Jesus - The Historical Facts Documentary

The man known to history as Jesus Christ, or Yeshua in his native Aramaic tongue, was born in Judaea, a region in the southern Levant in the Middle East. The Christian calendar commonly used throughout the world designates the Year 1 AD as the year of Jesus’ birth, though most scholars believe, based on circumstantial evidence relating to wider events in the Roman world, that he was born between 7 BC and 4 BC. Likewise, while his birth is celebrated on the 25th of December, Christmas Day, there is no concrete evidence for this. Almost everything about Jesus’ life, from

his birth to his death, as well as his resurrection, has been scrutinised by believers and non-believers alike. The tale of Jesus’ birth is one of the best-known stories in the world and is found in the gospels of Luke and Matthew. The fullest account is in Luke, who writes that his mother Mary, a young virgin from Nazareth in Galilee, was due to marry Joseph, a carpenter who was allegedly a descendant of the biblical King David. God sent the angel Gabriel to inform Mary of God’s plan, namely that she was to conceive a child from God in

the form of the Holy Spirit. Matthew’s version is slightly different, stating that the angel had appeared before Joseph and reassured him that he should still go ahead and marry Mary despite finding her pregnant, since she was carrying the child of God. The Bible states that months later Mary gave birth to the son of God in a stable in the town of Bethlehem. Bethlehem was the primary legal residence of Joseph and he and Mary had gone there to be recorded in a Roman census. Many biblical scholars have pointed out that the oldest traditions about Jesus do

not claim he was born as the Son of God, but rather that he attained this status upon his death and resurrection, while a slightly later tradition suggests that Jesus attained this status after his baptism. The earliest gospel, that of Mark, does not include any information about Jesus’ nativity. In this view it is held that, like any other human being, the historical Jesus was the son of two mortals, Mary and Joseph. The Gospels and other early sources indicate that Jesus had several siblings. Mark and Matthew mention four brothers: James, Joses, Simon, and Jude, as well as

several unnamed sisters. A brother of Jesus named James is also mentioned by the Romano-Jewish historian, Josephus, and the Apostle Paul, both near-contemporaries of Jesus, while the Apostle Thomas, also known as Jude, whose name means ‘twin’ in Aramaic, is sometimes identified as Jesus’ identical twin-brother. The idea that Jesus had siblings is challenged by Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox believers, who believed that the Virgin Mary remained a virgin throughout her life and therefore could not possibly have had any other children. They believe the siblings mentioned in the Gospels are either Jesus’ cousins or step-siblings from a previous

marriage of Joseph’s. Before progressing any further in assessing Jesus’ life and deeds, it is worth investigating both the historical context of Roman Judaea that he lived in and also the nature of the sources which are available for Jesus’ life. Mary and Joseph were Jewish. The exact origin of the Jewish people remains unclear even today, but they had emerged out of the chaos that followed the Late Bronze Age collapse in ancient times as a people who dominated much of the southern Levant by the eleventh century BC. There they would eventually rule over two polities, the Kingdom

of Judah and the Kingdom of Israel, with monarchs like King David and King Solomon expanding these Jewish states throughout a region that extended from the Mediterranean coastline inwards to the Sea of Galilee and the Dead Sea and from around the Sea of Galilee in the north, south to the southern edges of the Dead Sea and the Negev Desert. The Jewish people were united by a common cultural history and religion. They traced their origins to Egypt where they had allegedly been enslaved as a mass group during the New Kingdom era. Their great prophet, Moses, had subsequently

led the Jewish people out of Egypt and after forty years of wandering the desert they settled in the southern Levant and established themselves as a regional power there. They had their own distinct religion, a monotheistic one, which meant they believed in one, all-powerful god, a peculiar development in an ancient world where polytheism, the worship of multiple gods, was the norm. They also followed social customs which were attendant on their religion, such as the practice of circumcision, honouring of the Sabbath as a day of rest and the refusal to eat the meat of certain animals, notably

pork. Their religious worship centred on the Great Temple of Jerusalem in the main city of their polities. The Kingdoms of Judah and Israel were considerable regional powers for a time in the tenth, ninth and eighth centuries BC, but they had declined thereafter as other states in the Fertile Crescent became more powerful. This brought the Jewish people under foreign domination, most notably when, early in the sixth century BC, the Neo-Babylonians, under their ruler, King Nebuchadnezzar II, had conquered the southern Levant and destroyed the Temple of Jerusalem, bringing what was known as the First Temple Period to

an end. They also enslaved many of the Jews, bringing them back to Mesopotamia, an era which would become known as the Babylonian Captivity in Jewish lore. Eventually the Jewish people had begun to make their way home and under Persian rule decades later rebuilt the Temple of Jerusalem, so beginning the Second Temple Period, which was still under way when Jesus was born. The Jews acquired their independence again in the middle of the second century BC when the Maccabeans initiated a revolt against the Hellenistic Seleucid Empire. However, this was a short-lived independence, and as the Roman Empire

