[Before
reading further, start by answering briefly the following question: "Who was
Jesus?" Students should answer this in at most a sentence before proceeding]
Today, I'm going to introduce you to the way historians approach the figure of Jesus. Now, I asked you to answer the question "Who was Jesus?" But the fact that conservative Christians are more likely to be comfortable with the question "Who is Jesus?" than the question I had you answer, "Who was Jesus?", already introduces us to one of the issues that one must face if one attempts to study the figure of Jesus historically. For many who consider themselves Christians today, Jesus is not just a historical figure from the past, but rather is regarded as a figure who transcends history, who is meaningful to their lives in the present, who is alive and risen. But this person appears to dwell somewhere beyond the reach of the tools of historical research. Many people, and perhaps some of you here today, can tell stories, or even write songs, about experiences you may have had or about what Jesus means to you today, but no one else can check the facts and verify those personal experiences directly. So when we speak about Jesus as one whom historians can study, we do not have in mind the Jesus of individuals' personal, spiritual experiences, which by definition lie beyond the realm and scope of historical research.
So what do we mean when we talk about studying the historical Jesus? The historical Jesus refers to the human being that was born around 2,000 years ago in the Middle East, in a relatively obscure corner of the Roman Empire, about whose life there are nonetheless historical documents that bear witness. (For example, Josephus, the first century Jewish historian, has a famous passage about Jesus. Once obvious Christian insertions are removed it reads as follows: "About this time there lived Jesus, a wise man. He was one who wrought surprising feats and was a teacher of such people as accept the truth gladly. He won over many Jews and many of the Greeks. When Pilate, upon hearing him accused by men of the highest standing among us, had condemned him to be crucified, those who had in the first place come to love him did not cease. And the tribe of the Christians, so called after him, has still up to now, not disappeared." Similarly we may note that Tacitus mentions the fact that Jesus was crucified by Pontius Pilate during the reign of Tiberius Caesar). And so from the outset it is important to understand who we are studying if we seek to look at Jesus using the tools historians use. We are studying the historical Jesus, a figure who lived and died in the ancient world, in the past, and in studying him and drawing conclusions about him we try to limit ourselves only what we can confirm from historical data. The method of a historian is like that of a prosecuting attorney. The question of whether someone is guilty or not guilty can rarely be proved or disproved so convincingly that new evidence could never change things and lead to an appeal and a new verdict. The attorney aims to prove his case beyond reasonable doubt, based on the available evidence. The historian has a similar task: to set forth what can be known or hypothesized with reasonable certainty, based on whatever evidence there is available that can withstand careful, critical inspection and scrutiny.
It is worth pointing out that the real Jesus is not simply the same as the historical Jesus. If you think of any human individual, whether from the ancient world or the recent past, no historian will ever be able to tell you everything about that person's life. Let's say you were a good friend of Princess Diana's. Let's imagine someone is writing a biography of Princess Di, and the biographer interviews you. Does that automatically mean that that biographer will include your recollections in his or her book? There may be things that you personally vividly remember happening, but a historian writing a biography of Princess Diana will weigh your testimony, that of others, the evidence from letters, TV interviews, and anything else, and will decide what he or she thinks is most important and what he believes to be true. A historian will never put down on paper the real Princess Di. The historical figure of Princess Diana will always be less (and may at times perhaps also be more!) than the real Princess Diana (To give just one example, most Americans think of her as having been an ordinary girl who got to marry a prince. In fact, she had more English royal blood in her than Charles does! Popular ideas and myths may be based on fact, but may not be). Do you see the difference? A real, living person is always much more than the historical evidence about that person contains and describes. Historical figures - whether ones from the ancient world like Plato or Alexander the Great, or ones from relatively recent history, like John F. Kennedy or Martin Luther King - were real, living people with many facets to their personalities, and so their human lives will have been much more than that which a modern historian, sifting through the many fact, legends, and stories of all sorts, can hope to discover and demonstrate about them.
And so to study Jesus historically is to weigh the evidence we have from the Gospels and also from other sources, and to try to derive from them a portrait of Jesus that is historically reasonable and based on what can be proven. Now, I understand that one of the things that someone else who visited the campus and taught a class here this semester talked about was the Synoptic Problem, about studying the relationship between the Gospels. Do you remember that? So what do you think a historian will do if he sets Mark's, Matthew's, and Luke's accounts of the same event side by side and finds that Luke includes a detail that the others do not mention? He will probably not give Luke's extra detail too much weight. This does not mean that Luke's extra piece of information is necessarily wrong or inaccurate - it just means that, using a historian's tools and methods, it is not proven (and cannot be proven) beyond reasonable doubt. [This is one reason why John's Gospel is not used to reconstruct the life and words of the historical Jesus - John's portrait is clearly highly theological and differs significantly from that of the other Gospels].
Do you see what I am getting at here? To take an extreme example, if you are a believer, you may believe that Jesus was born of a virgin. Now, what sort of verdict do you think a historian would give on the virgin birth? Most historians simply dismiss it as legend or myth. Why do you think they do that? One reason is because virgin births are not everyday occurrences, and is not something explicable in terms of cause and effect; and so history is not designed to study such things. I mean, we have cases of people who were convicted of rape a decade or two ago, and who are now having their convictions overturned and being set free because of DNA evidence. Thanks to modern technology and science, we can 'prove' things today that even a few decades ago we could not. And so what historian could ever hope to prove whether a young Jewish woman 2,000 years ago did or did not have sexual relations with a man? We have only very recently reached the point where we can settle matters of paternity through studying DNA.
