Bible Secrets Revealed: The Real Jesus (S1, E4) | Full Episode

NARRATOR: This program explores the mysteries of the Bible from a variety of historical and theological perspectives which have been debated for centuries. For billions of people around the world, he is known as the Son of God, the Messiah, the Prince of Peace. But who was the man simply known in his lifetime as Jesus, the carpenter's son from Nazareth who was executed by the Romans and whose teachings have inspired one of the most powerful and influential religions in the world?

Just how accurate are the accounts as written in the Bible's New Testament? Jesus doesn't do lots of the things one would expect a messiah to do. His friends were prostitutes and sinners.

Jesus's ministry was actually funded by a lot of women. You might be surprised to learn that Jesus had siblings. NARRATOR: It is one of the most important books ever written.

Its contents have been studied, debated, and fought over for thousands of years. But does the Bible also contain secrets? Secret prophesies, secret characters, secret texts?

Now for the first time, an extraordinary series will challenge everything we think, everything we know, and everything we believe about the Bible. The ancient kingdom of Judea, more than 2,000 years ago. It was here, according to the New Testament gospels of Matthew and Luke, that the infant Jesus was born to a young woman named Mary and her husband Joseph.

But believe it or not, the actual year of Jesus birth is uncertain. For centuries, the year 1 AD or anno domini, the year of our Lord, was assumed to be correct. But recent historical research has proved otherwise.

ROBERT R. CARGILL: Jesus is born somewhere between 4 and 7 BCE because Herod the Great died in 4 BC and Jesus was born during Herod the Great. So this is one of the secrets that scholars know, but most people don't think about.

Those who made the calendar, they dated the birth of Jesus incorrectly, and we still live on a calendar where Jesus is actually born 4 to 7 years BC. NARRATOR: But the exact year of Jesus' birth is not the only historic fact that seems to differ from tradition. The New Testament states that Jesus was born in the town of Bethlehem, but even that has been recently questioned by both historians and theologians.

BART EHRMAN: Jesus is said to be born in Bethlehem in both Matthew and Luke. In fact, historians today widely think that Jesus was not born in Bethlehem, that Jesus was born in Nazareth, the hometown of his parents Joseph and Mary. NARRATOR: According to the Gospel of Luke, prior to giving birth to Jesus, Mary and her husband Joseph would have been required to travel to Joseph's birthplace of Bethlehem in order to take part in the Roman census.

But recent scholarship has indicated that the only likely census during that period was the census of Quirinius around the year 6 AD. REZA ASLAN: We know a lot about Roman census. After all, the purpose of a census was for taxation, and the Romans were quite adept at keeping documentations when it came to taxation.

There is not a single scrap of evidence that these people were to be counted not in the place of residence but in the place of their father's birth. So then why do Matthew and Luke say that Jesus was born in Bethlehem and not in Nazareth? Because according to the prophecies about the Messiah in the Hebrew Bible, the Messiah is supposed to be born in the city of David, which is Bethlehem.

NARRATOR: Why is there a disparity between the biblical account of Jesus' birth and the results of research by mainstream historians? The fact is pretty much everything we know about the life of Jesus comes from the four gospels of the New Testament. And even though the gospels are credited to the evangelists Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, the gospels may actually have been written 40 to 100 years after the crucifixion.

They also contained little or no accounts of Jesus' life before he became a prophet. We would love to know answers to like what was Jesus like as a teenager and did Jesus ever have any girlfriends. Did you ever have any relationships, anything like that.

The gospels don't really want to tell us any of that stuff because they're really interested in just focusing on why Jesus is who he is and what he did. NARRATOR: What really happened during Jesus' so-called lost years? Were the accounts omitted deliberately?

If so, why? Perhaps closer examination of the gospels will reveal some surprising facts. MARK GOODACRE: It's one of the biggest kept secrets about Jesus that he's one of quite a large family.

We know of at least four brothers-- James, Joses, Judas, and Simon. We know of at least a couple of sisters. JAMES D.

TABOR: One was named Salome. We think one Maria. So there you've got seven kids right there, maybe more.

