Jesus: 4 BC – 30 AD Jesus

Sources

Did Jesus exist? Was the story of the founder of Christianity the product of grief, imagination, and the hopes of a people—an myth like the legends of Krishna, Osiris, Attis, Adonis, Dionysus, and Mithra? In the early eighteenth century, a confidential discussion took place in the circle of Bolingbroke about the possibility that Jesus had never existed—a discussion from which even Voltaire shrank. Volney expressed the same doubt in his work The Ruins of Empire in 1791. When Napoleon met the German writer and scholar Wieland in 1808, he asked him not about politics or war, but whether he believed in the historical existence of Jesus.

One of the major preoccupations of modern thought has been the “higher criticism” of the Bible—an increasingly powerful attack upon its authenticity and authority—which has in turn encountered a heroic effort to rescue the historical foundation of Christian faith. The results of this encounter may prove as revolutionary as Christianity itself. The first engagement in this two-hundred-year war began in silence and secrecy with 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 which, from motives of caution, he had not published. The following year Gotthold Lessing, despite the protests of his friends, published portions of it under the title Wolfenbüttel Fragments. Reimarus argued that Jesus could not be understood or viewed as the founder of Christianity; he must rather be seen as the culminating and supreme figure of Jewish apocalyptic eschatology. In other words, Christ had not thought of founding a new religion but had wished to prepare men 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 the first three Gospels and the Christ of the Fourth. In 1828 Heinrich Paulus, in a massive 1,192-page summary of the life of Christ, offered a rationalistic explanation of the miracles—he accepted their occurrence but attributed them to natural causes and powers. David Friedrich Strauss, in his epoch-making Life of Jesus (1835–1836), rejected this middle ground; in his view the supernatural elements in the Gospels must be regarded as myth, and the real life of Christ must be reconstructed without them. Strauss’s voluminous work made biblical criticism the central focus of German thought for a generation. In the same year Ferdinand Christian Baur attacked the Pauline epistles and pronounced all but those to the Corinthians, Galatians, and Romans forgeries. In 1840 Bruno Bauer began a series of controversial works designed to prove that Jesus was a myth and that the figure was a personification 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 horrified many with its rationalism and charmed many with its beautiful prose; it gathered the results of German criticism and placed the Gospel problem before the entire educated world. The French school in this field reached its climax at the end of the nineteenth century with the Abbé Loisy. He subjected the New Testament text to so searching and minute an 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—and doing so with a wealth of documentation. In Germany Arthur Drews offered the definitive explanation of this negative conclusion; in England W. B. Smith and J. M. Robertson argued the same denial. The result of two centuries of discussion appeared to be the annihilation of Christ.

What evidence is there for the existence of Christ? The first non-Christian reference occurs in the Antiquities of the Jews of Josephus (c. 93 AD):

At that time there lived Jesus, a holy man, if indeed one may call him a man, for he performed wonderful works and taught those who gladly received the truth. He won over many Jews and many Greeks. This man was the Christ.

These strange lines may contain a kernel of truth; but such lofty praise of Christ from a Jew who was always anxious to please either the Romans or the Jews—both of whom were at that time fighting Christianity—makes the passage suspect, and Christian scholars almost unanimously regard it as an interpolation. The Talmud contains references to “Yeshu the Nazarene,” but they are too late to be anything but reflections of anti-Christian polemic. The oldest mention of Jesus in pagan literature occurs in the writings of Pliny the Younger and in a letter that may be dated about 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 identifies them as having had followers throughout the empire before 64 AD. This passage is so much in Tacitus’s style, force, and prejudice that only Drews among all biblical critics has denied its authenticity. Suetonius, about 125 AD, also refers to this persecution and says that about 52 AD Claudius “expelled the Jews from Rome, who were continually making disturbances at the instigation of Chrestus.” This agrees with the statement in the Acts of the Apostles that Claudius commanded “the Jews to depart from Rome.” These references prove the existence of Christians rather than of Christ; but if we deny the existence of Christ we must accept the improbable hypothesis that Jesus was invented within the space of a single generation. Moreover, we must suppose that the Christian community in Rome had come into existence some years before 52 AD so as to attract 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 purely natural phenomenon and a 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 determined pagans or by the Jews who opposed infant Christianity.

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

The question of the Gospels is not so simple. The four Gospels that have come down to us are the survivors of a much larger number that circulated among Christians in the first two centuries. The English word “gospel” (Old English godspel = good news) is the translation of the Greek euangelion, the first word of Mark’s Gospel, meaning “good news”—that the Christ has come and the Kingdom of God is at hand. The Gospels of Mark, Matthew, and Luke are the “Synoptic” Gospels. Their contents and narratives can be set out in three parallel columns and compared. They are written in the common Greek of the time, the “Koine,” and are not models of grammar or literary style. Nevertheless, their simple, strong, straightforward style, the living power of their scenes and parables, the depth of feeling, and the appeal of the stories they tell give even their unpolished original text an extraordinary charm—a charm greatly increased for English-speaking readers by the inaccurate but majestic translation made for King James of England.

