Historical Jesus

The term historical Jesus refers to the life and teachings of Jesus as interpreted through critical historical methods, in contrast to traditionally religious interpretations. It considers the historical and cultural contexts in which Jesus lived. Scholars differ about the beliefs and teachings of Jesus as well as the accuracy of the biblical accounts, with only two events supported by nearly universal scholarly consensus: his baptism and his crucifixion.

Reconstructions of the historical Jesus are based on the Pauline epistles and the gospels, while several non-biblical sources also support his historical existence. Since the 18th century, three separate scholarly quests for the historical Jesus have taken place, each with distinct characteristics and developing new and different research criteria. and rabbi. There is little scholarly agreement on a single portrait, nor the methods needed to construct it,

Historical existence

Virtually all scholars of antiquity agree that Jesus existed. Historian Michael Grant asserts that if conventional standards of historical criticism are applied to the New Testament, "we can no more reject Jesus' existence than we can reject the existence of a mass of pagan personages whose reality as historical figures is never questioned." There is no indication that writers in antiquity who opposed Christianity questioned the existence of Jesus.

There are at least 14 independent sources from multiple authors within a century of the crucifixion of Jesus that survive. Other independent sources did not survive, but are broadly referenced directly in the surviving sources themselves (e.g. Luke) or inferred from modern source analysis. The letters of Paul are the earliest surviving sources referencing Jesus, and Paul documents personally knowing and interacting with eyewitnesses such as Jesus' brother James and some of Jesus' closest disciples around 36 AD, within a few years of the crucifixion (30 or 33 AD). Paul was a contemporary of Jesus and throughout his letters, a fairly full outline of the life of Jesus can be found including details such as being born of a woman, descending from regular people such as Abraham and David, being a Jew and being brought up in Jewish Law, gathering together disciples, having family, the Last Supper, being betrayed, being crucified, people being involved in his crucifixion, etc.

Since the 1970s, various scholars such as Joachim Jeremias, E. P. Sanders and Gerd Theissen have traced elements of Christianity to currents in first-century Judaism and have discarded nineteenth-century minority views that Jesus was based on previous pagan deities. Mentions of Jesus in extra-biblical texts exist and are supported as genuine by the majority of historians. The presence of details of Jesus' life in Paul, and the differences between letters and Gospels, are sufficient for most scholars to dismiss mythicist claims concerning Paul. Theissen says "there is broad scholarly consensus that we can best find access to the historical Jesus through the Synoptic tradition." Bart D. Ehrman adds: "To dismiss the Gospels from the historical record is neither fair nor scholarly." Historian James Dunn writes: "Today nearly all historians, whether Christians or not, accept that Jesus existed". In a 2011 review of the state of modern scholarship, Ehrman wrote: "He certainly existed, as virtually every competent scholar of antiquity, Christian or non-Christian, agrees."

The Christ myth theory is the proposition that Jesus of Nazareth never existed, or if he did, he had virtually nothing to do with the founding of Christianity and the accounts in the gospels. In the 21st century, there have been a number of books and documentaries on this subject. For example, Earl Doherty has written that Jesus may have been a real person, but that the biblical accounts of him are almost entirely fictional. Many proponents use a three-fold argument first developed in the 19th century: that the New Testament has no historical value with respect to Jesus's existence, that there are no non-Christian references to Jesus from the first century, and that Christianity had pagan and/or mythical roots.

Contemporary scholars of antiquity agree that Jesus existed, and biblical scholars and classical historians view the theories of his nonexistence as effectively refuted. Robert M. Price, an atheist who denies the existence of Jesus, agrees that his perspective runs against the views of the majority of scholars. Michael Grant (a classicist and historian) states that "In recent years, no serious scholar has ventured to postulate the non-historicity of Jesus, or at any rate very few have, and they have not succeeded in disposing of the much stronger, indeed very abundant, evidence to the contrary."

Sources

thumb|upright=1.1|[[Judea (Roman province)|Judea Province during the 1st century]]

Due to the significant number of sources written relatively soon after his death, Jesus is one of the best documented figures from the First Century, comparable to Julius Caesar and Herod the Great.

