If you have read Khoury's book you know that the plot hinges around the idea that "Jeshua" (Jesus) wrote his own an autobiographical gospel. In his gospel, he reveals that he is not God but merely a man. Aside from the content of this "gospel", I have often wondered why Jesus didn't in fact write his own gospel, or seem to have written anything.
I posted a survey (at the bottom of this blog) a week ago not knowing that I would be reading about this very question in Khoury's book. If you look at the options I give for answers a few can be easily thrown out such as "He didn't have time", or "He asked his disciples to keep a journal, but they weren't very faithful in writing in it".
As well, we can exclude the proposition that "He couldn't read or write very well". In Luke 4:16-17, Jesus reads in Hebrew from a scroll on the Sabbath, so he can obviously read and write. Jesus probably spoke Aramaic as this first language as well as Hebrew from religious schooling and Greek because he lived in the Roman empire.
"He was too humble to record his own messages" at first resonates with Jesus, because he was "humble". But Jesus was not humble in the sense of shy, in contrast Jesus liked to stir the pot if you will. He would publicly call the Pharisees (the religious right): "you brood of vipers" (Matthew 12:34)! He unabashedly confronted, accused, pronounced judgments and wanted his teachings to be heard.
Of course if you do not trust four biblical gospels then you must question their accounts of what Jesus was like and did, but that is a subject of another post or should I say posts! (Mark D Robert wrote an entire blog on this topic which was converted into a "blook": blog/book) I will be assuming that the four biblical gospels have reliable information about Jesus of Nazareth.
The remaining options are subject to a little more thought.
- His message was purely spiritual
- He didn't want his message to become a religion
- He did but they were lost or are only included as fragments
- He wanted his movement to be grassroots
In The Last Templar, option number 4 would be true in that they were lost. As well option number 3 would be true as well.
The biblical gospels show many examples of Jesus planning ahead for when he would leave his disciples. He is shown giving them instructions to his disciples about how they are to continue preaching the gospel, especially in a long monologue in John chapters 14-16.
Jesus did not think it was critical to record written instructions for his disciples when he left them. In contrast he even thought is was better that he left!
"Nevertheless I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I go away..." John 16:7Jesus seems to have explicitly chosen not to record written instructions. It wasn't an afterthought when his death seemed imminent or that he didn't consider his own words as important enough to extend beyond his own life - he was too intentional for that. But still: Why?
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