Jesus, Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible

by Bart D. Ehrman

  Would later Christians who were inventing sayings of Jesus make up one in which Jesus seemed to differentiate himself from the Son of Man? It seems unlikely. If Christians had made up this saying, they would not have phrased it this way; instead, they would have said something like, “Whoever is ashamed of me, the Son of Man, of that one will I, the Son of Man…” This means that the saying probably does actually go back to Jesus.

  Or take another instance. In a saying drawn from Q, Jesus tells his disciples: “Truly I tell you, at the renewal of all things, when the Son of Man is seated on the throne of his glory, you who have followed me will also sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel” (Matthew 19:28; see also Luke 22:28–30). This saying about future judgment, and the future rulership of the Kingdom of God, is almost certainly authentic, something Jesus actually said. Why? Note whom he is addressing. The twelve disciples. That includes Judas Iscariot. Soon after the events of Jesus’ death, there were no Christians who would be willing to say that Judas Iscariot would be one of the twelve rulers in the Kingdom of God. In other words, no Christian would have made up this saying later. That means it must go back to Jesus. Jesus believed his own disciples would be the rulers of the future, earthly, Kingdom of God.

  A final instance of dissimilarity concerns the final judgment, when the Son of Man is sitting on his great throne and separates the sheep from the goats (this is M material, from Matthew 25). The “sheep” are allowed to enter their heavenly and eternal reward because of all the good deeds they did: feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, tending the sick; the “goats” are sent to eternal punishment because they failed to do good deeds. Would a later Christian make up this particular tradition? After Jesus died, his followers claimed that a person was made right with God and would receive an eternal reward by believing in Jesus’ death and resurrection, not by doing good deeds. Thus, this story cuts against the grain of that teaching by indicating that one will be rewarded by doing good things. Ergo: this must go back to Jesus.

  Jesus, in short, taught that the Son of Man was soon to arrive from heaven in judgment, and people needed to be ready for it by mending their ways and living as God wanted them to. This involved self-giving love for the sake of others. Thus Jesus is said to have quoted from the Scriptures: “Love your neighbor as yourself” (Matthew 22:39; quoting Leviticus 19:18). His formulation of this view is the Golden Rule, “Do to others as you would have them do to you” (Matthew 7:12). It is hard to state more concisely the ethical requirements of the law of God. Those who followed the dictates of Scripture would be rewarded in the coming judgment; those who did not would be punished. And when would this judgment come? In the disciples’ own lifetime: “Some of you standing here will not taste death before they see that the Kingdom of God has come in power” (Mark 9:1); “this generation will not pass away before all these things take place” (Mark 13:30).

  That this view fits in a first-century Palestinian context is clear to every historian of the period. Jesus was not alone in proclaiming the end of this age and the imminent appearance of the Son of Man. Other Jewish prophets had similar apocalyptic messages—even if the details varied from one prophet to another—including the Jews from roughly Jesus’ day who left us the Dead Sea Scrolls, which are chock full of Jewish apocalyptic thinking.

  Of even greater importance is the fact that this was the message of John the Baptist, before Jesus. John is recorded as saying in Luke 3:9 (from the Q source): “Even now the axe is lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.” This is an apocalyptic image of judgment. Humans are likened to trees that are cut down and burned if they do not do what they were designed to do: bear good fruit. And when will this destruction begin? It is imminent: the ax is ready to begin its work; it is “lying at the root of the trees.” People need to begin to “bear good fruit”—that is, do what God commands them to do—or they, too, will be destroyed.

  That is why it is important to know—based on multiple attestation and dissimilarity—that Jesus began his ministry by associating with John. Jesus was an apocalypticist from the beginning of his ministry. That he remained an apocalypticist is quite clear from our sources. Our earliest traditions are filled with apocalyptic sayings and warnings. More significant still, after Jesus’ death his followers remained apocalyptically oriented. That is why they thought the end was coming in their day, that Jesus himself was soon coming back from heaven to sit in judgment on the earth. This is contained in Paul’s writings, the earliest Christian documents we have. The early Christians, like Jesus before them, and John the Baptist before him, were apocalyptically minded Jews, expecting the imminent end of the age.

  Jesus’ ethical teachings need to be placed in that apocalyptic context. Many people understand Jesus as a great moral teacher, and of course he was that. But it is important to recognize why he thought people should behave properly. In our day, ethicists typically argue that people should behave in ethical ways so that we can all get along for the long haul, in happy and prosperous societies. For Jesus, there wasn’t going to be a long haul. The end was coming soon, the Son of Man was to appear from heaven, imminently, in judgment on the earth, the Kingdom of God was right around the corner. The reason to change your behavior was to gain entrance to the kingdom when it came. It was not in order to make society a happy place for the foreseeable future. The future was bleak—unless you sided with Jesus and did what he urged, in which case you could expect a reward when God intervened in history to overthrow the forces of evil and set up his good kingdom on earth, which would happen very soon.

  The Deeds and Activities of Jesus

  Understanding Jesus as an apocalyptic prophet who anticipated the judgment of this world and the imminent appearance of the Kingdom of God helps us make sense of the deeds and activities of Jesus that can be established as historically probable, on the basis of our various criteria.

