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Jesus the Jew

Most people, whether they admit it or not, approach the Gospels with preconceived ideas. Christians read them in the light of their faith; Jews, primed with age-old suspicion; agnostics, ready to be scandalized; and professional New Testament experts, wearing the blinkers of their trade. Yet it should not be beyond the capabilities of an educated man to sit down and with a mind empty of prejudice read the accounts of Mark, Matthew and Luke as though for the first time.

The basic Gospel is presented in the form of a record of the life of Jesus from the time of his appearance in public in the company of John the Baptist till the discovery of his empty tomb, a biographical framework into which are incorporated extracts from sayings attributed to him. This primary structure has survived in Mark. The other two evangelists preface it with stories relating to the birth and youth of Jesus which are on the whole theologically motivated; they are distinct from the main Gospel body, which at no stage pays any regard to them. All three Gospels have also an epilogue elaborating on the apparitions of Jesus to his disciples after his resurrection, an afterthought which failed to make its way into the earliest manuscript tradition of Mark,¹ but was inserted without difficulty into Matthew and Luke.

Since it is always an arduous, and often almost hopeless, task to try to establish the historical value of the Synoptic story, the plan here is not to attempt to reconstruct the authentic portrait of Jesus but, more modestly, to find out how the writers of the Gospels, echoing primitive tradition, wished him to be known. What did they think was important about him, and what secondary? On what did they expatiate fully, and what did they gloss over? Who, in brief, was the Jesus of the evangelists?

Personal Particulars

The main Gospel – that covered by Mark – provides the following personal information.

Name:	Jesus
Father’s name:	Joseph
Mother’s name:	Mary
Place of birth:	not mentioned
Date of birth:	not mentioned
Domicile:	Nazareth in Galilee
Marital state:	not mentioned
Profession:	carpenter (?); also itinerant exorcist and preacher

A death certificate can be filled in somewhat more fully.

Place of death:	Jerusalem
Date of death:	‘under Pontius Pilate’, between AD 26 and 36
Cause of death:	crucifixion by order of the Roman prefect
Place of burial:	Jerusalem

Family Background

Apart from the infancy stories,² which in any case inject an element of doubt into the issue of paternity, the name of the father of Jesus appears only in Luke and in a variant reading in Matthew.

‘Is not this Joseph’s son?’³

‘Is he not [Joseph] the carpenter’s son?’⁴

The same passage contains also the Greek form of his mother’s name, Maria or Mariam, and (unless the reader’s judgement is affected by the later belief in the perpetual virginity of Mary) the names of his four brothers, Jacob, Joseph, Judah and Simon, and mention of his several sisters.⁵

The main Gospel, as opposed to the birth stories in Matthew and Luke, does not state where Jesus was born. If anything, it implies that his birthplace was Nazareth, the unimportant little Galilean locality where he and his parents lived. The only indirect evidence on his date of birth is concealed in the verse describing him as being of about thirty years of age when John baptized him in the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius, probably in AD 28/29.⁶

Although several women were included in his group during his ministry, no wife is ever mentioned. He does not seem to have left one behind at home, as he advised his would-be disciples to do,⁷ or as did certain mature Jewish ascetics, the Therapeutae, according to Philo of Alexandria.⁸ The Gospels do not depict him as a widower either, so one is to assume that he was unmarried, a custom unusual but not unheard of among Jews in his time, as will be shown in a later chapter.⁹

Jesus the Carpenter

His secular profession remains uncertain. Tradition has it that he was a carpenter and learned his trade from his father, but this on the fragile evidence that after his first and last sermon in the synagogue of Nazareth, the townsfolk could not understand how ‘the carpenter’,¹⁰ or ‘the carpenter’s son’,¹¹ could have acquired such great wisdom. Was he a carpenter himself, or was he only the son of a carpenter? The confused state of the Greek text of the Gospels usually indicates either (a) a doctrinal difficulty thought by some to demand rewording; or (b) the existence of a linguistic problem in the expression in Hellenistic terms of something typically Jewish. Here the second alternative applies. The congregation in the synagogue voices astonishment.

‘Where does he get it from?’ ‘What wisdom is this . . . ?’

‘Is not this the carpenter/the son of the carpenter . . . ?’¹²

Now those familiar with the language spoken by Jesus are acquainted with a metaphorical use of ‘carpenter’ and ‘carpenter’s son’ in ancient Jewish writings.¹³ In Talmudic sayings the Aramaic noun denoting carpenter or craftsman (naggar) stands for a ‘scholar’ or ‘learned man’.

This is something that no carpenter, son of carpenters, can explain.¹⁴

There is no carpenter, nor a carpenter’s son, to explain it.¹⁵

Thus, although no one can be absolutely sure that the sayings cited in the Talmud were current already in first-century AD Galilee, proverbs such as these are likely to be age-old. If so, it is possible that the charming picture of ‘Jesus the carpenter’ may have to be buried and forgotten.¹⁶

Jesus the Exorcist

Whatever he did to earn a living before he entered public life, the New Testament record leaves no room for doubt that during his ministry Jesus practised no secular profession but devoted himself exclusively to religious activities. The Synoptists are unanimous in presenting him as an exorcist, healer and teacher. They also emphasize that the deepest impression made by Jesus on his contemporaries resulted from his mastery over devils and disease, and the magnetic power of his preaching. He is claimed to have once defined his mission in the following words:

‘Today and tomorrow I shall be casting out devils and working cures; on the third day I reach my goal.’¹⁷

In Galilee, such was definitely his main occupation.