The oldest surviving manuscripts of the Gospels date from the third century. The originals themselves were apparently written between 60 and 120 AD. They were therefore exposed for two centuries to the errors of copyists and possible alterations made to bring the text into line with the opinions or purposes or theological principles of a sect or period. Christian writers before 100 AD quote from the “Old Testament” but never from the “New Testament.” Before 150 AD the only mention of a Christian Gospel is in Papias, who about 135 reports that a certain “elder John” said that Mark had written his Gospel from the reminiscences that Peter the Apostle dictated to him. Papias adds that “Matthew wrote the Logia in Hebrew”—apparently meaning a collection of the sayings of Christ in Aramaic. Paul probably possessed such a document, for although he never mentions any of the Gospels he sometimes quotes words of Jesus. Critics generally agree in giving priority to the Gospel of Mark and in dating it about 65–70 AD. In Mark the same material is often repeated in several forms; hence it is thought that its basis was the Logia and another narrative, probably Mark’s own original composition. The Gospel of Mark, in the form we have it, apparently existed during the lifetime of several of the Apostles or their immediate disciples. It is therefore unlikely to differ fundamentally from their memories and interpretations of Christ. On this ground one may agree with Albert Schweitzer, a sound and famous scholar, that the main part of Mark’s Gospel contains “genuine history.”

Orthodox tradition gives priority to the Gospel of Matthew. Irenaeus notes that the original was in “Hebrew,” i.e., Aramaic; but what has come down to us exists only in Greek. Since the existing Gospel of Matthew is in many places a copy of Mark and probably also of the Logia, critics tend to attribute it to a disciple of Matthew rather than to Matthew himself. Nevertheless even the most skeptical investigators do not date its composition later than about 85–90 AD. Because Matthew’s aim is the conversion of 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 the Gospel of Matthew is the most stirring of the four and must be ranked among the unknown masterpieces of world literature.

The Gospel of Luke, which is generally placed toward the end of the first century, aims to harmonize and reconcile the earlier accounts of Jesus and is addressed not to Jews but to Gentiles. There is strong probability that Luke himself was originally a Gentile, a friend of Paul, and the author of the Acts of the Apostles. Like Matthew he draws heavily upon Mark. Of the 661 verses that have come down to us from Mark, more than 600 appear in Matthew and 350 in Luke, often word for word. Many passages in Luke that are not in Mark have almost verbal parallels in Matthew. Apparently Luke took them from Matthew, or both Luke and Matthew took them from a common source now lost. Luke arranges his borrowings with some literary skill. Renan called his Gospel the most beautiful book ever written.

The Fourth Gospel does not claim to be a biography of Jesus. It presents Christ theologically as the Logos (Word), the divine Creator of the world and the Redeemer of mankind. It differs from the Synoptic Gospels in many details and in its general picture 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, from the experience of history it seems unwise to reject an ancient tradition without careful examination; our ancestors were not all fools. Recent studies place the composition of the Fourth Gospel toward the end of the first century. Tradition probably correctly attributes the Epistles of John to the same author; both works express the same themes in the same style.

In summary, it is clear that there are many contradictions between one Gospel and another, and that all four contain vague historical information, suspicious similarities to pagan myths of the gods, fictitious incidents designed to prove the fulfillment of Old Testament prophecies, and passages very probably inserted to provide a historical basis for later Church doctrine or ritual. The evangelists shared with Cicero, Sallust, and Tacitus the view that history should carry a moral. It is also not unreasonable to suppose that the dialogues and sayings reported in the Gospels have suffered from the weakness of memory in unschooled persons and from the mistakes and editorial improvements of copyists.

With all this, what remains is still impressive. The contradictions concern details and do not touch the essential subject. The Synoptic Gospels agree remarkably in their main content and give the reader a consistent picture of Christ. “Higher criticism,” carried away by its discoveries, applied such severe standards of authenticity to the New Testament that many ancient and real persons—Hammurabi, David, Socrates—were relegated to the realm of legend. Despite all their theological prejudices and presuppositions, the evangelists relate incidents that, had they been mere forgers, they would have suppressed—for example, the rivalry of the Apostles for high places in the Kingdom, their flight after the arrest of Jesus, Peter’s denial, Jesus’ inability to work miracles in Galilee, the suggestion by some listeners that he might be mad, his own initial uncertainty about his mission, his confession of ignorance about the future, his moments of bitterness, and his despairing cry on the cross. After reading the description of these scenes no one can doubt the reality of the personality behind them. That a number of simple individuals within a single generation should have been able to create 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 recorded in the Gospels. After two centuries of “higher criticism,” the outlines of the life, character, and teachings of Jesus remain clear and credible and constitute the most attractive personality in the history of Western man.

