Who is the “Kosher Jesus”?

How the Criteria of Historical Jesus Research Can Tell Us Who Jesus Wasn’t

By Micah Ben David Naziri © 2011 New Dawn Publications. All rights reserved.

MicahNaziri@gmail.com

Recently, Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, perhaps the most famous rabbi in America, authored a controversial book by the name of “Kosher Jesus.” Like his “Kosher Sex,” the title was intentionally provocative. “Kosher Jesus?” How could Jesus be Kosher? To be kosher, Jesus would have to have been Jewish, in every sense that the word implies. That means that Jesus was not simply a “Judean,” nor was he simply of Jewish parentage, but – this title asserts – he lived and died a practicing Jew.

To those who are unfamiliar with the field of research termed “The Quest for the Historical Jesus,” and lately simply, “Jesus Research,” or “Historical Jesus Research,” this assertion might sound fairly preposterous. The image of Jesus depicted in traditional Christianity is anything but kosher. A common Orthodox response to Rabbi Boteach’s book has been simply “there’s nothing kosher about treifah.” To be sure, the Traditionalist, Christian literary character of Jesus is treif, and indeed, even anti-Jewish. This literary character of Jesus, in the Gospel narratives, has in fact been responsible for untold amounts of anti-Semitism, and quite a bit that has been told as well. Everyone from Mel Gibson, to Adolf Hitler, to Martin Luther has rooted their Jew-hatred in words attributed to the character of “Jesus Christ.”

Rabbi Boteach too acknowledges that he was raised in an Orthodox community where there was no differentiation between the historical Jesus and the literary character, in whose name so many pogroms and even the Holocaust, were committed. Boteach explains that he was later inspired by the work of Hyam Maccoby (1924–2004) to investigate a more-probable Jesus than the character which appears in the amalgamated image of the Gospel accounts. Because his critics are largely unfamiliar with Maccoby’s research, and also because this research is not always the most exemplary presentation of impartial Historical “Jesus Research,” Rabbi Boteach’s work seems, to his critics, to be nothing more than randomly “picking and choosing” of what one wants to believe from the Gospel narratives, as radio talk-show host Tovia Singer argued, in debating Rabbi Boteach.

The reality is that Historical Jesus Research is based on very clearly articulated historical-critical methodologies that are a far cry from “picking and choosing.” Because neither Rabbi Boteach’s book, nor the works of Hyam Maccoby are the best representation of what Historical Jesus Research is, and how it can lead to the conclusion that the historical Jesus was, in fact, a kosher Jesus, this study presents the methodologies and the research from scratch, for the reader of Rabbi Boteach’s work – fans and critics alike – to gain a better understanding of why this is not simply a matter of “picking and choosing” which attributions of Jesus to believe, but a matter of historiographical methodological process; one which while Boteach does not articulate, he does seem to have an intuitive grasp of.

This work will explain that methodology of Historical Jesus Research. It will outline the history of “Quest” periods in this scholarly endeavor, and how the criteria used in this field evolved over the past few centuries. It will then compare and contrast various Gospel accounts to demonstrate the unique hand of each Gospel author in crafting an unhistorical Jesus, in their own images. It will finally, having demonstrated narrative interpolation, give some examples of historically-probable Jewish-Jesus material, which was so well-known that the Gospel narrators could not disown such accounts, and thus recorded these passages, in spite of their conflict with the over-all image of Jesus, which they wished to present.

The Traditional Jesus

Before one looks critically at probable historical personalities – Jesus, his disciples, his brother, John the Baptist, Paul, etc. – or statements attributable to them, it must be explained just what is meant by the “Traditional” versions of the Jesus figure. Put simply, the traditional Jesus is the Jesus of Christian theology.[1] All canonical accounts of Jesus blend any seeming contradictions together in order to form a picture harmonized by theologians. The traditional Jesus was born of a virgin in Bethlehem but then raised in Nazareth after his mother and step father fled to Egypt. He dazzled scholars many times his age at the Temple, and after decades of enigma, emerged again to be baptized by his cousin John. He then began his ministry, teaching, healing and finally being crucified as part of the divine plan to redeem humanity from their sins as a metaphorical sacrificial lamb. After foretelling that he would be in the belly of the Earth for three days and nights, he was resurrected on the third day. He then appeared to his disciples, able to pass through walls, and disappear at will, finally being taken up into heaven with the promise that he would return again. When one speaks of a historical, kosher Jesus, they are not speaking of this literary character.

An historian of religious communities, or an anthropologist, may be appropriate in documenting the emergence of these beliefs. These stories, however, can be seen as mythological in nature, and should be differentiated from a more objective, critical assessment of the events, personages and eras they describe. One must then employ historical-critical methodologies, as a historian, in order to ascertain probabilities of what might lie behind religious narrative.  This, as we will see, is the “Quest for the Historical Jesus” wherein, the “historical” Jesus is understood in the context of first century Roman Judaea, and the Second Temple Jewish sectarian milieu, not in the context of later Christian doctrine.[2]

The Quest for the Historical Jesus

With the advent of Albert Schweitzer’s groundbreaking 1906 work, The Quest of the Historical Jesus, there were several generations of what have become termed, as a result, the “Quest for the Historical Jesus.” W. Barnes Tatum delineates these phases of scholastic evolution in his In Quest of Jesus, as eras of academic “Jesus Scholarship” broken into five distinct “Quest” periods, which can help us understand the evolving approach to determining probable historicity in Jesus Research.

Period 1: Pre-Quest (Before 1778)

Period 2: Old Quest (1778-1906)

Period 3: No Quest (1906-1953)

Period 4: New Quest (1953-1985)

Period 5: Third Quest / Renewed Quest / Post-Quest (Since 1985)[3]

The Quest for the Historical Jesus is itself intertwined with eighteenth century European Enlightenment. Prior to this, the question of a differentiated, historical Jesus would have been, in the words of James K. Beilby and Paul R. Eddy, in The Historical Jesus: Five Views, “a strange proposition.”[4] In this, the “Pre-Quest” Era, there was simply no quest for a historical Jesus, nor any other Christian Testament figure. The Jesus of Christian theology was the assumed Jesus of history. Contradictions between Gospel accounts were seen as part of a harmonic total Gospel, vision.[5] In the perception of scholars of this period, “there was no need to go searching for Jesus when he could be easily found in the Gospels.”[6]

The “Old Quest” or “First Quest” has, since Schweitzer, generally been considered to have been inaugurated by Hermann Reimarus in 1778.[7] James K. Beilby and Paul R. Eddy explain, however, that “this is not quite accurate,” as such modern era thinkers as Benedict Spinoza, Isaac La Peyrere, Richard Simon, Thomas Woolston, Peter Annet and Thomas Morgan laid the groundwork for what would eventually emerge as the mature historical-critical method.”[8]

Reimarus argued for a distinction between the Jesus of history and the Christ of faith,[9] explaining that Jesus “was a born a Jew and intended to remain one.”[10] This Jesus saw himself as a herald of a coming “kingdom of God” but this phrase indicated “the usual meaning” that would have been understood “amongst Jews of his time” as a Messianic kingdom.[11] In Reimarus’s view, the Jesus of history was a Jewish messianic claimant whose hopes for establishing the Kingdom were dashed when he was arrested and crucified. Thereafter, Reimarus asserted, his disciples stole their teacher’s body and fabricated the story of his resurrection.[12] Reimarus’s work was so controversial in his day that he locked the entire manuscript away in his desk, only to be discovered after he died.

Between Reimarus and Schweitzer, numerous scholars began to write about Jesus in a way that deemphasized mythological views of him as a supernatural figure and emphasized his moral teachings. Karl Venturini (1768–1849) rationalized that Jesus’s “miracles” were born of his abilities as an herbalist, who brought with him a “portable medicine chest.”[13] Venturini also revived the “swoon” theory, proposed by Peter Annet (1693 – 1769). In his The Resurrection of Jesus Considered, Annet advanced that Jesus only appeared to die on the cross, based on forensic observations noted accidentally in the Gospel accounts.[14] Venturini argued that Jesus was revived by Joseph of Arimathea, who, knowing he was not dead, offered his tomb for an above ground burial where he was nurtured back to health. David Friedrich Strauss (1808-1874) rationalistic The Life of Jesus Critically Examined, was so controversial that soon after it was published in 1835, he was denounced as nothing less than the Antichrist himself![15] In France during this period, Ernest Renan, who we will see again in his writings on the historical Muhammad, wrote The Life of Jesus (1863). This work presented an ethical, yet apocalyptic, non-supernatural teacher and would-be messiah, who was crucified as a result of his socio-political aspirations.

Two main criticisms arose by this time, however, regarding the historical Jesus. First, it was argued that in seeking the historical Jesus, one often only saw a figure very palatable to them. Conversely, however, Schweitzer’s conclusions that Jesus was a “wild-eyed and ultimately mistaken prophet of doom-left little for modern Europeans to embrace.”[16] So profound was his contribution, however, that Schweitzer is generally regarded as marking the end of the First or “Old Quest” period. Reacting to Schweitzer, the “No Quest” period emerged, though its designation as such was something of a misnomer. While it is true that the “Quest” for the historical Jesus became highly criticized and was no longer in vogue, studies were still produced during this time that continued to evolve our understanding of a historical Jesus, separate from the Christ of Christian theology.[17] During this period, three important works emerged, employing German form-critical Biblical studies, included works from Karl Ludwig Schmidt, Martin Dibelius and Rudolf Bultmann.[18] Still, eventually Bultmann would express concerns about Quest activity, along with scholars like Karl Barth, Emil Brunner, and Paul Tillich.[19]

Bultmann’s The History of the Synoptic Tradition became the standard for a “No Quest” approach for some time.[20] Bultmann expressed skepticism that the Jesus of history could ever be recovered in any detail.[21] Martin Kahler articulated in his The So-called Historical Jesus and the Historic Biblical Christ (1892) that the Quest was “a blind alley”, and the entire endeavor was irrelevant because “the historical Jesus of modern authors conceals from us the living Christ.”[22] Beilby, explains that the perspective of opponents of the Quest in this period was that “it can’t be done; and if it can, it shouldn’t.”[23] Donald Macpherson Baillie summarized, in his God Was In Christ, that this opposition as “defeatism of those who give up all hope of penetrating the tradition and reaching assured knowledge of the historical personality of Jesus.”[24] He concluded further that “such defeatism is a transient nightmare of Gospel criticism, from which we are now awakening to a more sober confidence in our quest of the Jesus of history.”[25]

The “New Quest” or “Second Quest” that followed was a revival of the academic quest to extrapolate data from the Gospel narratives, abandoned by Bultmann, in the “No Quest” period now approached anew by one of his students, Ernest Käsemann. Käsemann too shared Bultmann skepticism towards using the Gospels as a historical source.[26] He argued however, that the end of the Quest could not be permitted simply because of obstacles that one faces in researching and the limitations of the Gospel narratives. He asserted that “the clash over the historical Jesus has as its object a genuine theological problem.”[27] Thus, he maintained that the Quest must be resumed to bridge the gulf between “the exalted and the earthly Lord”, and demonstrate, somehow, continuity between them.[28]

It was during the “New Quest” period that the criteria for determining the potential historicity of Gospel material began to be assessed and employed in a more formal manner.[29] The redaction criticism of the 1950s elucidated that Gospel authors were not simply collecting earlier traditions, but were molding traditions into the image of their own theological tendencies. The most notable of the criterion developed at this time was “the criterion of dissimilarity” or “double dissimilarity”.[30]  This methodology states that “the earliest form of a saying we can reach may be regarded as authentic if it can be shown to be dissimilar to characteristic emphases both of ancient Judaism and of the early Church.”[31]

With the opening of Günther Bornkamm’s work Jesus of Nazareth (1960), the position of this era was cemented: “No one is any longer in the position to write a life of Jesus” as any sort of biographical narrative.[32] Bornkamm explained that this “is inherent in the nature of the sources”,[33] owing in part to the fact that “we possess no single word of Jesus and no single story of Jesus, no matter how incontestably genuine they may be, which do not contain at the same time the confession of the believing congregation or at least are embedded therein.”[34] We can discuss “occurrence and events” in the life Jesus, based upon assessed probabilities, but not anything approaching a biography, as the Gospel narratives purport to be.[35] Examples of conclusions reached as a result of this quest Bornkamm and Bultmann both maintained that the historical Jesus never proclaimed himself to be the Messiah,[36] but that “the Messianic character of his being is contained in his words and deeds and in the unmediatedness of his historical appearance.”[37]

Following this, the “Post Quest” or “Third Quest” has emerged, employing any and all sources which might lend to a better historical understanding. In a supplementary chapter to Stephen Neill’s The Interpretation of the New Testament, Tom Wright first defines what he sees as the “Third Quest.” Stanely Porter summarizes Wright’s view in terms of being “fortified by Jewish material and using historical methods”.[38] Sources include not only the Christian Canon, but also apocryphal accounts and contemporary accounts that describe varieties of Judaism in the first century of the common era. The historical Jesus is to be understood in the context of first century Judea, and Second Temple Era Jewish sectarianism, along with various possible influences from Hellenistic sources[39] (both Jewish and non-Jewish alike); such as we see in Burton L. Mack’s “Q and a Cynic-Like Jesus”.[40]

To describe the sectarian environment which Jesus was situated in, sources such as Philo, Pliny or Josephus or the Dead Sea Scrolls are examined.[41] Later resources are considered as well, but with an emphasis placed upon those sources which predate the activity of Jesus.  Sources from the Christian canon may potentially holding some clues, but nothing therein is taken at face value, and these texts are not given more weight than third party sources, or archeology.

