If we cast our net over all surviving Greek and Roman (pagan) sources for the first hundred years after Jesus’ death (30–130 CE), these two brief references are all we find.1
In addition to pagan sources of the first century, we have non-Christian Jewish sources, though not nearly as many. But there is one, and only one, that does mention Jesus. This is the famous Jewish historian, Flavius Josephus, who around 90 CE wrote a twenty-volume history of the Jewish people from the time of Adam and Eve down to his own day. In this lengthy book he does not talk about Jesus at great length, but he does refer to him twice. In one reference he simply identifies a man named James as “the brother of Jesus, who is called the messiah” (Antiquities of the Jews, 20.9.1).
The other reference is more extensive, but it is also problematic. In it Josephus seems to confess that he himself is a Christian, but we know from his other works that he was not (he wrote an autobiography, among other things). Scholars have long known that Josephus’s writings were not copied by Jews throughout the Middle Ages, since he was (probably rightly) considered a traitor to the Jewish cause in the disastrous war with Rome in which Jerusalem was destroyed in 70 CE. His writings were copied instead by Christians. And at the point where Josephus discusses Jesus, it appears that a Christian scribe made a few choice insertions, in order to clarify who Jesus really was. I have placed the sections possibly inserted by the scribe in brackets:
At this time there appeared Jesus, a wise man [if indeed one should call him a man, for] he was a doer of startling deeds, a teacher of people who receive the truth with pleasure. And he gained a following both among many Jews and among many of Greek origin. [He was the Messiah.] And when Pilate, because of an accusation made by the leading men among us, condemned him to the cross, those who had loved him previously did not cease to do so. [For he appeared to them on the third day, living again, just as the divine prophets had spoken of these and countless other wondrous things about him.] And up until this very day the tribe of Christians, named after him, has not died out. (Antiquities 18.3.3)2
It is certainly worth knowing that the most prominent Jewish historian of the first century knew at least something about Jesus—specifically that he was a teacher who allegedly did wonderful deeds, had a large following, and was condemned to be crucified by Pontius Pilate. This account confirms some of the most important aspects of Jesus’ life and death as recounted in the Gospels. But it doesn’t indicate exactly what he did or said, or what circumstances led to his accusation and death, even if you include the bracketed comments.
There are no other non-Christian sources—Jewish or pagan—from the first hundred years after his death that mention Jesus.
There are, of course, later Christian sources—lots of other Gospels, for example—from the second and third centuries and later. We will be looking at these sources in the next chapter. There we will see that these other accounts are interesting in the extreme and well worth reading. But they do not, as a rule, provide us with reliable historical information. They are all later than the Gospels of the New Testament and are filled with legendary, though intriguing, stories of the Son of God.
One might think that the other books of the New Testament could provide us with additional information about Jesus, but here again there simply is not much to go on. The apostle Paul, for example, talks a lot about Jesus’ death and resurrection, but says very little about Jesus’ life—what he said and did before he died. In a few places he provides confirmation of what the Gospels report: that Jesus was a Jew who ministered to Jews; that he had brothers, one of whom was named James, and twelve disciples. He mentions Jesus’ words at the Last Supper and two other sayings of Jesus: that his followers should not get divorced and that they should pay their preachers.3 Apart from this Paul doesn’t tell us much. The other writers of the New Testament tell us even less.
The results of this quick survey should be clear: if we want to know about the life of the historical Jesus, we are more or less restricted to using the four Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. These are not disinterested accounts by eyewitnesses, however. They are books written decades after the fact by authors who had heard stories about Jesus from the oral tradition, stories that had been altered and even made up over time. There were lots of discrepancies in these stories, and the Gospel writers themselves changed them as they saw fit. How is it possible to use such sources to find out what really happened historically? In fact, there are ways. Scholars have devised some methodological principles that, if followed closely and rigorously, can give us some indications of who Jesus really was.
Criteria for Establishing the Veracity of Historical Material
There is nothing overly complicated about these principles—they make sense, given everything that we have seen about the Gospel traditions so far. The first should seem a bit obvious:
1. The earlier the better. Since the traditions about Jesus changed over time as stories about him were told and retold, and as the written sources were altered, amplified, and edited, it makes sense that the earlier sources should be more trustworthy than the later ones. Gospels from the eighth century will not, as a rule, be as historically reliable as Gospels from the first century (although they may be terrifically fun to read).
John is the latest of the four New Testament Gospels and tends to be less historically reliable than the others. It presents views of Jesus that represent later developments within the tradition—for example, that he was the Passover lamb who died on the day the Passover lambs were slaughtered, or that he claimed to be equal with God. This doesn’t mean that we can completely discount everything found in John; on the contrary, we need to apply the other criteria to its accounts as well. But generally speaking, earlier is better.
