M08a
Video Lecture: Stu Talené
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When most Christians speak about Jesus, they do not make a distinction between the person who lived in the first three decades of the first century and later interpretations of him in the Gospels and Church tradition. In other words, they rarely make a distinction between the Jewish Jesus and the Christianized Jesus, or as some describe it, the pre-Easter Jesus and the post-Easter Jesus. For eighteen hundred years of Christian history such divides were unthinkable. The Church oversaw the academy; most parishioners were illiterate; reason was subservient to doctrines of faith; and the bible was primarily in the hands of the clergy. The last two hundred years of New Testament scholarship has raised questions and issues about the historical Jesus that have changed the landscape forever. This chapter is an introduction to what has become the field of historical Jesus research. As you read this chapter, try to identify with the agonizing passion of historians—many of whom were committed Christians—in their search for the person who is believed to have turned the world upside down. Try to also wrestle with your own position on the relationship between the Jesus of history and the Christ of Christian faith. How are they distinct? How are they the same? This field of study has also raised numerous tangential issues that are interesting in and of themselves, such as the relationship between theology and history, faith and reason, and the nature of historical inquiry itself.
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Mosaic of Christ “Pantocrator” (“ruler of all”). This was an iconic image throughout the Medieval period. Hagia Sophia, Istanbul. 1261.
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The Influence of the Enlightenment
Eugene Delacroix, “Liberty Leading the People,” Louvre-Lens, 1830. This famous commemoration of the French revolution is personified in a woman, who is a goddess figure standing over the bodies of the fallen, holding the flag of the new Republic. This painting has often been viewed as the symbolic end of the Enlightenment.
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The modern quest for the historical Jesus is rooted in the European Enlightenment (ca. 1650-1800), which is also known as the “Age of Reason,” the “Age of Modernity,” and the “Age of Science.” During this 150-year period, Western culture underwent a dramatic shift. The rise of rational inquiry, the scientific method, democratic political movements (and revolutions), and the legal emancipation of the individual all led to the secularization of society within a liberal democratic framework. One of the major outcomes of the Enlightenment was the challenge to the authority of the Church on almost every level of thought, including the historical identity of Jesus. Before the Enlightenment, the Jesus of the Gospels and the Christian tradition was assumed to be the same as the Jesus of history who ministered throughout Palestine during the late 20s of the first century. During the Enlightenment period, the attention to the critical use of sources in the study of history led to an alternate view that has remained with us ever since, namely the division between the “Christ of faith” and the “Jesus of history.”
Scholars have used the designation “Christ of faith” to refer to the theologically interpreted Jesus as the object of Christian worship, who is believed to be, among other titles, the Messiah, Son of God, Lord, and the second person of the Trinity. Alternatively, they have used the designation “Jesus of history” to refer to the Jewish person who can be reconstructed using the tools and methods of historical inquiry. Since the latter part of the Enlightenment, New Testament scholars studying Jesus have been guided by two related overarching questions:
(1) Who was Jesus prior to the emergence of Christianity?
(2) what is the relationship between the historical Jesus and later Christian portrayals of him?
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Fresco of Jesus healing the bleeding woman (Mark 5:25-34), Catacomb of Marcellinus and Peter, Rome. Early 4th century. Depictions of past figures like Jesus were commonly contemporized in writing and art. Jesus appears as a Roman healer and/or god.
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Inquiry into the historical Jesus naturally stems from a comparative reading of the Gospels. Alongside the many similarities, the four Gospels of the New Testament contain diverse portrayals of Jesus. At the risk of repeating the detailed discussion of the Gospels in the next chapter, it is important for modern readers to understand that the Gospels convey a dual perspective. On the one hand, the evangelists write about Jesus in the context of Jewish life set in Palestine during the late 20s of the first century. This is where the plot unfolds and the interactions among the characters takes place. Yet, on the other hand, the Gospels were written for audiences who lived outside of Palestine decades later (approx. 70-95 CE). These audiences were Christians, living in a post-resurrection setting, and had as their main opponents Jews who did not believe that Jesus is the messiah. The Gospels were primarily written to address the issues plaguing the evangelists’ communities. While the Gospels contain historical material, they are not reconstructions of the life of Jesus as we might write them today.