expanded throughout the Eastern Mediterranean in the second and first centuries BC, the Jews had fallen into the status of being a client state of Rome, meaning that a local Jewish ruler remained King over Judaea, but he was effectively a vassal of the Romans. The foremost such client king was Herod who had ruled for about three decades when Jesus was born. In a series of gradual steps Judaea was more fully absorbed into the Roman Empire, with the local Jewish rulers marginalised. Roman garrisons were established in places like Jerusalem and a Roman prefect or governor was appointed

as the chief Roman magistrate in what became the province of Roman Judaea in 6 AD. These political developments are important for Jesus’ story. The imposition of Roman rule had the effect of stirring up immense political unrest in Judaea, much of it centred on religion, the thing which marked the Jewish people as being so distinct from outsiders like the Romans. Where so many other subject people of Rome gladly accepted their rule, happy to have peace and prosperity, the Jewish people never acquiesced to it, in part because the Romans handled the management of Judaea so badly, with

rulers like Emperor Tiberius, who ruled the Roman Empire between 14 AD and 37 AD, a period encapsulating much of Jesus’ life, enflaming local tensions by disrespecting the sanctity of the Temple of Jerusalem. As these events played out, non-conforming religious preachers and groups abounded in Judaea. These included the Essenes, the Sadducees and the Zealots, many of which preached against the authority of what they perceived as the corrupt Temple authorities in Jerusalem and the manner in which they had facilitated the Roman takeover of the Jewish homeland in order to protect their own privileges. Others were simply wandering

preachers who followed the path of Charismatic Messianic Judaism, building up their own followings of hundreds of individuals. Jesus’ life would play out within this complex political, social and religious environment. The most important sources for Jesus’ life are the New Testament Gospels attributed to the four Evangelists: Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John. These four gospels were written between 70 and 110 AD, several decades after Jesus’ death. As such they are not entirely contemporaneous accounts of the messiah’s life and in the case of the Gospel of John, the latest of the four, was written as much as three-quarters

of a century later. The traditional view holds that the evangelists were either Jesus’ disciples, as in the case of Matthew and John, or their companions, as in the case of Mark and Luke, however in reality the gospels were most likely written by anonymous individuals and were only later attributed to the Apostles and their associates in order to lend them greater credibility. That said, most scholars do agreed that these four canonical Gospels were written by elite followers of Jesus’ teachings, albeit several degrees removed from the man himself, since they were written in Greek rather than Aramaic,

the language of much of the southern Levant in ancient times. The earliest Christian sources by a verifiable individual are the letters by the Apostle Paul, an early convert to what would become known as Christianity. These date to the middle of the first century AD. With respect to non-Christian sources, Jesus is mentioned by Josephus, a Romano-Jewish historian writing towards the end of the first century AD, as well as the Roman writers Pliny the Younger and Tacitus, who were also writing between 50 and 100 years after Jesus’ own time. The references to him in their writings are

brief and suggest that Jesus was not regarded as an important figure in the wider Roman world during his own time. The gospels are not true biographies in the modern sense and offer little insight into the chronology of Jesus’ life, since they are primarily collections of Jesus’ sayings and deeds used to promote his teachings. The gospels of Mark, Matthew and Luke are collectively known as Synoptic Gospels, since they are similar in content and structure, while that of John relates a different set of tales about Jesus’ life and is considered less reliable. While both Matthew and Luke

were based on Mark, they are believed to have also drawn on an earlier collection of Jesus’ sayings known by biblical scholars as the ‘Q source’, which has not survived down to the present day. Differences between the three Synoptic Gospels indicate that the Evangelists, as the authors of the four canonical gospels became known, would have drawn from other sources and oral traditions about Jesus’ life. The four canonical gospels are only a small proportion of the dozens of gospels known to exist. These other apocryphal gospels were not included in the New Testament. Most scholars believe there is

little historical value in the apocryphal gospels with the exception of the Gospel of Thomas and the Gospel of Peter, both of which possibly date to within a hundred years of Jesus’ lifetime. Any assessment of both the four canonical gospels and the other apocryphal gospels should note that the early heads of the Christian church, who organised it into a state religion during the reign of Emperor Constantine in the early fourth century AD, effectively selected which gospels they believed were most suitable in order to spread the new religion. They were not historians, nor was their mission to

present the most historically accurate version of the Jesus story. Thus, the gospels need to be handled with some caution, particularly so as they often differ on points of detail. Given these myriad issues, there is considerable disagreement about how much of the content of the gospels is authentic to the historical Jesus, and how much was added and embellished by the authors of the gospels to serve their own theology, or even edited by the early Church Fathers centuries later, to fit the mould of the church they were trying to create in Late Antiquity. In 1985, American biblical

scholars convened what they called the Jesus Seminar to try and identify what can be reliably attributed to the historical Jesus. The group found that 16% of the deeds and 18% of the sayings attributed to Jesus in the four canonical gospels and the apocryphal Gospel of St Thomas were likely to have been authentic as they were consistently related in each of the canonical gospels and were verified by other historical dates. Armed with these major caveats concerning the historical Jesus, we can proceed on to try and retrieve what we might call the historical Jesus from the conflicting

