Ideas

by Peter Watson

  Within this post-Antiochus Epiphanes world, and in the years preceding the birth of Jesus Christ, and despite the power of the Hasidim, Judaism continued to develop, and took four main forms. What happened subsequently cannot be understood without some grasp of these four developments.

  The Sadducees were priests, sometimes described as the aristocracy of Jewish society, who were more open than most to foreign ideas and influences. They may have derived their name from Zadok, a high priest in Davidic times, though there are alternative explanations. Politically, they favoured peaceful co-operation with whichever occupying power happened to be governing the country. In religious terms they were characterised by a literal interpretation of the Torah. This did not make them as conservative as it might have done, however, because their literal beliefs led them to oppose the extension of the Torah into areas not specified in scriptures. Since they confined their Bible to the Pentateuch, they had no notion of the Messiah, nor any belief in resurrection.54

  The idea of resurrection seems to have first developed around 160 BC, during the time of religious martyrdom, and as a response to it (the martyrs were surely not dying for ever?). It is first mentioned in the book of Daniel. We saw earlier how the idea of Sheol had evolved during exile, and then into a rudimentary concept of heaven and hell, and how the Jews may have garnered the notion of a covenant with God from Zoroastrian sources picked up in Bablyon. The same may be true of resurrection, which was another Zoroastrian idea. Although Zoroaster had said that all souls would have to cross a bridge at death, to reach eternal bliss, when the unrighteous would fall into the netherworld, he also said that, after ‘limited time’, there was to be bodily resurrection. The world would undergo a great ordeal in which all the metal in the mountains of the world would be melted, so the earth would be covered by a great stream of molten metal. For the righteous, the molten metal would not be a problem–‘It will be like walking on warm milk’–but the wicked would perish, the world would be purged of the sinful and, with only the righteous alive, the earth itself would now be paradise.55 As many commentators have observed, the Jews’ predicament, of being surrounded by powerful neighbours, was a natural setting for Zoroastrian beliefs, of a great conflagration, in which great evil powers would be destroyed, and the righteous would be resurrected. It was in such a scenario that the idea of a Messiah, who would lead the righteous to victory, also arose, but that came later.

  The Pharisees were a diametrically opposite group to the Sadducees. They were a lay movement, very conservative, but extended the Torah to all areas of life, even those not specified in the scriptures. They were obsessed with ritual purity and held a deep belief in the Messiah and in resurrection. For them the synagogue rather than the Temple was the main way they spread their beliefs. ‘They yearned for God to bring about the last days but did nothing to initiate the End themselves.’56

  The Zealots were the extreme party–indeed, the word has entered the language as the symbol of extremism. Their main aim, unlike the Sadducees, was to ‘purge’ Israel of foreign ‘defilement’ and they were willing to go to war if necessary to achieve their aim. They believed that ‘the people of God’ would triumph.57

  The Essenes held property in common and ate and lived together. It was in all probability an Essene community that lived at Qumran, where the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered after the Second World War.58 They were pious, hostile to other Jews, and held elaborate initiation rites. Their most notable idea was that they were living ‘at the edge of time, in the very last days’, and they spent those days preparing for the coming of God, who would relieve them of the world’s bleak political realities and restore the Jews to glory. They believed that there would be a Messiah, who would lead them to Paradise (some even believed in two Messiahs, one priestly, the other military, a return to ancient Mesopotamian ideas). Essene writings were found at Masada, where the sect was destroyed.

  The idea of a Messiah (‘the anointed’) is, according to some scholars, implicit in Judaism. It is related to the idea there would come a new age of peace, righteousness and justice, following cataclysmic disorder.59 It was also believed that there was a predetermined history of the world, from Creation to Eschaton (‘the end’, in the sense of the end of time, which ‘will bring God’s definitive and ultimate intervention in history’).60 The name given to this set of ideas is ‘apocalyptic eschatology’: a period of catastrophe, followed by the revelation of hidden things (which is the meaning of apocalypse), and the ultimate triumph of God. And, to quote Paula Fredericksen again, ‘happy people do not write apocalypses’. The Messiah (mashiah) was an important factor in apocalyptic eschatology. There are some thirty-nine references to such a figure in the Old Testament where, to begin with, the term means king. ‘Jewish tradition gave pride of place to the expectation that a descendant of David would arise in the last days to lead the people of God…A human descendant of David would pave the way for a period of bliss for Israel.’61 At this time, the Israelites would return to the vegetarian diet they had at the Creation.62 This Messiah figure was not a supernatural phenomenon at first; in the Psalms of Solomon (Apocrypha), for instance, he is a man like other men–there is no doubt about his humanity.63 The Messiah only became supernatural because the political situation of the Jews deteriorated, became ‘so bleak that only a supernatural act could rescue them’.64

