Jesus the Apocalyptic Prophet

Cecilia Wassen, Tobias Hägerland, Cian J. Power

• Publisher: T&T Clark
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9780567693792
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Studies

In this new English language translation of Den okände Jesus (The Unknown Jesus), Cecilia Wassén and Tobias Hägerland consider Jesus as an apocalyptic prophetic figure within the context of first-century Judaism and reconstruct the life of Jesus from his birth to his death, with a focus on understanding him in the context of his own time and place. Engaging critically with the sources, they examine Jesus' life in order of events and draw together the threads of scholarly discussion on the history, archaeology and geography of first-century Galilee, forming a complete picture of Jesus' world suitable for non-specialists and university students. Wassén and Hägerland provide a strictly historical reconstruction, distinguishing between the rhetorical aims of the New Testament texts and the information about the past that these texts contain. They enhance the texts surrounding Jesus in the context of first-century Galilee with historical and archaeological reflections and discussion, including penetrating insights from the Dead Sea Scrolls. Illustrated throughout with photographs taken by the authors specifically to offer insights into the world of Jesus and the New Testament writings, Jesus the Apocalyptic Prophet provides a deeply informed introduction to Jesus in his first-century context.

1

Jesus’ birth and life in Galilee

Jesus’ birth

What do we know about Jesus’ birth? Almost nothing. Historical details include the name of Jesus’ parents and the approximate date, at the end of Herod the Great’s life (d. 4 BCE). What day of the year Jesus was born is not mentioned. The idea that Jesus was born on 25 December is a late Christian tradition linked to Saturnalia, the joyous Roman festival honouring the deity Saturn, which was celebrated at the end of December (Dec. 17–23). More specifically, 25 December was the festival of the birth the ancient Roman sun god Sol Invictus (‘Unconquered Sun’) and the official day of the winter solstice according to the Roman calendar. Christians appropriated the festival and applied it to the nativity of their Lord, Christ. Besides the indication of date and the name of Jesus’ parents, no reliable historical information about Jesus’ birth appears in the Gospels. Chronologically speaking, of course, his birth constitutes the event furthest removed in time from the Gospel authors. The earliest preserved account of Jesus’ life is the Gospel of Mark, which was written c. 65–70 CE, thus roughly forty years after Jesus’s death. Jesus was born at least thirty years earlier. Since the birth narratives occur only in Matthew and Luke, which may have been written in the 80s, they were written down nearly ninety years after Jesus’ birth (6–4 BCE). We may assume that Jesus’ origins first became important when Jesus came to be regarded as a divine figure, which happened gradually. In other words, at a much later date Christ-believers speculated about the miracles that must have taken place in connection with his birth, as with the births of other great men that were accompanied by signs, such as celestial events and extraordinary dreams. Here we may mention legends about Alexander the Great, whose mother Olympias, according to Plutarch, dreamt that a ball of fire entered her body when she conceived Alexander. The births of both Augustus and the mythical Mithras were preceded by celestial signs. In particular, a new star in the sky could signal the birth of a great man.

Matthew’s and Luke’s accounts of Jesus’ birth are also radically different. Although both authors maintain that Mary was a virgin when she conceived and that Jesus was born in Bethlehem, the stories differ regarding practically everything else. It is clear that theological interests steer the evangelists, who want to stress the fact that Jesus was born of a virgin in David’s city, Bethlehem (1 Sam. 16). Because they also know that Jesus was from Nazareth they offer varying solutions for how he could nevertheless have been born in Bethlehem. Matthew states that Herod the Great massacred the young boys of Bethlehem and that Jesus’ family therefore fled to Egypt, later settling in Nazareth. The massacre is not mentioned in other historical sources; rather it was created by Matthew, who presents Jesus as a new Moses. For Moses, too, was hidden away from an evil ruler who killed all the young Israelite boys. It is evident that the well-known story of the Israelite people’s sojourn in Egypt and their flight from that land – the exodus – underlies Matthew’s tale of how Jesus fled to Egypt and later returned to Israel (Mt. 2.13–23). Here he wants to show that Jesus’ own story in some way corresponds to the history of the people as a whole; Jesus becomes Israel personified. In Matthew’s version, then, Jesus’ family were living in Bethlehem and Mary gave birth to Jesus at home. According to Luke it was instead a census of ‘all the world’, that is, the Roman world, that brought Joseph and Mary from Nazareth to Bethlehem, where the inn was full and where Mary gave birth to her son in a stable. Whereas other censuses did take place in the empire, the census which is supposed to have taken place in the time of Herod the Great is otherwise unknown. In addition, the idea that throughout in the Roman Empire people had to make their way to the cities where their ancestors had lived, in Joseph’s case around 1,000 years earlier, is, historically speaking, highly implausible and would seem to indicate a fictional account.

