It is not coincidence that there are so many similarities between the lives of Socrates and Jesus Christ even though they are separated in history by almost 500 years. It is as if the life of Socrates was a kind of prophecy for the life of the Jewish Messiah to come. Did not Aristotle, who was the student of Plato, the disciple of Socrates, make what amounted to a prophecy of his own when he predicted that if a perfect man ever entered what was considered an ideal society at the time, the perfect man would be put to death by that society?
Both Socrates and Christ were born into times of moral malaise and disillusionment. Sparta had just defeated Athens the city state and Rome was dominating the Jews in Israel. Both of these men were regarded with suspicion by the religious establishment of the day. Both held themselves somewhat aloof from the world of politics and felt their callings in the world of philosophic and theological ideas and morality. Both were itinerant teachers who employed the method of dialogue but neither wrote any books or founded a school of philosophy or theology. Moreover neither was physically attractive so that this could not be used as a trait to explain the large numbers who gravitated to them. (See Isaiah 53, v.2)
Socrates and Christ each rejected plans by their followers for them as leaders to escape death and execution. (Deitrich Bonhoeffer is another more modern example of this during World War Two.) Peter the leading disciple lifted his sword in violent defense of his master. But each teacher was resigned to accept the verdict of corrupt judicial systems that decided their respective fates. Each was incredibly calm in the face of false accusation and flagrant injustice and mistreatment. Socrates was reminding his follower Crito of a responsibility in the concluding moments of his life, just as Jesus assigned John the duty of caring for his own mother Mary right before he died. Neither was concerned primarily about himself in those moments. Plato was in awe of what he witnessed in the moments before his teacher’s death and how assured was Socrates of his peaceful place in the afterlife. Jesus too was bequeathing his peace to his followers in his last hours, (John 14, v.27; John 16, v33) and knew that he was returning to his Father from Whom he had come in the first place. (John 16, v.28
Finally both of these men were constantly misunderstood and misinterpreted and ultimately perceived by their contemporaries as failures, even by their own disciples. Both were executed by the accepted means of execution of their societies. But now in retrospect Socrates is thought to have salvaged Greek and Western civilization with his reemphasis on absolute virtue and justice, and Jesus, well we know how he became the Savior of humankind through his resurrection which was made known to his followers, though not immediately blazed abroad before the establishment of his day. Most of their contemporaries had no clue of how far their influence would extend over time, or of how deeply some had already been impacted!
(An unexamined life, said Socrates, is not worth living. The one who defined boredom may have been thinking of this statement when describing boredom as an over-accumulation of layers of unexamined experience. One who is continually bored may as well not be living. In fact, that particular one is not living at all but is among the walking talking dead, and all the while surrounded with such wonders and all kinds of stimuli. Whether continually or occasionally bored, whatever boredom there may be in our lives is a summons to our reflection to catch up with our experience, to quit living so mindlessly! Socrates was good at issuing that particular summons, so was Jesus who was the best of all at it, and is still busy doing it.)