How do we know what to believe?
By James A. Bacon
Who was the historical Jesus? An apocalyptic prophet who foretold the imminent coming of the kingdom of God? A social reformer seeking to better the lives of the poor and dispossessed? A revolutionary bent upon overthrowing the Romans and their Jewish puppets? Or something else entirely?
To separate fact from legend, scholars over more than 200 years have subjected the writings of the four Gospels, our primary source material, to close examination. Consensus in the field is uncommon. New Testament scholars have proffered so many interpretations that scarcely a word in the Gospels has gone uncontested. It is standard practice to attribute inconvenient passages to scribes who, long after Jesus lived, altered texts to advance their own agendas. Frustratingly, it is difficult for a newcomer to the field to know what to believe.
In researching and composing “The Mystery of the Empty Tomb,” I have given considerable thought to which testimony in the Gospels reflects a reasonable facsimile of the historical truth and which is 1st-century spin or fabrication. I don’t pretend to possess greater insight than scholars who have devoted their careers to the matter. But I do feel that I owe it to the reader to make clear how I drew the portrait of Jesus that I did. Much of my logic can be found in the footnotes in the book as well as the words I have put in the mouth of my protagonist Nicolaus of Caesarea. But there is much more to be said about the sources.
Among the Gospels, I draw most heavily from Mark and John, and a bit from Luke. (Mathew, as I shall explain is almost worthless as a historical source for the life of Jesus.) In contrast to the radical skeptics who contend that little escaped the hand of scribes, editors and mythmakers and that, therefore, that little can be known with confidence about the life of Jesus, I find that Mark, John and Luke contain much reliable testimony. Here, for the edification of readers, I offer my assessment of the Gospels as historical sources.
The Gospel of Mark
Our knowledge of the Gospel of Mark derives largely from the words of Papias of Heirapolis (c. 60 to c. 130 C.E.), and those who later commented upon (and sometimes contradicted) them. Wrote Papias, who claimed to have made a practice of interviewing and recording the words of travelers through his city who knew “the Lord’s disciples”:
Mark, in his capacity as Peter’s interpreter, wrote down accurately as many things as he recalled from memory—though not in an ordered form—of the things either said or done by the Lord. For he neither heard the Lord nor accompanied him, but later, as I said, Peter, who used to give his teachings in the form of chreiai [a type of anecdote], but had no intention of providing an ordered arrangement of the logia [words] of the Lord. Consequently, Mark did nothing wrong when he wrote down some individual items just as he related them from memory. For he made it his one concern not to omit anything he had heard or to falsify anything.
Some scholars believe that the name of John Mark, a companion of Paul and Barnabas on their missionary journeys, was given to the Gospel to link the Gospel to an authoritative figure and, thus, to enhance its credibility. I find such arguments unconvincing and, for our purposes, irrelevant. Regardless of who the author was, he clearly obtained his material from Peter. Peter was an uneducated man, most likely illiterate. He left no written testimony. (Few scholars attribute to others authorship of the New Testament epistles bearing his name.) But he was charismatic and one of Jesus’ closest followers, and it is natural that others deemed his stories about Jesus worthy of preserving after he died. His crucifixion is usually dated to the mid-60s A.D. The Gospel of Mark was composed only a few years later, most likely right after the 70 C.E. destruction of the Temple of Jerusalem. Someone wrote down his words and organized them into a coherent narrative. Whether or not the scribe went by the name of Mark is of peripheral interest.
The individual stories (or pericopes as New-Testament scholars term them) have the ring of authenticity. If they do not always reflect historical reality – did Jesus really perform healing “miracles”? – they faithfully reflect how the apostle Peter perceived that reality. The Gospel contains few of the legendary elaborations found in the later Gospels, such as the birth narratives or angels at Jesus’ tomb. Most telling of all, the Gospel contains much material that would later prove embarrassing to Jesus’ followers, such as his estrangement from his family and his summoning of demons to perform exorcisms. These stories were too notorious to ignore — and we can be all the more certain of their authenticity because of that.
While writing “The Mystery of the Empty Tomb,” I ranked Mark as the most credible of all the Gospels. Peter was an eye-witness source, and his words were written shortly after his death, meaning they had less time to drift due to the telling and retelling. When Mark’s account conflicted with other Gospels, I almost always deferred to his version.
The Gospel of Luke
The Gospel of Luke was the first of two volumes in a two-volume work, the second of which was Acts, a chronicle of the early deeds of the apostles after Jesus’ death. The author is not named in either book, but according to Irenaeus writing in the mid-late 2nd century, authorship was ascribed to Luke, a traveling companion of the apostle Paul. As with almost everything else in New Testament studies, scholarly opinion regarding authorship differs. But, as with Mark, what matters for our purposes is not the name of the author but where he got his material.
