Example: Jesus stretched love of neighbor to love your enemies. I must confess I never understood what "love your neighbor" and "love your enemies" really meant until a few weeks ago. It came from the book: The Historical Jesus in Context. That is his Jewish context. The Rabbinic tradition did not interpret 'neighbor' and 'enemy' as individuals but as words stretching the meaning of the <the common good>. So Jesus was expressing a Jewish, Rabbinic contextual idea that we have lost in our tradition divorced from Judaism. Jesus whole teaching and training is about the growth of a <common good> consciousness. It is like the circle when you drop a stone in the water.
Therefore, to understand Jesus we have to understand the context of how his three pound brain was operating in it. If not, our three pound brain is dysfunctional in understanding the teaching and training of the Jewish God of the Jewish Jesus, in first century context. When I read all the parables now I see beyond the story of individuals; I read now the insight: they are simple stories about focusing a life on <the common good.>
How simple religion is!
George
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