The Mysterious Disappearance of Jesus and the Origin of Christianity
By:
Dr. Ahmad Shafaat
(1997)
Reproduced from the JOURNAL of THE MRI, March 1997,
Vol. 1, no. 4, (ISBN:
1209-8507 © Copyright: For each item by its author, 1997)
Dedicated to all those who have labored or are laboring to find the
historical truth behind the Jesus tradition
CONTENTS
PREFACE
INTRODUCTION
PART I: JESUS AND THE
EARLIEST JESUS PEOPLE
Chapter
1:
A Look at the Life of Jesus
Chapter
2:
The Existence of Rival Jesus Groups
From the Beginning
Chapter
3:
A History of the Earliest Jesus People
PART II: THE EARLIEST
TRADITIONS ABOUT JESUS' FATE AND PERSON
Chapter
4:
Formative Processes for the Jesus Tradition
Chapter
5:
Tradition of Jesus' Disappearance (Hiding/Exile)
Chapter 6:
Tradition of Jesus'
Execution
Chapter
7:
Tradition of Jesus' Ascension
Chapter
8:
Tradition of Jesus' Return
Chapter
9:
The Earliest Beliefs about the Religious Identity of
Jesus
PART III: THE EMERGENCE
OF THE TRADITION OF JESUS' RESURRECTION FROM THE DEAD
Chapter
10:
The Origin of the Belief in Jesus' Resurrection
From the Dead
Chapter
11:
Paul and the Historical Value of His Witness
Chapter
12:
Tradition of Rejecting Jesus' Death and
Resurrection
PART IV: NON-NARRATIVE
TRADITION ABOUT JESUS' DEATH AND RESURRECTION
Chapter
13:
Proclamations and Predictions of the Death and
Resurrection
Chapter
14:
According to Scriptures
Chapter
15:
Other Religious Interpretations of Jesus' Death
and Resurrection
PART V: THE FORMATION OF
THE PASSION NARRATIVES
Chapter
16:
Events Leading to the Passion
Chapter
17:
Sanhedrin's Decision and Jesus' Hiding
Chapter
18:
Judas Iscariot and the Betrayal
Chapter
19:
The Last Supper
Chapter
20:
Prayer and Deliverance/ Distress and Sleep
Chapter
21:
Arrest and Desertion
Chapter
22:
Peter's Denial and the Jewish Trial
Chapter
23:
The Roman Trial and Barabbas
Chapter
24:
The Trial by Herod and the Gospel of Peter
Chapter
25:
Mocking, Crucifixion and Death
Chapter
26:
Death on the Cross
Chapter
27:
Burial
PART VI: THE FORMATION
OF THE RESURRECTION STORIES
Chapter
28:
Appearances in Galilee
Chapter
29:
The Empty Tomb
Chapter
30:
Appearances in Jerusalem
Chapter
31:
Words Spoken by the Risen Jesus
CONCLUSION
APPENDIX
ABBREVIATIONS
BIBLIOGRAPHY
NOTES
PREFACE
This book arose out of the conviction --
which I share with many writers -- that at present we do not have a
satisfactory explanation of how the Jesus tradition originated and
how it developed during its earliest stages and that it is possible
to find such an explanation. After spending about twenty years
examining the New Testament and other writings about Jesus and the
early Christian church without any satisfactory results, one day in
the summer of 1991 I had a thought which struck me as very
promising. I had a strong feeling that I might
have finally found a provable hypothesis which provided the key to
solving the mystery of the origins of Christianity and hence to a
much fuller understanding of the whole Jesus tradition. I
started to test the hypothesis (which is stated below in the
Introduction) and found that the more I examined the evidence in its
light the more the pieces of the puzzle of Christian origins began
to fall into place. Sometimes I had doubts but not because of any
evidential or logical reasons. My doubts arose entirely from the
radical originality of the hypothesis: the hypothesis was so
different from what all other writers -- many with amazing learning
and impressive intellectual abilities -- have been saying that it
may be absurd. But each time I tried to see whether any alternative
hypotheses offered by others or any that I could myself think of
could explain the puzzle of the origin of Christianity better, my
doubts were overridden by the initial realization of the potential
of the new hypothesis and I would continue to develop and
substantiate it. This process of testing and
developing continued for the next five years, culminating in this
book.
Despite the originality of the main
thesis which required radical revision of many of the views
established among scholars of Christian origins, I have naturally
benefited immensely from the earlier discussions among those very
scholars and some of their conclusions. However, my knowledge of
such discussions is not of the same level on all relevant issues, as
a result of which the reader will notice a certain unevenness in the
degree to which I take the views of other scholars into account. In
this connection I take comfort in the fact that the field of
Christian studies is so vast that no one can go through the entire
literature much less digest it unless perhaps one lived like the
ancient biblical figures such as Noah for hundreds of years.
Consequently a writer has no choice but either to write on a very
specialized subject or to write in ignorance of a large part of what
others have written and hence risk making some naive judgments. But
the need for works seeking global explanation of the Jesus tradition
is at least as important as the need for specialized studies and
therefore the risk is worth taking.
E.P.Sanders has talked about the "sweat
which comes from the effort to explain history" (Jesus and
Judaism, p. 7). Writing this book has made me experience the
meaning of these words. I have, however, attempted that no sweat
will be necessary on the part of the reader to follow this book. In
order to achieve that goal I have not shunned detailed discussions
of relevant issues but I have presented the material in as readable
a fashion as it was in my power to do. In particular, the need on
the part of the reader to read for herself/himself the texts cited
is reduced to a minimum by as many quotations of the most relevant
texts as was possible without having to divide the book into two
volumes.
INTRODUCTION
What historically reliable information
about Jesus do the New Testament and other contemporary documents
about him and his churches contain? How did Christianity originate
and develop to take the forms that it took in the decisive first
century and half of its history? These are the two most central
problems about early Christianity. They are central regardless of
whether we are interested in early Christianity from a historical
point of view or from a purely religious point of view.
The early writings about Jesus and his
churches, both canonical and non-canonical, and their Semitic,
Greek, Roman and Persian backgrounds have been intensively studied
in the past couple of centuries. Literally millions of pages of
research have been published by scholars of every conceivable
background. Yet a satisfactory
solution of the two central questions have so far alluded scholars.
By a satisfactory solution I mean one that possesses the following
three characteristics:
1)
Comprehensiveness. This
receives more precise definition below. Here we can understand the
concept to mean that our picture of the historical Jesus and of the
development of the early Christianity must explain all the relevant
traditions in our documents and not just a selection from them. If a
tradition is historical, our picture should be consistent with it.
And if a tradition is unhistorical, then we should be able to
explain why and how it was fabricated.
2)
Plausibility. This
means that our picture of Jesus and of the development of earliest
Jesus tradition should be plausible in the light of what we know
about human history generally and of the history of the near east in
the first century. This does not exclude the possibility of miracles
but nevertheless requires that the reports of any miraculous events
should pass plausible tests of historicity. The occurrence of unique
and very unusual events other than miracles is also not excluded by
this criterion; in fact, it is plausible that the life of the
founder of a lasting religious movement as well as that of the
movement itself will have some very unique and unusual happenings.
The criterion of plausibility assumes that despite the possibility
of the presence of some miraculous, unique or unusual elements a
great deal of the life of Jesus and the development of the
traditions about him can be understood like we can understand any
other individuals and movements in history.
3)
Broad Acceptability.
Our answers to the two questions should be acceptable to scholars of
many different backgrounds after enough time has passed for those
answers to be duly examined. This criterion is valuable only as a
confirmation that the first two criteria have been met.
At present there is only one theory that
fulfils the first criterion for a satisfactory solution, namely,
comprehensiveness and that is the
traditional Christian view. According to this view, Christian
documents can be divided into two categories:
canonical and apocryphal.
The canonical documents represent by and large reliable records of
events that actually took place. The contradictions among the
various traditions are either only apparent or result from some
lapse of memory or misunderstanding or some form of human error on
the part of the original narrators or reproducers of the original
narrations; such errors in any case do not effect the historicity of
the main outline. The apocryphal documents, on the other hand, are
largely fabrications except where they are dependent on the
canonical documents and few other instances where they are
consistent with them. This theory is, however, rarely presented in a
scientific spirit and when it is, it is clearly seen to lack
plausibility, the second criterion for a satisfactory theory. For
there are so many contradictions even among the various canonical
traditions that to provide plausible harmonization is seen to be
impossible. And in many cases separate motives behind the
contradictory traditions are so apparent that we cannot attribute
the contradictions to failure of memory or any "human error."
The traditional view also fails the third
criterion, namely, that of broad acceptability to scholars of varied
different backgrounds, since this explanation has satisfied only
Christians committed to the traditional Christian teachings.
Critical scholars with a more scientific
approach have effectively demonstrated over the last couple of
hundred years the invalidity of the above-mentioned traditional view
but they have not been able to offer an alternative. Any theories
they have put forward fail in regard to the criterion of
comprehensiveness. This is because until recently scholars were busy
in the study of small parts of the early writings about Jesus and
his churches. Even when they attempted an overall explanation of all
the data, they used largely the parts they had the opportunity to
examine in detail. This was necessary because the data were so
extensive that it was impossible for individual scholars to fully
analyze them in their totality.
