A friend of mine and I were discussing the consumption of Jesus in America today. You know, where everyone has a different flavor. There is the left and the right, the super cool and sexy, some that have no resemblance to the Middle Eastern carpenter that we read about in the Gospels. That’s when Matt’s book came up. Why? Because it reveals a truth about people, namely us Americans – that we simply have so many Jesuses (Jesusi?) to choose from. I mean, if we don’t like the Jesus which helps the poor, we find a richer church to go to. We don’t like a Jesus who blesses? Go to a church that sits on their hands. We want a superman Jesus? Pick up a kids book sometime.
What about the Jesus that the authors of the Gospels knew? (Or, if you like, knew of…) What about the Middle Eastern, down trodden, poor Rabbi who didn’t even work to support his family – a family who, by the way, at one time thought that he had jumped the shark? What about the Jesus who was not a friend of the State, but still encouraged that the laws be obeyed? The one who didn’t care for institutionalized religion but called a community together?
We Americans and our Wal-Mart style religion. I am sure if we don’t like what is on the shelf, we can find a better product, and cheaper too, down the road.
Yay! This was me!!
Just to be perfectly clear–the plural of Jesus depends on what sort of Jesus you’re talking about. Hebrew Jesus: Yeshvim. Greek Jesus: Iesoi. Latin Jesus: Jesi. Italian Jesus: Gesui. English and or Spanish Jesus: Jesuses, but the trick is that English and Spanish Jesus, though spelled alike, have different pronunciations, and therefore their plurals work differently as well. Hope that helps.
Um, thanks, Mitchell 🙂
I just assumed that we were using Jesus in the latinized Greek and thus would be a third declension and that the proper nominative plural would be “Jesus.” But that was confusing in English so I used “Jesuses” because one of the great strengths of English is that you can ignore all the other languages when you feel like it.
I’ll admit that a compelling argument could be made for an irregular fourth declension as well.
Also, thanks for the shout out, Joel. This is a topic that is important to me, and I’m passionate about all of us interacting with the real Jesus….
At least everyone got the real point…. 🙂
Can I just say how much I super love the word “declension”? I don’t know what it means, but I assure you I’m going to find out and use it in at least 10 different sentences tomorrow.
Declensions in Latin were pretty easy