  The Baptism

  It is almost certain that Jesus began his public ministry by being baptized by John the Baptist. This is attested to in multiple independent sources, both early and later, and is not the kind of tradition that a later Christian would make up. I think the significance of the baptism makes sense only within an apocalyptic context. Jesus had lots of religious options available to him, as did other Jews of his day. Some Jews joined the Pharisees, who were intent on keeping the law of God as carefully and conscientiously as possible (that was why God had given the law—so it could be kept); others joined monastic communities like those of the Essenes, who produced the Dead Sea Scrolls, and were intent on preserving their own purity apart from the corrupting influences of the world around them; others sided with the Sadducees, aristocratic power players in Palestine who controlled the Temple and its sacrificial practices and who served as the liaison with the ruling Roman authorities; others were particularly zealous for the Holy Land and urged a religious and military rebellion against Rome, in order to establish Israel as a sovereign state within the land that God had originally given them.

  Jesus did not join any of these groups. Instead he sided with John the Baptist, an apocalyptic prophet who was urging people to prepare for the day of judgment, which was to appear in the very near future. Why did Jesus side with John? Because he agreed with his message, not with the messages of all the others. Like John before him and his followers afterward, Jesus was an apocalypticist.

  The Twelve Disciples

  There can be little doubt that Jesus chose twelve followers to be a kind of inner circle around him. The twelve are attested to in various Gospel sources as well as by Paul and Acts. In addition, one saying, about the twelve ruling the twelve tribes of Israel in the kingdom, passes the criterion of dissimilarity. But why did Jesus choose twelve disciples? Why not nine? Or fourteen?

  It was not so they could have a disciple-of-the-month club. It appears to have been a symbolic gesture on Jesus’ part. Originally, in the Hebrew Bible, the people of
God—the people of Israel—had consisted of twelve tribes. According to Jesus, these twelve tribes would be reconstituted in the coming Kingdom of God, when the true people of God were ruled by the twelve apostles. By choosing twelve close disciples, Jesus was indicating that those who follow him and his teachings would be the ones who enter into that future Kingdom of God. Not all Jews would be allowed into that kingdom. Only those who mended their ways and adhered to Jesus’ teachings would survive the coming judgment. Choosing twelve, in other words, was a kind of cryptic apocalyptic message.

  Jesus as a Healer and Exorcist

  Later in this chapter I will discuss the problem of whether historians can say anything definite about whether Jesus actually performed miracles. For now it is enough to point out that he was widely believed to have done miracles—healing the sick, casting out demons, and raising the dead. Traditions of Jesus’ miracles occur in multiple independent sources. These traditions cannot pass the criterion of dissimilarity of course: storytellers in the early church naturally wanted the people they were trying to convert to understand that Jesus was not a mere mortal, but was especially empowered by God in his public ministry. No doubt stories of his great miracles were made up all the time, as is evidenced in later Gospels outside the New Testament, where the miracles that both he and his followers do are even more stupendous. But even early on, the stories were widespread, and what matters for my purposes at this point is that in the earliest stages of the tradition these miracle stories were interpreted in apocalyptic terms.

  In the future kingdom there will be no forces of evil. Jesus overcomes evil now. There will be no demons; Jesus casts out demons now. There will be no disease; Jesus heals the sick now. There will be no natural disasters; Jesus calms the storms now. There will be no hunger; Jesus feeds the hungry now. There will be no death; Jesus raises the dead now.

  When John the Baptist sent messengers from the prison where he was being held to ask Jesus if he is the prophet to come at the end of the age, or if another is to be expected, Jesus (according to Q) gives the response: “Go and tell John what you have seen and heard: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, the poor have good news brought to them. And blessed is anyone who takes no offense at me” (Luke 7:22–23). The Kingdom of God is soon to appear, and is already beginning to be manifest in a small way in the deeds of Jesus. Jesus’ activities are understood apocalyptically.

  The Trip to Jerusalem

  If a Christian theologian were asked why Jesus traveled to Jerusalem the last week of his life, she might say that it was so he could be crucified for the sins of the world. But, from a historical perspective, what was his motivation for going? If one understands Jesus as an apocalypticist, it makes perfect sense. According to our earliest sources, the Synoptic Gospels, Jesus had spent the bulk of his ministry preaching to Jews in the rural hinterlands of Galilee. He evidently did not spend much time, if any at all, in large cities, but went to small towns, villages, and hamlets throughout the north.

  But he had an urgent message: the kingdom was soon to arrive with the coming of the Son of Man, and people needed to prepare.

  Why, then, did he go to Jerusalem? Evidently in order to take his message to the heart of Judaism, the capital city, the home of the Temple, and to all the important social and political figures there, as well as to the masses. And why did he go during Passover? Because that is when the largest crowds would be there. As we saw in an earlier chapter, Passover in Jerusalem was a big event. It was the largest pilgrim festival in the Jewish year, when the number of people would swell the city beyond its normal capacity.

