jesus 3
Judea and Galilee in the 1st century
Judea, Galilee and neighbouring areas at the time of Jesus
In AD 6, Judea, Idumea, and Samaria were transformed from a Herodian client kingdom of the Roman Empire into an imperial province, also called Judea. A Roman prefect, rather than a client king, ruled the land. The prefect ruled from Caesarea Maritima, leaving Jerusalem to be run by the High Priest of Israel. As an exception, the prefect came to Jerusalem during religious festivals, when religious and patriotic enthusiasm sometimes inspired unrest or uprisings. Gentile lands surrounded the Jewish territories of Judea and Galilee, but Roman law and practice allowed Jews to remain separate legally and culturally. Galilee was evidently prosperous, and poverty was limited enough that it did not threaten the social order.[24]
This was the era of Hellenistic Judaism, which combined Jewish religious tradition with elements of Hellenistic Greek culture. Until the fall of the Western Roman Empire and the Muslim conquests of the Eastern Mediterranean, the main centers of Hellenistic Judaism were Alexandria (Egypt) and Antioch (now Southern Turkey), the two main Greek urban settlements of the Middle East and North Africa area, both founded at the end of the 4th century BC in the wake of the conquests of Alexander the Great. Hellenistic Judaism also existed in Jerusalem during the Second Temple Period, where there was conflict between Hellenizers and traditionalists (sometimes called Judaizers). The Hebrew Bible was translated from Biblical Hebrew and Biblical Aramaic into Jewish Koine Greek; the Targum translations into Aramaic were also generated during this era, both due to the decline of knowledge of Hebrew.[317]
Jews based their faith and religious practice on the Torah, five books said to have been given by God to Moses. The three prominent religious parties were the Pharisees, the Essenes, and the Sadducees. Together these parties represented only a small fraction of the population. Most Jews looked forward to a time that God would deliver them from their pagan rulers, possibly through war against the Romans.[24]
Sources
Main article: Sources for the historicity of Jesus
See also: Josephus on Jesus and Tacitus on Christ
A 1640 edition of the works of Josephus, a 1st-century Roman-Jewish historian who referred to Jesus[318]
New Testament scholars face a formidable challenge when they analyse the canonical Gospels.[319] The Gospels are not biographies in the modern sense, and the authors explain Jesus' theological significance and recount his public ministry while omitting many details of his life.[319]
The reports of supernatural events associated with Jesus' death and resurrection make the challenge even more difficult.[319] Scholars regard the Gospels as compromised sources of information because the writers were trying to glorify Jesus.[64] Even so, the sources for Jesus' life are better than sources scholars have for the life of Alexander the Great.[64]
Scholars use a number of criteria, such as the criterion of independent attestation, the criterion of coherence, and the criterion of discontinuity to judge the historicity of events.[320] The historicity of an event also depends on the reliability of the source; indeed, the Gospels are not independent nor consistent records of Jesus' life. Mark, which is most likely the earliest written gospel, has been considered for many decades the most historically accurate.[321] John, the latest written gospel, differs considerably from the Synoptic Gospels, and thus is generally considered less reliable, although more and more scholars now also recognize that it may contain a core of older material as historically valuable as the Synoptic tradition or even more so.[322]
Some scholars (most notably the Jesus Seminar) believe that the non-canonical Gospel of Thomas might be an independent witness to many of Jesus' parables and aphorisms. For example, Thomas confirms that Jesus blessed the poor and that this saying circulated independently before being combined with similar sayings in the Q source.[323] However, the majority of scholars are sceptical about this text and believe it should be dated to the 2nd century AD.[324][325]
Other select non-canonical Christian texts may also have value for historical Jesus research.[68]
Early non-Christian sources that attest to the historical existence of Jesus include the works of the historians Josephus and Tacitus.[o][318][327] Josephus scholar Louis Feldman has stated that "few have doubted the genuineness" of Josephus's reference to Jesus in book 20 of the Antiquities of the Jews, and it is disputed only by a small number of scholars.[328][329] Tacitus referred to Christ and his execution by Pilate in book 15 of his work Annals. Scholars generally consider Tacitus's reference to the execution of Jesus to be both authentic and of historical value as an independent Roman source.[330]
