Jesus of Nazareth

               
                                                                 Notes

All date references are in the “Current Era” and are written without the customary “CE” except for dates before the Current Era, which are written as “BCE.” For example Jesus’ birth date is written as ‘3' indicating the third year of the first century. “A.D.” and “B.C.” will only be used if part of quoted material.  Although there was no such thing as a “Christian” until the Council of Nicea in 325, this essay will use “Christian” instead of the awkward and more correct term, “proto-Christian.” Please note, “The first recorded use of the word ‘Christians’ to describe Jesus’ followers comes not from Jerusalem but from Antioch in Syria (Acts 11:26).”

       
                                                              Introduction

Jesus of Nazareth is certainly one of the best-known, beloved, and revered figures in history.  There are over two billion Christians in the world today who worship Jesus as God and their personal savior.  He is also held in high regard by non-Christians.  For example, he is considered one of the great prophets by Muslims and is mentioned in the Qur’an twenty-five times.  Jews consider Jesus a great teacher and moral leader, but not divine. Albert Einstein was an admirer and professed, “I am a Jew, but I am enthralled by the luminous figure of the Nazarene . . . No one can read the Gospels without feeling the actual presence of Jesus.”  On the other hand, scholars recognize two Jesuses: the Jesus of the gospels and the historical Jesus.  Reza Aslan, religious scholar and author of the best-selling book,  Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth (2013) makes the point that history is concerned with what is likely, while faith deals with what is possible.  Aslan’s idea is useful when comparing the Jesus of the gospels to the historical Jesus, remembering that historians cannot attest to the veracity of any given miracle; they can only document how the people of the time reacted to them.

                                                                Sources

Secular sources of information about the historical Jesus are scant and are limited primarily to three persons: Tacitus (56 - 117),  a Roman senator and a historian,  Flavius Josephus (37 -100), a first-century Romano-Jewish scholar and historian, and Pliny the Younger (62 - 113), a Roman governor.  Although all three were born after the death of Jesus in 36, they lived relatively close to Jesus’ lifetime.  Other sources include the Hebrew Bible (the Old Testament), the New Testament, the oral tradition, and the writings of the early Church fathers such as Tertullian (160 – 230), Origen (185 -254), and Eusebius (265 -340).  Also, much can be learned about the times Jesus lived from the over fifty non-canonical texts that were rejected by the church fathers.  Edward Gibbon’s monumental six-volume work The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776) is another rich source of information about the period when Jesus lived.  Biblical scholars have learned three (and only three) facts about Jesus from the historians of his time: He was Jewish, he led a movement against the Roman state, and he was executed by the Romans for treason.  However, from these three facts and the backdrop of the history of Palestine it is possible to arrive at what is the most-likely truth about the historical figure,  Jesus of Nazareth which differs from the Jesus depicted in the modern versions of the New Testament.

                                        First Century Palestine (The Holy Land)

Palestine in the first century was dominated by conflict between the Jewish people and the Roman state, an extremely low level of literacy and education, and a wide gulf between the wealthy and the poor.  Jews incurred the hostility of their pagan neighbors and government officials after they “invented” monotheism and their subsequent refusal to respect the old gods still favored by the majority.  They were resented for their exclusivity and their claim that they were God’s “chosen people.”  The Hebrew Bible is in part the history of the repression of Jews by the Egyptians, Assyrians, Babylonians, and the Romans.  Out of these experiences came the apocalyptic tradition, the belief that as God’s favored people he was going to send a messiah to drive the Romans out of Jerusalem and establish the Kingdom of God on earth with the messiah serving as king.

The low literacy rate in Palestine is well known to historians. Education during first-century Palestine was the exclusive privilege of the wealthiest citizens and was concentrated in the cities where less than 10% of the population could write by the low standard of being able to copy the letters.  The literacy rate was even lower in rural areas such Galilee.  Biblical scholar and student of antiquity, Bart Ehrman described the disciples as “rural peasants from the backwaters of Galilee” and in (Acts 4:13) Peter and John are both described as “unlearned and ignorant men.” There is only one passage in the New Testament indicating that Jesus knew how to write (John 8:3-9), and there is not any record of anything he wrote.  The disciples spoke Aramaic whereas the earliest known New Testament was written in Greek, a language spoken only by the educated classes of Palestine.   Also, the gulf between the rich and poor was extremely wide in Palestine at this time.  The poor, mostly lived in rural areas and depending on farming for a living.  They were heavily taxed both by the Roman state and the by the high priest of the Temple who lived in luxury causing much resentment.  In short, revolution was in the air that Jesus was breathing.

