Part One: How Jesus’ Pronoia Trumps John’s Metanoia

Background Check + Preamble # 1

In The Historical Figure of Jesus, 1995, by E.P. Sanders, we are told that Sanders was born in Texas, did graduate studies in Gottingen, Jerusalem, Oxford, and New York; got a THD from Union Theological Seminary, joined a faculty at McMaster University, Ontario, and was elected Dean Ireland’s Professor of Exegesis in the University of Oxford and a Fellow of Queens College. He moved to Duke University, North Carolina, got further degrees, Doctor of Letters from the University of Oxford; he was a Fellow of the British Academy, Doctor of Theology of the University of Helsinki. Wikipedia calls him a Protestant theologian, who spent a year in Israel studying Rabbinic Judaism and received a Guggenheim Fellowship for Humanities.

Sanders was an insider—an Oxford Dean, about which Steven DeLay might have some things to say—and this is a Penguin book, 1^st Matrix material, an official report, endorsed by the Gatekeepers.

And yet. The proof of any pudding is in the eating.

This might be considered an example of using 1^st Matrix sources to try and make sense of things, while remaining aware that there is always a covert agenda at work. Both the 1^st and the 2^nd Matrix contain elements of truth within their architecture; and just as some of the missing truths of Matrix 1 can be found in Matrix 2, it works the other way too.

Moving into the 2^nd Matrix isn’t an escape from the 1^st Matrix, but we can loosen its hold over us, over time, by moving freely between two perspectives. Referring to 1^st Matrix materials is a way to test the propositions of the 2^nd, and vice versa.

Preamble # 2

What I’m going to get into with this post is potentially the most important subject I’ve ever addressed.

The word “important” is a word I dislike, however. How can anything ever be important in an empirical sense? By what criteria? All we really mean when we to say something is important is that it had an impact on our lives, for good or ill. The JFK assassination is “important” to many people because it was a turning point in US history; but what makes US history important? It’s a matter of personal interest.

The works of Carlos Castaneda were extremely important in my life, insofar as they altered, not only my beliefs and interests, but my entire trajectory (I learned Spanish and moved to Mexico). You might say they imported things into my psyche, and into my behaviors. That doesn’t make those books “important” books, ipso facto; but they were catalysts to action (for good or ill).

The passages I’m about to cite—from pages 231-237 of the 1995 Penguin edition of Sanders’ book—were likewise “important” for me to read at this particular time. I’m hoping this will translate into action (such as this post), and thus into something of importance to others.

I think what Sanders gets into in these passages (in his attempt to understand why Jesus’ actions were threatening enough to get him crucified) may be the key to unlocking the vault of Judeo-Christianity, to bringing Jesus out of the Sepulcher of Religion, and to resurrecting him—his example—in our hearts and minds, in the living present.

As such, I think this subject is of universal importance, to everyone everywhere, so far as anything can be said to be that.

Those who have ears to hear, etc., etc.

Gospel According to Who?

It won’t surprise anyone who’s been following this substack for the last year or so, or even for the past few months, to hear that this centers on the idea of salvation as something guaranteed to all souls, through the love embodied—historically speaking!—in Jesus Christ, whatever his actual name was, and with the important(!) proviso (provided here) that the word “Christ” doesn’t have to the carry all the baggage of belief placed on it by Christianity.

Sanders begins his argument by looking at how the word repentance— μετάνοια in Greek, pronounced metanoia—is not as prolific as we might think in the New Testament. According to Sanders, the main references to repentance occur a total of 62 times in the New Testament, 14 in Luke, 11 in Acts, and 12 in Revelation, placing well over half in those three books (only one of which quotes Jesus in his lifetime). The figures Sanders gives for the other gospels are: 10 mentions in Matthew, 3 in Mark—which takes us to 50 out of 62—and 0 in John (placing the remaining 12 in the other epistles).1

Sanders makes the comparison with phrases that refer to the kingdom of God or the kingdom of Heaven, and gives the tally at 162. He deduces from this that, though the author of Luke and Acts (supposedly the same author) especially emphasized the idea of repentance, it was not a major theme of Jesus’ message.

Sanders then points out that, although the word is scarce in Matthew and Mark compared with Luke, both Matthew and Mark use the word in their summaries of Jesus’ teachings. This suggests to Sanders that the evangelists themselves (besides John) were keen on the idea of repentance, that they wanted to make it central, and that therefore they had no interest in downplaying it in the rest of their accounts, i.e., in Jesus’ actual teachings.

What Is the Explanation?

Sanders asks this question and provides his answer:

It is not that Jesus disliked repentance and thought that people should never feel remorse and pray for forgiveness. He favored all this. He thought that the prostitutes had repented at the preaching of John the Baptist, like the Ninevites who repented at the preaching of Jonah, did the right thing . . . and that the towns of Galilee should have repented. . . . The parable of the Unforgiving Servant . . . discusses appeals for leniency and forgiveness in such a way as to leave no doubt that the speaker valued them. That is not the issue. There are two questions. The first is, what was it about Jesus’ association with wicked people that offended his critics? If other wicked people responded as did Zacchaeus, who repented and distributed his wealth generously, what would be the complaint? None I think.

This leads to the second question: what was Jesus’ own mission? What did he think he was up to? Was his goal in life to persuade bad people that they should start being honest, or to persuade the prosperous to share their money? To answer these questions, we must ask just what it is that the gospels say about Jesus’ association with the wicked. This examination reveals that only Luke gives concrete stories about Jesus’ calling on people to repent, and that only Luke thought that Jesus persuaded the wicked to repent and pay back their ill-gotten gains. That is, Luke’s Jesus, who got tax collectors to repent and repay, would not have irritated anyone, at least not on this point. But since Jesus did run into opposition for his behavior with sinners, I am inclined to think that Jesus is not to be defined as a preacher of repentance. Jesus favored repentance, but, if we classify him as a type and describe how he saw his mission, we shall conclude that he was not a repentance-minded reformer.

In the New Testament, that title clearly belongs to the Baptist. Jesus was conscious of his differences from John and he commented on them more than once. The prostitutes repented when John preached—not when Jesus preached. John was ascetic; Jesus ate and drank. And Jesus was a friend of tax collectors and sinners—not of former tax collectors and sinners, which is what Zacchaeus was after he met Jesus, but of tax collectors and sinners. Jesus, I think, was a good deal more radical than John. Jesus thought that John’s call to repent should have been effective, but in fact it was only partially successful. His own style was in any case different; he did not repeat the Baptist’s tactics. On the contrary, he ate and drank with the wicked and told them that God especially loved them, and that the kingdom was at hand. Did he hope that they would change their ways? Probably he did, but “change now or be destroyed” was not his message. It was John’s. Jesus’ was, “God loves you” (p. 232-33).

(Over the Paywall, “Do Lost Sheep Need to Find Their Own Way Back or Only to Be Found?”)