accounts of him presented through myriad sources. The difficulties inherent in this are seen in the mixed information about Jesus’ birth. None of the gospels offer any dates and even the year is disputed. Both Matthew and Luke indicate that King Herod was still alive at the time of Jesus’ birth, although he died soon afterwards, which would point to a date before 4 BC, when Herod is assumed to have died. However, Luke also states that Mary and Joseph had gone to Bethlehem because the Roman authorities were holding a census. According to Josephus, a census was called by

the Roman governor of the province of Syria to the north of Judaea, Publius Sulpicius Quirinius, in 6 AD. So we are left with a contradictory set of evidence for establishing the year of Jesus’ birth. This also calls into question the location of Jesus’ birth. While both Matthew and Luke state that he was born in Bethlehem, they offer contradictory narratives about the family’s movements. Matthew infers that Mary and Joseph possibly already lived in Bethlehem before Jesus was born, but the family escaped to Egypt after being warned about Herod’s plans to massacre all children under the age

of two, which he adopted after hearing that a child had been born who would become King of the Jews. It could be argued that, the authors of the canonical gospels were more interested in placing Jesus’ birth in Bethlehem than in historical accuracy, as an Old Testament prophecy foretold that a child would be born in Bethlehem of the line of King David and that he would become the ruler of the Israelites. Thus, the account of Mary and Joseph going to Bethlehem to be counted in the census could be challenged by those who believe that Jesus was

actually born in Nazareth, the town with which he was more commonly associated. While Jesus evidently grew up in Nazareth, very little besides is known about his childhood, as the gospels are only concerned about the events of his life after he became a religious teacher. Matthew’s Gospel refers to Jesus as the son of a carpenter or craftsman, and Jesus may have learned his temporal father’s trade as a young man. The only tale about Jesus’ childhood is in Luke, who states that when Jesus was 12 years old, he accompanied his parents on their annual visit to Jerusalem

to observe the Passover, the Jewish festival celebrating the Israelites’ escape from Egypt under Moses many centuries earlier. While Joseph and Mary were on their way home, Jesus remained in Jerusalem. It was allegedly only on the following day that his parents noticed he was missing. They returned to Jerusalem and spent three days looking for him before finding him in the Temple discussing religious issues with the teachers, who were impressed by his understanding. When Mary asked her son why he had not gone home with them, he replied “Why were you searching for me? Didn’t you know I

had to be in my Father’s house?” But none of his family understood what he meant. He then dutifully accompanied his family back to Nazareth. Since historians do not believe Jesus identified himself as the Son of God until late in life, if at all, this tale is best understood as a narrative device to foreshadow events in Jesus’ later career. One of the most important events in Jesus’ life was when he was baptised by John, son of Zechariah, better known to posterity as John the Baptist. According to Luke, in the fifteenth year of the Emperor Tiberius, or

29 AD, John became a wandering preacher, one of many in Roman Judaea at the time, urging people to repent for their sins as the Day of Judgement was at hand. For most Jews, Judgement Day did not mean the end of the world, but rather a major upheaval brought about by God to redeem the Israelites, while unrepentant sinners would be subjected to the divine wrath of God. Jesus accepted John’s message and received baptism from him in the River Jordan. According to Josephus, Herod Antipas, the Roman client king of Judaea at the time and for the remainder

of Jesus’ adult life, was alarmed by John’s prediction of an imminent political upheaval, in particular his criticism of Antipas’ marriage to his niece, Herodias, which he considered sinful under Jewish law. In the interests of political security, Antipas imprisoned John, sentenced him to death and executed him by beheading. Given these events, it is possible that Jesus was in some respects the successor to John the Baptist, of a movement he had established prior to his death. According to Mark’s Gospel, soon after John was arrested, Jesus began his work as a religious preacher in Galilee, spreading John’s message

that the day of redemption was near. Before doing so, the Synoptic Gospels relate that he spent forty days in the wilderness fasting, during which time he was repeatedly tempted by the devil. Matthew and Luke say that the devil asked Jesus to prove himself by turning stone into bread, secondly to become king of all the nations of the world on the condition that he worship the devil, and thirdly to throw himself off the top of the Temple of Jerusalem. In response to all three temptations, Jesus quoted from the Old Testament and refused to violate God’s law.

