| Click here for an explanation of the color-coding used in the sayings and acts of Jesus. |
Jesus - The Mission Begins
The Baptism of Jesus
"Or don't you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life. If we have been united with him like this in his death, we will certainly also be united with him in his resurrection."
- Romans 6:3-5
"Apparently there was nothing in his [Jesus'] previous life that foreshadowed or ostensibly prepared for his decision to dedicate himself totally to a religious mission to all Israel, a mission lacking any official sanction. His baptism by John is so important because it is the only external, historically verifiable marker of this pivotal 'turning around' in Jesus' life - his 'conversion' in the root sense of that word."
- John P. Meier, A Marginal Jew - Rethinking the Historical Jesus, Vol. 2.
"We know very little about the first thirty years of Jesus' life. It is notable however than certain Essene [Qumran] initiations require one to be thirty to assume mature office."
- Chris King, "The Apocalyptic Tradition"
"...Around the beginning of AD 28, Jesus of Nazareth, no doubt in the company of other Jews, journeyed from Nazareth to the Jordan River to receive John's baptism. By doing this Jesus acknowledged John's charismatic authority as an eschatological prophet, accepted his message of imminent fiery judgment on a sinful Israel, submitted to his baptism as a seal of his resolve to change his life and as a pledge of salvation as part of a purified Israel, on whom God (through some agent?) would pour out the holy spirit on the last day."
- John P. Meier, A Marginal Jew - Rethinking the Historical Jesus, Vol. 2.
"And this was his [John's] message: 'After me will come one more powerful than I, the thongs of whose sandals I am not worthy to stoop down and untie.'"
- Mark 1:7"'I baptize you with [or in] water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.'"
- Mark 1:8"John answered them all, 'I baptize you with [or in] water. But one more powerful than I will come, the thongs of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his barn, but he will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.'"
- Luke 3:16-17; Matthew 3:11"The Holy Great One will come forth from His dwelling,
And the eternal God will tread upon the earth, (even) on Mount Sinai,
[And appear from His camp]
And appear in the strength of His might from the heaven of heavens."And all shall be smitten with fear
And the Watchers shall quake,
And great fear and trembling shall seize them unto the ends of the earth."And the high mountains shall be shaken,
And the high hills shall be made low,
And shall melt like wax before the flame"And the earth shall be wholly rent in sunder,
And all that is upon the earth shall perish,
And there shall be a judgement upon all (men)."
- 1 Enoch 1:3b-7
"The description of the Coming One points to God as apocalyptic avenger, and it is only later...that one thinks of Jesus as the Coming One."
- John Dominic Crossan, The Historical Jesus, The Life of a Mediterranean Peasant (1991)
The Coming One could also have been the apocalyptic judge, the Son of Man, whom Jesus referred to, according to the gospels.
"The next day John saw Jesus coming toward him and said, 'Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world! This is the one I meant when I said, "A man who comes after me has surpassed me because he was before me." I myself did not know him, but the reason I came baptizing with water was that he might be revealed to Israel.'"
- John 1:29-31
In Matthew, this possibility does not occur to John the Baptist until after he is arrested by Herod.
"When John heard in prison what Christ was doing, he sent his disciples to ask him, 'Are you the one who was to come, or should we expect someone else?'"
- Matthew 11:2-3
"...Jesus, in submitting himself to John's baptism, must also have accepted John as the Prophet of the Coming One."
- John Dominic Crossan, The Historical Jesus, The Life of a Mediterranean Peasant (1991)
"This is the one about whom it is written: 'I will send my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way before you.'" [Isaiah 40:2]
- Matthew 11:10 // Luke 7:27
(2) Spiritual Entities in the Magical Tradition
Spirits of the Dead
"The 'obot (plural of 'ob) are a mysterious class of beings, commonly said to be 'spirits of the dead,' but probably some sort of underworld deities. Although they are in the realm of the dead, and speak from the earth in whispering voices (Isaiah 8.19; 29.4), they are associated with deities and are referred to as objects of worship to whom Israelites sometimes turn, abandoning Yahweh."
- Morton Smith, Jesus the Magician: Charlatan or Son of God? (1978) p. 103
"When men tell you to consult mediums and spiritists, who whisper and mutter, should not a people inquire of their God? Why consult the dead on behalf of the living?"
- Isaiah 8:19"Brought low, you will speak from the ground; your speech will mumble out of the dust. Your voice will come ghostlike from the earth; out of the dust your speech will whisper."
- Isaiah 29:4
"These 'obot can enter men and live in them, evidently for a long time, so that the man possessed is known as 'one who has an 'ob' (I Sam. 28.7), more specifically, 'one who has in him an 'obot'. The priestly law said such persons were to be stoned (Lev. 20.27). The most famous of them is 'the witch of Endor' to whom King Saul went when Yahweh refused to speak to him (I Sam. 28.8). Saul said to her, 'Do magic for me with the 'ob and bring up (the spirit of) the man I shall name.' Evidently here permanent, personal 'ob was not the same as the spirit who was to be brought up just this once."
