Finally today released the second volume of Jesus of Nazareth the pope. I rush to buy it and read it, partly because the cover shows the shocking statement: "The Lord is truly risen. He is the living God. " Signed, Benedict XVI.
what "really", the pope explained precisely in the preface to the whole work, which declared its intention "to present the Jesus of the Gospels as the real Jesus, as the historical Jesus in proper sense. " Therefore, for Benedict XVI "really means not what is written in history books, but what is written in the Gospels.
It 'clear that, by this criterion, any religion can decide what happened "really" on the basis of its own mythology. And the historical method, where does it go? In the attic, for the reasons explained by Benedict XVI himself in the same preface.
First, "the progress of the historical-critical research led to ever more subtle distinctions between the different layers of tradition. Behind them, the figure of Jesus, on which faith rests, became more and more nebulous, took increasingly blurred boundaries. "
And then, "as common result of all these efforts has been the impression that, however, we know well little for sure about Jesus and that only after the belief in his divinity has shaped his image. This impression, meanwhile, has deeply penetrated the consciousness of Christianity. A similar situation is dramatic for the faith because it renders uncertain its authentic point of reference. "
In other words, the Gospel, Pope Benedict XVI judge the tree by its fruit. And as the fruits of history lead to a "dramatic" deconstruction of Christianity, to rebuild it, he simply removes the entire tree, and with it the reality principle.
Indeed, in his commentary to the temptations of Jesus, the pope on the observation that "the devil is revealed knowledge of Scripture," to conclude that "the interpretation of the Bible can actually become a tool of the Antichrist."
The pope then folding the logical order of things, what should be the downgrading fundamental thesis of Christianity to mere assumptions . That are made to rest solely on the observation that "only if it was something extraordinary happened, if the figure and the words of Jesus had radically exceeded all the hopes and expectations of, explains his effectiveness."
Similarly, in his famous Introduction to Christianity Benedict XVI warned that "perhaps we should trust more than the current that is resistant to the centuries of the faith, faith which by its very nature did not want to be anything but a understand ".
The weakness of these arguments is that they could be applied, in exactly the same way, to reclaim the historical and theological truth of any other religion that has had the same effectiveness, and whose faith has endured many centuries. First , Hinduism and Buddhism, which can boast a history as venerable and wisdom as a teaching of Christianity. In fact, much more.
Preference faith tends rather to the history, I think, to a double error: the undervaluation of the religions of others, and the overvaluation of their own. And the Jesus of Nazareth it tries to compensate for the lack of historical evidence with an excess of apodictic statements and superlatives that seem to focus more indoctrination than in teaching.
Leggiamolo well, then, if we want to know what the Pope thinks of Jesus, and if we are sensitive to literary hyperbole. But do not expect him to tell us what is "really" happened, though this is what promises to do right by its cover.
P. Odifreddi
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