There are over two billion Christians in the world today and very few have any idea about the history of the New Testament (NT). Many think that it was dictated by God to the prophets who then precisely reduced it to writing all at one time in its current form. Nothing could be farther from the truth. After the death of Jesus and for centuries the various ideas about his life and death were so diverse that the NT scholar and Professor of Religion, Bart D. Ehrman coined the word “proto-Christian” to describe the religion that would eventually become orthodox Christianity in the fifth century with the meeting of bishops at the Council of Chalcedon in the year 451 C.E. In the words of the historian and Princeton Professor of Religion, Elaine Pagels, Christianity “had flourished for generations–even centuries before Christians formulated what they believed into creeds.” The NT came together over a period of over 300 years in a manner strikingly similar to biological evolution. This similarity can be realized by reading the words of Harvard biologist, E.O. Wilson from his Pulitzer Prize-winning book, The Future of Life: “Over a lifetime the details of real events are increasingly distorted by editing and supplementations. Across generations, the most important among them turn into history, and finally legend and myth.” The evolution of Christianity reflects a gradual change in the nature of Christ from a rabbi and prophet to being God himself as a fully equal partner in the Godhead.
This essay attempts to reveal (as much as possible) the historical Jesus using the same methods employed in researching any other historical figure such as Shakespeare or Newton. The key to deciphering history is the availability of sources. The most important and reliable ones are called primary sources and are defined as direct witnesses to the events under consideration. Multiple independent first-hand witnesses (particularly if they are in agreement) are the gold standard of historical sources. Secondary ones are the next most reliable sources and are defined as those people who had personal access to a primary source. The least reliable source can be described as an oral tradition compiled over a long period of time and handed down from generation to another. In a legal environment they would be called “hearsay.” In the case of the NT there are not any primary or secondary sources. It may come as a surprise to many Christians to learn that the NT is based entirely on an oral tradition that developed over a period of at least 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). NT scholar Bart Ehrman described the disciples as “rural peasants from the backwaters of Galilee” and according to Acts (4:13) both Peter and John are described as “unlearned and ignorant men.” 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. There is only one passage in the NT indicating that Jesus knew how to write (John 8:3-9) and there is not any record of anything he wrote. Also Jesus and his disciples spoke Aramaic and the earliest known NT was written in Greek, a language only spoken by the educated classes of Palestine.
The authorship of the twenty-seven books of the NT is uncertain or unknown. Most NT scholars are in agreement that the writers of the gospels were anonymous. The gospel writers explicitly acknowledged this by their choice of titles. For example, Mark’s Gospel is titled The Gospel According to Mark and the other three Gospels are titled similarly and all are written in the third person. According to noted biblical scholar Bart D. Ehrman The Gospel of John explicitly states that it was not written by an eyewitness. Writings attributed to the Apostle Paul constitute over 50% of the NT; most of which are letters he wrote to the various churches throughout the Roman Empire. Scholars agree that Luke and Acts were written by the same person with some believing it was Paul, but it is not certain.
The synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) all tell a similar story about the life of Jesus, whereas John (written last) renders a different account. It should be noted that John and Matthew were disciples whereas Mark and Luke were apostles (associates). Tradition holds that Luke was a companion of Paul, and Mark was a secretary to Peter. All the Gospels were written in the first century (in Greek) from within thirty-five to sixty-five years after the death of Jesus, and with Mark being written first. Other Gospels had been written earlier still, but only Mark is extant. According to Luke (1:1-4) “many predecessors had written accounts of Jesus’ life.” Matthew and Luke used Mark as a source with some changes. John was written last, most likely at the end of the first century.
Although the synoptic Gospels tell a similar story, there are many differences. For example, only Matthew and Luke claim that Jesus’ mother Mary was a virgin. Matthew establishes Mary's virgin birth by quoting (Isaiah 7:14) and mistranslating the Hebrew word “alma” (maiden or young unmarried woman) to the Greek word, “parthenos” (virgin). Some of Matthew’s obvious zeal to portray Jesus fulfilling OT prophecy is humorous. For example, in (Zechariah 9:9) the author writes poetically, “See, your king comes to you, righteous and victorious, lowly and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.” Matthew anxious to show Jesus fulfilling prophecy writes in (Matthew 21:6-7) that Jesus rode on two donkeys, a mother and foal. John, Luke, and Mark all record Jesus as riding on only one donkey, although they don’t explicitly refer to Zechariah. The synoptic Gospels all depict Jesus in very human terms; in Matthew, as an appointed king, in Luke as a priest, and in Mark as God’s prophet. John alone makes the claim that Jesus is divine.