Non-Christian sources are valuable in two ways. First, they show that even neutral or hostile parties never show any doubt that Jesus actually existed. Second, they present a rough picture of Jesus that is compatible with that found in the Christian sources: that Jesus was a teacher, had a reputation as a miracle worker, had a brother James, and died a violent death.[331]
Archaeology helps scholars better understand Jesus' social world.[332] Recent archaeological work, for example, indicates that Capernaum, a city important in Jesus' ministry, was poor and small, without even a forum or an agora.[333][334] This archaeological discovery resonates well with the scholarly view that Jesus advocated reciprocal sharing among the destitute in that area of Galilee.[333]
Chronology
Main article: Chronology of Jesus
See also: Anno Domini and Saturnalia § Influence
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Jesus was a Galilean Jew,[6] born around the beginning of the 1st century, who died in 30 or 33 AD in Judea.[335] The general scholarly consensus is that Jesus was a contemporary of John the Baptist and was crucified as ordered by the Roman governor Pontius Pilate,[188] who held office from 26 to 36 AD.[188]
The Gospels offer several indications concerning the year of Jesus' birth. Matthew 2:1 associates the birth of Jesus with the reign of Herod the Great, who died around 4 BC, and Luke 1:5 mentions that Herod was on the throne shortly before the birth of Jesus,[336][337] although this gospel also associates the birth with the Census of Quirinius which took place ten years later.[338][339] Luke 3:23 states that Jesus was "about thirty years old" at the start of his ministry, which according to Acts 10:37–38 was preceded by John the Baptist's ministry, which was recorded in Luke 3:1–2 to have begun in the 15th year of Tiberius's reign (28 or 29 AD).[337][340] By collating the gospel accounts with historical data and using various other methods, most scholars arrive at a date of birth for Jesus between 6 and 4 BC,[340][341] but some propose estimates that include a wider range.[p]
The date range for Jesus' ministry has been estimated using several different approaches.[344][345] One of these applies the reference in Luke 3:1–2, Acts 10:37–38, and the dates of Tiberius's reign, which are well known, to give a date of around 28–29 AD for the start of Jesus' ministry.[346] Another approach estimates a date around 27–29 AD by using the statement about the temple in John 2:13–20, which asserts that the temple in Jerusalem was in its 46th year of construction at the start of Jesus' ministry, together with Josephus's statement[347] that the temple's reconstruction was started by Herod the Great in the 18th year of his reign.[344][348] A further method uses the date of the death of John the Baptist and the marriage of Herod Antipas to Herodias, based on the writings of Josephus, and correlates it with Matthew 14:4 and Mark 6:18.[349][350] Given that most scholars date the marriage of Herod and Herodias as AD 28–35, this yields a date about 28–29 AD.[345]
A number of approaches have been used to estimate the year of the crucifixion of Jesus. Most scholars agree that he died in 30 or 33 AD.[335][351] The Gospels state that the event occurred during the prefecture of Pilate, the Roman governor of Judea from 26 to 36 AD.[352][353][354] The date for the conversion of Paul (estimated to be 33–36 AD) acts as an upper bound for the date of Crucifixion. The dates for Paul's conversion and ministry can be determined by analysing the Pauline epistles and the Acts of the Apostles.[355][356] Astronomers have tried to estimate the precise date of the Crucifixion by analysing lunar motion and calculating historic dates of Passover, a festival based on the lunisolar Hebrew calendar. The most widely accepted dates derived from this method are 7 April 30 AD, and 3 April 33 AD (both Julian).[357]
Historicity of events
Main article: Historicity of Jesus
See also: Cultural and historical background of Jesus, History of the Jews in the Roman Empire, Historical criticism, Textual criticism, and Historical reliability of the Gospels
Roman senator and historian Tacitus (pictured left) mentioned the execution of "Christus" (Jesus) by Pilate in a passage describing the Great Fire of Rome and Nero's persecution of Christians in the Annals, a history of the Roman Empire during the 1st century.