Our earliest surviving Gospel is Mark, and it may contain more reliable information than John. But Mark was not the only source for later Gospels. There was probably another Gospel source that may have been produced as early as Mark and that no longer survives. In an earlier chapter I pointed out that Matthew and Luke got many of their stories from Mark, which they used as a source. There are numerous other traditions about Jesus in both Matthew and Luke that cannot be found in Mark. Most, but not all, of these traditions are sayings of Jesus, for example, the Lord’s prayer and the Beatitudes (found in Matthew and Luke, but not in Mark). Since the later Gospels could not have gotten these traditions from Mark, where did they get them? There are good reasons for thinking that Matthew did not get them from Luke, nor Luke from Matthew. And so, since the nineteenth century, scholars have maintained that they both got them from some other source. The German scholars who came up with this view called this other source Quelle, the German word for “source.” This unknown additional “source” is called simply Q.4
Q then is the source of material found in Matthew and Luke but not found in Mark. This material appears to have come from a lost Gospel accessible to the two later Gospel writers. We do not know everything that was in Q (or that was not in Q), but whenever Matthew and Luke agree word for word on a story not found in Mark, it is thought to came from Q. So Mark and Q are our two earliest sources. Matthew used one or more other written or oral sources for his Gospel, and these we call Matthean sources, or M. The sources for material special to Luke we call L. So prior to the Gospels of Matthew and Luke there were four available sources: Mark, Q, M, and L (both M and L are possibly multiple sources). These are our earliest materials for reconstructing the life of Jesus.5
2. The more the better. Suppose there is a story of Jesus found in only one source; it is possible that the author of that source invented the tradition himself. But what if a story is found independently in more than one source? That story cannot have been made up by either source, since they are independent; it must predate them both. Stories found in multiple, independent sources therefore have a better likelihood of being older, and possibly authentic. (Note: if the same story is found in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, that is not three sources for the story, but
one source: Matthew and Luke both got it from Mark.)
For example, both Matthew and Luke independently indicate that Jesus was raised in Nazareth, but their stories about how he got there differ, so one came from M and the other from L. Mark indicates the same thing. So does John, which did not use any of the Synoptics or their sources. Conclusion? It is independently attested: Jesus probably came from Nazareth. Another example: Jesus is associated with John the Baptist at the beginning of Mark, at the beginning of Q (Matthew and Luke both preserve portions of John’s proclamation that don’t appear in Mark), and at the beginning of John. Conclusion? Jesus probably associated with John the Baptist at the beginning of his ministry.
3. It is better to cut against the grain. One thing we have repeatedly seen is that discrepancies have been created in our stories about Jesus because different storytellers and authors changed the traditions in order to make them conform more closely with their own views. How might we account for traditions of Jesus that clearly do not fit with a “Christian” agenda, that is, that do not promote the views and perspectives of the people telling the stories? Traditions like that would not have been made up by the Christian storytellers, and so they are quite likely to be historically accurate. This is sometimes, confusingly, called the “criterion of dissimilarity.” Any tradition of Jesus that is dissimilar to what the early Christians would have likely wanted to say about him is more likely authentic. Take the two previous examples. You can see why Christians might want to say that Jesus came from Bethlehem: that was where the son of David was to come from (Micah 5:2). But who would make up a story that the Savior came from Nazareth, a little one-horse town that no one had ever heard of? This tradition does not advance any Christian agenda. Somewhat ironically, then, it is probably historically accurate. Or take John the Baptist. In Mark, our earliest account, John baptizes Jesus. Would Christians have made this up? Remember, in the early Christian tradition it was believed that the person who was spiritually superior baptized the one who was spiritually inferior. Would a Christian make up the idea that Jesus was baptized by, and therefore inferior to, someone else? Moreover, John was baptizing “for the forgiveness of sins” (Mark 1:4). Would someone want to claim that Jesus needed to be forgiven for his sins? It seems highly unlikely. Conclusion? Jesus probably really did associate with John the Baptist at the beginning of his ministry, and probably was baptized by him.
4. It has to fit the context. Since Jesus was a Jew who lived in first-century Palestine, any tradition about him has to fit in his own historical context to be plausible. Lots of our later Gospels—written in the third or fourth century, in other parts of the world—say things about Jesus that do not make sense in his own context. These things can be eliminated as historically implausible. But there are implausibilities even in our four canonical Gospels. In the Gospel of John, chapter 3, Jesus has a famous conversation with Nicodemus in which he says, “You must be born again.” The Greek word translated “again” actually has two meanings: it can mean not only “a second time” but also “from above.” Whenever it is used elsewhere in John, it means “from above” (John 19:11, 23). That is what Jesus appears to mean in John 3 when he speaks with Nicodemus: a person must be born from above in order to have eternal life in heaven above. Nicodemus misunderstands, though, and thinks Jesus intends the other meaning of the word, that he has to be born a second time. “How can I crawl back into my mother’s womb?” he asks, out of some frustration. Jesus corrects him: he is not talking about a second physical birth, but a heavenly birth, from above.
This conversation with Nicodemus is predicated on the circumstance that a certain Greek word has two meanings (a double entendre). Absent the double entendre, the conversation makes little sense. The problem is this: Jesus and this Jewish leader in Jerusalem would not have been speaking Greek, but Aramaic. But the Aramaic word for “from above” does not also mean “second time.” This is a double entendre that works only in Greek. So it looks as though this conversation could not have happened—at least not as it is described in the Gospel of John.