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The quest for the historical Jesus has been nothing short of controversial. Historians have represented almost every imaginable position. The main problem for many observers is that the reconstructions of Jesus by historians have not always lined up with the Gospel portrayals of him. What is more, many lay people regard the historical pursuit of Jesus as antithetical and even hostile to Christianity. Over the years, there has certainly been reason for this sentiment, but it does not represent the main thrust of this inquiry. Many scholars have viewed historical Jesus research as beneficial to the Church and Christianity. Learning and discovering what Jesus was like, why he taught the way he did, why he did the things he did, what he meant by what he said, all speak invaluably to who he really was and ultimately play a role in the broader understanding of Christianity.
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Mosaic of the Glorified Christ, St Vitus Cathedral, Prague, 14th century. Theological interpretations of Jesus in the Gospels and the church are not subject to historical critique. They are affirmations of faith.
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Aside from the immense value of historical Jesus research, it is vital for the person of faith to keep in mind that whatever the historian concludes in his or her reconstruction of Jesus, this portrayal should not be confused with or replace the portrayals of Jesus in the New Testament as the symbols that guide worship. The Church has canonized the New Testament writings and not the reconstructions of Jesus.
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A Brief History of the Quest for the Historical Jesus
Historical surveys of quests for Jesus have often hinged on Albert Schweitzer’s The Quest for the Historical Jesus: A Critical Study of its Progress from Reimarus to Wrede, originally published in 1906. Schweitzer surveyed all the works before him beginning with Herman Reimarus, who is often credited with writing the first critical work on the historical Jesus. Schweitzer concluded that all the reconstructions (or “Lives of Jesus” as they were often called) prior to his own were too subjective to be considered as accurate treatments. The main problem for Schweitzer was that the so-called historical reconstructions of Jesus resulted in portrayals that resembled the authors of the studies, and not a first century Galilean Jew.
Before Schweitzer
Hermann Samuel Reimarus
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Focusing only on two historians as a sampling, we begin with Herman Samuel Reimarus (1694-1768), who laid the groundwork for a century’s worth of biographies about Jesus. Reimarus’ four thousand page manuscript was selectively published posthumously by G. E. Lessing as Wolfenbüttel Fragmente (published today in English as Fragments) between 1774 and 1778. Since Reimarus’ ideas about Jesus and the disciples were highly controversial, he refrained from publishing them during his lifetime, for fear of significant reprisals.
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Reimarus (in Fragments 6 and 7) argued for a rationalistic reconstruction of early Christianity that had its roots in the unsuccessful political ambitions of Jesus who ironically was not trying to start a new religion. Instead, he was trying to call Israel to repentance and establish the kingdom of God. For Reimarus, the kingdom of God was a political reality wherein Jesus would rule instead of the Romans. Unfortunately for Jesus, his hopes were dashed and he was executed for sedition, or pretensions of kingship. For Reimarus, Jesus’ cry of dereliction, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me” (Mark 15:34; Matt 27:46), clearly conveys the realization that God had failed him. Instead of a king, Jesus was a failed and broken man. Since Jesus’ disciples did not want to accept this outcome, they stole his body and claimed that he rose from the dead, and would return again to establish the kingdom of God that he previously promised. This, for Reimarus, constituted the beginning of Christianity. The Christ of the Gospels is thus regarded as a fanciful product of the disciples. By historically discrediting the Gospels’ portrayals of Jesus, Reimarus had hoped to discredit revealed religion in favor of worship that is rooted in reason and history.
