You Say That I Am: The Historical Jesus Becomes the Messiah

By Dennis Lines

The book is a critical study of the evidence of the existence of the historical Jesus, a study of the records and the background data that supplies the context of first century life in upper Galilee Palestine.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookTrail Publishing
• Release date: Jan 23, 2022
• ISBN: 9781637671856

Book preview

Chronology

Codex Sinaiticus: Italian naturalist Donati identified Codex Sinaiticus in 1761 at St. Catherine’s Monastery in Sinai. Constantine Tischendorf retrieved 129 leaves of the Codex (the Old Testament) in 1844. It is the best example of a fourth-century Codex of the Bible. It is stored in four international libraries, the largest part in The British Museum, London, UK. The Old Testament is the Greek Septuagint and the New is written in vernacular Koine Greek. The margins have scribal annotations that show that the original text was not known.

Papyri P52: Bernard Greenfell acquired papyri in Egypt in 1920. Among them was this 2.5 x 3.5 copy of John (18:31–33 front, 18:37–38 rear). This fragment (P52) is kept in The John Rylands Library, Manchester, UK.

The Gospel of Thomas: Folio 32 of Nag Hammadi Codex II: this Codex leaf is the end of the Apocryphon of John and the beginning of the Gospel of Thomas.

The Nag Hammadi Collection: Mohammed Ali (Bedouin) discovered thirteen leather- bound Codices of the fourth and fifth centuries CE in the Egyptian desert. Though Coptic, they may be translations of earlier Greek texts: the 52 documents include The Gospel of Philip, The Gospel of Thomas and The Apocalypse of Peter. The Gospel of Thomas may be a translation from a Greek original dating between 130–250 CE: Robinson (1988).

Archaeological Discovery

Preface

Few other figures of history have been the subject of greater debate than Jesus of Nazareth. His teaching divides much opinion and has resulted in strife and schism throughout the centuries. Even today, his defenders and critics are locked in uncompromising positions from fundamentalism to scepticism. The Amazon book site has many volumes about Jesus, works that argue for myth on one hand and apologetics on the other. It can be a case of utilising the same evidence to authenticate different perspectives, evidence drawn from archaeology, form criticism and historical research. Critical scholars may depend on the same Gospel passages as conservative scholars, but come up with different conclusions. This life of Jesus reviews the evidence afresh in light of critical scholarship, but also pays respect to theological interpretation and the relevance of Christian belief. I consider that theology has something to contribute to history, that they compliment each other for a deeper understanding of what it means to be Christian.

There is no sound evidence that Socrates existed, since the accounts of his life and dialogues are entirely second-hand, almost but not quite as much as those of Jesus. Some philosophers reason that it doesn’t matter whether Socrates had actually lived so long as the dialectical method was adopted. His philosophy has no need of demonstration, because it deals with logic, not revelation. Liberal theologians might also say that it is not essential for Jesus to have existed to put into practise his teaching, but for the majority of Christians, I suspect, the notion of a fictitious Jesus is unthinkable. His teaching is judged to be contingent on belief in him as a historical person. Socrates never said you must believe in what I say because I am the Son of God, yet the Synoptic Gospels present Jesus as the Son of God and the Gospel of John implies he was divine—that he was God. The Christian revelation of God and Jesus of Nazareth are held to be synonymous. Christianity stands on the foundation that Jesus was a historical figure.

Jesus once said, ‘Do not be anxious about tomorrow’, but many Christians have a dilemma in following this precept in daily life. Was he saying there should be no investment or provision for children, that one’s family has to be abandoned for the Kingdom and that one doesn’t have to be concerned about the future? Was C.S. Lewis right when saying that Jesus must have been a maniac, sick, or evil? Or was Jesus convinced that the world was shortly to end? Was the Kingdom an unflinching imperative to follow him at whatever cost, or was it that the early Church put such sayings into his mouth? These questions a study of Jesus must address.

Sceptics have said that the messianic claims made by the Jesus movement were a distortion of what Jesus had said, that Christian traditions were a fabrication of history. A Hebrew prophet predicted that the Messiah was to be born of King David’s royal line and another foretold that he was to come from the tribe of Bethlehem, but it is certain that the historical Jesus was not a prince and that he didn’t come from Bethlehem.A How did the evangelists get round this problem?

They made up stories to fit the Jewish predictions? The Jesus movement believed that Jesus had risen from the dead, and that the prime witnesses were women, who would have had as much chance of being listened to in a Jewish court of the time as they would in an Islamic court today. But the Gospels do not agree on the birth, or the resurrection of Jesus, and yet the Incarnation and the resurrection are fundamental to Christian faith. Most critical scholars of the historical Jesus contend that the evidence is sound that there actually was a charismatic prophet from Galilee called ‘Jesus of Nazareth’, that he spoke of the end of the age and that his followers held him to be the Jewish Messiah. Many agree that a historical event occurred that resulted in his devotees being convinced he came back from the dead. If the traditions were all made up, it is argued, why not fabricate the entire account, and have him born in Bethlehem, and present male dignitaries witnessing the resurrection? That the evangelists elected not to do so, may suggest that they represented their source material accurately.