The Growth of Jesus

Matthew and Luke both date the birth of Jesus “in the days of Herod the king”—i.e., before 4 BC. Nevertheless Luke describes Jesus as “about thirty years of age” when he is baptized by John “in the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius”—i.e., 28–29 AD. This would place his birth in 2 or 1 BC. Luke adds that the birth occurred “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 reference to this census exists. Tertullian reports 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 refers to, the birth of Jesus must be placed before 6 BC. We have no information about the day of Jesus’ birth. Clement of Alexandria (c. 200 AD) lists various opinions current in his time about the date of Jesus’ birth and says that some chronologists fixed it on April 19 and others on May 20, but he himself gives November 17 of 3 BC. In the second century Eastern Christians celebrated the Nativity on January 6. In 354 certain Western churches, including that of Rome, took December 25 as the date; they had mistakenly calculated it as the day of the winter solstice, after which the length of the day begins to increase. This day had previously been the chief festival of the Mithraic cult—the birthday of the Invincible Sun. Eastern churches for some 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 also in the East.

Matthew and Luke give Bethlehem, eight kilometers from Jerusalem, as the birthplace of Jesus; and they say that from there the family of Jesus moved to Nazareth in Galilee and settled there. Mark never mentions Bethlehem and refers to Jesus only as “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: “Whence hath this man this wisdom and these mighty works? Is not this the carpenter’s son? Is not his mother called Mary? And his brethren, James, and Joses, and Simon, and Judas? And his sisters, are they not all with us?” Luke relates the Annunciation with literary charm and records the Magnificat of Mary, one of the greatest odes in the New Testament.

Mary, after her son, is the most interesting figure in the story: she rears the child amid all the painful joys of motherhood; she takes pride in his precocious culture; later she is astonished at his doctrine and claims, wishes to draw him away from the exciting crowds and back to the healing quiet of home (“Thy father and I have sought thee sorrowing”), stands helpless while he is crucified, and takes his body in her arms. If all this is not history it is at least great literature, for the relations of parents and children contain deeper excitements than sexual love. Stories later circulated by Celsus and others about Mary and a Roman soldier are, in the opinion of all critics except the most prejudiced, “clumsy forgeries.” Other stories, less offensive, found chiefly in the apocryphal or non-canonical Gospels, tell of the birth of Jesus in a cave or stable, the 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 by tracing the genealogy of Jesus through Joseph back to David. Apparently the belief in the virgin birth of Jesus arose after the belief that traced his descent from David.

The evangelists say little about the youth of Christ. 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 for some time followed this pleasant occupation. He became acquainted with the craftsmen of his village, with the great landowners, stewards, and slaves of the rural environment in which he lived; his speech contains many references to them. He was sensitive to the natural beauties of the countryside, the charm and color of flowers, and the silent fruitfulness of fruit trees. He attended the synagogue and listened with evident pleasure to the readings from the Scriptures. The prophetic books and the Psalms sank deeply into his memory and helped to form his character. He may also have read the Book of Daniel and the Book of Enoch, for his later teaching draws upon their apocalyptic visions of the coming of the Messiah and the Day of Judgment and the advent of the Kingdom of God.

The air he breathed was saturated with religious excitement. Thousands of Jews anxiously awaited the Redeemer of Israel. Magic, angels and demons, possession and exorcism, miracle and prophecy, divination and astrology were everywhere accepted realities; perhaps the story of the Magi was a necessary concession to the astrological beliefs of the age. Wonder-workers traversed the cities. All pious Jews of Palestine made an annual pilgrimage to Jerusalem for the Passover; Jesus must therefore have had some knowledge of the Essenes and their semi-monastic, almost Buddhist way of life; and he had probably heard something of the “Nazarenes” who lived beyond the Jordan in Perea and rejected worship in the Temple and the absolute authority of the Law. But what aroused his religious fervor was the preaching of John the son of Elisabeth, the cousin of Mary.

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 him thus: “John had his raiment of camel’s hair, and a leathern girdle about his loins; and his meat was locusts and wild honey. Then went out to him Jerusalem, and all Judaea, and all the region round about Jordan, and were baptized of him in Jordan, confessing their sins.” He was ascetic like the Essenes but differed from them in considering one baptism sufficient. His title “the Baptist” may have been the Greek equivalent of the Essene term (Essene, bather). To this rite of purification he added a symbolic condemnation of hypocrisy and licentious living and warnings to sinners to prepare themselves for the judgment of the Last Day; he announced that the Kingdom of God was at hand; he said that if all Judaea would repent and be cleansed of sin the Christ and the Kingdom would come at once.

Luke says that “in the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius” or shortly afterward Jesus went to the Jordan to be baptized by John. Such a decision on the part of a man “about thirty years of age” shows that Christ accepted the teaching of John. His own teaching was originally the same. Nevertheless his methods and character differed: he himself never baptized anyone; and he never lived in seclusion but moved among the people. Shortly after this meeting Herod Antipas the tetrarch of Galilee ordered John to be imprisoned. The Gospels attribute John’s arrest to his criticism of Herod’s act in divorcing his wife and taking Herodias, who was still the lawful wife of his half-brother Philip. Josephus gives as the reason for the arrest Herod’s fear that John’s purpose was to foment political revolt under the cloak of religious reform. Mark and Matthew, continuing the story, relate the tale of Salome, daughter of Herodias, who danced so seductively 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 with reluctance granted her request. In the Gospels there is no mention of Salome’s love for John, and in Josephus there is no mention of her participation in the murder of John.