  By the time of Jesus, the whole world of which Palestine formed a small part had to come to terms with Rome, the greatest occupying power the world had ever known. For a fundamentalist people, such as the Jews, for whom political occupation was the same as religious occupation, the world must have seemed bleaker than ever. In earlier bleak times, as we have seen, there had been an outbreak of prophecy and now, beginning in the second century BC, there was another, though this time, given that Zoroastrian ideas had been incorporated into the Jewish scheme of things, apocalyptic eschatology shaped these beliefs. Only a Messiah with supernatural powers could save the Jews. And it was into this world that Jesus was born. In Greek the term Messiah is translated as Christos, which is how, in time, this became Jesus’ name, rather than his title.65 In this way, too, general prophecies about the Messiah came to be applied to Jesus Christ.

  Before we come to Jesus, we need to examine one other factor–the role of Herod and the Temple he rebuilt in Jerusalem. By the time Herod became a satellite king of the Romans in 37 BC, Palestine had been under Roman rule for a quarter of a century. The Jews had never stopped squabbling among themselves, as well as resisting foreign rule where they could. Herod had his own contradictory ideas and, as Paul Johnson says, he was a baffling figure, ‘both a Jew and an anti-Jew’.66 When he took power, one of his first acts was to execute forty-six members of the Sanhedrin, the Committee of Elders, who had been chiefly responsible for extending Mosaic law into traditional secular areas. Like Antiochus Epiphanes before him, he appointed more sophisticated, less fundamental figures in their stead, at the same time limiting the Sanhedrin to a religious court only.67

  Herod agreed with many sophisticated people that Palestine was backward and could benefit from closer acquaintance with the Greek way of life. Accordingly he built new towns, new harbours, new theatres. But he headed off the kind of revolt that Antiochus Epiphanes had provoked by a massive rebuilding of the Temple. This began in 22 BC, and took forty-six years to complete, meaning that the great Temple was under construction throughout Jesus’ life. The scale of works was impressive. It took two years just to assemble and train the workforce of ten thousand. A thousand priests were needed to oversee the workforce, because only priests could enter restricted holy areas. The finished Temple was twice the size of what had gone before (about twice as high as what can be seen today on what Jews call the Temple Mount). It was a colourful and exotic place. There was a vast outer courtyard, open to all, where money-changers had their stalls and where they exchanged coins from any currency into the ‘holy shekels’ needed to pay Temple fees. (It was these money-changers to whom Jesus
would take such exception.) In this outer section, there were large signs in Latin and Greek which warned non-Jews that they risked death if they went further. Beyond the outer courtyard was a series of smaller ones for special Jewish groups, such as women and lepers. The inner courtyard was open only to male Jews. The Temple was always crowded and busy. In addition to the thousands of priests who worked there, large numbers of scribes and Levites helped in the ceremonies, either as musicians, engineers or cleaners.68 Only the high priest could enter the central compartment, the Holy of Holies, and even then only on the Day of Atonement every year.69

  By tradition two lambs were sacrificed at dawn and dusk each day, but every pilgrim could offer their own individual sacrifices. This practice was accompanied by singing and music and wine drinking, and needed, we are told, an average of thirteen priests per sacrifice. One description of the Temple refers to seven hundred priests performing sacrifices, which means that more than fifty animals were killed at that one time. No wonder that their squeals, added to the music and chanting, struck many people as barbaric.70

  The Temple was an impressive site. But under Herod the Jews were no happier in their skin, Palestine was still a client state, and orthodox Judaism still as uncompromising as ever. In AD 66, seventy years after Herod’s death, the Jews revolted again, and this time were put down with such vehemence that his magnificent Temple was completely destroyed and the Jews were sent away from Palestine for two thousand years. Between Herod’s death and the destruction of his Temple, there occurred one of the most decisive, yet mysterious, events in world history: the advent of Jesus.