The historical Jesus is a technical description that critical scholars apply to the Jesus of history (against the Christ of faith). The first quest began at the end of the eighteenth century with the advent of biblical criticism, and the second and third occurred in the twentieth century. European Protestants led the work of the second, but the third involved international scholars of multiple disciplines. This book reviews the current debate.

You Say That I Am was the answer Jesus gave (according to Luke) at his trial when asked whether he was the Son of God and the Messiah—it was a deflection. No transcript of either trial has survived and no emphatic confession by Jesus to be the Son of God, or the Messiah, can be traced in the early Aramaic sources that are not without historical problems; yet the evangelists held both these convictions. This search for Jesus weighs the evidence of his early life, his ministries in Galilee and Judea, his execution as a political criminal and the evidence of the resurrection.

I invite readers to suspend their presuppositions and begin a journey with an open mind as we examine the source traditions of the Jesus movement within two particular stages of development:

The setting of the historical Jesus in first-century Galilee

The historical context in which the Gospel narratives were shaped.

You Say That I Am starts with a verification of the available data and ends with a construction of a life of Jesus based upon source evidence, historical records and archaeological findings. Fifteen assertions of events occurring during the life of Jesus are put forward in the closing chapter.

Chapters 1 and 2 cover the social and political situation in Palestine in the first century. Chapters 3–7 and 13–16 present an analysis of the historical Jesus, with Chapter 19 offering a brief synopsis. Chapters 8–12 cover the major themes of the teaching of Jesus in relation to the Kingdom of God: readers might prefer to study this section in isolation. Theology takes up Chapters 18–17, in which we explore some implications of issues the book has raised, in terms of historical source material underlying the canonical Gospels and modern-day Christian relevance.

---

A 2 Samuel 7:12–14; Micah 5

Acknowledgements

I wish to express my gratitude to those who have given me their time and expertise in writing this book. I particularly acknowledge Vivian Jackson, Rachel Blackmore, Alison Goodhead and Michael Green in proofreading and advising on details of structure, theology and analysis. Thanks also to Graham Hughes for copyediting and proofreading the final manuscript, to Ian Wilson and Peter and Ben McHaffie for support with the graphics, to Mark Holtham for designing the cover, and to Dave Holtham for printing the manuscript. All remaining errors and conclusions are my own.

Introduction

The most influential book to have directed the course of New Testament scholarship on the historical Jesus was Schweitzer’s study: The Quest of the Historical Jesus (1906). ¹ Schweitzer examined the critical works on a life of Jesus and concluded that each author had projected ideas of Jesus from a religio-social perspective: liberal, modernised, rational and eschatological. Authors looked deep into the well of the life of Jesus and found their own reflection and ideology. Studies of the historical Jesus should recognise at the outset an important deduction of Schweitzer’s when he said:

The historical Jesus will be to our time a stranger and an enigma. The study of the Life of Jesus has had a curious history. It set out in quest of the historical Jesus, believing that when it had found Him it could bring Him straight into our time as a Teacher and Saviour … But He does not stay; He passes by our time and returns to His own …

The historical foundation of Christianity as built up by rationalistic, by liberal and by modern theology no longer exists; but that does not mean that Christianity has lost its historical foundation … We had forced Him into conformity with our human standards and human psychology …

The historical knowledge of the personality and life of Jesus will not be a help, but perhaps even an offence to religion … In reality that which is eternal in the words of Jesus is due to the very fact that they are based on an eschatological worldview …²

To summarise Schweitzer: the historical Jesus is a stranger and an enigma; he does not stay but passes by our time and returns to his own. But what was meant by: that which is eternal in the words of Jesus is due to the very fact that they are based on an eschatological worldview? This question is considered in our search for the historical Jesus.

Following the seminal work of Schweitzer, many critical scholars became more reserved in claiming much about the historical Jesus. Bruno Bauer said there was no evidence that Jesus existed.³ David Strauss reduced the supernatural stories of the New Testament to myths and presented Jesus as an ordinary human being.⁴ There resulted a strong contention that Jesus was not the founder of the Church and that the evidence points to Paul being the founder of Christianity.⁵

There have been three quests of the historical Jesus from the nineteenth century. Further research applied revised critical disciplines and a refined methodology of studying the Gospels. Coming forward in time, there has been a resurgence of interest in studies of the historical Jesus.⁶ The Jesus Seminar comprised a team of scholars re-examining the evidence of data which can be verified to establish authentic Sayings of Jesus, in contrast to those that were put into his mouth by the Christian community.

This account of the historical Jesus reviews a broad range of presentations of the Aramaic source traditions before arriving at a personal construction of the place of Jesus in history, presentations that include those that view:

Jesus as a Jewish prophet.⁷

Jesus as the bedrock of the Christian Church.⁸

Jesus as a fictional typology of Elijah and Elisha.⁹

Jesus as a peasant Jewish Cynic.¹⁰

Jesus as a moral reformer.¹¹

Jesus as a Spirit-driven teacher of Wisdom.¹²

Jesus as a militant Jewish zealot.¹³

Jesus as an apocalyptic prophet who held that the end of the age was about to come in his own time.¹⁴

History and Theology

Examining the historical Jesus has to be based on conventions of studying ancient documents. We are required to draw a distinction between history and theology. Historians apply rules of study, classified as historiography. The rigorous scrutiny of source traditions is termed exegesis, a discipline that engages historians and theologians. Historians deal with objective facts of the past; (not that they exist), whilst theologians deal with the meaning of those facts. Historians and theologians endeavour to discover whether a Saying was a verbatim account of what Jesus said and what it meant for an author—both will look for hidden agendas. Statements of faith are the business of theology, but assertions of fact are the business of history.

