What If Jesus Wasn't Dirt Poor?

The Internet, cultural anthropology, archaeology digs, global divinity schools and public broadcasting shed new light on the history of religions. I’ve been watching a rerun of PBS’s late-90s Frontline series: From Jesus to Christ - The First Christians.

Drawing upon historical evidence, the series challenges familiar assumptions and conventional notions about Christian origins. Archaeological finds have yielded new understandings of Jesus’ class and social status; fresh interpretations have transformed earlier ideas about the identity of the early Christians and their communities.

Science challenges the depiction of Jesus as a poor man, a point of discussion and debate in the first episode of the PBS series. CNN writes today: Each Christmas, Christians tell stories about the poor baby Jesus born in a lowly manger because there was no room in the inn.

The emerging concept of a “prosperity gospel” may not represent a seismic schism to Christianity to our readers, but it is.

It matters to people like Luke Timothy Johnson, a prominent New Testament scholar and author. He says that a rich Jesus is a distortion of history and a threat to one of Christianity’s core teachings: God’s identification with the poor.

“If Jesus reveals God, there is something powerful about God appearing and working among the poor,” says Johnson, a New Testament professor at Emory University’s Candler School of Theology in Atlanta, Georgia.

“Jesus’ lifestyle is not of one in a gated community or a corporate office,” says Johnson, a former Benedictine monk. “You don’t have to go through a security gate to get to Jesus. People touch him. He reached out and touched children. His accessibility is one of the most powerful messages of Christianity. In Jesus, God is with us, and the majority of us are poor.” via CNN

Tell that to Bill Gates and Warren Buffett. Anne

More reading: Did Christianity Cause the Crash? The Atlantic

Also: Jerusalem: Center of the World PBS