  Did Jesus exist? Was he a person or an idea? Can we ever know? If he didn’t exist, why did the faith he founded catch on so quickly? These are questions which have provoked scholars since the Enlightenment when ‘The Quest for the Historical Jesus’ became a major academic preoccupation. It has to be said that, today, the scepticism, where it once existed, is declining: few biblical scholars now doubt that Jesus was a historical figure. At the same time, there is no escaping the fact that the gospels are inconsistent and contradictory, or that Paul’s writings–letters mainly–predate the gospels and yet make no mention of many of the more striking episodes that make up Jesus’ life. For example, Paul never refers to the virgin birth, never calls Jesus ‘of Nazareth’, does not refer to his trial, nor does he specify that the crucifixion took place in Jerusalem (though he implies it occurred in Judaea, in 1 Thessalonians 2:14/15). He never uses the title ‘Son of Man’ and mentions no miracles Jesus is supposed to have performed. So there is, at the least, widespread scepticism about the details of Jesus’ life.71

  Scepticism also arises from the fact that the idea of Jesus was not entirely new. For example, there were at that time at least four gods–Attis, Tammuz, Adonis and Osiris–who were widely revered in the Middle East ‘as victims of an untimely death’.72 These were vegetation gods, not saviour figures explicitly, but they needed to be revived for the sake of the community: there was an overlap in meaning.73 Nor should we forget that, in Hebrew, the very name of Jesus (Ieshouah) means salvation. Allied to the word Christos–‘Messiah’, as was mentioned above, meaning king and redeemer–Jesus Christ, on this analysis, is less a historical personage than a ritual title.

  The early Christian literature, and its relation to the development of Christian ideas, is uncertain. In all the shortcomings of the New Testament, discussed below, we should remember that the earliest gospels were written some forty years after Jesus’ death and therefore they stand in much greater proximity to the events they purport to record than all but one of the books of the Hebrew Bible (the exception is Nehemiah).74 Altogether, there are in existence about eighty-five fragments of New Testament passages which are datable to before AD 300. The four gospels that we use were all in existence by, roughly speaking, AD 100, but we know of at least ten others. These include a Gospel of Thomas, of Peter, of the Hebrews, and of Truth.75 The Gospel of Peter, for example, like our gospels, details the Passion, Burial and Resurrection, making much more of the latter event. It also relates the Passion to Hebrew scriptures much more deliberately than do our gospels. The Gospel of Thomas has been dated to mid-second century and is a collection of sayings by Jesus, openly anti-women and turning some of the sayings of Jesus on their head.76 And, as Robin Lane Fox reports, four fragments of a gospel ‘of unknown identity’ were discovered in 1935 from a papyrus found in Egypt; it contains many of the stories found in our gospels, but in a different order.

  The preface of the third gospel (Luke) refers to ‘many’ previous attempts at writing a narrative about Jesus, but apart from Mark and Matthew none of these has survived. The same is true of at least some of Paul’s letters. Paul wrote the earliest of his letters (to the Galatians, c. 48/50 AD), very soon after Jesus died, so if Paul made no mention of the more striking episodes, can they ever have happened? If they did not, where does the tradition come from? The first mention we have of Matthew’s gospel comes in a series of letters written by Ignatius, bishop of Antioch, around 110, though Matthew isn’t mentioned by name. The first evidence of John’s gospel comes from a scrap of papyrus, datable by its handwriting to around 125 and there is a reference to a gospel by Mark a little later, c. 125–140.77 The earliest gospel source is generally taken to be Mark, c. AD 75. This is mentioned in a quotation by Papias, bishop of Hierapolis (inland from the Ionian coast, in Asia Minor, Turkey, near the river Maeander). Writing around 120–138 he quoted John the Elder, a disciple of the Lord, who said that Mark was the interpreter of Peter ‘and wrote down carefully what he remembered of what had been said or done by the Lord, but not in the right order’. However, the language of Mark (which, like all the gospels, was written in Greek) was in a style inferior to that used by educated writers. The chances are therefore that he was not a sophisticated man, may not have been directly linked with the apostles and, worse, may have been credulous and unreliable. Given that there is a gap of between fifty and eighty years between Jesus’ death and the writing of the later gospels, their accuracy must be called into question. Of the gospels, only one, John, refers to an author: ‘the disciple whom Jesus loved.’78