Propositions (I’m saved by the blood of Christ) and confessions of religious belief (Jesus guides me through life) belong to categories of faith, not to those of historical fact. Christians cannot prove objectively to a neutral audience that they are saved (whatever that means) by the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ; neither can they demonstrate how spiritual beings influence them in our material universe, but historical facts, such as ‘Jesus caused a disturbance in the Temple’, and ‘Capernaum was the hamlet where Jesus frequent went home’ can be verified by available source material.

These distinctions are self-evident, but what if we discover that sources of which a historian has based a thesis had previously been embellished? What sense should a historian make of sources that were Christianised?

For the past two centuries the convergence of history and theology has led to confusion in various studies of the historical Jesus. Some adopt a radical position and claim that the real person of Jesus, unmasked from the Christ of Christian faith, is unrecoverable, whilst more conservative scholarship has tended to merge the two in the interest of securing the Synoptic Jesus.

Some critics argue that a few Sayings and accounts of Jesus healing and disputing with Jewish leaders have been so filtered through the lens of the resurrection that they cannot be viewed as historical, but for a good many Christians, I suspect, it is untenable that faith is not based on actual events. It is little wonder that the laity becomes confused and disregards biblical criticism. There is a considerable gap between what happens in theological departments of university and what is heard from the pulpit of an average church. Our search for the historical Jesus will distinguish between history and theology, since as will become evident the four evangelists were more theologians than historians. As we ponder the significance of what occurred in Galilee and Judea during the early 30s, however, theology has to take precedence over history if the events are to have meaning.

Method of Studying the Gospels

The chief sources are the canonical Gospels, but we cannot just accept the accounts of Jesus at face value. Within these documents there are tensions, variants, contradictions, embellishments and developments from the early sources. They each have a specific perspective. A working methodology is required to make intelligible the many strands of handed-down tradition. Otherwise a researcher will be peering into the well of the historical Jesus and seeing again their own reflection.

To take one common example of shallow biblical exegesis, consider the practice of harmonising stories in the New Testament. Students may often flit about from one Gospel reference to another to solve a particular riddle, an inconsistency, or a contradiction, as though the different contexts and intentions of each author were the same. They claim that a given event had occurred twice. So, if Mark has Jesus causing a scene in the Temple at the end of the ministry and John presents it occurring at the beginning, then it must have happened twice! If Mark has Peter’s house at Capernaum and John has it at Bethsaida, then Peter must have had two houses or moved home quickly! If Luke has Jesus returning to Nazareth after his baptism and Mark presents his homecoming after a period of healing and teaching in Galilee, one itinerary should not be interpreted literally. Quite how they get round the problem of Jesus being crucified on the 15th day of Nisan (Mark, Matthew, Luke) and the 14th day of Nisan (John), I can’t imagine! Was Jesus executed twice? These contradictions suggest that each author used a different source or modified the tradition for a theological reason.

To take a further example, Mark has a source of a little girl ‘at the point of death’ whose father (the synagogue president) approached Jesus asking that he might come to his home and make her well. His daughter had not died when leaving home. Matthew covered the same narrative within the same scheme as found in Mark, but there is a difference.B Matthew reports that his ‘daughter had died’ when her father left home. So, who was right, Mark or Matthew? Was the daughter dead, or had she died awhile later? Both cannot be right if objective history is the prime objective. These two accounts cannot be harmonised if the texts are studied critically. Although Matthew tended to abbreviate the miracle stories and heighten their effect, it doesn’t get round the problem of contradiction. If students continue to harmonise contrasting Gospel accounts they are inadvertently writing their own Gospel; they are not defending scripture, as is thought. In harmonising the same story, they are not representing what each evangelist had written but are creating their own version of the New Testament.

Harmonising Gospel passages is not a new method of study. The original ending of Mark was probably chapter 16 and verse 8, with no appearance narrative of Jesus, but older versions of the Bible have The Shorter Ending of Mark, or The Longer Ending of Mark (King James Bible) that includes appearance narratives. Comparison shows that the additional material is taken from other accounts of the resurrection appearances.

The method of harmonising varied textual narratives—by weaving into the text material taken from elsewhere—occurred because early Christians believed that the Gospel sources could be pieced together to represent one composite story of a ministry of Jesus. In the case of Mark’s abrupt ending, copyists believed there was something lost, or never completed, that they had a licence to supplement their manuscripts of Mark with appearances from Matthew, Luke and John to supplement what was lost or incomplete.