The New Testament represents sources that have become canonical for Christianity, and there are many apocryphal texts that are examples of the wide variety of writings in the first centuries AD that are related to Jesus.

Non-Christian sources that are used to study and establish the historicity of Jesus include Jewish sources such as Josephus, and Roman sources such as Tacitus.

Although Paul the Apostle provides little biographical information about Jesus compared to the Gospels, he was a contemporary of Jesus and does make it clear that he considers Jesus to have been a real person and a Jew. Moreover, he claims to have met with James, the brother of Jesus. Paul states that he personally knew and interacted with eyewitnesses of Jesus such as his most intimate disciples (Peter and John) and family members (his brother James) starting around 35 or 36 AD, within just a few years after the crucifixion, and got some direct information about his life from them. From Paul's writings alone, a fairly full outline of the life of Jesus can be found: his descent from Abraham and David, his upbringing in the Jewish Law, gathering together disciples, including Cephas (Peter) and John, having a brother named James, living an exemplary life, the Last Supper and betrayal, numerous details surrounding his death and resurrection (e.g. crucifixion, Jewish involvement in putting him to death, burial, resurrection, seen by Peter, James, the twelve and others) along with numerous quotations referring to notable teachings and events found in the Gospels.

Jesus was a Galilean Jew who was born between 7 and 2 BC and died 30–36 AD.
Jesus lived only in Galilee and Judea: Most scholars reject that there is any evidence that an adult Jesus traveled or studied outside Galilee and Judea. Marcus Borg states that the suggestions that an adult Jesus traveled to Egypt or India are "without historical foundation". John Dominic Crossan states that none of the theories presented to fill the gap of 15–18 years between Jesus's early life and the start of his ministry have been supported by modern scholarship. Nazareth is not mentioned in the Hebrew Bible and the Christian gospels portray it as an insignificant village, John 1:46 asking "Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?" Craig S. Keener states that it is rarely disputed that Jesus was from Nazareth, an obscure small village not worthy of invention. Gerd Theissen concurs with that conclusion.
Jesus spoke Aramaic, and may have also spoken Hebrew and Greek. The languages spoken in Galilee and Judea during the 1st century include the Semitic Aramaic and Hebrew languages as well as Greek, with Aramaic being the predominant language. N. T. Wright accepts that there were twelve disciples, but holds that the list of their names cannot be determined with certainty. John Dominic Crossan disagrees, stating that Jesus did not call disciples and had an "open to all" egalitarian approach, imposed no hierarchy and preached to all in equal terms.
Jesus caused a controversy at the Temple.

Some scholars have proposed further additional historical possibilities such as:

An approximate chronology of Jesus can be estimated from non-Christian sources, and confirmed by correlating them with New Testament accounts.
Claims about the appearance or ethnicity of Jesus are mostly subjective, based on cultural stereotypes and societal trends rather than on scientific analysis.
The baptism of Jesus by John the Baptist can be dated approximately from Josephus' references (Antiquities 18.5.2) to a date before AD 28–35.
The main topic of his teaching was the Kingdom of God, and he presented this teaching in parables that were surprising and sometimes confounding.
Jesus taught an ethic of forgiveness, as expressed in aphorisms such as "turn the other cheek" or "go the extra mile".
The date of the crucifixion of Jesus was earlier than 36 AD, based on the dates of the prefecture of Pontius Pilate who was governor of Roman Judea from 26 AD until 36 AD.

Portraits of the historical Jesus

Scholars involved in the third and next quests for the historical Jesus have constructed a variety of portraits and profiles for Jesus. However, there is little scholarly agreement on the portraits, or the methods used in constructing them. Such conceptions are merely a sketch or model which may inform about but never will be the real Jesus of history; similar to how models exist in the natural sciences that inform about phenomena without specifying a particular object. W.R. Herzog has stated that: "What we call the historical Jesus is the composite of the recoverable bits and pieces of historical information and speculation about him that we assemble, construct, and reconstruct. For this reason, the historical Jesus is, in Meier's words, 'a modern abstraction and construct.'"