  The early Christians seem to have had contradictory ideas about the gospels. Around 140 Marcion, a noted heretic, who believed that the God of the New Testament was superior to the God of the Old Testament, thought that one gospel–Luke–was enough. By the 170s, however, our four gospels began to emerge as somehow special, for this was when Tatian, a pupil of Justin, the Roman Christian writer, brought them together, ‘harmonised’ as a special book. The four gospels we use were originally written in Greek but we know early translations in Latin, Syriac and Egyptian. Some of the translations are as early as 200 and resulted in many variations. Around 383, Jerome produced a major revision of the Latin versions using, it is said, earlier Greek texts to correct errors that had crept in. Jerome’s Bible became the basis for the Vulgate, the standard Latin version, replacing earlier partial translations, called the Itala.79 But the actual list of New Testament books that we use was not settled until the fourth century, when the early Christian bishops approved that grouping.80

  The most significant difference in the gospels is that between John and the other three. Matthew, Mark and Luke are known as the ‘synoptic’ gospels because they are essentially narratives of Jesus’ story, and these stories, it is often said, are like photographs taken of the same subject from different angles. (Luke may have been deliberately ‘tweaking’ Matthew and Mark, to bring out different aspects of Jesus.) In the synoptic gospels Jesus hardly ever refers to himself, still less to his mission from God.81 But in John Jesus’ life story is less significant than his meaning, as an emissary from the Father.82 Even Jesus’ manner of speaking is different in the fourth gospel, for he constantly affirms that he is indeed the ‘Son of God’. It may well be that John is a later work, and one specifically designed to be a reflection on the events reported in the other three. But if so, why does it not even attempt
to clear up some of the glaring inconsistencies? The very proximity of the gospels to the events they report only makes these inconsistencies more troubling.

  They begin with Jesus’ birth. For a start, neither Mark nor John even mentions the Nativity, despite its sensational nature. Matthew locates Jesus’ birth in Bethlehem but says it took place in the later years of King Herod’s reign, while Luke connects the Annunciation with King Herod’s reign and associates the Nativity, in Bethlehem, with a specific event: ‘And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus, that all the world should be taxed.’ This tax was first imposed during the time when Quirinius was governor of Syria, which was the year we understand as 6 AD, after Herod had died. According to this, then, Matthew and Luke have the birth of Jesus ten years apart.83

  Details surrounding the virgin birth are even less satisfactory. The uncomfortable truth is that, despite its singular nature, there is no mention of it in either Mark or John, or in any of Paul’s letters. Even in Matthew and Luke, according to Geza Vermes, the Oxford biblical scholar, it is treated ‘merely as a preface to the main story, and as neither of these two, nor the rest of the New Testament, ever allude to it again, it may be safely assumed that it is a secondary accretion.’84 In any case, the word ‘virgin’ was used ‘elastically’ in both Greek and Hebrew. In one sense it was used for people in their first marriage. Greek and Latin inscriptions found in the catacombs in Rome show that the word ‘virgin’ could be applied to either a wife or husband after years of marriage. Thus ‘a virgin husband’ almost certainly meant a married man who had not been married before. Another meaning of the term was applied to women who could not conceive–i.e., had not menstruated. ‘This form of virginity ended with menstruation.’85 Even in those gospels where the virgin birth is mentioned, the inconsistencies multiply. In Matthew the angel visits Joseph to announce the birth, but not Mary. In Luke he visits Mary and not Joseph. In Luke Christ’s divinity is announced to the shepherds, in Matthew by the appearance of a star in the east. In Luke it is the shepherds who make the first adoration, whereas in Matthew it is the Magi. Then there is the episode, mentioned in Matthew, where King Herod, worried about the birth of a ‘new king’, commands that all infants under two and living in Bethlehem should be killed. If such mass infanticide ever took place, it would surely have been mentioned in Josephus, who so carefully recorded Herod’s other brutalities. But he does not.86