first followers (successors) were Jews like him and understood him and his message of the kingdom of God as an actualization of the biblical hopes of faith, which were then handed down in writing in a preliminary form of the Tanakh . According to the Gospels, they called Jesus a rabbi (teacher of the scribe) ( Mk 9.38  EU ; Mk 11.21  EU ), as did the rich young man ( Mk 10.17  EU ) and some Pharisees ( Mk 12.14.32  EU ).

The Jewish rural population of that time referred to Jesus as a prophet analogous to one of his self-designations ( Mk 6.4  EU ) . Some saw in him the returning Elijah ( Mk 8.28  EU ), who was expected by the people as the forerunner of the final judgment . Some of his followers referred to Jesus as "the anointed" (Hebrew maschiach ; Greek Christos, Χριστός), which meant the end-time savior appointed by God for the liberation of Israel and the world of nations: according to Mk 8.29  EU Simon Peter . The Messiah was considered a descendant of the Israelite King David . A blind beggar called Jesus on his way to Jerusalem "son of David" ( Mk 10.47  EU ). A crowd of festival pilgrims loudly praised his entry into Jerusalem: “Blessed be the kingdom of our father David, which is now to come.” ( Mk 11.10  EU ) Accordingly, they brought the expectation of a messianic liberation from Roman rule to Jesus. He had awakened this with the implicit Messiah claim of his Kingdom of God message in favor of the poor, suffering and without rights ( Mt 5: 3ff.  EU ).

Jesus' main opponent, the Sadducees , saw in him a false prophet because of his harsh temple criticism ( Mk 14.58  EU ). His self-designation as the Son of Man ( Mk 14.62  EU ) according to Daniel's vision ( Dan 7.14  EU ) confirmed this picture. That was the likely reason for his extradition to the Roman governor for crucifixion .

Rabbinical tradition

After the lost uprising of the Jews against Roman rule, which ended with the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple in 70, the Pharisees gained the leading role in Judaism. In the process of mutual delimitation, Christianity , which was still strongly influenced by Jewish Christians, was now considered incompatible with Judaism and was excluded at the Sanhedrin of Jamnia (around 95). The separation occurred when the early Christian mission , since Paul of Tarsus, also addressed non-Jews . By accepting Christians without a Jewish background ( Gentile Christians ), the majority situation changed. The clashes ultimately led to anti-Judaism among the Gentile Christians.

The Babylonian Talmud , which was written around 200, usually called Jesus only “that man”, thus avoided his name, described him as a false prophet and seducer of Israel who practiced magic, ridiculed the wise and had only five disciples. He was hanged on the eve of Passover after no witness had been found for him despite a forty-day search (Sanhedrin 43a; cf. Mk 14.53-64  EU ). The Talmud explains Jesus' origins with a misstep by Mary: She got involved with a Roman legionnaire named Panthera and ascribed the resulting child to the “Holy Spirit”. For the Talmudic rabbis she was a "whore". Through his Roman father, Jesus was "not just a bastard, but the son of a gentile". He could therefore not claim the descent from King David announced in the NT . This idea, together with the Messiah and Son-of-God claim of Jesus or the NT, was pure deception for the Talmud authors. They also portrayed Jesus as a promiscuous person who had had sex with a prostitute and followed his mother. This proves that he was not a prophet.

Around the 8th century, the Toledot Jeschu , a polemical Jewish tale of Jesus that takes up Talmudic and other popular legends, was written in Italy . Jesus appears here as a misguided pupil of the rabbis, for whom, not least, his magic arts are fatal. This story is partly connected with a Peter legend, according to which Peter as Pope actually worked in the interests of the rabbis and saved them from worse by strictly separating them from Christianity.