There is widespread (though not unanimous) agreement that the author of Luke took Mark’s Gospel as the foundation for his own work, weaving in additional material available to him. Thus, we find that roughly 65 percent of the verses are very similar, and they appear in roughly the same order. Luke adopted the Marcan material to suit his own literary style and tone down material that became embarrassing in the years that had passed since the composition of Mark. (More about that below.)
A second source has been termed the “sayings” Gospel or Q (for the German word for source, quelle, used by German scholars who first developed the theory). Noting that the Gospel of Luke differed from that of Matthew in the same way, containing many Jesus sayings that don’t appear in Mark, scholars theorized that an unknown scribe wrote down collections of Jesus sayings, and that these sayings circulated for many years before Luke and Matthew inserted them into their reworked versions of Mark. There is endless disputation over how the anonymous compilers might have altered the sayings to suit their own didactic purposes but the hypothesis that collections of Jesus sayings were an actual literary form received resounding confirmation with the discovery of the Nag Hammadi texts in Egypt in 1945. The best known of these is the Gospel of Thomas, a compilation of Jesus quotations with no connecting narrative, just like the hypothesized Q. The Q sayings were much earlier in origin than Thomas, however, they underwent less transformation at the hands of theologically minded scribes, and thus they can be more reliably ascribed to Jesus.
For what it’s worth, my working assumption is that is that the scribe or scribes who wrote down the quotations reflected Jesus’ meaning with fair accuracy. However, I did not draw heavily upon the Q sayings for “The Mystery of the Empty Tomb.”
I relied far more upon the source unique to Luke: a person or persons in the court of Herod Antipas. Luke has much more to say about Antipas, the tetrarch of Galilee, than the other Gospels. Examples include his detailed description of John the Baptist and Antipas’ fear of him, as well as the parlay between Antipas and Pontius Pilate during Jesus’ trial. Luke also takes note of two women, Joanna and Susanna, who supported Jesus and his disciples financially. Joanna, the wife of Antipas’ steward Chusa, undoubtedly was a prominent figure in Antipas’ court and might well have been Luke’s source. Thus, in matters pertaining to Herod Antipas, who assumes an important secondary role in “The Mystery of the Empty Tomb,” I usually defer to Luke.
The Gospel of Matthew
The Gospel of Matthew, according to Papias of Heirapolis, was written by Matthew, an apostle of Jesus. Very few modern scholars accept that assertion, however. Citing internal evidence in the text, they suggest that the Gospel was composed by a man who belonged to a community of Jewish Christ followers in the late 1st century, possibly in the great metropolis of Antioch. Like Luke, it is widely thought, “Matthew” used Mark as the template for his Gospel — 600 of 661 verses are similar — and that he supplemented it with the Q source as well as his own material, referred to as the M source.
Material unique to Matthew includes eight parables, which likely came from one version or another of written Jesus sayings and has value to anyone trying to reconstruct the words of Jesus. By contrast, the beginning and ending of Matthew – the birth narrative and the angels-at-the-tomb narrative – have no analogue in the other Gospels and cannot be attributed to any plausible eye-witness source.
Matthew’s birth narrative cannot be reconciled with Luke’s. Matthew’s story contained wisemen; Luke’s had shepherds, but no wisemen. Matthew’s had a star; Luke mentions no astrological phenomena. Matthew said Herod wanted to slay the baby Jesus and the family fled to Egypt. Knowing nothing of that, Luke told stories of a precocious Jesus holding forth in the temple. Even the genealogies attributed to Jesus differed. The miraculous-birth narratives in both Gospels likely arose after the destruction of the temple in response to accusations that Jesus was born of fornication. At the time of their writing in the late 1st century, both evangelists had to confront the taunts of the Jews, and both adopted the same scheme of arguing that Jesus was conceived by the holy spirit. Otherwise, their narratives bore few similarities. I exclude them from “The Mystery of the Empty Tomb.”
Luke and Matthew also added miraculous elements to their accounts of the empty tomb not found in Mark. Luke described the disciples visiting the tomb after the sabbath and encountering two men “in shining garments,” presumably angels, who said the Jesus had risen. In modern vernacular, it can be said that Matthew said, “Hold my beer.” At the behest of the high priests, he wrote, Pilate posted guards at the tomb. They witnessed an earthquake and angel of the Lord who descended from heaven and moved the stone at the entrance. Not yet done, Matthew described how Jesus appeared to his disciples briefly afterwards and then how the chief priests paid the guards to say nothing of what they had seen. “And this saying is commonly reported among the Jews until this day,” he added, illustrating clearly the polemical contest in which he was engaged.
