Jesus: The Unauthorized Biography

Martyn Whittock, Esther Whittock

• Publisher: Lion Books
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9780745980942
• eBook ISBN: 9780745980959
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Biography

By bringing together all of the available evidence on the life of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, this book offers a compelling biography of His time on Earth.

Looking at sources such as the gospels, inscriptions, early Church writings, the apocryphal gospels and more, readers will be able to vividly visualise Jesus’ life and his First-Century Jewish cultural context.

If you've ever wondered about the impact of Jesus' social class on his ministry; the influence on His disciples of contemporary resistance movements; or the prominent role of women in the disciple community, then allow this book to challenge and deepen your understanding of the Jesus described in the Bible.

CHAPTER 1

A conversation of many “voices”

To write a biography of a man who did not commit a single word to paper (for paper read papyrus), never wrote down his thoughts, never published his manifesto or programme, might seem to pose a bit of a problem. After all, how can we know what this man really thought or what his motivations were? A biography which cannot reference a single word or reflection set down by its subject might appear a little unusual. When one reflects for a moment on the life of Jesus, one has to admit that this is, indeed, the state of affairs. It may come as a surprise because we are not used to thinking of him in this way but it is the undeniable reality. Confucius may not actually have written the so-called Five Classics, but traditionally many Chinese people thought he had. Julius Caesar wrote his Gallic Wars as a self-promoting combat dispatch that could be put up around the forum in Rome to get his version of events into the public domain. St Augustine wrote his Confessions as an autobiography which would set out the development of his inner life as he moved from Roman paganism to Christianity. Alfred the Great wrote his Preface to The Pastoral Care so everyone could see his vision for rebuilding Wessex after the Viking Wars. William Bradford wrote Of Plymouth Plantation, so those who came afterward would understand why the Pilgrims sailed to North America. We could go on. And today, when biographies are written, they are often as reliant on access to the subject’s personal papers and documents, as they are on the thoughts and conclusions of others. Often that is, but not always. For there are, of course, also what are termed “unauthorized biographies”; those where the writer(s) cannot access the private archives of the person about whom they are writing.

For would-be biographers, in these cases, that is not an insurmountable problem, if we have the evidence of those who knew the person, listened to them, set down what they thought. In such cases we are in with a chance. Such evidence might be at one-remove, but it is pretty close to the subject and many historians of the medieval, classical, and ancient world would be very pleased indeed to have sources which were, almost certainly, eyewitnesses (or connected to eyewitnesses) of the events they describe. As we shall shortly see, this is arguably the case when it comes to reconstructing the life, times, thought, and impact of Jesus. This is so, even if later commentators on these texts disagree over the extent to which these sources record the actual words and events of Jesus and his life; or debate whether or not these are the constructs of a community of believers in the generation following these momentous activities. We will return to that issue shortly, because we will need to establish something of the nature of these crucial pieces of written evidence. In addition, if we can cross-reference these sources to other corroborative pieces of evidence then our exploration can really begin to gain traction. And this is true whether these other “witnesses” specifically refer to the events we are exploring or simply corroborate the impression we are getting of the life, times, outlook, and teaching of Jesus.

The perspectives of the Gospels

The Christian “canonical” (officially accepted) Gospels abound in details concerning the life, movements, and experiences of Jesus and date from very close to his lifetime. This does not mean that they have to be accepted as accurate, but they certainly claim to be eyewitness reports, or at least closely associated with eyewitnesses and – whether they are accurate or not – the time-proximity of their compilation to the events described is striking. From a historian’s point of view it is actually a great strength that there are four of them. This gives us different perspectives on events, and recognizes that all four share certain core beliefs about Jesus and his impact. It also means that we have a broad base of evidence; we are not just dependent on one definitive document which has been edited in order to create one official and acceptable version. What is sometimes claimed to be a weakness (four Gospels, which at times offer differing versions of events) is, in fact, a substantial strength. And the sheer number of surviving early manuscripts of the four canonical Gospels is remarkable; as is their high level of agreement with each other. One should also note the rapidity with which the four canonical Gospels were accepted as authoritative within the early Christian communities. Also, it should be remembered that this was a time before Christianity commanded state power to impose orthodoxy.