And so, to ask a speculative question in order to illustrate a point: if someone did a DNA test on Jesus, what do you think they would find? Would they find that he only had Mary's DNA? Would he have half Mary's and half God's - as thought God has DNA? If Jesus came out as being genetically Joseph's son, a believer might say that God used Joseph's DNA pattern when miraculously causing Jesus' conception. But you see, here we are crossing a crucial line. The virgin birth is something that some people believe on faith. Others reject it. But a historian can never really give a definite verdict on such matters, particularly after 2,000 years have passed. The best a historian can hope to say with certainty is 'not proven'; and depending on one's presuppositions, the historian may also say 'not likely', especially in view of the fact that the virgin birth is first mentioned in Matthew and Luke, both of whom wrote relatively late, whereas earlier writers like Paul and Mark do not mention it. But I want to stress that if you are here today and you happen to be a believer of some sort, you don't need to be scared of studying Jesus historically. The real Jesus is more than the historical Jesus, and historians will never be able to prove, but neither can they definitively disprove, unique events that Christians have traditionally believed in, such as the virgin birth or the resurrection or other 'miracles'. There is a real sense in which these are not things that a historian can study. Historians deal in probability, and thus since miracles, if they happen at all, are obviously not things that happen regularly, historians will never be able to say even that a miracle probably happened. But neither can they say definitively that one did not happen. History deals in probabilities, in evidence, in regularities. And so, when historians set aside miracles and other such things, they are not being overly skeptical - they are just using the methods of historical study.
Do you think it is better to be a believer or an unbeliever in order to study Jesus historically? On the one hand, it might seem better to not have any faith commitments, or at least to not be a Christian, so that one will not be under pressure to make Jesus look like what people in one's Church think he should look like. Yet hopefully all of you are aware that none of us is objective. No one can look at the evidence without presuppositions. And so if one is not a Christian, one may feel under equal pressure to show that Jesus was just another figure of history, of little relevance for today. Who is right, and who is wrong? Who decides? I guess one can sum it up this way: "Faith commitments: you can't study Jesus with 'em, and you can't study Jesus without 'em."
So what can one do? Well, a sociologist named Bryan Wilson has looked at precisely this sort of problem, and he suggests that the best perspective for examining any group and its religious beliefs is that of what he calls "sympathetic distance". This means that ideally one has to have both sympathy for, and distance from, the group that one is studying. So if we apply this to the case of studying the historical figure of Jesus, ideally one needs to be sympathetic and have a positive outlook towards the historical figure of Jesus, without being simply someone committed to finding proofs to confirm what one is already committed to believing. So be aware that if your perspective is that either of a convinced believer, or a convinced unbeliever, that is going to affect the way you read and interpret and evaluate the historical evidence. If you think that you are unbiased, you are sadly mistaken! Don't get me wrong: your biases may help you to see certain things more clearly. But they also may make you sweep other evidence that doesn't suit you under the carpet!
Albert Schweitzer, one of the most famous people to write on this subject, compared the historical Jesus to a well: everyone looks in and sees his or her own reflection looking back. In other words, we all have a tendency to 'see what we want to see'. One thing that can help one to avoid simply reading one's own beliefs and assumptions into the historical Jesus is to dialogue with historians of other perspectives, and to listen to what historians with different faith commitments, and with none at all, have to say. In particular, in recent decades there have been a number of interesting studies of Jesus from a Jewish perspective. Listening to these voices may help us to at least have our own assumptions challenged.
Now some of you may at this point feel like asking "Why should I be interested in the historical Jesus?" So let me ask you this question now: Why is the historical Jesus important? What can we hope to learn by studying the historical Jesus? One benefit of historical study is that, unlike personal religious experiences, historical evidence, on the other hand, is something that is accessible to everyone. As one historian working in this field puts it, "Many will dismiss the whole thing [that is, the whole quest for the historical Jesus] as a waste of time: we have the Bible, that's enough for us. But if we cannot say something in public about Jesus as he really was, we are turning Christianity into a private club. And speaking in public means doing history" (N.T. Wright, "The New Unimproved Jesus" Christianity Today Sept 13, 1995, p.26). Historical research is a field in which there is a level playing field: the same evidence is available and the same criteria can be used by historians, regardless whether they are Christians of some description or not. This doesn't mean that by studying the historical evidence for Jesus we will arrive at a portrait of Jesus that everyone - Jews, Muslims, Christians, and atheists, to name a few - will all agree on. That is to hope for too much from the study of history. But what we can hope for is that we can find some basic historical information that we agree on, which we can then use for whatever purpose suits us: to foster mutual dialogue and religious understanding, to challenge commonly-held assumptions in our church or our society, to talk about our personal beliefs, or just to understand a little bit about who this figure was that has had such an influence on human history.