At the same time as Jesus and his disciples were traveling throughout the rural areas of Palestine preaching his message of the coming of the Kingdom of God, there were scores of other evangelists, self-proclaimed messiahs, and miracle-workers performing healings, exorcisms, and other magical acts in Palestine.  This was in spite of the fact that The Law of Moses prohibited “magic-working” and was punishable by death in accordance with (Deuteronomy 18:10-11) calling for anyone who engages in “divination, or is a witch, an enchanter, or a sorcerer” to be cast out. In the words of words of Reza Aslan, “Again Jesus was not the only miracle worker trolling through Palestine healing the sick and casting out demons.  This was a world steeped in magic and Jesus was just one of an untold number of diviners and dream interpreters, magicians and medicine men who wandered Judea and Galilee.”  However, it was Jesus who out of all of the other itinerant preachers who was unique because he performed his service free while all the others charged a fee.

                                                          The Oral Tradition

After the death of Jesus in (approximately) 36, the record of Jesus’ life and death was entirely oral and is referred to as the “oral tradition” or as “Q,” a hypothetical writing.  Saul of Tarsus (the Apostle Paul) wrote his  first epistle, 1 Thessalonians, in 48. The four gospels are thought to have been written in the following years:  Mark in 70, Matthew and Luke from 90 to 100, and John from 100 to 120.  These dates represent a consensus of scholars and historians and must be considered approximate, but the important fact to keep in mind is that all the books of the New Testament were written long after the death of Jesus by anonymous authors who attributed their work to someone else.  For example the titles of all four gospels are The Gospel According to followed by the names Mark, Matthew, Luke, or John. It may come as a surprise to many Christians to learn that the gospels are based entirely on the oral tradition that developed over a period of almost forty years after the death of Christ.  What about the disciples and the apostles (Jesus’ closest associates)?  Didn’t they leave a record of their experiences with Jesus?  The answer is a resounding, ‘No,” and the reason is very simple; they were illiterate (could not read or write).

                                                     Importance of Language

Language and translations from one to another are a major consideration for biblical scholars.  It is very important to keep in mind the original language of any document and the chain of translations leading to any current version.  The original Old Testament, of course,  was written in Hebrew and the New Testament in Greek, whereas Jesus and the disciples spoke Aramaic.  St. Jerome was commissioned by Pope Damasus in 382 to translate the Greek New Testament into Latin resulting in the Latin Vulgate Bible after three years of effort.  The importance of translation can be realized by a simple example.  It is traditional to say that Jesus was a carpenter based on (Matthew 13:55) and (Mark 6:3) that indicate that his “adoptive” father Joseph was a carpenter. In Jesus’ time most men followed their father’s occupation.  Their conclusion rests on the definition of the word, Tekton, an ancient Greek noun, and a common term for an artisan/craftsman, and in particular a carpenter, wood-worker, or builder.  It is highly unlikely that Jesus would have been a carpenter in Nazareth for the simple reason that Nazareth was a small village without any trees or wood and where most houses (huts) were made of mud or stone.  The word Tekton also meant a common manual laborer or even “uneducated or illiterate.”  Nazareth was a small village of less than one-hundred very poor families who could not afford expensive wood.  Historically, Jesus was most likely a laborer, but to the faithful he was a carpenter.  This is just one of many examples where it is critical to understand the history of the time Jesus lived and the New Testament was first written.   