They brought to him all who were ill or possessed by devils . . . He healed many who suffered from various diseases, and drove out many devils.¹⁸

So all through Galilee he went . . . casting out the devils.¹⁹

In addition to these summary references, the Synoptists list six particular episodes involving exorcism. Four of them, the only ones to appear in Mark, describe as demonic possession what seems to have been mental or nervous illness. The Gerasene demoniac was a dangerous madman who walked about naked, repeatedly wounded himself, and had to be kept on a chain.²⁰ The boy whose devil the disciples were unable to cast out was an epileptic and possibly a deaf-mute.²¹ The man exorcised in the synagogue of Capernaum shrieked and was seized by convulsions.²² More vaguely, the daughter of the Tyrian woman was tormented whilst possessed, but lay peacefully on her bed after her unclean spirit had been expelled.²³

In two other instances, unrecorded in Mark and possibly a double narration of the same story, possession is seen as the cause of dumbness, or of dumbness and blindness combined.²⁴ The twelve apostles of Jesus,²⁵ as well as his seventy (or seventy-two) disciples, are also portrayed as generally successful exorcists,²⁶ and to John’s great indignation, even a non-disciple was once seen to cast out devils in the name of Jesus.²⁷

Contrary to Jewish folk medicine,²⁸ the Gospels know nothing of a ritual of exorcism. The actual expulsion is described four times and, with the exception of the one effected in absentia by a mere declaration,²⁹ always follows a direct command:

‘Be silent!’³⁰

‘Out, unclean spirit, come out of this man!’³¹

‘Deaf and dumb spirit, I command you, come out of him and never go back!’³²

The last example is the only instance in which the devil is ordered to stay away permanently and not to return when its desert exile becomes too unbearable.³³ Does this imply that in the other cases, to employ contemporary psychiatric jargon, there was merely a temporary remission? It ought to be mentioned at this juncture that the psychiatrist whom I have consulted on the question whether most of the diseases exorcised or healed in the New Testament could be recognized as hysterical, after giving a qualified affirmative reply, wished to know the success rate of the treatment and the state of health of the patients six months after discharge!

The story of the demon called ‘Legion’ who sought to bargain with Jesus and obtained a comparatively light sentence (a transfer into the local herd of pigs) may sound extraordinary, but is not unparalleled in ancient Jewish literature, as will appear later.³⁴ Another curious Gospel feature deserves to be pinpointed here: the excellence of the demonic intelligence service.³⁵ In the temptation story, Satan challenges Jesus to prove that he is ‘the son of God’;³⁶ his underlings are afraid of Jesus, knowing that he is ‘the holy one of God’,³⁷ ‘the son of God’³⁸ and the ‘son of the Most High’.³⁹

Jesus the Healer

It is not always easy to draw the line between exorcism and healing in the Gospels, but for practical purposes the most reliable distinguishing factor appears to be the treatment adopted by Jesus in dealing with his patients. Exorcism is always effected by word of mouth alone, but with the exception of the verbal healing of a paralytic,⁴⁰ physical cures entail the performance of a rudimentary or occasionally complex rite.

Not counting allusions to mass healing in Capernaum,⁴¹ by the lake-side,⁴² and throughout Galilee, where people ‘scoured that whole country-side and brought the sick on stretchers to any place where he was reported to be’, and in ‘farmsteads, villages, or towns’, where ‘they laid out the sick in the market-places’;⁴³ leaving aside, also, the interesting remark that despite the unbelief of Nazareth, he still performed a few cures there,⁴⁴ the Gospels contain twelve particular healing narratives (some of them, however, thought to be duplicates).

Arranged according to illnesses, three refer to cures from blindness,⁴⁵ two from leprosy,⁴⁶ one each from fever,⁴⁷ haemorrhage,⁴⁸ a withered arm,⁴⁹ deaf-muteness,⁵⁰ paralysis,⁵¹ lameness⁵² and dropsy.⁵³

In most cases the Gospels attest that there was some kind of bodily contact between the healer and the sick. Jesus practised the laying on of hands in Nazareth;⁵⁴ he did the same with the cripple woman;⁵⁵ he held Simon’s mother-in-law by the hands;⁵⁶ he touched the leper⁵⁷ and the blind men,⁵⁸ and was touched by many sick persons⁵⁹ and by the woman suffering from haemorrhage.⁶⁰ In the last case, Jesus is said to have been aware that ‘power had gone out of him’.⁶¹

In two accounts a ritual is performed privately. In the first, Jesus puts his finger into the ears of a deaf-mute, touches his tongue with saliva and gives the command, ‘Be opened!’⁶² In the second, the blind man from Bethsaida is cured after Jesus has spat into his eyes and laid his hand on him twice.⁶³

It is not said how the man with dropsy was healed, or the ten lepers⁶⁴ – whether by means of contact or without it – but three instances are described in which a cure was performed without any exchange of touch between Jesus and the patient. In two of these the miracle is attributed to faith, namely in the healing of the blind beggar from Jericho⁶⁵ and that of the servant of the centurion from Capernaum.⁶⁶ In the second case, contact was physically impossible since the sick man lay paralysed in his home.

