JESUS OF NAZARETH

Men believe that the gods are clothed and shaped and speak like themselves. . . . If oxes and horses and lions could draw and paint, they would delineate thier gods in their own image. . . . The Negroes believe that their gods are flat nosed and black; the Thracians that their gods have blue eyes and red hair.

Ancient Greek philosopher Xenophanes

For hundreds of thousands of years the great majority of people on Earth were probably animists: that is, they believed in the existence of spirits. For them, spirits -- immaterial beings -- dominated the forests, winds, and elements. Gradually this belief changed (we don't know when) into belief in a multitude of powerful and more personal deities. In India most people still believe in a large pantheon. They are polytheists (believers in many gods).

But in 2001 the great majority of people on the Earth have come to believe in but one god. They are monotheists (believers in one deity only). And they believe that the god of the other monotheistic religions is a person, the same person, in fact, as the god of their own. This most widely-believed god is called (in English) God; in the faith of Islam his name is Allah.

The vast, vast majority of persons involved in the religions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam believe in the existence of God. If one studies, however, what they really mean by God -- for instance, by asking them detailed questions about their beliefs -- one invariably discovers that each believer imagines God in his or her own way. Each believer seems, in fact, to have unconsciously shaped his own God; and not to realize either that he has done it or that, because of having done it, he believes in a slightly different god than his co-religionists.

Nearly all believers in God, however, believe that He is -- in some sense -- male. (A few think that He is both male and female.) Nearly all believe that God is immensely powerful. Most believe that He created the Universe, perhaps about 6000 years ago. Many believe that God is a loving Father of humankind.

Others, however, believe that God has more than just a loving side. They believe that He is, at the same time as a loving deity, also of a stern and angry temper, able to smite evildoers hard as well as reward and cherish doers of good.

A few members of each of these religions -- but especially, I think, of Christianity and Judaism -- believe in God in a more intellectual and abstract way. Their God is not a person so much as a rarefied Supreme Power; these believers think that He cannot adequately be expressed in words. According to them, God can only be experienced.

Most believers in God, however, believe that God is transcendent; that is, that in some sense God is outside our Universe, or that His power transcends (goes beyond) it in some way. Others believe, by contrast, that God is immanent, i.e., within our Universe, and permeating it. (Others speak as if they believe that He is both transcendent and immanent.)

Not to drag this out, but a very few believe that God is so immanent and so permeating the Universe that He is everywhere throughout it: He is the Universe, or at least the principles that structure it. Such people are called pantheists. Their exemplar is the Dutch philosopher Baruch (or Benedict) de Spinoza (1632-1677). Another famous pantheist was the German-Swiss-American physicist Albert Einstein (1879-1955), who said he believed in Spinoza's god.

However all this may be, the most important fact about God with reference to our subject, Jesus of Nazareth, is that, in the religion about Jesus, the Christian religion, God is believed to be, in some sense, Jesus's father.

Who Was Jesus?

Jesus of Nazareth (circa 4 B.C.E.-ca. 29 C.E.) was a great religious teacher. His influence has almost certainly been greater than anyone in history. Until the last century it totally dominated what moderns usually call the West, or Western Civilization: that is, the culture, centrally, of Europe, the Americas, Australia, and New Zealand. This domination has been so total that Western chronology even erroneously dates from an inaccurate sixth-century calculation of the date of Jesus's birth, by Dionysius Exiguus (fl. early 6th century C.E.), a monk appointed by pope St. John I to this end.

