Very Brief Histories

A Very Brief History

Helen K. Bond

• Publisher: SPCK Publishing
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9780281076000
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theologie & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblische Studien

Part One: The History (What do we know?) This brief historical introduction to Jesus assesses his impact on the world as it was at the time and outlines the key ideas and values connected with him. It explores the social, political and religious factors that formed the context of his life and teaching, and considers how those factors affected the way he was initially received. Part Two: The Legacy (Why does it matter?) This second part surveys the intellectual and cultural 'afterlife' of Jesus, exploring the ways in which his impact has lasted. Why does he continue to be so influential, and what aspects of his legacy are likely to endure beyond today and into the future? The book has a brief chronology at the front plus a glossary of key terms and a list of further reading at the back.Contents: Part 1: Jesus of Nazareth Did Jesus Exist?The Political Context: Dreams, Prophets and MessiahsJesus' MessageJesus as Miracle Worker – Healings and ExorcismsFriends, Family – and a Wife?Jerusalem, Betrayal and Execution Part 2: Jesus' Legacy Resurrection - and the Earliest Portrayals of JesusJesus the God and the Centre of TimeJesus in the Middle Ages: Art, Relics and Passion PlaysJesus in Contemporary ReligionJesus Today Glossary

Part 1

JESUS OF NAZARETH

1

Did Jesus exist?

In 1909 a German thinker, Arthur Drews (pronounced ‘Drefs’), caused a stir with his highly controversial claim that Jesus had never lived. In The Christ Myth, Drews argued that what mattered to Christians was not the ‘Jesus of history’ but the individual’s personal encounter in the present with the risen Jesus. The historical Jesus, he claimed, was nothing but a myth, developed first by Paul and later expanded by the Evangelists. Although Drews’ views never commanded much scholarly support, they proved remarkably persistent. Similar ideas were put forward in the 1970s by G. A. Wells (though he modified his views later), and ‘mythicist’ the­ories still abound today on the internet. Indeed, in a recent poll, 25 per cent of 18–34-year-olds in the UK thought that Jesus was a mythical or fictional character.

In fact ancient evidence for Jesus is remarkably early and widespread. It is true that no member of the Roman elite mentions him before the early second century, but this is not particularly surprising. Romans were generally distrustful of ‘new’ religions; they took note of Jesus and the movement that followed him only when it threatened to disrupt society, and would hardly have lowered themselves to probe too carefully into its origins. Our earliest Roman reference to Jesus comes from the historian Tacitus. In a famous passage in which he describes Nero’s brutal persecution of Christians following the fire of Rome in the mid 60s ce, Tacitus gives an all too brief account of Christian origins. Victims, he explains, took their name from Christus [i.e. Christ], ‘who had undergone the death penalty in the reign of Tiberius, by sentence of the procurator Pontius Pilate’.1

Jewish evidence for Jesus is earlier, though not entirely straightforward. The Jewish historian Josephus mentions Jesus in his account of Jewish history, written at the very end of the first century:

About this time there lived Jesus, a wise man, if indeed one ought to call him a man. For he was one who wrought surprising feats and was a teacher of such people as accept the truth gladly. He won over many Jews and many of the Greeks. He was the Messiah. When Pilate, upon hearing him accused by men of the highest standing amongst us, had condemned him to be crucified, those who had in the first place come to love him did not give up their affection for him. On the third day he appeared to them restored to life, for the prophets of God had prophesied these and countless other marvellous things about him. And the tribe of the Christians, so called after him, has still to this day not disappeared.2

Josephus was a Pharisaic Jew, and there is no evidence elsewhere in his writings that he had any sympathy ­whatsoever for the Christian movement. It seems incredible, then, that he could have written any of the phrases in italics in the above quotation. To add to the difficulty, the third-­century church father Origen, who knew Josephus’ works well, ­categorically notes that he was not a Christian – a view he could not easily have taken had he known this passage. While an earlier generation of scholars assumed that the entire paragraph was a later Christian addition, it is more common nowadays to think that it has been altered by a Christian scribe, who perhaps added the italicized sentences. Once these are removed, there is nothing that might not have been written by a first-century Jew. The original might have been something like this:

About this time there lived Jesus, a wise man. For he was one who wrought surprising feats and was a teacher of such people as accept the truth gladly. He won over many Jews and many of the Greeks. When Pilate, upon hearing him accused by men of the highest standing amongst us, had condemned him to be crucified, those who had in the first place come to love him did not give up their affection for him. And the tribe of the Christians, so called after him, has still to this day not disappeared.