The method of healing by command alone – ‘Stretch out your arm!’ – is noteworthy since this is the only cure placed by the unanimous Synoptic tradition on a Sabbath day.⁶⁷ Speech could not be construed as ‘work’ infringing the law governing the Jewish day of rest.⁶⁸

It should be added that with their powers of exorcism the twelve apostles also received the gift of healing. Their method of treatment was, however, the more conventional one of anointing the sick with oil,⁶⁹ although in the Acts of the Apostles reference is nevertheless made to healing by command and touch.⁷⁰

Other Miracles

The accounts of the raising from the dead of Jairus’s daughter, and of the son of the widow from Nain, scarcely differ from any ordinary healing. Jesus holds the hand of the girl who, in his opinion, was in any case not dead, and tells her in Aramaic to rise.⁷¹ Similarly, he touches the young man’s bier and orders him to stand.⁷² It is worth remarking, even before the matter is discussed more thoroughly,⁷³ that Jesus is never depicted as a person concerned with defiling himself ritually through contact with a dead body. No one can be a healer and preserve himself from sickness and death, or an exorcist and be afraid of the devil.

Compared with the massive insistence of the Synoptists on the healing of mental and physical disease, other miracles assigned to Jesus are numerically insignificant. The calming of the storm on the Sea of Galilee,⁷⁴ and the feeding of a large crowd with a few loaves and fishes,⁷⁵ must be set beside other Jewish miracle tales of a similar kind.⁷⁶ Others appear to be secondary accretions: for example, the story of Jesus walking on the water by night,⁷⁷ the unexpectedly large catch of fish by Peter and his colleagues,⁷⁸ and that most convenient landing by the penniless Peter of a fish with a coin in its mouth of just the right value to allow him to pay the Temple-tax for himself and Jesus.⁷⁹

Jesus the Teacher

From the outset the Gospels portray Jesus as a popular preacher and preserve various types of sayings ascribed to him. Some of these may have been handed down intact, but others are reformulations of the originals made by the early Church, and still others are actual interpolations devised to secure the authority deriving from the ‘words of the lord’ for beliefs in vogue at a subsequent stage of doctrinal development. It is not proposed at this moment even to try to extricate the authentic from the inauthentic, but simply to determine what kind of teacher Jesus was according to the evangelists. The enquiry will be concerned not so much with the contents as with the mode of his preaching, and the impression it left on sympathetic listeners.

Contrary to the Essene practice reserving instruction to initiates only,⁸⁰ but imitating John the Baptist, Jesus addressed his preaching in Galilee to all who had ears to hear – or rather, to all Jews with ears to hear, for he never envisaged a systematic mission to Gentiles.

‘I was sent to the lost sheep of the house of Israel, and to them alone.’⁸¹

But even within Israel he preferred the uneducated, the poor, the sinners and the social outcasts.⁸² All were called to repentance and told that God’s rule over the world was imminent.

‘The time has come; the kingdom of God is upon you; repent, and believe the Gospel.’⁸³

His ethical message was also aimed at all and sundry, as were also his parables, a form of homiletic teaching commonly used by rabbinic preachers. That he employed them to conceal the meaning of his message⁸⁴ is a contorted and tendentious explanation. Non-Jews unaccustomed to Palestinian teaching methods must have found some of them difficult to comprehend, but it would have been they, and not Jesus’ direct disciples, who would have needed every detail of a similitude to be spelled out.

The equally traditional Jewish method of preaching in the form of Bible interpretation is less frequently attested in the Gospels, though this may be accidental. Nevertheless, if Jesus was primarily a teacher of morals, he might be expected to have shown a liking for short, pithy, colourful utterances, the kind of rabbinic logia with which the pages of the Sayings of the Fathers in the Mishnah are filled. He several times taught in synagogues⁸⁵ and once delivered the liturgical sermon after reading the prophetic lesson of the day in Nazareth.⁸⁶

Did the preaching of Jesus differ from that of his contemporaries? Yes, the evangelists assert, in so far as, unlike the doctors of the Law, he spoke with authority.⁸⁷ New Testament commentators usually see in this a contrast between Jesus’ method of teaching and the rabbis’ habit of handing down a legally binding doctrine in the name of the master from whom they learned it, which was held to derive from a chain of tradition traceable (ideally) back to Moses. Jesus, however, was no expert in Jewish law, and it is therefore misleading to compare his style of instruction to that of later rabbinic academies. It is more probable that people saw the exorcisms and cures as confirmation of Jesus’ teaching. For instance, it was when moved by amazement at his expulsion of a demon that his listeners cried out:

‘What is this? A new kind of teaching! He speaks with authority.