There is strong evidence, from the writings of early church leaders, that all four canonical Gospels were accepted across most church communities by about the year 180.¹ The so-called Muratorian Fragment suggests that the basic New Testament canon was in place by the year 200.² That is not, of course, the date of its writing but, rather, of the acceptance of a collection of long-established documents constituting what we now call the New Testament; and the exclusion of other documents which were regarded as lacking authoritative connections to the first generation of believers. With regard to actual manuscripts: there survive some 5,300 in Greek (with very high levels of textual agreement); and 10,000 manuscripts survive in Latin, Syriac, Coptic, etc.³ Famously, the John Rylands MS P52, of the Gospel of John has been dated to as early as 100–150;⁴ the Chester Beatty MS (containing many of the letters) dates from c. 200.⁵ Almost all of the New Testament is present in surviving manuscripts compiled before the year 300. Soon after this date, complete parchment manuscripts survive (containing virtually the whole New Testament). And this is all prior to the church possessing coercive state power sufficient to enforce uniformity. This is remarkable, to put it mildly. What it basically means is that we can be extremely confident that, when we open the New Testament today, we have what was written; and footnotes in the best editions (and in commentaries) give us insights into the best attested variant readings where these occur in the surviving manuscript evidence. We will also argue that the outline of events they recount is broadly corroborated by other forms of evidence regarding religious beliefs, politics, and society.

This does not mean that what they say necessarily represents what actually happened. More-conservative and more-liberal scholars differ over this matter. The former would describe them as rooted in eyewitness accounts of those present at events or from communities with strong connections to those present. In short, they are rooted in historical information, albeit framed and composed in order to present a faith case. The latter would reject their historical credentials and, instead, describe them as products of the later Christian communities’ confession statements of their proclaimed faith (even legends) which sought to present these as based on the original words and deeds of Jesus.⁶ Non-believers and sceptics might argue that just because a person says something was said or occurred does not mean that it actually was or did. But, whatever the stance taken, it does mean that we have a range of different accounts regarding Jesus and his significance which were compiled very close to the time of the “events” they describe. And many experts would argue that these are rooted in the memories of eyewitnesses. This then leaves the matter to the individual of whether to believe them or not.

The authors of this book come down on the side of those who argue that we have in the Gospels a record that is rooted in eyewitness accounts, although accepting that they were compiled, framed, and redacted in the context of communities of believers who had strong beliefs regarding the significance of Jesus, and who wanted to present their case through the words and actions of the one they had come to believe had been sent by God. We will leave readers to decide whether they accept the authenticity of these claims and whether they concur with the original compilers concerning the supernatural agency, power, and significance of Jesus. The authors have their own beliefs and views regarding this, but will not be imposing those on readers. Readers must make up their own minds. What we have aimed to do is to analyze, explore, and explain what was presented and claimed about the life of this first-century Jewish preacher and teacher; and to set this in the context of the time, in as far as the evidence survives sufficient to achieve this.

The role of a modern biography

So, having said that we don’t have any words written by Jesus, we now seem to have reached the point where we can conclude that people claiming to be eyewitnesses were writing down reports of his life, words, and actions within a generation of these occurring. So, in that case, who needs a modern biography? Surely we have four already? We call them the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Of these, Matthew, Mark, and Luke are often termed the “synoptic gospels” because they contain many of the same stories and teaching; often similarly arranged; using comparable or at times identical wording. The description is derived from a Greek word, meaning to broadly see things from the same point of view. All four Gospels were written in Greek, the international language of the eastern Mediterranean in the first century AD. Most of the authors probably spoke Aramaic at home, understood Hebrew in the synagogue, and used Greek to get the message out to the widest audience possible. Plus, by the time of compilation, the early Christian community was well on the way to becoming Greek-speaking and was no longer a sect within Judaism. This was a seismic shift for a Jewish group, believing in a Jewish messiah.

Many experts believe that the Gospel of Mark was the first Gospel to be written, probably around the year 70. The same general agreement would accept that the Gospel of Matthew and the Gospel of Luke were both composed sometime in the 80s.⁷ These latter two seem to have been written independently of each other and used significant amounts of material peculiar to themselves. For example, the familiar events associated with the Christmas story are found only in Luke; on the other hand, the visit of the Magi is found only in Matthew and this Gospel contains none of the other well-known traditions concerning Jesus’ birth. However, despite this, they seem to have used a version of the Gospel of Mark (possibly one slightly earlier than the version we have today), along with material that was not in Mark. This additional material may have been in the form of a collection of Jesus’ sayings.⁸

This hypothetical collection of sayings is often referred to as the Synoptic Sayings Source or, more usually, “Q” (from the German word quelle, meaning “source”). Q may have been compiled very early indeed; maybe as early as the 40s or 50s. What is called Q no longer exists as such, but many experts believe it can be traced through the common material found in Matthew and Luke and so can broadly be reconstructed from this usage. It is even possible that Matthew used a slightly different version of Q to that used by Luke. Or it may be that Luke followed the order of Q more closely.⁹ But that is getting more complex than we can attempt to explore in this overview. Some experts think it is possible to deconstruct the synoptic gospels in order to identify a number of, once-independent, written collections of traditions associated with Jesus: collections of miracle stories, collections of sayings revealing heavenly wisdom, passion accounts, and so on. These once-independent sources, it is argued, were originally collated by particular church communities, in order to support their specific theological interests, liturgies, and teaching needs. The Gospel-compilers then incorporated them into their writings. How convincingly the identification of these original sources can be done varies between different scholars proposing this approach and there is no one agreed view on this.