Bart Ehrman explains that sources written more than a century after Jesus are generally disregarded by historians as unreliable.[42] He notes that “the sources we’ve examined” are employed simply because they “are the only sources available.” Ideally, he lists the following that “a historian might hope for”, as the criteria for a probable historical source. These are “an ideal set of sources for reconstructing a past event”:

1.       The sources would be numerous, so that they can be compared to one another.

2.       The sources would derive from a time near the event itself, so as to be less likely to be based on hearsay.

3.       The sources would have been produced independently of one another; so that their authors were not in collusion.

4.       The sources would not contradict one another, so that one or more of them is not necessarily in error.

5.       The sources would be internally consistent, so that they would show a basic concern for reliability.

6.       The sources would not be biased towards the subject matter, so that they would not have skewed their accounts to serve their own purposes.

Ehrman explains “a few very basic methodological principles” in approaching material from a historical-critical perspective and “reconstructing a past event”. First, he explains, “historical sources that are closest to an event have a greater likelihood of being accurate than those that are further removed.” Moreover, “as an event gets discussed, and reports of it circulate, there are greater opportunities for it to be changed, until,” finally, he explains “just about everyone gets it wrong.”[43] Thus, Ehrman concludes that “the less time has elapsed in the transmission process, the less time there is for alteration and exaggeration” and thus, “the earliest sources should be especially valuable.”

Contrary to this “Historian’s Wish List”, Ehrman explains that while Jesus is described “numerous ancient sources”, which are in some cases “independent of one another”, on the other hand “there are obvious historical problems” with these sources, such as the fact that they are “not disinterested accounts, by impartial observers, written near to the events which they describe.” Instead, they were written by those professing faith, “who had a vested interest in what they said about him, who were writing a long time after him, 35-65 years.” Moreover, Ehman notes, “none of these authors were an eye-witness,” and in their composing of the Gospel narratives, they were addressing “different audiences with different needs” – these being “writings produced by believes, for believers, to produce belief” – and thereby conforming the telling of their accounting of Jesus’s life to the contexts and beliefs of their respective communities.[44]

At the same time, Ehrman notes that any detective will attest to the fact that even eye-witness accounts, written shortly after the events which they describe, are not guarantees of accuracy.[45] “Even if these authors had been eyewitnesses,” he explains, “we would still have to examine their testimonies carefully.” This is because “the needs of their audiences affected the way they told these stories.”[46] He similarly explains that each Gospel narrative is a separate story – a separate testimony – and that the amalgamation of these oral traditions set to pen, in effect creates a fifth narrative, different from each of the four composing it.[47]

Secondly, Ehrman explains that methodologically, “we should be alert to later developments in the tradition that have affected our sources,” including “theological views” about Jesus “that develop after his death.” Commenting on the lateness of the Gospel attributed to John, in which a theologically “divine” and “exalted” character of Jesus appears, Ehrman explains that “our question as historians is not whether or not the things Jesus says about himself in the Gospel of John are true. The question is whether the things that Jesus says of himself in John are the things that the historical Jesus actually said.” Related to this, Ehrman explains, the third rule is to beware of the bias found in each individual author. These three basic rules can be applied to “every historical figure that you are trying to establish from antiquity.”[48]

In addition to these rules, Ehrman notes that all of the historical criteria used in Historical Jesus Research can be boiled down to three essential criteria. These can be applied “any tradition” or any source, whether earlier or later, on the historical Jesus, in reconstructing what a historical figure probably said or did. The first is the “Criterion of Independent Attestation,” or of “Multiple Attestation”. This, however, does not prove that the tradition multiply attested is authentic, just that it is more likely to be authentic, in that – for certain – it is older than the multiple sources that attest to it; thus bringing us back to the value of the earliest sources. “For that reason,” Ehrman explains, “our first criteria has to be supplemented by others.”[49]

The “Criterion of Multiple Attestation” holds that a passage is more likely to go back to Jesus if it has been preserved in two or more sources which are independent of each other; not drawing from one another, or a common source.[50] When two or more independent sources present similar or consistent accounts the tradition likely pre-dates the sources. John Meier writes in A Marginal Jew that “The criterion of multiple attestation focuses on those saying or deeds of Jesus that are attested in more than one independent literary source and/or in more than one literary form or genre.”[51] Furthermore Meier explains that “the force of this criterion is increased if a given motif or theme is found in both literary sources and different literary forms.”[52] John Dominic Crossan writes in The Historical Jesus that this “Plural Attestation in the first stratum pushes the trajectory back as far as it can go with at least formal objectivity.”[53]

Second, the “Criterion of Dissimilarity” can be understood in the analogy of a court witness. Ehrman explains that, “sometimes a witness has a vested interest in the outcome of a trial. Is the witness distorting, or even fabricating testimony for reasons of their own?” Taken by itself, however, something being dissimilar only argues for its probability; the inverse is not necessarily true. That is, just because something fits with the tradition does not necessarily make it untrue, it is only more suspect than something which is dissimilar and had less likelihood of being preserved had it not been true. It is thus not as useful for showing what Jesus didn’t say as it is for showing what it is likely Jesus did say.

In addition and related to the “Criterion of Dissimilarity,” one of the most important criteria is the “Criterion of Embarrassment”, which is a “heightened form of the criterion of dissimilarity.”[54] This approach maintains that a Traditionalist narrative would not have preserved an account or narration that embarrassed or overtly conflicted with the historical dogma at the period of documentation unless the widespread attestation of the accounts made the stories impossible to disown. Thus, such an account has a higher degree of probability for being historically reliable by virtue of the fact that they were recorded in spite of what they recorded.

A crucified Messiah figure would hardly fulfill Jewish expectations, yet all early accounts of Jesus maintain his crucifixion. This indicates that crucifixion was so widely known that the authors had to confront this reality and create a narrative that explained this problematic incident in the context of a theology that was literarily adapting to these undesirable circumstances.[55] The other side of this and the “Criterion of Dissimilarity” is that of determining and scrutinizing solitary accounts which conform too closely to a known agenda of the author.[56] There are some examples so extreme, that this criterion can be used to demonstrate what Jesus did not say. For instance, Ehrman cites three times in the Gospel attributed to Mark, where Jesus predicts that he must go to Jerusalem, be rejected, be crucified and rise from the dead. As well, in the Johannite account, Jesus claims to be coequal with God; a view which is simply unparalleled in the earlier Synoptic accounts, and reflects a theology emerging much later.[57]

Third, the “Criterion of Contextual Credibility,” understanding Jesus’s own context, to better understand which traditions are more probably descended from him. Ehrman explains that “for ancient documents, reliable traditions must conform to the historical and social contexts to which they relate.” Thus, he continues, “sayings, deeds and experiences of Jesus have to be plausibly situated in the historical context of first century Palestine,” from what we know of that context from third party sources, “in order for them to be trusted.” We can thus say with a fair degree of probability that “any saying or deed that does not make sense in this context is automatically suspect,” and might well have been fabricated to conform to later ideas.[58] All other criteria, Ehrman explains, reel from these three.

“The” Gospel?

Much of the problem of the Traditional Jesus lies in the early “Gospel harmony” that was presumed between what were clearly discrepant accounts of Jesus’s words and biography. In the second century, Tatian the Assyrian (c. 120–180), the student of Justin Martyr (103–165), published a single composite Gospel composite account, which was termed the Diatessaron. The Syrian Church used this amalgamated Gospel from the second through fourth centuries. It was not until the fifth century that the Syrian Church came to accept all four canonical Gospel accounts.

The Diatessaron was extremely popular and the premise of it – that the various Gospel narratives somehow could “harmonize” to form a single, composite Gospel narrative – was an idea that gained even more traction, and has had remarkable staying power. This remains the dominant assumption amongst Christians, Jews, Muslims and even the secular third-party who is even marginally aware of the Traditionalist narrative. To illustrate the problem with this assumption, the following “quiz” is provided, with “answers” in parentheses:

1. Who first came to the tomb on Sunday morning?

a. One woman (John 20:1)

b. Two women (Matt. 28:1)

c. Three women (Mark 16:1)

d. More than three women (Luke 23:55-56; 24:1, 10)

2. She (they) came

a. While it was still dark (Matt. 28:1; John 20:1)

b. After the sun had risen (Mark 16:2)

3. The woman (women) came to the tomb

a. To anoint the body of Jesus with spices (Mark 16:1-2; Luke 24:1)

b. Just to look at it (Matt. 28:1; John 20:1)

4. The women had obtained the spices

a. On Friday before sunset (Luke 23:54-56; 24:1)

b. After sunset on Saturday (Mark 16:1)

5. The first visitor(s) was/were greeted by

a. An angel (Matt. 28:2-5)

b. A young man (Mark 16:5)

c. Two men (Luke 24:4)

d. No one (John 20:1-2)

6. The greeter(s)

a. Was sitting on the stone outside the tomb (Matt 28:2)

b. Was sitting inside the tomb (Mark 16:5)

c. Were standing inside the tomb (Luke 24:3-4)

7. After finding the tomb empty, the woman/women

a. Ran to tell the disciples (Matt. 28:7-8; Mark 16:10; Luke 24:9; John 20:2)

b. Ran away and said nothing to anyone (Mark 16:8)

8. The risen Jesus first appeared to

a. Mary Magdalene alone (John 20:14; Mark 16:9)

b. Cleopas and another disciple (Luke 24:13,15,18)

c. Mary Magdalene and the other Mary (Matt. 28:1,9)

d. Cephas (Peter) alone (1 Cor. 15:4-5; Luke 24:34)

9. Jesus first appeared

a. Somewhere between the tomb and Jerusalem (Matt. 28:8-9)

b. Just outside the tomb (John 20:11-14)

c. In Galilee, some 80 miles (130 km) north of Jerusalem (Mark 16:6-7)

d. On the road to Emmaus - Miles (11 km) west of Jerusalem (Luke 24:13-15)

e. We are not told where (Mark 16:9; 1 Cor. 15:4-5)

10. The disciples were to see Jesus first

a. In Galilee (Mark 16:7; Matt. 28:7,10,16)

b. In Jerusalem (Mark 16:14; Luke 24:33,36; John 20:19; Acts 1:4)

11. The disciples were told that they would meet the risen Jesus in Galilee

a. By the women, who had been told by an angel of the Lord, then by Jesus himself after the resurrection (Matt. 28:7-10; Mark 16:7)

b. by Jesus himself, before the crucifiction (Mark 26:32)

12. The risen Jesus

a. Wanted to be touched (John 20:27)

b. Did not want to be touched (John 20:17)

c. Did not mind being touched (Matt. 28:9-10)

13. Jesus ascended to Heaven

a. The same day that he was resurrected (Mark 16:9,19; Luke 24:13,28-36,50-51)

b. Forty days after the resurrection (Acts 1:3,9)

c. We are not told that he ascended to Heaven at all (Matt. 28:10, 16-20; John 21:25; the original Gospel of Mark ends at 16:8)

14. The disciples received the Holy Spirit

a. Fifty days after the resurrection (Acts 1:3,9)

b. In the evening of the same day as the resurrection (John 20:19-22)

15. The risen Jesus

a. Was recognized by those who saw him (Matt. 28:9; Mark 16:9-10)

b. Was not always recognizable (Mark 16:12; Luke 24:15-16,31,36-37; John 20:14-15)

16. The risen Jesus

a. Was physical (Matt. 28:9; Luke 24:41-43; John 20:27)

b. Was not physical (Mark 16:9,12,14; Luke 24:15-16,31,36-37; John 20:19,26; 1 Cor. 15:5-8)

17. The risen Jesus was seen by the disciples

a. Presumably only once (Matt. 28:16-17)

b. First by two of them, later by all eleven (Mark 16:12-14; Luke 24:13-15,33,36-51)

c. Three times (John 20:19, 26; 21:1,14)

d. Many times (Acts 1:3)

18. When Jesus appeared to the disciples

a. There were eleven of them (Matt. 28:16-17; Luke 24:33,36)

b. Twelve of them (1 Cor. 15:5)

As the reader can see, any of these answers is “correct,” according to the literary mythology of the Christian Testament. Thus, in understanding the criteria for determining probability to a given attribution to Jesus (whether words or events), we must look at how the actual four canonical Gospel narratives differ from, and in some cases even contradict, one another. That is, we must learn to “unread” the assumptions of the Diatessaron “harmony” of the Gospels. When variations of one author’s telling of the story are presented, they should be presumed to be in contrast to another author’s telling, rather than a telling of a similar, but repeated, story or “missing details,” such as narrative, characters present or outcomes that are simply different in other tellings. The most obvious and fundamental way that we can do this, and a way that will help highlight to those new to this field of study, is by comparing and contrasting the Traditionalist narrative accounts, so that the biases, interpolations, and at times fabrications of the respective Gospel authors can be brought to the surface. In this way, we can ascertain probability based on a set of historical-critical criteria that were developed over centuries of secular scholarship, rather than simply “picking and choosing” what suits us to attribute to Jesus.

