Prayer Tents Bible References - Prayer Tents

JESUS CHRIST

The Calling of the Apostles Peter and Andrew, Duccio di Buoninsegna (1308/1311) (National Gallery of Art, Washington; Samuel H. Kress Collection)

The founder of what became the Christian movement. For greater specificity, in his lifetime he was called “Jesus son of Joseph” (Luke 4:22; John 1:45; 6:42), “Jesus of Nazareth” (Acts 10:38), or “Jesus the Nazarene” (Mark 1:24; Luke 24:19 [some translations do not distinguish “the Nazarene” from “of Nazareth”]). “Christ” is a title, the English form of Gk. christós, “anointed” (which translates Heb. māšîaḥ, “messiah”). Acts 2:36 and other passages show knowledge that “the Christ” was properly a title, but in many NT books, including Paul’s letters, the name and title are used together as Jesus’ name: “Jesus Christ” or “Christ Jesus” (e.g., Rom. 1:1; 3:24). Paul sometimes simply used “Christ” as Jesus’ name (e.g., Rom. 5:6).

Life

Jesus was a Galilean, whose home was Nazareth, a village near Sepphoris, one of the two major cities of Galilee. He was born shortly before the death of Herod the Great (Matt. 2; Luke 1:5), which was in 4 b.c.e. The year of Jesus’ death is uncertain, probably sometime between 29 and 33.

Jesus’ parents were Joseph and Mary, but according to Matthew and Luke, Joseph was only his legal father. They report that Mary was a virgin when Jesus was conceived (Matt. 1:18; cf. Luke 1:35). Joseph is said to have been a “carpenter,” a craftsman who worked with his hands (Matt. 13:55); according to Mark 6:3, Jesus also was a carpenter.

Luke reports that as a child Jesus had precocious learning (Luke 2:41-52), but there is no other evidence about his childhood or early development. As a young adult, he went to be baptized by a prophet, John the Baptist, and shortly thereafter began a career as an itinerant preacher and healer (Mark 1:2-15). During this short career of less than one year he attracted considerable attention. When he went to Jerusalem to observe Passover ca. 30 c.e. (between 29 and 33), he was arrested, tried, and executed. Convinced that he still lived and had appeared to them, his disciples began to convert others to belief in him; these efforts eventually led to a new religion, Christianity.

Sources

The only substantial sources for the life and message of Jesus are the NT Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Reliable (but meagre) evidence is found in the letters of Paul. There are many sayings attributed to Jesus and stories told about him in noncanonical literature, especially the apocryphal Gospels, and occasionally a reinvestigation of this material leads to the proposal that some of it is “authentic.” Although possible in principle, and although a few authentic traditions probably have been preserved outside the Christian canon, it is unlikely that noncanonical sources can contribute substantially to understanding the historical Jesus. The traditions are frequently completely unlike the evidence of the canonical Gospels, and are for the most part embedded in documents that are unreliable on the whole. A few references to Jesus occur in Roman sources, but these are dependent on early Christianity and do not provide independent evidence. A reference to Jesus in Josephus (Ant. 18.3.3 [63-4]) has been heavily revised by Christian scribes, and the original statement cannot be recovered.

The Gospels attributed to Matthew, Mark, and Luke agree so closely that it is possible to study them together in a synopsis (arranged in parallel columns). John is remarkably different, and can be reconciled with the Synoptics only in very general ways. One may, however, distinguish John’s discourse material from the narrative outline and evaluate them separately. In the Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke), Jesus teaches in short aphorisms and parables, using similes and similar figures of speech, many drawn from agricultural and village life. The principal subject is the kingdom of God; he seldom refers to himself. When asked for a “sign” to prove his authority, he refuses (Mark 8:11-12). In John, however, Jesus teaches in long metaphorical discourses, in which he himself is the main subject. His miracles are described as “signs” that support the self-descriptions in the discourses and prove who he is. Faced with the choice between John and the Synoptics, scholars have almost unanimously chosen the Synoptic Gospels as giving the substance and manner of Jesus’ teaching.