Modern times

Some Jewish religious scholars see Jesus as a genuine Jewish teacher of the Torah , who taught the people the belief in YHWH , the God of Israel. The " science of Judaism " produced important Jesus researchers such as Abraham Geiger and Leo Baeck . Before the Shoah , Christian theologians mostly met this research with rejection and ignorance. Since 1945, German-speaking Jewish religious scholars such as Martin Buber , David Flusser , Pinchas Lapide , Schalom Ben-Chorin , Abraham Joshua Heschel , Walter Homolka and others have been concerned with Jesus.

The Messianic Jews recognize Jesus as the Messiah, but at the same time adhere to Jewish customs that they associate with Christian worship .

Mandaeans

The Mandaeans - a monotheistic religion that can be traced back to John the Baptist - regard Jesus as a "prophet of lies". In the Sidra Rabba , the sacred book of the Mandaeans, it says:

“When John lives in that age of Jerusalem, takes the Jordan and baptizes, Jesus Christ comes, walks in humility, receives John's baptism and becomes wise through John's wisdom. But then he twisted John's speech, changed the baptism in the Jordan and preached iniquity and deceit in the world. "

Manichaeism

"Jesus the shine" plays a central role in the cosmology of the founder of the religion Mani : Jesus is identified with the serpent in the story of paradise , which Adam and Eve eat from the tree of knowledge (Gen 3). While the created world as a mixture of matter and spirit is evaluated negatively in Mani's teaching, Manichaeism interprets the fall of man positively as the first step towards salvation. For him, Jesus as a figure of light is also one of four deities that every human being meets after his death in order to "weigh" his soul and either send it for further purification into a new earthly existence ( reincarnation ) or on a journey to the world of light.

Mani saw himself as the last messenger of light called to be the “seal of the prophets”. This should follow Buddha , Zarathustra , Moses and Jesus, i.e. integrate all religions known to Mani into a common teaching system in order to proclaim the common liberating truth behind them.

Islam

In the Koran , “ Jesus, son of Mary ” ( Arabic عيسى بن مريم ʿĪsā ibn Maryam ) as word (kalima) and spirit (rūh) of God (Allāh). By strengthening with the Holy Spirit (ruh al-Qudus) he could with God's permission wonder accomplish, and here probably with the Holy Spirit a Koranic description of the Archangel Gabriel's present. Jesus is explicitly, with reference to Christianity, not seen as the Son of God and part of the Trinity . Any veneration of Jesus isrejectedas a breach of pure monotheism . But Jesus is in the form of a high messenger ( rasūl ), important prophet (nabīy) and the only person born by a virgin (after the first person in prehistory), as the Messiah (al-masīh) - albeit in a different form in Christianity or Judaism . In popular Islamic tradition, the idea is widespread that hewill returnwith the Mahdi , a descendant of Muhammad ,to hold judgmenton Judgment Day .

The crucifixion of Christ is denied in sura 4 , verse 157 and accordingly in the Islamic exegesis of the Koran :

“They did not (in reality) kill him and (also) did not crucify him. Rather, (someone else) appeared similar to them (so that they mistook him for Jesus and killed him). "

In Islamic literature, the person who was crucified instead of Jesus is identified with Simon of Cyrene or Judas Iscariot , depending on the author . The Ahmadiyya doctrine provides another theory . After that it was Jesus who was crucified, but he survived the crucifixion. After his recovery, he emigrated to India, where he finally died at the age of 120 and was buried under the name Yuz Asaf . His tomb is the Roza Bal tomb in Khanyar Street in the eponymous district of Srinagar in the capital of Kashmir . Further references to Jesus' work in India can be found in the place names of the region, for example in the Hill Station Yusmarg 47 km south of Srinagar.

Alternatively, Muslim authors also advocate the theory that there was such chaos at the crucifixion that nobody really knew what was happening. This then led to the misunderstanding that Jesus was crucified.