The Discrepant Accounts

Throughout the history of Christianity since the Council of Nicea[59] and the Canonization of the Christian Testament texts and Epistles, a psychosocial blending process of reconciliation slowly clouded the individual contrasts in perspective of one Gospel account from the next. When the “Nativity” story is told, it is the Nativity story. When the “Easter” story – about the arrest, trial, crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus – is told, it is the Easter story. There is no notion of four Nativity stories, or of four Easter stories. To the Traditionalist, there is only one story, and as the analogy is often given, we are to regard them as would a police investigator with four different, completely unbiased, third-party eye-witness accounts of a crime or accident scene.

There are numerous problems with such an analogy; foremost is the problem that none of the Gospel narrators (with the possible exception of the original articulator of the material for John), were “eye-witnesses” to anything they are describing. This becomes additionally problematic as they narrate private conversations, and indeed even the innermost thoughts of characters which the reader is to presume are historical figures, incidences and thoughts transpiring, and subsequently documented by the divinely-imparted narrator. Discrepancies are regarded as persepectival, and all reconcilable. Just as a police investigator would blend all trustworthy accounts into one – in order to gain the clearest picture – we are asked to do the same with the Canonical Gospel accounts, begging the question that the accounts are themselves trustworthy, without criticism.

Another significant problem with this is that there is that if we are to carry such an analogy to its logical end, what we have are three variant accounts of purported witnesses. Our question, as investigators or detectives, should be: why are each of these “witnesses” apparently lying? We have four people claiming different people did different things, said different things, saw different things; and indeed that different people were at different locations at different times. This is perhaps no place more obvious than in the narrative of the Tomb scene following the Resurrection of Jesus.

In each Gospel account, there are variant descriptions of what happened at the tomb, of who was there, of what was said, of where they were told to go, of whether or not they were to tell others of what they witnessed, and even of who was the one being told at the tomb. Thus, the difficulty of a synthetic “blending” of Gospel traditions is highlighted by the impossibility of reconciling clearly contrary testimonies.

The Gospel authors did not see their works as one of many equally valid Gospels, all able to function in concert and harmony with the others. Luke mentions “many other” accounts, and indeed crafts his introductory genealogy to highlight what he perceives as errant aspects of Matthew’s. Mathew, as well, rewrites the general Markan accounts, as does Luke. John disregards both as misunderstanding Jesus and failing to perceive the “signs” that indicate not only the nature of Jesus’ mission, but the nature of Jesus (and man), himself. Each wrote their account to dethrone another earlier prevailing account, vying for ideological supremacy.

Thus, it should not surprise us to see such stark contrasts between accounts of various narrated events. What should surprise us is how easily these differences are overlooked, disregarded and merged into a purportedly cohesive event of Shepherds and Magi, of different people racing to the tomb by “the Marys” and Salome; then the Mary’s and Joanna; then Mary followed by Peter and the “beloved disciple.” All of this blending is nowhere to be found in the accounts themselves, but is the sort of apologetic scriptural hybridization necessary to make sense out of the proscribed canonization of intentionally contradictory literary works.

The Gospel according to Mark, the chronologically earliest extant Gospel account, tells us in Chapter 16:1-8 the following story upon which Matthew and Luke will subsequently base their own reinterpretations on:

And when the Sabbath was past, Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James, and Salome, bought spices, so that they might go and anoint him. And very early on the first day of the week they went to the tomb when the sun had risen. And they were saying to one another, “Who will roll away the stone for us from the door of the tomb?” And looking up, they saw that the stone was rolled back; it was very large. And entering the tomb, they saw a young man sitting on the right side, dressed in a white robe; and they were amazed. And he said to them, “Do not be amazed; you seek Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has risen, he is not here; see the place where they laid him. But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going before you to Galilee; there you will see him, as he told you.” And they went out and fled from the tomb; for trembling and astonishment had come upon them; and they said nothing to any one, for they were afraid.

The women at the tomb, in the Markan account, were Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James and Salome. It was “very early” on “the first day” and they went “when the sun had risen.”  The stone had not yet been rolled away, as they even had a conversation about who was going to roll it out of the way before they then found it has been magically removed for them.

Inside, they found a man, with no indication of any angelic status, dressed in a white robe. The man tells them to go and tell, in contradistinction to the Markan theme of Jesus instructing people to “tell no one” of miracles and his Messianic status alike. Now told to go and tell the disciples and Peter that he was going to Galilee as they spoke, they were too afraid to say anything “to anyone.” In the Mattheian account, Chapter 28:1-10, we read a reconstruction of the Markan version:

Now after the Sabbath, toward the dawn of the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to see the sepulcher And behold, there was a great earthquake; for an angel of the Lord descended from heaven and came and rolled back the stone, and sat upon it. His appearance was like lightning, and his raiment white as snow. And for fear of him the guards trembled and became like dead men. But the angel said to the women, “Do not be afraid; for I know that you seek Jesus who was crucified. He is not here; for he has risen, as he said. Come, see the place where he lay. Then go quickly and tell his disciples that he has risen from the dead, and behold, he is going before you to Galilee; there you will see him. Lo, I have told you.” So they departed quickly from the tomb with fear and great joy, and ran to tell his disciples. And behold, Jesus met them and said, “Hail!” And they came up and took hold of his feet and worshiped him. Then Jesus said to them, “Do not be afraid; go and tell my brethren to go to Galilee, and there they will see me.”

Matthew records that again on the first day of the week “Mary Magdalene and the other Mary” went to the tomb. Salome, however, is nowhere to be found in the Mattheian account. Now there is a “great earthquake” which is not mentioned in the Markan account at all, when the stone seems to be magically rolled away, with no apparent catalyst.

The simple “man” in Mark is replaced with “an angel of the Lord,” (presumably “Angel of the LORD”), who “descended from heaven and came and rolled back the stone,” finally sitting on top of it, in triumph over all sense of physical limitations! He wasn’t just a man dressed in white, Matthew has decided that he looked like lightening. Now the guards are textually accounted for too, apparently a flaw in the Markan account which the Mattheian narrator wished to reconcile. As guards wouldn’t simply abandon their posts nor fall asleep, Matthew explains that they passed out in fear at the sight of this magnificent angelic being.

In Matthew, the two women get up their collective nerve to run to tell the disciples that Jesus was on his way to Galilee. Now Jesus meets them along the way and reiterates the angelic instructions; perhaps intending – through this echoing – to subtly parallel Jesus to the “Angel of the LORD” in the esoterism written in between the lines of the Mattheian, Jewish account. In the Lukan account, Chapter Luke 24:1-12, we find yet another variation on the resurrection:

But on the first day of the week, at early dawn, they went to the tomb, taking the spices which they had prepared. And they found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they went in they did not find the body. While they were perplexed about this, behold, two men stood by them in dazzling apparel; and as they were frightened and bowed their faces to the ground, the men said to them, “Why do you seek the living among the dead? Remember how he told you, while he was still in Galilee, that the Son of man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men, and be crucified, and on the third day rise.” And they remembered his words, and returning from the tomb they told all this to the eleven and to all the rest. Now it was Mary Magdalene and Joanna and Mary the mother of James and the other women with them who told this to the apostles; but these words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them.

Again, the trio have remained consistent regarding the day of the week, but from there nearly all other details of the story fall apart. Luke bizarrely tells us of “spices” or “herbs” that were brought to embalm Jesus. John will expand on the details and quantity; that Jesus was wrapped in one hundred pounds of liniment and aloes, as part of “Jewish custom”[60] which – it would seem the textual scribe interpolated – it of course was not.[61] Like Matthew, Luke has apparently found himself in a position where oral legends have circulated and gained a certain footing. These are legends that he has to explain away much as Matthew does with the “bribed soldiers” rumor in Matthew 28:11-15.

In the Lukan account there are two men, not one; again, apparently demonstrating a familiarity with, and response to, the Mattheian account, and crafting an explanation for the discrepancy between it and Mark. Now it is Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of Jesus and Joanna, not Salome who run to tell the disciples. Though corroborating the Mattheian account, however, this all seemed like an “idle tale” to the men, who thus disregarded the words of the women. Obviously discrepant, this might perhaps be the strangest aspect of the Lukan tomb story; that Jesus’ mother, Mary Magdalene and a third witness would all claim such a strange thing and this would barely raise an eyebrow of the disciples.  Even if viewed as a hallucination of distraught, sleepless mourners, the shared aspect of such a would-be hallucination is written off as a seemingly everyday occurrence in Luke. Differing further still, the Johannite account, Chapter John 20:1-10 reads:

Now on the first day of the week Mary Magdalene came to the tomb early, while it was still dark, and saw that the stone had been taken away from the tomb. So she ran, and went to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved, and said to them, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him.” Peter then came out with the other disciple, and they went toward the tomb. They both ran, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first; and stooping to look in, he saw the linen cloths lying there, but he did not go in. Then Simon Peter came, following him, and went into the tomb; he saw the linen cloths lying, and the napkin, which had been on his head, not lying with the linen cloths but rolled up in a place by itself. Then the other disciple, who reached the tomb first, also went in, and he saw and believed; for as yet they did not know the scripture, that he must rise from the dead. Then the disciples went back to their homes.

For the quasi-gnostic author of John, it is Mary Magdalene alone who came to the tomb on that Sunday, before the sunrise, “while it was still dark,” rather than after sunrise. She saw the stone had been taken away entirely. Thus, the tidy explanation of apologetic synthesis falls apart when we realize that had this account simply have transpired before the others, then the stone would have obviously have had to been put back in place before the second imagined trip in Matthew. Clearly the authors of these variant accounts had no intentions of their stories fitting together, and intentionally wrote in contradiction to the other accounts which we are familiar with.

Had a synthetic approach been what the author had in mind, they themselves leave no evidence of it, since Mary runs back for Peter and the “disciple whom Jesus loved;” with no reference to an intermediary Mattheian account. In the Johannite account, the disciple whom Jesus loved, the “other” disciple, “saw and believed,” paralleling the familiar motif of this particular Gospel account. He does not shrug it off as an “idle tale” of women who are not to be believed, as Luke’s disciples do; there is no room for this in the Johannite account. Moreover, there is no mention of an earthquake, of a man or angel (or two men), and neither is there any instruction to go to Galilee.

These accounts are not simply different takes on the same events, they are accounts that fundamentally conflict with each other at every turn. These are accounts that do not tell four different perspectives of the same event, but tell completely different events within the event, and tell of different, exclusionary eye-witnesses. It is not as if we have four eye-witnesses to the same events, but rather as if four detectives have been called to witness on the stand of a court and cannot even agree on who they have taken their information from! No court would take anything they had to say seriously when looked at from as historical or factually purported information. In spite of this, the Traditionalist perspective asks us to “just go with it,” and re-imagine these as harmonic accounts. Let us now look at each narrative account as it is uniquely presented, so that by contrasting these account, and applying the criteria we have previously discussed, a more historically-probable Jesus can emerge.

It is accordingly that we, as readers of the Gospel accounts, must bear in mind two alternative interpretations: First, that the authors themselves (with the likely exclusion of Luke), were not intending to write history. Secondly, that the authors were aware of the conflict and were deliberately avoiding textual reconciliation for the purposes of promoting a certain perspective, a certain agenda, a certain bias as superior to others. Accordingly, as readers, we must be aware of the existence of such a perspectival differences and seek to deconstruct the literary accounts in light of all relevant factors; biases rooted in cultural, gender, and even sectarian splintering.

Parallels and Differences Between Mark and Matthew

Boris Uspensky identified five distinct points of view in the course of an author constructing a literary work. Implicitly, the audience of the work employs these perspectives in understanding the points of view. These “planes” or aspects of the author’s point of view are the phraseological plane; the spatial and temporal planes; the psychological plane; and the evaluative or ideological plane.[62]

The phraseological plane is concerned with the terminology used in the telling of the story. It is concerned with how and why words are employed in specific manners that lack coincidence. Spatial and temporal planes indicate the context within which the actions and actors in the story are described. The author knows what needs to be known to tell the story. The author is omniscient, and omnipresent, within the context of the story. The psychological plane deals with inner knowledge of the feelings, and perceptions, of the characters, included by the omniscient narrator. The evaluative or ideological plane is regarded as the sum of the aforementioned planes.

The Gospel According to Matthew opens with the temporal plane, looking back on the history of the Children of Israel as a people. It is within this context that Matthew consciously places the coming of Jesus Christ. For Mark, it all begins in the wilderness, with a man named John. John is something of a stir-crazy Essene in nature, preaching and “baptizing” in a miqvah of living water;[63] a practice not at all unique nor innovative to John and the Christian tradition which would come to adopt the practice.

For the author of Matthew, the story really begins in ancient times (a theme which will be carried back even further by the later Johannite author, to the cosmonogic origins of the Universe itself). As such, the account does not begin with the preaching of John and the hierarchical submission of a sinful (read that, fallible and human) Jesus to the popular grassroots leader.[64] Instead, it begins with a carefully constructed (or reconstructed), genealogy that links Jesus to pivotal figures in Jewish history, some key Messianic prerequisites like David, and in a strikingly deliberate move, Matthew introduces women who were faithful to Israel and Mosaic law (in the case of Tamar,[65] before Mosaic law even existed), in spite being somewhat of ill-repute. Some generations are deleted outright from the account to form a symmetry of three sets of fourteen generation gaps. The Tanakhic account itself demonstrates to the errancy of this genealogy,[66] but historical accuracy is not the point for Matthew, a literary convention of the symbolism in shifting from one epoch to the next is. There can be no question then, that from the outset, Matthew has stepped away from any activity of history-writing as we understand it.