The Gospel of Matthew is the first Gospel based on the order it appears in the NT, but in fact was written from fifteen to twenty years after Mark, which is the primary source for Matthew and Luke. Careful analysis of the synoptic Gospels indicates that 97% of Mark is reproduced in Matthew and/or Luke. Matthew is considered the most “Jewish” of the Gospel in two significant ways. First, he stressed the importance of Jewish law insisting that converts to Christianity must keep the Jewish law (including circumcision) to enter the Kingdom of heaven. He quotes Jesus in (Matthew 5:17) “Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I have not come to destroy, but to fulfill.” The message is clear in Matthew, to become a Christian, converts (pagans) must first become Jews and follow all the requirements of the Jewish religion including circumcision. This eventually becomes a major issue in the early church because of the reluctance of adult pagan men to undergo a very painful procedure.
The second reason Matthew is considered the most “Jewish” Gospel is the extent that he goes to blame the death of Christ on the Jews. In (Matthew 27:24) Pontius Pilate washes his hands and says “I am innocent of this man’s blood” and in (Matthew 27:25) he writes, “His blood be on us and our children.” And so it came for Christians to blame all Jewish people for the murder of Jesus into perpetuity. It should be noted that Judas is portrayed as the prototype Jew in the most unflattering terms in the Gospels. Anti-Semitism was a major theme of many of the most prominent Church fathers. For an example, Irenaeus is quoted in Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas (Elaine Pagels) saying “God disinherited the Jews and stripped them of their right to be his priests. Although they continue to worship, God rejects their offerings as he rejected Cain’s, since, just as Cain killed Abel, so the Jews ‘killed the Just One,’ Jesus, so that ‘their hands are full of blood.’”
With all the contradictions in the four gospels, the question as to Jesus’ birth place would appear to be of little doctrinal importance. In (Mark 1:9) Jesus was born in Nazareth, but in (Matthew 2:1) he was born in “Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king.” Matthew as a Jew was well aware of the OT prophecy found in (Micah 5:2) that Jesus would be born in Bethlehem and given his proclivity to demonstrate OT prophecies being fulfilled, it is not surprising that he would place Jesus’ birth in Bethlehem. But this presents a severe challenge to the notion that Mary was a virgin. In (Luke 2:4), Joseph left Galilee and went to the “City of David which is called Bethlehem (because he was of the house and lineage of David).” In this verse Luke is attempting to fulfill the prophecies of both Daniel and Isaiah predicting that a messiah will be sent by God in accordance with the Jewish apocalyptic tradition. But for Jesus to be the Messiah, he would have to be born into the bloodline of David as the son of Joseph thus making it impossible for Mary to be a virgin.
It is important to understand that the word “messiah” means “anointed” in Hebrew, and when translated to Greek becomes “Christ.” In Jewish history the future king was always anointed to show God’s favor. Also, within the Jewish apocalyptic tradition as predicted by Daniel and Isaiah, God will send a warrior-king, who will defeat the forces of evil, including the enemies of Israel (think Romans) and establish the Kingdom of God (an actual kingdom on earth) ruled by God’s representatives which in the NT is Jesus and his twelve disciples. Jesus makes it very clear this will happen very soon. In (Mark 9:1), Jesus teaches that this Kingdom will come during the lifetime of his disciples: “There are some of you standing here who will not taste death until you see the kingdom of God come in power.”
In (Matthew 26: 31-35) after Jesus was arrested all the disciples deserted him because they feared for their lives, except Peter who was being questioned by the authorities. While they could be criticized for being cowards, it is fair to think that they did not fear for Jesus’ life. As Jews, they believed that Jesus was a warrior sent by God to destroy the forces of evil and as such could not be any danger in the hands of the Romans. Strangely, according to John, he was the only disciple present at the crucifixion.
Paul’s contributions to the NT were written perhaps as many as twenty years earlier. The conversion of the Apostle Paul on the road to Damascus is one of the seminal events in the NT. Paul who never met Jesus claimed that Christ appeared to him in a vision while he was on the road to Damascus (Acts 9) and revealed the truth to him and this was his only source of information about Christ. For this reason it was necessary for Paul to claim that he had not met with any of the Disciples in Jerusalem. However, in (Galatians 1:18), he admits to going to Jerusalem three days later and staying for fifteen days, but in (Galatians 1:19) he says “But I did not see any other of the apostles except James, the Lord's brother.”