"Belief in 'obot or similar powers seems to have lived on in Palestine to at least the third century A.D., when it is attested by some...rabbinic passages..."
- Morton Smith, Jesus the Magician: Charlatan or Son of God? (1978) pp. 103, 104
Spirits of the Living
The author of A Horoscope Written in Code (4Q186) "seems to have believed that the 'spirit' (which...every human received in certain proportions) moved through the blood and thus to every extremity of the body. Once it reached a given locality in the body its nature would become manifest. For a bad birth sign [according to astrological doctrine], one such manifestation could be hairiness, for example."
- Michael Wise, Martin Abegg, Jr., and Edward Cook, The Dead Sea Scrolls: A New Translation (1996) p. 244
"The life is in the blood."
- Genesis 9:4
"A portion of the Damascus Document explicitly states that spirits move through the blood and have physical outworkings...This whole way of thinking is immediately reminiscent of Greco-Roman medical ideas that came to full expression in the writings of the famous Greek medical writer Galen (ca. 129-99 C.E.). Galen wrote of 'humors' circulating in the body and used this idea to explain the observed truths of (pseudo-) Aristotelian Physiognomy."
- Michael Wise, Martin Abegg, Jr., and Edward Cook, The Dead Sea Scrolls: A New Translation (1996) p. 244
Ritual Induction of Spirits
Morton Smith argues that the baptismal ceremony in the gospels has more in common with magical rather than scriptural tradition.
Moses, Elijah, and Elisha "have the spirit, or rather it 'is on them' (II Kings 2.9, 15; Num. 11.25). If it is the same as 'the hand of Yahweh,' Elisha is said to have induced its coming by music. In contrast to the gospels and the magical papyri its coming is not preceded by a rite of purification, (2) it does not come down from heaven as a bird, nor is it heralded by one, (3) it does not make the recipient a son of god nor lead to his being worshipped as a god."
- Morton Smith, Jesus the Magician: Charlatan or Son of God? (1978) p. 211
"Having sanctified yourself in advance and abstained from meat [?] and from all impurity, on any night you wish, wearing pure garments, go up on a high roof. Say the first [prayer of] union when the sunlight is fading...having a black lsiac band over your eyes...When the sun rises, greet it...reciting this [hereafter specified] holy spell, burning uncut frankincense [etc.]...While you are reciting the spell, the following sign will occur: A hawk flying down will stop [in the air] in front of you and, striking his wings together in the middle [in front of his body], will drop a long stone and at once fly back, going up into heaven. You take up that stone and having cut...engraved and pierced it...wear it around your neck. Then at evening, going up to your roof again and standing facing the light of the [sun] god, sing the hymn [specified], sacrificing myrrh [etc.]...And you will soon have a sign, as follows: A fiery star, coming down, will stand in the middle of the roof and...you will perceive the angel whom you besought, sent to you, and you will promptly learn the counsels of the gods."
"Know therefore that this god, whom you have seen, is an aerial spirit. If you command, he will perform the task at once. He sends dreams, brings women or men...kills, overthrows, raises up winds from the earth, brings gold, silver, copper, and gives it to you whenever you need; he frees from bonds...opens doors, makes invisible...brings fire, water, wine, bread and whatever foodstuffs you want...he stops ships [in mid voyage] and again releases them, stops many evil demons, calms wild beasts and immediately breaks the teeth of savage serpents; he puts dogs to sleep or makes them stand voiceless; he transforms [you] into whatever form you wish;...he will carry you into the air;...he will solidify rivers and the sea promptly and so that you can run on them standing up;...he will indeed restrain the foam of the sea if you wish, and when you wish [he is able] to bring down stars and...to make hot things cold and cold hot; he will light lamps and quench them again; he shakes walls and sets them ablaze. You will have in him a slave sufficient for whatever [tasks] you may conceive, 0 blessed initiate of holy magic, and this most powerful assistant, who alone is Lord of the Air, will accomplish [them] for you, and all the [other] gods will agree, for without this god nothing is [done]."
"Now this god will be seen only by you, nor will anyone hear his voice when he speaks, except you only. When a man [is sick] in bed he will call you whether he will live or die, and [if the latter] in which day and which hour...He will also give you wild plants and [tell you] how to perform cures; and you will be worshipped as a god, since you have the god as a friend."
- Papyri graecae magicae I.54ff(Click here for the complete text.)