Another reason to do historical research on Jesus is to avoid distortion. When we do not turn to historical evidence, then Jesus can be made into anything we choose. And so today we have everything from Jesus the kind teacher to Jesus the Evangelical preacher of hell and damnation to Jesus the space alien, and hundreds of other viewpoints in between. No one finds the historical Jesus, that Galilean Jew from the ancient world, a very comfortable figure to be around. We are thus always tempted to distort Jesus and make him fit our tastes. Or as Marcus Borg, a key figure in historical Jesus research today, colorfully puts it: I don't have any interest in seeing Jesus as a peasant, Jewish reformer; I would rather Jesus were a middle class guy who drove a Mitsubishi (see his The Search for Jesus, Washington: Biblical Archaeology Society, 1994, p.106). We are separated from the historical Jesus by four great gaps: Language, culture, religion, and 2,000 years. To understand Jesus, we must bridge those gaps, and that requires historical investigation.
Another point that makes historical study of Jesus important is the fact that Christianity is different from many other religions in the world today precisely because it claims to not be only about a lifestyle or belief system. It focuses on historical events in the past, and claims that those events are crucial to things like knowing God and eternal life. To refuse to use historical study to examine Jesus is therefore to treat Christianity as something other than what it claims to be, and to turn it instead into a timeless philosophy. As John Meier puts it, "The quest for the historical Jesus reminds Christians that faith in Christ is not just a vague existential attitude or a way of being in the world. Christian faith is the affirmation of, and adherence to, a particular person who said and did particular things in a particular time and place in human history" (John P. Meier, A Marginal Jew. Rethinking the Historical Jesus, New York: Doubleday 1993, p.32). In other words, you cannot study Christianity just by looking at what Christians believe today. Christianity is a religion that focuses a great deal of attention on historical events in the past. If we want to assess the claims of this belief system, we need to study the past, and not just the present.
So, to conclude this introduction, you should be prepared for your examination of this historical Jesus to challenge and change you, regardless what perspective you are starting from. As one scholar working in this field put it, "For me, studying Jesus in his historical context has been the most profoundly disturbing, enriching, and Christianizing activity of my life. As a historian, I meet a Jesus the church has unwittingly hushed up--a more believable Jesus, a Jesus who challenges me more deeply than any preacher, a Jesus who evokes my love and worship by what he is and does, not by the sentiment or hype that some preachers fall back on" (N.T. Wright, "The New Unimproved Jesus" Christianity Today Sept 13, 1995, p.26). [You may wish to consult further Stephen T. Davis, "Why The Historical Jesus Matters", at http://www.wcg.org/lit/jesus/davis.htm]
So where do we start? Well, let's turn now to look first at some of the presuppositions one must make in studying Jesus historically, and then we'll look at the method of historical study of Jesus. From there, we will focus on just a couple of examples that are of crucial importance in relation to who we think Jesus was.
For more information on the study
of the Synoptic Gospels, click here
For more information on the Gospel of John click here
On the testimony of Flavius Josephus, try the following:
http://artfuljesus.0catch.com/meier2.html
http://www.bede.org.uk/Josephus.htm
http://members.aol.com/FLJOSEPHUS/testhist.htm
http://www.carm.org/questions/Josephus_Jesus.htm
http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~humm/Topics/JewishJesus/josephus.html
http://www.religiousstudies.uncc.edu/jdtabor/josephus-jesus.html
http://web.archive.org/web/20050304042142/http://www.users.zetnet.co.uk/kking/extern3.html
Further links on sources can be found at
the bottom of this page
The earliest account of Jesus' life, apart from the hints Paul gives us in his letters, is that found in Mark's Gospel. We also have the early collection of Jesus' sayings in Q. The date of both these documents is debated, but most place Mark as having been written sometime in the 60s C.E. This is a good 30 years or so after the events being described. This makes it analogous to someone writing about the assassination of John F. Kennedy today. Are there still eyewitnesses around? Yes, certainly. Are there records of eyewitness testimony from closer to the event? Yes. Does this mean that one has access to certainty as regards what happened? By no means! And so we must remember that, although there were certainly eyewitnesses around, there is no unambiguous evidence that could make us 100% certain that any of our written sources was written by an actual eyewitness. One of our sources claim to depend on eyewitness testimony (e.g. John's Gospel), but it was written very late, and that needs to be taken into account as well. The other Gospels do not claim to be written by eyewitnesses, and we cannot simply assume that they were. And so there may have been as much uncertainty about certain events by the time Mark wrote as there is concerning the assassination of JFK today. And so, as historians, you will need to sift through the evidence, argue, reconstruct, and at times hypothesize. The most important characteristic of a good historian is humility: you should, indeed must, draw conclusions, but just remember how much uncertainty is inherent in each decision.
On the evidence from Paul's letters, see the very helpful
article by Marion L. Soards, "Christology of the Pauline Epistles", in Who Do
You Say That I Am? Essays on Christology, ed. Mark Allan Powell and David R.
Bauer, Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1999, pp.88-109. Also relevant is the
little book by Victor Furnish, Jesus According to Paul, Cambridge
University Press, 1993.
Biographies, but not modern biographies
Midrash and the ways one retold authoritative stories in early Judaism
The book known as 'The Book of Jubilees' is a retelling of Genesis that was popular at Qumran and in many Jewish circles from the time it was written, which is estimated to be in the second century B.C.E. Here's how this book tells the story of Abram's time in Egypt:
...And there was a famine in the land. And Abram went into Egypt in the third year of the week and he stayed in Egypt five years before his wife was taken from him. And Tanis of Egypt was built then, seven years after Hebron.