Of course, a Christian editor may also have omitted certain unfavourable parts of the paragraph. The fact that it is found within a series of ‘tumults’ that took place during Pilate’s term of office actually suggests that the original ­version included something else, perhaps an account of Jesus’ disturbance in the Temple (see pp. 32–4). Josephus makes certain mistakes – for instance, there is no evidence Jesus preached to Greeks – and the reference to early Christians as a ‘tribe’ is a peculiar one. Nevertheless, this is an extremely valuable early reference to Jesus, particularly as it comes from a Jerusalem Jew who was born only a few years after Jesus’ death, who would have had access to broadly reliable information through older family members, and who might perhaps represent Jewish views of Christians at the time he wrote in late first-century Rome.

The rest of our evidence comes from Christian sources. Our earliest links with Jesus are the letters of St Paul. The great apostle founded churches throughout the eastern Mediterranean and kept in touch with his congregations by letter, many of which are still preserved in the New Testament. All date to the 50s ce; that is, around 20 years after the death of Jesus. Although a native of Tarsus (in modern Turkey), Paul had spent time in Jerusalem and was in the city in the 30s. He knew many of Jesus’ closest followers, such as Peter and other disciples, and Jesus’ brother James, who took over as leader of the Jerusalem church after a vision of the risen Jesus. Clearly Paul was in an excellent position to hear reliable information about Jesus of Nazareth, and the date of his letters makes them first-rate testimony. We might wish that the great apostle had said more about the historical man. For him, the crucial aspect of Jesus’ life was his death and resurrection; it is this that changes everything for Paul, and most of his letters are attempts to work out the meaning of this event, particularly for non-Jewish converts. Still, he records a number of other things about Jesus’ ministry: he notes his teaching on divorce (1 Corinthians 7.10–11) and on financial support for missionaries (1 Corinthians 9.14), and his views on the end of the world (1 Thessalonians 4.15–17); and Paul provides our oldest account of the Last Supper (1 Corinthians 11.23–25).

Paul’s testimony is broadly corroborated by the four New Testament Gospels, which date from around 70–100 ce. As we shall see in Part 2, the Gospels reflect the post-Easter Christian faith of the Evangelists, but this need not stop us using them as historical sources. All writing reflects the viewpoint of the author, and there never was a time when we could have had access to unbiased accounts. Even during the lifetime of Jesus, some believed in Jesus, holding him to be a prophet, a messiah and perhaps something more, while others regarded him as a charlatan or a false prophet. Ideally the historian would have access to all of these views and would strive to build up a picture that might account for them all. The fact that only biographies written by followers survive might make the task of sifting through the information and assessing its historical plausibility more difficult, but it is not impossible.

Of greatest importance to the historian is the Gospel of Mark. Scholars consider this to be the earliest Gospel – it was probably written just after 70 ce – and it seems to have been used as a major source by Matthew and Luke, both of whom adapted and edited it to reflect their own interests. At times we’ll also need to take note of another, hypothetical document known as ‘Q’, from the German Quelle, ‘source’. Although scholars are far from agreement on this matter, the dominant view is that Q represents a second source used by both Matthew and Luke. This hypothetical document can be reconstructed by isolating material shared by Matthew and Luke but not found in Mark; and it’s thought to be a written document because the sayings found in this way are broadly in the same order. The resulting material amounts to around 70 short paragraphs, mainly consisting of sayings of Jesus. The date of Q is uncertain: scholars have put it anywhere from the 50s to the 70s, but all we know for sure is that it predates Matthew and Luke. At all events, it is a second very early witness to Jesus, and gives a good indication of the kind of things Jesus taught.