John’s narrative outline is also different from the Synoptics, but here the choice is less clear. In the Synoptics, it appears that Jesus’ ministry lasted less than one year, since they mention Passover only once during Jesus’ adulthood, the occasion of his last, fatal trip to Jerusalem. John, however, cites three Passovers, and thus a ministry of more than two years. John narrates several trips to Jerusalem during Jesus’ ministry. Either narrative outline is possible. A ministry of more than two years, however, leaves more questions unanswered than does a ministry of a few months. Jesus and his disciples were itinerant; they travelled around Galilee and its immediate environs, and Jesus taught and healed in various towns and villages, as well as in the countryside and by the shore of the Sea of Galilee. None of the Gospels explains how they lived (though Luke 8:1-3 mentions some female supporters), but the omission is more glaring in John.

This discussion makes clear how little we really know about the life of Jesus. The Gospels provide the information that the authors regarded as necessary in the Christian communities in which they worked. The details of Jesus’ life — where he slept, how he ate, where he took refuge in bad weather — are barely mentioned. From the perspective of a modern historian, the sources are deficient in other ways as well. The characters on the whole are “flat”: emotions, motives, personalities are seldom mentioned. Jesus is sometimes angry and sometimes compassionate (Mark 3:5; 6:34), but one can say little more. Because of his letters, we know more about Paul the man than about Jesus the man.

This is understandable when one considers the history of the material in the Synoptic Gospels. They consist of brief, self-contained passages called “pericopes,” which the Synoptic authors arranged in different contexts as they saw fit, frequently according to similarity of subject matter. The heart of each passage has been stripped of the elements that surrounded it in real life, and the central unit applied to various situations by different users, including the authors of the Gospels.

Moreover, not all the sayings and deeds in the Gospels are reports of things that Jesus actually said and did. The early Christians believed that Jesus still lived in heaven, and they spoke to him in prayer. He sometimes answered (2 Cor. 12:7-10; cf. 1 Cor. 2:13). The early Christians did not distinguish between “the historical Jesus” and “the heavenly Lord” as firmly as most modern people do, and some sayings heard in prayer almost certainly came into the Gospels as sayings uttered by Jesus in his lifetime.

This means that we no longer have the original immediate context of Jesus’ sayings and deeds, and we are somewhat uncertain as to which passages in the Gospels go back to the historical Jesus. Without context, we cannot reconstruct the original meaning of the individual passages with certainty. Jesus said, “Love your enemies” (Matt. 5:44). We do not know the original circumstances in which he said this, and so we do not know whom he had in mind. This robs us of precision in interpreting individual passages.

Public Career

We can, however, find the overall context and the general history of Jesus’ ministry, and this provides certainty of the thrust of his teaching as a whole. Jesus’ public career began when he was baptized by John the Baptist, an eschatological prophet who proclaimed that the day of judgment was at hand. Jesus seems to have accepted this. Subsequently Jesus gathered 12 disciples, representing the 12 tribes of Israel, proclaimed the arrival of the kingdom of God, predicted the destruction of the temple and its rebuilding “without hands,” and shared a final meal with his disciples in which he said that he would drink wine again with them in the kingdom of God. After Jesus’ death, his disciples formed a small community which expected him to return and bring in the kingdom. This group spread, and its members continued to expect Jesus to return in the near future, inaugurating a kingdom in which the world would be transformed.

This outline of Jesus’ career shows that he was an eschatological prophet, much like John the Baptist and a few other 1st-century Jewish prophets such as Theudas. Like John, Jesus believed in the coming judgment, but the thrust of his mission was more toward inclusion than condemnation.

Teaching

The Nature of the Kingdom

Jesus proclaimed the eschatological kingdom of God. “Eschatology” in this sense means “discussion or teaching of last things,” rather than “of the end of the world.” Ancient Jewish eschatologists actually thought of God’s definitive intervention in the world, which would transform the world and its inhabitants, not destroy them. Jews believed that God had previously intervened in history (the Exodus from Egypt, the Conquest of Canaan), and hoped that he would do so again, but in an even more decisive manner. There would be peace and tranquillity in society and nature (cf. Isa. 2:2-4), and the world would be governed in accordance with the will of God.