In general, the differences between Mark and Matthew could be summarized in saying that Matthew is a clear expansion of Mark. Chronologically, Mark is older. Moreover, while Mark begins with an errant Scriptural quote, attributing Malachi’s passage to Isaiah,[67] Matthew does not make this mistake.[68] It is obvious that if Mark was drawing from Matthew (either from the text or from contact with the author), then he would not have made so basic a mistake in dealing with the text. Moreover, while Mark deals with few scriptural references, Matthew is quite concerned with peppering the text with Scripture throughout; not only legitimizing the text in his mind, but also indicating events of Jesus’ life as interpreted fulfillments of hidden prophecies within the Tanakh (otherwise unknown to the uninitiated Jewish masses). We can thus deduce from this that the Mattheian author probably came from a Jewish upbringing while the earlier Markan account might have been penned by a convert to a movement barely still Jewish, if at all, Paulian, and anti-Peter and anti-disciple (as we will see).

Matthew not only expands on Mark, but he weaves the ideological perspective of a growing Jesus-oriented, Jewish movement throughout the text. While Mark interpolates that Jesus “declares all foods clean” (7:14-23), we see no such Paulian interpretation in Matthew. Matthew’s Jesus insists that the Torah and Prophets be adhered to; that “Heaven and Earth” would pass away before the smallest stroke of the pen would pass away from them (Matthew 5.17-20). For Matthew there is a paradoxical love-hate relationship with Jewish tradition and culture. Matthew is clearly anti-social, despising the masses of Jews, as we know the Jewish Essenes did as well, but adhering to Jewish tradition and – to some extent – Messianic expectations of the redeemer of the House of Judah. That is to say, Matthew is likely a Jew, or a very “Judaized,” circumcised Greek convert, but he has a growing resentment of the masses for not popularly accepting his Messiah. He refers to Jews in the third person, and yet he is certainly a keeper of Jewish law.

This leads us to the plausible conclusion about the author: that he was an Essenic Jew, an isolationist, community-member, growing ever-frustrated with his co-religionists of a different sectarian orientation, who a later transcriber (or translator) interpolated as “the Jews,” when in his earlier Hebrew account, he made no such specification of “the Jews” in the third person. This, we can further surmise from the abundance of Early Church Fathers – from Jerome, to Origen to Epiphanius – who asserted that Matthew was a Jew, and that his original Gospel account was penned in Hebrew.

A major source regarding the notion of an original Hebrew Gospel of Matthew is the testimony of Jerome who received a copy from a Nazarene group while he was at Chalcis between 373 and 376.[69] Jerome records that it was regarded by many of the Nazarenes and Ebionites as the original version of Matthew.[70] Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (1729 – 1781) posited a lost Hebrew Gospel as a proto-Gospel common source used freely for the three Greek Synoptic Gospels.[71] Hermann Olshausen (1796 – 1839) suggested a lost Hebrew Matthew was the common source of Greek Matthew and the Jewish-Christian Gospels mentioned by Epiphanius, Jerome and others. Leon Vaganay, Lucien Cerfaux, Xavier Leon-Dufour and Antonio Gaboury from 1952 attempted to revive Lessing’s proto-Gospel hypothesis.[72] Thus, we might conclude that third-person, anti-Jewish references were not a matter of something being “lost in translation,” but instead “added in translation.”

Those who reject Jesus are the crowd who call their own blood and the blood of their offspring upon themselves in the prelude to the crucifixion.[73] But this likely contains interpolation where “the Jews,” rather than those present, are cursed. We have no historical reason to imagine a large Jewish audience at a crucifixion.

Beyond the expansion of Mark’s account – both John and Jesus having much to say, and the Markan accounts being greatly expanded upon – the events recorded in Mark are greatly cleaned up, and literarily improved upon. Not only are there no errant Scriptural references and more Scriptural validation, but logical inconsistencies and problematic accounts of Mark are reconstructed or removed. Jesus does not curse the fig tree “when it was not the time for it to bear fruit,” he just curses it. It is presumed, by the reader, that it was the time for it to bear fruit and that in spite of this, there was no fruit to be found. Thus, the metaphor is both more obvious in Matthew, and more profound. The tree does not wither the next day,[74] which is perhaps more believable, it withers immediately.[75] Similarly, the account of the second try at healing the blind man[76] is removed entirely from Matthew’s account; obviously showing a less powerful figure than Matthew was comfortable with.

Just as potentially confusing as the author of Greek-Matthew’s love-hate relationship with the Jews, is his relationship with the P’rushi or Pharisee sect of the First Century. Throughout, they are described in contradictory terms. They are adherents to the Torah, who are to be obeyed, but though they are concerned with a flexible and innovative interpretation of the Torah, they are not as deeply concerned with such an underlying esoteric dimension of the Torah and Prophets, which Jesus wishes to emphasize (a clear prerequisite for interpreting his reign in terms outside of the mainstream conceptualizations of the Jewish Messiah). As such, they find themselves victims of Greek-Matthew’s disfavor; albeit much less so than the Sadduccees, who are the rich collaborators with Rome. To the Pharisee’s credit, they are not seen as collaborators, and are concerned, to an increasing degree, with understanding the Torah within changing contexts. Accordingly, we find them both praised and criticized.[77] Thus, we are left with a conceptualization of the Pharisees that makes it possible to reconcile how Acts describes a Christian as a member of the Pharisees who remains a member after conversion to Proto-Christianity.[78] Fundamentally, however, this is evidence that the original Hebrew Matthew might not have denounced the Pharisees, but only “the hypocrites,” which the later interpolator of Greek-Matthew believes must have been the Pharisees.

Finally, the last significant expansion of Matthew from the Markian account lies in the addition of a Resurrection story. Later scribes would find this troubling and add excerpts constructed from later Gospel Resurrection stories to Mark to fill in the gaps. To their credit, still today, many translations of the Christian Testament will footnote that original manuscripts did not include these accounts.

In Mark, the reader is thus left with a bit of a cliffhanger. There is a clear implication that Jesus has risen from the tomb, his disciples are instructed to go back to Galilee,[79] and though we are told that they were paralyzed with fear, there is an implication that somehow, someway, they got their act together. Mark tells us that they “told no one,”[80] and yet there we are, reading the account that supposedly no one told. As such, Mark ends his story in a way that allows us to continue it in our own minds. What happens next is something we are perhaps to construct – in his time – from our socio-political understanding of the Zealot War against Rome and the obviously impending destruction of Jerusalem.[81] Matthew knows or wants you to believe he knows, how the Resurrection story ends. Jesus rises from the grave, the disciples reconvene in Galilee, they are given further instructions that conform with the mission the Matthew sees himself as fulfilling; spreading the Gospel to all the “ethnos,” all of the nations and peoples.[82]

To this end, it is possible to be both objective and decisive in stating that Matthew is a writer on a theological mission. He is not just interested in telling a story, his perspective – on all planes of narrative point of view – is concerned with composing a theologically water-tight account of Jesus that conveys to the reader a convincing pitch of sorts, as to why Jesus is to be understood by the Jewish reader as the prophesied Messiah, the liberator of Judea and Judeans from the oppression of not only the nations, but of their own sins.

Luke’s Upright Citizen: Gospel Redaction as a Preface to Paul’s Ministry

Though similar in many ways to the Mattheian development of Mark, the avenue taken by the Gospel According to Luke significantly differs in many striking ways. Purporting to be the authoritative Gospel account in its preface, we expect from the outset, to find many contrasts with other Gospel narratives. What is surprising is both the nature of many of these differences and the companion scroll of Acts of the Apostles. In a fairly overt manner, Acts attempts to legitimize the message of a previously unknown figure known therein as both Saul and Paul (in different social contexts); neither being a companion of Jesus, nor a witness to the events of the Gospel narrative. Ironically, however, these are, according to the text of Acts itself, prerequisites for legitimate authority in the pre-Christian Jesus Movement.[83] We must then explore the underlying motivations and bias of the Lukan author, as a likely disciple of Paul, and a Pro-Roman opponent of the popular Judean dissent; socio-politically underlying many of the themes, teachings and actions of other Gospel accounts.

Luke-Acts is thought to have been written in the latter decades of the first century – obviously in a completely Hellenistic environment – presumably by a Greek, Syrian, or otherwise non-Jewish Christian. The traditions record that the author of Luke-Acts was the same “Luke” named in Colossians 4:14, a physician and disciple of Paul;[84] educated in Hellenistic literature and with an obvious bias and devotion towards Paul, and thus against his “Ebionite” Jewish opponents. From the evidence of the third Gospel and the Book of Acts we can ascertain that the author was someone thoroughly entrenched in Jewish Scripture, and simultaneously aware of Hellenistic literature; both patterns having a notable impact on his writing.

Both Luke and Acts are consistently found together, as companion works; the first necessarily laying the foundation, and setting us up, for the second. Luke-Acts is addressed to “Theophilus,” simply meaning “friend of God” in Greek. Theophilus may not be a proper name at all, but perhaps a title generally addressing the intended devout audience. From this, it is apparent that the Gospel is directed at Christians of the Paulian variety, or at those who already knew about Early Christianity and yet sat the fence with regards to opposition or support of Paul. The attribution of the text states that the Gospel was written “so that you may know the certainty of the things you have been taught.”[85] The implied audience is thus those who have been taught certain things, perhaps conflicting things by opposing parties, but have been given some reason to pause in their certainty about what they have heard (perhaps from other Gospel accounts, or even from the “Ebionite” Jamesean Community in Jerusalem).

It is unlikely that Luke was focusing on swaying the hard core opponents within the Jerusalem community; described in Acts 15:1-35 as the Council of Jerusalem, likely a parallel reference of Chapter 2 of the Epistle to the Galatians recounting of this meeting. [86] Referencing this in his own words, Paul claims he “went up again to Jerusalem” with Barnabas and Titus “in response to a revelation,” in order to “lay before” James, and Cephas and John[87] “who were supposed to be acknowledged leaders”[88] the “Gospel” as proclaimed by Paul.

The Paul of the Epistles is much more brazen, brash and unrefined than the man described and narrated in Acts, by the author, who – as mentioned – was possibly Paul’s disciple Luke. Accordingly, the critical readers can only conclude that Luke-Acts was written as a publicity piece of sorts; reworking and “reforming” the perception of Paul in the minds of skeptics and critics of his ministry. The author of Luke is attempting to demonstrate, first the Paulian “orthodox” account of the Gospel narrative, and secondly how the life of Jesus is itself paralleled in the ministry of Paul. Luke tells us of Jesus instructing his disciples to go to the gentiles[89] (nations), and Acts fulfills the expectation that Luke has created;[90] both through instructive and parable forms exemplified in the Good Samaritan.

Nevertheless, this is a tough sell for Luke, as Jesus clearly makes no positive reference to a figure who would come after him; abrogating the Torah and Mitzvot (the very things that the Jerusalem Community was taking issue with him on). As well, as previously noted, in Matthew’s account, Jesus seems to negatively allude to one who would do this “and teach others to do the same;” Matthew calling him the “least” in the Kingdom.[91]

Luke wrote both the third Canonical Gospel and the Book of Acts; beginning with the life and teachings of Jesus and continuing, through Acts, with the growth and expansion of Christianity; after the death of Jesus down through close to the end of the ministry of Paul. While there were diverse lines branching in different directions of Proto-Christian development, Luke-Acts endeavors to define the “correct” line of descent – from Jesus, through an unlikely but necessary Peter, to Paul – and to paint Paul in an almost “Christ-like” light. So “Christ-like” is Paul in Acts, that he and Barnabas are perceived as “gods”[92] by those who don’t know any better; barely stopping the Lycaonians from offering sacrifices to them as “gods” who came down “in the form of men.” Notwithstanding claims of Paul’s humility, in spite of his apparent “god-like” nature, Luke neglects to mention whether or not he chastises the Maltan’s for referring to him as a god.[93]

In crafting the Lukan account, Mark is perhaps the longest single source of substantial material, likely influencing Acts, where Luke was not directly incorporating it. While Luke and Matthew both derived part of their contents from Mark their other content apparently depends upon another common written record. This is based on the body of similar traditions found in Matthew and Luke, but not present in Mark. Like that which derives from Mark, this source material was apparently available to the two Gospel narrators. Scholars use the name “Q,” from the German “Quelle,” meaning “Source,” to refer to this material. The existence of a common source can often be asserted with a great deal of confidence, in literary criticism, while the scope and origin thereof remain unknown.[94]

While Mark is considered the principal Lukan source, Martin Hengel has made the more controversial argument that Luke also draws from Matthew.[95] Thus, it may be that the overt contradictions between Luke and Matthew are, in fact, contrasts due to Luke taking issue with the Mattheian account and trying to “fix” it. Luke may well be aware of Matthew, and regard his Gospel as one of the “many” failed Gospel attempts referenced in Luke’s preface.[96]

Regardless, of this possibility and without a doubt, Luke is drawing on the Markan and “Q” sources, yet finds them insufficient, both in detailing the Gospel narrative and in laying the appropriate foundation to justify the ministry (and theological offshoot), of his likely teacher, Paul. The Markan account simply cannot get the reader to Paul, and Q – from what can be known of it – certainly cannot do so either. Luke mentions that: “many have undertaken to set down an orderly account of the events that have been fulfilled among us, just as they were handed on to us by those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and servants of the word.”[97] To that end, Luke finds each and every one of these “many” accounts to be utterly insufficient as well.