While the story of Jesus overcoming the temptations of the devil could be argued by some to be a literary device employed by the evangelists to set up the struggle between good and evil that would feature prominently in Jesus’ teachings, before beginning his work as a religious teacher, Jesus may indeed have spent some time in isolation contemplating his message and his relationship to God. According to Luke, Jesus was around 30 years old when he began his ministry. Unlike John the Baptist, who had operated from the River Jordan and attracted followers from throughout the Judean countryside as

well as Jerusalem, Jesus held his ministry in the towns and villages of Galilee in the north of Roman Judaea. The gospels state that Jesus initially preached at his hometown of Nazareth, but was rejected by the people there, who knew him as the son of the carpenter Joseph and drove him out of the town. Matthew’s Gospel states that after leaving Nazareth, Jesus went to Capernaum on the northern shore of the Sea of Galilee to spread his message, although Mark and Luke say that he had already been preaching in Capernaum for some time before his brief return

to Nazareth. Whether before or after his return to Nazareth, Capernaum seems to have served as Jesus’ base, and he often taught in the synagogue there. Unlike the Temple in Jerusalem, which was the abode of the unseen God and the venue for animal sacrifices carried out by priests, synagogues were places where local Jewish communities would gather on the Sabbath and talk about religious issues. Archaeological evidence of early synagogues in Galilee indicates that the congregation sat around the four sides of the room, with the leader in the middle, an arrangement that facilitated debate and discussion among the

group. Jesus possibly began his ministry by being one of the many contributors around the room who responded to the leader of the congregation. According to the gospels of Mark and Matthew, Jesus found his first disciples on the shores of the Sea of Galilee near Capernaum. According to their versions of events, he saw Simon and his brother, Andrew, fishing with their nets and told them to follow him. Further along the shore, he encountered the brothers James and John, the sons of Zebedee, who were on a boat with their father preparing their nets. They left their father

behind on the boat and joined Jesus’ growing entourage. Perhaps the four men were already aware of Jesus’ reputation, but they do not explain how and why they would simply give up everything to join Jesus. Luke claims that Jesus was preaching from Simon’s fishing boat and urged him to put down his nets. Although he protested that it was useless to do so, since he and his fellow fishermen had been fishing all night without catching anything, Simon duly cast his net and landed a large catch of fish, as did his comrades. Simon saw this as a sign

that Jesus enjoyed divine favour and joined him along with his friends. Fishing, rivers, water and the symbolism of fish abound throughout the story of Jesus. The four men were the first of a special group of Jesus’ followers who have become known as the twelve disciples or the Twelve Apostles. There are discrepancies in the list of twelve offered in the Synoptic Gospels, while John does not give a full list. The gospels refer to the leading role of Simon, later called Peter, and the brothers, James and John. Peter’s brother Andrew is mentioned by all four gospels, as

are Thomas and Philip, though they only have an active role in John’s Gospel. All four name Judas Iscariot as the disciple who betrayed Jesus. The three synoptics also name Matthew, Bartholomew, a second James, the son of Alphaeus, and a second Simon. While Matthew and Mark call the twelfth disciple Thaddeus, Luke has another Judas, called the son of James, while John refers to him as Judas (not Iscariot). In order to distinguish him from Jesus’ betrayer, he is often known in English as Jude. In an effort to reconcile the lists of the synoptics, Thaddeus and Judas are

often understood to be the same person. Meanwhile, John claims that Jesus had a disciple named Nathaniel, who is not mentioned elsewhere in the Bible. Perhaps the reason for the confusion is that the number twelve was symbolic and the authors of the gospels were attempting to ensure that there were exactly twelve apostles, even though the information they had on these disciples possibly conflicted with this. Yet there is surely some accuracy to the details of them. If the names and identities had been chosen purely at random by later writers they would not have confused their readers by

stating that there were two disciples named James and possibly two that bore the name Judas. The gospels indicate that after he gathered his apostles to him, Jesus and his disciples travelled around the towns and villages of Galilee spreading their message. Both Matthew and Luke mention that Jesus had taught in the nearby villages of Chorazin and Bethsaida, but that they had mostly rejected his teachings. Jesus appears to have avoided the major cities in Galilee, such as the city of Sepphoris a short distance from Nazareth, which had been the largest city in the region and subject to

Greek and Roman cultural influence, and the Roman administrative capital, Tiberias, built by Herod Antipas around 25 AD on the shore of the Sea of Galilee. Jesus’ focus on rural regions was possibly a reflection of his own background and his egalitarian message that held that everyone, including the downtrodden, had a place in the kingdom of heaven. This view is reinforced by the likelihood that Jesus and his followers did not travel through Galilee in much comfort. Matthew’s gospel includes an instruction from Jesus to his disciples not to take any money with them as they travelled, but rather

to live off charitable contributions and to stay with worthy men in each town. Jesus’ family members were seemingly not among his itinerant followers. Joseph is not mentioned after Jesus’ birth and Mary only makes a few brief appearances thereafter. A key figure who does appear regularly in the accounts of Jesus’ ministry is Mary Magdalene, a follower who is mentioned more often in the canonical gospels than several of the individual Apostles. Moreover, the reference to her as a ‘companion’ of Jesus in the non-canonical Gospel of Philip has led to speculation that she may have been Jesus’ wife.

