This lesson is a group work based lesson that looks at different interpretations on Jesus' character. You will need access to the Bible, the Qur'an and Jesus and Buddha the Parallel Sayings by Marcus Borg. There are 8 groups so if you do not have access to Qur'ans and the Marcus Borg book you can reduce it to 6 groups and it will still work.
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Poorly researched. References to Jesus as a Buddhist ! no one credible takes this notion seriously, and the differences to Islam are huge.
mpp86
5 years ago
Thanks for your feedback:<br />
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The learning objective is to be able to explain different interpretations of Jesus’ character. <br />
All the ideas listed are interpretations of who Jesus was and the character presented in holy texts or different cultural/religious traditions. The students are then expected to evaluate whether Jesus can be "whatever you want him to be" or if some interpretations are more valid/historically accurate than others.<br />
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The slide on Jesus as Buddhist literally starts with the sentence: "This is a very unlikely theory but one that has some supporters." I understand that historically this theory is discredited but it is a fact that some people interpret the character of Jesus in this way. It is clearly not presented as historical fact in the PowerPoint and simply as one unlikely theory. This would be no different to presenting the Mormon belief that Jesus visited America or the ideas found the poem Jerusalem of Jesus visiting England.<br />
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As to your comments about Jesus in Islam, I don't fully understand your criticism. Students have to look up passages from the Qur'an that detail the actions of Jesus and compare them to the Christian beliefs. Again, the PowerPoint reads "Muslims have a different understanding of the role and nature of Jesus." The students can then identify how the view of Jesus is similar or different.<br />
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I am happy to receive feedback on lesson style and I am happy to accept when there might be factual errors but to describe it as poorly researched when you appear not to have even read the PowerPoint slides and the lesson activities is a bit much. In addition when each slide has at least 6 Bible/Quranic verses and includes interpretations of Jesus presented by Liberation theologians, Geza Vermes, Reza Aslan and the Catholic Church, it is not exactly fair to call it poorly researched.<br />
Empty reply does not make any sense for the end user