And it came to pass when Pharaoh took Sarai, the wife of Abram, that the LORD plagued Pharaoh and his house with great plagues on account of Sarai, the wife of Abram. And Abram was honored with many possessions: sheep and oxen and donkeys and horses and camels and male and female servants and silver and much gold. And Lot, his brother's son, also had possessions. And Pharaoh returned Sarai, the wife of Abram. And he sent him out from the land of Egypt. (Jubilees 13:11-15)
Notice anything? The difficulties created by Abraham lying about Sarah being his wife are simply left out. Note how Matthew and Luke deal with difficult passages from Mark.
Flavius Josephus was a Jewish historian, famous for having participated in and written about the Jewish War against the Romans that led up to the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem in 70 C.E. In the present context another of his works is probably more interesting, his Antiquities of the Jews, which retells the story of the Jewish people, including the parts already covered in the Jewish Scriptures. His retelling will help us to understand the ways one wrote history in this time. But first, let us hear his own explanation of his motives for writing:
THOSE who undertake to write histories, do not, I perceive, take that trouble on one and the same account, but for many reasons, and those such as are very different one from another. For some of them apply themselves to this part of learning to show their skill in composition, and that they may therein acquire a reputation for speaking finely: others of them there are, who write histories in order to gratify those that happen to be concerned in them, and on that account have spared no pains, but rather gone beyond their own abilities in the performance: but others there are, who, of necessity and by force, are driven to write history, because they are concerned in the facts, and so cannot excuse themselves from committing them to writing, for the advantage of posterity; nay, there are not a few who are induced to draw their historical facts out of darkness into light, and to produce them for the benefit of the public, on account of the great importance of the facts themselves with which they have been concerned. Now of these several reasons for writing history, I must profess the two last were my own reasons also; for since I was myself interested in that war which we Jews had with the Romans, and knew myself its particular actions, and what conclusion it had, I was forced to give the history of it, because I saw that others perverted the truth of those actions in their writings. (Antiquities of the Jews, Preface, 1)
So we see that Josephus presents his aim as having to do with 'the facts', and with the misrepresentation of those facts by other historians. And so let us take the same example we have been looking at in the case of other writers, namely Abram's sojourn in Egypt when he lied about Sarai being his wife:
NOW, after this, when a famine had invaded the land of Canaan, and Abram had discovered that the Egyptians were in a flourishing condition, he was disposed to go down to them, both to partake of the plenty they enjoyed, and to become an auditor of their priests, and to know what they said concerning the gods; designing either to follow them, if they had better notions than he, or to convert them into a better way, if his own notions proved the truest. Now, seeing he was to take Sarai with him, and was afraid of the madness of the Egyptians with regard to women, lest the king should kill him on occasion of his wife's great beauty, he contrived this device : - he pretended to be her brother, and directed her in a dissembling way to pretend the same, for he said it would be for their benefit. Now, as soon as he came into Egypt, it happened to Abram as he supposed it would; for the fame of his wife's beauty was greatly talked of; for which reason Pharaoh, the king of Egypt, would not be satisfied with what was reported of her, but would needs see her himself, and was preparing to enjoy her; but God put a stop to his unjust inclinations, by sending upon him a distemper, and a sedition against his government. And when he inquired of the priests how he might be freed from these calamities, they told him that this his miserable condition was derived from the wrath of God, upon account of his inclinations to abuse the stranger's wife. He then, out of fear, asked Sarai who she was, and who it was that she brought along with her. And when he had found out the truth, he excused himself to Abram, that supposing the woman to be his sister, and not his wife, he set his affections on her, as desiring an affinity with him by marrying her, but not as incited by lust to abuse her. He also made him a large present in money, and gave him leave to enter into conversation with the most learned among the Egyptians; from which conversation his virtue and his reputation became more conspicuous than they had been before.
For whereas the Egyptians were formerly addicted to different customs, and despised one another's sacred and accustomed rites, and were very angry one with another on that account, Abram conferred with each of them, and, confuting the reasonings they made use of, every one for their own practices, demonstrated that such reasonings were vain and void of truth: whereupon he was admired by them in those conferences as a very wise man, and one of great sagacity, when he discoursed on any subject he undertook; and this not only in understanding it, but in persuading other men also to assent to him. He communicated to them arithmetic, and delivered to them the science of astronomy; for before Abram came into Egypt they were unacquainted with those parts of learning; for that science came from the Chaldeans into Egypt, and from thence to the Greeks also. (Antiquities, 1.8.1-2)
Josephus is in one sense more conservative with his use of the Biblical narrative than the other authors we have looked at: he simply accepts that Abram and Sarai engaged in deception, without trying to avoid this implication. On the other hand, he feels free to fill in the gaps, and to turn Abram into a philosophically-minded Jewish apologist!
Other works from around this period in Jewish history that fall into the same category of 'rewritten Bible' and which may be found on the web include 1 Enoch, the Testament of Abraham.
