A Hermeneutical Note

I have no credentials to do this!

There, I have said it. Yet I maintain that I am as prepared as anyone to decide what is and what is not likely when looking at the range of sayings and aphorisms and other constructs attributed to Jesus in the various texts that are both canonical and apocryphal.

Furthermore I intend to do this.

My Adventures of Jesus series on Kindle is a remarkable effort to get at the heart of Jesus and Abba. Many seek to do this. Jefferson created a text made up of things he thought were authentic. All preachers do this one way or another. Everyone ends up saying what they believe and rejecting the rest.

But there is that credentials thing.

By WHAT authority do I suggest that Jesus did not leave us with cause to believe he was born in Bethlehem or that he authored and authorized a Trinitarian creed?

I have but the MA level from theology school. I turned down a chance to get a PhD. I maintained that singing texts was the best way to see what they might mean. I did nothing that passed muster with any renowned scholars and I can prove that from sad experience. So to the question of authority I say by NO authority.

And by saying that I freely admit that some of my abductions (guesses) are possibly erroneous.

Look at it this way.

Back in the 19th Century the greatest of scholarly biographers of Jesus, Renan, seems to have assumed that most of the canonical texts are far more authentic than I do. His effort to see Jesus in them is a wonderful way to gather a basis for determining what texts OUGHT to be seen as authentic.

After Renan came the various schools of higher criticism and then the Jesus Seminar folk. There was an effort to grade authenticity which helped to at least suggest a core of sayings and aphorisms that may have come from the mouth of Jesus.

The problem with most of this is that we have little way of dealing with the problem of Jesus if we do not decide whether the substance of what we have is true or false.

I say FALSE.

Because the substance is creedal, binary, we-they religion and this is not what Jesus was about.

The core of Jesus’ message is in the texts and it contradicts most of what the churches profess to believe. That would be the planks of the classic creeds. I have for fifty years held that creedal messianism is the victorious message of the church and that it is WRONG.

So how do we move beyond this?

By moving beyond. People are inferring from this sign and that that the received religion is problematic and that spirituality, universal spirituality, is the probable direction. That and a universal move toward justice and nonviolence.

Beyond Prosperity gospel. Beyond God has a plan for you gospel.

I do not expect to prevail in this life. I am too old to believe that what I hold will be part of everyone’s reading list.

But I do not NEED to.

Because I profess to have a bead on the truth and truth is what happens regardless.

I derive it from Peirce and from my reading of Jesus.

I will put this understanding up against anything out there, but it would be a waste of time. It will not be accepted. No credentials. No right to speak. Charlatan. Scam.

So I shall just write with no credentials and we shall see.