Historical Jesus

This article is about Jesus the person, using historical methods to reconstruct a biography of his life and times.

• For disputes about the existence of Jesus and reliability of ancient texts relating to him, see Historicity of Jesus
• For a list of related articles, see Jesus and history

In the field known as Jesus research, scholars use scientific disciplines, including the historical method and Israeli archeology, to reconstruct a biography of the life and times of Jesus himself, as a historical figure. This is to be distinguished from the Biblical Jesus, which includes a theological reading of the Gospel texts. The distinction between the Jesus of history and the Christ of Faith began with the work of Hermann Samuel Reimarus.

Overview of Scholarly Methods

The Historical Jesus is a scholarly reconstruction of Jesus as referred to in ancient documents. It relies on historical methods to present an account of past events based on available evidence, including various textual sources. Because this method does not employ theological axioms, it should be distinguished from religious views of Jesus.

Historical Criteria Applicable to the Life of Jesus

Historians have developed a number of methods to critically analyze historical sources.

• Criterion of dissimilarity. (Also known as criterion of embarrassment.) Statements contrary or dissimilar to the author's agenda are likely to be more reliable. For example, why would a Christian source claim that Jesus was from Nazareth (rather than from Bethlehem), when this was clearly a cause of embarrassment, unless his family really was from Nazareth.
• Criterion of multiple attestation. When two independent sources present similar or consistent account, it is at least certain that the tradition predates the sources. See the historicity of Jesus for an example of the multiple independent attestations of the fact that Jesus was a real person.
• Contextual and linguistic criteria Does the tradition make sense in the context of what we know about the cultural background. There are some interesting conclusions that can be drawn from linguistic analysis of the gospels, e.g. if a dialogue would only work in Greek (the language of the written source), it is quite likely the author is reporting something slightly different from the original.

Biography of Jesus

Names of Jesus and his family

Main articles: Names and titles of Jesus and Desposyni

Most Western, Latin derived, sources agree that this man's name was Jesus (Template:Lang-la). In the Greek alphabet, as recorded in the New Testament, it was ᾿Ιησοῦς. Using the scholarly reconstruction of Classical Greek pronunciation, it would be pronounced IPA: /iˈeˈsuːs/, however the New Testament was written in Koine Greek which was probably pronounced differently, in particular with the possible addition of the palatal approximant and variance in the pronunciation of eta, thus: /jɛːˈsuːs/ or /jiːˈsuːs/.

Given that this was an extremely common name in the first century Jewish world, this is quite credible. Josephus alone mentions some twenty or so men called "Jesus" in his writings, four of whom were high priests, and no fewer than ten belonging to the first century.

This name is usually assumed to be derived from the Late Biblical Hebrew (ישוע) which is commonly spelled in English as Yeshua (IPA /jeʃuaʕ/). This name was a shortened form of Yehoshua, which literally means "'Yhwh' (is) a saving-cry", or figuratively "Yhwh saves". By the time of the first century, many were interpreting this as "Yahweh saves" or "May Yahweh save." This understanding is attested in the work of the philosopher Philo: "Joshua [ ᾿Ιησοῦς] means 'the salvation [ σωτηρία] of the Lord'". This popular etymology is also implied in Matthew 1:21.

The name is derived from the three-letter root yod-shin-`ayin (י-ש-ע) which has the meaning of "to save", but the name is not identical to the word "salvation" (y'shu`ah) or to any verb form such as "he will save" (yoshia`). It does not contain part of the name of God YHWH as the name Yehoshua` (Joshua) appears to do, although this name (yod-he-vav-shin-`ayin, י-ש-ה-ו-ע) could be considered a third person imperfect hiph`il verbal form of the same yod-shin-`ayin root.

The Masoretic Text indicates Yeshua is pronounced as יֵשׁ֣וּעַ (for example see Ezra 5:2). The yodh is vocalized with the Hebrew vowel, tsere, a long e (IPA /e/) as in "neighbor" (but not diphthongized) not with a shva (IPA /ə/) (as Y'shua) or segol (IPA /ɛ/)(Yesh-shua). The final consonant is the voiced pharyngeal fricative consonant `ayin (IPA /ʕ/), sometimes transcribed by "`" (Yeshua`), a sound not found in English. The "a" represents the patach genuvah ("furtive" patach) indicating the diphthongization of the "u" vowel due to the effect of the final `ayin - in simple terms the "a" is not an additional syllable but indicates a modification of the "u" vowel which due to the `ayin was pronounced somewhat like the oo of English moor as opposed to that of food.

Both infancy narratives, in Matthew and in Luke, agree that his putative father was "Joseph" and his mother was "Mary", which is also attested by references elsewhere in the Gospel tradition and other first and second century texts.

Although Jesus' best-known brother is referred to in English as "James" out of tradition, in ancient Greek documents this brother of Jesus is always identified as ᾿Ιάκωβος, or Jacob (Antiquities 20.9.1, Galatians 1:19), which was also a fairly common name, after the Hebrew patriarch. According to Mark 6:3, the other brothers of Jesus are named Joses (Joseph), Judas (Judah), and Simon (Simeon); these are three of the twelve tribes or sons of Israel. In Hebrew, the names of the brothers are Yaakob, Yosef, Yehudah, and Shimeon.)

Birth

Year and date

See also: Census of Quirinius

Gerd Theissen and Annette Merz write: "There is no certain indication of the precise year of his birth. Certainly Matthew and Luke agree in attesting that Jesus was born in the lifetime of Herod the Great (Matt. 2.1ff.; Luke 1.5), i.e. according to Josephus (Antt. 17, 167, 213; BJ 2, 10) before the spring of 4 BC/E. This is certainly probable, but there is some dispute over it, as doubts about the reliability of the chronological information in both the Matthean and Lukan infancy narratives are justified."