All of the above is not aimed at presenting these works, or the Gospels, as 'historical fictions'. Let us reserve that term for works that are essentially fictional but set in a real historical context. These narratives are rather 'dramatized true stories' - they are telling about something that actually happened, but they are also seeking to tell the story in such a way as to make a point, and so they may 'dramatize' it. This may include things like filling in gaps in their knowledge by making up plausible accounts based on what little they do know, or placing words on the lips of a speaker that would have been appropriate for that person in that setting, in cases where they do not know what actually happened. And certainly we may expect on the basis of the literature surveyed that they will have felt free to 'improve' even an authoritative narrative, smoothing out difficulties, making it more 'reverent', more 'theologically correct' and so on. Whether the Gospels actually did any of this remains to be seen, but at the very least we cannot presume that they did not, in view of the liberties taken with biblical narratives by Jewish writers in this period. The frequent appeal to the presence of eyewitnesses who would have 'set the record straight' had anyone departed from a literal, word-for-word reproduction of what Jesus said and did, misses the point entirely. In the case of biblical narratives, there was a story that was set in stone, known by the whole community and memorized by many as it was told over and over again. And yet authors felt free to add details and recast the personages in order to make a point. It is not that they could 'get away with this' - it was apparently not felt at all inappropriate! And so it is certainly in no way implausible that they would have done the same when retelling the story of Jesus.
Conspiracy theories
Innocent until proven guilty?
We
now need to turn to look at the criteria used in studying the various sources
that we have available to us, in order to sift through the material and
determine what is likely to be historically accurate. But before doing that, it
will be good to think briefly about another question: What kinds of sources does
a historian hope for? I can scarcely think of a better summary than Bart
Ehrman's:
Historians obviously have to devise criteria for determining which sources
can be trusted and which cannot - much as the jury in a murder trial must
decide which of the witnesses called to the stand can be believed. In
reconstructing any past event - whether an air disaster in 1930, a heresy
trial in 1030, or a crucifixion in 30 - an ideal situation would be to have
sources that (a) are numerous, so that they can be compared to one another (the
more the better!); (b) derive from a time near the event itself, so that they
were less likely to have been based on hearsay or legend; (c) were produced
independently of one another, so that their authors were not in collusion; (d)
do not contradict one another, so that one or more of them is not necessarily in
error; (e) are internally consistent, so that they show a basic concern for
reliability; and (f) are not biased towards the subject matter, so that they
have not skewed their accounts to serve their own purposes (Bart
Ehrman, Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millennium, Oxford
University Press, 1999, pp.85-86).
How
do the New Testament documents come out looking evaluated as historical
documents in these terms? Not too bad, in fact! While there is some collusion in
the sense of the use of common sources, this is not that hard to detect. As you
saw when you learned about the Synoptic problem, it is relatively easy to spot
that Matthew and Luke are deriving some of their material from Mark. So they do
well on pretty much every point - except the last. If there is one thing
that is clear about the New Testament accounts, they are not attempting to give
unbiased accounts of historical events. When they pick and choose from among the
various events and teachings that have been either witnessed or retold and
passed down, they choose them with a purpose. John puts his own purpose in words
that would apply well to pretty much all the New Testament documents. In John
20:30-31 we are told, "There were many other signs that Jesus worked in the
sight of his disciples, but they are not recorded in this book. These are
recorded so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and
that believing this you may have life in his name". So far from being unbiased
observers, the Gospel authors are out to prove something. And so this is
something that a historian has to particularly watch out for.
In looking at the New Testament documents, therefore, historians have
come up with some criteria to help separate the most historically reliable
material from other material found in the Gospels.
----------------------------------------
For the following discussion see John P. Meier, A Marginal Jew. Rethinking the Historical Jesus (New York: Doubleday, 1991) 167-95. The summary which follows is largely the work of Jerry Truex.
These are basic principles used to determine whether material embedded in the Gospels comes from Jesus (28-30 A.D.) or from some other source (oral tradition or the Evangelist's redaction).
There is no fixed number. Different
scholars suggest different criteria. For
example, Meier proposes five primary and five secondary (disputed) criteria.
Each criterion has strengths and weaknesses.
Hence, the more criteria that can be met by something attributed to
Jesus, the more likely that it is genuinely from him.
Material traced to the life of Jesus will be call "authentic."
[Note that one's evaluation of the sources will affect one's
conclusions. Crossan uses the criteria, but believes certain extracanonical
Gospels are the earliest, and thus reaches quite different conclusions than
others might on the basis of the same criteria]
Description: Sayings
or actions of Jesus that would have embarrassed or created difficulty for the
early Church are more likely to be authentic.
The Church would not have gone out of its way to create material that
would have been embarrassing or undermined its credibility or status.
Example: The church
would not have created the story where the supposed inferior John the
Baptist--who baptized people for the repentance and forgiveness of
sins--baptized the superior and sinless Jesus.
Other embarrassing reports include Peter's denial, Judas's betrayal,
Jesus' crucifixion, and the suspicion by Jesus' family that he is insane (Mk
3:21).
Limitation: What we might perceive as embarrassing might not have been to the
early church.
Description: This
criterion (also called dissimilarity) focuses on actions or sayings of Jesus
that cannot be derived either from Judaism at the time of Jesus or from the
early Church. Some historians view
this as the most fundamental criterion, the basis of all reconstructions, since
it gives us an assured minimum of material to work with.