Nearly all historians (both modern and historical) agree that Jesus was a real person who historically existed.[e] Scholars have reached a limited consensus on the basics of Jesus' life.[358]
Family
See also: Brothers of Jesus
Many scholars agree that Joseph, Jesus' father, died before Jesus began his ministry. Joseph is not mentioned in the Gospels during Jesus' ministry. Joseph's death would explain why in Mark 6:3, Jesus' neighbours refer to Jesus as the "son of Mary" (sons were usually identified by their fathers).[359]
According to Theissen and Merz, it is common for extraordinary charismatic leaders, such as Jesus, to come into conflict with their ordinary families.[360] In Mark, Jesus' family comes to get him, fearing that he is mad (Mark 3:20–34), and this account is thought to be historical because early Christians would likely not have invented it.[361] After Jesus' death, many members of his family joined the Christian movement.[360] Jesus' brother James became a leader of the Jerusalem Church.[362]
Géza Vermes says that the doctrine of the virgin birth of Jesus arose from theological development rather than from historical events.[363] Despite the widely held view that the authors of the Synoptic Gospels drew upon each other (the so-called synoptic problem), other scholars take it as significant that the virgin birth is attested by two separate gospels, Matthew and Luke.[364][365][366][367][368][369]
According to E. P. Sanders, the birth narratives in the Gospel of Matthew and the Gospel of Luke are the clearest case of invention in the Gospel narratives of Jesus' life. Both accounts have Jesus born in Bethlehem, in accordance with Jewish salvation history, and both have him growing up in Nazareth. But Sanders points out that the two Gospels report completely different and irreconcilable explanations for how that happened. Luke's account of a census in which everyone returned to their ancestral cities is not plausible. Matthew's account is more plausible, but the story reads as though it was invented to identify Jesus as like a new Moses, and the historian Josephus reports Herod the Great's brutality without ever mentioning that he massacred little boys.[370] The contradictions between the two Gospels were probably apparent to the early Christians already, since attempts to harmonize the two narratives are already present in the earlier apocryphal infancy gospels (the Infancy Gospel of Thomas and the Gospel of James), which are dated to the 2nd century AD.[371][372]
Sanders says that the genealogies of Jesus are based not on historical information but on the authors' desire to show that Jesus was the universal Jewish saviour.[88] In any event, once the doctrine of the virgin birth of Jesus became established, that tradition superseded the earlier tradition that he was descended from David through Joseph.[373] The Gospel of Luke reports that Jesus was a blood relative of John the Baptist, but scholars generally consider this connection to be invented.[88][374]
Baptism
Baptism in the Jordan River, the river where Jesus was baptized
Most modern scholars consider Jesus' baptism to be a definite historical fact, along with his crucifixion.[2] Theologian James D. G. Dunn states that they "command almost universal assent" and "rank so high on the 'almost impossible to doubt or deny' scale of historical facts" that they are often the starting points for the study of the historical Jesus.[2] Scholars adduce the criterion of embarrassment, saying that early Christians would not have invented a baptism that might imply that Jesus committed sins and wanted to repent.[375][376] According to Theissen and Merz, Jesus was inspired by John the Baptist and took over from him many elements of his teaching.[377]
Ministry in Galilee
Most scholars hold that Jesus lived in Galilee and Judea and did not preach or study elsewhere.[378] They agree that Jesus debated with Jewish authorities on the subject of God, performed some healings, taught in parables and gathered followers.[188] Jesus' Jewish critics considered his ministry to be scandalous because he feasted with sinners, fraternized with women, and allowed his followers to pluck grain on the Sabbath.[51] According to Sanders, it is not plausible that disagreements over how to interpret the Law of Moses and the Sabbath would have led Jewish authorities to want Jesus killed.[379]
According to Ehrman, Jesus taught that a coming kingdom was everyone's proper focus, not anything in this life.[380] He taught about the Jewish Law, seeking its true meaning, sometimes in opposition to traditions.[381] Jesus put love at the center of the Law, and following that Law was an apocalyptic necessity.[381] His ethical teachings called for forgiveness, not judging others, loving enemies, and caring for the poor.[382] Funk and Hoover note that typical of Jesus were paradoxical or surprising turns of phrase, such as advising one, when struck on the cheek, to offer the other cheek to be struck as well.[383][384]