In addition to his preaching, Jesus was credited with performing many miracles. Christians consider these deeds as evidence of Jesus’ divine powers as the son of God, but Jewish people in Jesus’ day believed that miracles could happen to anyone who prayed to and enjoyed the favour of God, while a general belief in magic amongst the Romano-Greeks of the Roman Empire was certainly not unheard of. Even Jesus’ opponents accepted the authenticity of his miracles, but claimed that he was summoning evil spirits rather than the benign God. The miracles that Jesus performed were primarily to do with healing

the sick. Although there were physicians in the ancient world, their limited understanding of medicine meant that their intervention was often counterproductive and people who were sick often turned to prayer for a cure. Perhaps the most striking example of Jesus’ alleged interventions was the resurrection of Lazarus of Bethany. In historical terms Jesus was not unique amongst Messianic Jewish preachers in ancient times that were believed to be miracle-workers. For instance, Josephus writes of Honi the Circle Maker, an individual of the first century BC known for his ability to successfully pray for rain after he drew a circle

around himself and vowed not to move until it started raining. Jesus’ ability to perform miracles was viewed amongst his followers as a sign that he enjoyed divine favour, but by no means an indicator of his own divinity. The Jews distinguished between charismatics, who could perform miracles by speaking to God, and magicians, who could employ particular formulas and incantations. Mark’s gospel, which places special emphasis on Jesus’ miracles, primarily features charismatic miracles, but also includes magical ones, such as the healing of a blind man by spitting in his eyes and laying his hands on him. Matthew and

Luke are less reliant on miracles to establish the divinity of Jesus, but primarily use them to show that he was fulfilling longstanding Jewish prophecies about the coming of a chosen one amongst the Jewish people. The miracles in Luke’s gospel show Jesus’ concern for the poor and for women. On one occasion, while teaching in the synagogue on the sabbath, Jesus healed a woman who was unable to straighten her back by placing his hands on her. Although the leader of the congregation rebuked him for working on the Sabbath, Jesus argued persuasively that there was no restriction against

him engaging in good deeds on the holy day of rest. While Mark claims that Jesus urged his patients to keep his interventions secret, his fame soon spread throughout Galilee and he could not go anywhere without being mobbed. Jesus alludes to his reputation as a healer when he is criticised by the Pharisees for dining with outcasts at the house of the tax collector Levi, whom Matthew’s gospel calls Matthew and identifies him with the disciple of the same name. Jesus responds, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to

call the righteous, but sinners.” Some of Jesus’ best-known miracles involve natural phenomena, such as the tale of him walking across water to rescue his disciples who were caught up in a storm while crossing the Sea of Galilee in a boat. There are also stories of Jesus feeding thousands of people with a few loaves of bread and some fish, while at a wedding feast at Cana he transformed water into wine when informed that the hosts had no wine to offer to their guests. While the disciples expressed amazement and bewilderment at Jesus’ walking on water, the feeding

miracles do not elicit much of a reaction among the masses. That is because these stories were possibly elaborated to make it seem that Jesus had many followers during his life, more than he in fact may have had. Overall Jesus’ followers and sympathisers saw him as someone who enjoyed God’s favour and could call on his powers to banish sickness, produce abundant food and control nature where necessary. Whether they had a sense of him as a divine being though is open to debate. There were many messianic prophets in Judaea in Roman times, of which Jesus was just

one. Moreover, the commonly cited issue of Jesus telling his followers that he was the son of God perhaps has little bearing on how he presented himself to his disciples as his meaning may not have been taken literally. After all, he said that all people were the ‘children of God’, making every male the ‘son of God’ by extension. While Mark emphasises Jesus’ miracles in his gospel, Matthew and Luke place greater value on Jesus’ teachings. The different methods scholars use to determine how many of the stories related in the canonical gospels are authentic lead to different conclusions

about what he taught. For instance, some of the best-known teachings of Jesus are found in the Sermon of the Mount in Chapter 5 of the Gospel of Matthew. The Sermon is introduced by a series of blessings known as the Beatitudes, including famous Christian phrases such as “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of Heaven”; “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth”; and “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God.” The Sermon of the Plain, found in Chapter 6 of Luke, contains variations of four

of Matthew’s Beatitudes, which are followed by four “woes” directed against the rich and powerful. As reflected elsewhere in his gospel, Luke’s Jesus is more of a social revolutionary who raises the poor and condemns the elites, while Matthew’s Jesus is less confrontational. Throughout his teachings in the gospels, Jesus repeatedly invokes the concept of a “kingdom of God” or “kingdom of heaven,” but there is considerable debate amongst biblical and religious scholars about what he meant by the term. Some biblical scholars argue that Jewish people at the time would have understood the term in two ways, as God’s

eternal kingdom of heaven, where their souls would go after death, or as a future kingdom of God on earth in which God would actively exercise his power. The kingdom of God may come to earth within their lifetimes, or he would resurrect true believers after their deaths so that they could experience the glory of his rule on earth. In a limited sense, Jews also believed that the kingdom of God already existed on earth in some ways, since God could intervene in earthly matters by answering their prayers. In the canonical gospels, Jesus referred many times to the

kingdom of God in all of these respects. The Austrian polymath, Albert Schweitzer, argued in the early twentieth century that Jesus had prophesied the coming of the kingdom of God on earth in the near future, though more contemporary biblical scholars note that the historical Jesus only spoke of the kingdom of God in the here and now. When we dig down into what Jesus allegedly told his followers and those who came to hear him preach, we gain an insight into why he was possibly ruffling feathers amongst both the Roman authorities and the Jewish Temple authorities in Jerusalem.

