Jesus: Lecture 1

Importance, Existence & Birth of Jesus

0. About the Course

1. Outline of the Course
2. Reading List
3. Course Work
4. Assessment
5. Web Site
6. Mailing List

 

1. Why People Engage in the Quest

• Millennium!
  • The degree of ignorance over dates.
  • Proliferation of Jesus books.
• The fascination of doing history - people do it because it is interesting
• Theology: Christianity is an historical & incarnational religion
• The Church & Scriptural Interpretation - question of fundamentalism
• Religions
  • Relevance to Jewish & Christian relations.
  • Relevance to Christian & Muslim relations.

 

2. The Existence of Jesus

• Radical Scepticism, doubting the existence of Jesus, is based on several propositions, chief among which are usually:

1. Distance between the writing of the Gospels & the events they purport to witness.
2. Scarcity of information about the earthly Jesus in Paul
3. Scarcity of information about Jesus in non-Christian sources.

• All of these are problematic as grounds for doubting Jesus' existence:

1. It is highly likely that the Gospels were written by the end of the first century & we should not overestimate the importance of the time-lag. It is similar to the distance between us and the Second World War.

2. It is easy to underestimate the number of references to Jesus' life in Paul. 1 Corinthians is particularly rich in references to Jesus' life & sayings -

   1 Cor. 7.10-11 (divorce), cf. multiple parallels in the Synoptics

   1 Cor. 9.5 (brothers of the Lord), cf. also Gal. 1-2 on James

   1 Cor. 9.14 (saying re. mission), cf. Matt. 10.10 // Luke 10.7

   1 Cor. 11.23-26 (Lord's Supper)

   1 Cor. 15.3-8 (Resurrection appearances)

3. If the Gospels' general picture of Jesus' origin (unknown village in Galilee) & death (crucifixion as a criminal) is correct, we would hardly expect to see large numbers of references to this figure in non-Christian literature. The remarkable thing is that Jesus does appear outside of the New Testament, most notably in the one place where we would expect to find him, in Josephus, the Jewish historian who knew Galilee well and who also mentions both John the Baptist and James.

Josephus: 'At this time lived Jesus, a wise man (if it is right to call him a man), for he was a worker of miracles and a teacher of people who receive the truth with pleasure; as followers he gained many Jews and many of the Hellenic race. He was the Christ, and when by the accusation of the chief men among us Pilate condemned him to the cross, those who at first had loved him did not cease from doing so; for he appeared to them, alive again, on the third day, since the divine prophets had foretold this as well as countless other marvellous matters about him. Up to the present day the tribe of Christians, named after him, has not disappeared.' (Ant. 18.63-64)

• Josephus' text has, of course, been interpolated by Christians, but most scholars think that there is at its base a passage written by Josephus: NB style, context & non-Christian elements that survive.

• There are other references to Jesus in non-Christian literature. Most famously, Tacitus:

Tacitus: 'The founder of this sect, Christus, was given the death penalty in the reign of Tiberius by the procurator Pontius Pilate; suppressed for the moment, the detestable superstition broke out again, not only in Judea where the evil originated, but also in the city [of Rome] to which everything horrible and shameful flows and where it grows.' (Ann. 15, 44).

• But also the following elements make it quite clear that Jesus was an historical person who lived at the beginning of this era:

1. In spite of the influence of the post-Easter experience of the Church, the Gospels remain surprisingly interested in recording all sorts of minor details of the kind that it would not have been in the interest of mythmakers to create: elements of geography, family etc.
2. There are far too many elements in the tradition that appear to be embarrassing to the evangelists, elements they knew to have happened but which they are attempting to gloss or explain away. One of the most prominent examples is the baptism of Jesus by John, a figure to whom Josephus provides independent witness.

3. Time & Place

(a) When Was Jesus Born?

Luke 1.5: In the days of Herod, king of Judea, there was a priest named Zechariah, of the division of Abijah; and he had a wife of the daughters of Aaron, and her name was Elizabeth.

Luke 2.1: 'A decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be taxed. This was the first enrollment, when Quirinius was governor of Syria.'

Matt. 2.1: 'In the time of King Herod . . . wise men from the east' (cf. Luke 1.5)

Matt. 2.22: 'But when he heard that Archelaus was ruling over Judea in place of his father Herod, he was afraid to go there.'

• There is a major historical discrepancy: Quirinius's census was in AD 6, but Herod the Great died in 4 BC, ten years earlier. Some attempt to solve this by translating prwtoV in Luke with "before".