The Ministry

“Now after that John was put in prison, 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 in the synagogue of Nazareth and choosing a passage from the Book of Isaiah the Prophet:

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised… to comfort all that mourn.

Luke adds: “And the eyes of all them that were in the synagogue were fastened on him. And he began to say unto them, This day is this scripture fulfilled in your ears. And all bare him witness, and wondered at the gracious words which proceeded out of his mouth.” When news came that the head of John had been cut off and his disciples were seeking a new leader, Jesus accepted the burden and the danger of that leadership. At first, from motives of caution, he went to quiet villages and always avoided political discussions. Then with growing boldness he preached repentance, faith, and salvation. Some of his hearers thought that he was John 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 also because our own ethical heritage and ideals are so largely dependent upon him and have been so formed upon his model that we feel hurt at the slightest flaw discovered in him. His religious sensitiveness was so intense that he condemned with severity those who did not share his vision. He could forgive every fault except unbelief. In the Gospels there are harsh phrases that seem inconsistent with everything we have heard about Christ. He appears to have accepted without question the terrifying contemporary ideas about an eternal hell in which unbelievers and unrepentant sinners would suffer “where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched.” He speaks without protest of a poor man in paradise who is not permitted to let a drop of water fall upon the tongue of the rich man sent to hell. He magnanimously says, “Judge not, that ye be not judged,” yet he himself curses men and cities that reject his message and curses the fig tree that bears no fruit. He was somewhat harsh with his mother. He had more of the zeal of a Hebrew prophet than the calm detachment of a Greek sage. The fire of his convictions set him ablaze. Sometimes his righteous anger marred his deep humanity; his faults were the price he paid for his passionate faith—a faith that enabled him to move the world.

Aside from this, he was the most lovable of men. No portrait of him has come down to us, and the evangelists do not describe his appearance. But beside his spiritual charm he must have been physically attractive to have drawn so many women as well as men to him. From scattered words we gather that Jesus, like other men of his time and country, wore a tunic under a cloak, wooden sandals, and probably a cloth headdress that fell over his shoulders to protect him from the sun. Many women found in him a compassionate love that aroused in them a selfless devotion. The fact that only John tells the story of the woman taken in adultery cannot be proof of its falsity, for it cannot be said that John invented the tale to support his theology, and it fully accords with the character of Christ. Another story of equal beauty, beyond the inventive power of the evangelists, is the account of the harlot who, thrilled that Jesus accepted 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 that he might touch them, and he “took them up in his arms, put his hands upon them, and blessed them.”

Unlike the prophets, the Essenes, and John the Baptist, Jesus was not an ascetic hermit. He is described as providing abundant wine for a wedding feast, consorting with “publicans and sinners,” and accepting the companionship of Mary Magdalene. He was not an enemy of the simple joys of life, though he showed a fierce and unnatural hostility to the sexual impulse of man and woman. Sometimes he joined the banquets of the rich; nevertheless he generally preferred the society of the poor and even of those who were almost unclean and despised by the Sadducees and Pharisees. When he realized that the rich would never accept him he based his promises upon a transformation that would give the poor and the weak superiority in the coming Kingdom. Only in this respect that he placed himself on the side of the lower classes and in his compassion was Jesus like Caesar; in every other respect—in his worldview, character, and interests—there was a world of difference between the two! Caesar hoped to change men by changing institutions and laws; Christ wished to change institutions by changing men and to reduce the number of laws. Caesar too was capable of anger, but his emotions were always controlled by his clear intelligence. Jesus was not lacking in intelligence; he answered the ensnaring questions of the Pharisees with almost the skill of a jurist and at the same time with wisdom. No one could disturb him even in the face of death. But his mental power was not intellectual and did not depend upon the extent of his knowledge; it sprang from the intensity of his imagination, the strength of his feeling, and the unity of his purpose. He made no claim to absolute knowledge and was surprised at some events; only his great ardor led him to overestimate his powers, as happened in Jerusalem and Nazareth. But the miracles attributed to him testify to his exceptional abilities.