Applying such a method of study misses the point. When reading a book we customarily begin at the first page and follow the storyline to the last. Conservative Christians naturally do the same with the Gospels. A proper approach is to read comparable texts of the Gospels horizontally. Studying an event in one Gospel, a student might pick up the same event in another and see the process of what is called source redaction in action (redaction is a revision, or edit of a source text); then the inconsistencies that are there in the text will be seen clearly (books of the Synoptic texts set side-by-side in parallel columns simplify the task).

With contradictory accounts of the same source, one question to ask is: what might be a motive for an author to alter a handed-down tradition? To make sense of the Gospels, the evangelist is to be viewed as an editor rather than an author, an editor selecting and refashioning handed-down material— the evangelists were not recording events they personally witnessed. Only then will the historian see the relevance of authorship; only then will these questions become pertinent: Why was the document written? To whom was it principally directed? What point was the author wishing to make?

Superficial interpretations of biblical contradictions and methodologies of harmonisation seem oblivious to the fact that the extant Gospels are copies of copies many times over.¹⁵ Of the earliest manuscripts of the Gospels to hand there are thousands of variant (if minor) texts. It needs a painstaking analysis by specialists to assess the original script and even then there will be differences of opinion amongst scholars.¹⁶

We cannot ignore the fact that how Jesus is presented is not value-free for many devout Christian scholars. Critical deductions of a revered figure of history can have an emotional impact for many devotees. We owe it to everyone taking the subject seriously to be transparent about the method conducted. There are basic rules that historians apply when authenticating strands of tradition.

One important rule of study is to take the text seriously: let the words speak for themselves, rather than steer them to say something other than what they’re saying. To take two examples: a) if Jesus told his disciples that they would ‘not taste death until they see the Kingdom of God had come with power’, and b) that the high priest was to ‘see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of the Power and coming with the clouds of heaven’, then even if these events didn’t happen at the time, it shouldn’t detract from what he was reported to have said. If Jesus had spoken openly against divorce and remarriage, then so be it. He was alleged to have said on one occasion:

Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple.C

No matter how unpalatable the Saying may be, how impractical or lacking in understanding, or how much it may sit against family values, we have to let the text speak. But how can we tell an authentic Saying of Jesus if one Gospel records the Saying in one form and another records it differently? How do historians determine authentic events from those written to make a theological point? Historiographers have to apply criteria.

Criteria of Historical Authenticity

The first criterion of historical authenticity is to regard the earliest form of a Saying of Jesus, or episode in the ministry, as more likely to be authentic than those that have undergone development. And if a Saying, or event, is recorded in more than one independent source, then it’s more likely to be authentic. Other criteria are centred on context. A Saying that appears to run contrary to what early Christians believed, or taught, is likely to have been said by the historical Jesus. A criterion of authenticity is also applied to those traditions that appear in sync with what was known to have taken place at the time, rather than if they fitted a cultural context of a later time. Summarising the rules of historical methodology, they are as follows:

Rules of Exegesis

Let the Saying or Event speak for itself, avoiding a tendency of reading into narratives something alien, or harmonising contradictions: allowance has to be made for hyperbole and idiom in Semitic and Greek.

The Earlier a Saying or Event the More Reliable it is likely to be: the historian is aware of bias and needs a rationale for selection.

The Criterion of Multiple Attestation: if more than one independent record—say Mark and John—preserves a Saying or event, that tradition is more likely to be authentic than if found in one source.

The Criterion of Dissimilarity: if the Saying is out of character with the teaching of the early Church (if an embarrassment) it may be authentic.

The Criterion of Contextual Credibility: if a Saying, or event, reflects a first-century Palestinian context, it is more likely to be authentic than if it fits a later period.¹⁷

To amplify this final criterion, any Saying that is ascribed by an evangelist to have been spoken by Jesus must be coherent with the cultural setting of first-century Palestine. Sayings of Jesus must also be consistent with other forms of tradition, i.e. with parables, aphorisms and the conduct of his life as a whole. To quote David Catchpole:

Any viable interpretation must pass the test of being comprehensible to Jesus and his companions within that framework.¹⁸

The Gospels as Sources

We now have to consider the nature of viable sources in a study of the life of Jesus. Naturally, we have the Gospels, but scholarship has shown that these documents are not wholly independent of one another. We must be cautious about dogmatic claims of historical objectivity with the Gospels.

Since the advent of biblical criticism and in light of what is known as The Synoptic Problem—where study has shown that the stories are artificially put together—we can no longer read the Gospels as biographies of the life of Jesus.¹⁹

It is widely agreed amongst most biblical scholars that Mark is likely to have been the first complete Gospel and that Matthew and Luke adopted the form and structure of Mark. They similarly present a chronology of the ministry, where Jesus preached in the villages of Galilee before arriving at Jerusalem in the last week of his life. The last week was significant for the Gospel tradition. I am persuaded that the original ending of Mark did not have the Shorter or Longer Ending amendments, as found in some Bibles, even though the closing scene appears incomplete.

Mark’s Gospel moves at quite a pace in recording event after event leading to a sequel with little teaching material. This is not the case with Matthew and Luke. In unique ways they amplified Mark’s narratives with copious teaching material, aphorisms and parables. It is conjectured that they used a source document that has, at the time of writing, never been found and to which scholars attach the title: The Q. Source (from the German Quelle, meaning unknown). I shall refer to this hypothetical source as the Gospel of Q.²⁰ The (Sayings) Gospel of Q was probably first compiled in Aramaic, though it is probable that Matthew and Luke drew upon a Greek version of the Q. Source.