• But there is general agreement that Jesus was born before the turn of the era, sometime towards the end of the reign of Herod the Great, who died in 4 BC, when Archelaus succeeded him (in Judea).

• By ancient standards, we have a good, rough indication of the time Jesus was probably born.

 

(b) Where Was Jesus Born?

• Both Matthew & Luke say that Jesus was born in Bethlehem (Matthew 2, Luke 2).

• If they are independent of one another, as many scholars think, we have a double witness to Jesus' birth there. However, Luke may have found the reference to Bethlehem in Matthew.

• Both Matthew and Luke believed that these events were foretold in the Scriptures, in which case Micah 5.2 may be the source. It is cited in Matthew 2.6.

• Bethlehem is "David's Town" and Jesus was believed at least as early as the 50s to have been "of David's line" (Rom. 1.3). Did a tradition of Jesus' birth in Bethlehem give rise to the idea that he was "Son of David" or did Matthew and Luke simply "narrativise" the Son of David Christology and place his birth in Bethlehem?

• Matthew appears keen in his birth narrative to make clear that in spite of the (apparently well-known) fact that Jesus was called a "Nazarene" (Matt. 2.23), he nevertheless was born in Bethlehem. Is Matthew embarrassed by the possibility that Jesus was born in Nazareth?

• John 7.42: "Has not the scripture said that the Messiah is descended from David and comes from Bethlehem, the village where David lived?": this may witness to a tradition that Jesus was not born in Bethlehem (or is John being ironic?).

(c) What about the Virgin Birth?

• Like Jesus' birth in Bethlehem, we are reliant solely on Matthew 1-2 & Luke 1-2 here, and several of the same considerations apply.

• There are, nevertheless, several indications that Jesus may have been known to have been conceived out of wedlock:

• Matthew appears to be "apologising" for the tradition: a "flourish of strumpets" (N.T. Wright) in 1.2-17

• John 8.41: 'They said to him, "We were not born of fornication; we have one Father, even God."'

• Several later traditions assert that Jesus' father was one Panthera, especially NB Celsus (2nd Century), against whom Origen is writing (3rd C.)

"Jesus had come from a village in Judea, and was the son of a poor Jewess who gained her living by the work of her own hands. His mother had been turned out of doors by her husband, who was a carpenter by trade, on being convicted of adultery [with a soldier named Panthéra (i.32)]. Being thus driven away by her husband, and wandering about in disgrace, she gave birth to Jesus, a bastard. Jesus, on account of his poverty, was hired out to go to Egypt. While there he acquired certain (magical) powers which Egyptians pride themselves on possessing. He returned home highly elated at possessing these powers, and on the strength of them gave himself out to be a god." (Contra Celsum, 1.28)

 

Suggestions for Additional Reading on these Topics

Gerd Theissen & Annette Merz, The Historical Jesus: A Comprehensive Guide (London: SCM, 1998): Chapter 4 is an excellent discussion of the topic "Historical Scepticism and the Study of Jesus". Chapter 3 is also relevant to some of the material considered here: it discusses "Non-Christian Sources about Jesus", but we will be returning to this in due course.

E. P. Sanders, The Historical Figure of Jesus (London: Allen Lane, 1993) has much relevant material: see in particular Chapter 5, "External Sources" and Chapter 7, "Two Contexts".

Marcus Borg & N. T. Wright, The Meaning of Jesus (London: SPCK, 1999) has a chapter entitled "Born of a Virgin" in which these two scholars argue opposing views.

• An on-line version adapted from Wright's article is available at http://www.religion-online.org/cgi-bin/relsearchd.dll/showarticle?item_id=17

Jane Schaberg, The Illegitimacy of Jesus: A Feminist Theological Interpretation of the Infancy Narratives (Sheffield : Sheffield Academic Press, 1995) is a thought-provoking study:

• Summary available at: http://www.pinn.net/~sunshine/book-sum/illegit.html

Richard Bauckham, "All in the Family: Identifying Jesus' Relatives", Bible Review April 2000, an interesting article giving some background on Jesus' family.

Steve Mason & Jerome Murphy O'Connor, "Where Was Jesus Born?", Bible Review February 2000, contrasting views from two top scholars.

Alan Humm, Ancient Jewish Accounts of Jesus, http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~humm/Topics/JewishJesus : a useful collection of traditions, including Josephus' Testimonium Flavianum

There are many books and articles - and plenty on the web - on the radical scepticism point of view - look for names like G. A. Wells, Earl Doherty and Timothy Freke.

 

 

Mark Goodacre, 7 January 2002