Jesus: 4 BC – 30 AD

Sources

Did Jesus exist? Was the story of the founder of Christianity the product of grief, imagination, and the hopes of the people — a myth like the legends of Krishna, Osiris, Attis, Adonis, Dionysus, and Mithra? In the early eighteenth century a confidential discussion of the possibility of Jesus’s non-existence took place in the circle of Bolingbroke — a discussion that even Voltaire shied away from. Volney expressed the same doubt in his work The Ruins of Empire in 1791. When Napoleon met the German scholar Wieland in 1808 he asked him not about politics or war but whether he believed in the historicity of Jesus.

One of the major preoccupations of modern thought has been “higher criticism” of the Bible — an increasingly sharp attack on its authenticity and authority — which has in turn faced a heroic effort to save the historical foundation of Christian faith. The results of this collision may be as revolutionary as Christianity itself. The first clash in this two-hundred-year war began quietly and secretly from Hermann Reimarus, professor of Oriental languages in Hamburg. At his death in 1768 he left a 1,400-page manuscript on the life of Christ that he had prudently not published. The following year Gotthold Lessing, despite the protests of his friends, published excerpts from it under the title Wolfenbüttel Fragments. Reimarus argued that Jesus could not be understood as the founder of Christianity; he must be seen as the final and supreme figure of Jewish apocalyptic eschatology. In other words, Jesus had not thought of founding a new religion but had wanted to prepare the people for the imminent destruction of the world and the final judgment of all souls. In 1796 Herder pointed out the apparently irreconcilable difference between the Christ of Matthew, Mark, and Luke and the Christ of John. In 1828 Heinrich Paulus, in a 1,192-page summary of the life of Christ, offered a rational interpretation of the miracles — that is, he accepted the occurrence of miracles but attributed them to natural causes and powers. David Strauss, in a groundbreaking work The Life of Jesus (1835–1836), rejected this middle way; in his view the supernatural elements of the Gospels must be regarded as myths, and the real life of Christ must be reconstructed without using these elements in any form. Strauss’s massive work made biblical criticism the focus of German thought for a generation. In the same year Ferdinand Christian Baur attacked the Pauline epistles and declared all of them forgeries except those written to the Corinthians, Galatians, and Romans. In 1840 Bruno Bauer began a series of provocative polemical works to show that Jesus was nothing but a myth, the personified form of a cult that arose in the second century from a fusion of Jewish, Greek, and Roman theology. In 1863 Ernest Renan’s Life of Jesus shocked many with its rationalism and charmed many with its beautiful prose; this book gathered the results of German critics and placed the Gospel problem before the entire educated world. The French school in this field reached its peak at the end of the nineteenth century with Abbé Loisy. He subjected the text of the New Testament to such intense and precise analysis that the Catholic Church found it necessary to excommunicate him and some other “modernists.” Meanwhile the Dutch school, consisting of Pierson, Naber, and van Manen, carried the movement to its extreme by denying the historical existence of Jesus, presenting detailed evidence. In Germany Arthur Drews offered the definitive explanation of this negative conclusion; in England W. B. Smith and J. M. Robertson argued for such a denial. The result of two centuries of discussion seemed to be the annihilation of Christ.

What evidence is there for the existence of Christ? The first non-Christian source on this matter is the Antiquities of the Jews by Josephus (93 AD?):

About this time there lived Jesus, a holy man, if indeed one may call him a man, for he performed wonderful works and taught those who received the truth gladly. Many Jews and Greeks became his followers. This man was the Christ.

There may be a kernel of truth in these strange lines; yet such lofty praise of Christ from a Jew who was always thinking of winning the favor of either the Romans or the Jews — both of whom were fighting Christianity at that time — makes the passage look like a forgery, and Christian scholars regard this text as almost certainly an interpolation. The Talmud contains references to “Yeshu the Nazarene,” but they are later than the events and can hardly be anything but reflections of anti-Christian thought. The oldest mention of Jesus in pagan literature occurs in the writings of Pliny the Younger and in a letter dated approximately 110 AD. In this letter Pliny asks Trajan how Christians should be treated. Five years later Tacitus describes the persecution of Christians in Rome under Nero and introduces them as having had followers throughout the empire before 64 AD. This text is so consistent with Tacitus’s style, force, and prejudice that among all biblical critics only Drews has denied its authenticity. Suetonius, about 125 AD, mentions the same persecution and says that around 52 AD Claudius “expelled the Jews, stirred up by Chrestus, who caused public disturbances.” This phrase corresponds to the account in the Acts of the Apostles, which refers to an edict by Claudius that “the Jews must leave Rome.” These sources prove the existence of Christians rather than of Christ; but if we do not accept the existence of Christ we must return to the improbable hypothesis that Jesus was invented within the lifetime of one generation. Moreover, we must assume that the Christian community in Rome had come into existence several years before 52 AD, since it attracted the attention of an imperial edict. In the middle of the first century a pagan named Thallus, in a fragment preserved by Julius Africanus, claimed that the darkness said to have accompanied the death of Jesus was a completely natural phenomenon and mere coincidence. In this argument the existence of Jesus is taken for granted. The denial of his existence was apparently never expressed by the most stubborn pagans or by Jews who opposed infant Christianity.

The first Christian documents proving the existence of Christ are the epistles attributed to the Apostle Paul. Some of these epistles may not be by him, but most of them date before 64 AD and almost all are considered authentic. No one doubts the existence of Paul or his meetings with Peter, James, and John; and Paul himself, with envious regret, acknowledges that these three had known Jesus in the flesh. In the authentic Pauline epistles there are several references to the Last Supper and to the crucifixion of Jesus.

The problem with the Gospels is not so simple. The four Gospels that have reached us are the survivors of many more Gospels that circulated among Christians in the first two centuries AD. The English word “gospel” (Old English “godspel” = good news) is a translation of the Greek “euangelion,” the first word of Mark’s Gospel, meaning “good news” — that is, the Christ has come and the Kingdom of God is at hand. The Gospels of Mark, Matthew, and Luke are the “synoptic Gospels.” Their content and narratives can be placed in three parallel columns and compared. They were written in the common Greek “Koine” and are not perfect models of grammar or literature. Nevertheless, their simple, strong, and direct style, the living force of their scenes and parables, the depth of feeling, and the profound appeal of the stories they tell give even their unsophisticated original text an incomparable charm — a charm that was greatly increased for English-speaking readers in the inaccurate but majestic translation made for King James of England.