Bahai

In the Baha'i religion, Jesus is seen as a “ manifestation of God ”, as a divine revelator. In the Baha'i literature he is also referred to as "the spirit" or "the son". From the point of view of the Baha'i there is a progressive revelation , that is, there is only one God who has repeatedly and progressively revealed himself in the course of history and will continue to do so in the future. Baha'i believe that Baha'u'llah , the founder of the Baha'i religion, is next to the second coming of other religious founders also the "second coming of Christ in the glory of the Father" ( Mt 16.27  EU , Mk 8.38  EU and Lk 9, 26  EU ).

Hinduism

Images of Jesus in the religiously very diverse cultural area of ​​India (mostly summarized under the umbrella term Hinduism ) are primarily determined by three main factors: the ancient Vedic , later Brahmanistic philosophy, the traditional polytheistic tolerance of the religions of Asia and negative experiences with Western colonial rule and mission history .

The first encounters between Indians and the Syrian Thomas Christians influenced by Gnosticism took place in the 6th century. In the 17th century the Jesuit Roberto de Nobili proclaimed Christ for the first time in Hindu terms and thus won around 40,000 Indian Christians.

In the 19th century, some Hindu scholars specifically dealt with the person of Jesus. Keshabchandra Sen (1838–1884) called Jesus an Oriental who belongs to India and calls on the Hindus to live “like a Christ”.

Ramakrishna Paramahamsa (1836–1886) was a worshiper of the goddess Kali and was first introduced to Islam and then to Christianity. He got to know texts of the Gospels through a Hindu. During the meditative contemplation of an icon of Mary with the baby Jesus he experienced a vision: Jesus Christ appeared to him as a figure of light out of the picture and, against his resistance, took possession of his heart, so that he did not have the Kali Temple for three days can enter. On the third day the figure of light met him directly and revealed itself to him as an inner voice:

“This is Christ, who shed the blood of his heart for the redemption of the world, who crossed a sea of ​​suffering out of love for people. It is He, the Master Yogi, forever one with the Father. "

Then the figure hugged him and melted into his soul. Since then, he has not doubted Jesus' divinity and has worshiped him as an avatar alongside other incarnations of the divine.

This reception is based on a variety of possible paths to God (religious pluralism) and recognizes the deity of Jesus Christ not primarily cognitively through spoken communication, but through an emotional and mystical experience ( bhakti ) that can be reached meditatively . This should lead to a “spiritual realization” of the divine in the human soul, which raises it to a higher level of consciousness. The differences between the religions remain recognized, as their deity is experienced exclusively with other gods for the duration of the vision. Ramakrishna therefore advocated the principle: "We Hindus understand Jesus better than you Christians." Therefore, Hindus Christians could convey a vision of Christ. This concept had an educational effect.

Swami Vivekananda (1862-1902) was the most influential disciple of Ramakrishna. He interpreted Jesus Christ using Shankara's Advaita teaching . As a representative of India at the first World Parliament of Religions (Chicago 1893), he then founded the first Vedanta societies, which want to benefit Western educated Christians from Hindu spirituality. The declared goal is to become a “Christ”, not a Christian: The title stands for the highest level of God consciousness that can be reached by every human being, and against the dogmas and claims of superiority of churches and their missionary societies. Alcohol and other drugs are rejected as harmful components of Western culture.

Swami Akhilananda (1894–1962) saw Jesus as a real yogi who practiced all three types of yoga and showed the way to samadhi ("right meditation"). For Swami Abhedananda he was the Son of God who abolished all duality. In him every thought of separation from God and man ceases forever; as the mighty incursion of the divine being, it breaks down all barriers and boundaries of human consciousness.

This reception of Jesus differs in some features clearly from that in Judaism, Islam and Western atheism. “I and the Father are one” (John 10:30): Hindus mostly have no problem with Jesus' divinity and incarnation . They often see him as a matter of course as a full manifestation of the Krishna being, who "descended" ( Avatara ) on earth in human form in order to reveal their own essence to people so that they can become what they have been from eternity ( Sri Aurobindo ). His poverty, suffering and death are also appreciated and accepted as total surrender to God and self-humiliation, which corresponds to God's nature.