The Gospels portray Jesus teaching in well-defined sessions, such as the Sermon on the Mount in the Gospel of Matthew or the parallel Sermon on the Plain in Luke. According to Gerd Theissen and Annette Merz, these teaching sessions include authentic teachings of Jesus, but the scenes were invented by the respective evangelists to frame these teachings, which had originally been recorded without context.[68] While Jesus' miracles fit within the social context of antiquity, he defined them differently. First, he attributed them to the faith of those healed. Second, he connected them to end times prophecy.[385]
Jesus chose twelve disciples (the "Twelve"),[386] evidently as an apocalyptic message.[387] All three Synoptics mention the Twelve, although the names on Luke's list vary from those in Mark and Matthew, suggesting that Christians were not certain who all the disciples were.[387] The twelve disciples might have represented the twelve original tribes of Israel, which would be restored once God's rule was instituted.[387] The disciples were reportedly meant to be the rulers of the tribes in the coming Kingdom.[388][387] According to Bart Ehrman, Jesus' promise that the Twelve would rule is historical, because the Twelve included Judas Iscariot. In Ehrman's view, no Christians would have invented a line from Jesus, promising rulership to the disciple who betrayed him.[387]
In Mark, the disciples play hardly any role other than a negative one. While others sometimes respond to Jesus with complete faith, his disciples are puzzled and doubtful.[389] They serve as a foil to Jesus and to other characters.[389] The failings of the disciples are probably exaggerated in Mark, and the disciples make a better showing in Matthew and Luke.[389]
Sanders says that Jesus' mission was not about repentance, although he acknowledges that this opinion is unpopular. He argues that repentance appears as a strong theme only in Luke, that repentance was John the Baptist's message, and that Jesus' ministry would not have been scandalous if the sinners he ate with had been repentant.[390] According to Theissen and Merz, Jesus taught that God was generously giving people an opportunity to repent.[391]
Role
Jesus taught that an apocalyptic figure, the "Son of Man", would soon come on clouds of glory to gather the elect, or chosen ones.[392] He referred to himself as a "son of man" in the colloquial sense of "a person", but scholars do not know whether he also meant himself when he referred to the heavenly "Son of Man". Paul the Apostle and other early Christians interpreted the "Son of Man" as the risen Jesus.[24]
The Gospels refer to Jesus not only as a messiah but in the absolute form as "the Messiah" or, equivalently, "the Christ". In early Judaism, this absolute form of the title is not found, but only phrases such as "his messiah". The tradition is ambiguous enough to leave room for debate as to whether Jesus defined his eschatological role as that of the messiah.[393] The Jewish messianic tradition included many different forms, some of them focused on a messiah figure and others not.[394] Based on the Christian tradition, Gerd Theissen advances the hypothesis that Jesus saw himself in messianic terms but did not claim the title "Messiah".[394] Bart Ehrman argues that Jesus did consider himself to be the messiah, albeit in the sense that he would be the king of the new political order that God would usher in,[395] not in the sense that most people today think of the term.[396]
Passover and crucifixion in Jerusalem
Around AD 30, Jesus and his followers travelled from Galilee to Jerusalem to observe Passover.[386] Jesus caused a disturbance in the Second Temple,[20] which was the center of Jewish religious and civil authority. Sanders associates it with Jesus' prophecy that the Temple would be totally demolished.[397] Jesus held a last meal with his disciples, which is the origin of the Sacrament of the Holy Eucharist. His words as recorded in the Synoptic gospels and Paul's First Letter to the Corinthians do not entirely agree, but this meal appears to have pointed to Jesus' place in the coming Kingdom of God when very probably Jesus knew he was about to be killed, although he may have still hoped that God might yet intervene.[398]
The Gospels say that Jesus was betrayed to the authorities by a disciple, and many scholars consider this report to be highly reliable.[144] He was executed on the orders of Pontius Pilate, the Roman prefect of Judaea.[20] Pilate most likely saw Jesus' reference to the Kingdom of God as a threat to Roman authority and worked with the Temple elites to have Jesus executed.[399] The Sadducean high-priestly leaders of the Temple more plausibly had Jesus executed for political reasons than for his teaching.[144] They may have regarded him as a threat to stability, especially after he caused a disturbance at the Second Temple.[144][400] Other factors, such as Jesus' triumphal entry into Jerusalem, may have contributed to this decision.[401] Most scholars consider Jesus' crucifixion to be factual, because early Christians would not have invented the painful death of their leader.[2][402]
After crucifixion
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The Resurrection of Christ from a 16th-century manuscript of La Passion de Nostre Seigneur
