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[First posted in 2012, in time for the Lenten Season when Christianity commemorates the life, death and resurrection of their acclaimed Savior. Many of our posts at this time will focus on the claims of Christianity.
This post is about Charles Freeman’s The Closing of the Western Mind: The Rise of Faith and the Fall of Reason.
Here’s a listing in the Table of Contents:
- Thomas Aquinas and “The Triumph of Faith”
- The Quest for Certainty
- The Quest for Virtue
- Changing Political Contexts – Alexander the the Coming of the Hellenistic Monarchies
- Absorbing the East, Rome, and the Integration of Greek Culture
- “All Nations Look to the Majesty of Rome” – The Roman Empire at its Height
- The Empire in Crisis, the Empire in Recovery – Political Transformations in the Third Century
- Jesus
- Paul, “The Founder of Christianity”
- “A crowd that lurks in corners, shunning the light” – The First Christian Communities
- Constantine and the Coming of the Christian State
- “But what I wish, that must be the canon” – Emperors and the Making of Christian Doctrine
- “Enriched by the Gifts of Matrons” – Bishops and Society in the 4th Century
- Six Emperors and a Bishop – Ambrose of Milan
- Interlude – Quintus Aurelius Symmachus and the Defence of Paganism
- The Ascetic Odyssey
- Eastern Christiantiy and the Emergence of the Byzantine Empire 395-600
- The Emergence of Catholic Christianity in the West, 395-640
- “We Honor the Privilege of Silence which is without Peril” – The Death of the Greek Empirical Tradition
- Thomas Aquinas and the Restoration of Reason
The ebook is downloadable on the kindle app from amazon.com; paperback is a mere $0.99 and hardback $2.99, definitely a book that is worth more than that! Condensed and slightly edited, sub-titles added for this post. Again to ‘whet your appetite’ enough to get a copy for your library, we are featuring Chapter 8: Jesus. —Admin1.]
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Modern Biblical Scholarship
The past 30 years have been especially fruitful for the study of early Christianity. This is partly because the churches appear more to be relaxed about the uncertainties of research findings but also because the available sources, particularly the range of Jewish texts, preeminent among them the Dead Sea Scrolls, have expanded enormously. We are better able to set Jesus within a historical context than at any time since the 1st century. If we can sum up the rich diversity of modern scholarship, it is distinguished both by the acceptance of the essential Jewish-ness of Jesus and by a fuller understanding of what it means to say that Jesus was Jewish in the 1st century of the Christian era. While traditional interpretations of Jesus have seen him as somehow apart from Judaism, his mission always focused on the outside world, it is now argued not only that he preached and taught within Judaism but even that he was advocating a return to traditional Jewish values. Nevertheless, the continuing lack of Jewish sources for Jesus’ life means that any interpretation of his role and mission has to be made with caution.
There are only a few historical references to Jesus outside of the New Testament and one of these, by the Jewish historian Josephus , may have been rewritten by Christians at a later date. The earliest New Testament sources are Paul’s letters, written in the 50s, not much more than 20 years after Jesus’ crucifixion, but they say virtually nothing about Jesus’ life. Later than Paul, but drawing on earlier material are the 4 surviving Gospels, written for early Christian communities int he Gentile (Greco-Roman) world. As Luke reminds his readers in the opening verse of his Gospel, there were many other accounts of Jesus’ activities (scholars suggest that there may have originally been some 20 Gospels), but these are now all lost apart from the odd fragment; the 4 we know were accepted as canonical (authoritative) during the 2nd century. Other later non-canonical texts, such as the Gospel of St. Thomas, which does survive (in part) from the 2nd century, and the mass of material from the Nag Hammadi library (a collection of papyrus codices of works from the 3rd to 5th centuries discovered at Nag Hammadi in modern Egypt in 1945-46, some of which draw on 2nd century sources), are probably too late to be of much historical value. All 4 Gospels, as well as Paul’s letters, were originally written in Greek, although on occasion they preserve Jesus’ words in their original Aramaic. There is no account of Jesus’ life written from a Jewish perspective, unless one interpret’s Matthew’s Gospel in this light. Also lost is a rich oral tradition–it is known that until A.D. 135 many Christian communities preferred to pass on their knowledge of Jesus by word of mouth. Only a tiny proportion of what was originally recorded, whether orally or in writing, about Jesus has survived; some texts simply disappeared, others were suppressed as interpretations of Jesus evolved in the early Christian communities. The very fact that there are 4 different accounts of Jesus’ mission and that these reached their final form some decades after his crucifixion suggests that a coherent historical (and, equally, a coherent spiritual or divine) Jesus will be difficult to recover.