  It was also the time when Jews would reflect back on the great events of the Exodus under Moses, recalling how God had intervened on their behalf. No doubt many Jews did this in anticipation that God would intervene yet again, and overthrow the overlords of the present (the Romans) much as he had overthrown the overlords in the past (the Egyptians). Some Jews thought this would happen through a political and military uprising. Others thought it would be a supernatural cosmic event, when God himself would destroy those opposed to him. Jesus was of the latter train of thought. He came to Jerusalem in order to proclaim this message. The Kingdom of God was almost here: people needed to repent and believe the good news.

  It is no surprise that in our earliest sources—Matthew, Mark, and Luke—Jesus spends his last week in Jerusalem preaching a heavily apocalyptic message (see, for example, Mark 13 and Matthew 24–25). This is historically accurate. It is how Jesus spent his last week. But before doing so, he did something significant upon arriving in town, a symbolic act that conveyed his apocalyptic message.

  The Cleansing of the Temple

  Independently of one another, Mark and John tell the story of Jesus entering into the Temple and causing a ruckus. Mark’s account is earlier, of course, and in Mark this event is more plausibly situated toward the end of Jesus’ life rather than at the beginning. For Mark, in fact, the Temple event is what eventually led to Jesus’ crucifixion.

  The Temple was the focal point of all Jewish worship, as established in the Jewish Scripture. In Jesus’ day, Jews from around the world would come to Jerusalem to perform the animal sacrifices prescribed by the law, which had to be done in the Temple, nowhere else. Of course, people coming from long distances would not be able to bring sacrificial animals with them; these had to be purchased on site. But they could not be purchased with normal Roman currency: Roman coins were stamped with an image of the emperor, who in parts of the empire was thought to be a divine being. For Jews there was only one God, and so they were not inclined to bring the image of Caesar into the holy Temple. In addition, the law proscribed the use of any “graven images,” another reason that Roman coins could not be used. Some other kind of money had to be made available, and so there had to be a kind of currency exchange, where Roman coinage could be traded for Temple currency, which did not bear the image of Caesar. The Temple currency could then be used to purchase the necessary animals.

  There were money changers who made these currency exchanges. When Jesus arrived in Jerusalem he saw all the exchange of money and the selling of animals, and evidently he found it scandalous: he overturned some money changers’ tables and drove the animal sellers out of the Temple. It is hard to know just how thorough he was in this “cleansing of the Temple.” It is difficult to believe that Jesus shut down the entire operation: the Temple precincts were approximately the size of twenty-five football fields, not a small contained space, and the Gospels do not portray this act as a miracle. Moreover, if he had created such an enormous scene, it is almost impossible to explain why he wasn’t arrested on the spot, but only a week later. It looks as if our early sources have exaggerated some of the details.

  It is also hard to know what, exactly, Jesus was objecting to. God’s law required sacrifice; Jews had to have sacrificial animals; and they certainly couldn’t use Roman currency for the exchange. Was Jesus simply put off by the idea that some people were profiting from the worship of God? It is at least possible, and that’s how the Gospel writers themselves interpret the event.

  But modern interpreters have suggested that something else was going on as well. One of the best attested sayings of Jesus found in a number of our independent sources is a prediction that at the coming onslaught, at the end of the age, the Temple itself would be destroyed (Mark 13:2; 14:58; 15:29). The Temple? The center of the worship of the God of Israel? Isn’t that a blasphemous thought?

  Some Jews evidently thought so. This is what ended up getting Jesus into trouble. But Jesus himself appealed to a prophet of the Hebrew Scriptures, Jeremiah, who also thought the Temple and the activities within it had grown corrupt. Like Jesus, Jeremiah inveighed against the Temple. Like him, he also paid a heavy price (see Jeremiah 7:1–15; 20:1–6).

  Jesus thought that at the judgment that was soon to arrive, the Temple would be destroyed. Why, then, did he overturn the tables and cause a
ruckus? It is now a standard opinion among critical scholars that Jesus was performing a symbolic act—a kind of enacted parable, if you will.8 By overthrowing tables Jesus was symbolizing in a small way what was going to happen soon in a big way when the Son of Man arrived in judgment. God’s enemies would be destroyed. And like many of the prophets of the Hebrew Bible, Jesus thought that among God’s enemies were the Jewish leaders themselves, in charge of the Temple, who had become corrupt and powerful. But a day of reckoning was at hand.

  The Arrest of Jesus

  So it comes as no surprise that these very authorities saw Jesus as a threat who needed to be gotten out of the way. Why wasn’t Jesus arrested on the spot, but only a week later? My hunch is that the episode in the Temple was small and insignificant at the time, but that word eventually got around about what Jesus had done, and the leaders decided to keep an eye on him. What they saw and heard did not much improve their opinion of him. Jesus started gathering larger and larger crowds of people interested in his apocalyptic message of the coming judgment. Eventually the leaders became afraid that this could get out of hand. It was the Passover, after all, when the crowds were flocking into Jerusalem, many of them zealous for the traditions of Israel and eager for something to happen to change the dire straights they found themselves in under Roman rule. The Jewish leaders made arrangements to have Jesus arrested.