"The preceding rite resembles the gospel story in five points: (1) It is an account of an initial purification followed by reception of a spirit come down from heaven. (2) The first manifestation of the supernatural power is a bird. (3) The spirit enables the recipient to perform miracles and (4) leads to his being worshipped as a god. (5) The rite, like the gospel story, is a mythological attempt to explain the origin of a social figure like the Jesus of the gospels."
- Morton Smith, Jesus the Magician: Charlatan or Son of God? (1978) p.132
In another magical text, after seven days of rituals and three of purity, the following spell is spoken:
"May it seem right to you...that I should participate again in the immortal beginning....that I may be reborn in thought [John 3.3ff]...and that the holy spirit may breathe in me...that I may marvel at the holy fire...that I may behold the abyss of the east, the fearful water...and may the life-giving ether poured around me hear my [voice]..."
"Since it is not within my power while a mortal to ascend with the golden rays of the immortal luminary...be still, [my] corrupt body, [while I leave you], and again [receive] me safe after [I have satisfied] this unavoidable and pressing need, for I am the Son..."
- Papyri graecae magicae IV.475-830
"With this the magician inhales the rays of the sun, leave his body behind, and rises into the heavens."
- Morton Smith, Jesus the Magician: Charlatan or Son of God? (1978) p. 135
"Let [that which I have asked] come to my hand here today, for I am he who is in the seven heavens, who standeth in the seven sanctuaries; for I am the son of the living god."
- A Demotic papyrus
| Intimations of such a ritual can also be found in the raising of Lazarus. |
(3) The Baptismal Ceremony
Naked in the Sight of All
"The living water is a body. It is fitting that we put on the living person. For this reason, when one is about to go down to the water, one strips so that one may put on that one (that is, the living person)"
- Gospel of Phillip 75;21-25"So then once you entered, you took off your garment, and this was an image of taking off the old person with its deeds. Having taken this off you were naked... How marvelous! You were naked in the sight of all and were not ashamed. For truly you were bearing a copy of the first formed Adam, who in paradise was naked and not ashamed."
- Cyril of Jerusalem"Indeed, when you were examined and the one who instigates flight and desertion was duly rebuked by the omnipotence of the awesome trinity, you were not clothed with goatskin, yet your feet stood mystically upon it."
- Augustine, sermon 216 on prebaptismal instruction
"We know enough of Jesus' baptism...to be able to envisage something of the scene, with the hairy John in his camel-skins, and Jesus himself most likely naked for according to early churchman Hippolytus [ Apostolic Tradition XXI, 3, 5, 11], and references to 'complete stripping' by Paul (I Colossians 2:11), that is how the earliest Christian baptisms seem to have been conducted."
"In the earliest Christian art, where Jesus' baptism is a common theme, he is invariably represented quite naked. Such nudity does not contradict the traditional association of a white garment with baptism, symbolic of a burial shroud, and cast aside at the moment of baptismal 'rebirth'."
- Ian Wilson, Jesus, The Evidence
The Heavens Torn Open
"The heavens shall be opened
And from the temple of glory shall come upon him sanctification
With the Father's voice...
And the glory of the Most High shall be uttered over him."
- Levi 18:6 (Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs)"And the heavens shall be opened to him
To pour out the spirit, the blessing of the Holy Father."
Judah 24:3 (Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs)
"The scene passed through partial development on its way to Mark, shedding its 'adoptionist" theology but not yet losing its implication that Jesus was one among many repentant sinners."
- Randal Helms, Gospel Fictions (1988) p. 33
"At that time Jesus came from Nazareth in Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. As Jesus was coming up out of the water, he saw heaven being torn open..."
- Mark 1:9-10 (Matthew 3:13, 16; Luke 3:21-22)
The Symbolism of the Dove
"...And the Spirit descending on him like a dove."
- Mark 1:10b (Matthew 3:16b; Luke 3:22b)
"An especially intriguing feature of Jesus' baptism, to be found in all canonical gospels (and such non-canonical ones as the gospel of the Ebionites), is the association of a bird with his reported vision."
- Ian Wilson, Jesus, The Evidence
"The description of Jesus seeing a dove descend upon him was a standard Hebrew way of expressing the gaining of wisdom."
- Christopher Knight & Robert Lomas, The Hiram Key: Pharaohs, Freemasons and the Discovery of the Secret Scrolls of Jesus
"In the Old Testament account of the Creation, the spirit of God hovers like a bird above the primeval sea, wafting with its wing-beat the breath of God into the slime from which the world was made (Genesis 1:2). So Pliny speaks of 'that famous breath (spiritus) that generates the universe by fluctuating to and fro as in a kind of womb.' It is much the same imagery that portrays the Holy Spirit fluttering down on the head of Jesus at his baptism (Matthew 3:16), making him, too, a 'Bar-jona', 'Son of a Dove'."
