FWIW Aslan also got a Jesuit education.
The Jesus Seminar is not the final authority. I just think they are a good entry point.
The purpose of their text (or rather this text - they have written others) is to characterize which parts of the Bible (plus Thomas) are more likely to have been uttered by Jesus. They use mostly textual analysis. They lay out their criteria in the introduction. The seminar of about a dozen members gave each sentence a ranking on a scale of 0 to 3. I’ll relate one member’s “Informal but helpful interpretation of the colors” (the seminar has a more legalistic official version which I’ll skip).
red - That’s Jesus!
pink: Sure sounds like Jesus.
gray: Well, maybe.
black: There’s been some mistake.
Biblical narrative for example gets a black color because it reflects the words of the gospel writer, and does not derive from a collection of Jesus sayings. That said, the Book of John doesn’t score too well on the criteria above. “Render unto Caesar” earned a fairly rare red font.
The key point though is that the Jesus Seminar isn’t in the business of interpretation, at least in the text I’m using. Black letter parts can be very Christian, but not necessarily uttered by Jesus.
With that firmly in mind, I’ll defend their interpretation. Jesus was asked whether it’s right to pay the imperial tax. He could have said, “Sure, why not? The Kingdom of God is much more important anyway.” He could have said, “No way”. Or he could have said, “I’ll leave that to each person’s conscience.”
Instead after telling the questioners to buzz off, he says, “…give back to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s.” Now if there were any decent reporters around they simply would not let him get away with that. They would have asked, “But sir, could you tell us which is which? How do we know what is Caesar’s? Could you be more specific?” The guru shtick doesn’t fly anymore.
Anyway, the point is that Jesus didn’t give a direct order, so characterizing it as, “…a masterful bit of enigmatic repartee,” seems fair. At the same time, I think the early Christians also got it right: first think this moral issue through. Then pay your damn taxes.
“Give me the child for the first seven years, and I’ll give you the man.”
– Old, possibly apocryphal, Jesuit boast
Maybe not . . .
Except he does say which is which. He says the coin used for paying taxes is Caesar’s, and you should give Caesar what is his. There’s no ambiguity there.
Jesus was saying that Jews should pay their taxes to the Romans.
The interpretation of the specific line I’ve always heard is similar to yours, Sampiro: that there are different “domains” and one should know when one is in each. I’ve heard the line paraphrased, for example, as “unto Saint John of the Cross what is Saint John of the Cross’s and unto Isaac Newton what is Isaac Newton’s” when talking about science vs. faith. The interpretation of the whole passage includes the political analysis others have already given, of the tax issue and of how that instance of “Just Asking Questions” was a trap.
But then the question is, what is God’s and what is Caesar’s? On one hand, right now most of us are pretty clear on the notion that the Pope doesn’t get to tell countries what laws to have, nor countries to tell the Pope who to make a cardinal (I say “most of us” because there are people who disagree about both, see for example Ireland and China); on the other, being a [insert religion here] should pervade your whole life, and lines about “whitened sepulchres” would seem to apply if a person lights lots of candles “for the poor children in Africa” in his private life while using his public position to steal and to move forward policies which hurt those same poor African children, or if they claim to love all life except the life of a woman with a (can’t remember the English word) extrauterine pregnancy.
Ok.
I think this might turn on their black-letter designation of the bit about the coin. If I understand them correctly, they think that Luke and Matthew were derived from Mark, but that the Egerton Gospel comes from an independent tradition.
And now I get confused, because Egerton doesn’t have the “Pay the emperor” line either. Perhaps they don’t think the coin part is sufficiently epigrammatic to be definitively ascribed to Jesus.
Anyhoo, let’s look at Thomas:
Rather condensed, right? No pointing. But the part about the coin is there. Also note that last (black lettered) addition.
TJS’s take on Thomas:
[QUOTE=Jesus Seminar]
Jesus’ response is a humorous bit of repartee. He misleads his interlocutors by pointing to the emperor’s image and name on the coin, but he then ignores that point, and suggests they learn to tell the difference between the claims of the emperor and the claims of God. He responds to the question without answering it; he turns the question back on his interrogators… His audience is suppose to provide the answer themselves.
[/QUOTE]
And arguably the audience does. Again, I don’t think these guys are the final authority, only an entry point.
ETA: On the third hand, Nava correctly notes that the lines of church and state probably weren’t as clear in 30CE as they are in 21st century US. So Jesus’ line may have sounded more ambiguous back then.
Go thou, and do likewise.
Stand Up For Judas!
Without probably: the Emperor was a God, Jewish law tribunals were religious. In the intervening centuries, we’ve had “no divorce except if you’re a king and in that case you need permission from the religious authorities” (hi, Henry! And the other Henry!); we’ve had countries getting excomunicated because Rome had decided to update the rites of the Mass and those countries were still using the old ones; we’ve had the itty bitty trouble with Avignon… nowadays it’s more separated in general, but the Chinese ordaining their own priests mirrors situations from medieval Europe.