MARK GOODACRE: And the curious thing about Jesus's family is that lots of them later on become key people in the church, most importantly Jesus's brother James. It's curious how they disappear though, and it may just be because as time goes on, the idea of the perpetual virginity of the Virgin Mary catches on. NARRATOR: Perhaps one of the most controversial and profound aspects of the story of Jesus is the belief that his mother Mary gave birth to him while a virgin.

It is among the very foundations of the Christian faith. But curiously the references to Jesus being born of a virgin can only be found in two of the gospels, Matthew and Luke. Wouldn't such a miraculous event have been more widely reported?

Or was it, as some scholars suggest, an attempt by Jesus' followers to justify their belief in him as the Hebrew Messiah, the fulfillment of the Old Testament prophecies? ROBERT R. CARGILL: The New Testament loves to rely on the prophecies of a prophet Isaiah for proof of Jesus' Messiah-ship.

One of the prophecies that came very popular was a prophecy during the time of Hezekiah. Jerusalem's under siege. They don't know if they're going to survive.

And Isaiah comes up with a prophecy. It says, look, behold, there's a virgin. And she will bear a son, and his name will be Emmanuel, which is God with us.

CHRIS KEITH: Matthew uses a Greek word that in this context means virgin, but the Hebrew word that appears in Isaiah, it can mean virgin, but it usually just means a young girl with no comment at all on whether she had had sex yet. Matthew kind of wiggled into that interpretation in order to claim that Jesus was born of a virgin. So it's definitely the case that they went back to the Old Testament with eyes of faith.

The idea that Jesus has brothers becomes inconvenient, becomes a problem. People don't like to think that Mary might have given birth to anyone other than just Jesus. And so as time goes on, the church writes them out of the story, explains them away, says perhaps they were children of Joseph by another marriage, and so on.

NARRATOR: In addition to evidence that Jesus had brothers and sisters, there are, in fact, a wide range of other ancient texts about the life and teachings of Jesus that are referenced within the Christian tradition but remain outside of the official New Testament. In 1945, Egyptian farmers digging in the small town of Nag Hammadi uncovered an earthen jar containing more than 50 ancient texts. Later referred to as the Gnostic Gospels, they are believed to be older than the oldest known copies of the New Testament.

They also include several additional and at times conflicting versions of Jesus' life and teachings. Probably 85% of what was available in the ancient world got destroyed. What we have in the New Testament, even though there are four gospels, is a very small slice of the traditions that were available.

NARRATOR: Another ancient gospel excluded from the New Testament is called the Infancy Gospel of Thomas. Believed to have been written around 125 AD, the manuscript is thought to be an early attempt to provide more details of Jesus' childhood than could be found in the standard gospels. BART EHRMAN: Well, the Infancy Gospel of Thomas claims to be written by Thomas, who was Jesus' own brother.

MARK GOODACRE: Jesus is almost like the young Superman. He just goes around doing extraordinary things. BART EHRMAN: Jesus is walking through the street as a five year old, and another kid is playing and runs up and bangs him on the arm.

Jesus turns to him and he says you'll going no further on your way, and the child falls down dead. CHRIS KEITH: The people who were responsible for this text were very clearly interested in this idea of, you know, if a child was God and had power over life and death, what would happen if that child lost his temper? NARRATOR: But why if such a firsthand account of the boy Jesus' life existed might it have been excluded from the New Testament?

BART EHRMAN: The church fathers thought some of the stories in it were somewhat scandalous, and so they decided there is no way this one's getting into the New Testament. NARRATOR: Although all that is known about the man called Jesus is a composite written by several people over a period of hundreds of years, one fact is certain. He was a charismatic teacher and prophet.

He was a rabbi who, although some scholars claim he could neither read nor write, espoused a profound religious philosophy, that of the divine nature of mankind and the integrity of all living things. But where did Jesus' ideas about God come from? Who were his mentors?

There are those who believe he was strongly influenced by a man many thought to be wild and dangerous. The river Jordan, Palestine, approximately 26 AD. A half-starved, nearly naked man storms along the river's edge predicting the end of days and practicing baptismal rituals.

