Jesus vs Socrates

Jesus Against Socrates Socrates, known as the famous Greek philosopher and one of the wisest people around, was looked at as being a very strong willed and “stand-by-his-opinion” kind of man. Jesus, on the other hand, was a man who went through his life not by blatantly expressing and sharing his wisdom, but by making his “students” think things through for themselves in order to gain understanding and wisdom in certain topics. Based on what is known about Jesus and Socrates, two major moral figures in the world, it is hard to comprehend the major similarities that they obtain with one another because of their radical differences on how they lived their lives focusing on the way in which they were raised, what exactly they were standing up for and the way in which their lives ended because of it. Looking at their background, both were very similar with the way that they were raised and brought up. Both Jesus and Socrates came from small countries and were raised by common people; Jesus’ father was a carpenter whereas Socrates’ father was a sculptor. More significantly though, neither of them wrote anything- their teachings were only taken down by their followers at some point and were spread all around by word of mouth (1). Even though both men lived very simple lives only living on the bare minimum, they both made many enemies throughout their life, although for different reasons, it all leads back to their main beliefs and morals (2). Jesus had enemies mainly because he taught about the spiritual aspect of the kingdom and the ideals that go with it and that his “messiahship was spiritual instead of temporal as they wanted” (1), which is not what the higher officials wanted people to be preaching about. Socrates, on the other hand, had enemies because he proved to people that they didn’t know half as much as they thought, especially with a focus more on the political aspect of life; it was said that because he taught men how to think clearly on the idea

Cited: 1. Bostick, William F. "Jesus and Socrates." The Biblical World. 4th ed. Vol. 47. N.p.: University of Chicago, 1916 2. "Who Was Socrates?" Who Was Socrates? Columbia University Press, 1991. Web. 12 Nov. 2012 3. Graham, Daniel W. "What Socrates Knew." Apeiron: A Journal for Ancient Philosophy and Science 20 (1997): 25-36. JSTOR 6. The Holy Bible, King James Version. New York: American Bible Society: 1999; Bartleby.com, 2000.