Then we have the Gospel of John (Fourth Gospel), which reflects another unique tradition. Scholars view this Gospel as having drawn from distinct source material. It represents a second form of independent tradition.²¹

John addresses a later time of Christian history, in comparison with the Synoptics. I favour the latter over the former in cases where there appears to be a contradiction and go along with those who base their work on the priority of the Synoptics over John.²² There is another Gospel regarded by many as an early source: the Gospel of Thomas. This is controversial; not everyone is convinced that Thomas is as early as the canonical Gospels.

The Gospel of Thomas

There were a few Gospels that were never accepted into the canon, largely because they made bizarre claims about Jesus that belong more to legend than to history. The Church Fathers regarded as heresy those Gospels that were clearly Gnostic. The Gospel of Thomas is not Gnostic as such, but has features that were later developed in Gnosticism.

The reason why some critics regard Thomas as a Fifth Gospel is because it represents an independent tradition of Sayings of Jesus (Logia) without a chronological structure, or indeed any attention to the last week of Jesus’ life. Two fragments have been discovered in Egypt (both in Greek, dating between 130 and 250 CE), but a complete Coptic version is dated later. This later edition of Thomas is thought to have been translated from an earlier Greek, Syriac or Aramaic version, composed closer to the time of John, or, in the opinion of some critics, as early as 30–60 CE. Thomas has signs that suggest it first appeared in Syria.

Thomas is a collection of 114 Logia (Sayings), randomly listed, some of which are found in the canonical Gospels in similar if not identical forms.²³ Some Logia are exclusive, yet have a ring of authenticity when compared with similar Synoptic Sayings. To take one example, Jesus said:

Whoever is near me is near fire, and whoever is far from me is far from the Kingdom.D

Don’t get the idea that I came to bring peace on earth; I did not come to bring peace but a sword.E

There were three generations of Christians to emerge throughout the first century: a) Palestinian first-generation Jewish Christians, b) second-stage Judeo-Christian Hellenists, and c) third-stage Hellenistic Greek Christians. The New Testament is a collection of documents primarily of Hellenistic Christianity, with only passing references to Jewish Christianity. The early form of Q. tells us much about first-generation Jewish Christianity.

Sayings and Context

Sayings such as those cited above are unclear without the context in which they were delivered. This would be difficult for an author in compiling a document from detached sources, as can be seen with this aphorism:

Many of the first will be last, and of the last many will be first.F

The aphorism, along with its derivatives, is found twice in Mark (both are aimed at the disciples: a rebuke and a reversal of fortune for addressees), twice in Matthew (the reversal of fortune and close of the Parable of the Vineyard) and once in Luke (end of the parable of the Narrow Door). The evangelists used the aphorism quite freely, where the meaning seems to indicate the reversal of privilege and where the original context is possibly now lost. It is imperative to know the context if we are to bring out the full impact of a Saying of Jesus and his intention for using this aphorism. It is particularly important to acknowledge the fact that the Sayings of Jesus were delivered within the context of an oral community.

It is possible that Jesus used an aphorism on many occasions in different contexts. Conservative scholars take this option in harmonising conflicting details of tradition and Jesus may have changed his views over the period of his ministry as altering events reshaped his perspective. But there is no way of knowing this and the sources imply that his mission did not last long. There was no recording equipment in the first century; scholars are reliant on traditions from oral and written sources of events recalled by the first witnesses. If two persons cannot recall a witnessed event in the same way, is it likely that followers could remember precisely his actual words and the context of every Saying or parable? The answer is probably yes.

We cannot minimise the mental capacity of folk from an oral community. In our literary, technological world of today, we have countless means of storing and retrieving information; we rarely use our power of memory to the full. Scribes in biblical times could memorise the whole of the Law and the Prophets; they could quote at random from Hebrew scripture, just as Muslims quote from the Koran today. We ought not be surprised if first- century peasants had highly developed memories; accurate memorisation was essential for social and commercial survival in an oral community. We can have some confidence, then, in the Gospels preserving data which derived originally from oral sources.

This study will largely focus on the Sayings of Jesus, but it is important to recognise that the sources of the Gospels had gone through what is known as transmission. The pronouncements of Jesus, his parables and aphorisms, disputes and miracles, passed from oral to written forms, from Aramaic to Greek for a generation of telling and retelling. Pressing for certainty over what precisely Jesus had said and done is totally unrealistic. Scholars of the Gospels search for historical authenticity by use of form-critical and redaction-critical comparison, by isolating particular forms of tradition (i.e. Sayings, parables and miracles) and by contrasting renditions of tradition. Matthew and Luke redacted Mark and Q.; John went through at least two editions of redaction before reaching the Christian canon.