Most historical Jesus scholars are a little wary of John’s Gospel. Although all the Gospels have a clear theological agenda, it seems especially pronounced in the case of John. Jesus is presented here as God incarnate, engaging in long discourses and openly discussing his status and mission with his opponents. There may of course be snippets of good historical tradition here and there, though knowing how to pinpoint them is problematic. Some scholars have given attention to texts from outside the New Testament, especially the gospels of Thomas and Peter. In their present form, however, both are second-century texts and there is no solid evidence that they contain any significantly earlier material. We shall look at these gospels in more detail in Part 2.

Given that Jesus was a peasant from an insignificant part of the Empire, we actually have surprisingly good evidence not only for his existence but for the course of his life and even the contents of his teaching. All of our sources need to be used with care, but there can be no doubt that he existed and that we can say something about him. In very general terms, our best evidence for Jesus comes from Mark and Q, and these two documents will provide the basis for the following outline. Before we begin to sketch our historical portrait, however, we need to have some idea of the times in which Jesus lived.

2

Political context and early life

Our story needs to begin more than two hundred years before Jesus, with the victorious campaigns of Alexander the Great in the third century bce. Israel was incorporated into the largest empire the world had yet known, founded not only on military conquest but on the dream of a shared language (Alexander’s own native Greek) and a shared culture (a blend of Greek ideas combined with Eastern ­philosophy, art and beliefs known as Hellenism). Jews, like other subject peoples, seem to have been relatively happy to adopt the new ways, as long as native practices and beliefs were not compromised; and Greek forms of architecture, philosophy, government and even language seem to have slowly made their way into Israel throughout this period. Jerusalem in particular was thoroughly Hellenized; paradoxically it was also the most Jewish city in the land.

When Alexander died leaving no heirs, his empire was divided between his generals. Israel came first under the rule of the Ptolemies, based in Egypt, and then of the Seleucids, based in Syria. Around 167 bce, however, there was a dramatic change. The Seleucid ruler Antiochus IV Epiphanes, for reasons that are not entirely clear, decided to speed up the process of Hellenization in the land. He set up a statue of Zeus in the Jerusalem Temple and outlawed the ­practice of the Jewish faith. Circumcision was banned, as too was abstaining from pork. Not surprisingly, violent protest soon broke out. In the Judaean town of Modein, a priestly family later known as the Maccabees (meaning ‘hammer’) took a stand against the king’s men; they refused to ­sacrifice to pagan gods and fled to the hills. Taking advantage of Seleucid difficulties at home, the Maccabees gathered supporters, and first through guerrilla tactics and later on by means of a well-trained army, succeeded in establishing religious freedom and then national independence. The Maccabees set themselves up as national leaders, claiming the title of High Priest and later King. Known under their family name as the Hasmonaeans, they would rule for a century.

Despite their impressive political success, however, not everyone supported the Hasmonaeans. Although the family were priests, they did not belong to the Zadokite line, which had traditionally supplied the Jewish High Priests. The priestly group responsible for the Dead Sea Scrolls withdrew from Jerusalem into the wilderness at this period in protest at the Hasmonaean usurpation of the high priesthood. Others objected to their combination of the highest priesthood with kingship, arguing that the two roles were incompatible. But political independence guaranteed religious freedom, and most people were only too happy to exchange the hated Seleucids for native rulers.

By the mid first century bce, however, dynastic squabbling eventually led to the end of the Hasmonaeans, and a new superpower was only too eager to assert itself in the region. In 63 bce, the Roman general Pompey marched into Jerusalem and demanded tribute, and by 40 bce, the Romans had installed their own man, Herod I (or Herod the Great), as King of the Jews. In many respects, Herod’s was a successful reign: he presented himself as a major player on the world stage, offering gifts and benefactions throughout the eastern Mediterranean; at home he embarked on a series of impressive building projects, including a new harbour at Caesarea on Sea and a grand refurbishment of the Jerusalem Temple. Throughout his long reign he kept order in the land and gave Rome no cause to send in troops. But all of this came at a cost: He...

Table of contents

• JESUS
• Part 1 Jesus of Nazareth
• Part 2 Jesus’ legacy