Jesus shared this overall view. In particular, he thought that the original 12 tribes of Israel would be reassembled (Matt. 19:28; cf. the call of 12 disciples), that the order of society would be reversed, so that the meek and lowly would have plenty (Matt. 5:5), that sinners and reprobates would somehow be included (Mark 2:17; Matt. 11:19), and that he and his disciples would hold the chief positions (Mark 10:29-31, 35-40; Matt. 19:28-29).

Its Time and Place

In Jesus’ view, the kingdom of God existed in heaven, and individuals would enter it on death (e.g., Mark 9:47). God’s power was in some respects omnipresent, and Jesus may have seen “the kingdom” in the sense of God’s presence as especially evident in his own words and deeds. But Jesus was an eschatologist: in the future, the kingdom would come to earth in its full power and glory, at which time God’s will would be done “on earth as it is in heaven” (Matt. 6:10). Jesus died before this expectation was fulfilled, and this, coupled with the resurrection appearances, led his followers to expect his return in the near future, bringing in the kingdom and ruling in God’s stead (1 Thess. 4:13-18; vv. 15-17 modify a saying of the historical Jesus about the coming Son of Man found in Matt. 24:27-28; 16:27-28; cf. 1 Cor. 15:23-28). The fact that the early Christian movement expected the kingdom to arrive in the very near future is one of the strongest indications that this had been Jesus’ own expectation during his lifetime. Early in his career, Paul thought that he and most other Christians would be alive when the kingdom arrived (1 Thess. 4), but later he entertained the possibility of his own prior death (Phil. 1:20-26). One can see the diminishing expectation in the Gospels (compare Mark 9:1 and John 21:21-23), an expectation that Jesus’ followers had to modify as the decades passed.

Preparation and Discipleship

Jesus called some people to follow him and to give up everything in order to do so (Mark 1:16-20). He expected others to give their possessions to the poor, even though they did not join his itinerant ministry (Mark 10:17-31). He counselled all to fix their attention on the kingdom, not on material possessions (Matt. 6:19-21, 25-34; Luke 12:13-21). Their reward would be great in the kingdom.

The Poor and Sinners

The themes of reversal and inclusion require fuller presentation. The poor, the meek, the lowly, and sinners loom large in the Synoptic Gospels. Jesus came especially to call them, but he seems also to have favored them. In the coming kingdom, the last would be first (Mark 10:31). Those who held the chief positions in the present world would be demoted (Luke 14:7-11). Those who gave up everything and followed him would receive “a hundredfold” (Mark 10:30). Sinners, typified by the tax collectors, would be included in the kingdom (Matt. 21:31). This probably rests in part on Jesus’ sympathy for those who were in his own social and economic class and below it. Jesus and his disciples were not themselves from the very bottom of society; his father worked with his hands, but he was not destitute. Some of Jesus’ disciples were from families who owned their own fishing boats and had houses (Mark 1:19, 29). They were not rich, but they also were not day laborers, beggars, or homeless. Jesus’ sympathy, however, went out to those in the latter categories. His message had a social dimension in two respects: he thought that in the kingdom there would still be social relationships, and he thought that the disadvantaged in the present world would be in some sense advantaged in the new age (Matt. 5:3-11; Luke 6:20-23). The promise of houses and lands in Matt. 19:29-30; Mark 10:29-30 may be metaphorical, but Jesus also may have envisaged a future society in which property would still count, though it would be redistributed.

Jesus’ call of sinners, according to Luke, meant that he called them to repentance (Luke 5:32; but cf. Matt. 9:13; Mark 2:17). It is probable that Jesus’ message was more radical than merely that trangressors should repent. He called them, rather, to accept him and his message, and promised inclusion in the kingdom if they did so. This doubtless included moral reformation — followers of Jesus would not continue to cheat and defraud — but he probably meant that they did not have to conform precisely to the standards of righteous Jewish society, which would require repayment of money or goods, an additional fine, and presentation of a guilt-offering (Lev. 6:1-7). Accepting him and being like him and his disciples was what God required.