The miracles of Christ were probably in most cases the result of suggestion—that is, the influence of a strong and confident spirit upon impressionable minds. The mere presence of Jesus acted as a tonic. At his hopeful touch the weak gained strength and the sick were healed. The fact that similar stories are told in legend or history about other persons cannot prove that the miracles of Jesus are legendary. Except in a few cases these miracles are not unbelievable; similar phenomena can be observed almost daily at Lourdes and certainly occurred in the time of Jesus at Epidaurus and other healing centers of the ancient pagan world; even the Apostles performed such cures. The psychological character of the miracles is indicated by two points: first, Jesus himself attributed his cures to the “faith” of those who were healed; second, in Nazareth he apparently could work no miracle because the people looked upon him as “the carpenter’s son” and did not believe in his exceptional powers; and it is for this reason that he says, “A prophet is not without honor, save in his own country, and in his own house.” Of Mary Magdalene it is said that “seven devils were cast out of her”; in other words, Mary suffered from illnesses and hysterical seizures (the word recalls the theory of “demon possession”). This condition of hers apparently subsided in the presence of Jesus; hence she loved him as one who had restored her to life and whose presence was necessary for her health. In the case of the daughter of Jairus, Jesus explicitly said that the child was not dead but asleep—perhaps a kind of nervous faint. To awaken her Jesus did not use his usual gentleness but issued a commanding order: “Damsel, arise!” Of course this does not mean that Jesus himself regarded his miracles as purely natural phenomena; he felt that he performed them only with the help of a divine spirit within him. We cannot say that he was mistaken in this belief any more than we can yet set a limit to the potential powers latent in human thought and will. Jesus himself apparently felt mentally exhausted after his miracles. He performed them reluctantly and forbade his followers to spread news of them. 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 would choose to change the world. The Gospels with realistic frankness show the differences in their characters and openly reveal their faults. They were obviously ambitious; Jesus, to calm them, promised that on the Day of Judgment they would sit on twelve thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel. When John the Baptist was imprisoned one of his disciples named Andrew joined Jesus and brought his brother Simon, whom Jesus called Cephas (rock) and the Greeks translated as Petros (Peter). Peter is a completely human figure: active, serious, generous, jealous, and sometimes cowardly to the point of timidity. Andrew and he were fishermen of the Lake of Galilee. The two sons of Zebedee, James and John, were of the same type. These four left their trade to form a small circle of intimates around Jesus. Matthew in the frontier town of Capernaum was a “publican,” i.e., a government employee of Rome and therefore hated by every freedom-loving Jew. Judas Iscariot is the only Apostle who was not a Galilean. The twelve pooled their possessions and made Judas their treasurer. During the period in which they followed Jesus on his missionary journeys they lived in villages, supplied their food from the fields along the way, and accepted the hospitality of converts and friends. To these twelve Jesus added seventy-two disciples and sent them out two by two to the cities he intended to visit. He had instructed them: “Take no purse, no bag, no shoes.” 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 a man’s life. It was with this small group of humble and unlettered persons that Jesus spread his message to the world.

The Gospel

Jesus expressed his teaching with a simplicity suited to his hearers: with stories that conveyed his meaning indirectly by suggestion, with striking moral maxims instead of 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 vivid comparisons may unconsciously have been borrowed from the prophets, the authors of the Psalms, or the rabbis; nevertheless the directness of his speech, the living vividness of his imagination, and the warm sincerity of his spirit raised his words to the level of the most inspiring poetry. Some of his sayings are obscure and others at first sight seem wrong; still others are sharp, ironic, and bitter; and nearly all of them are models of brevity, clarity, and force.

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

Because these ideas were familiar to his hearers Christ did not explain them, and therefore great difficulties now exist in understanding his concepts. What did he mean by the Kingdom? A heavenly paradise? Apparently not, for the Apostles and the first Christians all expected a Kingdom on earth. This was the Jewish tradition that Christ inherited; and he taught his followers to pray to their heavenly Father in these words: “Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven.” Only after this hope faded did the Gospel of John put into the mouth of Jesus the saying: “My kingdom is not of this world.” Was his Kingdom then 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 within you.” At other times he pictured it as a future society of happiness in which the Apostles would rule and those who had given 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 the price that must be paid for the Kingdom, the necessary condition for the souls that will be saved when the Kingdom comes.

When would the Kingdom come? Soon. “Verily I say unto you, I will drink no more of the fruit of the vine, until that day that I drink it new in the kingdom of God.” Jesus told his followers: “Verily I say unto you, that this generation shall not pass, till all these things be done.” Later he postpones the date a little: “Verily I say unto you, There be some standing here, which shall not taste of death, till they see the Son of man coming in his kingdom.” “This generation shall not pass, till all these things be fulfilled.” In more cautious moments he warned the Apostles: “But of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only.” Before the coming of the Kingdom there would be signs: “And ye shall hear of wars and rumours of wars… For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places… Then shall they deliver you up to be afflicted, and shall kill you… and many false prophets shall rise, and shall deceive many. And because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold.” Sometimes Jesus made the coming of the Kingdom conditional upon man’s turning to God and justice. Usually he presented it as the work of God and a sudden miraculous gift of divine grace.

Many have interpreted the Kingdom as a communistic utopia and have seen Jesus as a social revolutionary. There are passages in the Gospels that support such a view. Christ openly despises the man whose chief aim in life is to gather money and luxuries. He threatens the rich and the well-fed with hunger and misery and consoles the poor with the promise of eternal happiness that the Kingdom will bring them. To the rich man who asked what he must do in addition to keeping the Ten Commandments, Christ replied: “Sell that thou hast, and give to the poor… and come and follow me.” Apparently the Apostles interpreted the Kingdom as a revolutionary change in the existing relations between rich and poor. In later sections we shall see how they and the first Christians formed a communistic group “and had all things common.” The charge on which Jesus was condemned was that he had plotted to make himself “King of the Jews.”

