{"id":7499,"date":"2012-07-07T23:21:43","date_gmt":"2012-07-07T23:21:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/?p=7499"},"modified":"2012-07-07T23:21:43","modified_gmt":"2012-07-07T23:21:43","slug":"in-the-beginning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/in-the-beginning\/","title":{"rendered":"In the Beginning"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Much as I am not a fan of the public nuisance better known as Karen Armstrong, the opening two paragraphs of a review <\/a>she has written for the FT<\/em> today caught my eye: <\/p>\n

Over the course of his long, distinguished career, Geza Vermes, the first professor of Jewish Studies at Oxford university, has made a major contribution to our understanding of the historical Jesus. In Christian Beginnings, as in his groundbreaking work Jesus the Jew (1973), he shows that Jesus would have been a recognisable and familiar figure to his contemporaries. A healer, exorcist and compelling preacher, he was the latest in a line of charismatic prophets who existed for centuries alongside the established priestly tradition and offered an alternative form of Judaism, based on vision, ecstasy and miraculous healing, and frequently in conflict with the Israelite ruling class.<\/p>\n

In this book, however, Vermes takes the story further, showing how the human figure of Jesus became increasingly other-worldly until, at the Council of Nicaea in 325, he was declared fully divine. Vermes points out quite correctly that in much of the New Testament, Jesus is perceived as \u201ca man attested to you by God with deeds of power, wonders and signs\u201d (Acts 2.22), a typical definition of a charismatic prophet. In Judaism, the title \u201cSon of God\u201d was simply a human being who enjoyed special intimacy with God and had been given a divine task: kings, prophets and priests \u2013 and the entire people of Israel \u2013 were all called \u201csons of God\u201d in this sense\u2026<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Much as I am not a fan of the public nuisance better known as Karen Armstrong, the opening two paragraphs of a review she has written for the FT today caught my eye: Over the course of his long, distinguished … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":64,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[90,711],"tags":[143],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7499"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/64"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7499"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7499\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7502,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7499\/revisions\/7502"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7499"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7499"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7499"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}