Luke 2:1 connects the birth of Jesus to both the census of Quirinius, which took place in 6 AD/CE according to Josephus and the reign of Herod the Great. Emil Schürer regards this as a chronological error in Luke. William Mitchell Ramsay argued for a series of censuses in Luke and Acts to explain the apparent discrepancy[3][4].

Some have attempted to make a more precise determination of Jesus' birthdate by correlating the magi's star (Matthew 2:2) with astronomical phenomena; however, Matthew 2 describes a miraculous travelling star, which does not fit into known astronomical categories, and such theories have commanded no wide assent.

Based in Josephus' Antiquities it has been traditionally inferred that Herod died at the end of March, or early April of 4 BC/E. However, David W. Beyer argued for a date of 1 BC/E based on a reinterpretation of Josephus' manuscripts. The primary one is that a printer typesetting of the manuscript Antiquities made a mistake in the year 1544. According to some scholars, every single Josephus manuscript, held by the British Library in London and the American Library of Congress, dating from before 1544 supports the inference that Herod passed in 1 BC/E. Knowing this, and since Herod according to the Gospels supposedly died shortly after Jesus' birth, a recent research study, gathering different available sources and acknowledged by leading scholars of the scientific and theological community, presents 3 to 2 BC/E as the probable time of Jesus' birth.

Location

See also: Nazarene

The Mandylion of Edessa from the private chapel of the pope in the Vatican. Considered to be the earliest image of Jesus.

In John 7:41-42, the Jews make the following objection to considering Jesus of Nazareth to be the Messiah:

"The Messiah isn't going to come from Galilee, is he? Doesn't the Scripture say that the Messiah will be descended from David and will come from Bethlehem, the town David came from?"

Some would say that this is "Johannine irony," and that the author and his audience knew that Jesus really came from Bethlehem. However, the evangelist also mentions Jesus' home town as Nazareth (1:45), to which Nathaneal replied: "Can anything good come from Nazareth?" This tradition also shows up later (18:5-7), and the evangelist never clues in his reader on the "true" hometown of Jesus. The irony in John's story is probably not that Jesus actually came from Bethlehem, but rather that his birthplace according to the flesh is not important because Jesus is the pre-existent Logos that comes from above (8:23).

The Nativity of Jesus according to Matthew 2 and Luke 2 are the only places in the New Testament that clearly make the claim that Jesus was born in Bethlehem. Elsewhere Jesus is simply Jesus of Nazareth, Jesus the Nazarene, or Jesus the Nazorean. The latter terms, "Nazarene" and "Nazorean", could have a variety of meanings: the name of a place (Nazara, later Nazareth), the term for a spiritual or community leader in Gnostic communities (Nostri and Nazara are both terms associated with Gnosticism), or a term denoting righteousness (Nazur or Nazarite).

Luke says that Caesar Augustus ordered a census of the entire Empire, which required Joseph to register in his ancestral town. Matthew says that Herod ordered the massacre of innocent children, so that they fled to Egypt and later returned to Nazareth. This massacre is not mentioned by Josephus. The story of Jesus coming out of Egypt does fit Matthew's presentation of him as the New Moses.

The setting of Luke's census is doubtful as well: During Herod's life time, Judaea was not under direct Roman rule and hence not subject to a Roman census. Also, the practice of enrolling in one's ancestral home is unknown from Roman practices.

The universal census Luke refers to did take place under Quirinius, when he became legate of Syria c. 6. Judaea had come under direct Roman rule in that year, as part of Iudaea Province, and the census, angering many Jewish people, features prominently in Josephus' works. This date cannot be reconciled with the Matthean date. In light of such considerations, Michael Grant concludes: "the familiar story that Jesus was born at Bethlehem—which was in Judaea and not in Galilee—is very doubtful. More probably his birthplace was Nazareth in Galilee, or possibly some other small town in the same region." However, it has also been argued that a different reading Luke's text actually indicates an earlier census during Herod's lifetime.

The fact that Jesus came from Galilee is the object of some embarrassment, as the quotes from John above show. And this is not just because the Messiah was supposed to come from Bethlehem. In John 7:52, a group of Pharisees object that no prophet can come from Galilee. As also reflected in the Talmud, the higher classes in Jerusalem and elsewhere looked upon those from the rural backwater of Galilee as uneducated, uncouth, and even barbaric. Among other things, this was reflected in their speech, which was considered to be slurred in a distinctive dialect. According to the Jewish Encyclopedia article on Galilee[5]: "But it is for their faulty pronunciation that the Galileans are especially remembered: 'ayin and alef, and the gutturals generally, were confounded, no distinction being made between words like '"amar" (= "ḥamor," uss), "ḥamar" (wine), "'amar" (a garment), "emar" (a lamb: 'Er. 53b); therefore Galileans were not permitted to act as readers of public prayers (Meg. 24b)."

Because the town is not mentioned by Josephus or other early non-Christian writers, some believe that Nazareth did not exist at the time of Jesus, instead interpreting the Greek to refer to Jesus as being a Nazarite (Numbers 6:1–21, a "vow of separation", a particular type of ascetic), which however is contradicted by Jesus' consumption of wine, unless, rather then being a lifelong Nazarite, he took a series of vows, such as possibly Mark 14:25.