Karl Ludwig Schmidt illustrated that the order of stories in the Synoptics was the hand of each respective evangelist. The Gospel narratives cannot and ought not be harmonised. Once form criticism and redaction criticism are applied to the accounts, it is evident we cannot legitimately construct a chronological grid of events, times and places. John presents a ministry of baptism practised by Jesus at the beginning and never says when or if it ceased. And John has no recorded example of exorcism. The Synoptics do not recall a ministry of baptism and have Jesus practising exorcism from the beginning.²⁴ Our study of Jesus will be cautious about claiming to be a comprehensive video sequence of the ministry, but will make estimations from leading factors of source tradition.

If there is no way to resolve an inconsistency, or a contradiction, and if we cannot unearth the original context of a Saying, parable or aphorism, we must acknowledge that we just don’t know, rather than come up with spurious solutions.

Interpreting Language

When speaking about the cultural context, the historian must consider the nature of written language. Linguists take note of the literary conventions of the time. When analysing a Saying of antiquity, we take note of idiom, metaphor and hyperbole, otherwise there is a tendency to misinterpret a Saying and read it too literally. When interpreting poetry of the Hebrew Bible, it is imperative to recognise Hebrew parallelism, where a phrase is repeated in different terms for emphasis. Take one well-known example, the citation of the prophet Zechariah that Matthew clearly misinterpreted:

Zechariah:

Your king comes to you in all modesty mounted on a donkey and on a colt, the foal of a pack animal.

Matthew:

Go into the village in front of you, and immediately you will find a donkey tied, and a colt with her. Untie them and bring them to me. If anyone says anything to you, you shall say, ‘The Lord needs them’, and he will send them at once.G

The point of the celebratory song is that the king would arrive on a young donkey, instead of a warhorse; it was to illustrate that Jesus came in peace. The conqueror would not have mounted two animals, as Matthew falsely presumed: the repetition with different terms was for literary emphasis.²⁵

The meaning of a given Saying is lost if readers are unaware of the regular conventions of Semitic language. The common mode of Aramaic speaking in opposites is not the conventional understanding of contrasts in English. Jesus is reported to have said:

To those who have, more will be given, and from those who don’t have, even what they do have will be taken away!H

On the Sabbath day is it permitted to do good or to do evil, to save life or to destroy it?I

In the first Saying, you cannot take away something you don’t have. This aphorism, originally in Mark’s harvest parables, has been tagged onto the Parable of the Talents/Pounds as a paradoxical maximum in an attempt to make sense of the parable. Interpreted at face value, God’s action may be qualified as unjust or capricious. And the point of the second Saying is not to legitimate harm, or to kill on a Sabbath day, or on any other day, but to emphasise doing good on the Sabbath. Attention is drawn to the positive part of the Saying; the negative serves to contrast the positive and bring it into sharp relief.²⁶

Classification of Terms

When presenting a Saying of Jesus, I will intentionally capitalise Saying to emphasise that it may have originally stood as an independent tradition without a context or adjoining narrative. Scholars sometimes use the term ‘Logion’ for a Saying of Jesus and the term ‘pericope’ for a particular unit of tradition. I shall indicate the source of a Saying or a pericope in this way:

If quoting a Saying commonly found in Luke and Matthew, but not in Mark, which infers it comes from the Gospel of Q, I will often indicate it thus: Q.—Luke 10:13–15/Matthew 11:20–24.

If found in Matthew or Luke only, the reference will be prefixed and shown as: M.—Matthew 21:31–32, or L.—Luke 15:1, respectively.

The Revised Standard Version is mainly used, but I shall also use The Five Gospels (FG) when quoting a Saying of Jesus.²⁷ This version translates the Greek directly to bring out the impact of the Saying.

Gospel references are footnotes, whilst notes and authors are endnotes, so as not to clutter the page and lose the argument, and I will occasionally italicise or embolden the text for emphasis: where it is a biblical reference, it is a subjective judgement—the New Testament has no textual emphases. With examples of tradition (or pericopes), which a scholar might consider were amendments by an evangelist, the passage is emphasised in regular against grey text.

When speaking of the author of a particular Gospel, I shall refer to him (all were likely to have been men) as the ‘evangelist’ and will occasionally use the terms ‘author’ and ‘editor’, for literary style, depending upon context. Given that each completed Gospel has been redacted, the term ‘redactor’ will sometimes be used. I consider the evangelist, rather than the redactor, to be the author of each Gospel, even though the evidence suggests that all four evangelists had redacted their source material to some degree.

Notes on the Introduction

Schweitzer (1906): These works ranged from Hermann Reimarus (The Aims of Jesus and his Disciples) to Johannes Weiss (The Preaching of Jesus Concerning the Kingdom of God), and include the seminal books of David Friedrich Strauss (Life of Jesus), Bruno Baur (Criticism of the History of Revelation), Ernest Renan (Life of Jesus) and William Wrede (Sketch of the Life of Jesus). Schweitzer’s work followed that of Johannes Weiss: Weiss (1892/1971).

Schweitzer (1906: 339).

Bauer (1841/1877) rejected the historicity of Jesus: ‘Everything that is known of Jesus belongs to the world of imagination.’

English philosopher, Bertrand Russell, in his 1972 lecture said: ‘Historically it is quite doubtful whether Christ ever existed at all, and if he did we do not know anything about him.’: (Russell 2004). See also Strauss (1913).

