The portrait of Jesus of the Famous German Website BASISRELIGION.

(The themes are sin, faith, love, sexuality, education of children, religion, scripture, forgiveness, morality, immorality, corruption of morals, hypocrisy, prudery, shame, nakedness, truth, theology, humanity, women, adultery, church, mafia, evolution, creation, conscience, premarital sex, Adam and Eve, Abraham´s sacrifice, Deluge, Tower of Babylon, atheism, criticism...)

The ideas about the historical (i.e. the true) Jesus are so exciting that they could be performed as a drama. The advantage would be the poetic freedom. But anyway: It's well known that 85 % or even more of the New Testament of the Bible is not originally from Jesus. And basisreligion tried to find out just those parts which could be original and to put them into a new puzzle. The advantage today: Since the situation with the Talibans in Afghanistan we have experience with a theocracy on our times – and the situation of the Jewish state at the time of Jesus was also a theocracy! And why not the same problems of todays theocracies also at the times of Jesus?

Title of the drama: Jesus And The Adulterous Woman

Basisreligion tells only the case history (which is not part of the bible!) – but the story of Jesus and the adulterous woman is exact like in the bible!

1. Act: The pimps Samson (bosstype), Jonathan (juniortype), Benjamin (underdogtype). Samson comes to organize a struggle against the obstinate former house constructor Jesus. Jesus is wandering around the country and speaking also with the prostitutes. And they tell him about their customers - sometimes famous men - and their "customs" and desires and Jesus tells this to the people. And because the "customers" are ashamed they avoid to go to the prostitutes and so also the business of the pimps is going down and morality is growing up.

In the conversation they are speaking about all the dirty practises against women: but "their women" should be obedient to the pimps and do their "duty" to the men and nothing more. That should be their way of life. They hate Jesus who tells the girls about honour and another life if they wouldn't start their "profession".

Therefore the pimps think about how to kill Jesus (since ever there belong those "customs" to their profession - still today in all countries of the world...) But they don't try to do this because Jesus meanwhile is very famous and the people love him because he says the truth about the wickedness and hypocrisy of the priests of the temple and of the people of the government. So they are looking for a trick: Samson explains a very old way of a judicial murder. He explains the strategy (analogous to the Susanna story, Daniel 13): He himself would start a love affair with her as a client because she wouldn't know him and he would "have sex" with her "orderly". Jonathan and his religious friend Ezechiel  should surprise both "in flagranti" but because he, Samson, is prepared he would escape unknown out of the window. But the girl would get caught and brought to court where she would get sentenced to death by stoning because of adultery corresponding to the law of Moses: If there are two witnesses at a crime, then this is a proof for the truth. They plan to do this "punishment" with the prostitute "Debora". And so the other prostitutes and also all women could see how important it would be to be obedient to the pimps and to be "protected" by them and Jesus would see what he had been up to with his crazy sermons.

2. Act: The Stoning. 

Jesus and his friend Zachaeus (a tax collector) are speaking about the dirty tricks pf the pimps and the establishment. Zachaeus tells of a story pf a pimp who had rented his “country house" and is making parties with girls and policemen. (It's a story of today just of my village - policemen were rewarded with the free intercourse of prostitutes...) There arrive excited Mizi and Muzi, two prostitutes and friends of Jesus, and tell that Debora was caught "in flagranti" and sentenced to death. All are confused. The girls start to speak about the risks of their profession because they work what is strictly forbidden but it's their way of life and profession. They tell how they started and what they now expect. (Now the spectators get knowledge from the other side".)

Mizi tells that she is the daughter of a prostitute but because she was disgusted by that profession she wanted to live an orderly life. But there were two guys who blackmailed her to have sex with them or to accuse them at the court that they had seen her as witnesses at sex with another man. This was according to the Jewish law at those times When there were two witnesses this was like a proof! So what Mizi should do because she didn´t want to die?

The other girl Muzi tells that she is the daughter of a priest (or Pharisee) and because she had premarital sex with a boy (seduced?) she preferred to live as a prostitute in another town than to get sentenced to stoning (it was also the law that daughters of priests would get stoned if they had premarital sex). Both feel guilty.