Early church tradition, from as far back as Papias of Hierapolis (died: c. 130), is that somewhere behind the Greek-language Gospel of Matthew lay a much earlier work written in the Aramaic language, to which the later – Greek – Gospel was in some way indebted. Papias actually claimed that the original was written in Hebrew.¹⁰ Modern experts are divided on this and most of them would disagree with this traditional claim, since Matthew carries no linguistic traces of it being a Greek version of an Aramaic/Hebrew original.¹¹ Perhaps Papias was referring to a collection of sayings that Matthew drew on, rather like the collection called Q? The matter is far from certain.

Finally, we come to the Gospel of John. This Gospel is very different to the other three and comes from a quite different literary tradition. Some think it is the work of a single man described in this Gospel as the “disciple that Jesus loved” who, it is claimed, wrote this Gospel, three letters attributed to John, and the book of Revelation. Others argue that there was a group of authors who wrote in a similar style, with numerous layers of careful editing. Although this Gospel is more developed, reflective, and symbolic, it achieves this by focusing in on a narrower set of events and themes. It is, therefore, arguably more theological. But this should not be overstated, as the other Gospels are also clearly focused on making key points regarding belief.

The general consensus among experts is that the Gospel of John was compiled later than the other Gospels but may still have drawn on much earlier oral traditions and even on some written sources now lost to us. More conservative scholars would definitely assert this. It was once fashionable to give it a second-century date but, given that the earliest manuscript dates from about 120 and was probably copied several times before that, and undoubtedly had a back-story of circulating among churches in Asia Minor prior to that, it was almost certainly compiled much earlier than some have suggested. With its emphasis on being thrown out of synagogues due to Christian faith (formal Jewish rejections of Christian belief date from about the year 90, but this was the culmination of a period of conflict) the Gospel could have been compiled any time between years 70 and 100. This would make its date of composition more comparable with the other Gospels.¹²

It will be noted that we have used the names Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John as the names of the writers of these Gospels, but some would conclude this is overly simplistic and that these are actually personal names anchoring these accounts in particular communities scattered around the eastern Mediterranean, rather than the individuals who actually penned them. Some, such as John’s Gospel, have been described as the work of a group of writers. In contrast, church tradition, it should be said, has tended to link these compilations to particular high profile members of the early church whose Christian credentials went back to the time of the ministry of Jesus. In this book we shall use these personal names for simplicity, although accepting that things were possibly (probably) rather more complex than this suggests. But, however these accounts finally came together, they were made up of collections of traditions that claimed to represent authentic words and deeds of Jesus. The early church certainly soon differentiated them from other – later – material, which included additional letters and Gospels that never made it into the accepted canon of the New Testament. This brings us to these other potential sources of “gospel” evidence.

There is a possibility that some early material may also survive into some, at least, of the non-canonical gospels which survive from the second century onward. Making sense of these in trying to construct something of the life, words, and deeds of Jesus is very contentious indeed. On one hand some may contain some evidence not found in the four canonical Gospels. We know – from Papias of Hierapolis again – that oral traditions (often termed agrapha, unwritten things) were still being passed down among Christians who believed they had originated with the first apostles. This was as late as c. 110, and Papias (controversially from our perspective) appears to have valued these collections even more highly than the written Gospels with which we are familiar.¹³ As a result, we will at times explore and assess some of this additional material. We get hints about this kind of evidence, paradoxically, within the New Testament itself. In Acts 20:35 the apostle Paul, while staying briefly at Miletus (in modern south-western Turkey), gave instructions to a group of chur...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Preface
• Chapter 1. A conversation of many “voices”
• Chapter 2. Back-story
• Chapter 3. “O little town of Bethlehem”
• Chapter 4. Growing up in “Galilee of the Gentiles”
• Chapter 5. “A voice crying in the wilderness”
• Chapter 6. “The kingdom of heaven is at hand”
• Chapter 7. A band of brothers
• Chapter 8. A band of… sisters
• Chapter 9. The “good news”: what exactly was it?
• Chapter 10. “Broods of vipers” or “stalwarts of national life”?
• Chapter 11. Escalating crisis
• Chapter 12. Enter the Romans
• Chapter 13. “Tell no one…” A secret messiah?
• Chapter 14. “O Jerusalem…”
• Chapter 15. From Palm Sunday to the Last Supper
• Chapter 16. Messiah on trial
• Chapter 17. The death of Jesus
• Chapter 18. “On the third day”
• About the authors
• References
• Index