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"But how do you know"?
It might seem from the foregoing discussion that we are trapped in relativism: we are faced with equally plausible but contradictory interpretations of Christian records.
Answer for yourself: Jesus as Gnostic teacher, Jesus as military revolutionary, Jesus as social critic, Jesus as dying savior - with countless equally possible interpretations, how can we decide for or against any of them?
Let me propose a simple criterion for evaluating any theory about Jesus:
Answer for yourself: Does it make sense of Christian history? "Christian history" means, of course, the life of Jesus (most Jesus theories do a pretty good job with this); but it also includes later events as well. The mission of Paul, the destruction of Jerusalem, the controversies over gnosticism in the second century, and the council of Nicaea in the fourth century- all of these need to be included.
Pick up any book on the historical Jesus, whether written two hundred years ago or yesterday, and you will most likely find no substantial discussion of Marcion and his role in second-century Christianity, no mention of the destruction of Jerusalem in the year 70 and its effect on Christianity, no mention of Jewish Christianity, no discussion of the other countless schisms in early Christianity, and no discussion of the council of Nicaea. There are only a handful of books in English whose primary subject is Jewish Christianity. Among these are : Danielous, The Theology of Jewish Christianity, 1995; Koch, A Critical Investigation of Epiphanius' Knowledge of the Ebionites, 1976; Ludermann, Opposition to Paul in Jewish Christianity, 1989; Schoeps, Jewish Christianity, 1969; Skriver, The Forgotten Beginning of Creation and Christianity, 1991; Vaclavik, The Vegetarianism of Jesus Christ, 1987.
With a few exceptions, most books on the historical Jesus pass all of this by. A few pages, a few paragraphs, or even a few footnotes are all that you will see on key historical issues. "Let's concentrate on the New Testament texts relating to Jesus," they seem to be saying, "and let the later history of Christianity take care of itself." The texts "float in the air," outside of time, space, and history.
We cannot understand Jesus or "the Christ" without first understanding early Christian history. The very records that we invoke for the understanding of this New Testament Jesus were themselves decisively shaped by later events. We must, therefore, turn to these later events to understand the earlier records. The history of early Christianity is exactly what shaped the text of the New Testament - and any criterion of what the "good" and "bad" texts are must rely on some idea of that history Most scholars, if they are tempted at all to go down the path of Christian history to understand Jesus, quickly turn back after encountering the demons of schism. But it is precisely these demons we must confront.
In this website we have sought to establish a very rough outline of a "road map" for the history of early Christianity. We have also proposed a framework for understanding who Jesus was: the history of early Christianity. Early Christianity was highly schismatic, and this fact complicates our knowledge of Jesus. We do not yet want to take sides, or say that someone was right or wrong; we simply want to see the problem and work our way back to the original question that led to the confusion:
Did the followers of Jesus, both Jew and "non-Jew", see the Jewish law as a guide for their lives?
Yes! In spite of what Paul might say, in spite of what Rome did to the texts to present ideas that the Law has passed away, the resounding fact of critical investigation and correct interpretation of the events and times of Jesus is that resoundingly the followers of Jesus revered and kept the Law as part of their covenant stipulations and responsibilities before God. It is this knowledge that the Gentile Church has tried to destroy and has done I might say a very admirable job up to now...it is time to correct such an abomination!