JAMES D. TABOR: John the Baptist or literally John the Dipper, because to baptize means to immerse or dip in water, he's seen as the one who prepares the way for the Messiah. NARRATOR: According to the New Testament, people came from all over the Middle East to be immersed in the river by this charismatic preacher.

He was also believed to be Jesus' first cousin, a prophet who sought to cleanse the sins of man before the coming of the Messiah. Jesus' mother Mary is called a kinswoman of Elizabeth, the mother of John the Baptist. They probably knew each other all their lives growing up as kids, teenagers, into their 20s.

One of the little known secrets of the Bible is that John and Jesus were at one time rivals. John was actually the big prophet and that Jesus was kind of the upstart. REZA ASLAN: Many Jews thought that John the Baptist was himself the Messiah.

In fact, many of John's disciples thought of their master as superior to Jesus. After all, as they argued, who baptized whom? NARRATOR: As far as the occupying Romans and the Hebrew elite were concerned, John the Baptist was not only popular, he was dangerous.

Judea in the time of Jesus was largely a nation of sheepherders and farmers. Life under Roman occupation was hard, and the conditions were often brutal. The Jews didn't like being a conquered people.

No one does. REZA ASLAN: The Roman occupation of Jerusalem created a profound sense of trauma among the Jews. This created a sense of apocalyptic yearning among the Jews.

There was a feeling that God was going to free the Jews from the yoke of occupation. NARRATOR: Fearing riots from his growing crowds of followers, the Romans had John the Baptist arrested, sent to prison, and eventually beheaded. REZA ASLAN: With the death of John, his ministry, and, in fact, his disciples were passed on to Jesus.

CHRIS KEITH: The beheading of John the Baptist had to have been a very important moment in Jesus' life. It provided the inauguration of Jesus's kind of solo ministry. Probably more importantly, it marked Jesus as something of a political dissident as well.

NARRATOR: Following John's death, Jesus returned to Galilee and started building his ministry. Sometimes he attracted followers by performing miracles. In the Capernaum, he made a lame man walk.

In that Bethseda, he gave a blind man his sight. At a wedding in Cana, he turned water into wine. KATHLEEN MCGOWAN: At the wedding of Cana, Jesus turns the water into wine.

And he doesn't just turn it into any wine. He turns it into the best wine. So this is Jesus's first public miracle.

And once he comes forward with his first miracle, the floodgates really open. The ministry has begun. NARRATOR: But were the miracles of Jesus as reported in all four of the gospels real?

Or were they concocted by his followers to help prove what they believe to be his divine origins? ROBERT R. CARGILL: If we read the biblical text, Jesus created a great following the way that just about everyone else did.

He perform miracles. He did magic deeds. He caused the blind to see.

He was a healer. NARRATOR: Jesus also included among his followers many who were considered outcasts, the poor, and the disenfranchised. JODI MAGNESS: Jesus's message was aimed primarily at the relatively lower class, the poorer population of this sort of rural agricultural Galilee and not so much against the background of Jerusalem.

NARRATOR: In Matthew chapter 20 verses 1 through 16, Jesus preaches that all are treated equally in the kingdom of heaven, similar to a job where all laborers receive the same daily wage regardless of how many hours each worked that day. JAMES D. TABOR: I get the idea that he's maybe done he knows what it feels like to come too late and not get chosen or to get cheated on your wages.

NARRATOR: The concept of equal pay per day regardless of hours worked was a radical notion for its time and one that made Jesus seem threatening to the status quo. ROBERT R. CARGILL: Jesus liked to push buttons.

He liked to provoke controversy. He asked really hard questions, and he pressed his students. He pressed those who would listen, challenged them, right.

Why do we think what we think? Why do we believe what we believe? He was incredible teacher.

NARRATOR: But although Jesus eloquently preached about the value of a person's labor, he did not appear to have an occupation of his own. DALE MARTIN: If you really look at the New Testament, he doesn't hold down a job. He tells other people to leave their jobs.