Self-Conception

Jesus attached enormous weight to his own mission and person. Christian preoccupation with titles (did he think that he was Messiah, Son of God, Son of Man, son of David, king, etc.?) obscures the issue. He sometimes called himself “Son of Man,” and indirectly accepted “Messiah” (or “Christ”) and “Son of God” (Matt. 16:16; Mark 14:61-62; but cf. the par. Mark 8:29 = Luke 9:20; Matt. 26:63-64 = Luke 22:67-70), but he did not make an issue of titles. He called people to follow him, not to give him some appellation. Jesus thought that he was God’s last emissary, that he and his disciples would rule in the coming kingdom, and that people who accepted him would be included in it.

Jewish Law

Numerous passages in the Gospels concern the Jewish law. According to one set, especially prominent in the Sermon on the Mount (Matt. 5-7), Jesus admonished his followers to extremely strict observance of the law (5:17-48). According to the second set, he was deficient in strict observance and transgressed current opinions about some aspects of the law, especially the sabbath (e.g., Mark 3:1-3). It is at least conceivable that both positions were true, that he was strict about marriage and divorce (Matt. 5:31-32; Mark 10:2-12) but lax about the sabbath. The study of “Jesus and the law” is highly technical. In general, the legal disputes in the Gospels fall well within the parameters of legal disputes in 1st-century Judaism. Some people opposed minor cures on the sabbath, but others permitted them. The Sadducees regarded the Pharisees as too lax in observance of the sabbath. Some Jews washed their hands before eating (Mark 7:5), but others did not. There were many disagreements about purity, and the two main parties within Pharisaism (the Shammaites and Hillelites) disagreed over menstrual impurity, a much more serious matter than hand washing.

One statement in particular does oppose Jewish law as universally understood. All Jews agreed on a long list of prohibited foods, including pork and shellfish (cf. Lev. 11; Deut. 14), which set them apart from other people. According to Mark 7:19 Jesus “declared all foods clean,” which directly opposed the law of God as given to Moses. However, this is not in the parallel passage in Matt. 15, , and Peter seems to have learned it first after Jesus’ death, by means of a heavenly revelation (Acts 10:9-16). Jesus did not, then, directly oppose any aspect of the sacred law.

He probably did, however, have legal disputes, in which he defended himself by quoting scriptural precedent, which would mean that he had not set himself against the law (e.g., Mark 2:23-28). However, Jesus was autonomous; he made his own rules with regard to how to observe the law, and he decided how to defend himself when criticized. Ordinarily legal debates were between competing camps or schools. Jesus was by no means the only person in ancient Judaism who struck out on his own, acting in accord with his own perception of God’s will, and so he was not uniquely troubling in this respect, but such behavior might nevertheless be suspicious.

Ethics

Jesus demanded complete devotion to God, putting it far ahead of devotion to self and even to family (Mark 3:31-35; Matt. 10:35-37). People should be willing to give up everything in order to obtain what was most precious (Matt. 13:44-46). Observance of the law should be not only external but internal: hatred and lust, as well as murder and adultery, are wrong (Matt. 5:21-26, 27-30).

Miracles

Besides being a prophet and teacher, Jesus was also a healer and miracle worker. In the 1st century, healers and miracle workers were fairly well known, and were not considered superhuman beings. Jesus granted that others could also perform miracles, such as exorcisms, even if they did not follow him (Matt. 12:27; Mark 9:38-41; 6:7). Thus the significance of this very important aspect of his life is frequently misunderstood. In Jesus’ own context, it was granted that various people could heal and perform nature miracles, such as causing rain. The question was, by what power, or spirit, they did so. Some of Jesus’ opponents accused him of casting out demons by the prince of demons (Mark 3:19b-22; Matt. 12:24; Luke 11:18); he replied that he did so by the spirit of God (Matt. 12:28; Luke 11:20).