                                                  The date and birthplace of Jesus

December 25th has long been the unquestioned and accepted birth date of Jesus in Bethlehem.  It has become a tradition without any scriptural basis. Celebrations of Jesus’ birthday are not mentioned in the Gospels or Acts; the date is not given, not even the time of year.  However, the historical facts strongly suggest that the “Christmas Story” although admittedly charming is not true.  First, only Matthew and Luke claimed Jesus was born in Bethlehem.  Second, in the first century people did not have last names and were referred to as being 'of' their birthplace or place of residence.  Thus, “Jesus of Nazareth” strongly suggests that he was born in Nazareth.  Third, early Christians celebrated the day that they were baptized as their birthday and Jesus was thought to have been baptized on January 6th.  Fourth, December temperatures in Bethlehem make the idea of shepherds tending their flocks in the middle of the harsh Galilee winter ludicrous.  Fifth, and perhaps most important, it was not until the fourth century that December 25th was observed as Jesus’ birthday at the instigation of the emperor Constantine, who prior to endorsing Christianity was a Sol Invictus (Sun God) worshiper.  Sol’s birthday had always been observed on December 25th which falls close to the winter solstice around December 22th.  Christians borrowed the date December 25th from the pagan religion Sol Invictus.  Borrowing from the pagans was not an  unusual practice as was noted by Oxford scholar and historian, Charles Freeman:  “Christianity, through its initiation rites (baptism), communal meals and the promise of a blessed afterlife, had much in common with these cults, not least in the idea that a priestly elite had privileged access to the cult’s secrets and the absolute right to interpret them for others.”

According to (Mark 1:9) Jesus was born in Nazareth as his name would suggest. Why then did  Matthew insist that Jesus was born in Bethlehem? The reason; Matthew of all the gospel writers was intent on demonstrating Jesus fulfilling Old Testament prophecies such as the virgin birth at Bethlehem, Jesus’s sojourn in Egypt, and his death and resurrection.  Christian apologists have a long history of mining the Old Testament for prophecies and then showing Jesus fulfilling them in the New Testament. In (Matthew 2:1) he writes, “After Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea, during the time of King Herod, Magi from the east came to Jerusalem.”  In this verse Matthew is attempting to fulfill the prophecies of Daniel and Isaiah predicting that a messiah will be sent by God in accordance with Jewish apocalyptic tradition.  For Jesus to be the messiah, he would have to be born in the bloodline of  David as the son of Joseph in Bethlehem. It should be mentioned that even if the New Testament confirmed some of the Old Testament Prophecies, it would hardly be probative, since the authors of the New Testament were very familiar with the Old Testament at the time they were writing.  It is similar to predicting the score of a baseball game after the game was completed.

                                                             The Messiah

Here again the importance of language and translation become paramount. "Messiah" is a Hebrew word meaning the “anointed one” and when translated to Greek becomes “Christ.”  The title refers to the practice of pouring or smearing oil on someone charged with divine office such as king, like Saul, David, or Solomon.  The primary role of the messiah, popularly believed to be a descendant of King David, was to rebuild David’s kingdom and reestablish the nation of Israel.  To call oneself the messiah was tantamount to declaring war on Rome. There were scores of messiahs in Galilee (before and after Jesus) in the first century and they were all executed for treason by the Romans.  Hezekiah and Judas the Galilean were only two of twelve such ‘failed’ messiahs mentioned in the Bible.  In the Jewish tradition a dead messiah was no longer a messiah, but simply an executed criminal.  The most important historical fact about the messiah is the fact that he was a mortal man sent by God to liberate Israel and establish the Kingdom of God on earth and not a divine person. It is important to remember that Jesus never said publicly that he was the future King of the Jews.  According to the Apocryphal Gospel of Judas it fell to the apocalyptic Judas to reveal what had been private (the fact that Jesus was the messiah) to the Jewish authorities who in turn notified the Romans who then arrested Jesus.  There was no kiss on the cheek as depicted in (Mark 14:45).  According to Mark, Judas kissed Jesus in order to identify him to the Roman and Church authorities, an idea that lacks credulity given the fact that Jesus was well-known to the Temple priests and had no need for him to be identified.  What was not publicly known, but known only to his disciples, was the fact that he claimed to be the messiah.  And, this was the secret that Judas betrayed to the Romans that led to his arrest for treason and crucifixion.