Now, however, thanks to the labors of a
great many scholars of every possible background most of the
relevant facts have been brought forward in readable books and it
should be possible for individual scholars to review them and fit a
satisfactory theory into them. Yet no such theory seems to exist
even now.
This situation has raised the question
whether we can ever know the historical Jesus and how Christianity
began. The answer to this question is of course in the negative if
"knowing" means the ability to answer all questions. We can rarely
know anything in that complete way. But the answer is in the
affirmative if "knowing" means finding the best explanation of the
data that we possess about early Christianity. For every data set
there is at least one theory that best explains it and the same must
also be the case with the data about early Christianity. To find a
"best fitting" theory for these data is to know the historical Jesus
and the origin and development of early Christianity.
The Key to a Solution:
Explaining the Resurrection
A central part of any theory explaining
the set of Jesus traditions known to us must include an explanation
of the traditions of Jesus' death and resurrection. And here I mean
not just general explanations but detailed explanations which start
with certain hypotheses and then show how the traditions took the
form in which we find them in the New Testament and other Christian
documents of the period. In recent critical scholarship such
explanations are almost never provided and when they are they lack
comprehensiveness and/or plausibility.
Some books dealing specifically with the
resurrection do raise the relevant historical issues and a few such
as the one by Gerd Luedemann, The Resurrection of Jesus, to
which my attention was drawn by Dr. Marshall D. Johnson, even
attempt "honest" and "reasonable" historical explanations of the
resurrection (p. vii). But books about the historical Jesus and the
origin and early history of Christianity either ignore the
resurrection tradition or give very tentative and vague explanations
of it. This can be illustrated by reference to the books by Paula
Fredriksen (From Jesus to Christ: The Origins of New Testament
Images of Jesus), E. P. Sanders, (The Historical Figure of
Jesus) and John P. Meier, A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the
Historical Jesus). Meier expressly declares the belief in Jesus'
resurrection as outside the purview of his work (Vol. 1, p. 13).
This, at first sight, looks reasonable, since resurrection belongs
to the period after the end of Jesus' ministry and hence is not
strictly relevant to the study of the historical Jesus. But all
historical facts about Jesus are to be recovered from the subsequent
church tradition and unless we understand how this church tradition,
which was based in large measure on the belief in the resurrection,
originated and developed, any reconstruction of facts about Jesus
can only be tentative.
In Sanders' works what happens in the
church after Jesus plays an important part in the reconstruction of
historical traditions about Jesus. But he too has to leave the
origin and development of the tradition of resurrection unexplained.
When Jesus was
executed, his followers fled or hid, but their hopes were
renewed when they saw him alive again. Here I wish to say
nothing at all about the disciples' resurrection experiences,
which we shall briefly consider in an epilogue, but rather focus
on their subsequent behavior. They were convinced that the
kingdom that Jesus had predicted would soon arrive, and that he
would return. They settled down in Jerusalem to wait. While
waiting, they tried to convince others that their Master was the
Messiah of Israel and that he would soon return to establish the
kingdom of God (The Historical Figure of Jesus, p. 58).
Considerations promised above for the
Epilogue consist of general and tentative suggestions of the type
that fill the literature on resurrection, with the difference that
unlike most writers Sanders admits what he does not know.
Faced with accounts
of this nature -- sharply diverging stories of where and to whom
Jesus appeared, lack of agreement and clarity on what he was
like (except in negatives) -- we cannot reconstruct what really
happened. Throughout this book I have offered suggestions about
what lies behind passages in the gospels. On the present topic,
however, I do not see how to improve on the evidence, or how to
get behind it. (Ibid. , p. 278)
In an earlier book, Jesus and Judaism,
Sanders' admission is even clearer: "I have no special explanation
or rationalization of the resurrection experiences of the disciples"
(p. 320). This means that we can think of Jesus and the church as
two ends of a dark tunnel. The tunnel represents the period between
the crucifixion and the disciples' experience of the resurrection.
On one end of the tunnel is Jesus and on the other the church.
Sanders' admission means that we do not know much about what is in
the tunnel. But then the confidence found in Sanders' books about
our ability to construct certain and probable facts (p. 321) is
hardly justified. If our information about what came before the dark
tunnel and what came after it was reliable, we would not have to
concern ourselves with what went in the tunnel for reconstructing
the historical Jesus and the earliest development of the Jesus
tradition; in fact by looking at what went into the tunnel and what
came out we may even find out what was in the tunnel. But that is
not at all the case. There is not much light even outside the
tunnel. Therefore, in order to reconstruct the history of Jesus
and/or the earliest church, we need to find a way to get under this
tunnel with some light.
Paula Fredriksen's book is more about
the origin of the Jesus tradition than about Jesus himself. But even
she talks mostly of the responses to the resurrection but not of the
resurrection itself. The resurrection itself receives the brief
comment that "what actually occurred ... is now impossible to say"
(p. 133). Other books that expressly deal with the origin and
history of early church also have no detailed explanation of the
resurrection. In other words, present studies of the Jesus tradition
tend either to end before the resurrection or start after it,
leaving the resurrection unexplained.
As noted earlier, some of the books that
deal specifically with the tradition of Jesus' resurrection do
attempt to give a reasonable explanation of the tradition. But at
least I find them completely unsatisfactory. The reasons for this
are given at various points in this book. Here I will briefly
comment on the recent book by Luedemann to which a reference has
already been made.
Luedemann bases his proposal on the
following two assumptions (The Resurrection of Jesus, pp.
30-31):
a) Paul is our earliest
witness and hence the most reliable. It is, therefore, above all
from Paul that "we are to expect access to the manner of the
appearance of the risen Jesus to the rest of the eyewitnesses."
b) Paul knew Cephas and
other leaders in Jerusalem and hence in talking of the appearances
of the risen Jesus to them he "must have known what he was talking
about."
These two general assumptions enable him
to agree with the following more specific judgement of David
Friedrich Strauss:
When Paul there places the
christophany which occurred to himself in the same series with
the appearances of Jesus in the days after his resurrection:
this authorizes us to conclude that, for all the Apostle knew,
those earlier appearances were of the same nature with the one
experienced by himself. (The Life of Jesus (1836), 1973,
p. 740)
But both of Luedemann's assumptions are
questionable. In regard to the first assumption: a set of tradition
which at first exists in oral form undergoing change and development
and are then written as the need arises after a considerable period
of time, the earlier writing of a particular version of an event or
story may often be just an accident of history and may not represent
the most reliable or even the earliest version. Paul only once
refers to the appearances of the risen Jesus to the disciples. Had
the circumstances in the Corinthian church, in a letter to which
this mention is made (1 Cor 15), been somewhat different, we would
have been deprived even of this one mention of the appearances. In
regard to the second assumption: It is manifestly wrong to draw from
the fact that Paul knew Peter and others the conclusion that he
must have known about the nature of their experience of Jesus'
resurrection. How easy would be the work of the historians and human
life generally if we can trust the testimony of every witness about
some other persons whom he had met a few times during his life! More
specifically, it is generally recognized that the traditions of
Jesus' appearances to "Cephas, then to the twelve" (1 Cor 15:5) and
to "James, then to all the apostles" (1 Cor 15:7) are rival
traditions. Luedemann himself recognizes this when he says: "The
text 1 Cor 15:7 arose when followers of James (or James himself)
claimed Peter's role as witness for Jesus. To this end they adopted
the account of the appearance of Jesus to James to the formula of 1
Cor 15:5 ..." How far can we trust in the personal knowledge of Paul
about the persons to whom Jesus appeared if traditions he quotes are
rival traditions?
In view of the fact that Luedemann
proceeds from questionable assumptions it is not surprising that he
arrives at a conclusion which does not explain all the important
facts. Paul says in 1 Cor 15:6 that Jesus appeared to more than 500
people at one time, most of whom were alive at the time he wrote. No
proposal of the origin of the tradition of Jesus' resurrection can
be accepted unless it can explain this statement of Paul
satisfactorily. Luedemann's proposal does not pass the test as he
has to resort to the explanation that tradition of the appearance to
"the more than 500" is based on the Pentecostal descent of the
Spirit, an untenable view (see Ch. 28).
This is not a reflection on the
scholarship of the writers cited above as examples. Indeed, their
books are well written justly acclaimed works, helpful both for
scholars and general readers. What the above comments are meant to
show is that at the present stage of Christian studies there exists
a huge gap in our understanding of the earliest Jesus tradition
which begs to be filled if we hope to ever arrive at some
satisfactory understanding of Jesus and his movement. And it seems
to be possible to fill that gap with reasonable degree of
satisfaction. For the process which created the belief in
resurrection must in some way lie behind the extant tradition about
the resurrection, albeit in a hidden form. The extant tradition is
extensive enough so that its careful analysis can be expected to
reveal the underlying process which created the belief in the
resurrection and at the same time reveal the development of the
extant tradition itself.
In this book I
offer a radically new explanation of the traditions about Jesus'
death and resurrection which, in case of resurrection, goes beyond
generalities and, I think, explains almost all the specific details
found in the extant resurrection tradition. In a subsequent
work I hope to show that starting from this explanation of the
traditions of death and resurrection and using the large number of
insights that have already been offered by scholars we can provide
an overall explanation of the entire extant Jesus traditions.
The Stumbling Block of
the Crucifixion
To introduce the theory presented here I
start with the observation that, as shown by the history of other
fields of knowledge, and also in detective work, when it is
difficult to find a satisfactory explanation of the known facts it
is because certain assumptions are made that one never thinks of
questioning and yet it is those very assumptions that are false and
therefore must be rejected in order to arrive at a satisfactory
explanation. This book will show that this exactly is the situation
in the field of Christian studies. In this
field everything from miracles to the existence of Nazareth has been
questioned but there are a few traditions that are considered above
question. Among these the most
important is the crucifixion of Jesus. The only writers who
have seriously questioned the crucifixion are those who reject the
very existence of Jesus. In other words, the existing attitude is
that if Jesus existed he must have been crucified. I hope to show
that it is this very assumption that is in the way of our
understanding of the origin and early development of the tradition
of Jesus' death and resurrection and therefore of Christianity as we
know it. The cross may or may not be a stumbling block for faith, as
Paul said (1 Cor 1:23), but it is most probably a stumbling block
for the historical truth. For, to understand the resurrection we
need, surprisingly, to reject the historicity of the very
presupposition of the resurrection, which is the cross.
The reason that scholars consider the
historicity of the crucifixion above question is not that the
evidence in its favor is compelling. The crucifixion is mentioned
only in two of our earliest sources: Mark and Paul.
It is not mentioned in Q, the set of
traditions that are found in both Matthew and Luke but not in Mark
and that are widely believed by scholars to come from a very early
written source. The non-canonical Gospel of Thomas and the canonical
Letter of James, both considered by many scholars as very early,
also do not mention the crucifixion even when a mention is almost
demanded by the context.
The sort of attestation that does exist
for the crucifixion places it in an early stage of oral tradition
but that hardly makes it historically certain. The tradition of
Jesus' resurrection has as early an attestation as that of his
crucifixion but no scholar has argued seriously that this early
attestation alone assures the historicity of the resurrection. There
is, in fact, no stage of tradition which can be regarded as above
all suspicion. As Paula Fredriksen, referring to the studies by G.
W. Allport and L.Postman (The Psychology of Rumor), J.
Vansina (Oral Tradition) and John Gager ("The Gospel and
Jesus") has noted:
Further, ... even
reports going back to eyewitnesses are far from historically
secure. Interpretation or distortion between an event and the
report of an event occurs almost inevitably, first of all
because the observer is human. If the report is communicated
through different people over a period of time before it
achieves written form (as is the case with the gospels),
revision can occur at every human link in the chain of
transmission. In brief, though the oral transmission of
traditions about Jesus allows us to assume some relation between
what the gospels report and what might actually have happened,
it also requires that we acknowledge an inevitable -- often
incalculable -- degree of distortion in those traditions as
well. (From Jesus to Christ, p. 5)
On the basis of the studies cited by
Fredriksen and other similar studies (see Ch. 4), one can in fact go
further and say that even reports of eyewitnesses themselves are not
necessarily entirely trustworthy. If reports can get distorted after
being heard, there is no reason why events cannot get
reported erroneously after being witnessed. Moreover, not
only there is distortion but given the right circumstances creation
of reports can also take place at any stage. Among the factors that
result in distortion and creativity at an early stage is the degree
of the reliable knowledge with which the reporting first starts. The
less of this knowledge people have, the greater is the room for
distortion and speculation. In case of the Jesus tradition we cannot
exclude the possibility that the disciples did not have any firm
knowledge about the fate of Jesus (see below), in which case the
reliability of the report of the crucifixion despite its early date
is put into question. Another factor is the environment in which a
story develops and travels. In societies or social classes
experiencing great emotional stress, a story may suffer much greater
distortion than in societies or social classes where there is
relative calm. Palestinian society in which Jesus' movement arose,
being torn between the brutal fact of Roman occupation and the
stringent demands of Jewish law and history, was under considerable
emotional strain. The alienated classes of Gentiles from which most
of the early Gentile converts came also lived under a great deal of
stress and a profound need for emotional release. Factuality,
historicity, even consistency were not their primary concerns, if at
all; participating in some group where they could feel some security
was their main concern. Under such circumstances the Jesus story
could easily undergo profound distortion and abuse within a matter
of months. Ernst Renan, more than a century earlier, notes:
It is the greatest
of errors to suppose that legendary lore requires much more time
to mature; sometimes a legend is the product of a single day."
(Ernst Renan, The Apostles, p. 58).
The truth is that critical scholarship
has so far offered no theory about the origin and early development
of the Jesus tradition which does not imply some creativity almost
from the beginning.
The extensive passion narratives
describing in vivid, and often plausible, details Jesus' arrest,
trials and the execution also do not constitute a compelling
evidence for the historicity of the crucifixion.
The historicity of almost every single unit of
tradition in these narratives has been questioned. Moreover,
two different but extensive "infancy narratives" in Matthew and
Luke, whose central themes (the virgin birth, the birth in Bethlehem
etc.) are widely regarded as unhistorical, show how lengthy
narratives can develop without even their central themes being
historical. The extensive and different passion narratives in the
gospels could have developed in the same way without the basic
underlying tradition of crucifixion being historical. It is true
that the infancy narratives are found only in two of the relatively
late gospels. But it is possible that the five extant passion
narratives (in the Gospel of Peter and the four canonical gospels)
are all dependent on only two primitive versions that were written
not too much before the infancy narratives (see Part V).
The reason for the solid consensus on
the crucifixion is not the compelling force of the evidence but the
fact that it is a tradition that is acceptable to traditional as
well as critical scholars, to conservative as well as liberal
scholars. It is acceptable to the traditional and conservative
scholars because the cross came to be a cornerstone of the Christian
faith while the critical and liberal scholars find it acceptable
because in a tradition dominated by the miraculous and the
supernatural the crucifixion is one of the few mundane "facts" that
modern man can easily accept. Then also consensus has a great
potential for self-perpetuation. Once formed, it has a strong
tendency to continue and reinforce itself.
The result of this consensus is that
writer after writer either assumes it or supports it with very brief
arguments without raising or discussing the relevant issues. This
can be illustrated by the books of E. P. Sanders, R. E. Brown and
John P. Meier, all three scholars assuming the historicity of the
crucifixion without discussion. Two volumes of Meier's book, A
Marginal Jew, consisting of over 1500 pages have already been
published with a promise of a third volume. Meier gives five primary
criteria for deciding whether a gospel tradition is historical. The
fifth of these criteria is that authentic words and deeds of Jesus
must fit the "historical fact" of Jesus' trial and crucifixion (Vol.
1, p. 177). One would expect that before coherence with the
tradition of Jesus' crucifixion can be made a criterion for the
historicity of all other traditions, the question of the historicity
of the crucifixion itself should be first raised and discussed. But
Meier spends about 200 pages of his Vol. 1 on "issues of
definitions, method and sources" (p. 13) and yet he nowhere raises
and discusses this particular question. Brown, in a parenthetical
remark in the Introduction to his The Death of the Messiah
describes the crucifixion "as bedrock history" (Vol. 1, p. 13) but
to the best of my knowledge his massive two-volume commentary on the
passion narratives (!) does not again raise the question of
historicity of the crucifixion much less examine it with some care.
It is true that Brown's primary goal is to interpret what the
gospels say in narrating the passion of Jesus but he does devote
considerable space to a careful examination of the question of
historicity for various individual items and one should expect some
discussion of the most basic of all historical questions raised by
the passion narratives, Was Jesus executed? E. P. Sanders in his
Jesus and Judaism and The Historical Figure of Jesus does
not state coherence with the "fact" of the crucifixion as a
criterion for authenticity of a tradition about Jesus but it
practically governs his reconstruction of the historical figure of
Jesus. He includes it among the facts about Jesus that are "almost
indisputable" and that must be explained by "any interpretation of
Jesus" (Jesus and Judaism, p. 11). He does support by
arguments some of the other "almost indisputable facts" (e.g. Jesus'
baptism by John and the choice of the twelve disciples by Jesus,
The Historical Figure of Jesus, p. 94 Jesus and Judaism,
p. 98-101) but not the crucifixion.
When scholars do spend some space in
supporting the historicity of the crucifixion they resort to one or
both of two arguments. One is that the crucifixion is incompatible
with the belief in Jesus' messiahship and therefore could not have
been invented by Christians. In this connection the question is
never raised that if the belief in the crucifixion could not have
been invented in the face of the belief in the messiahship, then how
could the belief in the messiahship have arisen or continued in the
face of the crucifixion. Some writers do raise the question, not in
connection with the historicity of the crucifixion but in connection
with the question whether the belief in the messiahship arose with
Jesus or after him. They argue that since the belief in the
messiahship could not have arisen in the face of the "fact" of the
crucifixion, it must have been based on Jesus' own view of himself,
which still does not explain how even Jesus' own claim to
messiahship could have continued to be believed in the face of his
crucifixion.
