I just saw Passion of the Christ and got to wondering if Jesus was… well…somewhat insane. If we assume he was just a human being, then Jesus’s belief that he was the son of God in a literal sense would make him a candidate for the looney bin. Have any historians ever found any evidence that Jesus was mentally ill?
Certainly that idea is one of the options in C S Lewis’ ‘trilemma’ (Liar, Lunatic or Lord), but Like Pascal’s Wager, Lewis’ argument is such a gross oversimplification or compartmentalisation of a complex issue that it isn’t really worth much.
Well he was very religious, so obviously he wasn’t a logical man.
I don’t think it’s clear that he did believe he was the son of God in a literal sense, despite what some of his champions believed after his death.
That makes perfect sense. After all, nobody with religious views can argue logically, or garner the respect of others for doing so – we’ve seen no examples of that around here.
WallyM7 had a thought to offer on that subject.
Despite the counterintuitive teachings of immaculate conception I always took that “Son of God” title to be comparable to saying George Washington is the Father of Our Country, or more directly that “so & so” was the son of The Revolution." Meaning that Jesus was a living archetype of Godliness. Kinda like Buddha. As close as a human being can come to living the teachings of the religion. In that sense, we all have the capacity to reach that same level of selfless love and righteousness. The story has more meaning and relevance to the average Joshua.
That this perspective makes Jesus a bastard is completely irrelevant. IIRC God’s command is “Be fruitful & multiply” but there is no caveat of “but only within the bounds of holy wedlock.” With that, Mary & Joseph could take credit for spawning a really terrific kid who went on to lead, by his example of self sacrifice (well, at least his example of raising hell and getting turned in), the “children” of God to the path of salvation. Or something.
Oh yeah…Meaglomaniacal Messiah Complex. Loony if you consider allowing one’s actions to wantonly break laws and cause public disturbances. Low grade loony to be sure, but not completely attached to the commonly accepted reality.
“Immaculate Conception” is a specifically Roman Catholic teaching regarding the Virgin Mary being born without “original sin” as a special act of grace towards her, preparing her to be the hostess of Jesus’s pre-birth development, more or less. Has nothing to do with the dogmata related to Jesus’s nature.
There are a host of opinions on who Jesus was – the orthodox treatment is found in Act V of the Council of Chalcedon:
Some modern theologians suggest that Jesus so perfectly lived out the intent of the Father that he effectively represented God in human form.
But yeah, the theory that He was a nutjob, a megalomaniac with quite literally a Messiah complex, has been advanced any number of times, whenever it was not punishable by law to suggest it.
There seem to me to be good reasons to think otherwise – when you look at the accounts of what He allegedly said and did, as opposed to dogmata about Him advanced by others.
Someone is bound to nitpick this, so I might as well play devil’s advocate; Polycarp, how do you differentiate between ‘accounts of what he allegedly said and did’ and ‘dogmata *about him advanced by others’, given that they all fall under the descriptor ‘things people have said about Jesus’?
Sorry for intruding but if I was to follow “His” (whose?) ways, up untill I am all “lovey dovey for God’s Covey,” would I be able to walk on water and give site to the blind as well? Sure, he lived his religion up to the fullest, but what about the accounts of him having save-magic in his fingers? Either some body reported it, or he did himself, but I really don’t know either way. Surly no sane man can walk on water like Jesus can, but maybe that is just me not living up to religion.
I had the same thought after watching the movie. I think the thought that came most clearly to the front of my mind was… Why did we think David Koresh was loony, but this doesn’t seem so strange? I don’t mean that as an affront, or an insult, I just couldn’t figure out where the line between messiah and maniac gets drawn?
Some have certainly hypothesized that Jesus may have been a bit touched. Actually, that explanation comes up for all kinds of charismatic religious figures who describe visions or claim to commune with God directly. It’s not implausible, though any such speculation along these lines is likely to be completely unprovable. After all, to do a proper post mortem diagnosis, you’d have to have some pretty detailed biographical accounts, and as we know, just about everything biographical in the Gospels is extremely sketchy, when likely to be accurate, and when detailed, likely to be total rubbish. Just about all that can be said about Jesus with a reasonable level of confidence (never certainty) is:
There was a guy named Jesus, son of Joseph and Mary, who came from Galilee. He was born around 6-4 BCE, just before the death of Herod the Great. His father was a carpenter, and he may have been trained in that trade also. There is no reason to assume he was literate, but he seems to have been quite familiar with the Hebrew scriptures, enough to argue their meaning with some level of authority.
He appears to have been a disciple of John the Baptist, a fiery prophet in the tradition of other Old Testament prophets, who predicted the imminent arrival of the End Times and the coming of the Messiah.