The oldest surviving manuscript copies of the Gospels date from the third century. The originals themselves appear to have been written between 60 and 120 AD. Thus they were exposed for two centuries to errors of copying and possible changes to adapt the text to the views or intentions or theological principles of the copyist’s sect or period. Christian writers before 100 AD quote from the “Old Testament” but never quote from the “New Testament.” Before 150 AD the only mention of a Christian Gospel occurs in the works of Papias, who, about 135 AD, reports a certain “John the Elder” as saying that Mark composed his Gospel from memories that the Apostle Peter dictated to him. Papias adds: “Matthew wrote the ‘Logia’ in Hebrew” — and by “Logia” is apparently meant an Aramaic collection of the sayings of Christ. Paul probably had such a document, for although he never mentions any of the Gospels he sometimes quotes words from the mouth of Jesus himself. Critics generally agree in giving priority to Mark’s Gospel and dating it about 65–70 AD. In Mark the same material is often repeated in several forms; thus it is supposed that its basis was the “Logia” and another narrative, probably Mark’s own original composition. Mark’s Gospel, in the form that has reached us, apparently existed during the lifetime of several of the Apostles or their immediate disciples. It therefore seems improbable that it would differ fundamentally from the memories and interpretations of these Apostles regarding Christ. On this basis one can agree with Albert Schweitzer, a sound and renowned scholar, that the main part of Mark’s Gospel contains “authentic history.”

In orthodox tradition priority is given to Matthew’s Gospel. Irenaeus notes that its original was in “Hebrew,” that is, Aramaic; but what has reached us is only in Greek. Since Matthew’s Gospel in its present form is a copy of Mark’s Gospel and probably also of the “Logia,” critics more often attribute it to one of Matthew’s disciples than to Matthew himself. Nevertheless even the most skeptical scholars do not date its composition later than about 85–90 AD. Because Matthew’s purpose is to win over the Jews, he relies more than the other evangelists on the miracles attributed to Jesus and is suspiciously eager to prove that many Old Testament prophecies were fulfilled in Christ. Nevertheless Matthew’s Gospel is the most moving of the four and must be ranked among the unknown masterpieces of world literature.

Luke’s Gospel, which is generally dated to the end of the first century, attempts to harmonize and reconcile the earlier accounts of Jesus and aims not at winning Jews but at winning pagans. It is highly probable that Luke himself was originally a pagan, a friend of Paul, and the author of the Acts of the Apostles. Like Matthew he borrows heavily from Mark. Of the 661 verses that have reached us from Mark, more than 600 appear in Matthew’s Gospel and 350 in Luke’s Gospel, often word for word. Many passages in Luke that are not in Mark have almost word-for-word parallels in Matthew. Apparently Luke borrowed them from Matthew, or else Luke and Matthew both took them from a common source that is now lost. Luke arranges his explicit borrowings with some literary skill. Renan considered Luke’s Gospel the most beautiful book ever written.

The “Fourth Gospel” does not claim to be a biography of Jesus. This Gospel presents Christ theologically as the “Logos” (the Word), the divine creator of the world, and the savior of mankind. It differs from the synoptic Gospels in many details and also in its overall portrayal of Christ. The semi-Gnostic character of this Gospel and its emphasis on metaphysical ideas have led many Christian scholars to doubt that its author was the Apostle John. Nevertheless, experience teaches that an ancient tradition should not be lightly dismissed; our ancestors were not all fools. Recent studies date the composition of the Fourth Gospel to the end of the first century AD. It is probable that tradition is correct in attributing the “Epistles of John” to the same author; both express the same themes in the same style.

In summary, it is clear that there are numerous contradictions between one Gospel and another, and that in all four Gospels there is vague historical information, suspicious similarities to pagan myths of the gods, fabricated incidents to prove the fulfillment of Old Testament prophecies, and passages that are very probably intended to give a historical basis to later church rites or ceremonies. The evangelists agreed with Cicero, Sallust, and Tacitus that history should carry a moral message. It is also not unreasonable to assume that the dialogues and sayings quoted in the Gospels have suffered from the weakness of the memory of illiterate persons and from the mistakes and revisions of copyists.

With all this, what remains is still noteworthy. The contradictions concern details and have no connection with the main subject. The synoptic Gospels agree remarkably in their essential content and give the reader a consistent picture of Christ. “Higher criticism,” carried away by its discoveries, applied such strict criteria for testing authenticity to the New Testament that it relegated many ancient and real persons, such as Hammurabi, David, and Socrates, to the realm of legend. Despite all their theological prejudices and presuppositions, the evangelists relate incidents that, if they had been mere forgers, they would have passed over in silence — for example, the rivalry of the Apostles for high positions in the Kingdom, their flight after Jesus’s arrest, Peter’s denial, Jesus’s inability to perform miracles in Galilee, the suggestion by some listeners that he might be mad, his own initial uncertainty about his mission, his admission of ignorance about the future, his moments of bitterness, and his despairing cry on the cross. After reading the accounts of these scenes no one can doubt the reality of the personality behind them. That a number of simple individuals within one generation could have created so powerful and attractive a personality, so lofty an ethic, and so inspiring a dream of human brotherhood is a miracle more unbelievable than any of the miracles mentioned in the Gospels. After two centuries of “higher criticism,” the outlines of the life, personality, and teachings of Christ remain clear and reasonable, and form the most attractive personality in the history of Western man.