When he gives orders, even the unclean spirits submit.’⁸⁸

This interpretation appears clearly preferable to that opposing the ‘scribal’ authority of the rabbis to the ‘prophetic’ authority of Jesus.⁸⁹

If he adopted a personal style of teaching, was his doctrine itself a novelty? Did he reject or contradict any of the basic beliefs of Judaism? Discounting passages which represent him as speaking lightly of certain non-scriptural customs held to be highly important by other teachers, or as interpreting a biblical verse in a sense different from that habitually ascribed to it, there still remains one crucial text apparently showing him ‘at variance with his inherited Judaism’,⁹⁰ namely, that concerned with clean and unclean food.⁹¹

The argument originates in a complaint lodged by Pharisees that the disciples of Jesus fail to conform to the tradition of ritual hand-washing before meals, the implication being that dirty hands can render food unclean and so cause defilement. Judging from his reply in Matthew, Jesus thought the whole matter of external cleanness trivial compared with moral uncleanness.

‘Whatever goes in by the mouth passes into the stomach and so is discharged into the drain. But what comes out of the mouth has its origins in the heart; and that is what defiles a man. Wicked thoughts, murder, adultery . . . perjury, slander . . .’⁹²

In Mark, however, the text is so modified that it is scarcely possible to avoid the conclusion that Jesus rejected the basic Jewish dietary law.

‘Do you not see that nothing that goes from outside into a man can defile him, because it does not enter into his heart but into his stomach, and so passes out into the drain?’ Thus he declared all foods clean.⁹³

But if the disciples understood Jesus’ words in this sense, why did they, and especially Peter, who put the question to Jesus and was answered by him, react so strongly against the possibility of eating forbidden, non-kosher food? For when the chief of the apostles is ordered in a vision by a heavenly voice to eat every kind of meat, instead of exclaiming, ‘Of course, I now remember the words of the lord!’ he expresses shock and indignation.⁹⁴ Paul, too, might have been expected to have appealed to his lord’s recommendation when he himself set aside Jewish ceremonial laws.⁹⁵

In the circumstances it is reasonable to ask whether a phrase meaningful in Aramaic can be discerned beneath the Marcan Greek gloss, ‘Thus he declared all foods clean’ (literally, ‘purifying all foods’). It has already been suggested that the word ‘food’ is employed metaphorically for ‘excrement’,⁹⁶ but to this it should be added that a possible polite term for latrine, ‘the place’ (dukha), might invite a pun on the verb ‘to be clean’ (dekha): ‘. . . it does not enter into his heart but into his stomach, and so passes out into “the place” where all excrement “is purged away” . . .’ This hypothetical exegesis is indirectly supported by the oldest available Semitic version of Mark, the so-called Sinaitic recension of the Syriac Gospel. Sensing, as it were, the play on words underlying the Greek text, the translator replaces ‘drain’ with the euphemism ‘purge’ and renders the phrase: ‘. . . it goes into his belly and is cast into the purge which purges away all food.’⁹⁷

If this interpretation is accepted, the one apparent doctrinal conflict between Jesus and Judaism is due to a deliberate twist given to a probably genuine saying of Jesus by the redactor of the Greek Mark. By that time Gentile Christianity needed and welcomed a formal ratification in the teaching of the Gospel of the Church’s abandonment of the laws and customs of Israel.⁹⁸

Attitudes and Reactions to Jesus

Exorcist, healer and itinerant preacher, Jesus is portrayed by the Synoptists as a person towards whom his contemporaries rarely, if ever, remained indifferent. Their reactions were by no means always favourable, but on the other hand, they were not generally hostile either.

A small group of devotees, simple Galilean folk, joined him from the beginning – ‘after John had been arrested’⁹⁹ – and became his travelling companions. The Twelve, an even smaller group, were later chosen to be his disciples par excellence.¹⁰⁰ So impressed were they by his powerful personality that they left everything to follow him – work, possessions and family.¹⁰¹ Yet, heroic though they may have become after Jesus’ death, consecrating themselves wholeheartedly to the continuation of his lifework, they are not depicted in the Gospels as particularly quick at understanding the mind and preaching of their master while he was alive,¹⁰² or brave at the time of his ordeal, when they all deserted him.¹⁰³ They remained in hiding, in fact, for nearly two months before their first reported reappearance in public.¹⁰⁴

Among the Galilean crowds Jesus was a great success. Large groups formed and accompanied him when the rumour went round that he was on his way to heal the sick,¹⁰⁵ or simply when he travelled.¹⁰⁶ He preached to multitudes in Capernaum and by the lake-side,¹⁰⁷ and soon acquired such a renown that he ‘could no longer show himself in any town, but stayed outside in the open country’.¹⁰⁸