Although these extraordinary events at the tomb had escaped the notice of Mark and John (more about John in a moment), both of which were based on eye-witness accounts, they were picked up and elaborated upon in later apocryphal gospels. According to the so-called Gospel of Peter, not only did Pilate assign guards to the tomb, but the soldiers saw two angels supporting Jesus as he left the tomb and then watched as all three ascended into the heavens! This was too fantastical for even the early church to accept into its New Testament canon.
The Beelzebub controversy
Critical to my interpretation of the historical Jesus is the evidence in Mark, downplayed by Luke and Matthew, of how Jesus exorcized demons. In the hearing before Pilate, the high priests charged Jesus with “sorcery” – performing miraculous acts through the power of demons. In their polemical battles against Jesus followers and later the Christians, the Jews reiterated that accusation. The Gospel of Mark contained numerous passages attesting to Jesus’ conjuration of demons, which seemed to confirm the Jewish indictment and proved an embarrassment. Accordingly, both Luke and Matthew modified the Marcan passages to attribute Jesus’ healing to the power of God.
This is an important though underappreciated point in Biblical scholarship, and I beg the reader’s forgiveness for documenting it at some length.
Here is how Mark (chapter 3) treated the controversy over his exorcisms:
And the scribes which came down from Jerusalem said, He hath Beelzebub, and by the prince of the devils casteth he out devils.
And he called them unto him, and said unto them in parables, How can Satan cast out Satan?
And if a kingdom be divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand.
And if a house be divided against itself, that house cannot stand.
And if Satan rise up against himself, and be divided, he cannot stand, but hath an end.
No man can enter into a strong man’s house, and spoil his goods, except he will first bind the strong man; and then he will spoil his house.
Notice that Mark (meaning Peter) did not deny that Jesus cast out demons by Beelzebub — he justified the practice. In the parable, the strong man was Beelzebub. By binding him, Jesus was able to enter and loot his house – expel lesser demons. This power, Mark said, was a sign that the reign of demons was coming to an end and that the kingdom of God was imminent.
Now look how Luke (chapter 11) reworked the pericope.
Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation; and a house divided against a house falleth.
If Satan also be divided against himself, how shall his kingdom stand? because ye say that I cast out devils through Beelzebub.
And if I by Beelzebub cast out devils, by whom do your sons cast them out? therefore shall they be your judges.
But if I with the finger of God cast out devils, no doubt the kingdom of God is come upon you.
When a strong man armed keepeth his palace, his goods are in peace:
But when a stronger than he shall come upon him, and overcome him, he taketh from him all his armour wherein he trusted, and divideth his spoils.
Luke acknowledged the accusations that Jesus cast out demons by Beelzebub but turned the accusation around. If Jesus performed exorcisms by Beelzebub, he asked, how did his accusers perform exorcisms? Then he suggested that Jesus performed his miracle empowered by “the finger of God.”
We see a similar rhetorical gambit in Matthew.
If Satan cast out Satan, he is divided against himself; how shall then his kingdom stand?
And if I by Beelzebub cast out devils, by whom do your children cast them out? therefore they shall be your judges.
But if I cast out devils by the Spirit of God, then the kingdom of God is come unto you.
Or else how can one enter into a strong man’s house, and spoil his goods, except he first bind the strong man? and then he will spoil his house.
Jesus, Matthew implied, performed exorcisms by “the Spirit of God.”
As I see it, Mark was the closest to an eye-witness source. He faithfully retold the stories of Jesus’ exorcisms and healings as Peter had. Luke and Matthew came along a generation later when rhetorical battles with the Jews focused on Jesus’ use of “sorcery.” The latter two evangelists reinterpreted Jesus’ power as coming from God, not Beelzebub, thus absolving him of the sorcery charge. One man’s sorcery was another man’s power of God. Accordingly, I treat Mark’s account as authentic and the reinterpretations by Luke and Matthew as apologetics.
The Gospel of John
The authorship of the Gospel of John was attributed in early Christian tradition to the apostle John, the brother of James and son of the Galilean fisherman Zebedee. Modern scholarship leans heavily toward the unnamed “beloved disciple” mentioned in the Gospel as the primary source but suggests that the Gospel, which contains a heavy theological overlay, was written by an unnamed scribe in the city of Ephesus around 90 to 110 C.E.