While impossible to determine a Lukan reaction to Matthew with any degree of certainty, it is likely that such a contrast could be highlighted in the parallel and clearly contradictory genealogies and nativity accounts. Luke knows of other Gospels, and interestingly, the one Gospel that parallels these features does so with many contradictory details. Luke’s genealogy is significantly longer than Matthew’s, presenting a far more plausible number of names, even if these are probably fabricated. Apparently Luke saw this as a correction of other genealogies, of which we have only Matthew’s to compare. It is altogether possible that Luke is deliberately contradicting the Mattheian account, and responding to it correctively.

Luke claims that his composition of the Gospel account in particular, was penned only “after investigating everything carefully from the very first,” revealing that Luke viewed himself as something of a historian and not as a prophetic writer. Accordingly, Luke thoroughly investigated previous Gospel accounts and also claims to have had direct interviews with eye witnesses of these events. To this end, we will see a striking re-characterization of the disciples from Mark’s doubting, thick-headed and disobedient figures, to upright pillars which Luke must portray them as. Peter is no longer the thick-headed figure knows as the Rock, he is the stable, trustworthy Rock upon which the Church is build; necessary to transitioning from the Gospel-narrated Jesus to Paul and the emerging Church.

Unique to Luke is John the Baptist’s nativity, further strengthening the connection between Jesus and John,[98] the census and journey to Bethlehem,[99] as well as the manger birth, and a boyhood account of Jesus. Matthew’s apocalyptic imagery of the imminent Kingdom of God, and Jewish notions of a Messiah, are rejected and reinterpreted; as the Mattheian account could be – and within the framework of Judean tradition, would be – understood as a denunciation of the Roman Empire and Caesar. In Luke-Acts, this image is shifted entirely out of the socio-political arena. Jesus is redrafted as a purely spiritual force – though not yet “the Christ” of Paulian Epistles – a spiritual redeemer, and liberator; from sin, not from social oppression and Imperial domination.

Luke-Acts paints a picture of a Jesus that is unrecognizable as a revolutionary of any sort found in selections from other Gospels. Paul follows in exemplifying this complicity with Rome. Luke exonerates Jesus of any accusations of anti-Roman activity, any claims of tax-evasion, and goes further than any other Gospel in his exoneration of Pilate and Roman culpability in the death of Jesus. Probably no omission of Markan and Mattheian accounts of rabble-rousing can compare to the addition of Luke 4:14-21, which tells of Jesus reading the Isaiah scroll in the Synagogue, stopping abruptly at a much unexpected time.

He came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, and went into the synagogue on the Sabbath day as he usually did. He stood up to read, and they handed him the scroll of the prophet Isaiah. Unrolling the scroll he found the place where it is written: “The spirit of the Lord is on me, for he has anointed me to bring the good news to the afflicted. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to captives, sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim a year of favor from the Lord.” He then rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the assistant and sat down. And all eyes in the synagogue were fixed on him. Then he began to speak to them, “This text is being fulfilled today even while you are listening.” And he won the approval of all, and they were astonished by the gracious words that came from his lips.[100]

The omission from this passage of Isaiah – at the moment when Jesus “closes the scroll” – reveals the popular Messianic expectations of the Judean masses - obviously delineated in Tanakhi passages such as the one Jesus quoted - with the remainder of the verse proceeding his reading: “…and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all that mourn.”[101]

The implication is clear from Luke’s account; Jesus is indeed the Messiah (verse 1), but there will be no fulfillment of the popularly expected “vengeance of our God,” at least not that “day.” Luke, Jesus emerges as a teacher of ethical wisdom. Jesus is someone interested in impressing the virtues of compassion and forgiveness among his followers. Luke portrays teachings entirely compatible with being a respectable Roman citizen; apparently a major concerns for the author and what he was trying to convey to a generally Anti-Paulian (and similarly, Anti-Roman), audience.

With a founder – or more realistically, a patron deity – who was executed as a political criminal, and associated with the destruction of Jerusalem, Luke has a lot of work to do in portraying the Sadducees and Roman Authority as having gotten it all wrong. For Luke, it’s all a big misunderstanding, and the Sadducees stand alone at the core of it. Luke 22-1-6 mentions the Sadducean “Chief Priests” as conspiring with Judas, who is probably a Sikarri Zealot (“Iscariot”); Luke 22:63-71 speaks of Jesus being tried before the “Chief Priests” and the Post-Hasmonean, Pre-Yavneh Sanhedrin.[102] Rome and specifically Pilate are essentially the victims of circumstantial Sadducean deception. They are acting in good faith and do their best to let Jesus off the hook, just as Luke will let them off the hook throughout both companion works.

Quotes from “Q” such as: “From the days of John the Baptists until now the kingdom of heaven suffered violence and men of violence take it by force”[103] are left out of Luke, but found in Matthew. Our criteria elucidate their high probability, while the Lukan, pro-Roman Jesus is clearly a late invention of the author. Mark’s introduction to the Barabbas figure in 16:7 – “there was one called Barabbas lying bound with the insurgents, men who in the insurrection had committed murder” – is revised in Luke to delete any mention of a Jewish insurrection. The Lukan author simply white-washes both the history of “Pax Romana” in the region, as well as the figure of Jesus.

Remarkably, and somewhat perplexingly, Luke does not delete the account at the Last Supper when Jesus counsels his disciples to sell their cloaks to buy swords.[104] This appellation was apparently not taken metaphorically by the very-much-armed Peter in the Garden of Gethsemane. Perhaps Luke interpreted this metaphorically, or was attempting a reinterpretation of one of several notorious accounts of Jesus using often violent words (“do not think that I have come to bring peace; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword”[105]), by concluding “it is enough,”[106] when two swords were presented. Our criteria, however, would indicate that the Lukan author retained these embarrassing quotes because they were too widely-attested to be dismissed.

What is contextually clear, regardless of Luke’s interpretative insinuation, is that at Gethsemane, we discover that at least Peter was unapologetically armed.[107] Jesus apparently had nothing previous to say in admonition against this obvious revolutionary tendency. While Luke is intending to defuse the volatile nature of this conflict, he does so in a way that maintains the armed status of Jesus’ inner circle; something he surely wishes to omit but apparently can only reinterpreted as resulting in disapproval by Jesus.

The author’s defusing perspective is clear throughout the telling of Luke, and made more obviously when we come to Acts. If the Pro-Roman slant was not apparent enough in the Gospel account, by the time we get to Acts, and ultimately to Paul, we can see where Luke had been taking us all along with the exoneration of Rome in Jesus’ crucifixion, and the deletion and defusing of incendiary words of Jesus found in many other accounts. When factoring into the equation the aforementioned proposition from Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, and Tertullian, that the author of Luke-Acts was non-other than Paul’s disciple by the same name, then the clarity of the bias is established.[108] Read in this light, the disputations between Luke and Matthew are elucidated, not as accidental discrepancies, but deliberate, calculated alterations to the Markan, “Q” and possibly even Mattheian accounts.

“You Are All Gods”: The Proto-Gnostic Johannite Gospel

The Canonical Gospels, each written by a different (and generally unknown), author – each with different perspectives, cultural leanings and biases – together form an unintentional composite image of a theological “Jesus Christ”; and a patchwork biography forever imposed upon him by the Christian Church. Differences between these Gospels have been a nagging concern for Christianity since their canonization. Early Christian communities understood the problem of using these variant accounts for the purposes of theology. Nevertheless, when we separate the accounts, viewing them each as separate documents, with no intention of being read in concert or conformity with one another, we begin to see the intentions of each respective author take shape, bringing clarity to our reading, and search for a historical Jesus.

In John, the last and latest of the Canonical accounts, we have the emergence of a previously unattested theological perspective. Had Gnosticism been a historical entity at this time (and indeed if it ever was something as narrowly defined as we now tend to perceive it as), it would not be difficult, nor any sort of stretch, to characterize John’s account as a gnostic Gospel. Indeed, when many Gnostic texts have been discovered, copies of John, and no other Canonical Gospel have accompanied the find. Whatever the Gnostics were, and however they developed, they found some enduring affinity for John – if not from direct theological parentage, then perhaps as a kindred scripture - giving more mainstream credibility to their typically heterodox, if not heretical, point of view.

Chronologically, beginning with Mark, we see a very “down to Earth” account of Jesus. There is no birth story because none is known. It would not have even occurred to the Markan author to invent one (nor would their audience have seen any dilemma caused by the absence of a genealogy, nor in the absence of formative years of a youthful Jesus). In Mark we have a Jesus who heals, but sometimes has to give it a second try; in the same way, we are being urged to take a second look at this figure, presumably known to the readers, who were presumably contemporary with Jesus or at least not far removed.

In Matthew we have the prototypical Jewish Messiah, if not for that embarrassing crucifixion. We have the fulfillment of at least many, if not most popular Jewish Messianic expectations, even if some are clearly inventions. We have a Jesus character who reasons like a Pharisee, even employing popular Pharisaic parables in some cases, and who keeps the Mitzvot at least as good as these paragons of piety and righteousness (criticized only for not always living up to their reputation).

In Luke we have a Hellenistic Jesus, like the Lukan author no doubt was himself. This literary figure is based upon a historical Jesus, but in most ways he is now very far removed. This Hellenistic Jesus sets the stage for Paul, both in word and in deed. We have a variation of Matthew’s nativity and genealogy. This is one intended to construct a more universal Jesus – a “second Adam” of sorts – and certainly a Jesus unfettered by Judean religious law and tradition that the Lukan author, like Paul, has no interest in keeping. Along with the following Johannite account, Luke will form the backbone of the “Christian” Jesus in centuries to come. When people think about “Jesus,” they are more or less thinking of a Lukan and Johannite character.

John begins with a genealogy altogether different from the sort of lineage found in Matthew or Luke. John develops a creation account “from above;” a descent of God into flesh. From this, we have what has caused the Johannite account to be characterized as a “maverick” Gospel by Robert Kysar.[109] In every way imaginable, when there is a discrepancy to be had with regards to describing Jesus, we will find it in the Gospel according to John. That is to say, while there is much agreement between the previous “Synoptic” Gospels, John clearly and unabashedly departs, with the most frequency and to the furthest reaches of theological divergence, just as this account is also the furthest removed from the events and figures which it purports to describe. There is no question that this “Jesus Christ” is not the historical Jesus, nor a “Kosher” Jesus. We will thus find much less material in this Johannite account which can be ascertained as probable. Phrased another way, much of the Johannite account can be determined, using historical-critical criteria, as being highly improbable.

John proves itself to be the only Gospel where Jesus’ divinity is directly implied, and at times expressly stated. In Mark, Jesus is all too human. In Matthew as well, Jesus is perhaps more glorified than in the Markan account, but certainly not yet anything resembling a god. In Luke we have something of a Jesus character approaching demi-god status. Yet in John, we have the emergence a full out divine being. In John 10:34-36, Jesus explains the reasonability of postulating his own divinity, by quoting Psalms 82:6: “Has it not been written in your Law, ‘I said you are all gods’?”

In the passage, not only is Jesus utterly detached from the notion of the Torah as legalistically (or perhaps even culturally), relevant to him – in utter contradistinction to Matthew’s account – but he implies a shared divinity in potentia with all of humanity. Jesus is God just as Scripture has said that we are all gods. That is, just as Luke will trace the Messianic genealogy all the way back to Adam, John will trace it back to the primordial origins of creation itself; and accordingly extrapolate Jesus as the prototypical Adamic god-man. Jesus is the way, the truth and the life, no one comes to the father but through him.[110] is a statement that implies that one can “go to” the Father, just as Jesus is “from” the Father. As well, “I am the vine and you are the branches,” [111]expresses a seamless connection between the branches and vine. The branch is originated from the vine, but it is still nonetheless part of a singular, unified existence with the vine. Far from a typical concept of the Jewish Messiah, in many ways, John is portraying Jesus as the Messianic King of the Universe, breaching the boundaries of socio-cultural expectation to such an extent that “Messiah” no longer has any tangible, relevant, meaning for John’s Jesus, in any literal Jewish sense.

The “Christ” for John, is more “mystical” than what we find in the Lukan accounts, and yet is not at all the socio-religious Mashiach of the Mattheian strain. To this end, John is apparently ignorant of, or otherwise altogether rejecting, the vast majority of Judean Messianic expectations; including the problem with Jesus having not emerged from Bethlehem in his account. John, apparently aware of “Nazareth problem” – that the Messiah was not expected to emerge from Galilee – narrates some confusion regarding the subject of Jesus’ origins amongst his characters. John apparently is unaware of the Bethlehem tradition (as he does not even mention it in abrogation), in spite of its having been rooted in the quite accessible Book of Micah.[112] This, perhaps demonstrates again, that the author of John is more interested, and versed, in Hellenistic traditions than in the Hebrew scriptures. John asks, “can anything good come from Nazareth,”[113] indicating that the people in the Johannite account were familiar with this problem, but also arguing that he was not from Bethlehem, otherwise such a contention would simply have been ignored.  The account further says: “Others were saying, ‘This is the Christ.’ Still others were saying, ‘Surely the Christ is not going to come from Galilee, is he?’”[114]John seems to know that the people did not expect a Galilean Messiah, but the region of specific expectations is apparently unknown to the author.