                                                             The Virgin Mary

Matthew again uses a mistranslation in (Isaiah 7:14), “Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel [God is with us]” to establish the Christian idea that Mary, the mother of Jesus, was a virgin. The original Hebrew version of (Isaiah 7:14) used the word “alma” meaning maiden or young unmarried woman.  When translated to the Greek, Matthew changed “alma” to “parthenos” meaning virgin. Bible scholar Reza Aslan notes that, “. . . outside of Matthew and Luke’s infancy narratives, the virgin birth is never even hinted at by anyone else in the New Testament: not by evangelist John the Baptist, who presents Jesus as an otherworldly spirit without earthly origins, nor by Paul, who thinks Jesus literally God incarnate.” The lack of definitive confirmation of Jesus’ virgin birth in all four gospels has even led to speculation that the story was invented to conceal the embarrassing truth that Jesus was born out of wedlock.  Remember, in Mary’s time unwed pregnant women were stoned to death, thus providing ample incentive for the teenager Mary to concoct a story to escape her predicament.

                                                          The nature of Christ

After Constantine enacted The Edict of Milan in February 313, (a declaration of tolerance for all cults, including Christianity), church fathers freed of persecution turned their attention to defining Christian orthodoxy (“right thinking”).  Philip Jenkins, Cambridge scholar and author, in his 2010 book,  Jesus Wars: How Four Patriarchs, Three Queens, and Two Emperors Decided What Christians Would Believe for the Next 1,500,  writes “What ultimately became accepted as Christian orthodoxy was hammered out in a process that was painfully slow, gradual, and often bloody.”  “Painfully slow,” is a bit of an understatement given that it took two-hundred and forty years after The Edict of Milan to finalize Christian doctrine at the Council of Constantinople in 553.  And it was “often bloody” as “Christian on Christian” violence was commonplace rivaling if not exceeding the torture and murder of early Christians by Roman authorities.  The issue split the Church into two factions over the nature of Jesus.  The Monophysites (the Greens) argued that Christ had one nature (divine) while the Chalcedons (the Blues) argued he had two natures (divine and human).  The Greens were led by Arius (250 - 336) and the Blues were led by Athanasius of Alexandria (296 - 373), a renowned Christian theologian and Church Father.

It would be a mistake to think that the “Greens” and “Blues” were a monolithic body of belief; they were in fact rifled with strife and contention.  For example, the Monophysites had to be careful not to be thought as totally denying the human aspect of Jesus necessary for him to suffer and die on the cross for the sins of mankind.  The margin of error was razor-thin and one could easily be declared a heretic (“wrong thinking”) and then suffer everything from excommunication, exile, imprisonment, torture, or even a painful death of being burned alive.  The Chalcedons faced an equally daunting task of finding the “sweet” spot between Jesus’s divinity and humanity with the danger of slipping too far in one direction or the other and then labeled a heretic.  The fascinating story of the various factions of early Christianity is well beyond the scope of this essay.  However, interested readers should consider the following three excellent books on the subject: The Closing of the Western Mind (Charles Freedom),  Jesus Wars (Philip Jenkins), and When Jesus Became God (Richard E. Rubenstein).

Modern readers, both  religious and non-religious find it very difficult to understand why (what appears to be a trivial and rather unimportant issue), would take over two-hundred years to find a compromise.  The answer is a simple one.  All the people living in the first-century Roman state including, Pagans, Jews, and Christians treated religion dead-seriously, and attributed any and all misfortunes a result of angering or disappointing one or more of the gods.  For example, if they experienced crop failures due to a drought, it was standard practice to seek out an individual or group of people whose behavior angered the gods and then punish them in the most brutal way in hopes of appeasing the gods.  To the people of the first century, embracing the “right” religions and following their dictates was a matter of utmost importance.

                                                             Son of God

In the face of so many people making claims about “Who Jesus was,” it is informative to read (Matthew 16:15) where Jesus asks his disciples, “Who do you say I am?” They answered, “Some say John the Baptist; and others, Elijah; but still others, Jeremiah, or one of the prophets.”  Jesus responded, “But who do you say that I am?” Simon Peter answered, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”  Remember “Christ” is the Greek word for messiah and there is not any doubt that all of the disciples believed that Jesus was the Messiah.  However, Jesus did not openly refer to himself as the Messiah, and for good reason.  Calling yourself king was considered treason against the Roman state and was a capital offense.  Jesus and his disciples were all quite aware of the fate of scores of previous failed messiahs who were crucified at the hand of the Roman authorities.   Also, Jesus did not call himself ‘Son of God,’ another title that others used to describe him. The title ‘Son of God’ did not imply a family connection to God, but was simply a traditional title of  Israel’s kings.