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Info Box 8.1: The Importance of Reimarus
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Although Reimarus’ reconstruction has long been abandoned, his importance in the field of historical Jesus research has been enduring. Norman Perrin explains, “The important thing about Reimarus, however, is not his conscious purpose, nor his reconstruction of earliest Christian history, but the way in which he is able to show, in instance after instance, that the gospel narratives may not be understood as historical accounts of actual events, but must be recognized as the product of conceptions arrived at subsequent to the events which they purport to narrate. True, Reimarus is a hostile historian, thinking in terms of delusion and fantasy, but he is none the less a brilliant historian, and his instinct is surer than his own conscious purpose. So he is able to take the first step on the way to understanding the essential nature of the gospels, by recognizing the determinative character of the influence of early Christian conceptions on the narratives. In one other respect also his instinct is sure: he interprets both the purpose of Jesus and that of his disciples in terms of Jewish messianic conceptions, and in this way puts his finger on eschatology as a key element in both the ministry of Jesus and the life of the early Church. In this he was to be shown to be absolutely correct, some two hundred years later!”
(Rediscovering the Teaching of Jesus, 210).
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As one can imagine, even by today’s standards, Reimarus’ controversial conclusions sparked not only a few responses, but also an entirely new field of study that shows no sign of abating. Interest soon developed in adjacent fields, like the study of early Judaism, Paganism, comparative religions, Greco-Roman literature, and historiography.
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The second major historian is David Friedrich Strauss (1808-1874), who claimed that the Gospels contained a mythological layer that was patterned on Old Testament stories and prophecies. Strauss argued that this layer needs to be peeled away so that the rationalistic and historically plausible Jesus can be revealed. But his efforts were not aimed only at discovering the Jesus of history. Strauss also wanted to know how historical events were theologically and mythologically interpreted. For example, the story of Jesus’ baptism refers to the Spirit descending upon Jesus as a dove and a voice from heaven declaring, “you are my son, the beloved one, in you I am well pleased” (Mark 1:11). For Strauss, Jesus’ baptism may have been a historical event, but the accompanying supernatural manifestation in the story was clearly not. Rather such manifestations were regarded as mythical constructs, influenced by Jewish tradition, which lent significance to a historical event. For Strauss, the historical Jesus was a religious genius who serves as a model for human behaviour.
Info Box 8.2: What is Myth?
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Terms like “myth” or “mythological” are neutral categories as far as the historicity of a story is concerned. Contrary to the popular use of the terms today, in the study of religion they are not equated with something that is untrue or false. Some myths are religious reenactments or retellings of actual historical events, like the crucifixion of Jesus. It is a historical event, but it is also a story that concerns the invisible world. The religious meaning of the crucifixion is not found in the fact of the event, as important as it is for Christians, but in the interpretation of it. Interpretations require narratives, which is where we encounter the mythological dimension as a key feature in a cosmic drama concerning salvation, evil, and restoration of the cosmos. So, the purpose of myths, or sacred stories, is that they communicate meaning that transcends the historical event and a single generation of devotees.
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The nineteenth century saw many publications of “Lives of Jesus.” As Schweitzer ably observed, each portrayal described him as a great and compassionate teacher. But the portrayals also had their individual emphases, often reflecting the interests of the biographer. All of the biographers shared a common conviction that the historical reconstruction of Jesus was of vital importance for Christianity, be it positive or negative. Reimarus, for example, argued for the latter since the historically reconstructed Jesus does not coincide with later interpretations of him in Christianity.
Along the same lines, President Thomas Jefferson, in his biography, describes Jesus as “A man, of illegitimate birth, of a benevolent heart... enthusiastic mind, who set out without any pretensions of divinity, ended in believing them, and was punished capitally for sedition by being gibbeted according to Roman law” (388). Strauss, on the other hand, argued for a more positive impact since the mythical aspects of the Gospels convey timeless truths and thus should be divorced from history. This period, often called the original or first quest period, tended to emphasize the historical Jesus over the Christ of faith.
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The “No Quest” Period
Like his predecessors Albert Schweitzer wanted to root Jesus in his historical context. That context for Schweitzer, however, was different. He saw Jewish eschatology as the essential framework within which historians need to understand Jesus. For Schweitzer, Jesus saw himself as the eschatological Son of Man announcing the end of the age and the imminence of the kingdom of God, when Jewish political and spiritual ideals would be realized over and against the dominance of Rome. Jesus kept his identity secret during most of his life, but eventually revealed it to Peter, James and John. When Peter told the other disciples, Judas seized on the opportunity to cash in and betrayed the secret to the Jewish religious authorities who arrested and executed Jesus.