But Hindus do not recognize Jesus as the only figure of the divine. According to their understanding that would be an arbitrary distortion:

“God is greater than Jesus… If God were to commit to a single incarnation, then we would limit God and make God available. God is limitless. Who could exhaust this ocean? "

The incarnation of God serves the incarnation of man. That is why Jesus' humanity is not a past event for Hindus, but takes place in every human soul ( Atman ) that opens to the divine ( Brahman ). Here Jesus stands as a person with every guru , wisdom teacher or saint on the same level and does not receive a special universal redeeming role. His temptation in the desert , his parables and miracles, his prayer in Gethsemane are received as meditative truths. Other details of its historical existence such as its interpretation of the Torah, the prohibition of divorce and others are, however, considered to be immaterial. Often, however, his Asian origins are emphasized in relation to western appropriation .

While western theology in the 19th and 20th centuries often no longer dared to speak of God's revelation in Christ, made him a model for general religiosity and humanity and closely linked Christianity with, at times, modern political ideologies , Indians kept precisely the theological dimension of " Holy "( Rudolf Otto ) and the" mystery "( Eberhard Jüngel ), which defies all human understanding. The Indian poet-philosopher Rabindranath Tagore wrote in Jesus, the great soul, before 1936, when there were hardly any religious dialogues :

“Revelation of God in the midst of people! The teaching of Jesus is not a truth that can be included in a verse of the Holy Scriptures, but it shows itself as the truth of his life. It has remained alive to this day like an evergreen fig tree that keeps sprouting new branches. "

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi (1918–2008) rejected the Christian theology of the cross , according to which God in Jesus Christ was reconciled to human beings through the real acceptance of human suffering:

“No, no, no, Christ never suffered. Man saw him as suffering. [...] So man saw from the level of his own suffering that his Redeemer suffered. But Christ in himself never suffered. "

The suffering is very real; But through the experience of the divine possible for him, man could become more capable of “not feeling the suffering” and “living in such a way that the suffering does not come”.

Modern images of Jesus

Historical research on Jesus

With the liberation of science from ecclesiastical tutelage, historical research into religions, primarily Christianity, was able to develop. She has gradually lightened the history of the origins of the Bible and gained many insights into Jewish roots, Hellenistic and Gnostic influences in the NT.

The historical criticism was initially directed primarily against church dogmas derived from the Bible, later against supernatural mythology and in part even denied Jesus' existence. Radical skepticism sees it as an unhistorical construct that the early Christians are said to have put together from circulating motifs, legends and mystery cults. However, only a few outsiders still represent this today. Albert Schweitzer demonstrated as early as 1899 that the postulate of a historical Jesus "behind" the writings of the early Christians very often projected their own ideas into them.

Comparative religious studies often saw Jesus as the founder of religion , since Christianity originated from and relates to him. Today, however, it is assumed that Jesus, as a Jew, only wanted to work in Israel and not found a new religion, but wanted to reform Judaism. Early Christianity was an inner-Jewish group and only developed into a separate religion from around 70 to 100 years of age, primarily and initially through the activities of Paul / Saul.

Philosophy since the Enlightenment

The Age of Enlightenment was dominated by the emancipation from the church, superstition , mythology and heteronomy. From this arose the modern criticism of religion , which Christianity and beyond all religion from different approaches as

This influenced the view of Jesus in the enlightened middle class of Europe in many ways.

In the face of secularization , rationalism , and the rising democracy and labor movement in the 19th century, the churches largely withdrew to orthodox dogmatics , pietistic inwardness and diakonia . Their lines remained allied with the conservative forces of the nobility , monarchy and bourgeoisie .