But Jesus explains them that they couldn't practise differently in those situations. Because of all the narrow pedagogic and education in those times, because of the taboos and the fears they were not able to think correctly and it would be completely normal if they did what they had done. The educators are telling only understatements and menaces instead to speak with them openly and intelligently so that they could really understand morality when they were young. Jesus is very excited how morality and real love would be made impossible also through men who think that they would be religious and moral, because at least they were not interested what happens. "Probably young people could have pleasure nakedly and completely innocent and would be also completely moral in the Lake of Galilaia if they were accustomed to behave in this way and if they would be informed about all what happened really since their childhood instead of the foolish and superfluous education of shame and decency." One of the friends says that then would happen the paradise. And Jesus tells that this would be exactly what he is thinking about and it would be possible if all the hypocrisy and superficial morality would finish. Corresponding to his experiences children would get convinced easily of his ideas - but people are too suspicious to leave him to teach them...

Morality is always the morality of the powerful. The friends ask him how he thinks about women personally and he answers that he would like to love one but in that situation of insidiousness and vulgarity he had "loosed any desire". He couldn't be involved in those matters and so he thinks that he would be elected to change something by the father in heaven first. He would be sure that the father would care for him…                        

And there they hear a noise: A lot of men is arriving with Debora to stone her. When they see Jesus they stop. Knowing that "those girls" are his friends they provoke him and spit on the ground and order her to lick it with her tongue. Meanwhile two of the men think loudly (for the spectators) about another coup to convict Jesus. They decide to put him to the test and to ask him whether he would agree to the stoning or not. Because if he would agree he was against the laws of the Romans who were the rulers, and if he wouldn't agree he was against the own Jewish laws. In both cases they had a reason to accuse him. And so they ask him the famous question: "Moses ordered to stone those women and we discovered her in the very act - what do you say?" "And Jesus answers very slowly and clearly and looking in t o their eyes the famous answer: "Which of you who never did what you are accusing that women -who never had been intimate with someone outside of his marriage -he should throw the first stone."           .

And all those - to whose eyes Jesus now is looking - leave in different ways, angry, hating, embarrassed, puzzled, confused, grumbling. And Jesus says to Deborah that she should stop her profession because she couldn't win against that criminal mafia.

3. Samson and Ezechiel

Samson is very angry because they were so crazy to become cheated by Jesus. He explains that now Jesus must get sentenced to death. Ezechiel protests: No, that would be too hard against Jesus because he is not really wrong. But Samson convinces him: If Jesus would get right with his ideas, he would destroy any religion and Ezechiel and all the other priests could pull down the temple and live as beggars. Finally Ezechiel accepts: May be that Jesus wouldn't believe religion anyway and in god, in the forgiving of the sins, in life after death, and he would bring a complete chaos to all the people.

So both start to develop a strategy to put down Jesus with religious arguments and to make false witnesses and to sentence him to death through the Romans.

Samson explains how the ideas of Jesus would fade away by the time. He would know those experiences:

1. At first the successors of Jesus would say nothing because of fear.

2. Later it wouldn't be decent to think and to speak about those subjects especially with children - "how would they do it, those narrow minded bourgeois?".

3. Then' they would give to all those ideas a new meaning in the way of mythology and all the other common religions (paradise after death etc.).        

4. And finally they wouldn't understand those who would start with the real ideas of Jesus and condemn them as "against Jesus".

And there we are today! Curtain of the stage and darkness!

O.K. the spectacle is very pessimistic - but the spectators would know some tricks of immorality and could become interested to change. So it's optimistic.

In a small copybook we could give Information to the spectators about the story of the adulterous woman, about the Susanna story (Daniel 13), about the way of the living men and women together at the time of Jesus, about the circumcision of the girls in Egypt in those times and today, about the auction of girls for marriage in Babylon in those times and the Cultural Prostitution there. So the spectators would get knowledge about that real love and partnership among men and women which was impossible in those times.

What would happen if we would translate that spectacle into different languages? And in many countries there are mafias also against women - but they could perform a spectacle of history outside of the up-to-date problems. But people would understand... And perhaps it could happen that you would find a theatre to put it into the reality of the stage. What do you think about? 11.5.1998   

This page belongs to the Website of a catholic teacher of religion in Germany. Though the basic of this story is official catholic and protestant theology (taught at colleges) it was forbidden to the teacher to teach any more the students. But the problem is: If the story of the drama is the truth about Jesus – most of the other theology should change also – and especially the Christian pedagogic! You´ll be surprised how fascinating new ideas there are!

You´ll find all these different ideas in a dictionary an in many dialogs and in a drama about Jesus and the Adulterous Woman in the website

www.basisreligion.de .

If you are interested – please write to KONTAKT. Perhaps you have any idea to translate the whole website or a part into English? Anyway I´ll help you if you have a special question, especially if you are student!

There is also the book HONESTY AND FUN WITH THE MORALITY in English  !