Bultmann observed that the New Testament was not the story of Jesus but a record of early Christian belief. Lüdemann (2002) concluded that Paul rather than Jesus was the founder of Christianity.

Beilby and Eddy (2010).

See Vermes (1983), Sanders (1995), Catchpole (2006) and Meier (1991–2009).

Paul, and not Jesus, was the founder of Christianity? Those who agree include Rudolf Bultmann (1969), Adolf Harnak (1902) and Gerd Lüdemann (2002). In arriving at final decisions, we cannot ignore the eclecticism of diaspora Judaism or the influence of the Greek-speaking Hellenists, from whom Paul, himself a Greek-speaking Hellenist, had probably first heard of Jesus of Nazareth: see Aslan (Aslan 2013: 279) and Bock (2010).

German scholars (Hans Conzelmann and Gerd Lüdemann) took a sceptical position of the Gospel narratives. This compares with French (Francis Durrwell and Xavier Leon- Dufour) and British (James D.G. Dunn and N.T. Wright) scholars who were moderate conservative. Radical scholars amongst British theologians include Michael Goulder and Duncan Derrett. North America took opposing positions, from Raymond Brown and Reginald Fuller to John Dominic Crossan and Marcus Borg. For the controversial areas of the resurrection, there is a 3:1 ratio of American and European authors who hold a moderate conservative to highly critical stance: Habermas (2005); Price (2010).

Crossan (1994).

C.H. Dodd viewed Jesus’ teaching as realised eschatology. See also Borg (1991, 1995).

Borg (1995).

Aslan (2013).

Vermes (1983), Meier (1991–2009), Sanders (1995), Ehrman (2001), Martin (2012) and Catchpole (2006).

Ehrman (2003: 221–223).

For a brief non-technical summary, see Ehrman (2003; 2011).

This is sometimes referred to as the ‘Criterion of Social-historical Context’, which means that historians attempt to avoid anachronism. To give three examples: Jesus did not make the kind of statements like ‘I am’, as found in John, since no pious Jew at the time would apply the divine name to himself; Jesus would not have spoken of ‘the Church’ during his lifetime when no such organisation existed; and the play on words when Jesus addresses Nicodemus about being ‘born again’, and ‘from above’, only makes sense in Greek, not in Aramaic, the language of Jesus: Martin (2012: Ch. 13).

The full quote reads: ‘Reluctance to explore and be guided by tradition history cannot be defended, still less advocated. Nor can inattention to the cardinal principle that the meaning of what might be attributed to Jesus would need to make sense to him as the speaker and to his disciples as hearers… Any viable interpretation must pass the test of being comprehensible to Jesus and his companions within that framework. This is absolutely crucial’: Catchpole (2006: 279, 292).

William Wrede became famous for his theory of the Messianic Secret in the Gospel of Mark. He suggested that this was a literary device by which early Christians could explain away the absence of any clear claim of Jesus to be the Messiah. According to Wrede, the evangelist’s solution implied that Jesus kept his messianic identity a secret, revealed only to his close supporters later in the ministry: Wrede (1901/1971).

The verbal similarities of Sayings in Matthew and Luke suggest that they each used a Greek translation of the Q. Source from an Aramaic original. If they utilised separately an Aramaic version, the verbal similarities would not be as common as are found in both Gospels. Some scholars believe the Greek text of Q. dates from around the Jewish War (Q.—Luke 13:34–35). When the Christian Canon was beginning to form, scribes did not make new copies of the Q. Source, but preferred instead the narrative Gospels of Matthew and Luke that contained these Sayings. The Sayings collections of Thomas and Q. were judged to be of less importance to copy than complete accounts of Jesus’ ministry. The Apostles Creed, formulated in Rome in the second century, contained baptismal confession but bypassed any sayings of Jesus.

A major study of the historical tradition of the Fourth Gospel is C.H. Dodd (1963).

This decision is made in spite of the fact that John’s source represented an earliest form of Aramaic-speaking Jewish Christianity (Semitic idioms, data on topography and history on the political situation of Palestinian Judaism in Judea before the Jewish War): Dodd (1963: 423–432); Sanders (1995: 73). See Robinson (1968).

In 1945, a Bedouin named Muhammad Ali unearthed a Coptic version of the Gospel of Thomas in Nag Hammadi, Egypt. He was digging for fertiliser and lifted a boulder, under which there was a large jar containing a part of a codex. It has been speculated that a monk had hid it during the late fourth century, when the Christian aristocracy outlawed the reading of heretical literature in Church. Unlike the Gospel of Peter, and fragments later identified as a Greek papyrus of Thomas discovered at Oxyrhynchus in Egypt, this version was completely preserved and has been dated between 130 and 250 CE. It is unclear who Didymus Judas Thomas was, as Didymus and Thomas both mean ‘twin’ (the first is Greek, the second Semitic). The author was not one of the twelve mentioned in Mark 6:3. Many scholars regard it as a Fifth Gospel, in spite of its proto-Gnostic tendencies, for two reasons: one because it was often cited by the early Church Fathers, and two because some redacted parts of this Coptic version may be based upon an early Greek original (possibly as early as 30–60 CE). It is of a different genre than other Gnostic works of the second century and it is possible that this work represents a splinter movement from ‘proto-orthodox’ Christianity: Robinson (1988).