Although his fame apparently also aroused curiosity outside Galilee,¹⁰⁹ he is not described as a welcome visitor in non-Jewish areas. The inhabitants of Gerasa requested him to leave their country,¹¹⁰ and as a Jew travelling to Jerusalem he is represented as a persona non grata in Samaria.¹¹¹ As for Judea, only two cities are said by the Synoptic Gospels – which allude to no more than one brief journey to the southern province – to have surrounded Jesus with great numbers: Jericho¹¹² and Jerusalem. In two out of three Marcan passages, however, the Jerusalem multitude is found in the precincts of the Temple, i.e. a place where immediately before Passover large groups of people would have gathered irrespective of whether Jesus was there or not.¹¹³ Mark’s third story, that of the triumphal entry into Jerusalem, tells of ‘many’ carpeting the road with their cloaks,¹¹⁴ and the Matthean parallel refers to ‘crowds of people’.¹¹⁵ Luke, on the other hand, is positive, and this time presumably correct, in attributing the entire happy and noisy welcome, not to the Jerusalem crowd, but to ‘the whole company of his disciples’.¹¹⁶ Whichever way this story is interpreted, the evangelists clearly convey the impression that the popularity of Jesus in Judea and Jerusalem did not match that which he enjoyed in his own country.

Jesus and John the Baptist

The true relationship between Jesus and his associates, and the company led by John the Baptist, is more difficult to determine. The aim of the Gospel writers was, no doubt, to give an impression of friendship and mutual esteem, but their attempts smack of superficiality and closer scrutiny of the admittedly fragmentary evidence suggests that, at least on the level of their respective disciples, sentiments of rivalry between the two groups were not absent.

That Jesus went to be baptized by John is enough to prove the Baptist’s initial impact on him. Mark has little further to say on the matter except to draw a distinction between the two religious circles,¹¹⁷ and to report the curious belief, shared by the Tetrarch Herod and others, that Jesus was a kind of reincarnation of John, a John redivivus.¹¹⁸ Together with the other Synoptists, he also relates a polemic between Jesus and the chief priests, lawyers and elders regarding the origin, divine or human, of John’s baptism in which neither party openly discloses its mind.¹¹⁹

Matthew and Luke, in contrast to Mark, put into words John’s feelings towards Jesus, as well as those of Jesus towards the Baptist. At their first encounter, according to these two evangelists, John recognizes Jesus’ superiority.¹²⁰ Later, when he is imprisoned, he is depicted as having despatched two of his pupils to ask for formal admission from Jesus that he was ‘the one who is to come’, or that some other person was still to be expected.¹²¹ Jesus, busy with healing, was unwilling to give a straight reply and his return message takes the form of a free quotation from various verses of Isaiah, all announcing cure and consolation.¹²²

Jesus, for his part, proclaims John as the greatest in the long series of Israelite prophets, the one in whom the words of Malachi have come true, i.e. the returning Elijah, the precursor of the Messiah.¹²³ At the same time, he is also reported to have said that though John may have been the greatest of men, ‘the least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he’.¹²⁴

It is on the interpretation of this remark by Jesus, and of the Baptist’s enquiry concerning Jesus’ role, that a correct assessment of the non-Marcan material concerning the two men depends.

For – supposing it to be historically conceivable that messengers were sent to Jesus by the imprisoned John, with the attendant implications of a rather enlightened jail administration under Herod Antipas, visiting hours, and an open line of communication with the outside world – what can be the meaning of ‘Are you the one who is to come, or are we to expect some other?’¹²⁵ Since, it should be stressed, the question was put after the news of ‘what Christ was doing’ had reached the Baptist¹²⁶ – who, according to Matthew, had acknowledged Jesus’ role when he baptized him – the words quoted are bound to express doubt: the Messiah is expected to do better than heal and exorcise, so if you are he, make haste and prove it. Jesus avoids the implied query, reasserts his healing mission, and indirectly reproaches those whose faith in him was small:

‘Happy is the man who does not find me a stumbling-block!’¹²⁷

The apparent sting in the tail of Jesus’ praise of John – ‘the least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he’ – has baffled many an interpreter. Some have seen in it a contrast between the future glory of the elect, and John’s greatness on earth. Others identify ‘the kingdom’ as the realm of the spirit resulting from the ministry of Jesus and belonging to a higher sphere than the world of the Baptist. Others still understand the phrase, ‘the least in the kingdom’, as a description of Jesus as the servant of God. The first two interpretations are too theological for serious consideration by a historian, but the third is plausible at least as far as its acceptance as a reference to Jesus is concerned. The Servant concept itself becomes less relevant when it is recalled that in Aramaic and Hebrew the phrase, ‘the least one’, ‘the smallest one’, can be used in the chronological sense to designate the youngest or last person in a series. In the belief of the evangelists, Jesus was God’s ultimate envoy, and although it is by no means sure that the words are his own, their significance is: John was very great, but I am greater.

