Comment: Finding the historical Jesus in the Gospels
With only sketchy support from non-Christian references for Jesus, Christian scholars still rely on the gospels, especially the so-called synoptic gospels, for constructing the historical Jesus. How should we read these gospels – Matthew, Mark, and Luke – critically? And should we include John as well?
Here are a few ideas.
- Gospels were written as proclamations of faith, literally the good news, about Jesus as the Christ, the messiah. So, despite being structured as historical narratives, the gospels are better seen as fantastic (in the traditional sense) biographical stories of Jesus, initially written around first and second centuries CE for fellow followers of Christ. Not unreasonably, gospel historical claims should be treated with scepticism unless supported by separate independent sources.
- Scholars have long recognised that the three synoptic gospels are closely interrelated with the popular consensus of Matthew and Luke drawing heavily from Mark. So be aware that three versions of the same story in the synoptic gospels may be the same one repeated many times. By contrast John’s gospel came from a separate tradition, but that writer presented a vastly different type of Jesus – the incarnate god.
- Despite church accreditations to apostolic authors – apostles or apostle companions – the gospels are considered anonymous by most scholars. Similarly there is no clear consensus of the locations of authorship. So we do not know who wrote the gospels and where they were written. Most scholars agree their initial appearances occurred between 70CE and 120CE.
- You are likely to be reading one of the many English translations of “reconstructed” Greek documents. The first full manuscripts of the gospels are copies made around the fourth century, some 300 years after their initial authorships. Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Vaticanus are famous examples. Interestingly, the earliest copy is the fragment P52, small section of John (18:31–33), dated around 130CE.
- The initial copies of the gospels were handwritten by amateur copyists -a literate member of the local Christian community – and then circulated by hand to fellow believers. Many historians estimate that less than ten percent of the population were literate in Rome even at its height. After hundreds of years of copying, editing, and further copying, these documents were collected together to be finally canonised. It is worth remembering that many texts, considered sacred by many Christians were ultimated rejected by the church authorities. Epistle of Barnabas and Gospel of Thomas are well known examples.
- The gospel presentations of Jesus draw heavily from Jewish religious symbols and traditions of the day, while being shaped by the surrounding influence of local Greek and Roman culture. Many scholars have long identified Greek, Roman, Egyptian, and other eastern religious myths and symbols embedded in the Jesus stories, not surprising with the authors likely to have been Greek-literate Jews living in urban areas of the Roman Empire outside of Palestine.
- Even though the authors of the gospels are unknown, we can surmise that they were urbanised Greek-speaking Jews living outside of Palestine and Galilee in particular. Their Jewish scriptures would have been the Septuagint, an earlier Greek (Hellenistic) translation of the Jewish scriptures. They portray Jesus as an Aramaic-speaking, rural Jew, preaching in Galilee some 70 years previously (and who is divine, of course). His scripture would have been the Torah, at least, in Hebrew and, at most, a Jesus would have probably known some Greek only. A large Greek-speaking city of Sepphoris was nearby rural Galilee. So we could expect a large disconnect between the gospel authors’ environments and world-views and that of less literate earlier rural preacher.
Not surprisingly, Christians revere the canonical gospels as sacred texts. However they are in no way privileged as historical documents. A critical reader has every right to approach with considerable disinterested scepticism – unknown authorships; overt promotions of faith; dubious or unsupported historical claims like the first born killings and empire-wide census; consistent internal contradictions; and years of subsequent manuscript copying and editing before modern printing.
The Internet is full of resources varying from literal interpretations (gospels as fully accurate historical documents) to sceptical responses (Jesus never existed as a recognisable historical figure). While a simple Google search will start you off, have a look at http://virtualreligion.net/ .
Alex McCullie
6 comments
Yusef…
Gotta say, mighty fine article…
Mr Sparkle…
Superb article, great writing style, content, and blog theme….
The Record…
I think you write superbly, wish I could write this well. Thanks….
Layer…
I have to agree with this post, well said….
Twizzle…
Excellent content, great read…
Evenlope…
Superb post, 10 out of 10 from me…