Central Christian Doctrine

The great body of Jesus's followers believe (or claim to believe, or hope) that Jesus was the literal son of God. (Who or what God is, has never been very clear. If we say a Power transcendent of most or all words, who is a person, all-knowing and all-powerful, who created and perhaps dominates everything that is, and deserves our reverence and worship, we are probably not far wrong.) Not only do classical Christians centrally believe in Jesus's literal divinity, and literal consanguineal sonhood to God, but most believe also that He was, while on Earth, both mortal and divine; that He was crucified to death by the Romans, and, after His miraculous Resurrection from death (the central belief of traditional Christianity) was and is now part of a tripartite divine entity, which we might call the Godhead. Incorporated in the Godhead with Jesus and his father God, (though incorporated is perhaps exactly the wrong word) is a lesser third person called the Holy Spirit or Holy Ghost. [According to theologians, the Holy Ghost "proceeds from the Father and the Son" (whatever this means), and seems to be a kind of influence of God that occasionally, at God's behest, fills up followers and works God's influence on the world.]

Faithful Christians believe that Jesus promised them eternal life in Heaven, and that his divinity is the certain assurance of their belief. There is a controversy in Christianity about whether simply believing in Jesus' divinity and the truth of his teaching about sin, forgiveness, and redemption is enough to secure eternal life. (Some have thought that, after coming to believe, one also has to reform one's ways. For them, faith is not enough: there must also be good works.) And just what Heaven is, or where, is not clear. (It is said to be something like a walled garden, and something like a grand and jewelled city in the sky or space; Christians believe it is splendid.) Believing Christians, when they die, either go immediately to Heaven as spirits or are eventually resurrected there in their bodies (popular Christianity is not clear on this point). In Heaven resurrected Christians serve God, worship him, and generally have a grand time. Many Christians literally believe they become God's angels (from Greek, messengers) with white wings.

The religion that centers about Jesus is called Christianity because Jesus is alleged to be the Christ, i.e., the Saviour or Messiah (Hebrew, Meshiah) promised (many Jews and Christians believe) to the ancient Hebrews in the Hebrew Bible: Christians call that collection of texts the Old Testament, and regard it as a prelude to the more important texts of Jesus's revelations.

Christians call their sacred texts about Jesus and his religion the New Testament. These texts seem to have been written between about 50 and 120 years after the birth of Jesus. They have been translated into hundreds and hundreds of languages, and have spread to the very farthest corners of the Earth. In Jesus's name, churches that claim to follow his life teachings (especially the largest, the Roman Catholic church) have, over hundreds of years, peacefully or with extreme violence converted or decimated many peoples. Sometimes they have waged annihilating wars to convert others to Christianity, or to force them to renounce particular doctrines and support others. Sometimes the Christian churches have warred with each other, or with those claiming to be loyal followers, to exterminate unorthodox persons (called heretics), or to drive competing religions like Islam from the holy lands where Jesus walked. Though his movement seems to me in some trouble, Jesus may still have one billion living people claiming to be his followers; there may be more. And the total number of Christians may still be growing.

Christianity is thus one of Earth's two most popular religions. (Until recently it was unquestionably the most popular; in recent years Islam may have nosed out Christianity and obtained more followers.)

Yet a few decades ago some scholars thought that Jesus was perhaps not real; according to them, he was a fiction!

Still, in recent decades the consensus of scholars has swung round. Jesus cannot be fictional, the new consensus of knowledgeable scholars contends. Jesus, they now say, is, after all, one of the best documented people of his time.

Yet that time, the time in which Jesus lived, was 2000 years ago, and the life and teachings of Jesus is not, by modern standards, satisfactorily documented at all.

# # #

His name was not literally Jesus. That is instead a Greek transliteration of the Aramaic name he actually bore. (Aramaic was the popular spoken language in Judea and Galilee, where Jesus spent his life.) Other equally valid versions would be Yehoshuah, Yeshua or Yeshwa; the name is cognate with the name of the Old Testament leader we call Joshua.

I do not know what name to call him. If we called him Yeshwa, perhaps we would tend better to remember that he was a Jew. Unfortunately, Christianity has spawned a virulent, stupid antisemitism (hatred of Jews) which, while it may be waning, still exists. In the 20th century it killed about 6,000,000 Jews.

Jesus wrote no books. As a result, I think that we know very little about what Jesus actually said.