On many occasions Jesus speaks about a reversal of the existing political and social hierarchies in Judaea, saying that, quote, “the last shall be first and the first shall be last.” This theme is reflected in the Beatitudes, in which Jesus asserts that the poor will be favoured in the kingdom of God. The parable of the Prodigal Son, which appears in Luke, illustrates Jesus’ belief of a merciful God who is prepared to admit repentant sinners into his kingdom. The parable tells of a father of two sons. While the elder remained at home with his father, the younger

took his inheritance and left the house. He soon spent all the money and was reduced to feeding pigs, an activity that would have appeared abhorrent to all Jews as swine were considered unclean. Nevertheless, when he returned home and begged his father to take him back, the latter rejoiced and ordered a feast to celebrate. The elder brother complained to his father that he had been a dutiful son all his life and had never been feted like his younger brother. The father explained to his elder son that he had shared everything with him at the family home,

but that he had now found his younger son who had been given up for lost. The message was that God was prepared to welcome any sinner who was prepared to return to his fold. This could also be interpreted as Jesus claiming that those who had been led astray by the corrupt Temple authorities in Jerusalem could be welcomed into God’s grace if they repented. Jesus’ general willingness to embrace sinners and his belief in a merciful God appears to contrast with the Sermon on the Mount, in which he encouraged his followers to apply higher moral standards than

those stipulated by Jewish law. For example, Jesus believed that divorce should be prohibited on the grounds that remarriage would count as adultery, a view that went beyond the Jewish law, which accepted that humans could make mistakes in their choice of partner. Elsewhere in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus cites the commandment against murder, and argues that even anger is sinful. On the subject of adultery, Jesus warns that looking at a woman lustfully is already adultery of the heart. The exhortation to turn the other cheek and to love your enemies are similarly presented as going beyond

Old Testament laws. Elsewhere in the gospels, Jesus argues against a strict application of the Jewish law. In all three synoptic gospels, for instance, Jesus’ disciples are criticised by the Pharisees for picking grain on the Sabbath. Jesus said in response, quote, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. So the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath.” Jesus’ message has led many biblical scholars to contend that he was the leader of a growing social reform movement which challenged both the Roman and Jewish hierarchies present in his day. His message was not

altogether estranged from that of the Cynics, a group of Greek philosophers who in the fourth and third centuries BC rejected social norms and lived according to nature rather than the artificial rules adopted by man. Jesus may even have been responding directly to his knowledge of the Cynics, as he was a quite knowledgeable figure, one who was also familiar with some of the key tenets of Buddhism and most likely Zoroastrianism, a Persian monotheistic faith system in ancient times. In any event, Jesus can be identified as an opponent of the prevailing Jewish elites’ conception of a society

that separated Jews from Gentiles, the morally pure from the impure and the rich from the poor. Still, while Jesus may have attracted large crowds, the gospels include instances of his teaching being rejected. His teachings would have been challenged by some of his contemporaries, and there is a set of stories in the gospels known as the controversies in which his opponents, usually the Pharisees, criticise him for doing things which they considered to be violations of Jewish law. However, it is also very possible that the authors of the gospels took Jesus’ sayings out of their original context

in order to set up literary confrontations in which Jewish law was debated. In other respects, Jesus’ habit of dining with sinners and tax collectors, and his rejection of some of the asceticism of John the Baptist, may have alienated potential followers. Whatever the size of his following might have been, it is relatively certain that Jesus claimed to speak for God. The authors of the gospels regarded Jesus as the messiah, a word in Aramaic and Hebrew which means “The Anointed One,” the equivalent of which in Greek is Christos or Christ. The term had been used by Jews

to refer to prophets and kings, but in the gospels Jesus rarely refers to himself as the Messiah. Jesus is also identified as the “Son of God,” not only in the nativity scenes in Matthew and Luke but also at his baptism in the River Jordan. In Mark, God adopts Jesus as his son after his baptism, while the Apostle Paul, who predates Mark, suggests that Jesus was only designated the “Son of God” upon his resurrection. Another title which appears frequently in the gospels is “Son of Man,” a label Jesus applies to himself but also to a figure

who will bring the kingdom of God to earth in the near future, who may have been a different individual. Perhaps none of these three titles truly express the role Jesus envisioned for himself as the viceroy of God in his future kingdom on earth. The story of Jesus’ death and resurrection is familiar to a vast number of people, not just Christians. It happened during the Jewish month of Nisan, which occurred around April every year. During this Jesus and his disciples travelled to Jerusalem to celebrate the Jewish feast of the Passover, and the happenings at the time,

are now remembered in Christian tradition by Easter celebrations today. The year when this occurred is debatable. Nearly all biblical scholars agree that Jesus was meant to be in the third year of his ministry and so was 33 years of age at the time. However, since the year of his birth is debated, we have to try and establish the year in a different way. What narrows this down is that Pontius Pilate was serving as prefect or governor of Judaea at the time. We know from other evidence that Pilate held that office from around 27 AD to