- John M. Allegro, The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross
The Indwelling of the Holy Spirit
"In orthodox Jewish tradition, the hassidHanina ben Dosa was specifically associated with the hearing of a heavenly voice addressing him with the words: 'my son Hanina'. In the Jewish royal ritual a perfectly human King of the Jews became 'son of God' at the time of his anointing as Messiah."
- Ian Wilson, Jesus, The Evidence
"...The spirit of holiness had become the Holy Spirit, a presence of God and from God who could now act as a distinct entity....The moment that this divine declaration was made had migrated from the climatic end of Jesus' life, where it rested for Paul, to the inauguration of his public ministry, where it appeared for Mark."
- John Shelby Spong, Liberating the Gospels, p. 225
"In the Old Testament 'the holy spirit' represents God's charisma or presence."
"The term 'the Holy Spirit' occurs only three times in the Jewish apocryphal works. 118 It is also rare in the later Mishna (m.Sot 9:6, 15) and even later rabbinics the 'Holy Spirit' is frequently mentioned to explain why prophecy ceased (t.Sot 13.2). (20-21)
'It is abundant, however, in the Dead Sea Scrolls. At Qumran 'the Holy Spirit' is angelic and a separate being (hypostasis); it is not the holy spirit of God but 'the Holy Spirit' from God. As E. E. Bruce perceived, it 'is remarkable' that a phrase or term so seldom found in the Old Testament and apocryphal writings should appear so frequently and importantly 'in the New Testament and other Christian literature, and also in the Qumran texts."
- James H. Charlesworth, "The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Historical Jesus" in Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls (1992), p. 20
"The category of Spirit-possession was used to some extent in early Christian thought to interpret not only Christ's present relationship to believers but also his relationship to God. If believers are sons of God through the indwelling of God's Spirit, possessing their souls and reshaping their lives according to the pattern of Christ, can Christ's own sonship be interpreted in the same terms? The gospels suggest this possibility. In the synoptists Spirit-possession and messianic sonship are linked together in the narrative of Christ's baptism. The Spirit descends upon him and he receives the divine assurance that he is Son of God."
- Geoffrey W. H. Lampe
The Titular Holy Spirit
"But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth."
- Acts 1:8-9
"The epithet 'the Holy Spirit' (however elusive its precise meaning) is used as a titular designation only in the scrolls and the New Testament."
- Norman Golb, Who Wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls?, (1995) p. 372
"And then God will purge by His truth all the deeds of man, refining for himself some of mankind in order to abolish every evil spirit from the midst of his flesh and to cleanse him through a Holy Spirit."
- Community Rule 1QS 4.20
"'The Holy Spirit' does not appear in Isa 63:10, in which we hear about God's holy spirit (rwh qdsw). Also, Ps 51:13 refers to God's holy spirit (wrwh qdsk)...While it is appropriate to state that the followers of Jesus and those earlier of the Righteous Teacher contended that their leader was inspired by 'the Holy Spirit,' the charismatic leaders earlier were 'anointed ones' who were possessed by 'the spirit of Jahweh,' as G. von Rad stated. See von Rad, Old Testament Theology, trans. D. M. G. Stalker (New York, 1962) vol. 1, P. 323."
- James H. Charlesworth, "The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Historical Jesus" in Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls (1992), p. 59
The designation "Holy Spirit" also appears in Jewish wisdom literature written shortly after the time of Jesus.
"Who has learned thy counsel, unless thou hast given wisdom and sent thy holy Spirit from on high?"
- Wisdom of Solomon 9:17 (ca. 49 C.E.)
The early Christian hymns called the Odes of Solomon, contain several references to the Holy Spirit as female, including the following passage:
"A cup of milk was offered to me,
And I drank it in the sweetness of the Lord's kindness.
The Son is the cup,
And the Father is He who was milked;
And the Holy Spirit is SHE who milked Him."
- Odes of Solomon 19:1-2 (1st century CE)
The Gospel of the Hebrews also depicts the Holy Spirit as female.
| See also:
1. Zoroastrian precedents to the "Holy Spirit", 2. The influence of "Lady Wisdom", and 3. Possession by the Holy Spirit in Jewish shamanistic tradition. |
Varying Accounts in the Gospels
"...The Sayings Gospel Q, which is much more interested in John's preaching than John's baptizing, has apparently no mention of Jesus' baptism. Luke barely mentions Jesus' baptism in a syntactical rush toward prayer and the epiphany."
- John Dominic Crossan, The Historical Jesus, The Life of a Mediterranean Peasant (1991)
"Now when all the people were baptized, and when Jesus also had been baptized and was praying..."
- Luke 3:21a
In Luke "there is no reference at all to John's role. Luke simply notes that when Jesus also had been baptized and was praying, the heaven was opened, and the Holy Spirit descended upon him in bodily form, as a dove (3:21-22). As in the fourth gospel, the reader unfamiliar with Mark or Matthew will not necessarily assume that John baptized Jesus!"
