Sometimes, interpreting the New Testament requires more than merely translating. It requires an affirmative and passionate abandonment of the usual pathways of reason for an entirely different way of understanding. It requires a “leap of faith” into the “absurd”.
The early Christian church was caught between two competing world-views: Hellenic (Greco-Roman) and Hebrew. While Christianity came from Judaism, mainstream rabbinical Judaism rejected the claim that Jesus was the Messiah, and early Christians in turn renounced Jewish law and customs. On the other hand, the history of the Jews was important evidence of God, and the early Christians shared with Jews a resentment of Roman military hegemony and Greek cultural imperialism. In the end, Christianity rejected both the Jew's history and the wealth of Hellenic civilization to trumpet Jesus' ignominious torture and death. It is not immediately obvious why one would find this to be "good news". Paul announced: “we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles”. 1 Cor. 1:23.
The Gospel may not always be convenient or comfortable. It may not be “common sense”. The early Christians, in fact, went out of their way to avoid the convenient and comfortable, and thumb their noses at "common sense". They contrasted their spiritual possessions with the wealth, power, and cultural richness of the ruling Roman Empire: “Consider your own call, brothers and sisters: not many of you were wise by human standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong ...” 1 Cor. 1:26-27. The contrast between the empire of God and the empire of Rome became even more pronounced in the Gospels (which modern scholars tend to agree were written after Paul’s letters). The sayings of Jesus contain a few explicit contrasts (“Render unto Caesar ...” Matt. 22:21, Mark 12:17; Luke 20:25). Even more interesting, however, are the numerous implicit contrasts between the Roman Empire and “the Kingdom of God” or "the Kingdom of Heaven". The scholars of the Jesus Seminar make this contrast even clearer in the Scholars’ Version (SV), their new translation of the Gospels, The Five Gospels (1993) by translating “Kingdom of Heaven” as “God’s Imperial Rule”. An example:
You won't be able to observe the coming of God's imperial rule. People are not going to say, “Look, here it is!” or “Over there!” On the contrary, God's imperial rule is right there in your presence. (SV, Luke 17:20)
Then something astonishing happened. The Roman Empire was taken over by Christians. The cross of Christ was emblazoned on the shields of the Roman army, and its motto became “In Hoc Signi Vincit” (By this Sign He Conquers). To make things even more confusing, Christianity appropriated the worldly wisdom against which Paul had contrasted Christ. Christians like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas so thoroughly absorbed Greek philosophy, for example, that it is very difficult for a modern person to read Plato or Aristotle without assuming they are Christian --even though their works were written several hundred years before the birth of Christ. Gradually, “Western Civilization” became synonymous with “Christendom”.
It has become all too easy to mistake "civilized" for "Christian". But while the world changed, the Bible did not. The Book of Genesis has not been revised to reflect current scientific knowledge. Jesus’ sayings remained paradoxical and contradictory --long after it ceased to be fashionable to express oneself in riddles.
After millennia of semantic drift, the temptation to interpret the miracles and explain away the paradoxes is overwhelming. But that would be a mistake.
It remains the case that the “truth” of the Bible can and should be contrasted with the “truth” of “common sense” of the majority (use “mob” or “masses”, if you like to be insulting) and also with the theorems of mathematics and science. Sometimes this is just a question of translation. Take for example, the phrase, “Son of God”. Clearly it is important to the Gospel message that Jesus is the “Son of God”. But he is clearly not God’s son in the way I am my father’s son. If he were, then why do we never hear about Mrs. God? Also, translating sometimes requires supplying a context. For example, Jesus is called the “Lamb of God” and his crucifixion is compared to a temple sacrifice. Jesus is somehow both the sacrificial animal and the high priest. Now, the Jewish Temple was destroyed in 70 C.E. and today Jews and Christians do not practice ritual slaughter of animals. No matter how much I study the matter and try to put myself in the minds of the people who actually did such things, ritual sacrifice just seems wrong to me. I’m fairly certain, however, that the people who used the phrase “Lamb of God” thought about it much the way I do when I put a check in the offering plate. (But try singing “O Check of God, you take away the sins of the world!”)
Finally, however, you uncover concepts which are strange, illogical and repellant, not just to me and my time, but always and for all time: the "absurd". Calling something “absurd” in normal parlance is to denigrate it as wrong or out-of-place. But in philosophy and theology, particularly after 19th and 20th century existentialism, “absurd” is the human condition. Being alive is an incongruous combination of existence and essence, of time and eternity, of unchanging truth and constantly changing life. Mathematicians are used to the idea of irrational numbers: numbers which cannot be expressed as a ratio of two whole numbers, such as the square root of 2. It is not an insult to the square root to call it “irrational”. Similarly, to say that the divinity of baby Jesus is "absurd", does not mean it is false or wrong, as in: "a baby can't be God, therefore the baby was not God." It means: "The divinity of baby Jesus is strange and wonderful and surpasses understanding".
While the “absurd” of philosophy and religion is not merely a logical contradiction, such contradictions can be signposts to the “absurd”. Jesus is God, yet he dies. He dies --completely, totally, really, truly, stone cold dead-- and then he rises again. He says: Love those you hate. He walks on water. He is the Messiah, the savior of Israel -- but he won’t fight the Romans. Jesus is a paradox: as the God-Man, he is the paradox.