The Growth of Jesus

Both Matthew and Luke attribute the birth of Jesus to “the days when Herod was king of Judea” — that is, to the third year before the Christian era. Nevertheless Luke describes Jesus as “about thirty years old” when he is baptized by John “in the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius” — that is, 28–29 AD. On this reckoning his birth would have been in the second or first year before the Christian era. Luke adds: “In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be enrolled … when Quirinius was governor of Syria.” We know that Quirinius was governor of Syria between 6 and 12 AD. Josephus mentions a census that this man conducted in Judea, but dates it between 6 and 7 AD. No other mention of this census exists. Tertullian relates that a census was taken in Judea by command of Saturninus, governor of Syria in 8–7 BC. If this census is the one Luke has in mind, Jesus’s birth must be placed before 6 BC. We have no information about the day of Jesus’s birth. Clement of Alexandria (about 200 AD) mentions various opinions current in his time about the day of Jesus’s birth and says that some chronologists fix it on April 19 and others on May 20, but he himself places it on November 17 of the third year before the Christian era. In the second century AD Eastern Christians celebrated the birthday on January 6. In 354 certain Western churches, including that of Rome, observed the anniversary of Christ’s birth on December 25; at that time this day was mistakenly calculated as the day of the winter solstice, after which the length of the day begins to increase; this day had previously also been the chief festival of the Mithraic cult, the birthday of the Unconquered Sun. The Eastern churches for a time refused to abandon January 6 and accused their Western brethren of sun-worship and idolatry, but by the end of the fourth century December 25 was accepted in the East as well.

Matthew and Luke both place Jesus’s birthplace in Bethlehem, eight kilometers from Jerusalem; and they say that from there Jesus’s family went to Nazareth in Galilee and settled there. Mark never mentions Bethlehem and calls Christ simply “Jesus the Nazarene.” His parents gave him the very common name Yeshua, meaning “Yahweh is salvation.” The Greeks turned it into Iesous and the Romans into Iesus.

He apparently came from a large family, for his neighbors, astonished at the persuasive power of his teaching, asked themselves: “Where did this man get this wisdom and these mighty works? Is not this the carpenter’s son? Is not his mother called Mary, and his brothers James, Joseph, Simon, and Judas? And are not his sisters with us?” Luke tells the story of the Annunciation with literary charm and records the song of the Virgin Mary, one of the greatest poems in the New Testament.

Mary, after her son, is the most interesting figure in the narrative: she rears the child amid all the painful joys of motherhood; she takes pride in his youthful learning, later wonders at his doctrine and claims, wants to keep him away from the exciting crowds and bring him back to the healing peace of home (“Your father and I have been sorrowful in seeking you”), stands helpless as she witnesses his crucifixion, and holds his body in her arms. If all this is not history it is great literature, for the relations between parents and children contain emotions deeper than sexual love. Stories that later circulated, by Celsus and others, about Mary and a Roman soldier are, in the opinion of all critics except the most prejudiced, “crude forgeries.” Other stories, less objectionable, are mainly found in dubious or non-canonical Gospels and concern the birth of Jesus in a cave or stable, his adoration by shepherds and Magi, the massacre of the innocents, and the flight into Egypt; the experienced mind is not offended by this popular poetry. Neither Paul nor John mentions the virgin birth of Jesus, and Matthew and Luke, who speak of it, contradict the virgin birth with a genealogy that traces Jesus’s descent through Joseph to David. Apparently belief in the virgin birth of Jesus arose after the belief that traced Jesus’s lineage to David the prophet.

The evangelists say little about Jesus’s youth. Jesus was circumcised when he was eight days old. Joseph was a carpenter and since in that age a trade was usually hereditary it appears that Jesus practiced this pleasant occupation for a time. He became acquainted with the craftsmen of his village, with the great landowners, stewards, and slaves of his rural environment; his sayings repeatedly refer to them. He was sensitive to the beauties of nature, to the grace and color of flowers, and to the silent fruitfulness of fruit trees. The story of his questioning the doctors in the Temple is not unbelievable; he had an alert and inquiring mind, and in the Near East a boy of twelve reaches maturity. Yet he had no formal education. His neighbors asked: “How is it that this man can read when he has never been to school?” He attended the synagogue and listened with obvious pleasure to what was read from the Scriptures. The “books of the prophets” and the Psalms sank most deeply into his memory and helped to shape his personality. He may also have read the Book of Daniel and the Book of Enoch, for his later teaching draws on their revelations about the coming of the Messiah, the day of judgment, and the arrival of the Kingdom of God.

The air he breathed was saturated with religious excitement. Thousands of Jews anxiously awaited the redeemer of Israel. Magic and sorcery, angels and demons, possession and exorcism, miracles and prophecy, divination and astrology were everywhere accepted as solid realities; perhaps the story of the Magi was a necessary concession to the astrological beliefs of that age. Claimants to miraculous powers traveled from city to city. All pious Jews of Palestine made an annual pilgrimage to Jerusalem for the Passover, so Jesus must have had information about the Essenes and their semi-monastic, almost Buddhist way of life; and he had probably also heard something about the sect of the “Nazarenes,” who lived beyond the Jordan in Perea, did not believe in worship in the Temple, and rejected the absolute power of the Law. But what aroused his religious enthusiasm were the sermons of John, the son of Elizabeth, Mary’s cousin.

Josephus tells the story of this John in some detail. We usually picture John the Baptist as an old man, but on the contrary he was almost the same age as Jesus. Mark and Matthew describe John as wearing “clothing of camel’s hair and a leather belt around his waist, and his food was locusts and wild honey. Then Jerusalem and all Judea and all the region around the Jordan went out to him and were baptized by him in the Jordan, confessing their sins.” He was ascetic like the Essenes, but differed from them in that he considered one baptism sufficient. His name, “Baptist,” may have been the Greek equivalent of the word “Essene” (bather). To this ritual of purification John added the condemnation of hypocrisy and loose living and warned sinners to prepare themselves for the judgment of the last day, announcing that the Kingdom of God was at hand; he said that if all Judea repented and was cleansed from sin, the Messiah and the Kingdom would come at once.