But a conservative can also find support for his purpose in the New Testament. Jesus makes friends with Matthew, who continues in his occupation as a Roman government employee. He offers no criticism of the civil government, takes no part in the Jewish movement for national freedom, and always recommends the gentleness and tolerance that carry not the slightest scent of political revolution. He encouraged the Pharisees: “Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s; and unto God the things that are God’s.” The parable of the man who, before departing on a journey, “called his own servants, and delivered unto them his goods” assumes the existing institutions and is not an attack upon usury or slavery. Jesus clearly approves the servant who took the ten minas (six hundred dollars) entrusted to him by his master and made them produce ten more minas; and he rebukes the servant who kept the one mina entrusted to him by his master until the master’s return without making it bear fruit, and puts these rebuking words into the mouth of the master: “For unto every one that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance: but from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath.” If this sentence is not an excellent summary of the history of the world it is at least an excellent summary of the rule of the market. In another parable the laborers “murmured against the goodman of the house” because he gave to one who had worked only one hour the same wage as to those who had labored all day. Christ attributes this reply to the employer: “Is it not lawful for me to do what I will with mine own?” Jesus apparently had no thought of ending poverty: “the poor ye have always with you.” Like all his predecessors he takes it for granted that a slave must serve his master: “Blessed is that servant, whom his lord when he cometh shall find so doing.” He does not attack the existing economic or political foundations; on the contrary he condemns the hotheads who would “take the kingdom of heaven by violence.” The revolution he sought was 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 utopia would come of itself and all institutions rooted in greed and violence would disappear, and with them the need for laws. Because such a revolution is the profoundest of all revolutions, and because in comparison with it all other revolutions appear merely as coups d’état by one class to oust another and continue exploitation, Christ in this spiritual sense was the greatest revolutionary in history.

His achievement was not the establishment of a new state but the outlining of an ideal ethical foundation. His moral law was based upon the nearness of the coming of the Kingdom and was designed to make man worthy to enter it. The “promises of eternal happiness” with their unprecedented praise of humility, poverty, tolerance, and peace were based on the same foundation; and so were the recommendations to turn the other cheek and to become like little children (not models of virtue!); and indifference to economic necessities, property, and the state; 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 suited to men and women worthy of God’s choice for the Kingdom that was soon to come and in which there would be no law of marriage, sexual relations, property, or war. Jesus praised those who “have left house, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children” for the Kingdom of God, even those who “have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven’s sake”; of course these commandments applied to a dedicated religious minority, not to a stable society. These ethical laws were limited in purpose but universal in scope, for they applied the concepts of brotherhood and the “golden rule” to strangers and enemies as well as to friends and neighbors. The ideal ethic of Christ envisioned a day when men would worship God not in temples but “in spirit and in truth” and not only in word but in every deed.

Were these ethical ideas new? Except for their arrangement and ordering, nothing about them was new. The central theme of Christ’s preaching—the Day of Judgment and the coming Kingdom—had been discussed among the Jews for a century before him. For a long time the Law had tried to inculcate the idea of brotherhood; in Leviticus it is written: “Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself,” even “the stranger that dwelleth with you shall be unto you as one born among you, and thou shalt love him as thyself.” The Book of Exodus had commanded the Jews to do good to their enemies: “If thou meet thine enemy’s ox or his ass going astray, thou shalt surely bring it back to him again. If thou see the ass of him that hateth thee lying under his burden, and wouldest forbear to help him, thou shalt surely help with him.” The prophets had placed a good life above ritual and ceremony. Isaiah and Hosea had begun to transform Yahweh 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 ethical 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 dispatched exclusively to Jewish towns: “Go not into the way of the Gentiles, and into any city of the Samaritans enter ye not.” Hence 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 of the Jews.” Although in principle we should not base a judgment of him upon words that another person, who was not present at the time and wrote nearly sixty years later, puts into his mouth. When a Canaanite woman asks him to heal her daughter he at first refuses and says: “I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” To a leper whom he has healed he says: “Go thy way, show thyself to the priest, and offer the gift that Moses commanded.” “Whatsoever they bid you observe, that observe and do; but do not ye after their works.” Like Hillel, Jesus did not intend by the changes he proposed to uproot the foundation of the Jewish Law: “Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil.” “It is easier for heaven and earth to pass, than one tittle of the law to fail.”

Nevertheless by the force of his personality and feeling he transformed everything. To the Law he added the commandment that for the Kingdom one must prepare with a just, kindly, and simple life. In matters of sex and divorce he made the Law stricter, but on the other hand he made it milder with forgiveness and mercy, reminding the Pharisees that “the sabbath was made for man, and not man for the sabbath.” He moderated the laws concerning food and cleanliness and omitted certain fasts. He restored to religion, which had become a ritual of ceremonies, the true meaning of right conduct and condemned the almsgiving “before men” and the ostentatious funerals. Sometimes he gives the impression that the Jewish Law will be abrogated by the coming of the Kingdom.

All Jewish sects except the Essenes opposed his innovations, and especially his claim that he could forgive sins and speak in the name of God angered them. They were deeply disgusted that he consorted 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 and feared that the Roman procurator would accuse them of neglecting their responsibility to maintain social order. They were somewhat alarmed by Jesus’ promise to destroy the Temple and were not sure that the words were merely metaphorical. Jesus in turn attacked them with sharp and bitter phrases:

Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees… For they bind heavy burdens and grievous to be borne, and lay them on men’s shoulders; but they themselves will not move them with one of their fingers. But all their works they do for to be seen of men: they make broad their phylacteries, and enlarge the borders of their garments. And love the uppermost rooms at feasts, and the chief seats in the synagogues… Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!… Ye blind guides… Ye fools and blind… Ye have omitted the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith… Ye make clean the outside of the cup and of the platter, but within they are full of extortion and excess… Ye are like unto whited sepulchres… outwardly ye appear righteous unto men, but within ye are full of hypocrisy and iniquity… Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of hell?… Publicans and harlots go into the kingdom of God before you.

Was Jesus fair to the Pharisees? Perhaps among them there were some who deserved such condemnation—those many who, like the countless Christians of later centuries, had substituted external piety for inner grace. But there were also many Pharisees who favored making the Law more flexible and more humane. Very likely a great number of the members of this sect were sincere, good, and honorable men who believed that the ritual practices that Jesus ignored should not be judged in themselves but should be regarded as part of laws serving to preserve the unity of the Jews and their dignity and worthiness among a hostile world. Some Pharisees sympathized with Jesus and warned him of the plots being laid against his life. One of Jesus’ defenders, Nicodemus, was a rich Pharisee.

The final break came from Jesus’ growing certainty that he was the Messiah and his open declaration of it. His followers at first saw him as the successor of John the Baptist; gradually they came to believe that he was the Redeemer whom they had long awaited to free Israel from the Roman yoke and establish the reign of God on earth. They asked him: “Lord, wilt thou at this time restore again the kingdom to Israel?” He rejected these questions and replied: “It is not for you to know the times or the seasons, which the Father hath put in his own power.” To the messengers of the Baptist who asked him: “Art thou he that should come?” he also gave ambiguous answers. To dissuade his followers from the interpretation they placed upon him—that they saw him as a political Messiah—he rejected any claim to be the descendant of David the Prophet. Nevertheless, little by little the ardent expectation of his followers and the extraordinary psychological powers he found within himself apparently convinced him that God had sent him not to restore the sovereignty of Judea but to prepare men for the reign of God on earth. In the Synoptic Gospels he does not equate himself with the “Father” or make himself equal to him. He asks: “Why callest thou me good? There is none good but one, that is, God.” In his prayer in Gethsemane he says: “Not what I will, but what thou wilt.” The term “Son of Man,” which Daniel had made synonymous with the Messiah, Jesus used at first without applying it to himself, but finally in the following statements he made himself its embodiment: “The Son of man is Lord also of the sabbath.” This seemed to the Pharisees a horrible blasphemy. Sometimes Jesus called God “Father” in a sense exclusive to himself, but in some passages 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 would not allow his disciples to call him the Messiah, but at Caesarea Philippi he approved 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 be the kingdom that cometh in the name of the Lord!” And when some of the Pharisees asked him to rebuke his disciples he replied: “I tell you that, if these should hold their peace, the stones would immediately 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 very acclamation and joy that brought about the destruction of Jesus as a revolutionary individual.

Death and Transformation

The Passover was approaching. Large numbers of Jews gathered in Jerusalem to offer sacrifices in the Temple. The outer court of the Temple was filled with the noise of vendors of doves and other sacrificial animals and of money-changers who exchanged the local coins for the pagan coins, i.e., Roman money. Jesus, who visited the Temple the day after his entry into Jerusalem, was astonished at the tumult and trading in the market stalls. In a fit of anger he and his companions overturned the tables of the money-changers and merchants, scattered their coins on the ground, and with “a scourge of small cords” drove the traders out of the outer court. 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 state—civil and religious, 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. The enthusiastic welcome he received in Jerusalem apparently led the Jewish leaders to fear 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 every remnant of autonomy and every religious liberty 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 perish not.” The majority agreed, and the council ordered the arrest of Christ.

It appears that Jesus was probably informed of this decision by members of the minority in the Sanhedrin. On the fourteenth day of the Jewish month Nisan (April 3), probably in the year 30 AD, Jesus and his Apostles ate the Passover meal at the house of 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 an atonement for the sins of his people. He had learned that one of the Twelve 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 eucharistēsai); then they all sang the Hallel Psalms. 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 unto you, That ye love one another… Let not your heart be troubled. Ye believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father’s house are many mansions… I go to prepare a place for you.” It seems very 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 look upon the bread they ate as the symbol of his body and the wine they drank as the symbol of his blood.