Controversy and Danger

Crowds and Autonomy

Jesus’ reputation as healer had one very important historical consequence: he attracted crowds. This is the main theme of the early chapters of Mark (e.g., 1:28, 45; 2:2). Crowds meant that more people would hear his message, which was an advantage, but there were disadvantages. People who came hoping for cures often had only a selfish interest. Moreover, crowds were politically dangerous. One reason Herod Antipas executed John the Baptist was that he attracted such large crowds that Antipas feared an uprising (Josephus Ant. 18.5.2 [116-19]).

Jesus’ message was not necessarily socially dangerous. The promise of future reversal might make some people uneasy, since it could be preliminary to social revolution, and Jesus’ promise to sinners might irritate the scrupulous, but without crowds these aspects of his message would not matter much. He did not strike at the heart of the Jewish religion as such: he did not deny the election of Abraham and the requirement of circumcision; he did not denounce Moses and the law. Nevertheless, because Jesus was autonomous and therefore unpredictable, some people regarded him with hostility and suspicion.

Scribes and Pharisees

These were two largely distinct groups, though presumably some scribes were Pharisees. A scribe was someone who had legal knowledge and who drew up legal documents; every village had at least one scribe. Pharisees were members of a party who believed in resurrection and in following legal traditions that were ascribed not to the Bible but to the fathers or elders of their own party. They were also well-known legal experts, thus the partial overlap of scribes and Pharisees. It appears from subsequent rabbinic traditions, however, that most Pharisees were small landowners and tradesmen, not professional scribes.

In Mark’s view, Jesus’ main disputants in Galilee were scribes; according to Matthew they were Pharisees. One may accept this apparently conflicting evidence as at least generally accurate: people knowledgeable about Jewish law and tradition would have scrutinized Jesus carefully, and they doubtless sometimes challenged his behavior and teaching (e.g., Mark 2:6, 16; 3:22; Matt. 9:11; 12:2). According to Matt. 12:14; Mark 3:6 the Pharisees (Mark adds “with the Herodians”) planned to destroy Jesus. If this plot was actually hatched, however, it seems that nothing came of it, since the Pharisees did not play a significant role in the events that led to Jesus’ death. Only one passage in Matthew, none in Mark and Luke, gives them any role at all (Matt. 27:62).

Put another way, some people in Galilee may have distrusted Jesus, but he was never charged formally with disregard of the law, and opposition in Galilee did not lead to his death.

Jesus’ Last Week

In ca. the year 30 Jesus and his disciples went to Jerusalem from Galilee to observe Passover. He presumably went a week early, as did perhaps as many as 200 or 300 thousand other Jews, in order to be purified of corpse-impurity (Num. 9:10-12; 19:1-22). The Gospels do not mention purification, but they do place Jesus in the vicinity of the temple in the days preceding Passover. Jesus entered Jerusalem on a donkey, perhaps himself intending to recall Zech. 9:9 (Matt. 21:4-5). This touched off a demonstration by his followers, who hailed him as either “Son of David” (Matt. 21:9) or “the one who comes in the name of the Lord” (Mark 11:9). Jerusalem at Passover was dangerous; it was well known to both the high priest (Caiaphas), who governed the city, and the Roman prefect (Pilate), to whom the high priest was responsible and who would intervene in case of trouble, that the festivals were likely times of uprisings. The prefect, who ordinarily lived in Caesarea, came to Jerusalem during the festivals with his troops, who patrolled the roofs of the temple porticoes. A large demonstration would probably have led to Jesus’ immediate arrest. From the fact that he lived for several more days, we may infer that the crowd was relatively small.

Jesus spent some time teaching and debating (Mark 12), and told his disciples that the temple would be destroyed (13:1-2). On one of these days of purification prior to the Passover sacrifice and meal, he performed his most dramatic symbolic action. He entered the part of the temple precincts where worshippers exchanged their coins to pay the annual temple tax of two drachmas and also bought pigeons to sacrifice. Jesus turned over some of the tables (Mark 11:15-19), an action that led “the chief priests and the scribes” (Luke adds “and the principal men of the people”) to plan to have him executed (Mark 11:18; Luke 19:47; cf. Mark 14:1-2 par.).