Nevertheless, the enlightened philosophy has appropriated the figure of Jesus, but also other biblical and theological ideas in its own way and translated them into humanistic, moral-ethical or revolutionary maxims of action. The “ golden rule ” of the Sermon on the Mount and other religions unmistakably represented the traditional background for Kant's categorical imperative . Hegel's “absolute world spirit” is an attempt to translate the work of the transcendent Holy Spirit into the work of dialectical understanding and in the reasonable progress of world history to find again.

The Dane Sören Kierkegaard anticipated the existentialism of the 20th century with his radical, subjective risk of faith . Following on from the early Martin Heidegger, Karl Jaspers poses the question of the authenticity and unconditionality of human existence. He brings it to a head to the appeal to “fulfill the existential experience”, which for him - unlike for the more atheistic existentialists Jean-Paul Sartre or Albert Camus  - necessarily points beyond itself and contains the reference to the whole of existence and its transcendent ground . He tries to grasp this ground of the whole with the expression "encompassing". But not only Jesus, but also other “authoritative people” with an incomparable historical impact can become the representation and language of the absolute for him.

Proponents of Marxism were also interested in Jesus. Friedrich Engels saw him as the leader of an early poverty movement in Roman class society, which at least tended to aim at overcoming slavery and a classless society . Rosa Luxemburg put Jesus against the Polish-Russian-German clergy (the church staff ) and their biblically unfounded hostility towards socialism . In the Christian-Marxist dialogue since 1965, Jesus was seen as the keeper of a humane ethics free of purpose ( Leszek Kolakowski ) or the “subjective factor” in the process of revolutionary change ( Milan Machovec ) or as the preacher of a “revolution in the concept of God”, which the potential for hope of “atheism in Christianity ”and the“ concrete utopia ”( Ernst Bloch ).

literature

A large number of different images of Jesus can also be found in the profane literature of the 19th and 20th centuries. He was u. a. portrayed as a humane role model, friend of people and children, philosophical sage, strict moralist or political resistance fighter.

From 1800 to around 1960, many novels were written in which Jesus appears as the leading figure and figure of identification for the poor and weak, their hopes, their human dramas. Famous were u. a. Fyodor Dostoyevsky's The Grand Inquisitor in his novel The Brothers Karamazov . From a Catholic background, also in a polemical demarcation, there are novels in which the example of Jesus brings church officials to followers without heroic pose:

But also in non-church literature of the war and post-war period, Jesus plays an important role as the one who refuses to face the madness of murder or is depicted in the fate of suffering but also survivors:

  • Anna Seghers : The Seventh Cross (1942).
  • Wolfgang Borchert : Jesus no longer participates (published 1947).
  • Peter Huchel : Report of a pastor on the downfall of his community (in: Chausseen , Gedichte 1974).
  • Heinrich Böll : Removal from the Troop (1964).
  • Heinrich Böll: And didn't say a single word (1953). With his novel, Böll had already set the silence of Jesus before Pilate against the penetrating pious eloquence and in the "tenderness of Christ" indicated the meaning of being human.
  • Wolfgang Koeppen : Death in Rome (1954). Koeppen invoked the suffering Jesus as a counter-image to the corrupt power institution of the church.

The following authors, referring to Jesus, criticize the Church as an exponent of the depraved post-Christian society in a similar direction:

In Max Frisch's Nun they are singing again . An attempt at a requiem (1945), as a dead figure, Jesus hands bread and wine to the victims of war, symbolizing senseless love as the last resort against despair.

See also

literature

General
Judaism
philosophy
Literature, music and film
  • Siglind Bruhn : Christ as an opera hero in the late 20th century ; Waldkirch: Gorz, 2005; ISBN 978-3-938095-03-4 .
  • Karl-Josef Kuschel : In the mirror of the poet. Man, God and Jesus in 20th Century Literature. Patmos, Düsseldorf 2000, ISBN 3-491-69021-8 .
  • Karl-Josef Kuschel: Jesus in the mirror of world literature. Patmos, Düsseldorf 1999, ISBN 3-491-72423-6 .
  • Georg Langenhorst: Jesus went to Hollywood: the rediscovery of Jesus in contemporary literature and film. Patmos, Düsseldorf 1998, ISBN 978-3-491-72387-0 .
  • Thomas Langkau: Film star Jesus Christ: the latest Jesus films as a challenge for theology and religious education. Lit, Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3-8258-0196-0 .
  • Manfred Tiemann: Jesus comes from Hollywood: religious educational work with Jesus films. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2002, ISBN 978-3-525-61396-2 .

