The charge is often made that Jesus’ message was actually quite different from the one which Christians have traditionally taught concerning him. This sometimes is said to be the case, for instance, because the Gospels represent the teachings of the early church and not those of Jesus himself (compare the discussion about Bultmann above). We saw how this approach is invalidated as an attempt to ascertain Jesus’ teachings.
Hugh Schonfield postulated another reason for this change in Jesus’ message. He holds that Jesus was a teacher who was true to Judaism and who had no desire to start any new religion. That is why, for instance, he never proclaimed his own deity.^38 While Paul did present some different teachings,^39 he is not the real culprit. Rather, Schonfield asserts that the church at Rome perverted Paul’s teachings about Jesus in order to turn him into a deity who set up a new religion.^40 The Roman church did this by consciously writing some of the New Testament books and by influencing others to rewrite the story of Jesus. Books said to be either written or influenced strongly by this effort include the synoptic Gospels, Hebrews and Peter’s epistles.^41 The general movement is from Jesus’ original teachings, to Paul’s assessments, to the Roman redirection.^42 The result is that Christian theology as it is taught today is not the teachings of Jesus and the apostles.^43 By such progress, the teachings of Jesus and Paul have been changed by a plot to make Christianity palatable to Roman Gentiles. In spite of Schonfield’s new “twists,” his thesis is vulnerable to four criticisms.
1.No factual basis
First, since Schonfield rejects the testimony of the Gospels,^44 he presents no valid basis on which to assert that Jesus’ original teachings were different from what
37 Although this argument cannot be pursued here, see Habermas, The Resurrection of Jesus: An Apologetic.
38 Hugh Schonfield, Those Incredible Christians(New York: Bantam, 1969), pp. IX, 50–
51. 39 Ibid., p. 67. 40 Ibid., pp. 135–155. 41 Ibid., pp. 136–149. 42 Ibid., pp. 149, 211, 230. 43 Ibid., pp. XVII, 170. 44 Ibid., pp. 142–146, 259–272.
traditional Christianity believes about him. The problem here is actually twofold. Initially, Schonfield is opposed by all of the evidence for the authenticity and trustworthiness of the Gospels (and the New Testament). Additionally, and more specifically, how can one rule out the Gospels’ testimony and still have a basis on which to assert that the original teachings of Jesus were different? How can Schonfield know that Jesus did not present the message of the Gospels? What is his basis of comparison between Jesus and what the earliest sources say about him? It becomes apparent that there are no grounds of distinction between Jesus and the Gospels.
Schonfield might respond that Jesus could not have taught the message that traditional Christianity affirms, since it was contrary to what first century Jews believed. Yet Schonfield uses the Gospels to establish this response,^45 a basis which he rejects. And since it is not proper hermeneutical method to pick and choose the verses which one will accept and those which one will reject, he is again left without any valid basis for his position.
For those who contend that the Gospels are dependable sources that reveal a non-divine Jesus and that Paul (and others) perverted this message, it should be mentioned here that even the synoptic Gospels reveal that Jesus claimed deity for himself. For example, he referred to himself as “Son of God” and “Son of Man,” he taught that salvation was found only in himself and claimed that only he had the power to forgive sin.^46 He certainly claimed to be in a privileged relationship with God; his usage of “Abba” (Aramaic for “Daddy”) is a very unusual name for God and is an indication of his unique sonship, as many critical scholars admit.^47
