5 Common Misconceptions About Jesus (You Won’t Hear in Church)

In Jesus, What He Really Said and Did, the author Stephen Mitchell tries to clear up a few misconceptions about Jesus, including a very big one—why did Jesus have to die? And what he has to say may surprise you, as he pokes holes in notions that many Christians take as fact.

Mitchell is an expert in his field, having translated some of the world’s great religious texts. His version of the classic Chinese book the Tao Te Ching has sold over a million copies. He’s also the author of The Gospel According to Jesus, with Jesus, What He Really Said and Did being a condensed version of that book aimed at a younger audience.

Over the course of Jesus, What He Really Said and Did, Mitchell calls out several things we may get wrong about the life of Jesus. What follows are the concepts I found most interesting, as they help shed new light on Jesus and his true message.

5 Common Misconceptions About Jesus 

1. Jesus did not go by the name Jesus. He went by the Hebrew name Yeshua or Yeshu which in English translates to Joshua. Jesus would not have recognized the name Jesus Christ as his own. It is not until the New Testament is translated into English (it was originally written in Greek) that the name Jesus is used. The Christ portion of his name, which stands for the Messiah, was also tacked on well after his death. (More here.)
2. Jesus never wrote anything himself. The earliest account we have of Jesus is the Gospel of Mark which dates from around the year 70, a full forty years after Jesus’s death. The other three gospels were written one to three decades after that. Every written version is a result of oral stories about Jesus that were passed on from person to person over the years—perhaps explaining why there are discrepancies in the Jesus story even within the New Testament itself.
3. Jesus didn’t intend to start a new religion. Jesus was born a Jew and remained one throughout his life. He wouldn’t have known what the word Christian means and Christianity today “would have been incomprehensible to Jesus.” His teachings were intended to bring people back to God, not start a new religion. It was not until after his death that Christianity was formed.
4. Jesus did not believe he “died for our sins.” While this has long been the view of the church, Mitchell dismisses this notion. In his words, “this is an idea Jesus couldn’t have approved of. As Jesus knew, God is unconditional love.” Jesus may well have accepted his death because he ultimately believed it was God’s will, part of a master plan he could not comprehend. But to pin his death on retribution for our sins is to paint a picture of an unjust God. Mitchell adds:

God is not some tyrant who demands the blood of an innocent victim in order to forgive people’s sins. God’s forgiveness is always present, whenever people are ready for it.

5. Jesus knew that he was not the only son of God. He believed that all of mankind were the sons and daughters of God. Mitchell writes that, “anyone who acts with unselfish love is God’s beloved child.” And as Richard Rohr points out, Jesus is an incarnation of the loving spirit of God, and a “shortcut” to accessing the Divine. But we all can access God directly just as Jesus did.

Here’s a bonus misconception. Jesus did not live his entire life preaching the word of God. According to Michell, he was probably an ordinary small-town kid. The gospels talk about the birth of Jesus and pick up the story when he was about 30 years old, the time he began healing and teaching people. What happened in those intervening years? No one knows for sure, but Jesus may have led a mostly unremarkable existence—until the spirit of God entered his life.