It is also possible that Nazareth was just a small village; archaeological findings suggest that it was occupied since the 7th c. BC/E and may have had a "refounding" in the 2d c. BC/E (Meier, A Marginal Jew, Vol. I, page 300). If Jesus was not actually born in Nazareth, he may have been associated with the town by the Hebrew word netzer, a shoot or branch, a term related to the Davidic house in a passage of Isaiah regarded as prophetic of the Messiah to come (Is 11:1, cf. Jer 23:5). It has also been proposed that 'Nazareth' was used as a synecdoche for all Galilee, which is why Jesus was also known often as 'the Galilean'.

Synagogue of Nazareth

The Gospel of Luke records Jesus "as was his custom," entering the synagogue of Nazareth. In this event Jesus "… stood up to read." Some argue that archaeological excavations have found no public buildings and therefore there could not have been a synagogue. However, these arguments are inconclusive in that only a very small portion of the ancient Nazareth has ever been excavated. Modern Nazareth sits on the ancient site. While conventional thinking in archaeological circles suggests that Nazareth was a small community in the time of Jesus, there is no conclusive evidence one way or the other.

In Jewish tradition, scriptures are precious and handled with extreme care. The statement that Jesus is handed the scroll of Isaiah suggests Nazarenes had at least that scroll, and likely others, and that they had a place to store and care for the scrolls. The synagogue would have been the likely place for this.

Archaeologists have found synagogues from the time of Jesus at Gamala, Jerusalem, Herodium, and Masada. The New Testament mentions synagogues at Capernaum and Nazareth, but archaeologists have not been able to confirm this. Neither have they been able to find remains of the synagogues mentioned by Josephus as existing in Tiberias, Dora, or the wealthy city of Caesarea Maritima. The last one is particularly puzzling. Unlike Nazareth, Caesarea is uninhabited today, so archaeologists have been able to excavate more extensively and intensively. The question is far more complex than appears prima facie. It is a major challenge to investigators. (See the Macmillan Bible Atlas, ISBN 0-02-500605-3)

Linguistic proficiency

Since Jesus became an itinerant preacher throughout his home area and surroundings, a relevant question here is: What was the language spoken by ordinary Jews during their daily lives in first century Judea? Jesus must have been fluent in this language, and possibly in others as well.

From the writings and inscriptions of the time, there are four languages attested: Latin, Hebrew, Greek, and Aramaic. Latin may quickly be eliminated from consideration. Latin was used almost exclusively by Roman officials, who had only recently introduced the tongue. The Romans would have written inscriptions on public buildings without regard for the ability of most Jews to read them. Notably, almost all of the known Latin inscriptions were situated in and around Caesarea Maritima and Jerusalem—the seats of imperial power, not Galilean villages.

Whether Jesus knew any Hebrew would hinge on whether he was literate. Hebrew suffered a great decline in popular use after the Babylonian exile and the return of Jews to Judah. Increasingly Aramaic, the lingua franca of the ancient Near East from the neo-Assyrian and Persian periods onward, made inroads among ordinary Jews resettled in Israel. Although the Dead Sea Scrolls found at Qumran have many Hebrew writings, these works are theological and literary compositions of an esoteric group. The rise of the Aramaic targums (translations of Hebrew Scriptures), witnessed already in a Qumran community that was devoted to compositions in Hebrew, is a strong objection to seeing Hebrew as the language of the common people. It would seem that Hebrew was only preserved in first century Judea among those Jews dedicated to the study of the Scriptures, much as Latin was mainly for the clergy in the Middle Ages.

Concerning Greek, the testimony of Josephus should be noted (Antiquities 20.21.2): "I have also taken a great deal of pains to obtain the learning of the Greeks, and understand the Greek language, although I have so long accustomed myself to speak our own tongue [Aramaic], that I cannot pronounce Greek with sufficient exactness; for our nation does not encourage those that learn the languages of many nations..."

As Biblical scholar John P. Meier observes (A Marginal Jew, Vol. I, page 261):

"Admittedly, all this sheds at most a very indirect light on our main question, the language that Jesus knew and used best. But if even the gifted Jerusalemite intellectual Josephus was not totally at home in Greek after years of writing in it while living in Rome, and if in AD 70 he had found it necessary or at least advisable to address his fellow Jews in Jerusalem in Aramaic rather than Greek, the chances of a Galilean peasant knowing enough Greek to become a successful teacher and preacher who regularly delivered his discourses in Greek seem slim."

Inscriptions of the time evince that the commonly spoken Aramaic was mostly free of Greek influence on its vocabulary, unlike in later centuries (Meier, page 265). Although they are all written in Greek, the only foreign words that the Gospels put on the lips of Jesus are in Aramaic, such as in Mark 5:41, 7:34, and 15:34. The Greek Gospel of John says that Jesus named Simon as Kephas (Jn 1:42), and Paul used the Aramaic address to God, abba, even when writing to Greek-speaking Gentiles in Gal 4:6 and Rom 8:16.

Meier concludes his discussion with these words: "Jesus regularly and perhaps exclusively taught in Aramaic, his Greek being of a practical, business type, and perhaps rudimentary to boot." (page 268)

Literacy

To refute the idea that Jesus was illiterate, evangelical scholar Ben Witherington III simply says that, "the only concrete evidence we have suggests the contrary (cf. Lk 4 to Lk 24)" (The Jesus Quest, p. 88). The account at Luke 4 of Jesus at the Temple tells of Jesus reading from a scroll in a Nazareth synagogue. However, Meier notes that "the sources and historicity of the narrative in this pericope are disputed. . . . The clear presence of Luke's redactional hand makes one wary." (A Marginal Jew, Vol. I, page 270).