After Jesus' death, his followers said he was restored to life, although exact details of their experiences are unclear. The gospel reports contradict each other, possibly suggesting competition among those claiming to have seen him first rather than deliberate fraud.[403] On the other hand, L. Michael White suggests that inconsistencies in the Gospels reflect differences in the agendas of their unknown authors.[358] The followers of Jesus formed a community to wait for his return and the founding of his kingdom.[20]
Portraits of Jesus
Main articles: Historical Jesus and Quest for the historical Jesus
Modern research on the historical Jesus has not led to a unified picture of the historical figure, partly because of the variety of academic traditions represented by the scholars.[404] Given the scarcity of historical sources, it is generally difficult for any scholar to construct a portrait of Jesus that can be considered historically valid beyond the basic elements of his life.[65][66] The portraits of Jesus constructed in these quests often differ from each other, and from the image portrayed in the Gospels.[308][405]
Jesus is seen as the founder of, in the words of Sanders, a "renewal movement within Judaism". One of the criteria used to discern historical details in the "third quest" is the criterion of plausibility, relative to Jesus' Jewish context and to his influence on Christianity. A disagreement in contemporary research is whether Jesus was apocalyptic. Most scholars conclude that he was an apocalyptic preacher, like John the Baptist and Paul the Apostle. In contrast, certain prominent North American scholars, such as Burton Mack and John Dominic Crossan, advocate for a non-eschatological Jesus, one who is more of a Cynic sage than an apocalyptic preacher.[406] In addition to portraying Jesus as an apocalyptic prophet, a charismatic healer or a cynic philosopher, some scholars portray him as the true messiah or an egalitarian prophet of social change.[407][408] However, the attributes described in the portraits sometimes overlap, and scholars who differ on some attributes sometimes agree on others.[409]
Since the 18th century, scholars have occasionally put forth that Jesus was a political national messiah, but the evidence for this portrait is negligible. Likewise, the proposal that Jesus was a Zealot does not fit with the earliest strata of the Synoptic tradition.[144]
Language, ethnicity, and appearance
Further information: Language of Jesus and Race and appearance of Jesus
The ethnicity of Jesus in art has been influenced by cultural settings.[410][411]
Jesus grew up in Galilee and much of his ministry took place there.[412] The languages spoken in Galilee and Judea during the 1st century AD include Jewish Palestinian Aramaic, Hebrew, and Greek, with Aramaic being predominant.[413][414] There is substantial consensus that Jesus gave most of his teachings in Aramaic[415] in the Galilean dialect.[416][417] Other than Aramaic and Hebrew, it is likely that he was also able to speak in Koine Greek.[418][419][420]
Modern scholars agree that Jesus was a Jew of 1st-century Judea.[421] Ioudaios in New Testament Greek[q] is a term which in the contemporary context may refer to religion (Second Temple Judaism), ethnicity (of Judea), or both.[423][424][425] In a review of the state of modern scholarship, Amy-Jill Levine writes that the entire question of ethnicity is "fraught with difficulty", and that "beyond recognizing that 'Jesus was Jewish', rarely does the scholarship address what being 'Jewish' means".[426]
The New Testament gives no description of the physical appearance of Jesus before his death—it is generally indifferent to racial appearances and does not refer to the features of the people it mentions.[427][428][429] Jesus probably looked like a typical Jewish man of his time and place; standing around 166 cm (5 ft 5 in) tall with a thin but fit build, olive-brown skin, brown eyes and short, dark hair. He also likely had a beard that was not particularly long or heavy.[430] His clothing may have suggested poverty, consisting of a mantle (shawl) with tassels, a knee-length basic tunic and sandals.[431]
Christ myth theory
Main article: Christ myth theory
The Christ myth theory is the hypothesis that Jesus of Nazareth never existed; or if he did, that he had virtually nothing to do with the founding of Christianity and the accounts in the gospels.[r] Stories of Jesus' birth, along with other key events, have so many mythic elements that some scholars have suggested that Jesus himself was a myth.[433]
Bruno Bauer (1809–1882) taught that the first Gospel was a work of literature that produced history rather than described it.[434] According to Albert Kalthoff (1850–1906), a social movement produced Jesus when it encountered Jewish messianic expectations.[434] Arthur Drews (1865–1935) saw Jesus as the concrete form of a myth that predated Christianity.[434]
Despite arguments put forward by authors who have questioned the existence of a historical Jesus, virtually all scholars of antiquity accept that Jesus was a historical figure and consider Christ myth theory fringe.[435][436][437][438][439][440][441]