The disciples found a room for the Passover meal, and one of them bought an animal and sacrificed it in the temple (Mark 14:12-16). At the meal, Jesus blessed the bread and wine, designating the bread “my body” and the wine “the blood of the covenant” or “the new covenant in my blood” (Mark 14:22-25; the variant is in Luke 22:20; 1 Cor. 11:25).

After supper, Jesus took his disciples to the Mount of Olives to pray. While there, Judas led armed men, sent by the chief priests, who arrested him (Mark 14:43-52). Jesus was taken to the high priest, who had gathered some of his councillors (called collectively “the Sanhedrin”). He was first accused of threatening to destroy the temple, but this charge was not upheld. The high priest asked him if he were “the Christ, the Son of God.” According to Mark he said “yes” and then predicted the arrival of the Son of Man. According to Matthew, he said, “You say so, but I tell you that you will see the Son of Man,” apparently implying a negative answer to the question. According to Luke he was more ambiguous: “If I tell you, you will not believe” and “You say that I am” (Mark 14:61-62; Matt. 26:63-64; Luke 22:67-70).

Whatever the charge, the high priest had evidently already decided that Jesus had to die, and he cried “blasphemy” and rent his garments, a dramatic sign of mourning that the Bible prohibits the high priest from making (Lev. 21:10). The councillors agreed that Jesus should be sent to Pilate with the recommendation to execute him.

It is doubtful that titles were actually the issue. As Mark (followed by Matthew and generally by Luke) presents the scene, the first attempt was to have Jesus executed for threatening the temple. That did not work, and so Caiaphas employed a ruse and simply declared whatever Jesus said (about which we must remain uncertain) to be blasphemy.

Pilate did not care about the fine points of Jewish law. To him, Jesus was a potential trouble-maker, and he ordered his execution. Matthew, Luke, and John give Pilate a rather good character and show him as troubled over the decision, but yielding to Jewish insistence (Matt. 27:11-26; Luke 23:1-25; John 18:28-40). This reflects the fact that the early Church had to make its way in the Roman Empire, and did not wish its leader to be thought of as truly guilty in Roman eyes. Pilate is known from other evidence to have been callous, cruel, and given to wanton executions (Philo Leg. 38.302). He was finally dismissed from office for executing a group of Samaritans (Josephus Ant. 18.4.1-2 [85-89]). Probably he sent Jesus to his death without anguishing over the decision very much.

Jesus was crucified as would-be “king of the Jews” (Mark 15:26 par.). On the cross, he was taunted as the one who would destroy the temple (Mark 15:29). These two charges explain the decision to execute him. His own thinking was almost certainly that God would destroy the temple as part of the new kingdom, perhaps rebuilding it himself (Mark 14:58; cf. 11QT 29.8-10). Caiaphas and his advisors probably understood Jesus well enough: they knew that he was a prophet and that his small band could not damage the temple seriously. But Jesus had made a minor assault on the temple, and predicted its destruction. These were inflammatory acts in a city that, at festival time, was prone to uprisings. The high priest, under Roman rule, had the responsibility to keep the peace, and he and his advisors acted accordingly (cf. John 11:50).

Jesus’ preaching of “the kingdom of God” was also potentially inflammatory. The phrase could have various meanings, but it certainly did not mean that Rome would continue to govern Judea. Many people resented Roman rule, and Rome was quick to dispatch people who became too vocal. Pilate did not think that Jesus and his followers constituted a military threat. Had he thought so, he would have had the disciples executed, either at the time or later, when they returned to Jerusalem to take up their new mission.

Thus no one thought that Jesus could actually destroy the temple, nor that he could create a serious revolt in favor of a new kingdom. Nevertheless, inflammatory speech was dangerous, Jesus had a following, the city was packed with pilgrims, who were celebrating the Exodus from Egypt and Israel’s liberation from foreign bondage, and Jesus had committed a small act of violence in the sacred precincts. He was executed for being what he was: an eschatological prophet.

