Nathan Christianson's List: Already Read

• If the  temple was the bridge between heaven and earth, Herod was the troll who lived  under the bridge
• But  when Jesus said, 'Go ahead, do your worst', and, as his early followers  testified, overcame death, he ripped the stinger out, rendering the whole wasp  twitching and dying from tip to tail. When his followers chose the cross as  their symbol, they seemed to be turning 'the world upside down', but they  weren't; they were turning the upside-down-world, finally, right-side-up. To get  the flavor, imagine a revolutionary era Frenchman displaying a tiny replica of  the guillotine, or modern Iraqis wearing little rape room replicas around their  necks, or industrial paper shredders. Imagine Russian dissidents making the sign  of the syringe, or think of holocaust survivors who display their tattooed  identification numbers with pride instead of shame. This is what the early  followers of Jesus did with the Roman cross.
• Into this world steps the young son of a Galilean entrepreneur. Joseph was a  'tekton', a skilled contractor. His adopted son, Jesus, was a rabbi, who  gathered around him a small group of apprentices (mathetai, disciples) and set off for  Jerusalem. Along  the way he said and did things that implied that the temple was losing its  status as the exclusive provider of access to the presence of God. Most Jews had  already come to similar conclusions. They knew the Temple was corrupt, and  turned to small group Torah study as an alternative. Jesus adopted and  intensified this new worship model. He created a network of small, nimble and  self-replicating clusters of people who could study and pray together and care  for the poor. In his words: "Wherever two or more are gathered in my name, I am  there in the midst of them." This threatened the templar monopoly.
  

  • I thought torah study was really only done by rabbis and/or in the synagogue. The book "The Source" (Jewish historical fiction) left me with this impression for some reason. It suggests that Jews don't really have a personal relationship with God for the most part. Maybe this is just because it centered on rabbis.

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