Week 4

Jesus is a icon that symbolizes metaphorically the "Light of the World", "Bread of Life", and "Gate and the Way". It would certainly add a comedic side of Jesus if he could actually be a candle, piece of bread, or gate. However, life isn't that comedically literal. Borg describes in chapter three the reality behind how the gospel writers utilized memory, metaphors, and method to gain understanding into the Bible's teachings. I think it is important to understand the methods used to help describe the wonders of the Bible and how Christianity is expressed to followers. Chapter four places society in context of Jesus' time. I found it interesting how a thousand years can pass, but Jesus' teachings and social cultures/norms can be still compared to our twenty-first century life. Below I have thought to make a table to illustrate comparisons and differences between Jesus' social world and Americans' social world. The table shows the perseverance of religion over time and concept of living in a social world. In terms of survival, the idea of survival of the fittest is still a reoccurring idea even though the conditions and means of survival have changed definitions (we can now go to the grocery store for meat instead of hunting animals in our backyards). Agricultural life is still an aspect of modern day life (importance of farming remains constant), and rural life still involves manual labor. The Jewish faith is still rooted in tradition and sacred practices. However class systems, governments, and world conflicts have changed over time to adjust to the needs and ideology of modern society.

Social World: “The social environment of a particular time and place” (Borg 78)	BCE Pre-modern Society	United States 21st   Modern Century Society
Survival	Hunting and Gathering; Survival of the Fittest	Supermarkets and Businesses; Survival of the Fittest
Careers	Agricultural	Industrial, Technological, Skilled Work, Agricultural
Class system	Two-class Society	Lower, Middle, Upper
Government	Imperial Rulers	Democracy
Rural population	Peasant village, preindustrial agrarian domination system, manual labor	Farming communities, manual labor
Jewish World	Judaism, Torah	Judaism, Torah
World Conflicts	Collisions based on Religious beliefs and imperial domination	Collisions between political conflicts and terrorism