Discovering the Historical Jesus 4-15-12

The search for the historical Jesus is also a search for God and who God is, according to Jim Wallace, who led a Dumbarton discussion of Stephen J. Patterson’s book, “The God of Jesus.” At an adult ed session on April 15, Wallace said that research done by The Jesus Seminar, a group of New Testament scholars, has helped to remove some of the myths surrounding Jesus and clarify who he was and what he said.

For one thing, Jesus believed that the "empire of God" is not just in the future but in the here and now, Wallace said. “All we need to do is to get in touch with it.”   And Jesus’ mission was to serve “the people valued least in the world.” They were referred to as sinners but were really the social outcasts, or “expendables”

In describing what he and other Dumbarton members got from the book, he read a passage from the last page: “Jesus experienced intimately a transcendent quality to existence that was more real, more satisfying, more hopeful than what life—even a successful life---can offer. It is this transcendent quality that we call God. Its nature is love. That is what Jesus knew.”

--By Mike Doan