It is said that on 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. He was first taken to the house of Annas, the former high priest, and then to Caiaphas. According to Mark the “council”—probably a commission of the Sanhedrin—had already assembled there. Various witnesses testified against him and particularly recalled 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 answered with ambiguity: “Thou sayest.” These details, which apparently come from hearsay and were written long after the event itself, are open to doubt. If we accept Matthew we must conclude that Jesus was determined to die and that the Pauline theory of atonement was already in the mind of Christ. John relates that Jesus added: “To this end was I born… that I should bear witness unto the truth.” The procurator asked: “What is truth?”—a question that may be due to the metaphysical tendencies of the author of the Fourth Gospel but that clearly reveals the gulf between the sophistical and cynical culture of the Roman procurator and the warm and instinctive idealism of that Jew. In any case, after Christ’s confession he was legally condemned, and Pilate with reluctance pronounced the sentence of death.

Pontius Pilate was a hard-hearted man who was later summoned to Rome on charges of extortion and cruelty and removed from his post. Nevertheless he did not think that this gentle preacher was really dangerous to the state. He asked Jesus: “Art thou the King of the Jews?” According to Matthew Jesus answered ambiguously: “Thou sayest.” If we accept Matthew we must conclude that Jesus was determined to die and that the Pauline theory of atonement was already in the mind of Christ. John relates that Jesus added: “To this end was I born… that I should bear witness unto the truth.” The procurator asked: “What is truth?”—a question perhaps due to the metaphysical inclinations of the author of the Fourth Gospel, but one that reveals the gulf between the sophistical and cynical culture of the Roman procurator and the warm, instinctive idealism of that Jew. In any case, after Christ’s confession he was legally condemned, and Pilate with reluctance pronounced the sentence of death.

Crucifixion was a Roman, not a Jewish, punishment. Usually the condemned man was first scourged, and when this was done with severity it reduced the body to a swollen and bleeding mass. The Roman soldiers placed a crown of thorns on Jesus’ 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 Jesus was a revolutionary or not, he was condemned by Rome as a revolutionary. Tacitus also understood the matter in this way. A small crowd—so small that it fitted into the courtyard of Pilate’s house—had demanded the execution of Christ; but now that the condemned man was being led up the hill of Golgotha, according to Luke “there followed him a great company of people, and of women, which also bewailed and lamented him.” It is clear that the condemnation did not have the approval of the Jewish people.

Anyone who wished could attend this horrible spectacle. The Romans, who considered it necessary to govern by terror, chose for major crimes against persons who were not Roman citizens a punishment that Cicero called “the most cruel and disgusting of tortures.” The condemned man’s hands and feet were bound (sometimes nailed) to the wood; a projecting piece of wood supported the spine and the legs; and if the victim was not mercifully killed he 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 his heart finally 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,” i.e., nine o’clock in the morning. Mark relates that two robbers were crucified with him 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: the mother of Jesus, his aunt who was also named Mary, and Mary Magdalene; “and many other women beheld from afar.” According to Roman custom the soldiers divided the clothing of the condemned among themselves, and since Jesus had only one garment they cast lots for it. Perhaps this is a fictitious story in memory of Psalm 22:18: “They part my garments among them, and cast lots upon my vesture.” The same Psalm begins with the words: “My God, my God, why hast thou 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 Pauline theology, substitutes: “Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit”—which is an echo of Psalm 31:5 and corresponds so exactly with it that it arouses suspicion.

A soldier took pity on Jesus’ thirst and offered him a sponge soaked in vinegar. Jesus drank the vinegar and then said: “It is finished.” At the ninth hour (i.e., three o’clock in the afternoon) “he cried with a loud voice, and gave up the ghost.” Luke adds—and this again shows the affection of the Jewish people—“And all the people that came together to that sight, beholding the things which were done, smote their breasts, and returned.” 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 were crucified beside him were still breathing. The soldiers broke their legs so that the weight of the body would press upon the hands, the circulation would be cut off, and the heart would stop sooner. They did not do this to Jesus, 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 anyone should die only six hours after crucifixion. He gave permission to take Jesus 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 nervous as all her emotions, went with “Mary the mother of James, and Salome” to visit the tomb; but they found the tomb empty. “Affrighted and yet filled with joy” they ran to tell the disciples. On the way they met someone whom they thought was Jesus himself. They bowed before him and touched his feet. One can imagine the incredulity mixed with hope that their statements aroused. The thought that Jesus had triumphed over death and had thereby 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 on the same day Christ appeared to two disciples on the road to Emmaus, talked with them, and ate food with them. Until then “their eyes were holden that they should not know him.” But when “he took bread, and blessed it, and brake, and gave to them… their eyes were opened, and they knew him; and he vanished out of their sight.” The disciples returned to Galilee. A little later “they saw him, and worshipped him: but some doubted.” While they were fishing they saw Jesus join them. They cast their nets into the water and caught a great quantity of fish.

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