He tells people to leave their families. NARRATOR: So without a job or any other apparent source of income, just how did Jesus support himself and his disciples? ROBERT R.

CARGILL: One of the secrets of the Bible is that Jesus's ministry was actually funded by a lot of women. If you read Luke, it's very clearly says that the women were the ones that were contributing the funds to fund this ministry. JAMES D.

TABOR: Some of the women are named-- Joanna, Susanna, and then Mary Magdalene. She's from up the road from Magdala. NARRATOR: Could Mary Magdalene, the woman who many believed to have been a common prostitute, really have been a major benefactor of Jesus' ministry?

CANDIDA MOSS: Some have said perhaps she owns a fishing business. She's Mary of Magdala, and so it could be that Mary's taking funds from her own business and giving them to Jesus. NARRATOR: There are even those who are convinced that Mary was not only one of Jesus' most devoted followers.

She was also perhaps his lover or even his wife. Certainly we discover in the Gnostic text that there are many, many references to Jesus's relationship to Mary Magdalene. She is referred to as his beloved.

She is referred to in a sexual manner in the Gnostic Gospels. So not only was Jesus married, but Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene. In the New Testament, Mary Magdalene shows up in Jesus' public ministry only one time in one verse.

The Gospel of Luke chapter 8, we're told that Mary Magdalene and a large group of other women used to support Jesus and their disciples financially. That's all it says. And so it's very difficult to get from that to Mary Magdalene being Jesus' closest disciple with whom he had a relationship and ended up getting married to.

NARRATOR: But whatever the nature of their relationship, many scholars now believe that the one thing Mary Magdalene was not was a prostitute. They also believe that she may have been the victim of a sexist agenda on the part of the church, one that has robbed her of a place of honor in the history of Christianity. JENNIFER WRIGHT-KNUST: What happens is that Mary Magdalene gets conflated with the woman who anoints Jesus in the Gospel of Luke who is said to be a woman of the city, a sinner.

She's interpreted as a prostitute by Pope Gregory in the fifth century, and the rest is history in the western Christian tradition. NARRATOR: Is Mary Magdalene's historic reputation as a prostitute the result of Pope Gregory's misinterpretation? Or was there another more deliberate agenda at work, an agenda that not only altered the historical understanding of Mary Magdalene but also that of Jesus himself?

Jesus is very much concerned with the poor, with the suffering. He likes to consort with sinners because he considers them the underdog. BART EHRMAN: Today people think of Jesus as the most righteous upright person who ever lived and had no taint on his personality.

But, in fact, his reputation in the New Testament was that he was a drunkard and a glutton and that his friends were prostitutes and sinners. NARRATOR: Was Jesus of Nazareth a social radical, a political revolutionary, a religious philosopher, or was he, in fact, the Messiah, the Son of God. Perhaps the answer can be found by an even more careful examination of the New Testament and secrets that have only recently been discovered.

Galilee, northern Israel. It was here more than 2,000 years ago that Jesus of Nazareth began his ministry and built his following. One day while traveling near the town of Caesaria Philippi, Jesus asked his disciples who do people say the son of man is.

When they offered various answers, he then asked who do you say I am. Simon Peter then declared you are the Messiah, the Son of the living God. DALE MARTIN: I'm fairly sure that the historical Jesus never openly taught that he was the Messiah.

I think if he did, we'd have more indications that he did in the first three gospels whereas we don't. We have more of that in John. ROBERT R.

CARGILL: In the Gospel of John, Jesus even uses a term to describe himself that's I think intentionally ambiguous. He refers to himself in the third person as the son of man. Well, the secret about the words son of man is that in Aramaic [aramaic],, it's just the way that you say a person.

So when Jesus uses the phrase son of man as a self-description, you don't know whether he's just saying himself or whether he's actually making a messianic claim. NARRATOR: During Jesus' lifetime, dozens of other aspiring self-proclaimed messiahs were criss crossing the holy land. Some were spiritual figures, claiming to cast out demons and heal the sick.