Neither Mark nor John addresses Jesus’ birth and neither is aware that Jesus may have come into being through the Holy Spirit. In this context it is interesting to note that Paul, too, seems completely unaware of any virgin birth. Rather he states with certainty that Jesus ‘was born of the seed [Greek sperma] of David according to the flesh’ (Rom. 1.3). Paul further explains (Rom. 1.4) that Jesus ‘was declared to be Son of God with power according to the spirit of holiness by resurrection from the dead.’ In other words, he became Son of God at the resurrection. In Mark’s account Jesus receives the title Son of God at baptism when a voice is heard from heaven: ‘You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased’ (Mk 1.11). According to these authors, then, someone can be Son of God in various senses, not just biologically.

We may wonder how both Matthew and Luke can refer to Jesus’ ancestors through Joseph and in addition claim that Jesus is Son of God through the Holy Spirit. Yet these apparently contradictory understandings were not problematic as divine paternity was a traditional way of expressing a close relationship between a ruler and the gods without thereby denying the existence of a human father. Traditionally Israel’s and Judah’s kings were seen as God’s special agents, a connection between God and rulers that could be expressed as a father–son relationship. In Ps. 2, a hymn that may have been used in association with a royal enthronement ceremony, God says of the king: ‘You are my son; today I have begotten you’ (v. 7). The notion that the ruler was in some sense a son of God was a common one in the ancient world. In the Graeco-Roman world, for example, the king or emperor was the son of Zeus (or Jupiter). Likewise Alexander the Great was not only the son of Philip II, but also a son of Zeus-Ammon (according to Plutarch). Since the Roman emperors were declared divine at death their sons became sons of gods as well. Legends also existed about sexual liaisons between a male god and a human woman, and these may have inspired the early Christ-believers as they retold traditions about Jesus. Thus, the mythical hero Hercules was the son of a woman, Alcemene, and the high god Zeus. Suetonius relates that Augustus (Octavian) miraculously came into being when his mother Atia was impregnated by a snake, which in fact was the god Apollo, while she was sleeping in Apollo’s temple. Additionally, he had a human father, Octavius. Ideas like these – the king as son of God, divine impregnations – evidently influenced Christ-believers when, long after Jesus’ death, they came to interpret and give expression to Jesus’ greatness.

After the narratives of Jesus’ birth in Matthew and Luke, it is only Luke who mentions that Jesus attracted attention as a twelve-year-old when he was debating with the teachers in the temple during a pilgrimage to Jerusalem with his family. According to Luke, Jesus stayed behind when the rest of the company travelled home and it took the family a day to notice that their son had not come with them. When they eventually find him they are met by a boy who, unsympathetic to their concern, says: ‘Why were you searching for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?’ (Lk. 2.49). This is a charming legend which most likely lacks historical value. A hero figure showing himself to be unusually gifted at an early age is part of the common image of an ideal character. The narrative can be compared to how the Roman-Jewish history writer Flavius Josephus (37/38 to just after 100 CE) describes himself as a young man in his autobiography The Life. There he states that from when he was fourteen years old the senior priests and other leading men often sought him out to get his advice and guidance in legal matters, which similarly appears fictional.

Jesus’ family

Jesus grew up in a small unremarkable village in Galilee of around 400 inhabitants. Coming from Nazareth was nothing to boast about, which John indicates when, on hearing about Jesus, Nathanael exclaims: ‘Can anything good come out of Nazareth?’ (Jn 1.45-46). The most important identity markers were a person’s family and hometown, which is also evident in the standard designation of Jesus as ‘Jesus of Nazareth’, or in the reference to him as ‘Jesus son of Joseph from Nazareth’ (Jn 1.45). According to Luke, who also wrote Acts, Paul opens a speech in Jerusalem with the words ‘I am a Jew, from Tarsus in Cilicia, a citizen of an important city’ (Acts 21.39). In contrast to Paul, Jesus had no important city as his home, although it was very close to the town of Sepphoris. This town, as we will discuss further below, was expanding heavily at the time of Jesus. In spite of his menial background, there is a strong tradition that Jesus belonged to a royal lineage, that of David. Both Matthew and Luke ascribe Jesus with a genealogy that presumes that his father Joseph was of Davidic descent. Although the genealogies differ radically – even by the time we reach Jesus’ paternal grandfather, who was either Jacob (Mt. 1.16) or Heli (Lk. 3.23) – they both maintain that the family derives from the House of David. The two genealogies show how important family identity was for an individual’s status in antiquity and Jesus’ heritage gave him great honour (Hanson and Oakman 2008: 48). As mentioned, Paul, who knew Jesus’ family, also takes it as given that Jesus was descended from David (Rom. 1.3). Although one could suspect that the claim of a royal descent was a later invention made up by Christ-believers to support their claim of Jesus’ messianic identity, there are several factors that speak against this according to John Meier (1991: 216–19). First, there was a widespread early tradition of a Davidic lineage (se also e.g. Mk 10.47; 12.35-37; Mt. 9.27; Acts 13.22-23); second, contemporary opponents could easily have disproved the claim, had it been false. In addition, the expectations of a Messiah were rather vague at this time, as we will demonstrate below, and a royal descent was not necessary for a person to fit a messianic role. But despite its allegedly noble lineage, Jesus’ family belonged to the large proportion of the population that lived in very simple conditions. His family supported themselves through building work. Doubtless, there were some skilled craftsmen and artists of various kinds in the Roman Empire who were able to become wealthy by their craft, but the hometown of Nazareth speaks against Jesus’ family having a large income. In ancient society there was a very small, extremely rich upper class, while a large proportion of the population had few resources. Unlike in the Western world of today, the middle class was not especially extensive. Consequently, at the outset Jesus’ life was like the lives of the vast majority of people in antiquity. Everyday life consisted of hard labour for all the members of the family, which was absolutely necessary if a household was to survive.