These then are some of the criteria that scholars use to examine the various traditions of Jesus, especially as they are found in the New Testament Gospels. The careful and rigorous application of these criteria can lead to some positive results. We probably can know some things about the historical Jesus. What, then, can we know?
JESUS THE APOCALYPTIC PROPHET
For over a century now, since the landmark publication of Albert Schweitzer’s masterpiece, The Quest of the Historical Jesus,6 the majority of scholars in Europe and North America have understood Jesus as a Jewish apocalyptic prophet.7 A good deal of work on the subject has been done since Schweitzer, of course, who did not rigorously apply the various criteria that I have laid out (they were developed after his day). But his instincts appear to have been right.
The Teachings of Jesus
Like other apocalypticists of his day, Jesus saw the world in dualistic terms, filled with the forces of good and evil. The current age was controlled by the forces of evil—the Devil, demons, disease, disasters, and death; but God was soon to intervene in this wicked age to overthrow the forces of evil and bring in his good kingdom, the Kingdom of God, in which there would be no more pain, misery, or suffering. Jesus’ followers could expect this kingdom to arrive soon—in fact, in their lifetimes. It would be brought by a cosmic judge of the earth, whom Jesus called the Son of Man (alluding to a passage in the Jewish Scriptures, Daniel 7:13–14). When the Son of Man arrived there would be a judgment of the earth, in which the wicked would be destroyed but the righteous rewarded. Those who were suffering pain and oppression now would be exalted then; those who had sided with evil and as a result were prospering now would be abased then. People needed to repent of their evil ways and prepare for the coming of the Son of Man and the Kingdom of God that would appear in his wake, for it was to happen very soon.
You don’t hear this view of Jesus very often in Sunday School or from the pulpit. But it is the view that has been taught for many years in leading seminaries and divinity schools throughout the country. There are strong and compelling arguments for thinking of Jesus in these apocalyptic terms. Most important, the traditions that present Jesus this way, all of them from the New Testament Gospels, are the ones that pass our various criteria of authenticity.
We have already seen some of the evidence that this is the earliest view found in the Gospels. As I pointed out in a previous chapter, it is in the Synoptic Gospels that Jesus preaches the coming Kingdom of God. This Kingdom of God is not “heaven”—the place you go to when you die (as in later Christian tradition; I’ll discuss this further in chapter 7). It is a real kingdom, here on earth, which will be ruled by God through his Messiah, a utopian kingdom where the first will be last and the last first. Only in the last Gospel, John, does Jesus no longer preach that this kingdom is arriving soon. And why is this teaching not in the last of our Gospels? No doubt because the kingdom never did arrive, and the later Gospel writer was forced to reinterpret Jesus’ message for his own day. The earliest Gospel traditions, though, portray Jesus’ message as about the coming kingdom.
In fact, not only is this message generally found in our earlier sources, it is a leading message of our very earliest sources, Mark and Q. In Mark, Jesus says:
Whoever is ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of that one will the Son of Man be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels…. Truly I tell you, there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see that the Kingdom of God has come in power. (Mark 8:38–9:1)
And in those days, after that affliction, the sun will grow dark and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will be falling from heaven, and the powers in the sky will be shaken; and then they will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds with great power and glory. And then he will send forth his angels and he will gather his elect from the four winds, from the end of earth to t
he end of heaven…. Truly I tell you, this generation will not pass away before all these things take place. (Mark 13:24–27, 30)
The Son of Man is coming, he will judge the world, those who side with Jesus will be rewarded, others will be punished, and it will happen within Jesus’ own generation. This apocalyptic message is found throughout our earliest accounts of Jesus’ proclamation.
Consider what he says in Luke and Matthew—not in Mark, thus from Q:
For just as the flashing lightning lights up the earth from one part of the sky to the other, so will the Son of Man be in his day…. And just as it was in the days of Noah, so will it be in the days of the Son of Man. They were eating, drinking, marrying, and giving away in marriage, until the day that Noah went into the ark and the flood came and destroyed them all. So too will it be on the day when the Son of Man is revealed. (Luke 17:24; 26–27, 30; cf. Matthew 24:27, 37–39)
And you, be prepared, because you do not know the hour when the Son of Man is coming. (Luke 12:39; Matthew 24:44)
Jesus preaches a similar message in the material that Matthew drew from his M source(s):
Just as the weeds are gathered and burned with fire, so will it be at the culmination of the age. The Son of Man will send forth his angels, and they will gather from his kingdom every cause of sin and all who do evil, and they will cast them into the furnace of fire. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Then the righteous will shine forth as the sun, in the kingdom of their father. (Matthew 13:40–43)
If one of our criteria is that we look for independent attestation of traditions of Jesus from multiple sources, the idea that Jesus preached the imminent arrival of the Son of Man in judgment on the earth passes with flying colors.
Jesus, Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible (And Why We Don't Know About Them) Page 17