- Graham N. Stanton, The Gospels and Jesus, The Oxford Bible Series (1989), paperback, p. 170
Following the Torah through the Jewish liturgical year, Luke related how "the spirit descended upon Jesus and the voice proclaimed him God's son. The background lection from Genesis would be the story of the pharaoh naming Joseph as the second person in rank in the entire realm."
- John Shelby Spong, Liberating the Gospels, p. 135
Pharoah inquired "Can we find a man such as this in whom is the Sprit of God?'
- Isaiah 40: 13-14
"Matthew and the Gospel of the Ebionites face the problem [of John's role] and declare its divine necessity."
- John Dominic Crossan, The Historical Jesus, The Life of a Mediterranean Peasant (1991)
"John fell down before him and said; 'I beseech thee, Lord, baptize thou me.' But he prevented him and said: 'Suffer it; for thus it is fitting that everything should be fulfilled.'"
- Gospel of the Ebionites 4; New Testament Apocrypha 1.157-158
"The Gospel of the Nazoreans denies it ever happened."
- John Dominic Crossan, The Historical Jesus, The Life of a Mediterranean Peasant (1991)
"Behold, the mother of the Lord and his brethren said to him: 'John the Baptist baptizes unto the remission of sins, let us go and be baptized by him.' But he said to them: 'Wherein have I sinned that I should go and be baptized by him? Unless what I have said is ignorance (a sin of ignorance).'"
- Gospel of the Nazoreans 2:New Testament Apocrypha 1.146-147
"From Matthew's point of view John's activity starts the new order of the kingdom of heaven (11:11-12). Like Jesus, John came to Israel 'in the way of righteousness' (21:32). Their rejection by Israel is all of a piece with the fate of the prophets of old, a fate shared by Christian prophets in the evangelist's own day (5:10-12; 23:34, 37). One further aspect of Matthew's portrait of John is worth noting. He drops Mark's association of 'the forgiveness of sins' (1:4) with John's baptism. Matthew links forgiveness of sins with the death of Jesus (26:28), as does Paul in numerous passages."
- Graham N. Stanton, The Gospels and Jesus, The Oxford Bible Series (1989), paperback, pp. 170, 171
The Omission in John
"But John, probably dependent on the synoptics for his Baptist traditions, never mentions a word about Jesus' baptism in all of 1:19-34 and emphasized instead John's witness concerning Jesus."
- John Dominic Crossan, The Historical Jesus, The Life of a Mediterranean Peasant (1991)
"Then John [the Baptist] gave this testimony: 'I saw the Spirit come down from heaven as a dove and remain on him. I would not have known him, except that the one who sent me to baptize with water told me, "The man on whom you see the Spirit come down and remain is he who will baptize with the Holy Spirit." I have seen and I testify that this is the Son of God.'"
- John 1:32-34
Though John reportedly saw the Spirit with Jesus, it was only a transient vision. According to John 7:37, Jesus did not receive the Spirit until his resurrection.
"On the last and greatest day of the Feast [of Tabernacles], Jesus stood and said in a loud voice, 'If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him.' By this he meant the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were later to receive. Up to that time the Spirit had not been given, since Jesus had not yet been glorified."
- John 7:37-39
The author of John "does insist that the spirit was not given during Jesus' lifetime - this exculpates his hero from the charge of having practiced magic in giving it - but he makes Jesus promise that after his death he will ask the Father to send (Jn. 14.16f., 26), or will himself send 'from the Father' (Jn. 15.26), 'the spirit of truth' to 'be in you', to 'lead you into all truth,' and to 'foretell the things to come.' These passages are paralleled by dozens of magical texts in which a magician either sends or asks a deity to send a spirit, occasionally to enter someone, more often to reveal secrets and foretell the future."
- Morton Smith, Jesus the Magician: Charlatan or Son of God? (1978) pp. 147-148
[After a long list of gods] ' I conjure these holy and divine names, that they may send me the divine spirit, and that he may do whatever I have in mind and desire."
- Papyri graecae magicae I.312ff."Come to me, air-walking spirit, called by symbols and names not to be uttered, [come] to this divination...and enter his soul, that it may receive the imprint of [thine] immortal form, in powerful and incorruptible light, for I call on you singing...Come to me, Lord, borne on immaculate light, incapable of falsehood or anger, to me and to this boy who will see [you]."
- Papyri graecae magicae VII.559ff.
You Are My Son
"Here is my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen one in whom I delight; I will put my Spirit on him and he will bring justice to the nations."
- Isaiah 42:1"I will declare the decree: the Lord hath said unto me, Thou art my Son; this day have I begotten thee."
- Psalm 2:7"And a voice came from heaven: 'You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased.'"
