What Do We Really Know About Jesus?

no he didn't invent Christianity it's quite possible that he had a a wife when he was younger was Jesus a very naughty boy he's not the Messiah he's a very naughty boy now go away hello my name's Helen Bond and I'm professor of Christian Origins at the University of Edinburgh I'm also co-host of the podcast biblical time machine and I'm here today to answer or to try to answer the most often Googled question about [Music] Jesus so here we go was Jesus called Jesus um yes he was probably called Yeshua which is the Aramaic version

of Jesus it just means God Saves and was quite a popular name at the time Jesus is the Greek version was Jesus born in Bethlehem now this is a little bit more complicated because certain Matthew and Luke want you to think that Jesus is born in Bethlehem this is the the town of David um and so there's clearly Legends and stories that Jesus was uh was born there but the difficulty is that um the stories that we have in Matthew and Luke's gospel the only birth stories we have date from the late first century so

um that's quite a long time after Jesus was actually born it might go back to genuine recollection but it might also be that Jesus was just born in Nazareth and then these stories developed later deliberately trying to link him to Bethlehem the city of David because people want to say that that Jesus is a second David was Jesus real what archaeological evidence is there for him well the first bit was Jesus real yes I think there's good reasons to think that Jesus was real certainly his followers start to talk about him within in a a

couple of Decades of his death there's not any archaeological evidence for him but then who would have archaeological evidence you know what would be left of any of us after 2,000 years Jesus is an artisan he's a a builder or a carpenter he's not going to leave any evidence in the archaeological world so I don't think we should be too worried that we don't have archaeological evidence and I don't think we should be too worried that Romans only start to talk about him a lot later either the more important thing is that followers do start

to talk about him Paul writes about him in his letters within a couple of decades so I think there's a good chance that Jesus was real what records are there of Jesus well okay there's actually a lot of Records so the earliest ones are the letters of Paul um they date to the the late 40s and early 50s so that's very close to the date of the crucifixion Paul doesn't tell us a great deal about Jesus but he he tells us about his death and Resurrection he says he had followers um he mentioned certain sayings

of Jesus things like that probably the most comprehensive accounts of Jesus are in the gospels and there's four gospels in the Bible in the New Testament there's also a huge number of gospels outside the the New Testament ones that didn't get into the New Testament and some of these are from maybe the 2 Century um and Beyond so the earliest records then are Paul's letters and uh the gospels how popular was Jesus this this is an interesting one actually because the the gospels give the impression that everybody followed him loads of people crowds you know

couldn't get enough of him and that was probably right on one level Jesus is this this popular healer and and um Prophet so probably people are coming out and they're wanting to be healed and they're wanting to hear what he's saying but um I mean clearly he was executed in the end he was very unpopular with a group of people in Jerusalem and I imagine that they weren't the only ones who s saw Jesus as something of a threat and perhaps were a bit worried by him so I think in general terms Jesus had a

high degree of popularity amongst the ordinary people but probably the higher up the echelons of society you went the more worried people were by him was he crucified I think this is probably the one we can say 100% yes to it seems a very odd story for um the early Christians to to make up if if Jesus wasn't crucified why on Earth would you say that and we know that one of the difficulties that early Christians had was in in getting people to join the New Movement when they said well you know he has great

teaching but it's a bit awward that he was crucified by the Romans and they have to sort of explain that away I think there's very good chance that that's 100% true what languages did he speak H this is an interesting one too so I think his native language would have been Aramaic that's what people in in the whole of this sort of Eastern region spoke that was their their native language it's not impossible that he had a few words of Greek because Greek was the sort of the language that uh United everyone that sort of

the Posh people spoke and um it was it was the language that you could use with Travelers and Traders and so if he's a a carpenter or a builder or we don't quite know exactly what it is he did but it might be that he speaks a few words of Greek um in order to sort of you know get by in his trade what clothes did he wear Yes again this is an interesting one because the impression you have from one of these Jesus films is that he's sort of wearing the bedin outfit you know

he's got long hair he's got these robes maybe you know an outer robe there sort of flowing garments going right down to the ground he's got sandals on his feet some of that might be true but it does seem that people of his sort of class would have had much shorter tunics um basically people in Judea are wearing whatever anybody else is wearing in the Roman Empire at this time and so some people might have worn togas but probably someone like Jesus would have had a shorter tunic maybe to his waist maybe with a belt

possibly some kind of cloak over it he would have worn uh sandals but but also there's evidence that people wore little sort of sock things to keep their feet warm which I think is very sweet so the whole sandals and uh and socks the Jesus look is actually genuine I'm always wondering about underwear too and probably he would have had some kind of loin CL or or undergarment like that particularly if his um if his tunic was quite short unfortunately and this is a bit nasty but most people at the time had lice particularly if

you only had one set of clothes and clothes were extremely um expensive and were made at home for most people you didn't go out to the market unless you were very rich so um he may not have had that many changes of clothes and probably like most people of his day he had light on his head and his body and he probably would have had quite short hair um at the time everybody was wanting to look like the emperor the Emperor Augustus of course had a short haircut and uh and no beard it might have