Poverty is a relative term. From a modern, Western perspective, peasants and fishermen might be classed as fairly poor, especially in comparison with the wealthy elite, who were obviously well provided for with slaves and retainers who worked on their behalf. But the peasants and fishermen who belonged to Jesus’ circle did not regard themselves as poor, as they could support themselves. Jesus says to the disciples, for example: ‘You always have the poor with you’ (Mk 14.7). From their perspective, ‘the poor’ were other people, such as beggars, not they themselves. Jesus was the eldest of several siblings. According to Mark he had four brothers and at least two sisters (Mk 6.3). Although later church theologians tried to interpret Jesus’ brothers and sisters as his cousins or as Joseph’s children from a previous marriage, there is nothing in the text that would indicate this. Based on the text alone, Mary seems to have had at least seven children who reached adulthood, but there may have been more since the number of sisters is not specified. Such a large number of children was typical for the time, as with most premodern societies before effective means of contraception were available and when women married young and bore children as long as they were fertile. It is estimated that on average families had between six and nine children. In addition to the surviving children it is possible that Mary and Joseph had lost one or more children, as infant mortality was high. The names of Jesus and his siblings are traditional Jewish names – James (Jacob), Joses (Joseph), Judas (Judah) and Simon (Simeon) – that testify to the fact that Jesus was raised in a normal Jewish home. ‘Jesus’ is the Greek for the Hebrew name Yeshua, which is a variant of Joshua, Yoshua, a common biblical name. Mary’s name is Miriam in Hebrew and was the most common name among Jewish women at this time, which explains the prevalence of the name in the Gospels.

Jesus’ mother tongue was Aramaic, a Semitic language closely related to Hebrew. The Jews had spoken this language since the end of the exile (from the end of the fifth century BCE on), when Palestine was part of the Persian Empire in which Aramaic was the official language. Jesus’ Aramaic shows through a few times in the Gospels when Aramaic phrases turn up in the Greek text, for example ‘Talitha cum’ in Mk 5.41, which reads: ‘He took her by the hand and said to her, “Talitha cum,” which means, “Little girl, get up!”’ The traditional Israelite language, Hebrew, was preserved by the reading aloud of the Torah and other ancient Hebrew scriptures in the synagogue, though translations of the scriptures into both Greek (the Septuagint) and Aramaic (the targums) were needed. In this period Jews primarily wrote new books in Aramaic and Greek, but also in Hebrew (among the Essenes at Qumran; see ch. 2). Ever since the conquests of Alexander the Great (356–323 BCE), Greek had been the common language of the Hellenistic world which the Romans inherited. Roman officials also used Latin, which can be seen in inscriptions on buildings in Palestine, but the language was not widely known in the land. It is unclear whether Jesus learned any Greek in his small village; perhaps, like many others, he knew a few polite phrases and possibly learned a little more through his work as a craftsman, which we turn to below.

Jesus’ life before he met John the Baptist

After the events of Jesus’ birth and childhood in the Gospels, Joseph disappears from view, a fact which none of the evangelists regard as meriting explanation. It is worth noting that Jesus is called ‘son of Mary’ (Mk 6.3) as an adult, which indicates that Joseph had been dead for a long time. He may have been considerably older than Mary. According to Roman custom it was usual for men to marry at a somewhat older age, around thirty, whilst women often married at puberty. Roman custom would certainly also have ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title Page
• Title Page
• Contents
• Preface
• List of abbreviations
• Chronology
• Acknowledgements
• Map
• Introduction
• 1 Jesus’ birth and life in Galilee
• 2 Judaism in the time of Jesus
• 3 The Jesus of the Gospels and the Jesus of history
• 4 John the Baptist
• 5 The prophet leader
• 6 The kingdom
• 7 In conflict with Satan
• 8 Jesus and the laws
• 9 The anointed one
• 10 The final week
• 11 From a Jewish group to a multi-ethnic movement in the Roman Empire
• Glossary of names and terms
• Index
• Copyright