- Mark 1:11; (Matthew 3:17; Luke 3:22)
"Most scholars agree that the Aramaic or Hebrew word behind 'son' is servant'....So although Mark 1:11 and 9:7 affirm that Jesus is called by God to a special messianic task, the emphasis is on Jesus' role as the anointed servant, rather than as Son of God. In any case, the words are those of the voice from heaven, and are not a direct reflection of the self-understanding of Jesus."
- Graham N. Stanton, The Gospels and Jesus, The Oxford Bible Series (1989), paperback, p. 225
"Since the thesis that Jesus became Yahweh's son by adoption at his immersion was incompatible with the interpolated- Matthew's virgin-birth myth, post-Nicene Christians expurgated the line, 'Today I have become your father', from the synoptic gospels, and substituted, 'in whom I am well pleased.'
"That 'Today I have become your father' was the wording of Matthew until at least 160 CE is attested by Justin Martyr in his Dialogue with Trpho (103); while evidence that Luke contained that wording until after 400 CE can be found in Augustine's Reply to Faustus the Manichaean (23:2)."
- William Harwood, Mythologies Last Gods: Yahweh and Jesus
"In Paul's theology, Jesus "was declared Son of God by a mighty act in that he rose from the dead" (Rom. 1:4). Luke apparently knew of this Pauline teaching for he has Paul quoting Psalm 2:7 as a speech uttered to Jesus at his resurrection, not at his baptism:"
- Randal Helms, Gospel Fictions (1988) p. 38
"God, who made the promise to the fathers, has fulfilled it for the children by raising Jesus from the dead, as indeed it stands written in the second
Psalm: "You are my son; this day I have begotten you."
(Acts 13:32-33)
"For Luke and Paul, Psalm 2:7 is a resurrection prophecy, not a baptism prophecy. Thus, unlike Matthew, Luke has no qualms about reproducing the divine speech at the baptism exactly as he found it in Mark: "Thou art my Son, my Beloved; on thee my favor rests" (Luke 3:22)."
- Randal Helms, Gospel Fictions (1988) p. 38
(4) Forty Days in the Wilderness
Magical "initiations were commonly followed by a period of self-enforced privation, reminiscent of Jesus' 'forty days in the wilderness'."
- Ian Wilson, Jesus, The Evidence
"At once the Spirit sent him out into the desert, and he was in the desert forty days, being tempted by Satan. He was with the wild animals, and angels attended him."
- Mark 1:12-13
("Forty days" means "a long time" in Middle Eastern tradition.)
"Because demons were believed to inhabit waterless wastelands, where hungry and tired persons often had visual and auditory hallucinations, early Christian monks went into the deserts to be the vanguard of God's army in joining battle with the tempting devils. They often recorded that the devil came to them in visions as a seductive woman, tempting them to violate their vows to keep themselves sexually pure, both physically and mentally."
- Encyclopaedia Britannica
"The Q version resembles haggadic tales of rabbis who battle each other with scripture, and thus has something of the form of a controversy dialogue. The closest parallels are the debates between Jesus and the Jewish leaders (high priests, elders, Pharisees, Sadducees, scribes,) in Matt 21.23-27; 22.15-23:36.
"It appears that a Christian scribe in the Q community composed the story on his model to portray Jesus' victory in his confrontation with Satan at the beginning of his confrontation with Satan so that it corresponds to the disputes with the Jewish leaders at the end of Jesus' ministry, thereby suggesting the underlying cosmic conflict that surfaces in the confrontation between Jesus and the Jewish leaders."
- Eugene Boring, The New Interpreter's Bible, Vol. VIII, p.162.
The Q story of Jesus temptations (Matthew 4:1-11; Luke 4:1-13) "is apologetic - told to show why Jesus did not perform the miracles expected of a messiah. Why did he not come flying through the air, turn stones into bread, provide food for everyone, and conquer the world. The gospels imply an answer. These things could have been done only by a magician. This world is the realm of the devil (Lk. 4.6) and anyone who wants to rule over it must worship the devil..."
- Morton Smith, Jesus the Magician: Charlatan or Son of God? (1978) p. 138
"Eulamon, receive [him - the victim]. Osiris, Osiris, Mnevis, Phre...[and other underworld gods] inasmuch as I give over to you Adeodatus the son of Cresconia, I ask you to punish (him) in the bed of punishment...and bind him from the present day and hour. Now, now! Quick, quick!"
- Seper ha-Razim - 'The Book of Secrets'"I have already judged [the offender]...to give [him] over to Satan for the destruction of his flesh."
- I Corinthians 5:3ff."Some...have shipwrecked their faith, among whom are Hymenaeus and Alexander, whom I have given over to Satan, that they might be taught not to blaspheme."