Contemporary scholarship, representing the "third quest" and the "next quest" places Jesus firmly in the Jewish tradition. Jesus was a Jewish preacher who taught that he was the path to salvation, everlasting life, and the Kingdom of God. A primary criterion used to discern historical details in the "third quest" is that of plausibility, relative to Jesus' Jewish context and to his influence on Christianity. Contemporary scholars of the "third quest" include E. P. Sanders, Géza Vermes, Gerd Theissen, Christoph Burchard, and John Dominic Crossan. In contrast to the Schweitzerian view, certain North American scholars, such as Burton Mack, advocate for a non-eschatological Jesus, one who is more of a Cynic sage than an apocalyptic preacher.

Given that Jesus was poor, long-established historiographical approaches associated with the study of the poor in the past, such as microhistory, are relevant to the study of his life.

Mainstream views

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The perspectives listed in the mainstream sub-sections below here are held by "more than a single mainstream scholar". The other views section below includes single scholar perspectives.

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Despite the significant differences among scholars on what constitutes a suitable portrait for Jesus, the mainstream views supported by a number of scholars may be grouped together based on certain distinct, primary themes.

The works of E. P. Sanders and Maurice Casey place Jesus within the context of Jewish eschatological tradition. Ehrman, Adams, and Ferda align with Schweitzer's view that Jesus expected an imminent apocalypse. Ehrman argues that the earliest Christian sources, such as Mark and the First Epistle to the Thessalonians, present Jesus as more apocalyptic than sources produced towards the end of the 1st century, contending that the apocalyptic messages were progressively toned down.

Dale C. Allison Jr. does not see Jesus as advocating specific timetables for the End Times, but sees him as preaching his own doctrine of "apocalyptic eschatology" derived from post-exilic Jewish teachings, and views the apocalyptic teachings of Jesus as a form of asceticism. it was contingent on the repentance of Israel, with some Jewish contemporaries and the Synoptics not viewing the date of apocalypse as unchangeably fixed. Hays thus suggests that unfulfilled eschatological expectations would not be failures or unusual in the Jewish prophetic context.

Other scholars follow most themes of the apocalyptic portrait, but take such teachings of Jesus as relating to the destruction of the Second Temple and not the end of the world due to the wider significance of the Temple in Judaism that would warrant apocalyptic language.

The characterization of Jesus as an apocalyptic or millenarian prophet can also be combined with other categories, such as in the work of James Crossley and Robert J. Myles (see below) who regard the end-time teaching of Jesus as a culturally credible way of responding to social and material upheaval in Galilee and Judea. Marcus Borg views Jesus as a charismatic "man of the spirit", a mystic or visionary who acts as a conduit for the "Spirit of God". Borg sees this as a well-defined religious personality type, whose actions often involve healing. Borg sees Jesus as a non-eschatological figure who did not intend to start a new religion, but his message set him at odds with the Jewish powers of his time based on the "politics of holiness". In John Dominic Crossan's view Jesus was crucified not for religious reasons but because his social teachings challenged the seat of power held by the Jewish authorities. Burton Mack also holds that Jesus was a Cynic whose teachings were so different from those of his time that they shocked the audience and forced them to think, but Mack views his death as accidental and not due to his challenge to Jewish authority.

The prophet of social change portrait positions Jesus primarily as someone who challenged the traditional social structures of his time. Gerd Theissen sees three main elements to the activities of Jesus as he effected social change: his positioning as the Son of man, the core group of disciples that followed him, and his localized supporters as he journeyed through Galilee and Judea. Richard A. Horsley goes further and presents Jesus as a more radical reformer who initiated a grassroots movement. David Kaylor's ideas are close to those of Horsley, but have a more religious focus and base the actions of Jesus on covenant theology and his desire for justice. Elisabeth Fiorenza has presented a feminist perspective which sees Jesus as a social reformer whose actions such as the acceptance of women followers resulted in the liberation of some women of his time.

Rabbi

The rabbi portrait advances the idea that Jesus was simply a rabbi who sought to reform certain ideas within Judaism. This idea can be traced to the late nineteenth century, when various liberal Jews sought to emphasize the Jewish nature of Jesus, and saw him as something of a proto-Reform Jew. Perhaps the most prominent of these was Rabbi Emil G. Hirsch, who in The Doctrine of Jesus wrote:

Bruce Chilton, in his book Rabbi Jesus: An Intimate Biography, painted Jesus as a devout student of John the Baptist who came to see it as his mission to restore the Temple to purity, and purge the Romans and the corrupt priests from its midst. Jaroslav Pelikan, in The Illustrated Jesus Through the Centuries stated:

The most neutral and least controversial of these words is probably Rabbi, along with the related Rabbouni. Except for two passages, the Gospels apply the Aramaic word only to Jesus; and if we conclude that the title "teacher" or "master" (didaskalos in Greek) was intended as a translation of that Aramaic name, it seems safe to say that it was as Rabbi that Jesus was known and addressed. He concludes by writing, as to Judeo-Christian values, that "the hyphen between Jewish and Christian values is Jesus himself."

Non-mainstream views

Other portraits have been presented by individual scholars:

Ben Witherington supports the "Wisdom Sage" view and states that Jesus is best understood as a teacher of wisdom who saw himself as the embodiment or incarnation of God's Wisdom.
Hyam Maccoby proposed that Jesus was a Pharisee, that the positions ascribed to the Pharisees in the Gospels are very different from what we know of them, and in fact their opinions were very similar to those ascribed to Jesus. Harvey Falk also sees Jesus as proto-Pharisee or Essene.
Morton Smith views Jesus as a magician, a view based on the presentation of Jesus in later Jewish sources and on (dubious) apocryphal writings such as the Secret Gospel of Mark.
Leo Tolstoy saw Jesus as championing Christian anarchism (although Tolstoy never actually used the term Christian anarchism; reviews of his book following its publication in 1894 coined the term.)
Psychiatrists, psychologists, and neurologists, from the late 19th century (Oskar Panizza), through the 20th century (including Emil Rasmussen, George de Loosten, Charles Binet-Sanglé, William Hirsch, Władysław Witwicki) to the early 21st century (Evan D. Murray, Miles G. Cunningham, Bruce H. Price), have suggested that Jesus had a mental disorder or psychiatric condition.

Notes

References

Sources

Craffert, Pieter F. and Botha, Pieter J. J. "Why Jesus Could Walk On The Sea But He Could Not Read And Write." Neotestamenica. 39.1, 2005.

Gnilka, Joachim.; Jesus of Nazareth: Message and History, Hendrickson Publishers, 1997.
Gowler, David B.; What Are They Saying About the Historical Jesus?, Paulist Press, 2007,
Loke, Andrew Ter Ern. The Origin of Divine Christology. Cambridge University Press. 2017.
Meier, John P. A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus, Doubleday,
v. 1, The Roots of the Problem and the Person, 1991,
v. 2, Mentor, Message, and Miracles, 1994,
v. 3, Companions and Competitors, 2001,
v. 4, Law and Love, 2009,
v. 5, Probing the Authenticity of the Parables, 2016,
O'Collins, G. Jesus: A Portrait. Darton, Longman and Todd: 2008.
O'Collins, G. Christology: A Biblical, Historical, and Systematic Study of Jesus. OUP: 2009.
Sanders, E. P. Jesus and Judaism. Augsburg Fortress Publishers: 1987.
Sanders, E. P. The Historical Figure of Jesus. Lane The Penguin Press: 1993.
Wright, N. T. Christian Origins and the Question of God, a projected six-volume series of which three have been published under:
v. 1, The New Testament and the People of God. Augsburg Fortress Publishers: 1992.;
v. 2, Jesus and the Victory of God. Augsburg Fortress Publishers: 1997.;
v. 3, The Resurrection of the Son of God. Augsburg Fortress Publishers: 2003.
Wright, N. T. The Challenge of Jesus: Rediscovering who Jesus was and is. IVP 1996
Yaghjian, Lucretia. "Ancient Reading," in Richard Rohrbaugh, ed., The Social Sciences in New Testament Interpretation. Hendrickson Publishers: 2004. .

External links

"Jesus Christ". Encyclopædia Britannica Online. 2009. The first section, on Jesus' life and ministry
Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus

Historical existence

Sources

Portraits of the historical Jesus

Mainstream views

Prophet of social change

Rabbi

Non-mainstream views

See also

Notes

References

Sources

External links