Others were more political, vowing to drive the hated Roman Empire into the sea. But Jesus, a Jew who was well versed in the scriptures, believed that the Hebrew prophets foretold of a Messiah who would liberate the Jewish people. They also predicted that the Messiah would be a descendant of King David and would restore the kingdom of Judea to peace and prosperity.

ROBERT MULLINS: Jesus's knowledge of scripture was so tremendous that he was acknowledged by the people and also by the religious authorities as one who knew the Bible quite well. REZA ASLAN: In the Hebrew Bible, there are multiple prophecies about what the Messiah is and what he is supposed to do. But there was at least some consensus in the time of Jesus that his primary task would be to liberate the Jews from the Roman occupation, redemption for the Jews, redemption for the House of Israel to recreate the kingdom of David on Earth.

NARRATOR: Did Jesus really claim to be the Messiah, the Savior whose actions would liberate the Jews? Or was he preaching an even more radical notion, one that went far beyond the teachings in the Hebrew testaments that all men are equal in the eyes of God regardless of wealth or even the origin of birth? DALE MARTIN: Jesus of Nazareth was an apocalyptic Jewish prophet, which is to say he was going around preaching about the coming kingdom of God and it would be a physical on Earth kingdom.

JEFFREY GEOGEGAN: On one occasion he is approached by a very wealthy man who asks what he do to be saved. Jesus said take all of your wealth, sell it, give it to the poor, and follow me. Wealth for Jesus was one of those things that stood in the way of people following him and following God.

There's also a great story about an adulteress and Jesus apparently letting this woman off scott free. BART EHRMAN: They say she's been caught in the act of adultery. According to the law of Moses, we're to stone her to death.

What do you say we should do? Jesus got a dilemma here because he says, yes, go ahead and stone her, he's violating his teachings of love and forgiveness and mercy. But if he says, no, let her go, he's breaking the law of Moses.

Well, he looks up and he says let the one without sin among you be the first to cast a stone at her. One by one, they leave until there's nobody left. And he says is there no one left to condemn you.

She says no, Lord, no one. He says neither do I condemn you. Go and sin no more.

MARK GOODACRE: It's a message all of that renewal, revolution, change, fulfillment. So he does see himself as something important, powerful, different that fulfills lots of what's gone before. NARRATOR: Jesus' message, one that promoted the idea that common people were in some ways equal to the wealthy and powerful, resonated with many of the occupied Jews.

They began to follow him everywhere and formed large crowds wherever he spoke. But as his followers grew in number, Jesus' populist teachings were being increasingly seen by the Romans as a threat. Did Jesus have a political agenda?

It is an issue many religious and Bible scholars have strongly debated for centuries. WILLIAM FULCO: Jesus makes it very plain himself that he's not after power and he's not involved in politics. Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's, under God, that is God.

Jesus is not involved in politics. He's not involved in trying to overthrow [inaudible] government. He's bringing a new spiritual reality.

He's a revolutionary that is already set up a provisional government. He tells the Twelve Apostles I've chosen you 12 because you will sit on 12 thrones ruling the 12 tribes of Israel. MARK GOODACRE: Jesus is a little different because there's not an obviously military angle to Jesus's kind of messianic identity.

In other words as far as we can tell, Jesus doesn't carry a sword around with him. He doesn't talk about building up an army. He doesn't like taking over Jerusalem or anything like that.

So Jesus does seem to have been a much more passive kind of figure, much more of the holy man kind of figure than a lot of the other messiah figures that we can track from that time. Anyone who tries to stand up against the status quo like a Moses figure or a Jesus figure or a Martin Luther King, Junior, figure, they know that they are heading for trouble. You cannot usher in the kingdom of God without ushering out the kingdom of Caesar.

For a Jew living in first century Palestine to be called the Messiah is to declare war on the Roman Empire. NARRATOR: Did allowing his followers to refer to him as the Messiah help to seal Jesus' fate? And did he deliberately encourage this notion because he knew that his death was inevitable, perhaps even necessary?

One thing is certain. Through his teachings, Jesus had made himself the target of both the Romans and the religious hierarchy of the Jews. It wasn't long before they would begin to plot his crucifixion.