Who wrote the Gospels?
Most scholars now assume that Mark is the earliest of the surviving Gospels, perhaps written about A.D. 70, forty years after Jesus’ death. It is the shortest of the canonical Gospels and begins with Jesus’ baptism by John the Baptist and ends in its original version with the discovery of the empty tomb. (In other words, there are no birth stories and the resurrection accounts were added later). It is believed to have been written for a Christian community in Rome and composed to be read aloud to them. Then follow Luke (after 70) and Matthew (between 80 and 90), drawing on a common (lost) source (known as “Q,” from the German Quelle, or “source”) as well as on Mark. There is no agreement among scholars as to where Luke’s Gospel was written, but there is a degree of consensus in the belief that Matthew’s was written for a community in Antioch in Syria. These 3 are known as the Synoptic Gospels (the word “synoptic,” “with the same eye,” reflecting their shared perspective on Jesus’ life). The lasts of the canonical Gospels, that of John, dated from about A.D. 100, is very different from the earlier 3 and is a more considered theological interpretation of Jesus’ life in which, for the first time, he is presented as divine. In one or 2 instances, the accounts of Jesus’ trial, for example, John appears to draw on an independent witness and in some ways his Gospel, though the most removed from events, may in fact be the most historically accurate.
The Gospels are not written as history or biography in the conventional sense. Events are shaped to provide a meaning for Jesus, partly through his teachings and partly through his trial and death (recounted in detail in all 4 Gospels) and resurrection. The earliest sources on which they draw appear to have been sayings of Jesus (assembled in collections known as “pericopes,” from the original Greek word for “a cutoff section”), which were placed in contexts created by the Gospel writers themselves. (The same pericopes appear in different contexts in different Gospels, as one can see when comparing Luke’s Sermon on the Mount, 6:17-49, with Matthew’s much longer version, which incorporates material used elsewhere by Luke in his Gospel.) The selection, placing and development of the sayings vary from one Gospel to another, but one common theme, which is approached differently in each Gospel, is the question of how Jesus was to be related to his Jewish background at a time, some decades after the crucifixion, when the Christian communities were spreading into the Gentile world. The issue can be explored by taking Matthew’s Gospel (highlighted here because it was the most influential of the 3 Synoptic Gospels in the early Christian centuries) as an example.
Matthew, as has been seen, shares a common source with Mark and also draws on “Q.” but there are a number of emphases in his Gospel that are unique. One is the bringing together of Jesus’ ethical teachings in the Sermon on the Mount, a version which is 3 times as long as the compilation by Luke, actually a “Sermon on the Plain” rather than “the Mount.” Another involves the relating of Jesus’ birth and life back to earlier Jewish prophecies; throughout his Gospel Matthew is concerned to place Jesus’ teaching into the context of earlier scripture. Yet Matthew depicts Jesus himself as firmly, indeed violently, rejected by Jews—Pilate, for instance, is shown as reluctant to order the crucifixion until urged to do wo by the Jewish crowds (27:22, “Let him be crucified!”). There is also in Matthew (but not in Mark or Luke) a powerful indictment of the scribes and Pharisees (23:13-33). So Matthew appears to be depicting a Jesus who is an important ethical teacher who can be seen as a fulfillment of Jewish prophecies, but who at the same time rejects Jewish sects and is rejected by the Jews themselves. Another central theme of Matthew is Jesus’ warning of”a burning furnace” for those who have done evil and “eternal punishment” for those who neglect his demands to feed the hungry or clothe the naked (Matthew 13:36-43 and 25:31-46). Many Jews did not believe in an afterlife, but some talked of sheol, a shadowy “grave” or “pit,” where departed spirits live, or Gehenna, a place of torment based on an actual valley in Judaea where human sacrifices had taken place. It is Gehenna to which Jesus refers in Matthew’s telling of his indictment of the Pharisees.