Luke says: “In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius” or a little later Jesus went to the Jordan River to be baptized by John. Such a decision by a man who was then “about thirty years old” testifies that Jesus accepted John’s teaching. His own teaching was originally the same. Nevertheless his methods and character differed from John’s: he himself never baptized anyone; and he never lived in seclusion but lived among the people. Shortly after this meeting Herod Antipas, tetrarch of Galilee, ordered John to be imprisoned. The Gospels attribute John’s arrest to his criticism of Herod’s act of divorcing his wife and taking Herodias, who was still the lawful wife of his half-brother Philip. Josephus gives the reason for the arrest as Herod’s fear that John’s intention might be to stir up a political revolt under the cloak of religious reform. Mark and Matthew, pursuing this matter, relate the story of Salome, Herodias’s daughter, who danced so charmingly before Herod that he offered to give her whatever she asked. At her mother’s insistence Salome asked for the head of John, and the tetrarch reluctantly granted her request. The Gospels say nothing of Salome’s love for John, and Josephus makes no mention of her participation in John’s murder.

The Ministry

“After John was arrested, Jesus came into Galilee preaching the gospel of the Kingdom of God.” Luke writes: “And Jesus returned in the power of the Spirit into Galilee … and he taught in their synagogues.” A vivid picture shows this young idealist reading the Scriptures in a synagogue in Nazareth and choosing a passage from the book of the prophet Isaiah:

The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the poor; he has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and the opening of the prison to those who are bound … to comfort all who mourn.

Luke adds: “The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. Then he began to say to them, ‘Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.’ And all bore witness to him and wondered at the gracious words that proceeded out of his mouth.” When news came that John’s head had been cut off and his disciples were seeking a new leader, Jesus accepted the burden and the danger of this leadership. At first, out of caution, he went to quiet villages and always avoided political controversies. Then with increasing boldness he proclaimed repentance, faith, and salvation. Some of his listeners thought he was John himself risen from the dead.

It is difficult to picture him exactly as he was, not only because the reports come from those who worshiped him, but, beyond that, because our own moral heritage and ideals are so dependent on him and have been so shaped by his model that we feel offended at the slightest flaw in him. His religious sensitivity was so intense that he severely condemned those who did not share his outlook. He could forgive every fault except unbelief. In the Gospels there are harsh expressions that are inconsistent with everything we have heard about Christ. He apparently, without examination or inquiry, adopted the most terrifying ideas of his contemporaries about an eternal hell in which unbelievers and unrepentant sinners would suffer “where their worm does not die and the fire is not quenched.” He speaks without protest of a poor man in paradise who is not allowed to let a drop of water fall on the tongue of a rich man who has been sent to hell. He magnanimously says, “Judge not, that you be not judged,” yet he himself cursed people and cities that did not accept his message and cursed a fig tree that bore no fruit. He was somewhat harsh even with his mother. He had more of the zeal of a Hebrew prophet than the calm serenity of a Greek sage. The fire of his convictions set him ablaze. Sometimes his righteous and just anger marred his deep humanity; his faults were the price he paid for his fervent faith, a faith that enabled him to shake the world.

Aside from these points, he was the most lovable of men. We have no portrait of him and the evangelists do not describe his appearance. But beside his spiritual appeal he must have been handsome as well, since he was able to draw so many women as well as men to himself. From some scattered words we learn that Jesus, like other men of that age and land, wore a tunic under a cloak, wooden sandals on his feet, and probably, to protect himself from the sun, a cloth headdress that reached to his shoulders. Many women found in him a compassionate love that aroused selfless devotion in them. The fact that only John relates the story of the woman taken in the very act of adultery cannot be evidence against its truth, for one cannot say that John invented this story as confirmation of his theological method, and it fully matches Christ’s character. Another story of equal beauty, beyond the inventive power of the evangelists, is the account of a prostitute who, excited by the fact that Jesus receives repentant sinners with open arms, kneels before him, anoints his feet with costly ointment mixed with myrrh, washes them with her tears, and dries them with her hair. Jesus says of her: “Her sins, which are many, are forgiven, for she loved much.” It is also related that mothers brought their children to him so that he might touch them and he “took them in his arms and blessed them, laying his hands upon them.”

Jesus, unlike the prophets, the Essenes, and John the Baptist, was not an ascetic hermit. He is described as providing abundant wine for a wedding feast, associating with “tax collectors and sinners,” and accepting Mary Magdalene as his companion. He was not hostile to the simple joys of life, although in the matter of a man’s sexual inclination toward a woman he showed a severe, almost unnatural strictness. Sometimes in the banquets of the rich he took part; nevertheless, on the whole, he preferred the company of the poor and even of those who were considered almost unclean and despised by the Sadducees and Pharisees. When he realized that the rich would never accept him, he based his promises on a transformation that would give the poor and the weak superiority in the Kingdom that was coming. Only in this respect — that he placed himself on the side of the lower classes and in his compassion — was Jesus like Caesar; but in every other respect, in worldview, character, and interests, there was a world of difference between the two! Caesar hoped to change people by changing organizations and laws; Jesus wanted to rebuild organizations by changing people and to reduce laws. Caesar too was capable of righteous anger, but his emotions were always controlled by his clear intellect. Jesus was not lacking in intelligence; he answered the Pharisees’ trapping questions almost with the skill of a lawyer and at the same time with wisdom. No one could disturb him even in the face of death. Yet his mental power was not intellectual and did not depend on the extent of his knowledge but sprang from the intensity of his imagination, the depth of his feeling, and the unity of his purpose. He did not claim to be omniscient and was surprised at some events; only his great zeal led him to think his powers greater than they really were, as happened in Jerusalem and Nazareth. But the miracles attributed to him indicate his exceptional abilities.

Probably Jesus’s miracles were in most cases the result of suggestion — that is, the influence of a strong and confident spirit on impressionable spirits. Jesus’s mere presence was like a tonic. At his hopeful touch the weak gained strength and the sick recovered. The fact that similar stories are told in legends or history about other persons cannot be evidence that Jesus’s miracles are legendary. Except in a few cases these miracles are not unbelievable; similar phenomena can be observed almost every day at Lourdes, and certainly such phenomena occurred in the time of Jesus at Epidaurus and other centers of psychic healing in the ancient world; even the Apostles performed such healings. The psychological aspect of the miracles is shown by two points: first, Jesus himself attributed his healings to the “faith” of those who were healed; second, in Nazareth, apparently because the people looked upon him as “the carpenter’s son” and did not believe in his exceptional powers, he could not perform miracles; and that is why he says: “A prophet is not without honor except in his own country and in his own house.” It is said of Mary Magdalene that “seven demons were cast out of her”; in other words, Mary suffered from illnesses and nervous seizures (this word brings to mind the theory of “possession”). This condition of hers apparently subsided in Jesus’s presence; therefore she loved him as someone who had revived her and whose presence was necessary for her health. In the case of Jairus’s daughter Jesus explicitly said that the child was not dead but asleep — perhaps a kind of nervous fainting. Jesus did not use his usual gentleness to awaken her but commanded imperiously: “Little girl, arise!” Of course this does not mean that Jesus himself regarded his miracles as purely natural phenomena; he felt that he performed these miracles only with the help of a divine spirit that was in him. We cannot say that he was wrong in this conception of himself, just as we still cannot set a definite limit to the potential forces latent in human thought and will. Jesus himself apparently felt psychological exhaustion after his miracles. He performed miracles reluctantly and forbade his followers to spread news of the miracles. He rebuked those who asked for “signs” and regretted that even his own disciples accepted him essentially because of the “miracles” he showed.

His Apostles were by no means the kind of men one might choose to change the world. The Gospels show with realism the differences in their characters and openly reveal their faults. They were clearly ambitious; Jesus calmed them by promising that on the day of final judgment they would sit on twelve thrones and judge the twelve tribes of Israel. When John the Baptist was imprisoned, one of his disciples named Andrew joined Jesus and brought his brother Simon with him; Jesus called him “Cephas” (rock) and the Greeks translated it as Petros (Peter). Peter is a completely human figure: active, serious, generous, jealous, and sometimes cowardly to the point of cowardice. Andrew and he were fishermen of the Sea of Galilee. The two sons of Zebedee, James and John, were of the same type. All four left their trade to form a small circle of companions around Jesus. Matthew was a “tax collector,” that is, a government employee, in the border town of Capernaum; therefore he was attached to Rome and for that reason hated by every freedom-loving Jew. Judas Iscariot is the only Apostle who was not from Galilee. All twelve pooled their possessions and made Judas their treasurer. During the period when they followed Jesus on his missionary journeys they lived in villages, obtained their food here and there from the fields along the way, and accepted the hospitality of converts and friends. To these twelve Jesus also added seventy-two disciples and sent them out two by two to the cities he intended to visit. He had instructed them: “Take no bag, no knapsack, no sandals.” Kind and pious women also joined the Apostles and disciples. These women cared for them and performed the domestic attentions that are the greatest comfort in men’s lives. It was with the hands of this small group of humble and uneducated persons that Jesus spread his message to the world.

The Gospel

Jesus expressed his teaching with a simplicity suited to his listeners: with stories that conveyed his message indirectly by allusion, with striking moral maxims that replaced logical arguments, and with similes and metaphors as brilliant as any found in other literary works. The parabolic form he used was common in the East, and some of his striking similes were perhaps unconsciously taken from the prophets, the authors of the Psalms, or the rabbis; nevertheless, the directness of his expression, the living force of his imagination, and the warm sincerity of his spirit raised his speech to the level of the most inspiring poetry. Some of his sayings are obscure, and others at first seem wrong; still others are sharp, ironic, and bitter; and almost all of them are models of conciseness, clarity, and force of speech.

The starting point of his work was the “gospel” of John the Baptist, which itself was taken from the Book of Daniel and the Book of Enoch; “history does not leap.” He said the Kingdom of God was at hand; soon God would put an end to the rule of evil on earth; the Son of Man would come “on the clouds of heaven” to judge all humanity, the living and the dead. The time of repentance was ending; those who had repented, lived righteously, worshiped God, and believed in his prophet would inherit the Kingdom and would attain power and glory in a world finally freed from every evil, suffering, and death.

Since these ideas were familiar to his listeners, Christ did not explain or expand them, and for that reason there are now many difficulties in understanding his concepts. What did he mean by the Kingdom? A heavenly paradise? Apparently not, since the Apostles and the first Christians all expected a Kingdom on earth. This was the Jewish tradition that Jesus inherited; and he taught his followers to pray thus to their heavenly Father: “Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” Only after this hope faded did the Gospel of John put these words into Jesus’s mouth: “My Kingdom is not of this world.” So was his Kingdom a spiritual state or a material utopia? Sometimes he spoke of the Kingdom as a spiritual state attained by the pure and innocent; “the Kingdom of God is in the midst of you.” Sometimes he pictured it as a future society full of bliss in which the Apostles would rule and those who had given something or suffered something for Christ’s sake would receive a hundredfold reward. It seems that he used perfection of the spirit only metaphorically as the Kingdom and meant that spiritual perfection is the preparation and price that must be paid for the Kingdom, the necessary condition for the saved souls that will be in it when the Kingdom comes.

When would the Kingdom come? Soon. “Truly I say to you, I will not drink again of the fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new in the Kingdom of God.” Jesus told his followers: “Truly I say to you, you will not have gone through all the towns of Israel before the Son of Man comes.” Later he postpones this date a little: “Truly I say to you, there are some standing here who will not taste death before they see the Son of Man coming in his Kingdom.” “This generation will not pass away until all these things take place.” In more critical moments he warned the Apostles: “But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but the Father only.” Before the coming of the Kingdom there would be signs: “And you will hear of wars and rumors of wars … For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom, and there will be famines and earthquakes in various places … Then they will deliver you up to tribulation and put you to death … and they will hate one another and many false prophets will arise and lead many astray. And because lawlessness will be increased, the love of many will grow cold.” Sometimes Jesus made the coming of the Kingdom conditional on humanity’s turning toward God and justice. Usually he regarded this arrival as the work of God and a sudden and miraculous gift of divine grace.

Many have interpreted the Kingdom as a communistic utopia and have seen Jesus as a social revolutionary. There are indications in the Gospels in favor of such a view. Christ clearly despises a man whose main goal in life is to accumulate money and luxury. He threatens the rich and the well-fed with hunger and misery and in return consoles the poor with the eternal bliss that the Kingdom will bring them. To a rich man who asked him what he should do in addition to keeping the Ten Commandments, Jesus replied: “Sell what you possess and give to the poor … and come, follow me.” Apparently the Apostles interpreted the Kingdom as a revolutionary transformation of the existing relations between rich and poor. In later parts we shall see how they and the first Christians formed a communistic group “and had all things in common.” The charge on the basis of which Jesus was condemned was that he had plotted to make himself “King of the Jews.”

But a conservative can also find evidence in the New Testament for his purpose. Jesus becomes friends with Matthew, who continued in his job as a Roman government employee. He makes no criticism of the civil government, does not participate in the Jewish movement for national freedom, and always recommends the gentleness and tolerance that carries not the slightest smell of political revolution. He encouraged the Pharisees: “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” The parable of the man who, before setting out on a journey, “called his servants and entrusted to them his property” presupposes the existing institutions rather than attacking usury or slavery; on the contrary, it is clear evidence of taking existing institutions for granted. Jesus clearly approves of the slave who put to work the ten minas (six hundred dollars) entrusted to him by his master and made another ten minas in profit; and he rebukes the slave who left the one mina entrusted to him by his master unproductive until his master’s return, and puts these reproachful words in the master’s mouth: “To everyone who has will more be given, and he will have an abundance. But from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away.” This sentence, if it is not an excellent summary of the history of the world, is at least an excellent summary of the rule of the market. In another parable the workers “murmured against their employer” because he gave the same wage to one who had worked only one hour as to those who had labored all day. Christ attributes this answer to the employer: “Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me?” Jesus apparently had no thought of ending poverty: “The poor you always have with you.” Like all his predecessors, he takes it for granted that a slave has the duty to serve his master: “Blessed is that servant whom his master will find so doing when he comes.” He does not attack the existing economic or political foundations; on the contrary he condemns the hot-blooded who want “to take the Kingdom of Heaven by force.” The revolution he sought was a far deeper one, without which every other reform would be superficial and transitory. If he could cleanse the human heart of selfish desires, of oppression and greed, then the ideal city would come of itself, and all institutions rooted in greed and violence would disappear, followed by the need for laws. Because such a revolution is the deepest of revolutions, a revolution in the face of which all other revolutions appear merely as a coup by one class to oust another and continue exploitation, Jesus was in this spiritual sense the greatest revolutionary in history.

His achievement was not the establishment of a new state but the outlining of an ideal ethical foundation. His ethical law was based on the nearness of the coming of the Kingdom and was designed to make man worthy of entering it. The “promises of eternal bliss” with their unprecedented praise of humility, poverty, tolerance, and peace were also based on this; and likewise the recommendation of another way — turning the other cheek and becoming like little children (and not models of virtue!); and indifference to economic necessities, property, and government; and the preference for celibacy over marriage; and the command to abandon all family ties: these were not rules for ordinary life but a semi-monastic system suitable for men and women worthy of God’s choice for a Kingdom that was soon coming and in which there would be no law, marriage, sexual relations, property, or war. Jesus praised those who “leave house, relatives, brothers, wife, and children” and even those who “have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the Kingdom of God”; of course it is obvious that these commandments applied to a dedicated religious minority and not to a stable society. These ethical laws were limited in purpose but universal in scope, since they applied the idea of brotherhood and the “golden rule” to strangers and enemies as well as to friends and neighbors. Christ’s ideal ethic had the dream of a day when men would worship God not in temples but “in spirit and truth,” and not only in words but in every deed.

Were these ethical ideas new? Except for their arrangement and organization nothing about them was new. The central theme of Christ’s preaching — the day of judgment and the future Kingdom — had been discussed among the Jews for a century before him. For a long time the Law had been trying to instill the concept of brotherhood; in Leviticus it is written: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself,” even “the stranger who sojourns with you shall be to you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself.” Exodus had commanded the Jews to do good to their enemies: “If you meet your enemy’s ox or his donkey going astray, you shall bring it back to him. If you see the donkey of one who hates you lying under its burden, you shall refrain from leaving him with it; you shall rescue it with him.” The prophets had also placed a good life above rites and ceremonies. Isaiah and Hosea had begun to transform Jehovah from a lord of wrath and war into a God of love. Hillel, like Confucius, had formulated the “golden rule.” Jesus cannot be blamed for inheriting the rich moral traditions of his people and for applying them.

For a long time Jesus considered himself a Jew who shared the thoughts of the prophets, continued their work, and, like them, preached only to the Jews. The disciples he sent to spread his message he sent exclusively to Jewish cities: “Go nowhere among the Gentiles and enter no town of the Samaritans.” For this reason, after his death, the Apostles hesitated to carry the “good news” to the “Gentile” world. When Jesus meets a Samaritan woman at the well he tells her: “Salvation is from the Jews.” Although in principle we should not base our judgment of him on words put into his mouth by another who was not present at the time and wrote them almost sixty years later. When a Canaanite woman asks him to heal her daughter, he at first refuses and says: “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” To a leper who has been healed by him he says: “Show yourself to the priest and offer the gift that Moses commanded.” “Whatever the scribes and Pharisees tell you, observe and do, but do not do according to their works.” Jesus, like Hillel, did not intend by the changes he proposed to uproot the foundation of the Jewish Law: “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.” “It is easier for heaven and earth to pass away than for one jot of the Law to become void.” Perhaps these passages were added by Jewish Christians to diminish the authority of the Apostle Paul; but we cannot assume this on our own.

Nevertheless, by the force of his personality and feeling he transformed everything. To the Law he added the rule that for the Kingdom one must prepare with a righteous, kind, and simple life. In matters of sex and divorce he made the Law stricter, but on the other hand he made it milder with easier forgiveness and pardon, reminding the Pharisees that “the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.” He moderated the laws concerning food and cleanliness and omitted some fasts. He restored to religion, which had become a ritual of ceremonies, the true meaning of right action, and condemned ostentatious charity and magnificent funerals. Sometimes he gives the impression that the Jewish Law would be abrogated by the coming of the Kingdom.

All Jewish sects except the Essenes opposed his innovations and were particularly angered by his claim that he could forgive sins and speak in the name of God. They were deeply disgusted that he associated with the hated agents of Rome and with women of ill repute. The priests of the Temple and the members of the Sanhedrin viewed his activities with suspicion; and just as Herod had been suspicious of John, they too saw his activities as a cover for a political revolution; they feared that the procurator might accuse them of neglecting their responsibility to maintain social order. They were somewhat alarmed by Jesus’s promise to destroy the Temple and were not sure that this statement was only a metaphor. Jesus, for his part, attacked them with sharp and bitter sentences:

The scribes and Pharisees … bind heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on people’s shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to move them with their finger. They do all their deeds to be seen by others. For they make their phylacteries broad and their fringes long. They love the place of honor at feasts and the best seats in the synagogues … Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! … You blind guides … You blind fools … You have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness … You clean the outside of the cup and the plate, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. … Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs … outwardly you appear righteous to others, but within you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness. … You are sons of those who murdered the prophets. Fill up, then, the measure of your fathers. You serpents, you brood of vipers! How will you escape being sentenced to hell? … Tax collectors and prostitutes go into the Kingdom of God before you.

Was Jesus fair to the Pharisees? Perhaps among them there were some who deserved such condemnation, that great number who, like countless Christians centuries later, had replaced inner grace with outward piety. But there were also many Pharisees who favored changing and humanizing the Law. It is highly probable that a great many members of this sect were sincere, good, and honorable men who thought that the ritual practices that Jesus ignored should not be judged in themselves but should be seen as part of laws that served to preserve the unity of the Jews and their pride and worthiness among a hostile world. Some Pharisees sympathized with Jesus and warned him of plots that were being laid against his life. One of Jesus’s defenders, named Nicodemus, was a wealthy Pharisee.

The final break came from the growing certainty that Jesus found in himself of being the Messiah and his open proclamation of it. At first his followers regarded him as the successor of John the Baptist; gradually they came to believe that he was the long-awaited redeemer who would deliver Israel from the yoke of Rome and establish the reign of God on earth. They asked him: “Lord, will you at this time restore the Kingdom to Israel?” He rejected these questions and answered: “It is not for you to know times or seasons that the Father has fixed by his own authority.” And to the messengers of the Baptist who asked him: “Are you the one who is to come?” he also gave ambiguous answers. To turn his followers away from the interpretation they had of him — that they saw him as a political Messiah — he rejected any claim that he was descended from the prophet David. Nevertheless, little by little, the ardent expectation of his followers and the extraordinary psychological powers he found in himself apparently convinced him that God had sent him not to restore the sovereignty of Judea but to prepare the people for the reign of God on earth. In the synoptic Gospels he does not make himself equal to or identical with the “Father.” He asked: “Why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone.” In his prayer in Gethsemane he says: “Not what I will, but what you will.” He used the term “Son of Man,” which Daniel had made synonymous with the Messiah, at first without intending it for himself, but finally, in the following statements, he made himself its embodiment: “The Son of Man is lord even of the Sabbath.” And this seemed to the Pharisees a terrible blasphemy. Sometimes Jesus called God “Father” in a sense exclusive to himself, but in some cases he specifically spoke of “my Father” and apparently meant that he was the Son of God in a special degree. For a long time he did not allow his disciples to call him the Messiah, but at Caesarea Philippi he confirmed Peter’s statement that he was “the Christ, the Son of the living God.” When on the Monday before his death he approached Jerusalem to deliver his final message to the people, “all his disciples” greeted him with the words: “Blessed is the Kingdom that comes in the name of the Lord!” And when some of the Pharisees asked him to rebuke his disciples, he replied: “I tell you, if these were silent, the very stones would cry out.” In the Fourth Gospel it is related that the crowd welcomed him as “the King of Israel.” Apparently his followers still saw him as a political Messiah who would overthrow the power of Rome and give sovereignty to the Jews. It was this acclamation and joy that caused Jesus’s death as a revolutionary.

Death and Transformation

The Passover was approaching. Large numbers of Jews gathered in Jerusalem to offer sacrifice in the Temple. The outer court of the Temple was filled with the noise of sellers of doves and other sacrificial animals and money-changers who exchanged the local currency for the coins of the pagans, that is, Roman money. Jesus, who visited the Temple the day after his arrival in Jerusalem, was astonished at the tumult and trading of the market booths. In a fit of anger he and his companions overturned the tables of the money-changers and merchants and scattered their coins on the ground and drove the merchants out of the outer court with “a whip of cords.” For several days after that he taught in the Temple without hindrance; but at night he left Jerusalem and went to the Mount of Olives, for he feared arrest or death.

The agents of the civil and religious government, Roman and Jewish, had probably kept Jesus under surveillance from the day he took up the mission of John the Baptist. But since he had not succeeded in gathering many followers they had gradually ignored him. Yet the enthusiastic welcome he received in Jerusalem apparently led the Jewish leaders to suspect that this excitement among the patriotic and emotional crowd gathered for the Passover might lead them into a premature and fruitless revolt against the Roman government and cause the loss of any autonomy and any religious freedom in Judea. The high priest convened the Sanhedrin and expressed the opinion: “It is expedient for us that one man should die for the people, and that the whole nation should not perish.” The majority agreed and the council ordered Jesus’s arrest.

It appears that Jesus, probably through members of the Sanhedrin minority, was informed of this decision. On the fourteenth day of the Jewish month of Nisan (April 3), probably in the year 30 AD, Jesus and his Apostles ate the Passover meal with a friend in Jerusalem. The Apostles expected their master to free himself with his miraculous powers. He, on the contrary, accepted his fate and perhaps hoped that his death would be accepted by God as atonement for the sins of his people. He had learned that one of the twelve Apostles was plotting to betray him; and at the Last Supper he openly accused Judas Iscariot. According to Jewish custom Jesus blessed the cup of wine that he gave the Apostles to drink (in Greek “eucharistisas”); then they sang the Hallel Psalms together. According to the Gospel of John he announced that “after a little while” he would no longer be with them and added: “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another … Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in me. In my Father’s house are many rooms. … I go to prepare a place for you.” It seems highly probable that at such a solemn moment Jesus asked them to renew this supper periodically (according to Jewish custom) in remembrance of him; and it is not unlikely that, with the intensity of feeling and Eastern imagination, he asked them to regard the bread they ate as a symbol of his body and the wine they drank as a symbol of his blood.

