Topics Religion

Question Jesus claimed that he was the son of God. Why is it that if one did that nowadays then they would get sent to a mental institution, instead of being praised and worshipped as that? Isn't it the same thing as what Jesus did but not in ancient times? -Jessica and Elise

Accepted:
November 16, 2005

Comments

1) We don't really know how people responded to this kind of claim in the very distant past. The events recounted happened so long ago, passed through so manymouths – many of them eager to believe, eager to impress their audience – that it's very difficult to be confident about them. It wouldn't really be surprising to learn that many who made such claims in the distant past were in fact swiftly dispatched.

2) That said, even today some who make comparable claims are indeed "praised and worshipped". In the late 20th Century in New York City, thousands of people convinced themselves (and many remain convinced) that Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson was the Messiah. That's in the past twenty years in one of the most technologically advanced and intellectually sophisticated cities ever to exist. If you can make it in New York .... To paraphrase David Hume, you'll never go broke overestimating the "propensity of mankind towards the marvellous."

3) And following on that, we don't send people who make such claims packing to mental institutions. If they are of no danger to themselves or to others, we don't (in the U.S., as of this writing) take ourselves to have the right to institutionalize them.

It's also worth saying that, although the Biblical accounts can be read in very different ways, and the Gospel accounts themselves conflict, all the Synoptics (Matthew 26:57-67, Mark 14:53-63, and Luke 22:66-71) present the Jewish authorities as rather upset with Jesus for claiming to be the Messiah and, indeed, as calling for his execution on those grounds. John presents the story rather differently, but agrees on this broad point. So it's not obvious Jesus himself was uniformly praised, and quite independently of the question I'll discuss next, it's clear enough that he was not. Self-proclaimed Messiahs were pretty common in those days, and they generally came in for rough treatment.

There is quite a lot of controversy among scholars about exactly what role the Jewish authorities might have played in Jesus's arrest and execution, but the general view is that they probably played less of a role than the Gospels make it appear they did. Indeed, the remark in John 18:14, that Caiaphas had suggested "that it would be good if one man died for the people" is sometimes taken to suggest that the Romans, as was their custom, were preparing to slaughter large numbers of Jesus's followers to restore order. (Just such a massive slaughter of the followers of another Messiah occurred shortly after Jesus's execution.) Jesus's arrival in Jerusalem had caused great upheaval, and Caiaphas may have offered Jesus to the Romans as, indeed, a kind of sacrificial lamb, if the Romans would agree to leave Jesus's followers otherwise alone. It is, indeed, one of the great mysteries of early Christianity why Peter, Paul, James, and the rest weren't hung up right beside Jesus or hunted down and killed afterwards, as the Gosepl accounts make it clear they feared they would be. It may well be that the reason is that the Roman authorities knew full well that Jesus was not the kind of "king" who posed a threat to Roman authority.