Web links

general
Manichaeism
Judaism
Islam
Baha'i

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Norbert Scholl , Winfried Belz, Karl-Heinz Knauber: Christianity and Judentum imprimatur, Trier 2018.
  2. ↑ Peter Schäfer: Jesus in the Talmud. Tübingen 2007, p. 45f
  3. ↑ Heribert Busse (2001), p. 168; Gabriel Said Reynolds (2009), p. 241.
  4. ↑ Mirza Ghulam Ahmad : Jesus in India. A depiction of Jesus' escape from death on the cross and his journey to India . Verlag Der Islam, Frankfurt am Main 2005, ISBN 978-3-921458-39-6 .
  5. ↑ Mirza Ghulam Ahmad : Masih Hindustan-mein . 1899.
    Günter Grönbold: Jesus in India. The end of a legend . Kösel-Verlag, Munich 1985, ISBN 3-466-20270-1 .
    Norbert Klatt: Jesus in India: Nikolaus Alexandrovitch Notovitch's “Unknown Life of Jesus”, his life and his trip to India (= orientations and reports 13). Evangelical Central Office for Weltanschauungsfragen , Stuttgart, 1986, p. 24.
    Wilhelm Schneemelcher , James Clarke (Ed.): New Testament Apocrypha , Volume 1: Gospels and Related Writings . John Knox Press, Westminster, 1991, ISBN 0-664-21878-4 , p. 87: “Günter Grönbold book Jesus in India. The End of a Legend (1985) is a devastating assessment of these fantasies. ”
    Sameer Arshad: Tomb Raider: Jesus buried in Srinagar? Times of India , May 8, 2010: “One of the caretakers of the tomb, Mohammad Amin, alleged that they were forced to padlock the shrine […] He believed that the theory that Jesus is buried anywhere on the face of the earth is blasphemous to Islam. "
  6. ↑ Gospel Network : Crucifixion and Redemption in Islam. Archived from the original on September 9, 2010 ; Retrieved August 29, 2012 .
  7. ↑ Baha'u'llah : Book of Certainty . 1:17 ff.
  8. ↑ cf. z. B. Baha'u'llah: Claim and Annunciation . 106, 108, 122, 140 etc.
  9. ^ Bahá'í International Community: Bahá'u'lláh. An introduction . Baha'i-Verlag, Hofheim-Langenhain 2004, ISBN 3-87037-333-4 ( PDF ). PDF ( Memento of the original from May 9, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. No. 107  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.at.bahai.org
  10. ↑ Reinhart Hummel: Jesus in Hinduism. In: Werner Zager (ed.): Jesus in the world religions. Neukirchener Verlagshaus, Neukirchen-Vluyn 2004, ISBN 3-7975-0069-6 , pp. 117-120.
  11. ↑ Reinhart Hummel: Jesus in Hinduism. In: Werner Zager (ed.): Jesus in the world religions. Neukirchen-Vluyn 2004, p. 121f.
  12. ↑ Rabindranath Tagore: Jesus. The great soul. Neue Stadt Verlag GmbH, 1995, ISBN 3-87996-336-3 .
  13. ↑ Robert Kee : The Maharishi and the Abbot . Digitized and translated by Tobias E. Klemke. BBC , July 5, 1965, p. 12 (pdf; 678 kB; English).
This version was added to the list of articles worth reading on December 5, 2005 .