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[ 44 ] the rise and fall of soul and self
Philo was also innovative in the account that he gave of the human capacity for
mystical union with God. In his view, the purpose of this ecstatic union, which he called
“sober intoxication,” was to lead humans out of the material world and into the eternal
world. Like Plato, he regarded the human body as the prison house of the soul. One
could argue that it was predominantly Philo’s influence that turned what was to
become orthodox Christianity toward Platonism.
Christianity
Around the age of thirty, Jesus of Nazareth (c. 4 b.c.e . to 30 c.e .) was baptized by
John the Baptist, just prior to John’s arrest and execution. Soon after, Jesus began his
public career, possibly planning to continue John’s work as an apocalyptic prophet.
John’s basic message was, “Repent, the end is coming.” Probably when Jesus was
baptized by John, he accepted that message. However, by the time Jesus began his
public teaching, he had developed his own distinctive message. Historians disagree
about what that message was.
5
According to traditionalists, Jesus was an apocalyptic
prophet, in the tradition of John the Baptist. However, traditionalists disagree about
whether Jesus regarded himself as the Messiah promised in the Hebrew Scriptures.
According to revisionists, Jesus was not an apocalyptic prophet, but a this-worldly
social and political reformer. In their view, his main message had to do with pro-
moting social equality and with replacing the Jewish system that stressed holiness
and purity with one that stressed compassion.
Aside from the extreme scarcity and ambiguity of the evidence on which
historians have had to rely in constructing their accounts, there are two main
reasons they have been unable to agree about Jesus’ message. First, they dis-
agree about what the evidence should include. The main source of contention
here
has to do with whether to regard as authentic certain literary evidence
that is outside of the New Testament. The most important potential evidence
of this sort is the Gnostic Gospel of Thomas,
a collection of sayings of Jesus
apparently based in part on early sources other than the canonical Gospels.
Second, virtually all academic historians, whether conservative or liberal, agree
that many of the events depicted in the New Testament are fictitious and that
most of the sayings attributed to Jesus are inauthentic. That is, in the views of
most academic historians, many of the events that are said to have happened to
Jesus, for instance, those depicted in the birth narratives in Matthew and Luke,
many of the things that Jesus is said to have done, such as raising Lazarus from
the dead and walking on water, and most of the words attributed to Jesus in
the New Testament are fictitious. In sum, in the views of most historians, the
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