Example: Jesus'
prohibition of all oaths (Mt 5:34, 37), his rejection of voluntary fasting (Mk
2:18-22), and his prohibition of divorce (Mk 10:2-12) are not found in Jewish or
early Christian writings.
Limitations: The
criterion seems to presuppose what we do not possess--a complete knowledge of
1st-century Judaism or Christianity. The
criterion tends to be unrealistic because it divorces Jesus from the Judaism
that influenced him and from the Church that he influenced.
If Jesus was so discontinuous from 1st-century Judaism and Christianity,
he would have been unintelligible to them.
Hence, E.P. Sanders stands this criterion on its head and says that if an
alleged saying or story of Jesus is discontinuous from 1st-century Judaism, it
cannot be from Jesus.
The usefulness of this criterion is that it can give us a core of events
and sayings that one can be as certain about as it is possible to be in
historical research. If the early Church didn't follow it and was
uncomfortable with it, and it didn't come from Judaism, then Jesus is pretty
much the only source left. However, on its own this criterion will at best give
us an unbalanced and lopsided portrait of the historical Jesus. Yet this
criterion will probably help us to home in on what was really distinctive about
Jesus, what he emphasized precisely because it set his mission and his
understanding of God's Kingdom apart from that of others. But to use this
criterion to exclude material is wrong-headed: it would be like saying
that Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. could not have been a civil-rights
activist, because both those who influenced him and those he influenced were
civil rights activists! It is likewise unthinkable that Jesus completely
differed from John the Baptist and Judaism in general, and that none of his
followers sought to preserve at least some of his actual emphasis and teaching.
Description: This
criterion (also called cross-sectional attestation) focuses on those actions and
sayings of Jesus that are attested in more than one independent literary source
(e.g., Mark, Q, M, L, Paul, John, and extracanonical sources) and/or more than
one literary form or genre (e.g., parable, conflict story, miracle story,
prophecy, aphorism). This criterion partially depends on the Four-Source Theory
as the solution to the Synoptic Problem.
Examples: Broadly speaking, we can be fairly certain that Jesus spoke about the
Kingdom of God because it is found in several independent traditions (Mark, Q,
M, L, John, and Paul) and in a wide variety of genres (parable, beatitude,
prayer, aphorism, miracle story). Because
of this broad cross-section of material, it is extremely difficult to claim that
the early church invented a Jesus who talked about the Kingdom of God.
More narrowly, it is highly likely that Jesus compared life in the
Kingdom to a lamp because it is found in a broad cross-section of independent
traditions (Mk 4:21; Mt 5:15; Thomas 22b).
Limitations: It is
possible that a saying created by the early community or prophet met the needs
of the Church so well that it was attributed to Jesus and spread to a number of
different strands of tradition. Conversely,
just because a story or saying is found in only one tradition does not mean that
it was not spoken by Jesus (e.g., the Parable of the Good Samaritan, which is
found only in Luke).
Description: This
criterion (also called consistency or conformity) can be used only when other
material has been identified as authentic.
This criterion holds that a saying and action attributed to Jesus may be
accepted as authentic if it coheres with other sayings and actions already
established as authentic. While
this criterion cannot be used alone, it can broaden the database for what Jesus
actually said and did.
Example: That Jesus
had disputes concerning religious traditions such as the Sabbath is likely
because it coheres with the well attested incident when Jesus clashed with the
religious establishment in the Temple (Mk 11:12-19).
Limitation: Early Christians could have created sayings that cohered with sayings
actually coming from Jesus. Additionally,
Semitic thought delighted in paradoxical statement that held opposites in
tension. Use of the criterion of
coherence might result in dismissing one or the other side of paradox as
inauthentic.
Description: This
criterion emphasizes that Jesus met a violent death at the hands of Jewish and
Roman officials and then asks what historical words or actions of Jesus explain
his trial and crucifixion as "King of the Jews."
A Jesus whose words and actions would not alienate people, especially
powerful people, is not the historical Jesus crucified by Pontius Pilate.
Jesus threatened, disturbed, and infuriated people.
Limitations: This
criterion might tend to miss sayings and actions of Jesus where he comforted and
consoled people. If Jesus was not a
revolutionary, and simply misunderstood or was simply a scapegoat, use of this
criterion would miss it.
Description: Since
Jesus spoke in Aramaic, traces of Aramaic in our Greek Gospels argue in favor of
a primitive tradition that may go back to Jesus.
Example: The pun in
Matt 23:24, "straining out the gnat (galma) and swallowing a camel (gamla)."
The use of Aramaic words such as amen (Mk 8:12), abba (Mk
14:36), bar (Mt 16:17), talitha cumi (Mk 5:41), eloi eloi lama
sabachthani (Mk 15:34) all point in the direction of the historical Jesus.
Limitation: Aramaic
(alongside Greek) was spoken by the early church after the death of Jesus.
Aramaic speaking Christians could have created these sayings.
Description:
Positively put, sayings and actions of Jesus that reflect concrete social,
political, economic, agricultural, and religious conditions of ancient Palestine
point toward a more primitive tradition that may go back to Jesus.