Meier (1994 Vol. 2:125).

The entry of Jesus into Jerusalem is recorded in Mark 11:1–11. The evangelist correctly interprets the prophecy as referring to a colt (the foal of a donkey), upon which no one had ridden, but he did not say that it was the fulfilment of Zachariah 9:9, as Matthew had done. Mark interpreted the event as a prediction of Psalm 118:25–26. But Matthew specifically said that the disciples fetched two animals for Jesus to ride: a donkey and her foal. Quite how Jesus straddled two beasts is hard to imagine.

Vermes (2004).

Funk and Hoover and the Jesus Seminar (1997).

---

B Mark 5:21–43/Matthew 9:18–25

C Q.—Luke 14:26/Matthew 10:37 KJB

D Thomas 82

E Matthew 10:34 FG

F Mark 10:31/Matthew 19:30; Mark 10:44; Matthew 20:16; Luke 13:30 FG

G Zechariah 9:9/Matthew 21:1–5 FG

H Mark 4:25 FG; Matthew 25:29/Luke 19:26; Matthew 13:12; Thomas 41

I Mark 3:4 FG/Luke 6:9/Matthew 12:12

Political- Sectarian Context Palestine

Introduction

Historians of the historical Jesus must address the dilemma of there being too little independent testimony to his life in secular sources compared with too much material in the canonical Gospels. ¹ This is surprising, given that Jesus gave rise to a major world faith. A reference to Jesus is found in the writings of Josephus, in the Talmud; and the Roman historians Tacitus, Suetonius and Pliny the Younger refer to Christ. Philo of Alexandria knew of Pontius Pilate but made no mention of Jesus of Nazareth, or of Christ. Neither did Justus of Tiberias, who, like Josephus, wrote of the first Jewish War, know of Jesus of Nazareth. We must therefore proceed with caution. ²

We begin by looking at context, because context is everything. Examining the Gospel narratives doesn’t reveal everything that can be known of Jesus of Nazareth—he was not born in a vacuum. All our religious and social assumptions of cultural upbringing have to be put aside if we are to avoid anachronism and reading into the life of Jesus presuppositions that do not belong to his world. A large amount of information about the political and cultural context of Jewish life in Palestine during the first century has been discovered in recent times. This is covered in this and the next chapter.

We begin with the secular records of the historical Jesus, and then look at the spread of Greek culture and Roman governance of Palestine during the early first century. We consider the Jewish sects in Jesus’ day, and the results of the War for Judaism and the Christian Church.

Historical Sources

Jewish Records: Flavius Josephus

The most significant non-biblical source of Jewish history during the first century is the work of Flavius Josephus.³ Josephus was born in Jerusalem and became a general of Galilean opposition to Rome in the Jewish War. Realising that nothing could withstand the force of Rome, he surrendered his beleaguered army to save Tiberias. As an educated diplomat, he made a prudent decision and predicted publicly that Vespasian would become the Emperor. When this happened on Jewish soil on 21 December 69 CE, he was called to Rome to take up office and left his son Titus to continue a campaign to resolve ‘the Jewish problem’. Vespasian recalled the forecast after the War and sent for Josephus to serve under the Flavian Dynasty.

From Rome he wrote his major works, in which he argued that Roman jurisdiction was a positive influence, even for his own people: he said that Rome had a heavenly mandate. An indication of ‘God’s favour returning to Rome’, for him, was the security of the Empire after Nero’s suicide. Peace of the Pax Romana was not a regular experience through much of the first century, but when Pilate became the governor of Judea, it was a relatively settled period in Galilee and Judea.⁴

Josephus (37–100 CE) wrote two classic histories of the Jews in defence of Judaism: The Jewish War, published between 70 and 79 CE; and Antiquities of the Jews, completed in the thirteenth year of Emperor Domitian, between 93 and 94 CE. Although a Jewish Pharisee, having Aramaic and Hebrew as his native tongues, he wrote his works in Hellenistic Greek, a literary form of Koine. Josephus is the most important chronicler of Jewish affairs, but his records appear exaggerated in places and are known to contain errors.

Jewish Records: The Talmud

The Talmud is a Jewish document of two components: the Mishnah (Oral Law of Judaism, 200 CE) and the Gemara (Exposition, 500 CE). Though late, there are references in these works that date back to the Tinnaitic period (70–200 CE).

Roman Records: Tacitus, Suetonius, Pliny the Younger

Three Roman chroniclers refer to Christ, or to Christian practice: Tacitus, Suetonius and Pliny. Tacitus (56–117 CE) was a senator and chronicler of Emperors Tiberius, Claudius and Nero (Annals and Histories). He wrote of Pontius Pilatus executing Christus (founder of the Christians) in the reign of Tiberius and of Nero accusing Christians for the fire that burnt Rome in 64. Suetonius (69–122 CE) wrote biographies of twelve successive rulers, from Julius Caesar to Domitian. A lawyer and magistrate named Pliny the Younger (61–112 CE) compiled hundreds of letters that contain valuable source material.

Non-Christian Records of Jesus/Christ

Let us first clear up a misconception by answering the question: Did Jesus of Nazareth actually