While the characters, perhaps drawn from a historical dilemma within the Early Jesus Movement, are aware of this problem, the author seems aloof from it, and makes no attempt at reconciliation within the framework of extant cultural (or Scriptural), expectations. Dealing with this dilemma in a way unique to the Johannite account, the author implies mysterious origins of Jesus, saying that “No one will know where he comes from.” Jesus emerges onto the scene abruptly, as in Mark, but John purports to know something of the cosmic enigma of his origins. Perhaps simultaneously reconciling his ignorance of the popular answer, the author goes so far as to have the Jewish leaders themselves confess that they themselves “do not know where he comes from.” [115]

The Gospel According to John appears to have been written with an evangelistic purpose, in mind, primarily for Greek-speaking readers who were not adherents, or more appropriately, believers: “these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.”[116] This theme of having life “through believing” will underlie the whole of the text. Time and time again we will see the dead raised, the sick healed, the hungry fed and so on, purely through the power of belief, or certitude of trust in Jesus and his Earthly mission. This is a far cry from the earliest, Markan Jesus, who takes two tries to heal a blind man.

The last chapter of the Gospel reads: “and we know that his testimony is true” indicating that the author has presumably died with the finalization of the text. Some critical scholars propose that the text was formulated in stages, beginning at an unknown time, culminating around the late 90’s. This is due, in large part, to the “appendix” of the 21st chapter; which concerns itself with explaining the death of the presumed “beloved disciple.”[117]Herein, Chapter 20:3-31 sounds like the end of the text, however Chapter 21 is then surprisingly interjected as later addition.[118]

No normative Christian teacher quotes from the Gospel of John for the first two hundred years after its writing. Clement of Alexandria was confounded by it; deciding, finally, that after the other Gospels gave you the facts, John gave you the spirit of the meaning of Jesus. Similarly grasping desperately for reconciliation, the Muratorian Fragment is possibly the oldest extant list of Christian Testament canon; dating back to the Seventh Century C.E. The fragment suggests, in attempting to deal with the problems that the contradictions of the Canonical Gospels posed, that the disciples got together to write Gospels but had a dream that night which revealed that John was to write the Gospel and the others were to check it.[119]

Beyond the 21st chapter’s obvious late addition, John has further selections that have been criticized (or at least identified), as obvious later expansions of to the text. For example, Chapter 14:31 has Jesus telling his listeners to “rise and go” and yet no one actually “goes” until Chapter 18:1; leading to the reasonable conclusion that the intermittent text was a later insertion. As well, Chapter 7:53-8:11 recounts the famous event of the woman caught in the act of adultery, yet this story was not found in the oldest manuscripts of the text.

Divergent at every turn from corroboration with the Synoptic accounts, Jesus was never explicitly baptized in the Johannite Gospel account. John the Baptist testifies to the vision of Jesus,[120] that in Mark only Jesus saw,[121] but there is no actual subordinate baptism of Jesus from John the Baptist, as this is problematic for the incarnation conceptualized in John. Mark sees no problem with a Jesus who is subordinate to John. To the author of Mark, this scene warrants neither comment nor revision.

To the author of Matthew, the scene is barely troublesome, with John still being given a high position: “Among those born of women[122] there has risen no one greater than John the Baptist.”[123] Though problematic, the author seems to feel in no position to omit it, as it is likely part of the well-established Markan, and pre-Markan, Essenic standard by his time. As such, the Johannite author puts a literary spin on the events; showing us a humble King who is subordinate to an existing hierarchy, even when such a figure as the Johannite author’s character of John the Baptist himself cannot fathom Jesus being subordinate to him. Luke, as well, is forced to acknowledge these details, but quickly skims over the subject: “After all the people had been baptized and Jesus also had been baptized and was praying, heaven was opened...”[124]

To the author of John, the entire story is thrown out; leaving only John the Baptist as a witness to the vision – once exclusively the experience of Jesus in the Markan account – and all details of subordination omitted. In this late account, Pharisees attest that Jesus was baptizing more followers than John, indicating that, in addition to John not baptizing Jesus, Jesus was initiating people through baptism on his own, independent of and far surpassing John in verse 10. John replies to this provocation, “I must decrease, he must increase.” In an improbable exchange, that is simply found nowhere else, the Johannite account explains that Jesus was baptizing “and John was also baptizing,”[125] as an aside, as though this “immerser” from other traditions was tagging along, and poorly keeping up in recruiting efforts.

In the Johannite account, it must be clarified of John, that “he was not that light, but was sent to bear witness of that light.”[126] As well, to clarify the Mattheian statement that John has the highest rank of those born from women, the Johannite account claims that the Baptizer said, lest there be any misunderstanding, “he who comes after me was before me; he has a higher rank than I have”[127] in verse 27 John stating that he isn’t even fit to unlatch the sandals of Jesus, let alone to baptize him.[128] From a historical-critical perspective, such attributions are nonsense.

Additionally, John denies being Elijah,[129] whereas Matthew’s John is affirmed by Jesus as being Elijah,[130] which indicates a probable attestation of a mystical, Jewish, proto-Gilgul ha’Neshamot, reincarnation tradition. Jesus is not conflicted in John. There is no room for a conflicted Jesus who hesitates as he stares into the face of destiny, and John does not portray one. Judas does not identify Jesus with a kiss, Jesus is himself looking for his accusers and it is he who rushes the soldiers. There is no room for Judas, as Jesus is eager to fulfill his destiny. Judas betrays, but this betrayal is not the direct cause of Jesus being apprehended, but is merely a subjective instance of personal will conforming, to the overall mandates of destiny. Additionally, throughout this scene, the glossed over account of an armed Peter seems to occur only to facilitate an incomprehensible account of healing, forgiveness and further resignation to prescribed destiny.[131]

As well, there are new resurrection stories. Though the Johannite account is clearly not a revision of Mark, the crucifixion accounts are the one constant that remains remarkably alike. This account was probably fixed even before the Markan account was and thus all of the narratives were forced by circumstance (if literary desire was not a compelling factor), to include them in some interpretive form.

Material in the Johannite account is from some place other than Mark; but the story of Gethsemane is utterly rejected, as are all accounts that portray an even remotely human Jesus. Jesus has emotion – he weeps when Lazarus dies – but this emotion is limited and regulated. Jesus is not incapacitated with grief as are those wailing by his tomb, but he does acknowledge emotion. This, however, is one of the few rare occasions for any expression of emotion at all in the Johannite account. Keeping with the “maverick” tradition of the Johannite account, Chapter 17 is the sole instance of Jesus praying. There is no talk of any “devil,” no exorcism, no Sermon on the Mount, nor ethical teachings other than “Love one another.”[132] There is no violent outburst at the Temple, there is no cursing of the fig tree; there is certainly no double-take, Markan healing.

Jesus is in control. Everything is deliberate. He does not cry out to God, asking “why have you forsaken me” – regardless of the tidy spin-doctoring of this being a fulfillment of Scripture – and neither does he ask for the cup to be passed from him. This material – from some source other than Mark – utterly rejects the story of Gethsemane. In its place, Jesus affirms that he came to Earth for the very purpose of sacrificial slaughter.

Explaining this heavenly mission, Charles Talbert notes that there are two different paradigms of divinity in the ancient world; one is the hero who ascends to the divine (such as Hercules or Caesar), and the other is the “god in disguise”; a savior god, who descends to Earth for the benefit of humanity and then returns to the heavens. This view is reflected in John’s account, as Jesus comes from the Father in Chapter 1:1-14 and returns to the Father in Chapter 13:1.

The Gospel according to John has overt sympathies with Stoicism and Gnosticism. Gnostic overtones of a “Cosmic Christ” are evident from the outset of the Gospel account. The fourth canonical Gospel opens with the famous quote: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God.”  Paralleling the Hindu Rig Veda account of the “Word,” or Vak, we read the following parallel in the Hindu Scripture:

In the beginning was Prajapati [the Creator] with whom was the Vak [Word] and the Vak is Brahman.[133]

The similarities between these two quotes are too close to possibly disregard. Since the time of Alexander the Great, there is affirmative historical verification of cultural exchange from India to the Hellenistic world. How this quote (or influence), might have made its way into the Johannite account of Jesus’ biography is largely a matter of speculation. However, Satyavrata R Patel proposes that the concept of the “Vak” was introduced to the Johannite community by proxy of the Jewish philosopher, Philo of Alexandria.

Philo (50 BC) an Alexandrian philosopher, who knew of the Indian Gymnosophists set forth the theory of Logos which passed into Christianity in the Gospel of St. John and is verily the Indian conception of Vak (Word) which is personified in the Vedas as a Divine Power.[134]

What can be concluded, with unequivocal certainty, is either that this is one remarkable coincidence, or there was some drawing in from Eastern traditions into the theological view of John’s author, emerging into a Prototypical Gnostic theology; combining elements of Vedic Tradition, Greek Philosophy, rooted in Jewish origins reminiscent of the exegesis of Philo of Alexandria. Additionally, and apart from the interpretations of Philo, some have suggested that these commonalities are rooted in elements of Jewish Apocalypticism,[135] prevalent in the Pseudepigraphica and Dead Sea Scrolls alike. This, however, is beyond the scope of the study at hand.

Far from the Gospel having influenced the writing of the Vedas, these words clearly found their way from the Vedas of India into John. Yet hardly dependent upon Eastern religious influence, everything John says about Jesus can be corroborated with wisdom in the Stoic tradition; perhaps underlying the Gnostic development of the Cosmic “Sophia” as a force of Creation. Stoicism taught that we should “live in the world,” Gnostics taught to reject the world; John’s Jesus synthesizes to “be in the world, but not of the world.” With the rare exception of verse 3:25, the Sadduccean and Pharisaic enemies of synoptic Gospel accounts are largely replaced with both “The Jews,” collectively, and “The World,” as opponents of the author and the implied reader.

The author of the Johannite Gospel is, in many ways, coming from a similar cosmonogical perspective as Philo of Alexandria and tried to unify the Greek Logos and the Hebrew Chokhmah into a sort of Angelic “Boundary” being, who human beings look up and see as God, and God looks down upon and sees as anthropomorphic manifestation. Such a conceptualization is clearly influential in the notion within John’s preface, that “the Christ,” a primordial being of sorts, is Jesus. Further, this notion will emerge as cornerstone to Gnostic theology, which appares to have emerged from the composition and theological codification of John.[136]

In spite of all the seeming evidence for a gnostic John, all elements of Gnosticism are found pre-existent in Plato. Commonalities between elements of the Johannite account and Gnosticism are clearly extant without a long interpretive leap. As John has been found along with Gnostic texts, as noted, leading to a view that the Gospel account was somewhat Proto-Gnostic in nature. Later Gnostics seem to have found affinity with the text, perhaps even as a more mainstream interpretive validation of many of their beliefs.[137] Yet, “Gnosticism,” as we understand it as a proper noun, doesn’t emerge (if it ever truly emerged at all), until the vehicle of Christ steps onto the scene; though for them, the historical personage is of no relevance.[138] Proposing the phrase “Biblical Demiurgic Tradition,” in his book “Rethinking Gnosticism,”[139] Michael Williams challenges modern academia to reevaluate the presumptuous pigeonhole of “Gnosticism” proper; purporting that there never was, in fact, such a clearly delineated category.[140]

Within the text of John is a thematic repetition of “signs” in place of “miracles.” There is no “Last Supper,” though the account is very concerned with themes of bread, water and wine. In John, however, water is never water, bread is never bread; John is characterized by an all-permeating, deliberate, symbolism. Accordingly, John employs the Greek differentiation between “duetemous” and “semeion” to describe miracles and signs. In Hebrew accounts from the Tanakh, including usage in Isaiah, the term employed is “nes” meaning both, or either, indicating an almost certain non-Jewish orientation of the author, which mean that the author had neither connection to Jesus or his “Ebionite” brother James. It is clear from the Greek employment in the Synoptic Gospels that contemporary authors did see a difference; even if that distinction was not historically relevant to Early Judean traditions predating the advent of the Jesus Movement.

For John, this distinction, or perhaps return to a primary meaning of “signs,” is essential to the thematic currents irrigated throughout the narrative. This primary device of the Gospel attributed to John is to show you something that you think you understand and then seek to demonstrate that you didn’t really understand it at all. To this end, John is an ironic Gospel, full of double entendre and esoteric undercurrents; by at the same time is the most typical of gnostic works, and the themes found in first century mystery religion.

The first sign of Jesus, in this strange account, is turning water into wine. What is certain is that wine is not wine here, and it is furthermore no coincidence that the author tells us that “the mother of Jesus” (surprisingly never named “Mary” in this Gospel, though nearly every other woman is), comes to Jesus “on the third day.” Just as “wine” is not wine, the “third day” is not the third day. This event is termed a “sign,” not a miracle; in that it is supposed to signify to the reader, something hidden about Jesus.