It is said that the same night the small group took refuge in the Garden of Gethsemane, outside Jerusalem. A detachment of Temple police found them there and arrested Jesus. First they took him to the house of Annas, the former high priest, and then to Caiaphas. According to Mark’s account the “council” — probably a commission of the Sanhedrin — had already been convened there. Various witnesses testified against him and particularly pointed out his threat to destroy the Temple. When Caiaphas asked Jesus whether he was “the Christ, the Son of God,” Jesus replied: “I am.” According to Matthew’s account Jesus added with ambiguity: “You have said so.” These details, which apparently come from hearsay and were recorded long after the event itself, are doubtful. If we accept Matthew we must conclude that Jesus was determined to die and that Paul’s theory of atonement was already in Christ’s mind. John relates that Jesus added: “For this I was born … to bear witness to the truth.” The procurator asked: “What is truth?” — a question that perhaps stems from the metaphysical inclinations of the author of the Fourth Gospel, yet reveals the gulf between the Sophistic and Cynic culture of the Roman procurator and the warm and instinctive idealism of that Jew. In any case, after Christ’s confession, according to the law he was condemned and Pilate reluctantly pronounced the sentence of death.

Crucifixion was a Roman punishment, not a Jewish one. Usually before it the condemned man was scourged, and when this was done with severity it left the body as a swollen and bloody mass. Roman soldiers placed a crown of thorns on Jesus’s head and thus mocked the reign of the “King of the Jews.” Above his cross they placed an inscription in Aramaic, Greek, and Latin: “Jesus the Nazarene, King of the Jews.” Whether or not Jesus had been a revolutionary, he was condemned by Rome as a revolutionary. Tacitus also understood the matter in this way. A small crowd, small enough to fit in the courtyard of Pilate’s house, had demanded Jesus’s execution; but now that the condemned man was climbing the hill of Golgotha, according to Luke’s account, “a great multitude of the people and of women who were mourning and lamenting for him followed him.” It is clear that this condemnation did not have the approval of the Jewish people.

Anyone who wished could attend this horrifying spectacle. The Romans, who considered it necessary to govern by terror, chose for major crimes against non-Roman citizens a punishment that Cicero called “the most cruel and shameful of tortures.” The condemned man’s hands and feet were bound (sometimes nailed) to the wood; a projecting beam supported the spine and legs; and the condemned man, if not killed out of mercy, might remain on the cross for two or three days, enduring the torment of immobility, unable to drive away the insects that gnawed his exposed flesh, gradually losing his strength until finally his heart stopped. Even the Romans sometimes took pity on the crucified and gave him a narcotic drink. It is said that the cross was set up at the “third hour,” that is, nine o’clock in the morning. Mark relates that two robbers were crucified with Jesus and “reviled him.” Luke testifies that one of the two praised Jesus. Of all the Apostles only John was present. With him were three Marys: Jesus’s mother, his aunt who was also named Mary, and Mary Magdalene; “several women also looked on from a distance.” According to Roman custom the soldiers divided the condemned men’s clothes among themselves, and since Jesus had only one garment they cast lots for it. Perhaps this is a fabricated story in memory of Psalm 22:18: “They divide my garments among them, and for my clothing they cast lots.” The same Psalm begins with the words: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” and this is the same cry of despair that Mark and Matthew attribute to Christ in his dying moments. Is it possible that in these bitter moments the great faith that had sustained him before Pilate gave way to a dark and black doubt? Luke, perhaps because he found these words inconsistent with Paul’s theology, replaces them with: “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit,” which echoes Psalm 31:5 and matches it so precisely that it arouses suspicion.

A soldier took pity on Jesus’s thirst and offered him a sponge soaked in vinegar. Jesus drank the vinegar, then said: “It is finished.” At the ninth hour (that is, at three o’clock in the afternoon) “he uttered a loud cry and yielded up his spirit.” Luke adds — and this again shows the affection of the Jewish people — “all the crowds that had assembled for this spectacle, when they saw what had taken place, returned home beating their breasts.” Two kind and influential Jews, with permission from Pilate, took the body down from the cross, anointed it with myrrh and aloes, and laid it in a tomb.

Had Jesus really died? The two robbers who had been crucified beside him were still breathing. The soldiers broke their legs so that the weight of the body would press on the hands, the circulation would stop, and the heart would fail sooner. They did not do this in Jesus’s case, but it is related that a soldier pierced his side with a spear and as a result blood and then water came from the body. Pilate expressed surprise that someone should die only six hours after crucifixion. He allowed Jesus to be taken down from the cross only after the centurion in charge of the execution assured him that he was completely dead.

Two days later Mary Magdalene, whose love for Jesus was as intense and passionate as all her emotions, came with “Mary the mother of James, and Salome” to visit the tomb; but they found the tomb empty. “They were terrified and yet filled with joy” and ran to tell the disciples. On the way they met someone whom they thought was Jesus himself. They bowed before him and clasped his feet. One can imagine the incredulity mixed with hope that their statements aroused. The thought that Jesus had triumphed over death and had thus proved that he was the Christ and the Son of God so excited the people of Galilee that they were ready to accept any inspiration and any miracle. It is said that the same day Jesus appeared to two disciples on the road to Emmaus, talked with them, and ate food. “Their eyes were kept from recognizing him.” But when “he took the bread and blessed and broke it and gave it to them, their eyes were opened and they recognized him; and he vanished from their sight.” The disciples returned to Galilee. A little later “they saw him and worshiped him, but some doubted.” While they were fishing they saw Jesus join them. They cast their nets into the water and caught many fish.

At the beginning of the Book of Acts it is written that forty days after appearing to Mary Magdalene Jesus ascended bodily into heaven. The idea of a saint who has been “translated” with flesh and bones (bodily) into heaven was very common among the Jews. They related this translation of Moses, Enoch, Elijah, and Isaiah. The Master went as mysteriously as he had come; but most of his disciples sincerely believed that they had had him with them in flesh and blood after the crucifixion. Luke says: “They returned to Jerusalem with great joy; and they were continually in the Temple blessing God.”