Only John has Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead. This contradicts Elaine Pagels account found in her book, Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas: “According to Luke’s account, written ten to twenty years after Mark’s, Peter dares announce to the ‘men of Jerusalem’ that Jesus alone, of the entire human race, returned alive after death. . .” From Paul’s “writings,” Luke and Acts we learn the following things about Jesus: 1. He was born of a woman, 2. He was Jewish, 3. He had brothers, including James, 4. He had twelve followers, 5. His mission was to the Jews, 6. He held a last supper, and 7. He was crucified. Paul’s major sayings were “Do not divorce and pay the preachers.” The crucifixion and the resurrection was what was important to Paul, and in his zeal to convert the pagans he not only contradicted Jesus on the matter of being bound by Jewish law, he went so far as to prohibit circumcision by saying anyone who has been circumcised is going to hell in (Galatians 5:2): “Behold I, Paul, say to you that if you receive circumcision, Christ will be of no benefit to you.”
The resurrection of Christ is the sine qua non of Christianity, yet inexplicably, the non-canonical Gospel of Peter is the only gospel that gives an account of the resurrection. The synoptic gospels do not even mention it, but begin their different accounts surrounding the “women” arrival to anoint Jesus’ body and find the tomb empty. What women? According to Mark they are Mary Magdalene, Mary (mother of James) and Salome. Matthew lists the women as Mary Magdalene and another Mary (presumably the mother of James). Whereas, Luke names them as Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary (mother of James), and “the others with them.” What did the women see when they arrived at the tomb? According to Mark, they saw one man, in Luke they saw two men, but according Matthew they saw an angel.
The alleged resurrection of Christ is a prime example of the literary device deus ex machina being used to resolve the problem of the failed return of Jesus during the lifetime of some of the disciples as prophesied in (Mark 9:1). It is also an example of history being concerned with what is likely and faith with what is possible. The first-century history of the Roman empire provides the most-likely explanation for the empty tomb discovered by the women in the Gospels. The Romans never permitted the burial of anyone sentenced to death by crucifixion. Part of the punishment was leaving the body on the cross to be eaten by various scavengers as a warning to anyone else who might challenge the Roman authorities. There is not any evidence of a crucifixion victim being permitted a burial. The best historical evidence strongly suggests that the reason the women found the tomb empty was because his body was never placed there in the first place. His body was thrown into a common grave after three days in accordance with Roman law and custom.
Christian apologists offer a number of sightings of Jesus after his death as evidence of his resurrection from the grave. In the Gospel of Matthew he appears to Mary Magdalene and another Mary at his empty tomb. Later, he appeared before eleven of the disciples on a mountain in Galilee. In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus appears to the disciples and eats with them and tells them to wait in Jerusalem for the start of their mission to the world, and then he ascends into the heavens. In Acts, Jesus appears to his disciples after his death and stays with them for forty days before ascending to heaven. Acts also describes Jesus' appearance to Paul on the road to Damascus. Assuming, for argument’s sake that in all the above cases the people sincerely believed that they saw the resurrected Jesus, what is the most likely explanation? From a historical perspective illusions offer the best answer. Psychologist estimate that 25% of “normal” people experience at least one illusion in their lifetime. They also distinguish illusions from hallucinations resulting from mental disease or a drug-induced state. Illusions are both common and not indicative of mental illness. Illusions are commonplace, and occur almost daily; researchers have discovered that epileptics have flashes of vision that are a mere neurological defect.
Countless people report seeing Elvis Presley and Michael Jackson years after their death. It is not unusual for people to have visions of recent departed loved ones, thought by medical authorities to be the result of extreme stress. Certainly the disciples were deeply bereaved and stressed over the terrible death of their beloved Jesus. Gatherings of large groups of people routinely report sightings of the Virgin Mary. For example, in 2003 an image of Mary appeared on the side of a financial building in Clearwater, Florida and attracted a large crowd who witnessed the event. From 1990 through October 1998 Nancy Fowler of Conyers, Georgia claimed that the Virgin Mary appeared at her small farm. As the word spread about Mary’s apparition, the roads to Conyers were clogged with pilgrims. The author personally knew a woman who traveled from Miami to Conyers, seeking a cure for an inoperable stomach tumor. Upon her return home she claimed that additional x-rays indicated that the tumor disappeared. Sadly, she died of stomach cancer in less than one year after being “cured.”
Bart D. Ehrman, biblical scholar and professor of religion writes in his 2009 book Jesus, Interrupted writes, “Despite the prominence of miracles in the Gospel traditions, I don’t think historians can show that any of them, including the resurrection, ever happened.” Another prominent bible scholar Reza Aslan wrote in his 2014 book, Zealot, The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth “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.” In order to better understand the NT miracles, it is helpful to consider the predominant view of the residents of Palestine at the time of Jesus’ mission.