Jesus thought the kingdom was at hand and that he and his disciples would soon feast in it. It is possible that even to the end he expected divine intervention (cf. Mark 15:34).

The Resurrection

What happened next changed history in a way quite different from what Jesus seems to have anticipated. He appeared to some of his followers after his death. The details are uncertain, since our sources disagree on the people who saw him and the places of his appearances (cf. the final sections of Matthew, Luke, and John; the beginning of Acts; and Paul’s list of appearances in 1 Cor. 15:3-9). According to Matthew, an angel showed Mary Magdalene and “the other Mary” the empty tomb, and told them to tell the disciples to go to Galilee. While still in Jerusalem, they saw Jesus, who told them the same thing. Jesus appeared just once more, to the disciples in Galilee. Matthew’s account is basically implied in Mark (Mark 14:28; 16:7), though Mark lacks a Resurrection story, ending with the empty tomb. According to Luke, however, the disciples never left Jerusalem and environs. The women (Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and “the other women”) found the empty tomb. “Two men in dazzling clothes” told them that Jesus had been raised. Later, Jesus appeared to two followers on the road to Emmaus, then to Peter, then the disciples. John (including ch. 21, usually thought to be an “appendix”) combines appearances in Galilee and Jerusalem. Acts, though written by the same author, has a more extended series of appearances than Luke, but like Luke places all the appearances in or near Jerusalem. Paul’s long list of people to whom Jesus appeared does not agree very closely with the other accounts.

Faced with such evidence, we can hardly say “what really happened.” Two points are important: (1) The sources wish to describe the resurrected Jesus as neither a resuscitated corpse, a badly wounded man staggering around, nor as a ghost. According to Luke, the first two disciples to see Jesus walked with him for several hours without recognizing him (Luke 24:13-32). He could also disappear and reappear at will (Luke 24:31, 36). According to Paul, the bodies of Christian believers will be transformed to be like the Lord’s, and the resurrection body will not be “flesh and blood” (1 Cor. 15:42-53). Although substantially transformed, Jesus was not a ghost. Luke says this explicitly (Luke 24:37-39), and Paul insists on “body,” choosing the term “spiritual body” rather than “spirit” or “ghost” (both Gk. pneúma). The authors, in other words, were trying to explain something for which they did not have a precise vocabulary.

(2) It is difficult to accuse our sources, or the first believers, of deliberate fraud. A plot to foster belief in the Resurrection would probably have resulted in a more consistent story. (We seem, instead, to have competition: “I saw him,” “so did I,” “the woman saw him first,” “no, I did; they didn’t see him at all”). Some of the witnesses of the Resurrection would give their lives for their belief, which makes fraud unlikely.

The uncertainties are substantial, but, given the accounts in our sources, certainty is unobtainable. We may say of the disciples’ experiences of the Resurrection approximately what the sources allow us to say of the life and message of Jesus: we have fairly good general knowledge, though many details are uncertain or open to question.

See Christ.

Bibliography. M. Borg, Jesus: A New Vision (San Francisco, 1987); G. Bornkamm, Jesus of Nazareth (1960, repr. Minneapolis, 1995); J. D. Crossan, The Historical Jesus: The Life of a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant (San Francisco, 1991); J. P. Meier, A Marginal Jew, 3 vols. (New York, 1991-); E. P. Sanders, The Historical Figure of Jesus (London, 1993); Jesus and Judaism (Philadelphia, 1985); Jewish Law from Jesus to the Mishnah (Philadelphia, 1990); A. Schweitzer, The Quest of the Historical Jesus (1910, repr. New York, 1968); G. Vermes, Jesus the Jew (1973, repr. Philadelphia, 1981); The Religion of Jesus the Jew (Minneapolis, 1993); N. T. Wright, Christian Origins and the Question of God, 2: Jesus and the Victory of God (Minneapolis, 1996).

E. P. Sanders

Prayer Tents Bible References - Prayer Tents

JESUS CHRIST

Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible (2000)