If this explanation is right, it may be inferred that the disciples of Jesus unhesitatingly asserted their master’s pre-eminence over John. An echo to this mood of rivalry in the Gospels makes itself heard in the apostles’ attempt to silence an outsider who dared to cast out demons in Jesus’ name,¹²⁸ as well as in the complaint of John’s followers, preserved only in the Fourth Gospel, that baptism by Jesus is improper and disrespectful towards their teacher.¹²⁹

The conflict arising from Jesus’ admiration for the Baptist, and the jealousy of the two groups of disciples, is resolved in the compromise that John, recognized as the precursor, acknowledges the superiority of Jesus at the time of his baptism, or, better still, when they are both in their mothers’ wombs.¹³⁰ Yet it is interesting to notice that, in contrast to this laboured insistence on the precedence of Jesus over John, Mark is satisfied with a straightforward presentation of Jesus as John’s successor, without discussing their relationship beyond the exegesis, by implication, of Isaiah 40: 3: ‘Prepare a road for the Lord through the wilderness, clear a highway across the desert for our God.’¹³¹

Critics and Opponents of Jesus

As an exceptional and controversial religious teacher, it was inevitable that Jesus should encounter criticism and hostility as well as respect and love, but strangely enough, the first opposition came from those closest to him, his family and fellow-citizens in Nazareth. When his relatives heard of his cures, exorcism and preaching, they set off to take hold of him, for they said:

‘He is out of his mind.’¹³²

The scandalous incongruity of this statement is the best guarantee of its historicity, and the Marcan variant, ‘For people were saying that he was out of his mind’, as well as the absence of Synoptic parallels, are no doubt due to an early ‘censorship’ tendency in the evolving Christian tradition. Moreover, it is difficult not to see it as a preliminary to the fuller account, a few verses later, of the arrival of Jesus’ mother and brothers at the house where he was teaching, their summons that he should join them, and Jesus’ subsequent retort that the greater family of those who do the will of God had first claim to his presence.¹³³

Whatever the actual outcome of this apparent refusal to submit to his family’s control, no further contact is mentioned in the Synoptics between them and Jesus. It is to remedy this unfortunate impression that the Fourth Gospel expressly depicts Mary as her son’s first convert, at the wedding feast in Cana,¹³⁴ and as standing at the last beside him at the cross.¹³⁵ Luke, too, finds Jesus’ mother and brothers in the company of the apostles after the Ascension.¹³⁶ The family may, of course, have changed its mind at a later stage and made common cause with the disciples; it is in fact a historically reliable tradition that James, ‘the brother of the lord’, became the head of the Jerusalem Church.¹³⁷

If his immediate kin were shocked by his behaviour, it is not surprising that friends and neighbours were also scandalized.¹³⁸ No one is prophet in his own town, Jesus is reported to have commented philosophically,¹³⁹ though he was taken aback by their want of faith.¹⁴⁰ Nevertheless, the Lucan story of an attempted lynching is probably an exaggeration.¹⁴¹

This unsympathetic reception of Jesus in Nazareth may explain his rhetorical disparagement of the ties of nature compared with those which bound men to him, and through him, to God. Happy the womb that carried him! cried a woman admirer, and was corrected, ‘No, happy are those who hear the word of God.’¹⁴² On another occasion he was even more direct:

‘He who loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me.’¹⁴³

The conflict between Jesus and the representatives of authority on doctrinal and politico-religious grounds requires several preliminary remarks. Firstly, the identity of the opponents is often unclear because the sources are contradictory regarding them. For instance, the protagonists in what appears to be the same event are described by Mark as Pharisees and Herodians, by Matthew as Pharisees only, and by Luke as lawyers and Pharisees.¹⁴⁴ Secondly, interpretative tradition, both scholarly and popular, is too easily inclined to equate Pharisees, scribes and lawyers, but since Mark and Luke expressly refer to the lawyers of the Pharisees, it would follow that those not so described were not necessarily members of that party.¹⁴⁵ Thirdly, in the various accounts of the plot which led to the arrest of Jesus and his surrender to Pilate for trial and execution, the Pharisees as a class play no part.¹⁴⁶ Lastly, the struggle with the chief priests and elders, and probably with the Sadducees too, is confined to Jerusalem.¹⁴⁷

As far as basic Jewish beliefs are concerned, the only serious clash reported in the Gospels between Jesus and the established authority finds him opposing the Sadducees in their denial of the resurrection of the dead.¹⁴⁸ Here, as well as in the identification of the greatest commandment – love of God and one’s fellow-men – Jesus is represented as sharing the outlook and winning the approval of the Pharisees.¹⁴⁹ Yet it would be a gross overstatement to portray him as a Pharisee himself. Indeed, in regard to those customs which they invested with a quasi-absolute value, but which to him were secondary to biblical commandments, a head-on collision was unavoidable. Jesus ate with sinners and did not condemn those who sat down to table with unwashed hands or pulled corn on the Sabbath.¹⁵⁰ The lawyers who accuse him of blasphemy because of his promise to forgive sins, and those who suggest that his exorcistic power is due to his association with the devil, need not have been Pharisees.¹⁵¹ The only other person said to have raised a charge of blasphemy against Jesus was the Sadducean high priest during the trial, although the words attributed to Jesus cannot, in fact, be construed as such by virtue of any known Jewish law, biblical or post-biblical. According to the Mishnah, only the misuse of the Tetragram, the sacrosanct name of God, constitutes blasphemy,¹⁵² and no accusation is levelled against Jesus in this respect. Also, even if it could be ascertained that he claimed to be the Messiah or the son of God, there are no grounds for seeing blasphemy in this, or any other capital crime.¹⁵³

There is little doubt that the Pharisees disliked his nonconformity and would have preferred him to have abstained from healing on the Sabbath where life was not in danger.¹⁵⁴ They obviously enjoyed embarrassing him with testing questions, such as whether tax should be paid to Rome.¹⁵⁵ An affirmative answer would have outraged Jewish patriots, and a denial would have been synonymous with preaching rebellion.¹⁵⁶ But Jesus himself was not above employing the same methods:¹⁵⁷ indeed, they were an integral part of polemical argument at that time. There is no evidence, however, of an active and organized participation on the part of the Pharisees in the planning and achievement of Jesus’ downfall.

Arrest and Execution of Jesus

The Synoptic Gospels know of two main plots to put an end to Jesus’ activities: one in Galilee, which failed, and one in Jerusalem, which resulted in the cross. Probably, some individual Pharisees bore a measure of responsibility for this, but in both cases the principal, and certainly the ultimate, guilt lay with the representatives of the political establishment – Herod Antipas and his supporters in Galilee, and the chief priests and Pilate in the capital.¹⁵⁸

Whether there was a trial of Jesus by the supreme Jewish court of Judea in Jerusalem on a religious charge, and a subsequent capital sentence pronounced and forwarded for confirmation and execution by the secular arm, remains historically more than dubious, as Paul Winter has shown in his magisterial study of the subject.¹⁵⁹ If such a trial did take place, and if it were possible to reconstruct its proceedings from the discrepant, and often contradictory reports of the Gospels, the only justifiable conclusion would be that in a single session the Sanhedrin managed to break every rule in the book: it would, in other words, have been an illegal trial. Yet even those who are able to believe that a real trial occurred are compelled to admit that when the chief priests transferred the case from their court to Pontius Pilate’s tribunal, they did not ask for their findings to be confirmed, but laid a fresh charge before the prefect of Judea, namely that Jesus was a political agitator with pretensions to being the king of the Jews.¹⁶⁰ It was not on a Jewish religious indictment, but on a secular accusation that he was condemned by the emperor’s delegate to die shamefully on the Roman cross.

The Resurrection of Jesus

Although founded on evidence which can only be described as confused and fragile, belief in the resurrection of Jesus became an increasingly important, and finally central, issue in the post-Synoptic and especially post-Marcan stage of doctrinal evolution. This development is all the more astonishing since the idea of bodily resurrection played no part of any significance in the preaching of Jesus. Moreover, his disciples did not expect him to arise from the dead any more than their contemporaries expected the Messiah to do so.¹⁶¹

All in all, taking into account the disciples’ despair after the tragedy in Jerusalem, and their startled incredulity on hearing from their women of the empty tomb, the historian is bound to query whether Jesus in fact prepared them for this extraordinary happening by repeatedly foretelling that he would rise again precisely on the third day. Admittedly, Mark and Matthew make room for five separate announcements by Jesus of his suffering, death and resurrection, but it is generally held even by academic orthodoxy that the references to the resurrection at least constitute prophecy after the event.¹⁶²

It is probably to reconcile this inconsistency between lack of expectation and clear prediction that the evangelists clumsily remark that the apostles could not understand Jesus. Peter rebukes him and is called Satan; they argue about the sense of ‘rising from the dead’; they do not grasp what he says and are too frightened to ask; they are filled with grief or utterly bewildered.¹⁶³ However, the illogicality disappears if the announcement of the passion alone, without the resurrection, is considered authentic, i.e. the form of the saying preserved in Luke 9: 44:

‘The son of man is to be given up into the power of men.’

A frightening statement such as this might well provoke an instinctive rebuke from Peter and explain the bewilderment and sorrow of the disciples.

A further point to take into consideration is that despite Luke and Paul, and the Creed, the resurrection of Jesus ‘according to the Scriptures’ cannot be seen as a logical necessity within the framework of Israel’s prophetic heritage because, as has been indicated, neither the suffering of the Messiah, nor his death and resurrection, appear to have been part of the faith of first-century Judaism.

Following these somewhat disconcerting preliminaries, what exactly do the Gospels yield by way of factual evidence? What light do they throw on how the earliest traditions developed?

The main Gospel narrative reports seven events subsequent to the death of Jesus.

(1) Joseph of Arimathea deposits the body of Jesus in a rock tomb, which he closes with a rolling stone.¹⁶⁴

(2) On the third day, at dawn, two, three, or several women, find the stone rolled back.¹⁶⁵

(3) They enter and see a young man (Mark), or two men (Luke), wearing white garments, or an angel (Matthew), sitting (Mark, Matthew), or standing (Luke), in the tomb.¹⁶⁶

(4) According to Matthew and Luke, but not Mark, they are frightened.¹⁶⁷

(5) The women are told that Jesus has been raised from the dead and they are shown where his body has rested.¹⁶⁸

(6) They are further instructed to convey a message to the disciples that Jesus is on his way to Galilee where he will be seen as already arranged. According to Luke, the women are reminded of a prediction made by Jesus in Galilee concerning his passion and suddenly remember.¹⁶⁹