- I Timothy 1:19f
In Matthew, "the temptation story had Jesus relive the experience of Moses and the Hebrew people in the wilderness. Before Moses received the law, he fasted forty days and forty nights (Exod. 34:28). So Jesus, before delivering the new law, underwent a similar fast....The manna story (Exod. 16) found expression in the temptation to turn stones into bread. The story of Moses striking the rock in the wilderness at Massah/Meribah (Exod. 17) was told as an act in which Moses put God to the test. That found echoes in the temptation story in Jesus' word, "You shall not tempt the Lord your god." (Matt. 4:7). The story of the people of Israel building and worshipping the golden calf (Exod. 32) in the wilderness found its echo in Jesus' words, "You worship the Lord your God and him only shall you serve." (Matt. 4:10). In all three temptation episodes, Jesus was portrayed as quoting Deuteronomy (8:3, 5:16, 6:13), and each Deuteronomic quotation reflected the Exodus wilderness journey of Israel."
- John Shelby Spong, Liberating the Gospels, p. 111
"The 'settings' of the three trials [in the tempation story] are those of the three Pilgrimage Feast references - wilderness [Passover], Temple [Tabernacles] and Mountain of the Lord [Pentecost]. They appear in correct calendrical order in the Gospel of Matthew. The Gospel of Luke reverses 2 and 3."
- Philip B. Lewis (Crosstalk)
The northern prophetic tradition of Israel, where Jesus lived, resonates with accounts of the Exodus which originated from Judah to the south.
Elijah "is fed miraculously on 'a cake baked on hot stones and a jar of water', so that 'he arose, and ate and drank, and went in the strength of that food forty days and forty nights to Horeb the mount of God.' A journey through the wilderness, miraculous food, and then a meeting with God at Mount Sinai or, as the northern traditions call it, Mount Horeb."
- John Dominic Crossan, The Historical Jesus, The Life of a Mediterranean Peasant (1991)
"The LORD said, 'Go out and stand on the mountain in the presence of the LORD, for the LORD is about to pass by.' Then a great and powerful wind tore the mountains apart and shattered the rocks before the LORD, but the LORD was not in the wind. After the wind there was an earthquake, but the LORD was not in the earthquake. After the earthquake came a fire, but the LORD was not in the fire. And after the fire came a gentle whisper."
- 1 Kings 19:11-12
A Prophet Without Honor
"The Spirit of the Lord has anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor."
- Isaiah 61:1
"...The Hebrew Masoretic text has anavim - humble, rather
than anniyim - poor...[In addition] the text has l'vasser - to proclaim news (albeit implicitly good) , rather than b'sorot tovot - good news."
- Lewis Reich (CrossTalk)
"Jesus started his public life with a serious commitment to John, his message and his movement, and...Jesus developed very soon his own distinctive message and movement which was very different from John's."
- Paul Hollenbach, "The Conversion of Jesus: From Jesus the Baptizer to Jesus the Healer", Aufsteig und Niedergang der römischen Welt 2.25.196-219 (1991)
"After John was put in prison, Jesus went into Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God."
- Mark 1:14
"...Jesus began to teach and heal in Galilee 'after John was arrested' (Mark 1:14; Matt. 4:12; Luke 3:21-23). Matthew even reminds the reader that John was 'in prison' (a phrase he adds to his source at 11:2) during the first part of the ministry of Jesus (see also 14:3). But in several passages the fourth gospel states that Jesus and John were active at the same time (1:29; 1:35-42; 3:22-24; 4:1-3). Two of the disciples of Jesus (and perhaps Jesus himself) were originally disciples of John (1:35-37). In other words, Jesus' ministry overlapped with John's."
- Graham N. Stanton, The Gospels and Jesus, The Oxford Bible Series (1989), paperback, p. 168
"In the eleventh chapter of the Gospel of Matthew, John does not know who Jesus is, and sends disciples to ask, 'Are you the one who is to come, or are we to expect some other [Matt. 1 1:3]?' Here Matthew writes from a source other than Mark (one commonly called 'Q'...) seemingly having temporarily forgotten his chapter-three fiction concerning John's certainty about Jesus' identity."
- Randal Helms, Gospel Fictions (1988) p. 37
"Now when John heard in prison about the deeds of the Christ, he sent word by his disciples and said to him, 'Are you he who is to come, or shall we look for another?' And Jesus answered them, 'Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight and the lame walk, lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear, and the dead are raised up, and the poor have good news preached to them. And blessed is he who takes no offense at me.'"