36 AD. Therefore Jesus’ arrival to Jerusalem must have occurred within this window. If we accept that 4 BC is a probably year for his birth and that he was around 33 years at the time of his crucifixion, then we arrive at a probable date of 29 AD in which these events occurred. Jesus’ party arrived a week before the festival to carry out the purification rituals, including the sacrifice of a lamb at the Temple. Upon his entry to Jerusalem riding a donkey or a mule, the gospels say that Jesus was greeted by a crowd who exclaimed,

quote, “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!”, while in Matthew and Luke he is explicitly hailed as the son or spiritual heir of King David. The following day, he went to the Temple and, quote, “overturned the tables of the moneylenders and the benches of those selling doves,” accusing them of turning the Temple from “a house of prayer” to “a den of robbers.” Chapter 13 of Mark has Jesus predicting of the Temple of Jerusalem that, quote, “there will not be left here one stone upon another,” and that a host of calamities would

befall his followers. However, he warned his disciples not to despair, as these events were a precursor to the coming of the kingdom of God. Matthew and Mark also have Jesus’ opponents accusing him of threatening to destroy the Temple. It should be noted in interpreting all of this that the four canonical gospels were written in the decades after the destruction of the Second Temple of Jerusalem by the Romans in 70 AD in the midst the infamous Jewish Revolt in the province, so when Matthew, Mark, Luke and John had Jesus prophesize the destruction of the Temple, they

had knowledge of the fate that would befall it about forty years after Jesus’ own time. The actions of Jesus and his Apostles in Jerusalem at the feast of the Passover clearly agitated the Temple authorities. That much seems very clear from all surviving accounts of Jesus. The size of the crowds that gathered to greet him possibly indicated that his following was growing in a way which now threatened the priests who exercised so much power in the city, while Jesus’ entry into the Temple precinct and his overturning of the tables and the report of his threatening the

Temple were clearly attacks on the authority of those who ran the Temple. This behaviour also alarmed King Herod Antipas, the Roman client ruler. While Jesus was preaching in the countryside of Galilee, his message of social revolution would have been seen by Antipas and the aristocratic priestly caste of Jerusalem as relatively harmless, just the musings of one of many provincial preachers with a small following. But now Jesus had brought his incendiary ideas to the very heart of the Jewish world. He was consequently immediately identified as a threat to the social order and one which had to

be dispensed with. During the week before Passover, Jesus continued to teach and perform miracles in Jerusalem. On the day of the feast of Passover, Jesus ate with his disciples in what has become known as the Last Supper. The Last Supper is described in the three synoptic gospels and by Saint Paul, though there are some differences in each account. While they were eating, Jesus told the Twelve Apostles that one of them would betray him to the authorities. Immediately before the Last Supper, Matthew and Luke tell of Judas Iscariot being offered money to betray Jesus to the

Temple authorities, who needed someone to identify him as they did not know what he looked like. Matthew adds that Judas was offered thirty pieces of silver. All three synoptics portray the disciples arguing among each other when Jesus revealed that one of them would soon betray him, though only Luke has Judas speaking up and attempting to protest his innocence. As Jesus broke the bread, he told the disciples that it was his body. He then filled a cup of wine and passed it around the table, telling his companions that this was the “blood of the covenant.” These

actions, the seeming transformation of the bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ, would become central to the Eucharist in Christian teaching and are the very heart of the religion through the taking of the sacrament during the Mass. While Jesus’ sense of his betrayal is attested to in all three synoptic gospels, he made no attempt to escape from Jerusalem. Instead after the Last Supper he went with his disciples to the Mount of Olives and prayed at the Garden of Gethsemane. Jesus was highly distressed, and berated his disciples for falling asleep and failing to

keep watch, but when the authorities found him, and Judas identified him to them by kissing his cheek, he willingly gave himself up. Jesus was then interviewed by the high priest of Jerusalem, Joseph Caiaphas, who charged him with blasphemy and recommended his execution, although his real motivation may have been to do with preserving public order. This decision was quickly confirmed by the Sanhedrin, a court of the priests of the Temple that was rapidly convened according to some versions of these events to condemn Jesus. This done, he was handed over to Pontius Pilate, the Roman prefect of

Judea who under the system of governance in place had to confirm the decision made by the Temple authorities. The gospels here depict Pilate as finding Jesus broadly innocent of any crime, but that he bends to the demands of both the Temple authorities and the Jewish mob to condemn him and so he orders the crucifixion of Jesus. This depiction of Pilate’s actions is one of the most difficult sections of the canonical accounts of Jesus’ life and death to accept at face value. It attempts to absolve the Romans of the crime of killing Jesus and instead places

responsibility for it squarely on the Jewish people. What must be borne in mind is that the early heads of the Christian church, who after a generation or two were nearly all Gentiles rather than Jews, were anxious at all costs to distinguish themselves from the Jewish people, as there had been several Jewish revolts against Roman rule between 66 AD and 135 AD. Thus it made sense from a propaganda perspective to vehemently distinguish themselves from the Jewish authorities in the canonical gospels. In doing so they were portraying Christianity as a distinct religion from Judaism and also trying