There is, however, considerable evidence
that Jesus did not himself come forward as the messiah and that the
belief in his messiahship arose after him. Be that as it may, even
the scholars who face this evidence and accept that the belief in
the messiahship arose after Jesus do not explain how this belief
could have arisen in the face of firm knowledge of Jesus' reported
crucifixion. To be sure, the resurrection or the "Easter experience"
is said to be in some sense responsible for overcoming the obstacle
that the crucifixion provided to the belief in the messiahship. But
since the nature of resurrection itself is left obscure, this
amounts to replacing one difficulty by another. Meyer (Aims of
Jesus, p.177) says with justification that in the writings of
many scholars "'the Easter experience of the disciples' had been
turned into a magic top-hat from which, like so many rabbits there
unexpectedly emerged the church itself, its messianic proclamation,
and its basic soteriology." And there is also some point to the
question by A. Schweitzer (The Quest of the Historical Jesus,
p. 345): "How can the appearances of Jesus have suggested to the
disciples the idea that Jesus ... was the Messiah"? Many scholars
(e.g. Edward Schillebeeckx) define resurrection or Easter experience
in terms of the revival of the disciples' faith in Jesus after the
despair of the cross but this leaves the basic question unanswered:
how could the revived faith take the form of faith in Jesus'
messiahship? Moreover, it is not clear what provided the motivation
for the disciples to overcome the obstacle of the crucifixion and to
imagine or "experience" the resurrection of Jesus and to regard
Jesus as the Messiah?
The argument that the crucifixion must
be a historical fact because the belief in it could not have arisen
in the face of the messiahship of Jesus is part of a more general
principle employed in sorting out authentic traditions about Jesus
from unauthentic ones: if a tradition is dissimilar to the views of
the early church and to the Jewish traditions then it is historical.
But this principle, even if we ignore its shortcomings (see below)
does not apply to the time immediately after the conclusion of
Jesus' ministry, since at that time there was no church whose views
could be compared with reports concerning Jesus. In that "primeval"
period conflicting beliefs could arise and establish themselves to
be later reconciled, rationalized, harmonized or synthesized.
Thus belief in the
messiahship can be used to argue for the non-historicity of the
crucifixion with as much justification as for its historicity.
The second argument used to support the
historicity of the crucifixion is that two non-Christian historians,
a Jewish one, Flavius Josephus writing in 93-94 C.E., and a Roman
one Cornelius Tacitus, writing sometime between 110 and 130 C.E.
refer to the crucifixion. This argument is used infrequently. One of
the scholars who uses both arguments is John Dominic Crossan (The
Historical Jesus, pp.372-376). Crossan is a scholar who has
probably contributed more than all others to show that passion
narratives are largely fictional. He proposes that "Jesus' closest
followers knew nothing more about the passion than the fact of the
crucifixion, that they had fled and later had no available witnesses
for its details," and that the passion narratives were created out
of verses and images in the Old Testament and out of details
invented to enhance narrative plausibility. But then if the
disciples fled sometimes before the crucifixion and there were no
other witnesses, Crossan's confidence can hardly be justified when
he says :"I take it absolutely for granted that Jesus was crucified
under Pontius Pilate." As for Josephus and Tacitus, it is doubtful
that one can describe them as "two early and independent witnesses".
Documents written sixty to ninety years after an event can hardly be
"early witnesses" if we want to reach absolute certainty on their
basis. We cannot be certain whether the event of Jesus' crucifixion
was recorded in any of the Roman sources used by Josephus or Tacitus
or whether they were simply reflecting what Christians were saying
for more than sixty years before they wrote. Odds are that the
event, if it did take place, was too unimportant to be recorded in
contemporary records. Crossan himself has observed the
insignificance of an execution like that of Jesus: "The elimination
of a dangerous peasant nuisance like Jesus need not have involved
any official trials or even consultations between Temple and Roman
authorities. ... After two thousand years of Christianity, it is
hard for us even to imagine the brutal offhandedness with which a
peasant nobody like Jesus would have been dispatched in a Jerusalem
under Caiphas and Pilate" (Who Killed Jesus? p. 212). If
there were no official trials, then the existence of any records for
Tacitus or Josephus to use in their references to Jesus' execution
becomes highly doubtful. Consequently, in his reference to Jesus'
execution Tacitus is in all likelihood dependent on the Christian
traditions. In doing so Tacitus would be following a practice common
among historians: to use traditions of a group as a source for the
history of that group.
It may be asked why Tacitus mentions
only one tradition about Jesus, namely his crucifixion. This is
explained by the fact that in Gentile Christianity with which
Tacitus is expected to be most familiar this tradition stands out
most prominently among all those in whom a pagan historian would be
expected to take interest. Indeed, we can go further and produce an
almost exact parallel between the concentration on crucifixion in
Tacitus and in Gentile Christianity. In 1 Cor. 2:2 Paul tells the
Corinthians: "For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus
Christ, and him crucified." Tacitus has exactly the same
combination: Christus and his crucifixion, except that writing about
half a century after Paul he is aware of the gospel tradition that
the crucifixion was carried out by sentence of Pilate, of which Paul
does not give the slightest indication in his letters.
It is worth noting that not all scholars
who accept the crucifixion as certain share with Crossan his
assessment of the testimony of Tacitus. E. P. Sanders, for example,
says: "But knowledge of Jesus was limited to knowledge of
Christianity; that is, had Jesus' adherents not started a movement
that spread to Rome, Jesus would not have made it into Roman
histories at all. The consequence is that we do not have what we
would very much like, a comment in Tacitus or another Gentile writer
that offers independent evidence about Jesus, his life and his
death" (The Historical Figure of Jesus, p. 50).
The situation with regard to the
reference to the crucifixion that appears in a passage in Josephus (Jewish
Antiquities, 18:63) is similar. All scholars, including Crossan
recognize that this passage contains Christian interpolations and
some have doubted the authenticity of the whole passage. The part
that is considered authentic by Crossan not only refers to the
crucifixion but also says this: "For 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."
Josephus must have known that Christians claimed Jesus to be the
messiah. It is difficult to see how Josephus after saying that Jesus
performed surprising feats and was a teacher of people who gladly
accept truth and then not to accept Jesus as the messiah and
instead give this role to the emperor Vespasian. Also, the comment
that Jesus won over many Greeks along with Jews can be understood to
mean that Jesus had Greek disciples which is very doubtful. The best
explanation of the comment is that in the time of Josephus there
were Greeks among Christians and he had simply assumed that the
conversion of Greeks started with Jesus himself. It then becomes
quite possible that his reference to the execution of Jesus is also
based on what he knew of Christianity of his time. This reference in
any case does not come from any independent Jewish records. For
Jewish sources talk of Jesus' execution by the Jews through stoning
rather than his crucifixion by Pontius Pilate.
An illustration of how even historians
could accept the historicity of an unhistorical crucifixion is
provided by the passion traditions. Crossan thinks that the accounts
of Jesus' arrest on the Mount of Olive, Jewish and Roman trials,
Peter's denial, Barabbas and the whole story about him, Joseph of
Arimathea and the story of burial by him are all fictional
creations, mostly of Mark (Who Killed Jesus? pp.
81,111-112,117,132,159,172,179,188). Now there are many critical
historians who believe that Barabbas and/or Joseph of Arimathea were
historical persons and some at least of the stories considered
fictional by Crossan are historical. Also, some scholars think that
the incident known as cleansing of or attack on the temple and Judas
and the story of his betrayal are fictional but Crossan accepts both
the cleansing/attack and the betrayal as historical (pp. 65,81).
Examples such as these show that a story once created can be easily
accepted, in part or in full, as historical even by the most
critical and objective historians. The same could well have been the
case with the story of Jesus' execution and its acceptance by
Tacitus and Josephus. To be sure, these two historians were much
closer to the time of Jesus than we are but that is hardly a
guarantee of superior knowledge on their part.
It is worthy of note that the
non-Christian references to Jesus' execution conflict with each
other as to who was responsible for that execution. The Jewish
Talmud mentions the Jews alone in connection with the
execution. The Roman historian Tacitus mentions Romans
alone as responsible for killing Jesus. And the Jewish friend
of Romans, Josephus, says that the Romans killed Jesus
after he was accused by the Jews. The full significance of
these facts will become clear in Ch. 6 but they should caution
against putting too much confidence into non-Christian references to
Jesus' execution and at least raise the possibility that the real
answer to the question, Who killed Jesus? may be: Nobody. It is
noteworthy that Crossan does not deal with the Talmudic evidence
which calls into question the account of both Tacitus and Josephus.
Morton Smith, on the other hand, makes the Talmudic evidence as the
very basis of his picture of Jesus in his Jesus the Magician.
Proposed theory
The above
observations show that the crucifixion is not a certain fact.