According to Reza Aslan the people in first-century Palestine “viewed magic and miracle as a standard of their world.” Jesus was only one of many miracle workers operating in Palestine at the time. Others included Eleazar, Rabbi Simon ben Yohai, and Apollonius. Paul also performed miracles by invoking Jesus’ name. This was considered standard practice at the time since illness was thought to be the result of divine judgement or demonic activity. This explains why NT miracles were fully accepted by the early followers of Jesus and never became controversial like the virgin birth, resurrection, or the divinity of Christ. In fact, most historians including bible scholars Aslan and Ehrman agree that none of Jesus’ miracles can be historically confirmed.
The natural tension between historians and theologians (and people of faith) explain the difference between the historical Jesus and the Jesus of the Gospels. Historians are concerned with what most likely happened, whereas theologians are concerned with what is possible and ultimately rely on faith more than evidence. Faith in this context is defined as “trust.” Faith can also be defined as accepting some religious doctrine as truth. There is a more universal understanding of faith as being the feeling that all is right in the world and eventually everything will work out for the best. Voltaire coined what he called the Panglossian Theorem in his 1759 novel Candide as, “All is for the best in this best of all possible worlds.” This universal faith is necessary for any degree of emotional stability in healthy people. It appears that all people are born with an impulse for mystery, transcendence, and mysticism. Part of this impulse is to seek out an agency or cause for all the important happenings in nature and life. As recent as 10,000 years ago virtually all the answers to man’s questions were satisfied by an appeal to supernatural agents called gods. As man’s understanding and knowledge of the world around him increased, his reliance on gods diminished not to disappear, but to evolve and adjust to the man’s increasing knowledge of nature and the universe.
Religion is then the way that this universal impulse is institutionalized into doctrine and ritual. Reza Aslan captures this idea nicely in his (2005) No god but God: “Religion, it must be understood, is not faith. Religion is the story of faith. It is an institutionalized system of symbols and metaphors (read rituals and myths) that provide a common language with which a community of faith can share with each other their numinous encounter with the Divine Presence.” The idea of a conflict between religion and science is relatively very recent one. Prior to the eighteen-century European movement, the “Age of Enlightenment,” scared texts were not considered history and were not intended to be read literally.
It was only after eighteen-century philosophers and intellectuals started challenging the existence of God, that religious apologists such as William Paley and others began to formulate elaborate proofs of God’s existence building on the work of St Thomas Aquinas. In fact the current (modern) understanding of truth is less than three hundred years old. Biblical scholar Bart Ehrman makes an important distinction between two “truths” in telling the story of watching television with his young children. If they ask if some event on television actually happened, he answers “No,” but concerning the same event, if they ask if it’s “true,” he sometimes answers “Yes.” He is teaching his children an important lesson: some things are literally true and others although not literally true reveals some truth. For example, when Jesus said “it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the Kingdom of God,” he was not speaking literally but metaphorically. In fact 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. The issue of any allegorical truth ultimately rests on the freedom of conscience of each individual to decide. The role of the historian and the scientist is to provide evidence for literal truths and leave the interpretation of allegorical truths to others.
There is both the historical Jesus and the Jesus of the gospels. The historical Jesus was a Jewish man born in the small farming Palestinian village, Nazareth close to the beginning of the first century CE. He began a social, religious movement that was perceived both as a threat to the Temple authorities and the Roman state. He was executed by the Romans for the crime of sedition. The Jesus of the gospels was born in Bethlehem of the virgin Mary. At the age of thirty he was baptized by John the Baptist and after John’s death, he gathered together twelve disciples and began his ministry, preaching the Kingdom of God was at hand everyone needed to get right with God in preparation. During his ministry he performed many miracles, including curing the sick, feeding the hungry, and raising Lazarus from the dead. He was arrested for the crime of sedition against the Roman empire and executed by crucifixion and buried in a private tomb only to be resurrected three days later.
Sources:
1. Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas (2003) by Elaine Pagels
2. Truth and Fiction in The Da Vinci Code (2004) by Bart D. Ehrman
3. The Lost Gospel Of Judas Iscariot (2006) by Bart D. Ehrman
4. The Great Transformation (2006) by Karen Armstrong
5. The Closing Of The Western Mind (2002) by Charles Freeman
6. Zealot, The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth (2014) by Reza Aslan
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