My interpretation departs somewhat from the mainstream consensus. It is evident to me that there are three voices within the Gospel of John — one a Galilean voice, which describes Jesus’ activities in Galilee; a Jerusalem voice, which recounts his activities in Jerusalem; and a scribal voice who melded the two and injected his own commentary which was infused by Greek philosophy. The opening words of the Gospel — “in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God — introduced concepts that were alien and unfamiliar to the Jewish eye-witness sources whose testimony the Gospel was based upon. Some see the Gospel as having similarities to the offshoot of the early Jesus movement known as Gnosticism, which also borrowed heavily from Greek philosophy. The scribe who composed John has little to tell us about the historical Jesus.
The Jerusalem narrative, I believe, rested upon the eye-witness testimony of “the beloved disciple,” whom I believe was named John and after whom the Gospel was named. Most likely, this John was a priest and a member of the temple hierarchy, as made evident by his detailed knowledge of the deliberations of the high priests in any number of encounters with Jesus and above all by his detailed description of events leading up to Jesus’ trial and crucifixion. John’s account contains considerable detail not found in the other Gospels and, as I note in “The Mystery of the Empty Tomb,” dovetails with what we know from Flavius Josephus, Philo of Alexandria, and the Roman historians about Pontius Pilate.
The eye-witness account comes to life most vividly in the rump trial of Jesus in the house of the old high priest Annas: “Simon Peter followed Jesus, and so did another disciple: that disciple was known unto the high priest, and went in with Jesus into the palace of the high priest.” Thanks to this unnamed disciple we know that the thoughts and motives attributed to the high priests described in John were not idle speculation but informed by personal knowledge. Whether the man “known unto the high priest” was one and the same as the beloved disciple, we can only conjecture. But for purposes of “The Mystery of the Empty Tomb,” I accept the Jerusalem narrative of the Gospel of John as the most authoritative account of Jesus’ last days.
One way or another, the beloved disciple left Jerusalem — perhaps as a refugee after the 70 C.E. destruction of the temple — and made his way to the thriving community of Jesus followers in Ephesus (whom the apostle Paul addressed in his letters to the Ephesians).
What of the Galilean tradition that I hypothesize? The clue is the presence of Hermione, a prophetess revered by the early church and said to be the daughter of a certain “Philip.” Early Christian tradition equated this Philip with Jesus’ apostle of the same name. Philip plays a prominent role in the Gospel of John; indeed, other than Peter’s, his name appears in that Gospel more frequently than any other’s. Some scholars have suggested that Hermione’s father Philip was a different man entirely from the apostle and have dubbed him “Philip the evangelist.” However, I believe the nexus of links between Philip the apostle, John the Baptist, Samaritans, and Simon Magus — a theory that would require a full scholarly treatise to defend — provide ample reason to accept that Philip the apostle is Hermione’s father.
If we accept that premise, admittedly a controversial one, then it logical to conclude that Hermione drew upon the testimony of her father, Philip the apostle, which in turn became the basis of the Galilean narrative that appears in the Gospel of John. Because the ultimate source of Gospel of John for the Galilean stories can be traced to Philip — not Peter as for the Gospel of Mark — it should surprise no one that there is little overlapping material. Whether one accepts my hypothesis or not, one has to account for how Galilean material originated from a source who lived a privileged life as a temple priest in Jerusalem. If not from Philip, who?
Rightly or wrongly, “The Temple of the Empty Tomb” assumes that the Gospel of John’s Galilean narrative originated with Philip the apostle, and was transmitted through his daughter Hermione who became a leading figure in the Christian community in Ephesus. She was the one who conveyed the Galilee narrative to the unknown scribe who authored the manuscript. Based upon this theory of two eyewitness sources, I give a prominent role to John the beloved disciple and a smaller but significant one to Philip in “The Mystery of the Empty Tomb.”
The Apocryphal Gospels
The early Christian community gave birth to innumerable texts attributed to celebrated figures associated with Jesus that scholars have dubbed “apocrypha”: of doubtful authenticity. While there may be a few historical needles buried within this haystack, they are exceedingly rare and for most apocryphal works are not worth the effort. However, two lengthy texts contain shadows of authenticity: the Clementine Homilies and Clementine Recognitions. Modern scholarship describes these 3rd-century works as fictitious accounts of the conversion of Clement of Rome to Christianity and his travels with the apostle Peter. It is conjectured that these novels were based upon a 2nd-century work referred to as the “Preaching of Peter.” They convey details that, though clearly fabricated, likely contain nuggets that shed light on the Jesus movement.
The Clementine literature focuses on the rivalry between Peter and Simon Magus, a Samaritan figure referred to derisively in other Christian literature as a sorcerer. They contain rich material laying out how Simon and another Samaritan, Dositheus, were followers of John the Baptist who contended over leadership of the Baptist’s followers after his death. There are kernels of historical authenticity here, largely overlooked by scholars, that I have integrated into “The Mystery of the Empty Tomb.”