Albert Schweitzer
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Schweitzer argued that Jesus died as a disillusioned prophet. Contrary to his expectations, the kingdom never arrived. Jesus’ cry of dereliction on the cross was an expression of his disappointment. For Schweitzer, the historical Jesus is neither relevant for today nor is his reconstruction necessary since his teachings and hope of a coming kingdom of God only make sense in apocalyptic Judaism, which is so far removed from the context of modern Western culture. Instead, the relevance of Jesus resides in his unwavering character and passion. Schweitzer explains, “The truth is, it is not Jesus as historically known, but Jesus as spiritually risen within men, who is significant for our time and can help it. Not the historical Jesus, but the spirit which goes forth from him and in the spirits of men strives for new influence and rule, is that which overcomes the world ” (401).
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Rudolf Bultmann
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One of the most important New Testament scholars participating in the “No Quest” period was Rudolf Bultmann (1884-1976), who proposed that the Gospels did not speak about the historical Jesus at all. Instead, they spoke about the Christian groups that produced the Gospels. Like his predecessor David Friedrich Strauss, he argued that the Gospels contain mythical accounts that naturally emerge out of the first-century prescientific worldview, which includes such things as a three-tiered universe, supernatural explanation for illness and tragedy, and the expectation of an end of the age. Therefore, the contents of the Gospels must be filtered through the mythical language of the day before it can be made relevant in the twentieth century scientific context. For Bultmann, history is still important, but the Gospels are not the means by which that history can be accessed. They are not windows through which the historical Jesus can be seen. They provide portraits of the theological Jesus.
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In the first half of the twentieth century, mainly due to Schweitzer’s influence, attention turned more toward the Gospels and the Christ of faith. Since there was diminished confidence in retrieving the historical Jesus, this episode in the history of Jesus scholarship is known as the “No Quest” period. Some have instead referred to this period as the Quest for the kerygma (“preaching”) of the Church.
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The “New Quest” Period
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Ernst Käsemann
In 1953, the German scholar Ernst Käsemann delivered a lecture that was highly critical of his teacher Rudolf Bultmann and the “No Quest” movement. The lecture injected new life and optimism into historical Jesus research and initiated what came to be known as the “New Quest” period. Käsemann proposed that the Christ of faith should share more continuity with the Jesus of history. He argued that the skepticism responsible for the divide was unfounded because the Gospels, though not full biographies of Jesus’ life, nevertheless refer to a real person. For Käsemann the divide between the historical Jesus and the Christ of faith did not adequately do justice to the early Christian unification of both. The early Christians, argued Käsemann, wrote about and worshiped a real person. To do otherwise, as some groups such as the Gnostics and Docetists (who denied Jesus’ physicality) had done, was unacceptable.
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The “New Quest” period, which received its name from James M. Robinson’s The New Quest for the Historical Jesus (1959), was particularly known for its attempt to arrive at some continuity between the historical Jesus and the Christ of faith. While there was considerable agreement that the historical Jesus cannot be reconstructed completely, it was nevertheless possible to arrive at some historical information about him. Much of the research during this period concentrated on the sayings of Jesus. Since the Gospels were viewed as faith stories, and not modern biographies, claims that Jesus’ sayings were historical, or “authentic,” demanded evidence and critical evaluation. Criteria for determining the historical probability of sayings were developed, some of which continue to be in use. These are discussed below. In contrast to the original Quest (from Reimarus to Schweitzer), the “New Quest” was much more aware of the limits of historical reconstruction. As a result, scholars became much more nuanced when speaking and writing about the historical Jesus. While the results of the “New Quest” were minimal, due in part to the rigidity of the criteria, the assumption that a partial historical reconstruction of Jesus is possible and that it can lead to continuity with the Christ of faith proved to be a significant contribution.