Other scholars, such as Jewish Historian Shmuel Safrai, have argued that the majority of Jewish children in first century Judea received education at schools, a program instituted by Simeon ben Shetah (c. 103-76 BC/E) and later Joshua ben Gamala (c. 63-65). However, our accounts of this in the Talmud were written down about 200 years after Jesus' boyhood. The references from Philo and Josephus probably only refer to the public reading of the Torah in the synagogue. Any school system would have to be reinstituted after disruption during the two Jewish revolutions around 70 and 130. Many scholars consider the educational program of Simeon to be a later legend: "What elementary education did exist was carried out within the family, and most often it simply involved instruction in a given craft by the father." (page 273, see also Craffert-Botha, below). Meier writes:

"Hence, despite inflated claims from some modern authors, we are not to imagine that every Jewish male in Palestine learned to read - and women were rarely given the opportunity. Literacy, while greatly desirable, was not an absolute necessity for the ordinary life of the ordinary Jew. … Taken by themselves, therefore, such influences as reverence for the Torah and respect for literacy do not prove that Jesus was counted among those Jews who could read and study the Scriptures; they simply show what might have been." (pages 275, 276)

Still, Meier argues that the debates of Jesus over the Scripture in the synagogues and other details suggest that Jesus had the ability to read the sacred Hebrew texts.

"To sum up: individual texts from the Gospels prove very little about the literacy of Jesus. Instead, it is an indirect argument from converging lines of probability that inclines us to think that Jesus was in fact literate. … [S]ometime during his childhood or early adulthood, Jesus was taught how to read and expound the Hebrew Scriptures." (page 277, 278)

However, his "indirect argument" can be doubted, not least because the scriptural background "could have been conveyed by word-of-mouth catechesis and memorization" (see Lucretia Yaghjian, 'Ancient Reading', in Richard Rohrbaugh, ed., The Social Sciences in New Testament Interpretation, pages 206ff). In 'Why Jesus Could Walk On The Sea But He Could Not Read And Write' (Neotestamenica 39.1, 2005), Pieter F. Craffert and Pieter J. J. Botha argue that "reading" was very likely a social exercise with religious significance, and did not necessarily imply actual literacy. According to their theory, Jesus might have been going through the motions of "reading," as a sort of religious rite, and giving his own teachings under the auspices of the document being "read." They cite an ancient practice of orators holding a blank document and "reading" from it in this way when giving oracles.

Ancient Historian William V. Harris in Ancient Literacy estimates less than 10% of the Roman Empire under the principate to be literate, with that number falling as low as 3% in Roman Judaea (see also M. Bar-Ilan, 'Illiteracy in the Land of Israel in the First Centuries AD/CE', in S. Fishbane and S. Schoenfeld, Essays in the Sociel Scientific Study of Judaism and Jewish Society, pages 46-61). James P. Holding argues that statistical analysis of literacy rates is unhelpful with regard to the question of which percentage Jesus would fall under, i.e., they are only helpful in answering the general question 'Were most people literate?', not the specific question 'Was Jesus literate?'.

Since a clear, reliable tradition in the Gospels does not exist, and other sources of evidence and lines of argument are equally inconclusive, there has been no scholarly consensus on the matter.

Socioeconomic status?

Although Jesus is traditionally identified as a carpenter, this rests on a single phrase in Mark 6:3, "Is this fellow not the carpenter ?" Nowhere else in the entire New Testament is the occupation of Jesus specified. Perhaps out of reverence for Jesus, the author of Matthew changes the question to (Matthew 13:55), "Is this fellow not the son of the carpenter?" Luke, apparently also finding the jibe offensive, changes it to (Luke 4:22), "Is this fellow the son of Joseph?" One might apply the criterion of embarrassment here, because the evangelists drop the reference to Jesus as a woodworker, as well as the fact that the trade was not very prominent and has no theological significance. Biblical scholar John Dominic Crossan writes (Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography, pp. 24-26):

Ramsay MacMullen has noted that one's social pedigree would easily be known in the Greco-Roman world and that a description such as "carpenter" indicated lower-class status. At the back of his book he gives a "Lexicon of Snobbery" filled with terms used by literate and therefore upper-class Greco-Roman authors to indicate their prejudice against illiterate and therefore lower-class individuals. Among those terms is tekton, or "carpenter," the same term used for Jesus in Mark 6:3 and for Joseph in Matthew 13:55. One should not, of course, presume that upper-class sneers dictated how the lower classes actually felt about themselves. But, in general, the great divide in the Greco-Roman world was between those who had to work with their hands and those who did not.

On the other hand, Meier writes (A Marginal Jew, Vol. I, pp. 281-282):

Many people fell into a vague middle group (*not* our American "middle class"), including business people and craftsmen in cities, towns, and villages, as well as freehold farmers with fair-sized plots of land. In speaking of this middle group, we must not be deluded into thinking that belonging to this group meant economic security known to middle-class Americans today. Small farmers in particular led a precarious existence, sometimes at subsistence level, subject as they were to the vagaries of weather, market prices, inflation, grasping rulers, wars, and heavy taxes (both civil and religious). Further down the ladder were day laborers, hired servants, traveling craftsmen, and dispossessed farmers forced into banditry - what Sean Freyne, former Chair of Theology at Trinity College Dublin, calls the "rural proletariat." At the bottom of the ladder stood the slaves, the worst lot falling to slaves engaged in agricultural labor on large estates - although this was not the most common pattern for Galilean agriculture.

