The Bad Jesus The Ethics of New Testament Ethics

Did Jesus ever do anything wrong? Judging by the vast majority of books on New Testament ethics, the answer is a resounding No. Writers on New Testament ethics generally view Jesus as the paradigm of human standards and behaviour. But since the historical Jesus was a human being, must he not have had flaws, like everyone else?

The notion of a flawless human Jesus is a paradoxical oddity in New Testament ethics. According to Avalos, it shows that New Testament ethics is still primarily an apologetic enterprise despite its claim to rest on critical and historical scholarship.

The Bad Jesus is a powerful and challenging study, presenting detailed case studies of fundamental ethical principles enunciated or practised by Jesus but antithetical to what would be widely deemed ‘acceptable’ or ‘good’ today. Such topics include Jesus’ supposedly innovative teachings on love, along with his views on hate, violence, imperialism, animal rights, environmental ethics, Judaism, women, disabled persons and biblical hermeneutics.

After closely examining arguments offered by those unwilling to find any fault with the Jesus depicted in the Gospels, Avalos concludes that current treatments of New Testament ethics are permeated by a religiocentric, ethnocentric and imperialistic orientation. But if it is to be a credible historical and critical discipline in modern academia, New Testament ethics needs to discover both a Good and a Bad Jesus.

Hector Avalos is Professor of Religious Studies in the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies at Iowa State University, Ames, IA.

Series: Bible in the Modern World, 68
978-1-909697-73-7 hardback / 978-1-909697-79-9 paperback
Publication June 2015 (not yet published)

Contents
1. Introduction
Basic Elements of the Argument

2. The Unloving Jesus: What’s New Is Old
Loving the Enemy in the Ancient Near East
Love Can Entail Violence
The Golden Rule: Love as Tactical
The Parochialism of New Testament Ethics

3. The Hateful Jesus: Luke 14.26
Jesus Commands Hate
Expressing Preference
Hate as a Motive for Divorce
The Statistics of Hate and Love
The Semantic Logic of Love and Hate

4. The Violent Jesus
Matthew 10.34-37: Jesus’ Violent Purpose
Matthew 5.38-42: Don’t Victimize Me, Please
Matthew. 26.48-56: Non-Interference with Planned Violence
John 2.15: Whipping up Pacifism
Acts 9: Jesus Assaults Saul

5. The Suicidal Jesus: The Violent Atonement
Jesus as a Willing Sacrificial Victim
Mark 10.45: Self-Sacrifice as a Ransom
Sacrifice as Service: Transformation or Denial?
2 Corinthians 5.18: Anselm Unrefuted
René Girard: Sacrificing Apologetics

6. The Imperialist Jesus: We’re All God’s Slaves
Rethinking ‘Anti-Imperialism’
Selective Anti-Imperialism
The Benign Rhetoric of Imperialism
Christ as Emperor
The Kingdom of God as an Empire

7. The Anti-Jewish Jesus: Socio-Rhetorical Criticism as Apologetics
Abuse Me, Please: Luke T. Johnson’s Apologetics
When is Anti-Judaism not Anti-Judaism?
When Did Christian Anti-Judaism Begin?

8. The Uneconomic Jesus as Enemy of the Poor
Jesus as Radical Egalitarian
The Fragrance of Poverty
Sermon on the Mount of Debts and Merits

9. The Misogynistic Jesus: Christian Feminism as Male Ancestor Worship
Mark 7//Matthew 15: The Misogynistic Jesus
Mark 10//Matthew 19: Divorcing Equality
The Womanless Twelve Apostles
The Last Supper: Guess Who’s Not Coming to Dinner
The Egalitarian Golden Age under Jesus

10. The Anti-Disabled Jesus: Less than Fully Human
Disability Studies
John 5 and 9: Redeeming Jesus
The Ethics of Punctuation
Paralyzed by Sin

11. The Magically Anti-Medical Jesus
Miracles, Not Magic?
The Naturalistic Jesus
Psychosomatic Ethics

12. The Eco-Hostile Jesus
Mark 5: Animal Rights and Deviled Ham
Luke 22 and Matthew 8: Sacrificing Animal Rights
Matthew 21: Fig-uratively Speaking
Mark 13: Eschatological Eco-Destruction

13. The Anti-Biblical Jesus: Missed Interpretations
Mel and Jesus: The Hypocrisy of New Testament Ethics
Mark 2:23-28: Jesus as Biblically Illiterate
Matthew 19: Jesus Adds his Own Twist on Divorce
Isaiah 6:9-10: Integrating Extrabiblical Materials

14. Conclusion
The Ethics of New Testament Ethics


http://www.sheffieldphoenix.com/showbook.asp?bkid=294


A must to read.

I will certainly be giving that a look when released next year (though will find somewhere else to buy, £25 is absurd for a paperback lol).