The central sources for Jesus's life are five first-century books in Greek traditionally held to have been written by some of his closest followers; these are gathered at the beginning of the chief solely Christian collection of biblical books, the New Testament. Four of these accounts of Jesus's life are known in English as the Gospels. (Gospel means "good news". The Gospels tell the good news of Jesus's sojourn on Earth.) The first three Gospels, the Gospels According to St. Matthew, St. Mark, and St. Luke, have many similarities. They are known as the Synoptic Gospels, from a Greek word that means "viewed together"; when considered together, they have many similarities. They are very simple and straightforward. They seek to point out how Jesus' life fulfilled prophecies in the Hebrew Bible. And the gospel of Matthew may have been written by someone who used the gospel of Mark for a source.

The fourth book, the Gospel According to St. John, reads differently from the Synoptic Gospels. The author of St. John was concerned with theological and philosophic matters, and constantly brings these to attention.

The fifth book, The Acts of the Apostles, seems to be a continuation of one of the other four, namely the Gospel of St. Luke.

Then we have some letters by other followers, a few of whom quote Jesus; and a handful of references to him in the Jewish historian Flavius Josephus (AD 37?-AD 101?) and the Jewish Talmud. (The reference in Josephus has occasionally been challenged as a later interpolation by Jesus's followers.)

These are the central historical texts for the life of Jesus.

# # #

Christianity seems to have started as a sect of the religion of Judaism. At first Christians seem to have been regarded as an entirely respectable, if slightly eccentric, Jewish group, adherents of their particular rabbi (or rebbe: Hebrew, (religious) teacher). It appears that the sect became a new and totally separate religion only after the Second Jewish Temple (Herod's Temple) was destroyed in 70 CE by the Romans, and the Jews were subsequently expelled from Judea (the diaspora or galut).

The development of the Christian sect into a new religion may have been because of the wiping-out of the Jerusalem-centered branch of the sect, and the consequent taking-over of Christianity by the churches and organization that had been created outside Judea. The Christian churches outside Judea contained Gentiles (a name used to indicate non-Jews). These may have caused the religion to be treated by outsiders and regarded by themselves as now different from Judaism. Another cause may have been hostility from the Jewish authorities (early Christian accounts talk of martyrdoms at the hands of Jewish officials prior to the diaspora, and show distinct hostility toward the class of Jews known as Pharisees). Or the reason may have been because Christians began to adopt new customs which could not be squared with the books of Jewish law (known as the Torah).

I have recently read -- to my astonishment -- that in the 19th century 60,000 lives of Jesus were published. Surely this number cannot be accurate?? But the writing of lives of Jesus is at least very popular. Because of the odd nature of his life and the nature of the material about him, it is perennially natural to try to review and rewrite this material to make it more palatable for modern times.

About 525 C.E. a Church historian named Dionysius Exiguus attempted to calculate the date of Jesus' birth; Jesus seems actually to have been born four to eight years before Dionysius' date. That is, we nowadays think that Jesus was born somewhere between 8 and 4 B.C.E. He died (probably) about 29 or 30 C.E. However, none of the records of his life that we have give undisputed certain dates; in fact, they contradict each other. Further, none of the available records were written until about 50 C.E. In itself this is not a great problem nor to be unexpected. Jesus' first followers were fishermen and poor people for the most part. It would be natural if they were not careful writers or historians.

However, a few problems arise at once.

Anyone sensitive to the history of religion must be aware that the followers of the charismatic founder of a religion are often gullible. Like the followers of L. Ron Hubbard and Scientology, they may be inclined to believe in many strange doctrines and miracles. They may interpret ordinary events in extraordinary ways. So one must read the accounts of "simple" followers with a great deal of skepticism.

Then there is the additional problem that many of the people who establish or administer a religion often have a criminal streak, and exploit the gullibility of others through deception. Presumably this is for financial gain. This too must give grounds for skepticism.