For 1,500 years, the Roman Empire dominated the world, a far longer period than any of the empires that followed it. But around 30 AD, Palestine and its capital Jerusalem was considered by the Romans to be particularly difficult to rule. ROBERT R.

CARGILL: Jerusalem is the holiest city in Judaism. This is where the temple sits. This is where God resides.

Jerusalem would have been a place where Jesus would have encountered the Roman rule and occupation of the country. Temple was always sort of a tinder box where the Romans anticipated the possibility of Jewish uprising. NARRATOR: According to the Gospel of John, it was here in Jerusalem during the week before Passover that Jesus of Nazareth entered the city on a donkey.

There's certain prophecies that are given in Zecharia or Isaiah, Jeremiah. For example, the Messiah will come humble riding on a donkey. So here's Jesus last week of his life.

On a Sunday, he comes riding down the Mount of Olives on a donkey, almost panomiming this prophecy. CHRIS KEITH: There are very few Jews who knew the Old Testament scriptures that would have missed the analogy. If Jesus ever did ride into Jerusalem on a donkey, he would have been self-consciously encouraging them to think of him in terms of the promised Davidic king.

NARRATOR: With shouts of Hosanna, teeming crowds gathered around the man who was now being openly called Messiah, the one who would liberate the Jewish people from Roman rule. CANDIDA MOSS: To the Romans, that's constantly a red flag because that's political language. That's military language.

You're talking about a rebellion. WILLIAM FULCO: The Romans were probably a little alarmed that he was gathering a rather large following, which would make them suspicious of what's going on. NARRATOR: But if there is one event in the life of Jesus that is the most out of character, it is perhaps the so-called cleansing of the temple.

It is one of the few incidents that is reported in all four of the gospels and the one that likely cost him his life. GARY BURGE: When Jesus comes to Jerusalem, he immediately goes into the temple. He discovers the financial corruptions at work inside of the temple.

He knocks over some furniture. He chases out animals. He makes quite a scene, and his critique is this house of God, which is intended to be a house of prayer for all nations, not just Jews, all nations, it has become a house of commerce.

He is bringing that voice of judgment into the temple. And after he does this, it sets the course that leads to his death. NARRATOR: In all of the accounts of his life and teachings, Jesus appears to be loving, docile, and deliberately nonviolent.

Yet here in the largest and most important of all Jewish temples, Jesus reportedly shouts at and even whips people who he feels are committing acts of desecration. But why? Was Jesus trying to ignite a political revolt, or did he stage the event in a way that was deliberately intended to trigger his arrest and eventual martyrdom?

JAMES D. TABOR: Not so much staging it but sincerely believing that he's supposed to do this. Did he also read about how the Messiah's going to suffer for the sins of the people and he thought he had to go to the cross?

NARRATOR: Did Jesus really think he was the Messiah, the actual son of God? Or did he believe himself to be a spiritual leader and liberator? The question of how Jesus perceived himself will likely remain a secret for all time.

He told his disciples, according to several verses in the New Testament, that they would be rulers in the future kingdom. Who would Jesus be in this kingdom? I believe that Jesus taught the disciples privately that he himself was going to be the king.

One of the 12, Judas Iscariot, told the authorities what Jesus was saying in private. NARRATOR: On the evening of Passover, following what Christians refer to as the Last Supper, Jesus was arrested on a charge of sedition and brought before the Roman governor Pontius Pilate. REZA ASLAN: Pontius Pilate was a ruthless blood-thirsty governor who routinely sent his troops out into the streets of Jerusalem to slaughter the Jews whenever they disagreed with even the slightest of his decisions.

NARRATOR: Jesus' torture and trial before Pontius Pilate is possibly the most famous courtroom drama in the history of the world. But believe it or not, there are several Bible scholars who doubt the details as reported in the gospels. CHRIS KEITH: Was there a trial that condemned Jesus?

The Romans would not have killed Jesus without some type of hearing. I'm not sure how formal of a trial it was. The gospels give different details of how that actually played out.

I think that what historically is very clear is that there was some type of gathering. CANDIDA MOSS: When it comes to the trial, there are some historical problems with the trial as it is recorded in the New Testament. The historical details of that trial, they seem a little shifty.