Negatively put, sayings and actions of Jesus that reflect social,
political, economic, agricultural, or religious conditions that existed only
outside Palestine or only after the death of Jesus is to be considered
inauthentic.
Example: The Gospels
anachronistically identify Pontius Pilate as the Procurator of Judea.
However, governors of Judea were not called Procurators until 44 A.D.,
eight years after Pilate was recalled by Rome.
Pilate was a Prefect, not a Procurator.
The Gospels, in this respect, reflect political conditions after the
death of Jesus.
Limitation: The
social, political, economic, agricultural, and religious conditions of ancient
Palestine would not have altered very much after Jesus' death.
Therefore, the criterion is not very useful in distinguishing pre-Easter
sayings of Jesus from post-Easter sayings created by early Christians living in
Palestine. And to take the example of Pontius Pilate again, the fact that
anachronistic language is used does not mean that Pontius Pilate was not
the Roman official in charge in Jesus' time. So this criterion should be used
with caution. It is worth noting that the Roman historian Tacitus, who records
(writing in 115 CE) that Jesus was crucified at the hands of Pontius Pilate,
also calls Pilate a 'procurator'.
Description:
Liveliness and concrete details--especially when the details are not relevant to
the main point of the story--are sometimes taken as indicators of an eyewitness
report.
Example: A person is
described as running away naked after Jesus is arrested (Mk 14:51-52).
Limitation: Skilled authors can create vividness and concrete detail even if the
account is unhistorical. Liveliness
and concrete detail in themselves are not proofs of historicity.
Description: Certain
"laws" govern the transmission of tradition during the oral period, we
can, by understanding these "laws," determine which tradition is early
and which is late.
Example: As sayings
and stories pass from mouth to mouth, there is the supposed tendency to make
details more concrete, to add proper names, to turn indirect discourse into
direct quotation, and to eliminate Aramaic words and constructions.
Limitation: E.P.
Sanders has shown examples of tradition becoming longer and shorter, discourses
becoming both direct and indirect, and proper names being dropped as well as
added. The tendencies run in both
directions.
Description: This
criterion concerns who has the burden of proof?
Option 1: The burden
of proof rests on the claim of authenticity; if a person claims that a
saying/story comes from Jesus, then the burden of proof rest on the person
making that claim [So e.g Norman
Perrin, Rediscovering the Teaching of Jesus,
London: SCM, 1967, p.39; the Jesus Seminar].
Option 2: The burden
of proof rests on the claim of inauthenticity; if a person claims that a
saying/story does not come from Jesus, then the burden of proof rests on the
person making that claim [so e.g. Joachim
Jeremias, New Testament Theology, Part One: The Proclamation of Jesus,
London: SCM, 1971, p.37].
Option 3: The burden
of proof rests on either claim. If
a person wants to discount certain material, that person must prove
inauthenticity; if a person wants to use certain material, that person must
argue for authenticity [so e.g. E.P.
Sanders, Jesus and Judaism, Philadelphia: Fortress, 1985, p.13].
[Note:
We've already looked at a few examples of historical questions relating to Jesus as we've looked at the criteria of authenticity that have been proposed. Let's now try applying them to two specific questions about the historical Jesus:
[The Jesus Seminar has its members vote and rate the texts as (a) high confidence that the event or saying took place, (b) the event or saying probably occurred, (c) the event or saying possible, but not likely, and (d) the event or saying is largely or entirely fictive. Maybe we'll do that in class sometime!]
It is quite certain that Jesus referred to God as 'Abba'. Paul speaks of us having the Spirit of sonship, which leads us to cry out 'Abba, Father' (Romans 8:15; Galatians 4:6). There was no reason for him to use this Aramaic word unless he presumed his readers were already familiar with teaching about Jesus similar to that found in the Gospels, in which Jesus prays using this word. This word was not usual in Jewish prayers at the time, and this lends further support to its authenticity, as does the fact that it is something preserved in Aramaic. It has good independent attestation.
Take a look at the following passages. How about I let you try to answer this one? Which version or versions do you think can be traced back to the historical Jesus, if any? What do you think of Matthew's version in ch.12.
Mark
8:12
And he sighed deeply in his spirit, and said, "Why does this generation
seek a sign? Truly, I say to you, no sign shall be given to this
generation"
Matthew
12:39-40 But
he answered them, "An evil and adulterous generation seeks for a sign; but
no sign shall be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. For as
Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the whale, so will the Son
of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth."
Matthew
16:4 "An evil and adulterous generation seeks for a sign,
but no sign shall be given to it except the sign of Jonah." So he
left them and departed.
Luke
11:29-30 When the crowds were increasing, he began to say, "This
generation is an evil generation; it seeks a sign, but no sign shall be given to
it except the sign of Jonah. For as Jonah became a sign to the men
of Nineveh, so will the Son of man be to this generation
And finally, let's think briefly about one of the stories about Jesus that is of central interest to Christians: the resurrection. What can a historian say about these stories? A historian can only at best make judgments about whether the story of the empty tomb is likely to be historical, or only appears in the Christian tradition later on. But even if a historian tells you that the tomb probably was empty, he or she cannot tell you why the tomb was empty. Can one prove that an angel rolled away the stone? No. Can one prove that wild dogs took the body, dragged it away, and ate it? No. Can historical study definitively exclude either of these options? I'm afraid not. That doesn't have to do with excessive skepticism on the part of historians: it is just the nature of historical study.
