If I am honest, I will have to admit that I would be likely
to have missed Jesus as the Messiah. I very
probably would have, like Nathanial, when told "We have found the one Moses wrote about in the Law, and about whom the
prophets also wrote--Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph,” have responded:
“Nazareth? Can anything good come from there?”
I have to be careful when reading the gospels because I have a tendency to imagine Jesus as being intellectual, and sophisticated, as being at the same time urbane and uncouth – a sort of 1st century hipster, too cool for those in power. In my unguarded moments I imagine Jesus like this because this is how I like think of myself.
But this self-portrait Jesus is flawed. Jesus came from Nazareth in Galilee, “the
Bumblefuck of its day” as historian Thomas Cahill describes it. [i] He came from the sticks, the backwoods and
spoke with a thick rural accent. In the Talmud (c. 200 CE), a story is told of
a rural Galilean being ridiculed for his red-neck accent by the sophisticated
and urban people in the marketplace of Jerusalem.
“You stupid Galilean,
do you want something to ride on [hamar: a donkey]? Or something to drink
[hamar: wine]? Or something for a sacrifice [immar: a lamb]?” (Mishnah
Erubin 53b)
Peter was called out as one of Jesus’ followers, recognized
by his broad backwards way of speaking.
The prejudice against this rural rabbi blinded the religious
authorities of his time… and would probably have blinded me as well.
[i]
Cahill, Thomas Desire of the Everlasting Hills: The World Before and After
Jesus, Doubleday, New York, NY 1999. Page 89
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