to present themselves as a people who were largely loyal to Roman rule, unlike the Jewish people who had revolted so many times in recent decades and who had experienced prejudicial Roman policies as a result. This decision to present the Jewish Temple authorities and inhabitants of Jerusalem as being responsible for condemning Jesus to death in the canonical gospels would be responsible for a lot of the Anti-Semitism that pervaded Christianity for many centuries to come. On the morning of Friday, 15 Nisan, the day after Passover, Jesus was led out of Jerusalem along with two other convicted criminals

and crucified on the Hill of Golgotha overlooking the city. According to Matthew and Mark, at around three in the afternoon, Jesus cried out “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” This cry was perhaps an appeal to God to make his suffering end, but others speculate that Jesus was convinced that God would intervene to prevent his execution and establish him as his viceroy on earth. As he continued to languish on the cross, he realised he had been mistaken in that belief and was lamenting it. Not long afterwards, Jesus of Nazareth was dead. The Christian

tradition holds that one of his followers, Joseph of Arimathea, a wealthy individual who may have had contacts within the government and the Temple, then obtained permission to take his body from the cross and bury him in a tomb with the assistance of some of Jesus’ female supporters. They buried him hurriedly as the Sabbath was approaching. Yet when they went to anoint his body on the Sunday morning after the Passover they found that his tomb was empty. In the weeks that followed, Jesus’ disciples then saw him resurrected on several occasions. He was not a ghost or

a reanimated corpse, and his appearance defied any earthly description. For instance, Paul, who claims that the resurrected Jesus appeared to him, described seeing Jesus inhabit a spiritual body, distinct from the mortal bodies of human beings. Any attempt to explain the resurrection of Jesus is for theologians rather than historians, but clearly some of Jesus’ followers believed strongly enough in his message that they now set about propagating it across the Roman world. Three of his disciples in particular, Peter, James, and John, continued to play a leading role, while Saul of Tarsus, who became a believer in Christ’s

message after his death and resurrection, adopted the name Paul and became a leader of the new movement. These early believers soon became known as Christians. Within a short period of time they had abandoned the idea of trying to convince fellow Jews of the sanctity of Christ and his message and instead began to actively proselytize further west amongst the Gentiles of the Roman Empire. They gained a significant number of followers in the Eastern Mediterranean and by the early second century AD there were a substantial number of Christian communities in places like Anatolia in western Turkey and

in Greece. However, it was really in the third century AD, as the Roman Empire experienced a period of profound political, economic and social crisis, that the Christian Church began to gain huge numbers of followers. A half a century of state-led persecutions by the Romans, from the Emperor Decius in 249 AD down to the inception of the Great Persecution of Emperor Diocletian in 303 AD, followed. Thereafter the Emperor Constantine saw which way events were heading, issued the Edict of Milan in 313 AD that offered tolerance to Christians and then began establishing Christianity as the state religion

of the Roman Empire. A century later Christianity was conquering all before it and the old polytheistic religions of the Pagan Greeks and Romans were under attack all around the Mediterranean world. Hence did a small sect of radical Judaism become the religion which conquered the Roman world. Jesus Christ is an enigmatic character. Unlike many characters from the Old Testament, who some biblical scholars doubt the very existence of, there is no denying that Jesus was a real historical figure, one who is referenced by non-Christian writers of the first and second centuries AD such as Josephus, Tacitus and

Pliny the Elder. So much else, though, about his life is speculative. He was almost certainly born in Judaea around the year zero, with a date close to King Herod’s death in 4 BC being the most likely. He then grew up in the town of Nazareth, living an uneventful life until around 30 years of age when he began a ministry as a charismatic preacher, one of many who flourished in Judaea in Roman times. He gained a small, though dedicated following. Over time his message of raising the poor up and reversing the social order of Judaea irked

the Temple authorities in Jerusalem so much that they decided to move against him after he and his followers visited the Temple during the week of Passover, probably sometime around 30 AD. After they condemned him, the Roman prefect, Pontius Pilate, agreed that Jesus should be quickly crucified. Afterwards his followers claimed that they had seen him risen from the dead and that Jesus was the “Son of God”, part of a Trinity of divine beings that included God and the Holy Spirit. The story of Jesus after this is really the story of a church being born. Some may

argue that the shaping of the image of its founder to suit the designs of that embryonic church was achieved by selecting which accounts of his life should be recounted and that, the historical Jesus is very difficult to tease apart from the Jesus that was curated by the Church Fathers in the third and fourth centuries AD, but despite this there is no denying the immense historical significance that the man named Jesus has had on history and religion right down to the present day. What do you think of Jesus? Was he the Son of God, or was

he just one of many Jewish messianic prophets operating in Judaea in Roman times, one who was reacting against Roman rule and how the temple authorities were overseeing the Temple of Jerusalem in the first century AD? Please let us know in the comment section and in the meantime, thank you very much for watching.