This shouldn't trouble believers too much, since belief in the resurrection presumably doesn't depend on what happened to the body anyway. The Romans used to try to prevent Christian martyrs from being resurrected by burning their bodies and scattering their ashes in a river. But obviously, if one believes in a resurrection, it cannot be a requirement that God locate all the original molecules of your body and put them back together! So in a sense, it doesn't really matter what happened to the body.
On the other hand, historians can conclude with certainty that the followers of Jesus had some kind of experience that changed their lives, and convinced them that Jesus was alive in some sense. But there is no way we can penetrate their experiences. But it is clear that some over-simplified explanations, such as mass hysteria and hallucination, do not seem to account for the evidence. But how one assesses the evidence will depend on one's perspective. It is always easier to believe certain things in the context of one's own faith than about the faith of others. When a Christian looks at Paul the Apostle and sees how he turned from persecuting Christians and became a believer, they have no trouble believing that he had a vision and that Jesus appeared to him and spoke to him. Yet when Mohammed, in the context of polytheistic Arabia, said he had a vision, and told people to turn from idols and to believe in the one true and living God, the same Christians may have only skepticism and disbelief. If you want to realize how much your faith perspective affects your judgment of evidence, ask what it would take to convince you today that a particular cult leader (any one of your choice) had risen from the dead. Wouldn't you sympathize with 'doubting' Thomas? I'm not sure I would even trust a video tape - would you?
And so historical study of Jesus raises issues and questions that historical study itself cannot answer. It points beyond itself into other fields like theology, philosophy, psychology, sociology. That is OK. There are many perspectives from which one can do something like think about and study Jesus. Historical research and method is just one of them. But it is an approach without which there is almost no anchor to keep us from simply making a Jesus that suits us, whether one that is easier to worship and follow, or one that is easier to reject and dismiss. The challenge of historical study is to try to deal with evidence fairly and objectively, to the extent that that is humanly possible. But at the end of the day, whatever religious significance Jesus has for people today by definition cannot be demonstrated by historical study, but is only visible to the eyes of faith.
This is a topic we shall return to later in the semester,
but I thought it appropriate to mention it here as an example of what historical
study can and cannot accomplish.
From here, you will link next to a document presenting two scholars' assessment of what may, with the utmost confidence and the least uncertainty, be attributed to Jesus. JUST CLICK HERE! Or scroll down for further links and suggested possible reading on the topics discussed here...
JESUS Database of sayings attributed to Jesus
From The Christian Resource Institute:
The Gospels and the Synoptic Problem
A Proposed Reconstruction of "Q"
Burton Mack's translation of the lost sayings source 'Q'
[from http://cygnus-study.com/bible.shtml]
Steve C. Carlson's Synoptic Problem Homepage
Mahlon Smith's Synoptic Gospels Primer
Andrew Bernhard's site, Jesus of Nazareth in Early Christian Gospels
Gregory Jenks' article, "What did Paul know about Jesus?"
Martin Dibelius, "The Sources"
Secret Gospel of Mark Homepage
Ancient Jewish Accounts of Jesus
Mark Chapman, "Faith
and History: some problems and solutions"
Darrell J. Doughty, "Searching for the Historical Jesus: Sources"
Dennis Ingolfsland, "Q, M, L and other sources for the Historical Jesus" (Princeton Theological Review, October 1997)
James M. Robinson, "The Real Jesus of the Sayings "Q" Gospel"
Gospel of Thomas (encyclopedia article)
For further reading on sources:
Catchpole, David, The Quest for Q, Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1993.
Dalman, Gustaf, Jesus Christ in the Talmud, Midrash, Zohar, and the Liturgy of the Synagogue, New York: Arno Press, 1973 (reprint: originally Cambridge: Deighton, Bell, & Co., 1893).
Davies, Stevan, The Gospel of Thomas and Christian Wisdom, New York: Seabury, 1983.
Funk, Robert W., Roy W. Hoover, and the Jesus Seminar, The Five Gospels: The Search for the Authentic Words of Jesus, New York: Macmillan/Polebridge, 1993.
Grant, Robert M., with David Noel Freedman, The Secret Sayings of Jesus, London: Fontana/Collins, 1960.
Jeremias, Joachim, Unknown Sayings of Jesus, London: SPCK, 1957.
Kloppenborg, John S. (editor), The Shape of Q: Signal Essays on the Sayings Gospel, Minneapolis: Fortress, 1994.
Koester, Helmut, and Stephen J. Patterson, "The Gospel of Thomas: Does It Contain Authentic Sayings of Jesus?", Bible Review, April 1990, pp.26-39.
Meier, John P., A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus, volume 1, New York: Doubleday, 1991.
Meyer, Marvin, The Gospel of Thomas, San Francisco: Harper Collins, 1992.
Pagels, Elaine, The Gnostic Gospels, New York: Penguin, 1979.
Tuckett, Christopher M., Q and the History of Early Christianity, Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1996.
Wenham, David (editor), Gospel Perspectives - Volume 5: The Jesus Tradition Outside the Gospels, JSOT Press, 1984.