been different when Jesus was um walking um around and you know on the road with people maybe he didn't have much of a chance to get his hair done and to have a shave but his ordinary look I think would probably have been short hair rather than that um that look that we normally have and of course very dark hair and skin who were his parents the the gospels Matthew and Luke say that his parents were called Mary and Joseph and in the absence of any other um ideas there I suppose that that may well

be true Mary was an extremely common name almost a third of women in the first century were called Mary and Joseph is also common so um it they may well have been called Mary and Joseph did he do Miracles ah well this is an interesting one certainly people thought that he was doing Miracles and when opponents write about Jesus or come and and speak to him to his face the interesting thing is that they never say what are you talking about you're not making any difference to these blind people or these lame people they what

they argue is that he's channeling some sort of satanic power rather than um doing it through the power of God and also you need to think about this sort of first century context Jesus is not the only one to be able to do Miracles there are holy men in the Jewish tradition who are said to be able to do Miracles who can make the the the rain come or who can uh heal people there are people in the Old Testament Elijah Elisha people like that who can work miracles in the Greek and Roman worlds too

there are people who have these powers and of course the God ofius is believed to be able to to heal people so so this is a world where it's believed that people can heal and people can receive healing so Jesus is part of this sort of uh this general landscape so I think you either believe all of them or you believe none of them and but certainly people thought and Jesus got a reputation as a great healer was he born in a barn well um according to Luke's gospel he was born in a stable or

I mean it there there's there's a discussion as to how you translate that is it part of a a sort of a homestead where it the part where the animals are there's also a later tradition that uh Jesus was born in a cave the the honest answer is we just don't know it depends how much you trust these uh birth stories which are sort of picture language they're trying to build up a picture of Jesus and to say that he's the he's the promised Messiah he's the the the King David II maybe he was born

in a barn but we don't really know what ethnicity was Jesus well we know for sure that he was Jewish completely Jewish his parents were Jewish he would have gone to to synagogue his whole thought world is is Jewish so um yeah I don't think there's any doubt about that one why did the Romans want to kill him this is right the end of Jesus's life of course part of the difficulty here is that he's come to Passover um to Jerusalem and the city is absolutely full of people celebrating the feast they're drinking they're they're

having time off work which they don't normally do in this kind of society and he's sort of giving people this story about the coming kingdom of God and people are getting very excited by this and the one thing that the Roman Governor needs to make sure is that there's not any kind of a riot or an uprising particularly at a time like Passover so it's a very volatile difficult time of the year and I think as much as anything pilate wanted to get rid of him because he was a threat to Law and Order there's

a chance he might cause a riot he's got followers they've come with him From Galilee he's doing things in the temple he's he's overturning the the tables of the money changers he's prophesying the Temple's destruction so probably better just to get rid of him and make sure that everything runs smoothly did he invent Christianity uh this is a really interesting one I would say the answer to that is no he didn't invent Christianity a lot of people think that Jesus was the first Christian but that's not true at all Jesus was Jewish and throughout his

entire life he was a Jew what he wanted to do was Reform Judaism he wanted to um to call people to repentance and and to say get yourself ready for the kingdom of God God is about to break into human life and transform the world and those 12 disciples he had are probably representatives of the 12 tribes of Israel so it's very much a Jewish Reform movement I think nothing could be further away from Jesus's mind than creating a new religion that's that's named after him it's much much later some people say that Paul invented

Christianity but I would say it's even further beyond that there's not even a word for Christianity at this period it's much later second third Century or so when Christians and Jews clearly start to be different things that you can actually talk about Christianity as something distinct from Jewish ways did Herod tried to kill Jesus well he might have done and it depends which Herod you mean one one of the problems with the herods is that there's lots of them and they're all called Herod at this period it wasn't Herod the Great um or Herod the

first who was on the throne it was his son Antipas and he was the tetrarch or the ruler of Galilee the area where Jesus grew up we don't know for sure that Herod wanted to to kill Jesus in Luke's gospel um a Pharisee goes to Jesus and says beware of of Herod because he's looking for you but it makes a lot of sense that Herod Antipas might have been interested in Jesus because Herod has already killed John the Baptist who was sort of Jesus's predecessor so if Herod has killed him Jesus might well have been

a bit nervous that um he didn't want to get too close to Herod Antipas and that does sort of fit in with the um the record in the gospels because we never see Jesus going to any of the big cities where Herod sort of has his stronghold he's always in the rural areas the the towns and Villages and around the lake so maybe he was keeping away from Herod did Pontius Pilate exist wow well I've heard people say did Jesus exist but this is yes for sure Pontius pilot exists not only is he mentioned in

the gospels but he's also mentioned in the Jewish historian Josephus in both of his Major Works the Jewish War and the Antiquities and he actually tells us quite a lot about Pilate um he's also mentioned in a Jewish philosopher called Pho of Alexandria and he was a a very near contemporary of pilate he was writing around about ad40 and pilot was sent back to Rome around about 37 so very very close there there is some archaeological evidence connected with pilot but it doesn't specifically have his name on apart from a ring that it's a very