When Jesus reproduces bread, we are told this too was a “sign,” not a “miracle;” for who can make wine and bread but God? The ingredients for wine are mixed together and set aside, while “God” works “His” magic of transforming the simple ingredients into something altogether new and transcendent; much the same as in the case of bread. The wine and the bread are not merely the sum of combined ingredients, but are the sum, as well as the uniquely transcendent properties that emerge when united and left to the alchemy of Divine processes. That is, God, not man, makes wine wine, and God, not man, makes bread bread. Man can only combine these ingredients, but not cause the transformation. This theme is fundamental to the entirety of the Johannite account. Jesus does what only God can do, because from the perspective of the author, he is God, as “you are all gods” in potential, sleeping gods, as it were. To this end Jesus is the Platonistic figure who returns in the Allegory of the Cave[141] to illuminate those bound and imprisoned therein.

Additionally, while there is a gathering as in the Last Supper, there is no meal as such. The meal is not the point, and in a sense, John is going further than any previous Gospel narrator to explain the culturally perplexing absence of the traditional Passover lamb, which otherwise would argue strongly for a nadr nazir,[142] of Jesus, just as we see with John the Baptist.[143] Apparently to be understood by readers in the ancient Roman world, the Johannite Eucharist story directly parallels the legend of Orpheus, the Thracian personification of Dionysus. In the story, the somewhat effeminate son of Zeus torn to pieces in a drunken, ecstatic episode by his followers, correlative to the smashing and destroying grapes, as well as the pounding and kneading necessary to create these prevalent motifs, found throughout John.

According to Martin Hengel, “Dionysus had been at home in Palestine for a long time,”[144] and First Century Judaism had been influenced extensively by Dionysian traditions. It is certainly an unlikely coincidence (should one consider it a coincidence at all), that Dionysus was worshipped on December 25th,[145] the day of the Winter Solstice in the ancient Greco-Roman world.

A significant stretch, Martin Hengel believes that since Second Temple, Levantine Jewry was familiar with the transformation of water to wine as a miracle, it was expected that the Messiah would perform this miracle as well. This would be a fair statement if there were one singular strain of Messianic expectations and one flavor of such Hellenistic cultism in First Century Judea.[146] However, at best, one could deduce that this might well have been an attractive correlation for a type of mystical interpretation of the Proto-Gnostic era. We have absolutely no evidence that this influence predates the Johannite and Pauline communities, nor indication that these accounts have any connection to the historical Jesus.

Whatever the Messianic expectations of John’s community, beyond the clearly emerging concept of a “boundary being” primordial Christ, there is some indication that their perspective was consistent to some extent (or perhaps “retained”), with the established belief in a married Messiah. Relative to this, Pam Thimmis, a Professor at the University of Dayton, claims that the author of John created the story at the well from a type scene found in the Jacob story. Reading the story of Jesus and the Samaritan woman at the well, you do get the feeling that you’ve heard this before. Indeed, as Thimmis notes, the Biblical account has taken us here many times before. In Genesis 24:10-61 we were there with Isaac and Rebekah, in Genesis 2:1-20 we were there with Jacob and Rachel, and in Exodus 2:15-21 we were there with Moses and Tzipporah; an extremely important parallel if Jesus is to be regarded (as at least one strain of Early Christianity viewed him), as the “prophet like unto Moses” foretold in the Torah.[147]

Each of these three thematic repetitions share a common pattern of a man going to a foreign land, meeting a young woman at a well, having water drawn by said woman, the woman rushing home to announce the stranger’s arrival, the two then being married and the marriage reproductively yielding offspring. Whether independent of, or the basis for, later Gnostic tendencies of emphasizing the relationship between Jesus and Mary Magdalene,[148] this thematic resurrection of the man and woman by the well appears to be a “sign” as well, of something much more significant, below the apparent surface meaning of the account. The only correlative absence, and what the reader might be expecting, is an articulated marriage between this woman and Jesus; perhaps implied in this symbolic Gospel (some going so far as to interpreting the Marriage at Cana as Jesus’ own wedding).

John does with Jesus the same thing that Matthew did with Jesus, only with a different, non-Jewish tradition. Matthew reaches back to Jewish tradition, telling us that Judaism is what explains Jesus. Conversely, John reaches towards Platonism and claims that it is the explanation for Jesus. Accordingly, John gives a Platonistic explanation for why Jesus has to die. This is expressed, ironically, through the words of Caiphas, that “one man should die for the people.”[149]

Messianic coronation is utterly irrelevant to John’s Jesus, and yet Pilate bears witness to it. At the rewritten account of the feeding of the five thousand – a reconfiguration of the Moses story (bringing bread from Heaven) – Jesus leaves when the crowd is intending to collaboratively declare him Messiah. This crowd stayed on the other side of the sea when the disciples depart. The story that follows is the infamous “walking on water” narrative. When the crowd sees the disciples return to shore, they now see Jesus with the disciples. In their bewilderment, they ask how he got there, to which Jesus reaffirms the motif of signs; that they were not paying attention to the sign (or they wouldn’t have to ask). They were looking for him only because of the apparent miracle.

Time and time again, the miraculous nature of Jesus’ works, in John, are merely the outer shell of the signs being given about him… by the author. The miracle is not important, the sign is. John wants to emphasize throughout, that the miracles the readers may have heard of with regards to Jesus, were never the point. The point, as it were, is that Jesus does what only God does (or can do), plain and simply because Jesus is God in the flesh.  Moreover, you are the branches from the vine of Jesus. Jesus and the Father are one[150] just as you are in Jesus and he is in you.[151] More to the point, Jesus is god because we are all gods. That is, Jesus is awake, Jesus is “Gnostic” in the most literal sense, and if you only believe, as Peter so briefly did,[152] then there are no limitations. Through your belief you awaken to your godhood, to the world outside of the shadow reality in the Platonistic cave. This is the essence of the Johannite account that has since so shaped Christian belief in “Jesus Christ,” and even the traditional perception of Jesus by non-Christians.

Evidence for a “Kosher Jesus”

Though both Hyam Maccoby and Rabbi Boteach are highly focused on mining the Gospel narrative for useful and probable details of a practicing Jewish Jesus, a brief summary of such evidences, apart from their research, must be presented in conclusion. Using the early-delineated criteria for determining probable authenticity, these can be regarded as highly probable. This is not a matter of “picking and choosing,” but is instead a matter of intellectual deduction. We should not expect the Christian Church, which disavowed these practices, to record the man who they believed “abolished the Law in his flesh” (in the words of Paul), as practicing so strictly that which he came to abolish. That is, we should not expect such to have been recorded unless these details were so widely attested that it was impossible for the Church to disown them, much like the crucifixion itself. For example, it may come as a shock  to many Jews, Christians and even Muslims, that Jesus is recorded as wearing the Jewish religious “fringes,” the tzitzit which are commanded in the Torah (Matthew 9.20-22; 14.34-36; Mark 6).

And a woman who had been suffering from a hemorrhage for twelve years, came up behind Him and touched the fringe (Heb: Tzitzit) of his (Jesus’) cloak; for she was saying to herself, ‘If I only touch his garment, I will get well.’ But Jesus turning and seeing her said, ‘Daughter, take courage; your faith has made you well.’ At once the woman was made well. (Matthew 9:20-22)

Matthew 14:34-36 recounts a similar, probable account of Jesus wearing tzitziyot. This account is found in Mark chapter 6 as well.

When they had crossed over, they came to land at Gennesaret. And when the men of that place recognized him, they sent word into all that surrounding district and brought to him all who were sick; and they implored Him that they might just touch the fringe (Heb: Tzitzit) of His cloak; and as many as touched it were cured.

We see in the Gospel attributed to John, that Jesus celebrated Chanukah, even traveling to the Temple for this purpose.[153] This is surprising admission for the Johannite author, who – as we have seen – is both the latest, and least Jewish account of Jesus. We read in Matthew 23:5 that the hypocrites “do all their deeds to be seen by others. For they make their phylacteries” or tefillin prayer boxes, “broad and make long their fringes” or tzitzit. Almost without exception, this passage has been interpreted by scholars as a reference to Jewish tefillin “prayer boxes.” Its coupling with tzitzit in this reference makes it clear that it is not some other, incidental type of amulet, but a requirement of the Jewish religion[154] that some “hypocrites” made exaggeratedly big, so as to give the impression that they were ultra-religious. What is of chief import for the reader to note is that hypocrisy is never associated here with the act of wearing tzitzit or tefillin, but simply making them so large as to be showy about what was understood as a religious obligation. This is clearly an admonition that could only come from the mouth of a practicing, kosher Jewish Jesus. Furthermore, we may regard the following attribution as highly probable, due to the nature of the quote and its contrast with later, Christian doctrine. Furthermore, we find one of the most clear-cut statements by Jesus, highly embarrassing to later Christian theology, that Jesus upheld all of the mitzvoth. It is presented below with parenthetical translation, for the sake of the unfamiliar reader.

Do not think that I have come to abolish (καταλῦσαι) the Torah (νόμον) or the Prophets (προφήτας, Hebrew: Nevi’im); I have not come to abolish (καταλῦσαι) them but to perform (πληρόω) them. I tell you the truth, until heaven and Earth disappear, not the smallest letter (Hebrew: י) - not one iota (ἰῶτα ἓν) - not the least stroke of a pen at the apex (κεραία, Aramaic: tagin on top of certain Hebrew letters) of a single letter, will by any means disappear from the Torah until everything is accomplished [after heaven and Earth pass away]. Anyone who breaks one of the least of these Commandments (ἐντολῶν) and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the Kingdom of Heaven, but whoever practices and teaches these Commandments will be called great in the Kingdom of Heaven. For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the Kingdom of Heaven. (Matthew 5.17-20)

In spite of this fascinating instruction to follow the Torah, to keep the Mitzvot in the Torah, and to do so as long as Heaven and Earth exist, what does Paul say? He says that the Torah has in fact been abolished. He uses the identical term that Jesus uses when he said that this is not the case.

For he himself is our peace, who has made the two groups one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, by abolishing (καταργήσας) in his flesh the Torah (νόμον) with its Commandments (ἐντολῶν) and regulations. (Ephesians 2.14-15)

Paul uses the same term to describe abolishing the Torah and its Commandments that Jesus is recorded as having used to say not only would not be abolished, but also which he warned us that only an impostor would instruct us had been abolished. Put simply, this means that Jesus was a Jew; not in any sort of modern nationalistic sense, nor restricted to any 19th century, pseudo-scientific concept of race, but in terms of practice. Jesus practiced Judaism, and he warned against those who taught that the Torah and Mitzvot had been abolished. We then see that Paul said just that, and taught just that. He not only said and taught what Jesus warned against, he used the identical words that Jesus warned such a person would use. We can thus see that the most probable statements attributed to Jesus are also those which portray a clearly “kosher” Jesus.

Bibliography

Cadbury, H. J. (1927). The Making of Luke-Acts. The Macmillan Company.

Carter, W. (2004). Matthew: Storyteller, Interpreter, Evangelist. Hendrickson Publishers.

Crossan, J. D. (1993). The Historical Jesus: The Life of a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant. HarperOne.

Ehrman, B. D. (2005). Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why. New York City: HarperCollins.

Fredriksen, P. (2000). From Jesus to Christ: The Origins of the New Testament Images of Christ. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Funk, R. W., Hoover, R. W., & Seminar, t. J. (1993). The Five Gospels. SanFrancisco: Harper.

Gregg, B. H. (2006). The Historical Jesus and the Final Judgment Sayings in Q, Volume 2. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck.

Guthrie, D. (1990). New Testament Introduction . Leicester: Apollos.

Hayes, J. H. (2004). New Testament, History of Interpretation. Abingdon Press.

Kahler, M. (1988). The So-called Historical Jesus and the Historic Biblical Christ. (C. E. Braaten, Trans.) Philadelphia: Fortress.

Käsemann, E. (1973). The Problem of the Historical Jesus. New Testament Studies, 19, 235-245.

Klijn, A. F. (1991). Jewish-Christian Gospel Tradition. Brill Academic Publications.

Kysar, R. (1993). John the Maverick Gospel. Westminster: John Knox Press.

Mack, B. L. (1997). Q and a Cynic-Like Jesus. In W. E. Arnal, & M. Desjardins (Eds.), Whose Historical Jesus? Wilfrid Laurier University Press.

Meier, J. P. (2009). A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus, Law and Love. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Moss, C., & Annet, P. (2010). The evidence of the resurrection: cleared from the exceptions of a late pamphlet entitled "The resurrection of Jesus considered by a moral philosopher, in answer to The tryal of the witnesses, etc.". Nabu Press.

Perrin, N. (1976). Rediscovering the Teaching of Jesus. New York: Harper Collins.

Peters, F. (1991). The Quest For the Historical Muḥammad. International Journal of Middle East Studie, 23, 291-315.

Polkow, D. (1987). Method and Criteria for Historical Jesus Research. Society of Biblical Literature Seminar, 26, 336-56.

Reimarus, H. S., Talbert, C. H., & Fraser, R. S. (1985). Reimarus: Fragments. Chico: Scholars Press.

Sanders, E. P. (1993). The Historical Figure of Jesus. New York: Penguin Press.

Schneemelcher, W., & Wilson, R. M. (1991, 2003). New Testament Apocrypha: Gospels and Related Writings. Westminster: John Knox Press.