                                                             Son of Man

According to Reza Aslan, “The phrase ‘the Son of Man’ (ho huios tou anthropou in Greek) appears some eighty times in the New Testament, and only once in a positively operatic passage from the book of Acts, does it occur on the lips of anyone other than Jesus.” It comes in (Acts 7:56) concerning Stephens, the first Christian martyr, as he was stoned to death for proclaiming Jesus as the promised messiah. The title Son of Man simply meant a human being.  (John 18:36) is the only passage in the gospels that has Jesus making claims of a future celestial kingdom. To evolve from a earthly kingdom to a heavenly kingdom, John mistranslates the Greek phrase, “ouk estin ek tou kosmou” which is better translated as “not part of this order/system.”  Keep in mind that by the time the Gospel of John was written (at least sixty years after the death of Christ) it was obvious that the promise that Jesus made in (Mark 9:1), that some of the disciples would not “taste death” before they would see the “Kingdom of God come with power” would not happen.

                                         Saul of Tarsus: The Father of Christianity

After Jesus died in 36,  leadership of the his movement fell to James (his brother), John, and Peter who became the spokesman for the movement.  The question of how Saul of Tarsus (the Apostle Paul) was able to take control of Jesus’s movement is one of history’s most fascinating stories.  Paul had never met Jesus and claimed that he never met with any of the disciples in Jerusalem before his conversion, because he wanted people to believe that his knowledge about Jesus was obtained solely and directly from Jesus in the form of a vision. According to Charles Freeman, in his book, The Closing Of The Western Mind, “It has to always be remembered that Paul is the only major Christian theologian never to have read the Gospels . . .” (Paul died in 67 before any of the gospels were written.)  The book of Acts records Paul on his way from Jerusalem to Damascus when his journey was interrupted by a blinding light followed by the divine voice of Jesus whereby Saul of Tarsus was converted to Christianity and then became the self-designated Apostle Paul. Paul calls himself an apostle over 13 times in the New Testament and starts a majority of his epistles off with this title. Nowhere in scripture does any other apostle refer to him as an apostle.

Prior to Paul, the Jewish-Christian Ebionites, led by James, Peter, and John regarded Jesus as the Messiah and rejected his divinity and insisted that all converts had to follow Jewish law and all its rites including circumcision.  This was totally consistent with Jesus’s teaching, for in  (Matthew 15:24) he is quoted saying “I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel.”  And in (Matthew 5:17), he said, “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.”  After the fall of Jerusalem in 70, the Jews had to flee in what became known as the Diaspora resulting in a split between the “Hebrew” movement led by James, and the “Hellenist” group led by Paul.  Prior to Paul, the movement strictly preached to the Jews.

Both the “Hebrew” group and the “Hellenist” group were not having much success in attracting Jewish converts for a number of reasons.  First, the Jews rejected the story of Jesus’ divinity and considered the thought of  God having a son a gross blasphemy.  Second, in their eyes a true messiah could not die as a crucified criminal; to the Jews, Jesus was a simply a prophet and teacher sent to reform the Temple.  Paul quickly realized that the Jews were not receptive to the his message and the gentiles (Pagans) were not receptive to the Hebrew message requiring them to convert first to Judaism before being allowed to become a Christian. Not surprisingly, the Hebrew circumcision requirement was unappealing to adult males. 

The scholar and best-selling author Reza Aslan asked the following question, “How could a failed messiah who died a shameful death as a state criminal be transformed, in the span of a few years, into the creator of the heavens and earth: God incarnate?” The answer is best understood within the context of Paul’s biography.  He was a Roman citizen, a Pharisee Jew,  a tent-maker and a traveling salesman. He was also a bachelor just like Jesus, Augustine, and Jerome.  As he traveled throughout the Roman empire preaching the teachings of Jesus to the pagans, he quickly realized that they were not willing to give up the protections and miracles of their numerous gods in favor of a crucified state criminal.  Paul countered this resistance with the miracle of Jesus’ resurrection and the simple message that faith in the resurrection alone provides the gift of salvation and eternal life.  James and Peter were rural and uneducated where as Paul was urban, educated, and spoke Greek.  In Reza Aslan’s words, “As these extraordinary men and women, many of the immersed in Greek philosophy and Hellenistic thought, began to reinterpret Jesus’ message so as to make it more palatable both to their fellow Greek-speaking Jews and to their gentile neighbors in the Diaspora, they gradually transformed Jesus from a revolutionary zealot to a Romanticized demigod, from a man who tried and failed to free the Jews from Roman oppression to a celestial being wholly uninterested in any earthly matter.”

Paul moved quickly to divorce his ministry away from all things Jewish.  He even went so far as to say that anyone circumcised was going to hell, and wrote in (Galatians 5:2) “Behold I, Paul, say to you that if you receive circumcision, Christ will be of no benefit to you.”  Charles Freeman in his brilliant 2002 book, The Closing Of The Western Mind noted that Tertullian (160 - 240) the early Church Father and theologian, and the first Christian theologian to write in Latin, backed Paul’s views by insisting that “God had shown that circumcision was unnecessary by creating an ‘intact’ Adam.”  Tertullian  went on to write, “And so truly in Christ are all things recalled to their beginning, so that faith has turned away from circumcision back to the integrity of the flesh as it was in the beginning.” This was just one more step in splitting Christianity from Judaism as Paul gave up on converting Jews and actively recruited converts from the ranks of the pagans (a much larger population).  Paul also separated his message from the Jewish message of James and abandoned the requirement to observe Jewish law and absolved the Romans of any blame for Jesus’s death placing the responsibility totally on the Jews taking advantage of their unpopularity.

                                                          The Burial of Jesus

According to New Testament scripture Pontius Pilate allowed the body of Jesus to be removed from the cross and released to the wealthy Joseph of Arimathea where he was buried in his personal private tomb. If true, this would have been a most extraordinary and unlikely event given the Roman history of execution by crucifixion.  Crucifixion was used almost exclusively for those convicted of the crime of treason against the Roman state.  It was intended to be the most severe and painful punishment with the objective of discouraging other people from threatening the absolute authority of the state.  Part of the punishment was to leave the bodies of the victims on the cross for three days after death to be ravaged by the birds and mongrel dogs, and then thrown in a common pit and covered with dirt.  Pontius Pilate hated the Jews and executed so many thousands of Jews without a trial that the people of Jerusalem lodged a formal complaint with the Roman emperor. In the words of Reza Aslan, “. . . Pilate was best known for his extreme depravity, his total disregard for Jewish law and tradition, and his barely concealed aversion to the Jewish nation as a whole.” In light of what is known of Pilate and the Roman practice of execution by crucifixion, it is preposterous to think that Jesus would have been afforded any special treatment or consideration.  All the historical evidence suggests that Jesus was buried in a common grave along all the other crucified victims and was never allowed a proper burial. 

                                                  The Resurrection of Christ

Since the centerpiece of Pauline Christianity is the resurrection of Christ from the grave three days after his death, it is instructive to examine the Bible for scriptural confirmation that the resurrection actually happened.  Concerning the Old Testament Reza Aslan writes, “Despite two millennia of Christian Apologetics, the fact is that belief in a dying and rising messiah simply did not exist in Judaism.  In the entirety of the Hebrew Bible there is not a single passage of scripture or prophecy about the promised messiah that even hints of his ignominious death, let alone his bodily resurrection.” Furthermore not one historian of the time ever mentioned the resurrection of Christ in any of their writings. According to religious studies scholar Reza Aslan, “. . . the fact remains that the resurrection is not a historical event.” In fact the British biblical scholar Hugh J. Schonfield in his 1965 book The Passover Plot makes a compelling argument the crucifixion was staged and Jesus did not even actually die on the cross.  According to Freeman, the Church Father Origen (185 - 254) rejected the idea that there would be a bodily resurrection and argued that “God’s committing a soul to hell would be an admission that he been thwarted by a mere human being, something inconceivable if God was truly all powerful.”

