Jesus the Christ and Tragedy

Abstract

The boy Joshua who grew up at Nazareth during the reign of the Roman Emperor Tiberius knew a great deal about the countryside, about animals, birds, and fish, about Galilean parents and children, about crops good and bad, about sicknesses and deaths, about good turns of events and disasters. He may have been able to write and read, and he may have had some knowledge of Greek and very little Latin beside Aramaic and Hebrew. He listened and talked to representatives of religious leaders and he learnt the Scriptures. He knew nothing of Greek myths, Homer and tragic drama and never referred to any texts except those contained in the scrolls of Hebrew tradition. Of his inner life we know next to nothing until he appears as a wandering preacher, healer, and exorcist, as a man in and around Lake Galilee. We become acquainted with his words, his style, his mind, and his goal as he begins to lead a few men in a mission to promote the Kingdom of God. Through their remembrances of him, rehearsed by word of mouth and later set down in writing, posterity has received a picture of the rabbi and prophet from Nazareth which is totally unlike that of a tragic hero.