Schweirtzer, A. (1968). The Quest of the Historical Jesus: A Critical Study of Its Profess from Reimarus to Wrede. (W. Montgomery, Trans.) New York: Collier/Macmillian.

Theissen, G., & Winter, D. (2002). The Quest for the Plausible Jesus: The Question of Criteria. (M. E. Boring, Trans.) Westminster : John Knox.

Vermès, G. (1981). Jesus the Jew: A Historian's Reading of the Gospels. Fortress Press.

Williams, M. A. (1999). Rethinking Gnosticism: An Argument for Dismantling a Dubious Category. Princeton University Press.

68

[1] Hermann S. Reimarus, Reimarus: Fragments, reprint ed. ed. Charles H. Talbert, trans. Ralph S. Fraser (Chico, Cali: Scholars Press, 1985) 64

[2] John P. Meier. A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus, Law and Love. (Yale University Press: 2009) 6

[3] For a full treatment of these periods, see W. Barnes Tatum, In Quest of Jesus: Revised and Enlarged Edition (Nashville: Abingdon, 1999)

[4] James K. Beilby; Eddy, Paul R. The Historical Jesus: Five Views (IVP Academic: 2009), 10

[5] Beilby 10

[6] ibid. 11

[7] Albert Schweirtzer, The Quest of the Historical Jesus: A Critical Study of Its Profess from Reimarus to Wrede, trans. W. Montgomery (New York: Collier/Macmillian, 1968), 26

[8] Bielby 11

[9] Reimarus, 64

[10] ibid. 71

[11] ibid. 124

[12] ibid. 129

[13] Schweitzer, Quest 44

[14] Peter Annet, The evidence of the resurrection: cleared from the exceptions of a late pamphlet entitled “The resurrection of Jesus considered by a moral philosopher, in answer to The tryal of the witnesses, etc.” (Nabu Press: 2010)

[15] Beilby 16

[16] ibid., 21

[17] ibid.

[18] This period saw the quest for a historical Jesus itself as a violation of the Pauline edict of “Justification of by faith alone” and the perspective that “though we have known Christ after the flesh, henceforth, we know him no more” (2 Corinthians 5.16).

[19] Beilby, 23

[20] Rudolf Bultmann, The History of the Synoptic Tradition, rev. ed. (Oxford: Blackwell, 1963)

[21] Beilby, 24

[22] Martin Kahler, The So-called Historical Jesus and the Historic Biblical Christ, ed. and trans. Carl E. Braaten (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1988), 43, 46

[23] Beilby, 23

[24] D. M. Baillie, God Was In Christ: An Essay on Incarnation and Atonement (New York: Scribner’s Sons, 1948) 58

[25] ibid.

[26] Beilby 24

[27] Käsemann, “Problem”, cited in Beilby, 25. Emphasis mine.

[28] Beilby 25

[29] Dennis Polkow surveys over twenty different criteria used by scholars up through the 1980s in “Method and Criteria for Historical Jesus Research,” Society of Biblical Literature Seminar Paper, 26 (1987): 336-56

[30] Beilby, 27

[31] See Tatum, as well as Norman Perrin, Rediscovering the Teaching of Jesus (Harper Collins: 1976) 39. For a history and critique of this criterion see Gerd Theissen and Dagmar Winter, The Quest for the Plausible Jesus: The Question of Criteria, trans. M. Eugene Boring (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2002) 1-171

[32] Gunther Bornkamm, Jesus of Nazarth, trans. Irene and Fraser McLuskey and James Robinson (New York: Harper & Row, 1960), 13

[33] Bornkamma, 9

[34] ibid., 14

[35] ibid. 24-25

[36] Beilby 25

[37] Bornkamm, 178

[38] Stanley Porter, The Criteria for Authenticity in Historical-Jesus Research: Previous Discussion and New Proposals, (Sheffield Academic Press: 2000) 28

[39] John P. Meier, A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus, Law and Love (Yale University Press: 2009). 6

[40] Burton L. Mack “Q and a Cynic-Like Jesus” Whose Historical Jesus? William E. Arnal and Michel Desjardins ed. (Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1997), 25

[41] Géza Vermès, Jesus the Jew: A Historian’s Reading of the Gospels. (Fortress Press: 1981) 12; Markus N. A. Bockmuehl . The Cambridge Companion to Jesus. (2001: Cambridge University Press) 160

[42] Bart D. Ehrman, Historical Jesus. ‘Historical Criteria.’ Lecture 9 (The Teaching Company: 2000)

[43] Michael Standford, The Nature of Historical Knowledge, (Blackwell, Oxford: 1986)

[44] ibid.

[45] Ehrman, Historical Jesus. Lectures 1-4 (The Teaching Company: 2000)

[46] ibid.. Lectures 9

[47] Bart D. Ehrman, Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why. (HarperCollins: 2005)

[48] ibid.

[49] ibid.

[50] Ed Parish Sanders; Davies, Margaret, Studying the Synoptic Gospels (SCM Press: 1989) 323

[51] Meier, 175

[52] ibid.

[53] John Dominic Crossan, The Historical Jesus: The Life of a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant (HarperOne: 1993) xxxiii. This however, must be distinguished from “Independent Attestation”, as – for example – Matthew and Luke both use Mark’s Gospel as a source. Thus if there is a story present in all these three Gospels is in fact attested in only Mark, a single independent source. Instead, if something could be traced to both Mark and John, or a non-Canonical work like Thomas, then this would be “Multiple Attestation.” Ehrman, Historical Jesus.

[54] Brian Han Gregg, The Historical Jesus and the Final Judgment Sayings in Q, Volume 2 (Mohr Siebeck Tübingen, Germany: 2006) 30

[55] F. L. Cross, ed. “Jesus Christ.” The Oxford dictionary of the Christian church. (New York: Oxford University Press. 2005)

[56] Robert W. Funk, Roy W. Hoover, and the Jesus Seminar. The Five Gospels. (Harper SanFrancisco: 1993), 21

[57] ibid., Lecture 10

[58] ibid.

[59] In 325 C.E.

[60] John 19:39-40

[61] This passage is itself obviously addressing a topic of suspicion in both Lukan and Johannite accounts, as herbs, aloes  – and such a huge, one-hundred pound quantity – would be an absolutely enormous quantity of material to transport and bandage a person with. The authors apparently have to acknowledge the present of herbs, liniment, strips of bandaging, 100 lbs of aloe and other features that there is simply no parallel burial record of in First Century Judaism (or in any other era of Judaism).

[62] Warren Carter, Matthew: Storyteller, Interpreter, Evangelist (Hendrickson Publishers: 2004) 106

[63] Living water is used in Judaism in the absence of a ceremonial immersion miqvah.

[64] Mark 1

[65] Genesis 38

[66] The Tanakhi accounts include people whom Matthew writes out to get his perfect “14” generations times three. 1 Chronicles 3:9-15 day there were 18, not 14 generations between David and the Babylonian captivity. However, even in Matthew’s account, if you add them up, he actually records 41 not 42 (14 times 3).

[67] Mark 1:2-3 refers to both Isaiah 40:3 quote and Malachi 3:1: “Behold, I send My messenger before Your face, who will prepare Your way.”

[68] Matthew 3:3 omits the Malachi 3:1 portion of Mark’s quote.

[69] “Jerome can have had contact with them only during his stay in the desert of Chalcis, i.e. between 373 and 376.” From Wilhelm Schneemelcher, Robert McLachlan Wilson, New Testament Apocrypha: Gospels and Related Writings (Westminster, John Knox Press: 1991, 2003) 143

[70] “In evangelio quo utuntur Nazaraeni et Ebionitae, quod nuper in Graecum de Hebraeo sermone transtulimus, et quod vocatur a plerisque Matthaei authenticum.” Albertus Frederik,Johannes Klijn Jewish-Christian Gospel Tradition (Brill Academic Publications: 1991), 88

[71] Neue Hypothese über die Evangelisten als bloss menschliche Geschichtsschreiber 1778 - New hypothesis on the Evangelists as merely human historians 1778

[72] John Haralson Hayes, New Testament, History of Interpretation, (Abingdon Press: 2004)

[73] Matthew 27:25

[74] Mark 11:12-14

[75] Matthew 21:18

[76] Mark 8:28

[77] Matthew 23

[78] Acts 21:20

[79] Perhaps a literary allusion to the beginning of the story in Galilee; that is, “at this point, turn back to chapter 3 and read the story again, with all of these things you now know borne in mind.” In Matthew 28:16 the disciples go back.

[80] Mark 16:8

[81] Of which, the description is cleaned up in Matthew’s account, to speak of the City being “destroyed” (as it was), rather than the Temple being dismantled – as Mark predicted – which did not occur.

[82] Matthew 28:19

[83] Acts 1:21

[84] Donald Guthrie, New Testament Introduction (Leicester, England: Apollos, 1990), 37-40

[85] Luke 1:3–4

[86] Though it would seem unlikely that this parallel stems from any access of Luke to the Pauline Epistles, which the author is apparently unaware of.

[87] Galatians 2:9

[88] Much to the contrary of Acts accounts of a close relationship between Peter and Paul

[89] Luke 24:47

[90] Acts 18:5-6

[91] Matthew 5:19

[92] Acts 14:11

[93] Acts 28:6

[94] Henry J. Cadbury, The Making of Luke-Acts, (The Macmillan Company: 1927), 76

[95] Martin Hengel, The Four Gospels and the One Gospel of Jesus Christ: An Investigation of the Collection and Origin of the Canonical Gospels. Trans. J. Bowden. (London and Harrisburg: SCM and Trinity Press International: 2000), 169-207.

[96] Andrew Gregory, The Reception of Luke and Acts in the Period before Irenaeus, (DPhil thesis, University of Oxford, 2001), 68

[97] Luke 1:1-2

[98] Perhaps in an attempt to sway follows of John, Proto-Mandeans of sorts, who would have remained outside of the context of the dispute between Paul and James. Such followers are found references in Acts 9:9-13 and 18:24-28.

[99] This actually occurred in 6 CE and did not involve a “musical chairs” of shuffling back to one’s home town.

[100] Isaiah 61:1-2a

[101] ibid. 61:2b

[102] The Sadducees played the primary role in before the agreement between Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai and Vespasian, though the Pharisees were re-permitted marginal involvement beginning with the rule of Queen Salome Alexandra. This marginalization continues until the Ben Zakkai arrangement.

[103] Matthew 11:2

[104] Luke 22:35-36

[105] Matthew 10:34

[106] Luke 22:38

[107] Ibid 22:50

[108] Donald Guthrie, New Testament Introduction (Leicester, England: Apollos, 1990), 37-40

[109] Robert Kysar, John the Maverick Gospel, (Westminster, John Knox Press: 1993)

[110] John 14:6

[111] John 15:5

[112] Micah 5:2

[113] John 1:46

[114] John 7:41

[115] John 7:26-27

[116] John 20:30-31

[117] Never definitively identified.

[118] John 21:25

[119] Besides lacking any historical authenticity, this tale neglects what is almost universally accepted; that the disciples did not pen the canonical accounts.

[120] John 1:32

[121] Mark 1:10

[122] Note the Gospel of Thomas, Saying 15, where Jesus said, “When you see one who was not born of woman, fall on your faces and worship. That one is your Father.”

[123] Matt 11:11

[124] Luke 3:21

[125] John 3:23

[126] John 1:8

[127] John 1:15

[128] And in Luke 3:16

[129] John 1:19

[130] Matthew 9:13

[131] John 18:10

[132] John 13:34

[133] Prajapatir vai idam-agree asit tasya vak dvitiya asit vak vai paramam Brahma.

[134] Satyavrata R Patel, The Soul of India (Orient Book Distributors: 1974), 12

[135] Judith L. Kovacs, “Now Shall the Ruler of This World Be Driven Out: Jesus' Death as Cosmic Battle in John 12:20-36,” Journal of Biblical Literature 114(2) (1995), 227–247

[136] The plot, as it were, thickens here, when we examine the Ossaean-Elchasaites who rejected the deification of Jesus, remained Jewish adherents, and yet held to a proto-Qabalistic “Cosmic Christ” that seems to be a sort of “Adam Qadmon.”

[137] Stephen L. Harris, Understanding the Bible. (Mayfield: 1999)

[138] To find itself the subject of 1 John’s counter-thesis.

[139] Michael Allen Williams, Rethinking Gnosticism: An Argument for Dismantling a Dubious Category, (Princeton University Press: 1999)

[140] This might make sense of the diverse range of theological perspectives found in the Nag Hammadi codex’s; from those more oriented with esoteric Judaic imagery, and familiar Biblical characters, to Hellenistic Gnostic perceptions of Zoroastrian dualism; with the patron God of the Tanakh as an evil “Archon” of sorts.

[141] Plato, “The Republic” Book 7

[142] Numbers 6:1–21

[143] Luke 1:13–15

[144] Martin Hengel, Studies in Early Christology, (T. & T. Clark Publishers, Ltd.: 2005), 331

[145] Rustic Dionysia

[146] Abrogating Judaism in most ways, and yet paradoxically retaining Judaic Messianism

[147] Deuteronomy 18:18

[148] Including the Gospel of Mary Magdalene itself.

[149] John 18:14

[150] John 10:30

[151] John 17:20-21

[152] John 6:16-21

[153] John 10.22-24

[154] Exodus 13:9; Deuteronomy 6:8; Deuteronomy 11:18