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The “Third Quest” Period
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It has become customary in recent years to refer to the most recent research on the historical Jesus as the “Third Quest,” which has also been called the “Post Quest” and the “Renewed Quest.” Whatever designation one chooses, it should not be regarded in a strict chronological sense as if the Third Quest replaced or put an end to the New Quest. There is overlap. Concerns and aims of the New Quest continually surface. The main difference between the two Quests lies in their aims and methods. The New Quest’s focus is on the criteria of authenticity and the Gospels. Its driving force is to determine the source of the theological material in the Gospels. It is guided by the question: Did the theological material go back to Jesus or was it a construct of the early Church? By contrast, the focus of the Third Quest is less theologically driven. Instead, the context of investigation is not restricted to the Gospels, but more broadly tries to incorporate the social world of the first century. A caveat: Not all scholars agree with these divisions. Since, in the end, the quests are similar, some scholars have advocated for only one quest from the time of Reimarus to today.
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The Third Quest is often identified with two trends. The first trend is to study Jesus within the social framework of early Judaism. The discoveries of the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Nag Hammadi Library, and other documents have contributed significantly to our understanding of first-century Judaism. The reconstruction of the social world of Jesus, especially Jewish peasant life under Roman rule, has broadened well beyond that of the New Quest and its focus on the Gospels. For example, whereas the kingdom of God language in the New Quest period was understood theologically (as it was expressed in the Gospels); in the Third Quest its meaning incorporates a political dimension as a challenge to the kingdom of Caesar. Thus, Jesus is not simply viewed as a religious figure, but a political one as well. In short, the Third Quest tends to bring more continuity between Jesus and the Judaism of his day.
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Duccio di Buoninsegna “Healing of the blind man,” 1308-11. National Gallery, London. Jesus is depicted as both a healer and a sage.
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The second trend that characterizes the Third Quest is a movement away from portraying Jesus as an eschatological prophet (as was common among New Quest scholars). This is still minority view, however. Proponents of this view have come to portray Jesus as a subversive wisdom teacher who challenges the conventional wisdom of his day.
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Emperor Tiberius, Uffizi Museum, Florence. If Jesus’ language was politically charged, it would have been directed at Tiberius who reigned between 14 CE and 37 CE.
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Jesus’ parables, proverbs, and aphorisms are central in these kinds of portrayals. Most scholars who identify themselves with the Third Quest are much more comfortable with an eschatological or apocalyptic Jesus who is calling for an end of the age and the coming of God’s kingdom. Given the current state of the debate between these two portrayals, broadly speaking, it may be more accurate to say that the trend is a debate between those who propose a non-eschatological Jesus and those who propose an eschatological Jesus.
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The Five Gospels is the first publication of the Seminar’s findings.
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Many historical Jesus scholars would concur that the Third Quest began in the early 1980s, spearheaded primarily with the establishment of the “Jesus Seminar,” a largely American group of scholars that met twice a year to deliver papers and share research. The purpose of the Seminar was to ascertain, through the process of voting using various colors of marbles, which sayings and actions of Jesus can be deemed as (1) highly probable, (2) probable, (3) possible, and (4) improbable. The Seminar received considerable media attention. After about a decade of deliberations, the Seminar published its results in two books, The Five Gospels (1993) and The Acts of Jesus (1997), concluding that about 20 percent of Jesus’ sayings in the Gospels could be accepted as historically verifiable. The highly publicized results created a storm of controversy, especially among conservative scholars and religious communities. The Seminar was criticized for its assumptions and methods. Some have even argued that the Seminar’s skepticism and reliance on certain criteria of authenticity disqualify it from belonging to the Third Quest. Whatever one thinks about the results of the Seminar, there is no question that it has sparked considerable interest in historical Jesus research in academic and public spheres.
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Info Box 8.3: What was the original purpose of the Jesus Seminar?
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According to Robert Funk, the founder of the Jesus Seminar, “The aims of the Seminar were two: (1) we were to compile a raw list of all the words attributed to Jesus in the first three centuries (down to 300 C.E.). These sayings and parables were to be arranged as parallels, so that all versions of the same item would appear side by side on the page for close comparison and study. We decided to defer listing the deeds of Jesus until a second phase of the Seminar. (2) We were then to sort through this list and determine, on the basis of scholarly consensus, which items probably echoed or mirrored the voice of Jesus, and which items belonged to subsequent stages of the Jesus tradition”
(Funk et al., The Parables of Jesus, xii).
