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Don Cupitt: "Jesus' sayings have a better chance of being original than his life. About his life, we don't know much, except that he was crucified. He was a wandering Jewish teacher, traveled around Palestine in the first third of the first century for a few years, then he fell foul to the temple authorities in Jerusalem and he got crucified. But otherwise, he's really known for the first 20 years or so after his death simply as a moral teacher. And then, the supernatural beliefs about him began to develop. People began to believe that he was risen from the dead, that he had been the christ or the messiah designate, exalted to Heaven, and so on. Those beliefs developed very rapidly, and they soon hit his moral teaching. I'm thinking that the moral teaching remains very interesting and original, and deserves a look.

"...The original Jesus, oddly enough, never endorses the law of Moses, can't really be described as an orthodox Jew, but can't really be described as teaching any Christian doctrine at all, anyway. He's more like an Eastern sage...Jesus was the first modern radical Humanist.

"...I copied out the 20 passages in the Old Testament where the ancient Jews dreamed about a better world in the future: the kingdom of God on Earth. In all those passages, it's a secular, good society that they're asking for. The sort of good society that Karl Marx, and liberalism were still asking for all those centuries later. So it's a basically secular ethical dream of a society in which human beings really do get on better with each other. And [Jesus] sees the way to it is getting rid of living under an external law and instead learning to live from the heart. Jesus takes from the Jewish prophets the idea that God himself recognizes that the Torah has not worked, it has not made people righteous. Instead, God's spirit would have to be put into people's hearts, or the law would have to be internalized."

Philosophy Bites | Don Cupitt on Jesus as a Philosopher