Evidence in its favor is such that one can tentatively assign to it
a high probability of historicity but we must not be prevented from
exploring the possibility of getting better explanation of the data
as a whole by tentatively rejecting its historicity. This book will
show that such exploration does indeed result in a much better
understanding of the origin and formation of the earliest Jesus
tradition. More specifically, it will be shown
that the following scenario explains the data far more
satisfactorily than the usual scenario which assumes the
historicity of the crucifixion and then explains the resurrection
and the origin of Christianity in some way.
1) Jesus
was from Galilee where after some initial success he met with
indifference from the people, opposition from some scribes and a
threat from Herod.
2) He went
to Jerusalem, during a feast time, in order to reach Jewish people
of many different backgrounds. There a confrontation and a skirmish
developed between the temple traders on one side and Jesus and his
followers on the other. This put Jesus' life under serious threat
from the Jerusalem authorities, who became nervous at the slightest
sign of trouble on feast days.
3) Jesus
quickly went into hiding and secretly left for Galilee as soon as he
could, probably on the Sunday after the feast. Somewhere near the
sea of Galilee he saw some of his disciples and relatives who were
to subsequently play a leading role in the Jesus movement. He also
had a simple meal with a much larger number of sympathizers to whom
he entrusted with the mission to preach the nearness of the kingdom
of God and of healing the sick, thus launching one of the two main
wings of the movement, the other being the wing started by the
Hellenists in Jerusalem. Later he disappeared never to be seen again
except possibly by a few who have themselves disappeared from
history.
4) Jesus'
mysterious disappearance made him a hot subject of conversation
throughout Palestine during which there was a great deal of
speculation as to what happened to him. Some were sure that he was
executed, others were equally sure that he had gone into exile while
still others were convinced that he was taken up to heaven. (For
examples showing that it is possible for reports of an execution
that never happened, even when the person is alive and active in
another place, to be generated, see Ch. 6).
5) Soon
there came forward different individuals or small groups of five to
twelve persons with the purpose of continuing Jesus' work. These
individuals/groups had heard and seen Jesus at different times and
places and so their views of the work of Jesus, his fate and his
role were different. Some saw him as a prophet-reformer who for that
reason was executed by the Jewish authorities. Some viewed him in
more messianic terms, either as Elijah-type forerunner of God who
after calling people to repentance before the imminent judgment and
salvation has ascended to heaven or as a messiah in exile who will
soon return to perform his function as the Messiah or as someone who
has assumed the role of the heavenly Son of man and who will soon
come in the clouds of heaven.
6) Early,
oral Jesus tradition developed out of the conflicting speculations,
built on some historical reminiscences, about what happened to him
and about the significance of his work.
7) Along
with some rivalry between these views, there was also a tendency to
produce a consensus by synthesizing them. One such synthesis was
that Jesus was the Messiah and a prophet and that he was executed as
well as raised to heaven after being resurrected from the dead by
God. By the time of Paul this synthesis was well-established
although not all Jesus people accepted it or accepted it
wholeheartedly. In due course of time this synthesis became the
basis of mainstream Christianity. (For evidence showing the inherent
plausibility such a synthesis see Ch. 4).
8) In the
first century many documents were written, reflecting various other
combinations of the earliest rival speculations and beliefs but by
and large only those gained acceptance who conformed to the
mainstream synthesis.
9) Our
gospels are produced from different sources, some of which represent
earlier rival views, brought together within the overall perspective
of the mainstream synthesis.
In the next thirty
one chapters I hope to show that puzzle after puzzle about the
origin of Christianity begins to be solved on the basis of the above
theory. Why the resurrection tradition conveys a strong
impression that there lies behind it some actual event and yet we
find it impossible to reconstruct those events? Why in the synoptics
we have one trip of Jesus from Galilee to Jerusalem while John has
more than one? Why some stories appear both in the ministry and as
resurrection stories? Why Mark has no resurrection appearance? Where
does the tradition of Jesus' appearance to more than 500 brethren
mentioned by Paul come from and what happened to it after Paul? Why
the last supper of Jesus is presented as a Passover meal in the
synoptics while in John it takes place a day before the Passover?
Why the attack on the temple occurs in the synoptics in the last
week of his ministry while in John it takes place in the first week?
How could the Jesus' movement operating by and large well within the
thought-world of Judaism have arrived at the belief in the crucified
messiah, a belief which in that thought-world is an absurdity? How
could early Christians think that the death and resurrection of
Jesus took place according to scriptures when the scriptures say
nothing of the sort? And so on. Moreover, a continuity expected to
exist between Jesus and the Jesus' movement is established. We can
see more clearly the processes by which Jesus' work led to
the Jesus movement and then see the earliest stages of its
development.
General methodology
The methodological
approach followed in this book is the scientific approach which is
now followed in different fields of learning including physical and
social sciences. Its main features include the following:
1)
Scientific activity starts with some data consisting of "facts" and
construction of hypotheses or theories that fit the data. Since the
statement of what we call "facts" is always influenced to some
degree or the other by some assumptions that we have already made
prior to the examination of the data, it is often necessary, during
the process of fitting hypotheses or theories, to restate "facts."
The final result of this activity is a restatement of the given
facts (the data) together with a set of hypotheses or a theory
fitting that data. Apart from the data and the theory which explains
it, there is no other way to state any truth. This is not to say
that there is no absolute truth but only that such absolute truth
which may in some sense be identified with God is not accessible to
human intellect.
Furthermore, each
theory is as valid as any other provided both explain the whole data
set and not just a selection from it. On the other hand, any
hypothesis which explains only a selected part of the data is
worthless except as a means of one day playing a role in the
discovery of a comprehensive theory that would fit the data set as a
whole.
In case of scientific studies related to
Jesus and early Christianity, the data consist of statements of
facts of the form "such and such document, e. g. Mark or Didache,
says such and such" and we must devise hypotheses that explain how
these statements came to be formed. The "restatement of facts"
consists of settling some textual questions and determining the
meanings of the statements in our ancient texts, which to some
extent is determined by some of our prior assumptions. Along with
determination of the original text and meaning of the documents we
need to devise hypotheses that explain how the statements came to be
formed, sometimes revising our prior assumptions, making it
necessary to re-examine some questions of text and meaning, finally
arriving at the best combination of interpretations of the texts and
hypotheses fitting them. There is no truth about Jesus or early
Christianity apart from an interpretation of statements in our
documents and hypotheses explaining those statements in their
entirety. Every set of hypotheses that explain the whole data set is
as valid as any other while any partial explanation is ultimately of
no real value.
It has been said that
enlightenment comes not with new hypotheses
but by new discoveries. This statement at most contains a
partial truth when it comes to the study of Jesus tradition. We
possess a great deal of data and great deal of enlightenment can
come by coming up with hypotheses that better fit these data even if
we make no new discoveries.
The truth is that some relatively recent
phenomenal discoveries such as those of the Qumran scrolls and the
Nag Hammadi documents have not resulted in a solution of how Jesus
tradition was formed. These discoveries have greatly enhanced our
understanding of some individual pieces of tradition but not
provided us with any breakthrough in understanding its origin and
earliest development. One can expect that any future discoveries of
written documents will also not shed a direct light on this problem,
since the secret of the origins of Christianity most likely is
hidden in its oral pre-history and there may not be any document in
existence which we can discover and from which we can directly read
the story of Jesus and of the origin of Christianity.
2) One of
the fundamental axioms of the scientific approach is that phenomena
in any particular domain in time and space are related.
Consequently, what lies outside the domain to which the observed
facts belong can sometimes be reconstructed from those observed
facts. What happens in the inaccessible past, lives on in some form
in the present and what is invisible shows itself in the visible.
For example, from the observation of the earth at the present time
we can tell what happened to it millions of years ago or by
observing visible phenomena we can learn about some invisible
particles and forces.
Similarly, in Christian studies even
events that took place in the "pre-history" of the Jesus movement
with no direct reference in the extant sources in some sense lived
on in history and therefore may be found in the extant documents in
some form. The more foundational these "pre-historic" events, the
more likely they are to lie hidden behind the extant Jesus
traditions.
One of the invisible things about which
we can learn from extant sources is Jesus himself. Morton Smith has
said:
Trying to find
the actual Jesus is like trying, in atomic physics, to locate a
submicroscopic particle and determine its charge.
The particle cannot be seen directly, but on a photographic
plate we can see the lines left by the trajectories of larger
particles it put in motion. By tracing these trajectories back
to their common origin, and by calculating the force necessary
to make the particles move as they did, we can locate and
describe the invisible cause. Admittedly, history is more
complex than physics; the lines connecting the original figure
to the developed legends cannot be traced with mathematical
accuracy; the intervention of unknown factors has to be allowed
for. Consequently, results can never claim more than
probability; but "probability," as Bishop Butler said, "is the
very guide of life." (Jesus the Magician, p. 6)
The "pre-historic" foundational
processes that led to the formation of the primitive beliefs of
Jesus' death, resurrection and messiahship are also expected to lie
behind our extant sources and should be recoverable in their main
outline with considerable probability by using those sources like
"photographic plates". Indeed, the "photos" contained in our
documents are more directly influenced by these beliefs and the
processes of their formation should be recovered first, before
finding the historical Jesus.