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Did Jesus look something like this? This reconstruction was created for the BBC program “Son of God.” Forensic medical artist Richard Neave used the cast of a first-century male skull found in Israel. The forging of the face, skin, and hair was based on medical, archaeological, geographical, and artistic evidence from first-century Palestine.
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The Third Quest has seen an exponential rise in research and publications and has contributed to public interest that extends well beyond Christian communities. The historical Jesus has, in a sense, gone mainstream. Numerous scholars have been identified with the Third Quest and have contributed to widespread public interest, but a few are noteworthy. Notice the different portrayals.
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We begin with Marcus Borg, who describes Jesus as a Jewish mystic. For Borg, Jesus claimed an intimacy with God, which empowered him to initiate and complete the mission to which God had called him. Jesus understood himself as the initiator of a religious movement whose focus was not based on religious purity, but instead on compassion. Jesus was a social reformer who advocated for social justice toward all people, especially the marginalized. Borg’s Jesus conveys a shift from the importance of belief, law, and ritual within the Jewish establishment of his day to a practice of forgiveness, fairness, and compassion.
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John Dominic Crossan views Jesus as a radical peasant who rebelled against the authorities of his day. Jesus was influenced by Cynic philosophy and taught a new wisdom through his parables which pointed out the shortcomings within the current religious system. He chose to live in poverty and engaged in table fellowship with the outcasts of first-century society as an act of protest against the economic and social oppression of Rome and the Jewish establishment. For Crossan’s Jesus, God’s justice extended beyond economic and social status, and was to be appropriated by everyone.
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Cretan Painter, St. John the Baptist, Galleria dell’ Academia, Florence. c. 1500. John the Baptist is depicted post-mortem as winged angel looking up at Christ.
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John Meier describes Jesus as a Jewish teacher who chose to live in the outskirts of Jewish society. For Meier, Jesus left his average peasant family and quit his job as a woodworker and became a disciple of John the Baptist, who called people to repent in preparation for an imminent eschatological intervention by God. When he was ready, Jesus began a public ministry of his own, preaching that God was coming to gather his scattered people and to reign over them as their king. Jesus then presented himself as an authoritative teacher of God’s will, providing his followers with clear directives on how God wanted them to live in anticipation of the end of the age.
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E. P. Sanders presents Jesus as an eschatological prophet whose essential mission was to announce that God was going to intervene directly in history in a way that would involve the elimination of all evil and the dawning of a new age. For Sanders, Jesus was thoroughly saturated in Jewish life. For example, Jesus’ selection of twelve disciples was intended to represent the restoration of the twelve tribes of Israel. Sander’s Jesus was radical because he promised sinners acceptance into God’s kingdom without demanding their repentance, which was at odds with Jewish practice. However, Jesus’ vision for the immediate dawn of God’s kingdom turned out to be wrong, and his followers had to reinterpret his message in religious terms to salvage its meaning for their own lives. This reinterpretation of the facts also made the message more appealing to Gentiles, and so Christianity was born.
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Anselmo da Campione, Last Supper in painted marble, c. 1184. Modena Cathedral.
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N. T. Wright describes Jesus as a prophet and the Messiah who understood his own destiny as symbolizing the fate of Israel. For Wright, Jesus also sought to create a community of followers that would represent the reconstituted Israel (demonstrated by his choosing the twelve disciples). Eventually, Jesus came to believe that his vocation included dying as the representative of Israel. He understood his death as the judgment that Israel was to undergo because it failed in its vocation as the elect body that was to bring salvation to the world. Since Israel failed, God chose Jesus as the representative (hence Messiah) to fulfill the promise of salvation for the world. The resurrection of Jesus was the vindication that Jesus was God’s messiah.
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Entrance to a Jewish tomb near Jerusalem. Since the story of the empty tomb is not found in Paul’s writings or Q, our earliest sources, some scholars (e.g. Crossan and Borg) have argued that it was a later development.
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There are several points of agreement among Third Quest scholars. For example, all agree that Jesus was a Jewish peasant, taught in parables, announced the kingdom of God, was concerned about the outcasts of Jewish society, and that he was crucified. There are also many disagreements, but two are at the forefront. The first point of contention is Jesus’ identity. While all agree that he was Jewish, there is debate about what kind of Jew he was—as is evident in the previous examples. Was he a prophet, a sage, a social reformer, or a mystic? Was he trained sufficiently enough in Hellenistic thought to suggest that he was more like a Greek philosopher or cynic? Was he more allied theologically to the Pharisees or the Essenes? Not all of these options are equally popular, but they are all proposed by contemporary scholars.
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Second, scholars have not agreed on Jesus’ vision of the future. Did Jesus believe that the end was near? If this was the case, then how might we today understand his predictions since the end did not come in “one generation” (e.g. Mark 13:30)? Was Jesus wrong, misinformed, or cryptic? Other scholars hold that Jesus’ view of the end was the radical transformation of Israel, which did happen in and through the Church. And still other scholars claim that Jesus had no developed view on the future and was primarily concerned with the situation of his own day. Related to his eschatological expectations, is Jesus understanding of the kingdom of God. Did Jesus believe that his mission initiated the kingdom of God or was he expecting it to unfold in the near future? If he initiated the kingdom of God, did it really happen the way that he expected? These kinds of questions continue to stimulate creative and exciting research.
Sources for the Historical Jesus Research
The first step taken by historians seeking to understand the past is the collection and assessment of primary sources. These are usually written documents stemming from the same general time frame and context as the topic or subject that is being studied. The closer the source is to the subject, such as eyewitness accounts or autobiography, the more helpful it usually is. So, in the study of the historical Jesus, scholars appeal to a wide range of documents from the ancient world.
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One of the initial tasks that scholars undertake when attempting to reconstruct figures from the distant past, like Jesus, is the evaluation of sources. In comparison to other figures from the Greco-Roman period, there is a substantial quantity of sources that are available. But not all of them are of equal value.
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Our best sources for reconstructing the life and teachings of Jesus are the Synoptic Gospels. Before discussing these and other Christian sources, we will first consider the available data about Jesus in non-Christian writings. Roman and Jewish writings from the same period rarely have anything to say about Jesus in comparison to those written by his later followers. Given the magnitude of Jesus’ influence on subsequent generations, one might expect much more information about him from both Roman and Jewish writers. But historically, it must be remembered that within the grandeur of the Roman Empire, Judea was an insignificant player in the broader political and economic currents. A wandering Jewish peasant calling for the reform, social justice, and the kingdom of God would have only caught the eye of Jewish and Roman authorities if he and his followers posed a political threat. From the perspective of Rome, the historical Jesus was an insignificant figure living in an insignificant part of the empire. Yet, from a historical vantage point, the more insignificant Jesus was, the more historians are faced with the need to explain the rise of Christianity in a relatively short period of time.
Non-Christian Sources: Roman
These sources give us very little information about Jesus. They are nevertheless important as historical data because their authors appear to be hostile, or at least neutral, toward Christianity. Non-Christian sources have proved useful in the past as counter arguments to those who attempted to demonstrate that Jesus never existed.
Pliny the Younger. In 112 CE a letter was written from Pliny the Younger (61-112 CE), a governor in Bithynia-Pontus (Northern Turkey), to the Emperor Trajan requesting guidance on how to prosecute Christians in his province. The letter gives us insights into the practices of Christianity and its social impact on that part of the empire. We also find in it the Roman response to the Christian movement from an administrative perspective along with a passing reference to Jesus. Pliny writes that the Christians were diverse in age and social economic status (i.e. old and young, rich and poor) and that they were in the habit of reciting “chant verses to Christ as to a god” (Letter to Trajan 10.96). For an English translation of the letter, see http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/text/pliny.html
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Statue of Tacitus at the Parliament building in Vienna.