Religious ethics are inherently questionable by fault of when they were written. This will be a fascinating read- though sadly such a book will be dismissed by the devout and like so many will end up preaching to the converted...

Completely agree Eilzel and as have stated before you often find in the religious works, phrases and ideals plagiarized from early religious beliefs or mainly the views expressed in society.
Sumerian.
This being the most prominent. Where by today's standards, their culture was highly advanced for the time, they invented Schools, with countless other firsts like the law system, though theirs was based upon a revenge policy. They though did not follow mystical deities they could not see, they followed flesh and blood gods (other humans), but most ideals and views all can be traced back to this (at present) first known civilization.

Brasidas wrote:Completely agree Eilzel and as have stated before you often find in the religious works, phrases and ideals plagiarized from early religious beliefs or mainly the views expressed in society.
Sumerian.
This being the most prominent. Where by today's standards, their culture was highly advanced for the time, they invented Schools, with countless other firsts like the law system, though theirs was based upon a revenge policy. They though did not follow mystical deities they could not see, they followed flesh and blood gods (other humans), but most ideals and views all can be traced back to this (at present) first known civilization.

The fact Sumerian laws were based on revenge is no surprise. One of the chapters in this book implies 'The Golden Rule' is actually itself a selfish 'strategic' morality. Which it really is when you boil it down to the basics. As much as the righteous religious people out there would like to think otherwise, everything we believe harks back to primitive instincts and how they were harnessed into something we call 'civilization' in the earliest days of humanity.

Belief in other humans is surprisingly still potent here is SE Asia (and China!) where ancestor worships is taken seriously and the King is treated like God on Earth...

Eilzel wrote:

Brasidas wrote:Completely agree Eilzel and as have stated before you often find in the religious works, phrases and ideals plagiarized from early religious beliefs or mainly the views expressed in society.
Sumerian.
This being the most prominent. Where by today's standards, their culture was highly advanced for the time, they invented Schools, with countless other firsts like the law system, though theirs was based upon a revenge policy. They though did not follow mystical deities they could not see, they followed flesh and blood gods (other humans), but most ideals and views all can be traced back to this (at present) first known civilization.

The fact Sumerian laws were based on revenge is no surprise. One of the chapters in this book implies 'The Golden Rule' is actually itself a selfish 'strategic' morality. Which it really is when you boil it down to the basics. As much as the righteous religious people out there would like to think otherwise, everything we believe harks back to primitive instincts and how they were harnessed into something we call 'civilization' in the earliest days of humanity.

Belief in other humans is surprisingly still potent here is SE Asia (and China!) where ancestor worships is taken seriously and the King is treated like God on Earth...

Excellent points and agree.
I do have a fascination with the early Civilizations. For example one fascination, is something you brought up earlier, on another thread about what we see as right and wrong now compared to back then. How early societies viewed morality.

Brasidas wrote:

Eilzel wrote:

The fact Sumerian laws were based on revenge is no surprise. One of the chapters in this book implies 'The Golden Rule' is actually itself a selfish 'strategic' morality. Which it really is when you boil it down to the basics. As much as the righteous religious people out there would like to think otherwise, everything we believe harks back to primitive instincts and how they were harnessed into something we call 'civilization' in the earliest days of humanity.

Belief in other humans is surprisingly still potent here is SE Asia (and China!) where ancestor worships is taken seriously and the King is treated like God on Earth...

Excellent points and agree.
I do have a fascination with the early Civilizations. For example one fascination, is something you brought up earlier,  on another thread about what we see as right and wrong now compared to back then. How early societies viewed morality.

Yes, morality and how it evolves is something that fascinates me too. What is perhaps most interesting to think about is how something you or I or Ben or anyone else feels absolutely sure of (it could be anything) in terms of morality right now- may well be viewed as absolutely backwards by intellectuals and society as a whole 100 years from now.

Eilzel wrote:

Brasidas wrote:


Excellent points and agree.
I do have a fascination with the early Civilizations. For example one fascination, is something you brought up earlier,  on another thread about what we see as right and wrong now compared to back then. How early societies viewed morality.

Yes, morality and how it evolves is something that fascinates me too. What is perhaps most interesting to think about is how something you or I or Ben or anyone else feels absolutely sure of (it could be anything) in terms of morality right now- may well be viewed as absolutely backwards by intellectuals and society as a whole 100 years from now.

Again agree, what we perceive today may well be considered extremely backward by later societies. Though am confident, that even if our views would be seen as backwards by later societies, they would still have come from the correct seeds planted that allowed for the growth of what we see as the right morals views, going in the right direction. I really do think our morality is going in the right direction, but it faces its greatest challenge, when resources start to run out on this planet.

This thread has reminded me of a novel I read "The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ" by Philip Pullman.  I loved it.  Here's the Guardian review

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2010/apr/03/good-jesus-christ-philip-pullman