cheap and nasty ring but it says Pilato on on it and one of the things that people think about this ring is that it was perhaps given to one of his administrators and it's perhaps like his seal his stamp so I think yes definitely Pontius Pilate existed did he have disciples did Jesus have disciples not uh pontious pilot yes we all know about the 12 disciples of course who represent the renewed 12 tribes of Israel and these are 12 men but it seems to me that Jesus had a lot more than that we learned about

women who also walked around with him and were part of this inner group and that makes a lot of sense because if the disciples are going out spreading the message the men can easily go and talk to other men but men would have found it a lot harder to talk to women to go into women's areas in houses or to talk to women as they're cleaning by streams and things like that so I think you would have needed quite a lot of female disciples as well just to spread the message so I think Jesus had

lots of disciples um 12 in particular but uh not only them did Jesus marry Mary Magdalene well the thing is we actually know nothing about Jesus's marital status it's quite possible that he had a a wife when he was younger if so I think he probably left her behind in Galilee or maybe she died we just don't know certainly when Jesus starts on his ministry I think it would be very unlik likely that he's got a wife he's telling people to get ready for the kingdom of God which is going to break into people's lives

very very soon and God is going to transform the world that's not really the sort of talk you hear from someone who's got a wife and he's not really encouraging people to marry have children settle down the whole sort of thrust of his um his message is you know get ready because the world is going to end that's not somebody who's getting married and I know Mary Magdalene is often given that starring role as Jesus's wife Mary Magdalene was Jesus's wife the strange thing about Mary Magdalene is that she hardly appears in the gospels we

do know that she's one of Jesus's followers and um along with other women and in John's gospel she goes down to the empty tomb and she sees a vision of the the resurrected Jesus but there's absolutely nothing in that to give the impression that she's Jesus's wife who is she my dear that's Mary Magdalene the prostitute she was no such thing there's no impression either that she's a prostitute which is the other job she's often associated with and all of that is a much later development so I don't think there's any evidence that Jesus married

Mary Magdalene was he a carpenter well this is interesting this translates a Greek word that that can mean carpenter it can also mean a stonemason or a builder so it's something along those lines some kind of skilled Craftsman my personal favorite actually is that he was a boat builder and I think that's why he was so at home on the Sea of Galilee and why his first followers were all Fisher folk um but that's a bit of a niche forew not many people think he was a a boat builder where is his grave ah well

nobody knows there is a grave in the the holy Seiler Church in Jerusalem that was found in the early 4th century and it's a first century grave but we don't really know um I mean it would be very unlikely that it's actually the grave of Jesus it was found by Helena the emperor Constantine's mother there's another alternative grave in Jerusalem too the garden tomb um and that's been very popular since the 19th century particularly with Protestants who don't like all the gold and everything that you get in the Holy Seiler but this one definitely isn't

his his grave it's a very old tomb it's it's from the Iron Age and doesn't seem to fit what we know about Jesus's tomb from the the gospels so the difficulty is we just really don't know we don't even know whether it's true that he had this sort of melum that belongs to Joseph of aramia I think it's quite a natural thing that the the gospel writers and the early Christians want to imagine that Jesus had a nice proper burial but as far as we know it could have actually just been quite a quite a

shallow tomb somewhere you know the kind of burial that someone who's been executed is more likely to have had at all events it's quite interesting that we don't have any veneration of Jesus's grave we don't hear of anything like that in the early church what other religions does Jesus appear in well this is not my special area I have to say but I know that he's actually quite a major character in the Quran where he's a prophet there he doesn't actually get crucified in the end he seems to sort of Dodge it somehow in the

Quran but um so he is um held in in high esteem in that work and I'm not sure that he's in any other religion besides that was Jesus a very naughty boy well I think some people here have been uh listening to uh the Life of [Applause] Brian now you listen here is not the Messiah he's a very naughty boy now go away he's not the Messiah he's a very naughty boy in some ways though he actually was or at least we have some um infancy gospels as they're called infancy Gospel of Thomas tells us

all sorts of stories supposedly to do with Jesus's Boyhood so they're filling in that gap between Jesus's birth and the one story that we have about Jesus's boyhood in um Luke's gospel when he's aged 12 Jesus is really really naughty he kills other other children and he's really rude to his um teachers in the end nobody wants to teach him and and and and the people the town's people in Nazareth ask Joseph and Mary to take him away they say because he's killing our children and it it's very difficult to know what to make of

this this text why is Jesus is so naughty the power of the a God but the mindset of a child and maybe one of the things in this in this uh text is that he gradually sort of learns how to control his divine nature so that the last story we see is Jesus in the temple with the teachers of the law and by that stage he's sort of learned to live with his divine nature but if you want some stories about Jesus as a very naughty boy then the gospel infancy Gospel of Thomas is the

place to look so that's the end of the questions everything you ever wanted to know about Jesus so I've been Helen Bond and if you want to know more about Biblical history then go to my podcast biblical time machine and if you want some excellent top historical stuff go to history Hit YouTube channel