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Tacitus. Around the same time in 115 CE, the Roman historian Tacitus (56-120 CE) wrote in his Annals that Emperor Nero blamed the great fire of Rome in 66 CE on the Christians, who were “hated for their abominations,” and banished them from Rome. In his description of the event, Tacitus briefly refers to the Christians as superstitious followers of Christus. Tacitus affirms that Jesus was crucified during the governorship of Pontius Pilate (26-36 CE), but he is incorrect in calling Pilate a Procurator. An English translation of the account can be found at http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/tacitus.html.
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Pontius Pilate inscription from Caesarea Maritima.
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According to an inscription on a stone from Caesarea Maritima, Pilate was a Prefect, a lower ranking governor. The inscription reads, "The Tiberieum of the Seamen...Pontius Pilate...Prefect of Judea, dedicates..."
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Suetonius. A few years later in 120 CE, another Roman historian by the name of Suetonius (69-140 CE) included in his discussion of Christians a possible reference to Jesus. During the reign of Emperor Claudius (ca. 41-54 CE), Suetonius wrote that Jews were expelled from Rome due to riots concerning a figure called “Chrestus.” The passage reads, “Claudius expelled the Jews from Rome [ca. 49 CE] who, instigated by Chrestus, never ceased to cause unrest” (Life of Emperor Claudius 25.4). Many scholars think that this is perhaps a misspelling of Christus. Unfortunately, no additional information is provided in regard to this Chrestus. Suetonius does not say who he was, where he was from, or how he caused a disruption among the Jews. If it is a misspelling of “Christ,” we are not sure if this is Jesus of Nazareth or another figure hailed as Christ because of his revolutionary activity. Having said that, the probability that the reference is to Jesus as the Christ is fairly strong for two reasons.
First, according to the New Testament writings, there was considerable division in the first century between Jews who believed that Jesus was the Messiah and Jews who did not.
Second, according to Paul’s letter to the Romans, significant unrest erupted between Jewish and Gentile Christians, which could have been simply lumped together by the Roman officials as “Jewish” unrest.
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Cynicism was not only encountered in writings. This is an early anti-Christian graffiti depicting a crucified man with an ass’s head. The inscription reads, “Alexamenos worships his god.” This graffiti was discovered on a patch of plaster at the Poedagogium, Palatine Hill, Rome, c. 200.
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Lucian of Samosata. A satirist who targeted religious figures, philosophers, rhetoricians, and even the gods, Lucian (b. 120 CE) wrote a cynical life about a convert to Christianity who eventually gave up his faith. In this biography, he mocked Christians for worshipping an “impaled” [crucified?] sophist from Palestine as if he were a god (The Passing of Peregrinus §11, 13). Since Lucian’s use of the term “impaled,” instead of “crucified,” may indicate that his knowledge of the event was informed apart from the Christian Gospels and tradition.
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Celsus. Celsus was a second century pagan philosopher who wrote a work entitled True Reason or True Account (178 CE) in which he mocked Christians for blindly capitulating to blind faith instead of exercising reason. In the account, Celsus accuses Jesus of practicing magic or sorcery. For example, he writes, “He was brought up in secret and hired himself out as a workman in Egypt, and after having tried his hand at certain magical powers he returned from there, and on account of those powers gave himself the title of God” (Contra Celsum 1.38. See also 1.6, 68, 71; 2.48). About sixty years later Celsus was criticized by Origen in a massive treatment called Contra Celsum, wherein he quotes about three quarters of Celsus’ work.
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Non-Christian Sources: Jewish
Josephus. One of the most important sources for the study of early Judaism is Flavius Josephus (37-100 CE), a Jewish General and Pharisee, turned Roman historian. We have already encountered Josephus and his works in the first four chapters of this book. Josephus’ Antiquities of the Jews and Jewish War are histories of the Jewish people and the war with Rome during 66-70 CE respectively. They are both written from the perspective of a Pharisee under Roman patronage and do not depict social unrests and anti-Roman sentiments in a favorable light. Given Josephus’ detailed treatment of life in first-century Palestine, he only refers to Jesus on two occasions, and only in the Antiquities, which amounts to less attention than he gives to John the Baptist.
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Francesco Hayez, “Destruction of the Jerusalem Temple,” 1867. Galleria dell’ Accademia, Venice.
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