To establish how these emphases might relate to Matthew’s own concerns, attempts have been made to establish the audience for whom Matthew was writing. One view is that Matthew led a community that was Jewish in origin and still saw itself as Jewish, despite the fact that its devotion to Christ had led to its ostracism by orthodox Jewish communities. It is usually suggested that this was in Antioch at a time when Judaism was narrowing its boundaries after the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple by the Romans in A.D. 70. Determined that his community survive, Matthew, according to this interpretation, presented Jesus as the hoped-for Messiah, prophesied in the scriptures, but as a Messiah who has been rejected and betrayed by his own people. Such ideas of betrayal and renewal ran deep in Jewish history, and Matthew places Jesus within this tradition. Once again the Jews have betrayed the one who is sent from God, says Matthew, but this does not mean that Judaism in itself is at an end. Jesus had come “not to abolish but to complete [the Law].” It would remain in place “till heaven and hearth disappear . . . until its purpose is achieved” (Matthew 5:17-18). Matthew thus presents Jesus as spearheading a Jewish renewal, even if it is one that has not been recognized by his own people. Matthew believes that his community has replaced the Jews as guardians of his Messiahship. One of the verses Matthew attributes to Jesus (21:43) is particularly telling here: “I tell you then, that the kingdom of God will be taken from you [i.e., those Jews who have rejected me] and given to a people who will produce its fruit,” by implication Matthew’s community. Matthew also lays greater stress than the other Synoptic Gospels on the church as an institution. Peter, whose Christianity, like Matthew’s, was set within Judaism, is given a leadership role by Jesus, and there is specific mention of the community having disciplinary powers (18:15-20). This approach to Matthew’s Gospel has been summed up as follows:
[Matthew’s Jewish] community defines itself as the last sanctuary for the preservation of those fundamentals of Israel’s faith. It tries desperately to live up to its true calling, as represented in these responsibilities to preserve true holiness. But it is also inclined to be bitter and vengeful; this typical and entirely understandable, desire for vengeance (upon the Pharisees in particular) is expressed in the notion of eternal punishment and the principle of just requittal.
When Matthew’s text was adopted as one of the 4 canonical texts by the emerging churches of the Gentile world, its origin as a Jewish text was glossed over, and Matthew’s rejection of those Jews who had betrayed Jesus was transformed by later Christians into a justification for rejecting all Judaism — the cry of the crowd in Jerusalem. “His blood be on us and on our children!” (27:25), was to be frequently quoted in the diatribes that many of the Church Fathers launched against Judaism as a religion, something Matthew can hardly have intended. Again, the doctrine of eternal punishment in hell, which was further developed in the early church by interpreting Matthew’s verse “Many are called by few are chosen” (22:14) to suggest that a majority of human beings would suffer eternal punishment, became an entrenched and highly influential part of Christian teaching. It is equally important, of course, to note the enormous influence of the Sermon on the Mount on Christian ethics. This is the challenge the Gospels pose for the historian—their own versions of Jesus were shaped to meet the needs of their immediate audience, yet when adopted into the canon they were interpreted to fit the needs of the emerging church. Is it possible to “decode” the Gospel texts so as to place Jesus back into his original background? Some scholars argue that it is now virtually impossible to find “the real Jesus” under the layers of later developments; others believe that something can be reconstructed from the material in the Gospels. This latter will be what is attempted here.
Check out the sequels: