I Judge No One: A Political Life of Jesus - By David Lloyd Dusenburg - A Review and Beginning of Discussion in Relation to Today's Chaos in America

 

“The state, or rather, the whole world is in such error that it persecutes good and just men—torturing, condemning, and killing them.” 

– Lactantius, Divine Institutes

 

“The just man will have to 

endure the lash—
and finally, 

after every extremity of suffering,
 he will be crucified.” 

– Plato, Republic

Yesterday, I pointed out a personal caveat in reading the book, Donald Trump Is Not My Savior. It was that I believe the Holy Bible was God Inspired but not spe The Word of God. It would appear that, once again, a God Incident has occurred in leading me immediately to a book, I Judge No One: A Political Life of Jesus. You will also recall that in that caveat, I pointed out that when I started reading the Bible upon my baptism at age 13, I quickly realized that I could not understand much of what was being said. At that time, I purchased a number of Bibles in different versions. Finally, I found The Way. That became the book that I used and began to learn more. However, there was never a time when I totally understood what was being said...

And, then, in one book, I got my answer... It is an important statement. One that responded to me about what is happening within Christianity in America.

Let's learn a little about the author...

David Lloyd Dusenbury, MPhil, MPhil, PhD

I am senior fellow at the Danube Institute, visiting professor at Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest, and current holder of a joint chair at the University of Antwerp.
My newest book, I Judge No One: A Political Life of Jesus (2022), is out now with Hurst in London, Oxford University Press in New York.
I have held postdoctoral fellowships at the University of Leuven and Hebrew University of Jerusalem; and visiting professorships at Loyola University Maryland and Università Vita-Salute San Raffaele. I have lectured widely in Europe on topics in philosophy, religion, law, and the history of ideas.
My essays and criticism have appeared in the Times Literary Supplement, Corriere della Serra, Los Angeles Review of Books, American Affairs, and other cultural and political reviews.

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Dusenburg begins his latest book, I Judge No One, with an extensive literature review which explores how Jesus was written circa the time of His life and death, together with philosophers who were writing during the same time period. From a purely technical standpoint for reading this book as an ebook, I want to point out that, for me, I would have preferred to have the literature review footnoted at the bottom of the pages, so that we could have immediately read what was clarified in the footnote. That is practically impossible to do in standard text in ebook form. 

One of the more interesting for me is the comparative analyses with Socrates and Jesus. From the standpoint of placing Jesus within the world of philosophers as opposed to religious leaders, I was able to read writers speaking related to religion, in particular, without a dogmatic approach of ensuring that what was written "jived" with the Bible or other religious-oriented books. That is not to say, though, that Dusenburg does not have  a specific goal in mind as he reviews these writings and, in particular, in relation to the first four Books, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, from the Bible.

This first-century dating is contested, however.16 Mara’s allusion to the fall of Jerusalem and other catastrophes might have been occasioned by the second Judaean revolt of 132 to 135, and not the first revolt of 66 to 73 CE.17 But whether Mara’s Letter is dated to the first or second century, it is a pagan philosophical text, composed in Syriac, in which Jesus’ death seems to be remembered.18 Anticipating Nietzsche by as much as 1,800 years, Mara links the deaths of Socrates and Jesus. Unlike Nietzsche, he sees their deaths as belonging to an august history of philosopher-martyrs. This ancient Syrian philosopher believes that it is culpable human error which led to the executions of Pythagoras, Socrates, and Jesus—and the ruination of the cities that put them to death. Here is the text in question: What else can we say, when wise men are forcibly dragged by the hands of tyrants, and their wisdom is taken captive by slander, and they are oppressed in their intelligence without defence? For what benefit did the Athenians derive from the slaying of Socrates? For they received the retribution for it in the form of famine and plague. Or the people of Samos from the burning of Pythagoras? For in one hour their entire country was covered with sand. Or the Judaeans [from the slaying] of their wise king? For from that very time their sovereignty was taken away. For God rightly exacted retribution on behalf of the wisdom of these three. For the Athenians starved to death, and the people of Samos were covered by the sea without remedy, and the Judaeans, massacred and chased from their kingdom, are scattered through every land. Socrates did not die, because of Plato; nor yet Pythagoras, because of the statue of Hera; nor did the wise king, because of the new laws that he gave.19 Mara’s brief meditation on the deaths of Pythagoras, Socrates, and Jesus is ultimately redemptive. For he tells his son that, despite a confusing tradition about Pythagoras’ death-by-fire, the spirit of Pythagorean thought is honoured, in some way, by the great Samian shrine to the goddess Hera. And despite the poisoned cup that killed him, “Socrates did not die”; rather his wisdom lives on in Plato’s dialogues. And despite Jesus’ passing, he is still present in the observance of “the new laws that he gave”. What Mara calls new laws, here, we would now call Syrian Christianity—a rich and long-suffering tradition.20 That Mara’s wise king is Jesus is suggested by his claim that Judaeans were punished after his death, by the destruction of Jerusalem, just as Athenians were punished after Socrates’ death, and so on. There is nothing untoward about this notion of “divine nemesis”, per se.21 In chapter 2, we glimpsed the pagan conviction in Dio of Prusa’s Orations that Socrates’ death is “the cause” of the Athenians’ later misfortunes. Similarly, Josephus tells us that many Judaeans interpreted Herod Antipas’ humiliating defeat in 36 CE, by a Nabatean king, as divine retribution for the murder of John the Baptist.22 The notion that Jerusalem incurs its ruin in 70 CE, by Jesus’ death in the year 30 or so, is rooted in the gospels and many early Christian traditions. It is worth noting, however, that in Matthew and Luke, Jesus’ lament for Jerusalem is not only occasioned by his sense that he will be killed there. Rather, it seems that in Jesus’ mind, his holy city is doomed because “killing the prophets” is a recurring drama in that city. His death belongs to a history of Hebrew prophet-martyrs.23 This must be stressed. For a first- or second-century pagan philosopher such as Mara, ‘killing the philosophers’ is a recurring drama, which crescendos in the gods’ destruction of Mediterranean cities. And for a first-century dissident rabbi such as Jesus, ‘killing the prophets’ is a recurring drama which includes himself, and which calls down God’s judgement on Judaean cities.24 Beyond this, there seems to be a recognizably Syrian physiognomy to Mara’s Jesus. We catch this by glancing at a later text by the dazzling Syrian satirist, Lucian of Samosata...

Still, I want to be clear on my part that I, too, have a goal in reading. That is to move toward some type of rational and logical understanding of what is now occurring within American, and in particular, in relation to that division I see within the Christian faith. 

Hopefully, you, too, might become just as interested as I am; therefore, I'm including the following lengthy video since many of you may not be able to read the book itself...

To Be Continued...