3) In
various fields of knowledge the phenomena studied are extremely
complex. Successful explanation of the phenomena begins with the
demonstration of how a relatively few elements combining according
to a relatively few and simple principles can produce something like
the complexity actually observed. Then such a theory usually
requires almost continuous refinement to better explain the facts
already known or newly discovered.
Likewise, the theory proposed here about
the origin and early development of Christianity is a basis for
explaining the data that we possess and even if found adequate by
the majority of scholars will almost certainly require refinement.
4) The best
fitting theory generally is not a theory that explains fully every
individual fact, not even in physical sciences. The best fitting
theory is like a line which best fits a set of points. Often not all
the points may be on or close to the best fitting line, so that the
line does not "explain" them all. This may be either inherent in the
nature of a field of inquiry or due to some practical problems. In
physics, for example, we can fully explain and predict a great many
observed phenomena but not all. Thus we can fairly accurately
describe the movements of the sun in relation to the earth and
accurately predict its position at different times, but it is
difficult to describe accurately the movements of winds on the
globe, which is the reason why we cannot predict the weather for
tomorrow with the same certainty with which we can predict the time
of sunset for tomorrow. Yet most physicists are confident that the
known laws of motion best explain all that has been observed so far
in the universe. Our failure to accurately describe the movements of
the winds and their temperatures etc is either due to the fact that
the best explanation of the known phenomena does not necessarily
explain everything or due to a practical difficulty of obtaining all
the initial measurements that are required to accurately predict the
movements of winds.
Likewise when we seek a theory
explaining the data we have in the early Christian documents, we do
not necessarily seek to explain every single word in the documents.
But we must be able to give with reasonable
confidence a historical outline of the personality and life of Jesus,
an explanation of how the ministry of Jesus led to basic beliefs
about him in the early churches such as beliefs in his death,
resurrection, parousia and messiahship and then outline the
processes which led to subsequent developments in the Christian
tradition in, say, the New Testament times.
We can now give a more accurate
definition of comprehensiveness than the one used earlier in this
Introduction: a comprehensive theory is one that best fits the data
as a whole.
Since in the formation and transmission
of Jesus traditions many individuals participated with their own
complex mental processes, it is possible that some of the statements
may not be explainable even by the best-fitting theory. But a
comprehensive theory does not concentrate on a part of the data set
and ignore the rest. It takes into account the whole data and then
may find that some facts are not plausibly explained by it. Usually
the facts not explained by a truly comprehensive theory would be
randomly distributed in the set.
5) When in
science the best fitting theory or a basis for it has been found for
a data set, every one with a reasonably objective attitude can see
it like one can see when the pieces of a puzzle fit. This then
creates wide acceptability among scholars of very different
backgrounds. The same must be the case in the field of the early
history of the Jesus tradition. It is sometime
said that even if someone found the answers to questions about the
early history of the Jesus tradition, she or he may not be able to
convince the rest of the scholars. But there is no reason why that
should be so. To be sure, in the beginning there is
resistance to accept any new theory, however successful it may be in
explaining the known facts. But sooner or later, this resistance is
overcome except in those who use their scholarship to serve
particular vested interests. The fact therefore that until now no
comprehensive theory of early history of the Jesus tradition has won
wide acceptance supports the observation made earlier that no
existing theory meets the universal expectations of
comprehensiveness and plausibility. A related observation is about
the emphasis that in recent times is placed on the background of a
scholar. While background is in many ways important, it is possible
for scholars of all background to strive for objectivity and reach a
consensus when a theory in fact does fit the entire data.
I therefore present my
theory here with the conviction that if it is valid, then it will be
generally accepted by scholars of many different backgrounds.
6) It is
generally thought that in the natural sciences theories are built
from facts through a rigid use of logic. In reality, however, the
construction of theories requires both a leap of imagination as well
as systematic thinking. Once imagination and systematic thinking has
suggested a theory it is tested against facts. The theory is
accepted if it explains to a reasonable degree all the relevant
facts; otherwise it is discarded and a new search begins. The same
should be the case in the research about Jesus and his earliest
churches. However, in this field there is often the tendency to
either use imagination ignoring much of the evidence that lies
before us or not to use imagination when the evidence does not
provide clear guidance. The result is that we have either
imaginative works that propose theories without explaining much of
the evidence or very careful works that minutely examine most of the
relevant data but serve mostly to expose the inadequacy of proposed
solutions without providing a more adequate one. Once we have
committed to meeting the criteria of comprehensiveness and
plausibility, we can let our imagination free to aid systematic
thinking in the search for a suitable theory, for the limits imposed
by the two criteria on the final theory would restrain the ability
of the imagination to lead us astray.
7) Research
in science is often faced with the question of its practical value.
Such a question becomes important because of the limited resources
available for research. But often it is not easy to decide,
especially at the early stages of the development of a field, what
line of research would be of immediate practical value. Answers to
questions that at first appear, at least to some, as mere
theoretical curiosities, can prove of great practical significance.
In case of studies related to Jesus and
the early Christianity the situation is the same.
Here "practical significance" is significance
for the religious life of Christian believers. And
theoretical curiosities are what R. E. Brown has called "obsessive
history-hunting" (The Death of the Messiah, p. 24) but what
may not always be "obsessive". One can take the view that history is
completely irrelevant to faith and hold that the New Testament
traditions contain some valuable spiritual and moral truths which
have significance regardless of whether they are historical or not.
Within such a way of thinking it is even irrelevant whether Jesus
existed or not. But few if any believers hold such a view. It is,
for example, important for most believers to believe that Jesus was
a real person and that his resurrection had an objective reality.
Even those who may hold that history is completely irrelevant for
faith, probably arrived at such a position after a
historical judgment that no
reliable history can be recovered from the Christian documents. That
means that history is relevant to the practical significance of the
New Testament. And if history is relevant, then "history-hunting"
(pursuing the recovery of the historical as if for its own sake) can
be useful.
Criteria for temporal
priority of traditions
Scholars have used several criteria to
decide about the authenticity of a reported saying or deed of Jesus.
In reality, most of these criteria at best enable us to decide
whether a tradition found in a document is earlier than the
document. For example, scholars often consciously or unconsciously
use the "criterion of embarrassment," according to which a tradition
about Jesus that created difficulty or embarrassment for the church
is authentic. This criterion assumes that "the church" was a
homogeneous entity with well defined and uniform views. But such an
assumption cannot be accepted without the sort of discussion that
must come after the establishment of the criteria for
historicity. The reason for this is that extant Christian documents
show a great deal of diversity even on the most fundamental issues.
Thus while miracles are prominent in the gospels, Paul's letters do
not concern themselves with the miracles. In the synoptic exorcisms
form the most important core of Jesus' healing ministry, while in
John there are no exorcisms at all. In Paul and the four gospels the
death of Jesus occupies a central place, while in some documents
such as the Gospel of Thomas, Q and the Letter of James the death is
not even mentioned. In the synoptic Jesus proclaims the coming
kingdom of God but does not say much about his identity. Instead of
himself declaring his identity, he wants to know what the disciples
and other people think about him. In John the proclamation of the
kingdom of God is absent and Jesus is principally occupied with
about his identity both in private discourses with the disciples and
in the public teaching to the Jews. The identity of Jesus itself has
few common elements in various documents. In Q he is the apocalyptic
Son of man while this term is absent from Paul. In some synoptic
traditions he is the Davidic Messiah while in some Johannine
traditions he is a Gnostic revealer who comes from the Father and
returns to him. In the Stephenite tradition Jesus was a fiercely
anti-temple prophet while in many traditions in the gospels and Acts
Jesus and the twelve are represented as being faithful to the temple
cult. Paul regards the law as a curse to be dispensed with. But many
other traditions regard the law to be still valid. Whatever unity
that we may see in our sources may be the result of catholicity that
gradually developed instead of being present from the beginning. One
may argue that there must have been some set of beliefs and
traditions in the beginning on the basis of which the Jesus movement
started. We will see in Ch. 2 that this was not the case and that
from the beginning there were different groups in the Jesus movement
which had nothing in common with each other than the name of Jesus.
Furthermore, there are many traditions
that are found to be embarrassing or problematic by some gospels but
not the others. For example, Luke and to a lesser degree Matthew
remove or tone down some of the negative references in Mark to Peter
and the twelve. In Mark the story of Peter's confession in Caesarea
Philippi concludes with a severe rebuke by Jesus to Peter, in which
Peter is banished and called Satan (8:33). Luke has removed this
verse from his gospel. He also removes the reference to the flight
of the disciples at the arrest of Jesus found in Mark 14:50. It is
possible that what Luke found embarrassing, Mark did not find so.
Thus a tradition may be created at one time and/or place without any
embarrassment and is found embarrassing or problematic in another
time and/or place. The safest conclusion when we notice that a
document is having difficulty in dealing with a tradition is that
the tradition reached the author from an earlier time and is not his
own creation. Similar arguments show that some other commonly used
criteria of historicity or authenticity are more logically regarded
as criteria of priority in time rather than authenticity. For this
reason I use two sets of criteria -- those that decide a tradition's
priority in time and those that decide whether what is reported in
the tradition is historical. It needs to be noted by way of
clarification that the temporal priority is spoken of only in
reference to the Christian tradition: we are not concerned here with
how early a tradition or motif or phrase existed outside the
Christian church but with how early it was found in the Christian
church.
There are
six main criteria
for deciding a tradition's priority in time. They necessarily
lead to probable and not certain results, since they all have both
theoretical and practical uncertainties. By theoretical uncertainty
I mean an uncertainty that arises from the very nature of the early
Christian tradition. By practical uncertainty I mean an uncertainty
that arises in applying a criterion. After stating each criterion I
will illustrate both types of uncertainties.
1)
Criterion of earlier attestation. If the
earliest attestation of the tradition, motif or phrase A is earlier
than the earliest attestation of the tradition, motif or phrase B,
then A is earlier than B.
This may look like a tautology, but this
is not the case because there exist theoretical uncertainties. One
such theoretical uncertainty arises from the fact that oral
tradition continued long after the writing of traditions started. In
the middle of the second century Papias is on record as saying that
he preferred to learn from living voices rather than from written
word. Thus it is quite possible that an earlier tradition lived on
in oral form only to be recorded in a later document.
A practical uncertainty in case of this
criterion is created by the fact that its application requires
relative dating of our sources, which in some cases cannot be done
with confidence.
2)
Criterion of multiple attestation.
If a tradition, motif or phrase is found in two or more independent
documents, then it was well known before any of the documents
mentioning it was produced. If a tradition is not only attested by
two or more independent documents but is also attested in different
literary genres (miracle story, controversy story, parable,
prediction etc), then we can consider it even earlier and more
established than we would otherwise.
For this criterion a theoretical
uncertainty arises from the fact that a tradition etc. could have
been borrowed independently from a non-Christian source by several
different documents, in which case as a Christian tradition it is
only as early as the earliest document. A practical uncertainty in
application can arise from the difficulty of deciding whether two
documents are independent.
Many scholars use the criterion of
multiple attestation as a criterion of historicity rather than for
temporal priority. The logic for this seems to be that a tradition
could not have been widely spread among the Jesus followers at a
very early time unless it originated from Jesus. In view of the very
distinct possibility noted earlier that the creation of traditions
started at a very early date, this logic is not sound.
3)
Criterion of lack of explanation (within a
document) for creation. If a tradition, motif or
phrase cannot be reasonably explained in terms of the special
purposes of a document, then it is earlier than the document and was
well known at least in the community in which the document was
produced.
A theoretical uncertainty arises here
because it is possible that a piece written by an author at one time
may not fit well with the remaining document. A practical
uncertainty arises out of the difficulty of determining the purposes
of an ancient author.
A particular case of the criterion of
lack of explanation for creation is the criterion of embarrassment
mentioned earlier: if a tradition etc is problematic in a document,
then it was well known before the document was written, at least in
the community where it was produced. In this case, the lack of
reasonable explanation of creation of a tradition by the author(s)
of a document is positively concluded from the "embarrassment" shown
by the author(s). Consequently, the conclusion about the earlier
existence of the tradition can be affirmed with more confidence than
in the case when lack of explanation for creation is supported only
negatively by our inability to point to such an explanation.
4)
Criterion of knowledge of known events.
A tradition which shows knowledge of certain historical events is
later than those events.
Once again this is not tautological,
since there are theoretical uncertainties. One such uncertainty
arises because it is possible to foresee some events. Also, some
events used by scholars are vaguely defined and it is difficult to
place their occurrence in the Jesus tradition at a unique time. For
example, often traditions containing a developed Christology or
referring to a developed church organization are used to argue for
their late origin. But our sources do not present a simple linear
picture on the basis of which we can use such characterizations to
relatively date traditions. Thus Christology of Paul is much more
developed than that of the later synoptic gospels as is the
Christology of John which comes after the synoptic. Similarly,
Matthew assumes a much more developed church organization than does
the earlier Mark or the later John.
A practical uncertainty arises because
sometimes allusions to an event are not clear.
5)
Criterion of links to Palestine.
A tradition showing contact with Aramaic and specialized knowledge
of Palestinian environment of the time of Jesus is earlier than the
documents in which it is found. The basis for this criterion is the
sound assumption that our documents were originally written in Greek
and outside Palestine while Jesus and his closest disciples spoke
Aramaic and lived in Palestine.
A theoretical uncertainty is caused by
the possibility that a Christian writer could be familiar enough
with Aramaic and Palestinian environment to create a tradition
influenced by Aramaic and knowledge of Palestine. A practical
uncertainty arises because of the difficulty in some cases of
detecting traces of Aramaic origin and Palestinian environment.
6)
Criterion of being less developed.
Of two versions of the same tradition, the one which is less
developed is the earlier one.
A theoretical as well as a practical
uncertainty arises here from the difficulty to define "developed".
One way to define the word is in terms of how detailed and explicit
a tradition is. The assumption behind the criterion then is that
with time stories tend to become more explicit and definite. In
particular, individuals and groups, left unspecified in an earlier
version tend to get named in later versions and indirect speech in
an earlier version tends to become direct speech in a later version
than vice versa. However, details and explicit references can be
easily omitted by a later narrator because he found them
uncomfortable or too irrelevant to the main theme. The assumption
has some validity when we look at a large number of narrations of a
story over a period of time. More exactly, we can state with
justification that all the narrations, taken together, of a
tradition existing at a later time are expected to contain more
details and explicit references than all those existing at an
earlier time. This does imply that if we select two versions of a
tradition belonging to different times, the later version has some
likelihood of being more detailed and explicit. But this likelihood
seems to be too small to be of much use.
Another way to define "developed" is in
terms of the degree to which a tradition reflects later developments
in the church. In this case, a theoretical uncertainty arises
because not every tradition reflects all the earlier developments. A
practical uncertainty arises because of the difficulty of
determining "later developments".
Criteria for historicity
The first of the criteria of historicity
is the same as criterion 3 above for temporal priority, except that
now it is applied to the Jesus tradition as a whole rather than to
particular documents.
1)
Criterion of lack of explanation (within the whole Jesus
movement) for creation. A tradition is historical if
no reasonable explanation can be found for its creation by the
church as a whole.
A theoretical uncertainty arises because
if an explanation cannot be found, this does not mean that it did
not once exist. We may be unable to find it because of gaps in our
knowledge. If we knew enough about early Christianity, we may be
able to see the processes by which a tradition came to be
fabricated, but now because of our incomplete knowledge we cannot
see any reasonable scenario for the fabrication of the tradition. A
practical uncertainty arises from the difficulty of determining what
is "reasonable."
We can relate the above criterion with
another criterion for historicity that is widely used by scholars,
namely, the criterion of originality, dissimilarity, discontinuity
or dual irreducibility, according to which a tradition about Jesus
is authentic if it is derivable neither from Judaism of the time of
Jesus nor from the teachings of the early church. We can understand
this as a form of the criterion of lack of explanation for creation
if we admit only one of two explanations for creation of a tradition
as reasonable -- the tradition was derived from Judaism of the time
of Jesus or it was derived from the teachings of the church. If none
of these two explanations for its creation is judged to be valid,
then the tradition is judged to be authentic. Needless to say that
this reasoning is not sound.
2)
Criterion of being early without being
challenged by another equally early tradition. A
tradition shown by various criteria of temporal priority to be well
established at a time close to the reported events with no other
equally early tradition contradicting it is historical.
A theoretical uncertainty arises because
of the strong possibility, raised earlier, that false reports can be
generated at any time. Any of the practical uncertainties associated
with the various criteria of temporal priority may arise here. Also,
whether a tradition contradicts another is sometimes difficult to
decide.
For an experimental assessment of the
effectiveness of the two criteria of historicity see Ch. 4.
I have not illustrated the individual
criteria by examples because these criteria usually need to be
applied in combinations to yield any dependable results. Now that I
have described all the main criteria, I will illustrate their
application with some examples.
Mark describes Jesus as a carpenter
(6:3). Mark has no difficulty with this tradition. But both Matthew
and Luke find it hard to accept; they in two different ways change
this. Matthew has "carpenter's son" (13:55) while Luke omits any
reference to the carpenter (4:22), once again showing that what is
embarrassing or problematic for one writer may not be so for
another. The tradition that Jesus was a carpenter, although attested
only by Mark 6:3 in the New Testament is accepted as historical by
some scholars (e.g. John P. Meier, A Marginal Jew, Vol. 1) on
the grounds that there is no other explanation for it, that is, by
the criterion of the lack of explanation for why someone would
fabricate the tradition.
The tradition that Jesus was from the
line of David (a son of David) is attested by Paul and therefore has
an attestation earlier than the tradition that Jesus was a
carpenter. The historicity of the tradition of Jesus' Davidic
descent, however, has been called into question by the possibility
that this tradition may have been the product of the belief in
Jesus' messiahship and not vice versa. If we consider this argument
valid and if we accept that Jesus was a carpenter, then we have here
an example that a tradition with a later attestation is earlier and
has more claim to historicity than another tradition with an earlier
attestation.