For some reason, Jesus broke from John’s ministry, and may have taken other disciples of John along with him. Jesus may have distiguished himself from John by reinterpreting the End Times prophesy, defining the “Kingdom” as something more spiritual in nature than John may have understood it. Jesus may in fact see himself as the leader of this new spiritual Kingdom. (This is where the nutty Jesus theory may be applicable).
Jesus developed a sizable following after his break with John. In his early thirties, he entered Jerusalem with some number of his followers, who publically proclaimed him to be the Messiah. He went into the Temple grounds and caused a disturbance that drew the ire of the Jewish and Roman authorities. His identification with the traditional Messiah/King of Israel was likely regarded as seditious by the Roman authorities, and perhaps blasphemous by the Jewish authorities. In any event, sedition was a capital crime in all Roman-occupied lands, and Jesus was put to death by crucifixion as a matter of course.
It seems difficult to imagine that Jesus would not have known how dangerous his actions would be to himself and perhaps some of his followers if he was thinking at all sanely. One simply could not go around voluntarily being identified as a King of any kind under Roman rule and expect to live for long. To cause a disturbance in the Temple, around the time of the Feast of Passover (when many religiously-fervent and potentially riotous people, highly receptive and responsive to some sort of “sign”, would be in the Temple precincts in large numbers), and to associate that disturbance with something as politically loaded as “Messiahood” was nothing less than suicidal.
This begs the question: What person in his right mind would do this? Was Jesus crazy?
There may be an answer: “Oh, Lord, why have you forsaken me?” This quote is suffused with such tension (from the perspective of a redaction critic), it is highly likely that it is authentic. It may indicate that Jesus did not expect to be executed, but rather expected God’s intervention to deliver himself and the Jews from persecution. He may not have thought his actions would get him killed. If so, he was no more crazy than any other prophet of the day, proclaiming the End Times.
I suppose that to be acknowledged as a messiah rather than a loony, one would need to show some convincing proof of ones godhood. A few miracles would fit the bill. As in proper miracles: water into wine or a resurrection under scientific scrutiny, not the half baked types that are accepted by the Vatican as part of more recent canonisation procedures.
George Bernard Shaw posited schizophrenia to explain the voices Jesus heard.
Perhaps one could say that the individual Ye’shua ben Yu’seph had an ego-structure which gave him unique insight into the human condition and draw some unpopular conclusions about truth.
I’d like to say this about that:
…and this is where this part of the discussion gets ugly…
Well, I wasn’t referring so much to the miracles, which are a whole other can of worms. I was thinking more along of the lines of, for instance, the infancy narratives. You know, the whole story about the census, Joseph and Mary having to go to Bethlehem, and all that. Not only are the Gospel accounts of Matthew and Luke mutually inconsistent, they don’t easily fit any of the external recorded history. Jesus is said to have been born during Herod’s reign in Matthew. Yet no Roman census took place during Herod’s rule. Luke’s story does bring up a recorded census in the area (under Quirinius), but this took place ten years after Herod died. In Matthew, Herod is said to have killed all the newborn boys in Bethlehem. Nobody else felt this was worthy of record?
And so on. There’s plenty more, but perhaps this will suffice for now. It’s just not meant to be read as an accurate historical account, I don’t think. But perhaps historical information can be gleaned.
You don’t need historians to find the suggestion.
Mark Chapter 3
20Then Jesus entered a house, and again a crowd gathered, so that he and his disciples were not even able to eat. 21When his family heard about this, they went to take charge of him, for they said, “He is out of his mind.”
<snip>
31Then Jesus’ mother and brothers arrived. Standing outside, they sent someone in to call him.
32 A crowd was sitting around him, and they told him, “Your mother and brothers are outside looking for you.”
33"Who are my mother and my brothers?" he asked.
34Then he looked at those seated in a circle around him and said, “Here are my mother and my brothers! 35Whoever does God’s will is my brother and sister and mother.”
I thought about this several years ago and I looked at the bible and compared it to the symptoms of delusional schizophrenia.
In one part it says Jesus is reading someone’s thoughts, which is a sign of schizophrenia (feeling you can read minds)
Jesus also feels he communicates directly with god
He underwent a major lifestyle transformation
He felt compelled to do things he didn’t want to do
He felt the fate of the world rested on his shoulders
etc.
Of course there is no telling how much of what was written was actually true or not or how many of these things have alternate explanations.
If the Gospels had been written by Him during His lifetime, or by Matthew, Mark, Luke and John during their lifetimes, I’d be a lot more inclined to take it more, I dunno, literally or seriously. Jesus makes a lot more sense to me as a radical Essene rabbi with high expectations of people, who got in people’s faces and didn’t politely back down; one who never claimed divinity for himself and certainly never claimed his mom was a virgin.
Unfortunately, there’s no doctrinal support for my position.