N.B.: Caesar is better than Christ and Judas is better than Caesar.
This parable has at least 27 interpretations here. Easy to see that a preacher can
deliver a complete 45 minute sermon on this topic.
I think Nava makes a good point about the separation of Church and State. The question raised is indeed, what is Caesar’s and what is God’s? To which authority does each individual man lay his allegiance? However, if it’s read in that context, Jesus’s quote doesn’t just ring as enigmatic, it starts sounding downright treasonous.
I think Aslan goes through great pains in his book to build justification through citations of his portrayal of a historic Jesus as he was. I suppose it shouldn’t be eye-raising that this book doesn’t deal with a divine Jesus, but I don’t think it deals with even a supernatural Jesus even. It doesn’t acknowledge a God of any sort and really examines how a human Jesus of flesh and blood in his era would have been raised and how those circumstances would have affected his world view No prophecies, or anything too mystic like that.
Also, his daily show extended interview shows a man who’s at least had extensive education about religion and the history thereof. I don’t think his credentials should be called into question. It might not be paradigm shifting but the book does have its merits even if derivative.
I don’t have too much knowledge about the history of Judaism and Jesus of Nazareth, but from what I’ve read here and there, it seems the writers of the New Testament were purposely trying to make the Romans sympathetic in parts and the followers of orthodox Judaism not so much.
Supposedly there wasn’t a substantial amount of Jews willing to believe that Jesus was the prophesied Messah of the Torah, let alone willing to convert to the new religion of Christianity which was blasphemy to their beliefs of only one God and no deviation from the Law.
But the Romans it seemed were more open to the idea (already used to the idea of polytheism?) but things like not eating pork and circumcising their genitals were just too strange and foreign to their culture. So Paul, or maybe other writers of the New Testament wanted to make the religion more palatable to a portion of society who had more potential to become converted.
So you have excerpts that paint Pontius Pilate and his wife as almost sympathetic to Jesus, absolving the former of his part, “I wash my hands of this,” and all. The Jews supposed crying out of “let his (Jesus) blood be upon us and all our children.”
Jesus talking so positively of Gentiles and yet at times, very critical of the Jews.
This just seems like one more capitulation to gain favor with the existing and powerful government at the time. I mean, “render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s” is pretty broad. What is Caesar’s and what makes it so? Merely his proclamation? What YOU think is Caesar’s? What if Caesar claims the rights to have his way with your wife? Just go along with it?
Nitpick: Tiberius (Jesus’s Caeser) didn’t present himself as a God. His successor Caligula was the first Emperor to do so, after Jesus’s death.
Good point. Thus, what is God’s is, well… everything. If God created everything and if God is supposed to pervade your entire life and actions, then that which is Caesar’s is quite small. I think that’s also part of it - Jesus in a way that seems to imply taxes should be paid also states that the realm of Caesar is much smaller than Rome would like it to be.
Please God, no! In my ELCA congregation we are quite content with our 15-20 min sermons, thank you very much 
(I have been in Pentecostal services with the 45 min sermons - that wasn’t all that much fun).
Cool. Got it.
. . . Oh wait, there’s more.
Focusing only on the bolded parts, aren’t you contradicting yourself?
Did the coin belong to Ceasar or not?
If, as you claim, it didn’t, why would Jesus point out Ceasar’s image on the coin and then state “render unto Ceasar that which is Ceasars”?
And this is why people love to re-interpret what Jesus said.
Personal agenda.
This is precisely why I think it counts as “enigmatic.” Everyone in the room at the time would know that they all believe everything belongs to God. But on the other hand, he drew attention to the face of Caesar on the coin. This background supposition together with this demonstrative act make for an ambiguous message.
In his view, did Jesus believe he was the Messiah? And, if so, did he also believe he was the Only Son of God in a literal, non-honorific sense?
I read in the Amazon reviews of Aslan’s book that while he calls Jesus a “zealot,” he emphasizes that Jesus was not of the Zealot Party, which did not emerge until 30 years after his death.
If that’s true, then, what’s the deal with Simon Zelotes?
And I’ve read a theory that Judas Iscariot got his name from being one of the Sicarii (carriers of a kind of dagger called a sicarius), who were a hyperextreme faction of the Zealots, actually practicing terrorism and assassination. (Another theory is that it just means he came from the town of Kerioth.)
And according to Wiki, the contemporary historian Flavius Josephus dated the Zealots from 6 AD.
Really? Let’s have a look:
[QUOTE=Exactly what he said]
Then he said to them, “So give back to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s.”
[/quote]
[QUOTE=Exactly what he meant]
If you have anything belonging to that thief, Caesar, give it back to him, otherwise don’t give him anything. Voluntarily complying with thieves only encourages them to continue violating God’s command, “You shall not steal!” That is the only way a righteous person deals with the property of others.
[/quote]
In my experience, when two statements are exactly the same, they tend to look like one another a LOT more than these do.
:rolleyes: