What about The Jump Cuts in Jesus' Biopic

[MineralMan]

OK. The official New Testament canon describes Jesus' birth, and makes very brief mention of Egypt. But, it skips over the "Messiah's" childhood almost completely, until he shows up to surprise the priests with his wisdom around age 13.

Then, Jesus disappears from the Canon until he reappears at age 29 or 30, or something like that, and begins his journey toward his execution and resurrection, we are told.

So what happened in between? There are two major, multi-year jump cuts in this film. We just don't know. His childhood is unknown. His education is unknown. Where he was and what he did as a boy is a mystery. Odd, that.

And then, there's his adolescence and early adulthood to deal with. Presumption leads us to suppose that he made his Bar Mitzvah around the time he was awing the priests with his acumen. But then what?

Some claim he went to India and consorted with wise men, like those who are supposed to have shown up at his birth. No evidence, though, is presented. There are stories of him showing up in Britain, the Americas, and even Japan. But, again, nothing in the Canon about those peripatetic adventures.

Big jump cuts make for a confusing narrative. The chain of evidence is non-existent. Was the guy on the cross the same baby in the manger? How would we know? How did anyone know? Mom Mary didn't leave any writings. Joseph, who was his acting male parent, left no words behind. There are no writings from any siblings, if there were any siblings.

He just disappeared from history for a couple of long intervals of time.

There are some non-canonical writings regarding all this, but they're not officially part of the story. So, we don't know. Aren't we curious? Don't we wonder? I know I do. I mean, here's this guy from a couple of millennia ago who is the be-all and end-all of Christianity. But we have no idea what he was doing most of his life.

Did he get married as a young man? That would be normal for a young Jewish guy in that time. If so, did his wife bear children? That would also be typical, given that there was no effective contraception in those days. Did he attend shul as a youngster? If not, where did he get the knowledge that wowed the priestly types when he was 12 or 13?

So many questions. So few answers.

[DetlefK]

1. I think, it's because of an obscure part of christian doctrine:

There's something in christian doctrine about Jesus being the perfect human. He never was an imperfect toddler who shat himself or an imperfect child that played in the dirty streets.
In a religious sense he was born as an adult, meaning with the soul and mind of an adult. So they can't depict him as a child.



As for the years 13-30, that's bad story-telling I guess. The authors can hardly depict him living a normal life, because then they would have to invent a reason WHY he lived a normal life for 17 years and WHY he suddenly started a cult when he was 30.

And that would raise all sorts of uncomfortable questions if Jesus is only a part-time Messiah.

[MineralMan]

3. Well, that's a possible and probably likely reason we don't know.

Unsatisfying, though, I think.

Did Jesus flirt with girls as a teenager? Boys? I don't know. I wonder, though. Did Jesus ask uncomfortable questions of his parents? His rabbis? I'll bet he did, but I don't know.

Did Joseph need to use his rod to discipline the boy? That was typical in those days. I wonder.

So many questions. So few answers.

[marylandblue]

13. Every few years, someone makes a major archeological discovery in Israel

My fantasy is that we'll find a trove of contemporaneous documents equivalent to the Dead Sea Scrolls. There was a movie like that in the 1970s called "The Word." Major changes in the story and the Catholic Church was very upset about it.

[MineralMan]

14. I remember that movie!

Thanks for the reminder. Or was it a book? Irving Wallace wrote a book at that title in 1972. It was about the Gospel of James. Got it! It was made into a TV miniseries in 1978. I watched that.

[struggle4progress]

2. The oldest Christian texts seem to be the Pauline letters

and contain no biographical info

The oldest gospel seems to be the so-called gospel of Mark; its original title, however, was "The Beginning of the Good News." It starts with John baptizing Jesus

Clearly, stories of birth and childhood were not the original interest

[MineralMan]

5. Well, Paul's letters have huge significance to the Canon.

After all, Paul was a Roman and the Canon was the Roman version of the Gospels. Who knows what manuscripts were tossed into the fire back in the days when the Canon was being assembled? So much writing to go through. The Biblical Canon we have as a legacy from the past is partly scripture and partly political in nature.

Of course, none of it is contemporaneous with Jesus. It's all what showed up at the end of the Game of Telephone that was being played for a couple of centuries or more. I can hear the committee now, "OK, that stays and this goes." Over and over again.

We know almost nothing, really, except what was deemed useful.

[Act_of_Reparation]

4. There's nothing there because nobody knows.

Nobody knows because whatever he was doing wasn't worth writing down.

The more puzzling question is why the Evangelists, lacking most of the details concerning their lord and savior's life, didn't just make some shit up? I mean, they obviously weren't above making shit up, because there's made up shit all over the place.

[MineralMan]

6. Well, perhaps things were known, but were discarded.

"Let's just leave all of this out, OK? It's bound to create confusion and raise questions. So, let's just not mention it. Toss that manuscript into the fire over there, won't you?"

So much time has passed. Millennia, really. There's no way to know.

[Act_of_Reparation]

9. I doubt it.

In all likelihood, there are no details because there are no sources for that period of Jesus' life. He was the son of a carpenter. It's not like he was hanging out with a ton of literate people. By the time the Evangelists got around to writing the Gospels, anyone who knew Jesus during his childhood would likely have been dead already.

They weren't above bullshitting the circumstances of Jesus' birth, because the specifics were important scripturally. The messiah needed to be born in Bethlehem, so they cooked up a story explaining how a Nazarene pauper came to be born 150 km away in Bethlehem. The early Gospels didn't describe Jesus' awkward teenage years because there wasn't any reason to do so.

[MineralMan]

10. That's another possibility, of course.

I will admit that I do not know. I have no way to know. I suspect there is no way, a couple of thousand years later, to know.

It all seems doubtful, in any case, so I don't buy it.

[Bob Loblaw]

7. Jesus, the Missing Years

by John Prine. Don't know how to post the song from my phone. A little help please, someone post it for me.

[MineralMan]

8. Here ya go!

[Bob Loblaw]

15. Thank you

[MineralMan]

16. My pleasure.

[The Genealogist]

11. The infancy gospels to which you alluded are quite interesting

In fact, I'd say there was material in some of them that is far more interesting than what the canonical gospels have to say.

[MineralMan]

12. The thing is that Christianity is based on the official Canon.

Since that Canon became the official scripture of the RCC, it has been pretty much universally accepted by Christianity of all denominations. With very few exceptions, it is the official story. That there are other extant writings doesn't really alter that fact.

As an atheist, I'm looking at all religions from outside of them. I take each at its own declaration. The accepted scriptures are what interest me, since they form the foundation of that religion.

There are fragmentary and disputed additional writings, of course. Not as many as there once were, I suspect, though. The ones we have available probably still exist because they were not known at the time the Canon was set in stone. Given the authoritarian point of view of the Constantine church, I would be very surprised if contradictory manuscripts or documents were not destroyed during the process of creating the Canon. Either that or secreted away in inaccessible archives.

There was a process.

[edhopper]

17. When I ask believers about the accuracy of the Gospels

written decades after Yeshua might have died, I am told about orl history from those around him, including his family. They even remembered his exact words. But somehow none of them remembered a single thing from 90% of his life.