The tradition of baptism of Jesus by
John is found in Mark and Q, both being followed by Matthew and
Luke. It is also mentioned in some extracanonical traditions that
are considered independent of the canonical tradition (The Gospel
of the Hebrews 2, Ignatius, Ephesians 18:2). Thus it is
quite early by the criterion of multiple attestation. Furthermore,
these documents show difficulty in dealing with the tradition and
try in various ways to cover the inferior position Jesus took in
relation to the Baptist by submitting to him for baptism. Hence the
criterion of embarrassment further confirms that the tradition was
well established before Q which is dated in the fifties. Some
scholars conclude the historicity of the baptism from such
considerations but in fact the conclusion is not justified only on
the basis of criteria of multiple attestation and embarrassment. It
is possible that the tradition of baptism was first created and then
found embarrassing by most Christians. A crucial part is played by
the criterion of lack of explanation of creation: we conclude the
historicity of the baptism because we feel confident that there is
no reasonable explanation of how or why the tradition of baptism
came to be fabricated, if it is not historical.
The case with the tradition that one of
the companions of Jesus used his sword to cut off the ear of the
servant of the high priest is somewhat like that of the tradition of
baptism, except that it is attested only by the canonical gospels.
It does not fit in any of the gospels and they all in their
different ways try to dissociate Jesus from it. Mark does that by
using the phrase "one of those standing by" for the man who used the
sword, in this way suggesting that the man was not a companion of
Jesus. Matthew and John make Jesus rebuke the man but in different
ways. Luke makes him heal the victim. Clearly the tradition existed
well before any of the gospels and since no reasonable motive for
its creation is visible, it can be accepted as historical. We will
later see that the context of the tradition in the gospels, however,
is not historical.
The belief that Jesus is the Messiah is
attested in Paul, Mark, Q and John in a variety of forms and
therefore was widely established at a very early time. However,
Jesus' claim to be the Messiah has far less independent early
attestation. This suggests that the belief in Jesus' messiahship
came before the tradition of Jesus' claim to be the Messiah.
Starting with the belief in Jesus' messiahship we can easily
understand how and why the tradition of Jesus' claim to be the
Messiah arose: Christians simply attributed their belief to Jesus.
But how did the belief in Jesus' messiahship arise? At this point we
can judge that there is no reasonable explanation of this belief
other than that Jesus himself claimed to be the Messiah. This would
require accepting a tradition whose attestation is relatively late
to be earlier than a belief which is attested earlier and more
widely. Because our criteria only give probabilistic results, it is
possible to make exception to them.
However, it has been argued that Paul
and the early apostolic preaching in Acts not only do not attribute
the claim of messiahship to Jesus but implies that it was after his
ascension that he was made Lord and Christ by God. It is suggested,
moreover, that Mark knew that Jesus was believed to be the messiah
only after his resurrection and tries to explain this embarrassing
fact by his theory of the messianic secret. Because the church
believed in the messiahship of Jesus, such evidence contrary to its
position, if accepted as such, could not have been invented by the
church. Consequently, the claim on the part of Jesus to be the
messiah is not historical. Notice that the tradition of Jesus' claim
to be the messiah is of antiquity comparable to that of the
challenging traditions. But on the basis of the criterion of lack of
reasonable explanation, the latter is seen to be historical,
resulting in the rejection of the historicity of the former.
The tradition of Jesus' execution also
has multiple attestation (Paul, Mark and John). By the criterion of
multiple attestation, it was well known very early. In this book an
explanation is presented in detail how the tradition of execution
came to be created. If this explanation is reasonable, then despite
its antiquity the tradition of execution cannot be considered
historical.
The gospels attribute to Jesus a number
of sayings about the Son of man. Some scholars note that the
expression "Son of man" is not used as a title of a figure of
salvation in Judaism and Jesus is not confessed as the Son of man in
early Christian preaching as far as it can be known from the Acts
and "apostolic" epistles. Therefore by the criterion of
discontinuity or dissimilarity it is concluded that the use of the
title goes back to Jesus. However, it is possible to give an
explanation of how the reference to the Son of man as an
eschatological figure started in the early church without Jesus or
Judaism referring to him. The expression "son of man" can be used in
Aramaic to refer to oneself out of humility. Jesus referred to
himself using this expression as is shown by a number of early
sayings. Daniel 7:14, however, talks of a vision in which after
seeing a number of beasts the prophet sees "one like a son of man"
who represents the Jewish kingdom in contrasts to the beasts in the
vision who represent previous Gentile empires. Under the influence
of the belief in the early church that Jesus was seated on the right
hand of God as the anointed king or Messiah from where he will soon
return to establish the messianic kingdom, Jesus' use of the
expression "son of man" to refer to himself combined with Dan. 7:14
to create the title "Son of man" as a messianic title as well as the
application of that title to Jesus. If this explanation is judged as
reasonable, then we cannot conclude that Jesus used "Son of man" as
a messianic title whether in reference to himself or to a future
figure other than himself. The crucial point in our decision is not
whether the tradition is dissimilar to both Judaism and early church
teaching, but whether there is an explanation, judged to be
reasonable, of how or why it came to be created.
The tradition that Jesus talked about
the "kingdom of God or heaven" is attested in Q, Mark, John, Thomas,
material found only in Matthew or only in Luke. Paul also talks
about the kingdom of God a few times (Rom 14:17, 1 Cor 4:20) but
does not attribute its proclamation to Jesus. It was therefore well
established at a very early stage. The antiquity of the tradition is
further increased if we note that it is found in many different
literary genres: miracle story, beatitude, prayer, parable etc. This
massive attestation and the great antiquity which it implies
strongly suggests historicity. Most scholars have in fact accepted
that Jesus did indeed proclaim the kingdom of God, although there is
no agreement about how central the kingdom of God was in his work
Jesus and what did he mean by it.
In 1 Thess. 2:14-16 it is said that the
wrath of God has overtaken those Jews who persecuted the Christians.
This seems to be an allusion to the destruction of Jerusalem and its
temple by the Romans in 70 C.E. If so, the passage cannot be the
original composition of Paul who lived before this historic of a
well-known date. Here there is a difficulty in this use of the
criterion of knowledge of known events: the expression "the wrath of
God has overtaken" may be using apocalyptic way of talking, in which
the distinction between past, present and future is often blurred.
In that case, the verse does not refer to the destruction of
Jerusalem but simply to the imminence and certainty of the divine
judgment.
Matthew 16:17-19 is an addition to the
Markan version of the story known as Peter's confession (Mark
8:27-30). This raises the possibility that Matthew has himself
composed this passage. However, the passage has several Semitic
features such as the Aramaic form of Peter's name "Simon bar-Jonah".
By the criterion of links with Aramaic and Palestinian environment,
we may be more willing to conclude that Matthew is dependent here on
an earlier tradition.
The ultimate criterion
The criteria stated and illustrated
above are useful in reaching valuable results with some probability
but our results must finally meet the following criterion:
Our conclusions
about individual traditions must add up to an explanation of the
extant Jesus traditions which is plausible and comprehensive
enough to meet in due course of time wide acceptance from
scholars of different backgrounds.
This is the criterion that is ultimately
the only one that matters. Other criteria are helpful in practice in
guiding our thought, but they are not in principle necessary: if by
any method we can arrive at a picture of the development of the
Jesus tradition which plausibly explains the whole extant set of
traditions about Jesus, then it does not matter whether or not we
made use of any of the above criteria.
The structure of the
book
A brief outline of the contents of the
book will undoubtedly help the reader go through them more easily.
The story of Christianity is told in
this book by and large in a chronological order. We begin with an
account of Jesus' life followed by an account of developments that
took place at different successive stages after him. However, since
we can often reconstruct the history of Jesus and other earlier
stages only by reports that are heavily influenced by subsequent
developments, it will be often necessary to look at different stages
simultaneously or to go back and forth between later and earlier
stages, always dealing with the very distinct possibility that the
actual story may be different from what is being reported. Also,
sometimes it will be necessary to make statements about an earlier
stage that will be more fully supported only when the evidence
pertaining to a later stage is more fully examined.
The book consists of six
parts.
Part I
introduces the most important persons and groups in the Jesus
tradition. It begins with a brief look at Jesus himself and then
examines such earlier groups as the seven, the twelve and Jesus'
brothers.
Part II deals with earliest Jesus
traditions such as the traditions of his disappearance, execution,
ascension, his return as the Messiah and other views about his
religious identity.
Part III is concerned with the early
development of the belief in the death and resurrection of Jesus and
evaluation of Paul's witness.
Part IV looks at the non-narrative
tradition about Jesus' death and resurrection such as the kerugmatik
formulas in Paul and the passion predictions in the gospels.
Parts V and VI attempt to explain the
formation of the passion narratives and the resurrection stories. In
each part the proposed theory finds two types of support: support by
direct arguments and support by providing on the basis of the theory
a better explanation of the evidence. |