Jesus seems to have been born poor in Judea, one of the backwaters of the Roman Empire that was most troublesome to the Roman authorities. There is controversy among scholars whether he was born in the town of Bethlehem near Jerusalem, or in Nazareth in Galilee, the town with which Jesus is always associated and where tradition holds he spent his childhood and youth.

When he was twelve, tradition says, his mother and father took him to Jerusalem to make animal sacrifices at Herod's Temple. There He is alleged to have astonished the elders of the Temple with his wisdom.

When Jesus was about thirty, Christian tradition says, he began travelling about Galilee, Judea and adjacent areas preaching and teaching. This was the beginning of his ministry. For about three years, tradition says, he continued, gathering a group of twelve followers called his disciples. Then Jesus entered Jerusalem (the capital of Judea) on the back of a donkey.

This was to fulfill a prophecy that the Messiah would ride into Jerusalem. His followers loudly welcomed him into the city on the date celebrated as Palm Sunday.

His enemies watched this closely, we are told, and waited their chance.

On the next Thursday evening Jesus gathered together his disciples and held a feast in an upper room in the city. There he told them (or strongly hinted) that he would be betrayed by one of them and captured by his enemies; that he would be executed. The disciples protested their innocence, but one of them, Judas Iscariot, went to the Jewish authorities and offered to betray Him for money.

Jesus was taken prisoner in the Garden of Gethsemane where he had gone to pray, "fingered", as we would say, by Judas. He was taken before the Jewish authorities (the Sanhedrin) in a rare night session, accused, and turned over to the Roman authorities. These rather reluctantly ordered him to be crucified.

Jesus was crucified the next day, a Friday before the Jewish feast of Passover, and died in the very short time of a few hours. His body was hastily taken down, and put in a donated stone chamber. A stone was placed before the entrance.

On Sunday, the third day (the first being Friday, and the holy day of Jewish Passover the second), his followers found his body missing, then found him (or an angel). Jesus was seen by many of his disciples over the next forty days -- alive. Then he rose upward into Heaven, having told his disciples to spread the good news of salvation.

This is the story of Jesus in traditional Christianity. He was born in a manger in humble circumstances, the son of a tekton (that is, a skilled craftsman, probably in stone or wood; thus the tradition that Jesus was a carpenter). He taught people -- well, what did he teach them? To answer that, you have to appraise the gospels and the epistles (letters) of his followers.

[To Be Continued and Revised]

Books about Jesus and Christianity

(Most books about Jesus are pious works, written by believers, and therefore of little value to scholars. The following books are all worth reading.)

Cahill, Thomas. Desire of the Everlasting Hills: The World Before and After Jesus.    New York: Anchor Books (division of Random House, Inc.), 1999.

Craveri, Marcello. The Life of Jesus. New York: Grove Press, Inc., 1967. (Originally    published in Milan as La vita di Gesu, Giangiacomo Feltrinelli Editore, 1966.)

Friedman, Richard Elliott. Who Wrote the Bible? New York: Summit Books (division    of Simon & Schuster, 1987.

Grant, Michael. Jesus. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson Ltd, 1977.

Grant is an excellent ancient historian.

Harpur, Tom.

Harpur is a Toronto religious journalist, a (former?) Anglican priest. He argues that Christianity was never meant to be taken to be literally true, until in the fourth century Christian church officials began to demand literal belief and adherence.

Humphries, Jesus. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980.

Rubenstein, Richard E. When Jesus Became God: The Struggle to Define    Christianity during the Last Days of Rome. New York and Orlando, Florida:    Harcourt, Inc., 1999.

Spong, John Shelby. Born of a Woman: A Bishop Rethinks the Birth of Jesus. New    York: HarperCollins, 1992.

Spoto, Donald. The Hidden Jesus: A New Life. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1998.

Vos, Howard F. Introduction to Church History. Nashville, Tennessee: Thomas    Nelson, 1994.

Wilson, A.N. Jesus.

-------. Paul: The Mind of the Apostle.. London: Sinclair-Stevenson (imprint of Reed    International Books Ltd.), 1997.

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