In light of the above it is necessary to turn to the New Testament for a possible account of the resurrection of Jesus, either in the four Gospels or in Paul’s writings. The fact of the matter is the Gospels do not record any witnesses to the actual resurrection, and biblical scholars agree that no one witnessed the resurrection of Jesus.  Therefore the entire resurrection story rests solely on the “empty tomb” and each Gospel tells a different story about it.  In (Matthew 28) Mary Magdalene and the other Mary (thought to be Jesus’ mother) came to see the grave and found that an earthquake had moved the stone and an  angel sitting on it told them that Jesus had risen.  In the Gospel of Mark (Chapter 16) it was “Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James, and Salome” who found the stone already moved and a young man sitting inside told them that Jesus had arisen.  According to (Luke 24) it was Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and some other women who found the stone moved. They saw two men standing there who reported Jesus had risen.  In (John 20) Mary Magdalene came alone and found the stone moved.  She then ran and summoned “Simon Peter and to the other disciple whom Jesus loved” who accompanied her to the grave site. The disciples left Mary was crying at the grave and two angels appeared as asked why she was crying.  She turned her back and when she looked back, she saw Jesus.  She then left and told the disciples that Jesus had returned.

                                                           Visions of the risen Jesus

Since scripture does not record any witnesses of the resurrection, Christians rely on a number of reported visions of the risen Christ in the New Testament.  They include both individual and group sightings of the risen Jesus.  This should not be surprising since it is not uncommon for people to have visions of recently departed loved one.  According to Bart Ehrman, it is well documented phenomenon for people to have visions of their loved ones after they died and it is estimated that 25% of people even today report having visions.  Richard Smoley wrote in his 2006 book Forbidden Faith,  “. . . as the clergy have long since learned, many supposedly mystical revelations are little more than symptoms of mental disorder.” When the person having mystical revelations has a charismatic personality, some times a new religion is born.  Joseph Smith, the founder of the Mormon church is a good example.

In summary, there is a major difference between the Jesus of scripture and the historical Jesus.  The historical Jesus was a Jewish man born in Nazareth, who led a movement against the high priests of the Jerusalem Temple and the Roman authorities, and was executed for treason and buried in a common grave.  The Jesus of the gospels was born in Bethlehem of a virgin, was crucified, buried in a tomb, and was resurrected three days later with the promise that he would return and establish the “Kingdom of God” on earth.  The gulf between the historical Jesus and Jesus of the gospels is wide, but not an unbridgeable one depending on how one reads scripture.

It is important to remember that the idea of reading scripture literally is a relatively recent practice, less than two-hundred years.  For example, Saint Jerome (editor of the most widely used Bible) suggested a literal interpretation for the illiterate masses and an allegorical one for more advanced minds.  And John Calvin believed that the “. . . stories of the Bible must be seen in context, as a phase in an ongoing process,” and even went so far as to call the creation story in Genesis  balbative ‘baby talk,’ “which [according to Karen Armstrong] adapted immensely complex processes to the mentality of uneducated people .”  St. Augustine is quoted in Jon Meacham’s American Gospel saying, “If it happens that the authority of Sacred Scripture is set in opposition to clear and certain reasoning, this must mean that the person [who interprets scripture] does not understand it correctly.”  Fundamentalism then is the barrier that separates the historical Jesus from the Jesus of the gospels, and the source of two current problems: anti-science and unnecessary hostility between people of good will, but with different religious views.  Professor Sarah Coakley of the Harvard Divinity School expressed the idea of fundamentalism when she said, “The church is like a swimming pool. Most of the noise comes from the shallow end.”

Sources:

1.  Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth (2013) by Reza Aslan
2. The Closing Of The Western Mind (2002) by Charles Freeman
3. Jesus Wars: How Four Patriarchs, Three Queens and Two Emperors Decided What Christians Would Believe for the Next 1,500 Years (2010) by Philip Jenkins
4. The Lost Gospel Of Judas Iscariot (2006) by  Bart D. Ehrman
5.  Misquoting Jesus, The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why (2005) by Bart D.  Ehrman
6.  The Bible (2007) by Karen Armstrong
7.  American Gospel (2006) by Jon Meacham
8.   Forbidden Faith (2006) by Richard Smoley