(7) Their reactions are described differently in each Gospel. They return and report the news (Luke); they run with awe and joy to make their announcement (Matthew); they rush away from the tomb, beside themselves with terror, saying nothing to anybody (Mark).¹⁷⁰

The oldest manuscripts of Mark’s Gospel end at this point, but Matthew and Luke go on to record several appearances made by Jesus to the women, to two disciples travelling to Emmaus, to Peter and the company in Jerusalem, and to the eleven apostles on a Galilean mountain.¹⁷¹ It is in these stories that modern New Testament scholars, relying on Matthew and Luke, and especially on the tradition handed down by Paul,¹⁷² find the primary source of faith in the resurrection of Jesus; in their opinion, the narrative concerning the empty tomb is ‘completely secondary’, an ‘apologetic legend’ intended to ‘prove the reality of the resurrection of Jesus’.¹⁷³ This explanation is nevertheless open to serious criticism. Mark, which besides being the most ancient of the Synoptic Gospels is also doctrinally the least developed, alludes to no actual apparition, but is content to present as the somewhat embarrassing basis for belief in the resurrection the evidence of three women that they heard from a white-robed youth that the body was missing from the tomb because Jesus had been raised from the dead.

There is one point in this episode on which Mark and the other Synoptists insist, namely that the tomb found empty on that Sunday morning was the one in which the body of Jesus had been placed on the previous Friday. The women did not go to the wrong grave because having followed Joseph of Arimathea they knew the site of the burial place.

Mark and Matthew are categorical and Luke is even more emphatic:

Mary of Magdala and Mary the mother of Joseph . . . saw where he was laid.¹⁷⁴

Mary of Magdala was there, and the other Mary, sitting opposite the grave.¹⁷⁵

The women . . . took note of the tomb and observed how his body was laid.¹⁷⁶

A hostile version, namely that the disciples deliberately removed the body of Jesus, is recorded by Matthew. To neutralize this accusation, he introduces the story of the guards placed by the Sanhedrin near the tomb who fainted when the angel descended in the middle of the earthquake to remove the stone, but later spread the news – after a substantial bribe from the chief priests – that while they slept his followers had come by night and stolen the body.¹⁷⁷

The Fourth Gospel preserves a tradition to the effect that the body was taken out of its original burial place and interred somewhere else by people unconnected with Jesus’ party. Mistaking Jesus for ‘the gardener’, Mary of Magdala is supposed to have asked:

‘If it is you, sir, who removed him, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.’¹⁷⁸

From these various records two reasonably convincing points emerge, one positive and the other negative. First, the women belonging to the entourage of Jesus discovered an empty tomb and were definite that it was the tomb. Second, the rumour that the apostles stole that body is most improbable. From the psychological point of view, they would have been too depressed and shaken to be capable of such a dangerous undertaking. But above all, since neither they nor anyone else expected a resurrection, there would have been no purpose in faking one.

It is preferable not to speculate on the disappearance of the body of Jesus during the earthquake mentioned in Matthew for it may have been more imaginary than real, a literary cliché indicating the presence of the supernatural. It is equally pointless to conjecture what part an uninvolved or hostile outsider such as ‘the gardener’ might have played.

The corollary must be, curious though this may sound, that for the historian it is Mark’s evidence, the weakest of all, that possesses the best claim for authenticity, the story brought by two women which – to quote Luke – the apostles themselves thought such ‘nonsense’ that they would not believe it.¹⁷⁹

Christian tradition has tried to improve the argument. Luke and John introduce two male witnesses to check the women’s report,¹⁸⁰ but this is still not enough. The closest approach to first-hand evidence is the testimony of several trustworthy men who assert that Jesus appeared to them – to the Twelve, to all the apostles, and to over five hundred brethren, in addition to the leaders of the Church, Peter and James.¹⁸¹ It is their collective conviction of having seen their dead teacher alive, combined with the initial discovery of the empty tomb, that provides the substance for faith in Jesus’ rising from the dead.

A final comment, as it were in parenthesis. In addition to the usual concept of resurrection, another notion appears to have existed in Galilee in New Testament times. Already in the Bible, Elisha is said to have inherited a double share of the spirit of Elijah.¹⁸² In the Gospels, John the Baptist and Jesus are both described as Elijah redivivus, and Jesus is believed by some to be the risen John the Baptist, or the reincarnation of Jeremiah or one of the old prophets.¹⁸³

It is conceivable that a belief of this sort prevailing among those who continued Jesus’ ministry, including healing and exorcism, had a retroactive effect on the formation of the resurrection preaching, and liberal historians have long since seen the ‘real Easter miracle’, not in a changed Jesus, but in metamorphosed disciples.¹⁸⁴

But in the end, when every argument has been considered and weighed, the only conclusion acceptable to the historian must be that the opinions of the orthodox, the liberal sympathizer and the critical agnostic alike – and even perhaps of the disciples themselves – are simply interpretations of the one disconcerting fact: namely that the women who set out to pay their last respects to Jesus found to their consternation, not a body, but an empty tomb.