It's held at night on a holy day of Passover. This is all illegal. NARRATOR: But whether or not there was an official trial, there is no scholarly debate over Jesus' ultimate fate.

CANDIDA MOSS: I think we can be certain that Jesus was crucified. People just don't make that up about their Lord and Savior. REZA ASLAN: The titulus, the plaque that they put above Jesus's head as he writhed in pain, Jesus King of the Jews, was an actual proclamation of the crime for which Jesus was crucified.

His crime was written above his head. He was executed by the state for the crime of sedition. NARRATOR: After the crucifixion, Joseph of Arimathea, a wealthy Jewish follower of Jesus, provided funeral linens and even offered his personal tomb so that Jesus could be buried before the Sabbath.

But what reportedly happened just 40 hours later became the cornerstone of one of the world's great faiths and an event still debated by scholars around the world, Jesus' resurrection from the dead. A garden near a Golgotha, Jerusalem. Three days after the crucifixion of Jesus, a small group of women enter the garden and approach the tomb where according to the gospel of Mark Jesus was laid to rest.

BART EHRMAN: Mary Magdalene saw Jesus get crucified and saw where he was buried, and on the third day, she goes to the tomb in the company of other women in order to prepare his body for burial. But they find that the tomb's empty. NARRATOR: The traditional explanation for Jesus' empty tomb is that he rose from the dead.

But is it possible that hidden within the pages of the New Testament is another even more controversial account of the story? The Gospel of John says that they put the corpse in a tomb that happened to be nearby the place of crucifixion. Joseph of Arimathea put him there, and there's no indication that that's where he's going to stay.

Because what's going to happen when the Passover and the Sabbath are over, you're going to have to go retrieve the body, carry out the proper final rites of burial, and then put the body in a final resting place. So my conclusion is we should expect the empty tomb. If you put it in its Jewish context, the body was taken for a final reburial.

NARRATOR: Could it be that the reports of Jesus' resurrection are based on a simple misunderstanding, that the real reason that Jesus' body was missing from the tomb was that because he died hours before the Sabbath, his body was later moved so that it could be properly anointed prior to its final burial? Or might there be yet another reason? BART EHRMAN: The disciples' hopes were completely destroyed by the crucifixion of Jesus.

But then some of them claimed they saw Jesus alive again, and stories started floating around that he, in fact, had been raised from the dead. This reconfirmed for the disciples what they previously had thought. Jesus must be the one favored by God.

He's coming back from heaven, and he's going to set up the kingdom here on Earth. NARRATOR: Was Jesus' crucified body deliberately removed from the tomb in an attempt to create speculation and controversy? And were the gospel accounts written in an effort to promote the notion of Jesus' divine origin?

I do think it's a historical fact that at least a few of Jesus' disciples believed that they saw Jesus alive after his death. Maybe they saw a shadow on a wall, and they would decide this is Jesus in some other form. Whatever they saw, that was such a shock to their system that they basically completely changed their view of Jesus.

Now he was no longer just a crucified prophet. And that's the beginning of Christianity. JAMES D.

TABOR: Jesus' followers finally made him everything. They made him the Messiah, of course. He's greater than any priest, any prophet, any king that's ever come.

ROBERT R. CARGILL: Can be said that it was his followers who elevated him to divine status. BART EHRMAN: His followers said that, in fact, true religion is about Jesus who has died and been raised from the dead.

And so Christianity became a belief in the death and resurrection of Jesus, the Messiah. NARRATOR: Is the ultimate secret about Jesus the fact that he was a holy man, a prophet, but still a mortal, no more, no less? Jesus is the success story.

His movement is the one that prevailed. NARRATOR: Could Jesus' divine status as the Son of God really be based on a plan by his followers to legitimize his teachings? Or is the nature of many of the questions and controversies surrounding Jesus' life and death really intended by God to serve as a test of faith?

It is a question that will undoubtedly be asked and debated for centuries. Because like the Bible itself, the word of God can be written in many languages, and it is up to us to interpret them.