On this rough scale, Jesus the woodworker in Nazareth would have ranked somewhere at the lower end of the vague middle, perhaps equivalent - if we may use a hazy analogy - to a blue-collar worker in lower-middle-class America. He was indeed in one sense poor, and a comfortable, middle-class urban American would find living conditions in ancient Nazareth appalling. But Jesus was probably no poorer or less respectable than almost anyone else in Nazareth, or for that matter in most of Galilee. His was not the grinding, degrading poverty of the day laborer or the rural slave.

In any case, the historical Jesus who grew up in a small Galilean village did not become very wealthy or influential through his meager trade there.

Other authors (such as Robert Graves in Jesus King) to sustain the thesis of royal parentage of Jesus, place him in the upper class, concretely Jesus would be a nobleman of the Levi tribe on the mother side. Usually these types of patriarchal claims are just an attempt to secure theological (authority) power to an individual over a group.

By analysis of the gospels, we can tell that Jesus consistently worked to subvert patron/client relationships that dominated 1st century Mediterranean life. These patron client relationships determined power structure, or what was the then equivalent of our modern class structures. His itinerant movements allowed him to remain neither patron nor client, as to do so would have required a fixed location where people could come to him and have miracles performed. Instead, he remained, as he instructed his disciples, in the manner of a Greek cynic.

Family background and childhood

Joseph (Yosef)

The main Christian sources about Joseph come from the Gospels of Matthew and Luke. Joseph was betrothed to Mary at the time that she conceived; and therefore they were already legally husband and wife then, although they were not yet permitted to live together. Also has been suggested, by eastern occultism philosophy at the beginning of the 20th century, that Jesus was the called Jeshu ben Pandera, however, the major western occult philosophers have immediately corrected that Jesus was a common name in the middle east and that the Essene "Teacher of Righteousness" Jeschu ben Pandira (born ca. 105 BC/E) is not to be confounded with the high Initiate Jesus of Nazareth, also Essene, whose birth is on about the date usually ascribed to that event and who later in the moment of the Baptism delivered his pure, passionless, highly evolved physical body and vital body (already attuned to the high vibrations of the 'life spirit'), to the Christ being for His ministry in the physical world.

In the Christian Gospels of Matthew and Luke, Joseph is referred to as Jesus' foster father. Joseph is not featured in any of the four canonical gospels, except in these childhood narratives; moreover, he is not mentioned in the Book of Acts, unlike Jesus' other relatives; these facts are generally taken to mean that he was dead by the time of Jesus' ministry.

Matthew tries to convince the Jews that Jesus was indeed the royal son of David. The statement "son of David" is used seven times in his Gospel (1:1, 9:27, 12:23, 15:22, 20:30, 21:9, 22:42). Only in Matthew does Jesus speak of "The throne of his glory" (19:28, 25:31). And only in Matthew is Jerusalem referred to as "the holy city" (4:5). Therefore, Matthew spends a great deal of time trying to convince the Jewish people that Jesus was indeed the King of the Jews (27:29, 27:37). It is therefore important to note that Jesus is treated within biblical genealogies as the descendant of King David, and that this descent is through Joseph. However, there is some discrepancy between the genealogy of Jesus given by Matthew and that given by Luke.

Some non-canonical, adoptionist gospels claim that Joseph was the father of Jesus and that Jesus was a mortal man until the spirit of God entered him when being baptized by John The Baptist. However, the adoptionist views were rejected by the church at the First Council of Nicea.

Mary (Miryam)

The majority of information on Jesus' mother Mary comes from her mention in the four canonical Gospels, and the Book of Acts; the Gospel of John does not mention her by name but refers to her as "the mother of Jesus" or "his mother".

Beyond the accounts given in the Gospels and a few other early Christian sources, there is no independent or verifiable information about any aspect of Mary's life. An account of the childhood of Mary is given in the mid-second century non-canonical Gospel of James. The Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Christian churches have several important traditions built around the figure of Mary.

Mark 6:3 (and analogous passages in Matthew and Luke) reports that Jesus was "Mary's son".

Mary (Miryam), mother of Jesus, is also directly named in the Qur'an in numerous verses, and the matter of the "Virgin Birth" is also upheld.

James (Yaakov)

In the same passages, Jesus is also described as having brothers: James (Jacob), Joses (or Joseph), Jude (Judas), and Simon, and several sisters (Mark 6:3; Matthew 13:55). The Jewish historian Josephus (1st century) and the Christian historian Eusebius (4th century but quoted much earlier sources now unavailable to us) refer to James as Jesus' brother.

A Christian tradition at least as early as the second century, adopted by Eastern Orthodoxy, explains that these "brothers and sisters" were from Joseph's marriage to an unnamed woman, before Joseph married Mary and so making them step-brothers and step-sisters. This version of events is related in the apocryphal History of Joseph the Carpenter. In contradistinction to the Eastern opinion the Roman Catholic Church has largely held that these brothers were in fact cousins or other relatives, arguing that the term brother was used periodically to speak of more distant relations. Protestants have generally held that these brothers and sisters were biological children of Joseph and Mary.

Thus the debate on the topic of Jesus' brothers can be divided into three schools, each named for the respective theologian who put forth the idea.

• The Epiphanius view, accepted in Eastern Orthodoxy, which suggests that Jesus' brothers were in fact Joseph's sons from another marriage
• The Jerome view, accepted in Roman Catholicism, that the term that meant "brother" was often used in the Bible to mean "cousin"
• The Helvidius view, which argues that Jesus did have biological brothers, the children of Joseph and Mary who were born subsequent to the Virgin Birth of Jesus.

Works and miracles

Early Christian image of Christ as the Good Shepherd. Second century.

Jesus, like many holy men throughout history, is said to have performed various miracles in the course of his ministry. These mostly consist of cures and exorcisms, but some show a dominion over nature. Scholars in both Christian and secular traditions debate whether these miracles should be construed as claims of supernatural power (which would be rejected by naturalistic historians, while possibly accepted by others), or explained without recourse to supernatural occurrences. Naturalistic historians generally choose either to see the texts as allegory or to attribute the healings and exorcisms to the placebo effect.

Jesus and John the Baptist

According to the Gospels, Jesus began his public ministry of preaching, teaching, and healing soon after he was baptized by John the Baptist. Luke's gospel records that Jesus' mother, Mary, was related to John's mother, Elizabeth (Luke 1:36), making the two men related. Though Matthew portrays John humbly attempting to decline baptizing Jesus, the gospel of Mark and the gospel of Luke do not mention this reluctance; this would tend to indicate a difference in the writers' theological and historical perspectives. Disciples of John are contrasted with the followers of Jesus, even as late as the Book of Acts. The Mandaeans look to John as their founder to this day.

Ministry and teachings

The Gospel of John mentions three separate Passovers during Jesus' ministry, so most scholars have traditionally concluded that it spanned a period of approximately three years. However, the other Gospels only mention one Passover, and a few scholars suggest that a ministry of more than three years is possible. Jesus used a variety of methods in his teaching. He made extensive use of illustrations in his teaching. (For example, consider Matthew 13:34–35.) The detailed nature of Jesus' spiritual teaching cannot be fully agreed upon because the Gospel accounts are fragmentary, and their objectivity is suspect. Furthermore, he made extensive use of paradox, metaphor and parable, leaving it unclear how literally he wished to be taken and precisely what he meant.

Jesus also seems to have preached the imminent end of the current era of history; in this sense he was an apocalyptic preacher.

The Gospels present Jesus as engaging in frequent question and answer debates with other religious figures; these debates were common between religious teachers of the period. For example, the Gospels report that Jesus made use of a quote from the Law of Moses to answer a question posed by the Sadducees regarding the resurrection of the dead, in which they did not believe. The Gospels agree that Jesus generally opposed stringent interpretations of Jewish law, and preached a more flexible understanding of the law. They present an inclination to following a teleological approach, in which the spirit of the law is more important than the letter, and record him as having many disagreements with the Pharisees and Sadducees. But in some places, Jesus suggests that the Pharisees were not strict enough in their observance of the law. The Jewish Encyclopedia article on Jesus notes: "Jesus, however, does not appear to have taken into account the fact that the Halakah was at this period just becoming crystallized, and that much variation existed as to its definite form; the disputes of the Bet Hillel and Bet Shammai were occurring about the time of his maturity."

It should be noted that the Evangelists would presumably favor accounts of Jesus which would tend to support their own theology and interpretations of the law. On the other hand, it should also be noted that the Evangelists themselves did believe Jesus to be the definitive messenger of God — proven by his rising from the dead — and so to have spoken in God's own authority. Deriving from this, it is quite probable that the evangelists did not feel free to select and deselect among sayings which were believed to be handed down from him.

It has been suggested that Jesus could have joined the Essenian sect or have been himself a disciple of John the Baptist (who by that theory may have been Essenian himself), and parallels have been argued between Jesus' teaching and Essenian ideas.

A few modern scholars believe that Jesus may have been a Pharisee. In this view, Jesus was later cast as an enemy of the Pharisees because by the time Christians transcribed the Gospels, the Pharisees had become the dominant sect of Judaism, and hence the most responsible for preventing conversions of Jews. This view receives some support in the Acts of the Apostles, where the apostles were generally attacked by Sadducees but sometimes protected by Pharisees (for example, see Acts 23:6-9). Evidence against this view is found in the understanding that some of the gospel materials were compiled before the destruction of the temple in 70. It was around this time in which the Pharisees came to power, see also Council of Jamnia.

According to the Bible, the theme of Jesus' preaching (and also that of John the Baptist) was: "Repent, for the kingdom of the heavens has drawn near" (e.g. Matthew 3:1–2,4:17). Jesus trained his disciples to do the same work: "As you go, preach, saying, The kingdom of the heavens has drawn near" (Matthew 10:7). These disciples were not just to preach in public places but were also to contact people at their homes. Jesus instructed them: "Wherever you enter into a house say first, May this house have peace" (Luke 10:1-7). After the crucifixion, these apostles preached his teachings and performed healings to both Jews and Gentiles. As an eschatological movement, they anticipated Gentile interest in the God of Abraham, as for example prophesied in Isaiah 56:6–8. The Gospel of Mark does not indicate whether Jesus intended his disciples to teach Gentiles (outside of the late addition Mark 16:15, see also Mark 16), though Luke, and Matthew especially, make statements which indicate that he did. Before the crucifixion, according to Matthew 10:5 and Matthew 15:22–28, Jesus limited his mission to the Jews alone, but after the resurrection he included all nations in the Great Commission. The Gospel of John records an instance of Greeks coming to meet Jesus, which Jesus apparently approved of in John 12:20–32 and records Jesus' conversion of the Samaritans in John 4:1–42.

Jesus is reported to have praised the value of celibacy, saying that some made themselves "eunuchs" for the Kingdom of Heaven (Matthew 19:12). This was not uncommon at the time; although most Jews married (including those who were Pharisees), others, like the Essenes, promoted celibacy. He is also reported to have condoned the Genesis description of marriage (Mark 10:6-9). But this is very controversial since nowhere in the Gospels is it said either that he was married or that he was single. In fact for the ancient Jews, a single man was an abnormality. He is also presented as having spoken out against divorce, which would imply at least a tacit approval of marriage. besides, in respect to women he wasn't a misogynist as suggested for instance in the discussion with a Cananean Woman, or in the episode of the anointing of Bethania. It has also been suggested that he was married to Mary Magdalene or to Mary the sister of Lazarus.

In his role as a social reformer Jesus would have threatened the status quo. He was unpopular with many Jewish religious authorities, although the book of Acts and some of the Epistles say that numerous members of the priests and the Pharisees became followers of his teachings. According to one view of the Gospels, his unpopularity among the leadership of the area was because he criticized it, and, moreover, because Jesus' followers held the controversial and inflammatory view that he was not only the Messiah but God Himself. Even the former claim would disturb the local leaders, who feared that a claimed Messiah would incite a revolt against Roman rule. (This view is also presented in the Gospels.)

The Jesus Seminar, in their Acts of Jesus, claim that Jesus was arrested in Jerusalem and crucified as a "public nuisance", specifically for overturning tables at Herod's Temple, not for claiming to be the Son of God. See also Sanhedrin Trial of Jesus.

Entrance to Jerusalem

The Gospels report Jesus' Entrance to Jerusalem as having occurred shortly before the Passover. However, some scholars have argued that this actually happened at Sukkoth or Tabernacles, based on the part of the waving of palm fronds and the Hosanna cry during that feast. The date given in the Gospels is seen as either an accidental error or a deliberate change.

Priestly and Kingly messiahs

The Jewish term Messiah traditionally referred both to the King of Israel, epitomized in David, and to the High Priest, beginning with Aaron. The two meanings are made explicit in Biblical writings, where King and High Priest are both anointed, and are also symbolized in the twin pillars of the temple, and their bridging arch which unified them.

Though Messianic expectations in general centred on the King Messiah, the Essenes expected both a kingly and a priestly figure in their eschatology. Some have speculated that Jesus and his brother James were seen by some as the kingly, and the priestly Messiahs, respectively. This interpretation has not found support in academia, owing to a lack of supporting evidence and the fact that neither Jesus nor James could claim priestly heritage.

Jesus and "Barabbas"

The Gospels report that Jesus was held at the same time as another, "Jesus Barabbas", the latter often considered to be a title or description rather than a name — it is Hebrew for "Son of the Father". Seeing it as improbable that two individuals both existed, both known as "Jesus" (heb: Yehoshua, or "God will save", colloquially meaning "Savior") and "Son of the Father" or "Son of Man", some have questioned the identity or existence of "Barabbas".

According to the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus sometimes prayed to God as אבא ['aba'], father. Furthermore, in the Aramaic language, בר אבא [bar 'aba'] means "son of the Father." Some scholars have argued that Jesus was identical with Barabbas, or in some manuscripts, Jesus Barabbas, who the Gospels report was a criminal released by Pontius Pilate instead of Jesus.

An alternative solution proposed by Knight and Lomas (1997, p.306) in a popular book touching on the subject, suggests that to prevent civil unrest, Pilate took captive both the Priestly messiah ("Savior, son of the Father") and the Kingly messiah ("Savior, son of Man"), and it was between these two that the crowd was asked to choose. Again, this view has not yet been tested academically.

Crucifixion of Jesus

Date

There is a general consensus that Jesus was arrested, judged, convicted and then crucified. The gospels say that Jesus began his ministry around the age of 30, though other facts, such as his birth date (c. 7 BC/E) and the mandate of Pontius Pilate indicate that he might in fact have been in the late thirties. As Pilate was the Prefect of Judea from 26 AD/CE - 36 AD/CE, most historians would accept a date between these parentheses.

Death on a cross

Crucifixion was a uniquely Roman method of execution, and the Romans alone administered it. The assertions made in the bible that Pilate, a highly uncooperative Prefect, crucified Jesus because the local population insisted upon it is highly dubious.

The commotion caused by Jesus in the Temple (the "cleansing of the temple") would have been all the reason that the Romans would have needed to crucify Jesus. That things were not happening as Jesus had predicted was all the reason that the disciples had to flee. The Passion Narrative and the audience with Pilate are clear fabrications as both of these narratives leave no place for the narrator as an eye witness. According to the Gospels themselves, none of the disciples were present when Jesus discourses with God in the Garden or with Pilate in Jerusalem. It is unlikely that Pilate would have bothered interviewing another Messiah as the power to execute him was probably in the hands of a delegate.

Though Christians usually assert that Jesus was killed on a cross, the Bible doesn't unambiguously state this. The Greek words in the Bible that are translated by Christians as cross are stauros and xy'lon; the former actually means stake/pole, while the latter literally means stick/tree. Death by being tied to a stake of wood, hands above head, was employed by the Romans, and this so-called crux simplex (simple cross, though not actually cross-shaped) may have been the form of death that the Bible actually describes Jesus as having had. This has led to suggestions that Jesus died having been nailed to a tree. Roman documents, on the other hand, suggest that in Judea, criminals were usually crucified on a Y-shaped device. (See Crucifixion#Cross shape)

Some authors suggest that Jesus didn't die on the cross, but was taken down before dying and moved to a cave where he recovered from his wounds and ordeal. According to these theories, Jesus returned to his private life after recovering.

However, although Romans had many ways of performing a crucifixion, their law was that once a criminal was hung upon a cross, their body was not allowed to be taken down until dead. The death was verified by various practices to ensure that the crucifixion had in fact been completed..

However, some scholars think that historical musings telling that Jesus may have been resuscitated are highly fanciful. Mark, possibly the earliest of the Gospels, in the oldest manuscripts breaks off at 16:8 stating that the women came and found an empty tomb "and they said nothing to anyone because they were afraid." (Mk 16:8) The passages stating that he had been seen by Mary Magdelene and the eleven disciples (Mk 16:9-20) was only added later. Had Jesus survived crucifixion, this would have been loudly trumpeted as a "miracle" in the earliest Christian narratives rather than added piecemeal in a clearly fictitious pen decades later.

According to these scholars, it is also quite unlikely that Pilate would jump to the Jewish demands to release the body of Jesus in order to allow them to observe their burial customs. Pilate was the least amenable of the Roman Prefects in Judea, as the issue of the coinage during his reign, which depicts Roman religious instruments (which must have been highly antagonistic to the local Jewish population), would attest.<original research?> Bodies would have likely been exhibited for some time as a warning to the myriad of other Messiahs and antagonists in Jerulasem. After being let down, their bodies were fed to the dogs.

The Jesus Seminar concluded: "in the view of the Seminar, he did not rise bodily from the dead; the resurrection is based instead on visionary experiences of Peter, Paul, and Mary."[6]

Quest for the Historical Jesus

Main article: Quest for the Historical Jesus

The Historical Jesus is the ancient person but only to the extent that later people can reasonably and reliably describe him. The Quest to use scientific principles to reconstruct a verifiable biography of Jesus has progressed for more than two centuries, and several phases of the Quest are evident.

• The first quest scholars applied the historical methodologies of their day to distinguish the mythology from the history of Jesus.
• The "No quest" scholars denied the possibility of reconstructing a biography of Jesus.
• The second quest sought to apply modern historical method of using comparative textual analysis and historical context to argue that at least probable accounts can be given.
• The third quest focus on Jewishness of Jesus and put a large emphasis on the socio-historical context.

See also

• The Quest for the Historical Jesus
• Cultural and historical background of Jesus
• Historicity of Jesus
• Jesus Seminar

• New Testament view on Jesus' life
• Religious perspectives on Jesus
• Jesus
• The Christ

External links

• Historical Jesus Theories. A very good starting point and collection of links. This site attempts to include historical Jesus theories across the entire spectrum from Marcus Borg to N.T. Wright.
• Historical Jesus Christ- A Logical reconstruction (arguing that Jesus was a guerilla army chieftain)
• Many writings, articles and spoken lectures can be found at N.T. Wright´s Unofficial Webpage. Wright is one of the premier scholars worldwide on the historical Jesus and on early Christianity.
• A Comprehensive Collection of articles on the study of the historical Jesus.
• Life of the Historical Jesus Condensed story of the life of Jesus as Albert Schweitzer understood his ministry
• Jesus: A Historical Reconstruction (a very minimal/not divine Jew unwittingly sparked the development (by others) of Christian beliefs)
• Presuppositions and Pretensions of the Jesus Seminar, by William Lane Craig (part 1)
• The Evidence For Jesus, by William Lane Craig (part 2)
• So what colour was Jesus? - Article in BBC News Online Magazine.
• PBS Frontline: From Jesus to Christ
• Jewish Encyclopedia: Jesus of Nazareth
• Jesus Police: "The 20 common errors listed on this website are areas in which there is a very substantial amount of historical evidence to support the conclusions."

References

• Craffert, Pieter F. and Botha, Pieter J. J. "Why Jesus Could Walk On The Sea But He Could Not Read And Write". Neotestamenica. 39.1, 2005.
• Crossan, John Dominic. Jesus : A Revolutionary Biography. Harpercollins: 1994. ISBN 0-06-061661-X.
• Grant, Michael. Jesus: A Historian's Review of the Gospels. Scribner's, 1977. ISBN 0-684-14889-7.
• Harris, by William V. Ancient Literacy. Harvard University Press: 1989. ISBN 0-674-03380-9.
• Meier, John P., A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus, Doubleday,

v. 1, The Roots of the Problem and the Person, 1991, ISBN 0-385-26425-9

v. 2, Mentor, Message, and Miracles, 1994, ISBN 0-385-46992-6

v. 3, Companions and Competitors, 2001, ISBN 0-385-46993-4

• Sanders, E.P. Jesus and Judaism. Augsburg Fortress Publishers: 1987.
• Theissen, Gerd and Merz, Annette. The Historical Jesus: A Comprehensive Guide. Fortress Press: Minneapolis, 1998. ISBN 0-8006-3122-6.
• Witherington III, Ben. The Jesus Quest. InterVarsity Press: 1997. ISBN 0-8308-1544-9.
• Wright, N.T. Christian Origins and the Question of God, a projected 6 volume series of which 3 have been published under: The New Testament and the People of God (Vol.1); Jesus and the Victory of God (Vol.2); The Resurrection of the Son of God (Vol.3). Fortress Press.
• Wright, N.T. The Challenge of Jesus: Rediscovering who Jesus was and is. IVP 1996
• Yaghjian, Lucretia. "Ancient Reading", in Richard Rohrbaugh, ed., The Social Sciences in New Testament Interpretation. Hendrickson Publishers: 2004. ISBN 1-56563-410-1.

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