- Matthew 11:2-6 // Luke 7:18-23
"The list of achievements in v.5 is derived from a book of prophecy, in this case the book of Isaiah:
1. The blind, deaf, and lame are mentioned in Isaiah 35:3-6.
2. The deaf and blind are also mentioned in Isaiah 29:18-19.
3. The dead being raised is derived from Isaiah 26:19.
4. Good news to the poor (oppressed) comes from Isaiah 61:1.
"Missing from the prophetic sources is any recognizable reference to lepers. There is, of course, the story of Namaan the Syrian leper, who is cured by bathing seven times in the Jordan (2 Kings 5:1-19), as well as other references to lepers and leprosy, both in narrative texts and in the Law (Leviticus 13-14, 2 Kings 7:3-10; 2 Chronicles 26:19-21)."
- Robert W. Funk, Roy W. Hoover, and the Jesus Seminar, The Five Gospels
Luke placed this teaching as the Christian New Year lection to be read during the Jewish liturgical year.
Isaiah 35 "was the traditional lesson appointed for the Festival of Rosha Hashanah, where the signs of the inbreaking of the kingdom were recorded."
- John Shelby Spong, Liberating the Gospels, p. 149
"The core of the whole Matthew 11:2-6 par. should be accepted as authentic for the following reasons:
(a) The core of the question of the Baptist ('Are you the one to come [
o ercomenoV], or should we look for another') uses terminology that is suggestive of eschatological hopes but does not employ any set messianic title used by Judaism at the turn of the era or by Christians in their earliest days.
(b) The pericope, like the Q material in general, does not presume that the Baptist once believed in Jesus and is now questioning his former faith. Rather, up until now nothing has indicated that the Baptist ever accepted Jesus as 'the one to come'."
(c) Jesus' reply uses none of the christological titles of the early church. Indeed, Jesus shifts the spotlight away from any title that would define his own person and toward the effects of his ministry on Israel: healing and good news to the poor, the fulfillment of Isaiah's vision for the last days. His answer remains allusive rather than direct
(d) Behind the concluding beatitude in Matthew 11:6, 'Happy is the one who is not kept from believing because of me [literally: who is not scandalized in me]', lies a discreet but urgent appeal to John to overcome his disappointed hopes and to accept Jesus' ministry as the way God is bringing Israel's history to its promised consummation."
(e) The whole pericope ends abruptly with the entreaty clothed in a beatitude along with the implied threat to one who does not follow the direction of the beatitude. We are not told whether John ever accepted Jesus' argument, Jesus' ministry, and Jesus as 'the one to come'."
- John P. Meier, A Marginal Jew - Rethinking the Historical Jesus, Vol. 2.
"The final saying (v.6) is a congratulation, like those found in Matthew 5:3-12. It presupposes that Jesus' behavior was viewed as scandalous by people, but that he was ready to accept all who were tolerant of him. The saying has a ring of authenticity about it for these reasons. However, there is no evidence that it once circulated independently." (The saying therefore cannot be segregated from the list of achievements which are not attributable directly to Jesus.)
- Robert W. Funk, Roy W. Hoover, and the Jesus Seminar, The Five Gospels
"...The embarrassment that the Baptist doubts Jesus and the greater embarrassment that the Baptist is never said to overcome his doubts argue for the context being historical."
- John P. Meier, A Marginal Jew - Rethinking the Historical Jesus, Vol. 2.
After John's messengers left, Jesus began to speak to the crowd about John:
"Jesus said 'Why have you come out to the countryside? To see a reed shaken by the wind? And to see a person dressed in soft clothes, [like your] rulers and your powerful ones?"
- Thomas 78:1-2 (Luke 7:24-25 // Matthew 11:7-8)
"Jesus began his public career as a follower of the Baptist and must have therefore expected the imminent advent of the avenging God preached by John. But instead of God came Herod Antipas, and John was executed without any divine intervention. This saying is Jesus' defense of John and must have been uttered very close to that tragedy. Which do you want, it asks: Antipas or John, The pliant kingling dressed in royal robes or the desert prophet of the apocalyptic God."
- John Dominic Crossan, The Essential Jesus: Original Sayings and Earliest Images (1998), p. 146
"...The saying...arose, directly and immediately, from the crisis engendered among his followers by John's incarceration and execution. It reads like an attempt to maintain faith in John's apocalyptic vision despite John's own execution."
- John Dominic Crossan, Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography (1994)
"The implied critique of a well-dressed nobility is consistent with Jesus' sayings that favor the poor (Thomas 54; Luke 6:20) and display a disregard for clothing (Thomas 36; Luke 6:29; 12:22-28)."
- Robert W. Funk, Roy W. Hoover, and the Jesus Seminar, The Five Gospels
"I tell you, among those born of women there is no one greater than John; yet the one who is least in the kingdom of God is greater than he."
- Matthew 11:11 // Luke 7:28
"Jesus is probably the only speaker in Christian sources who would have called John the Baptist the greatest among all human beings (v. 11). Yet the second part of the saying downplays the first by excluding John from God's domain. This qualification reflects the subsequent rivalry between the followers of the two leaders (the Baptist movement did survive and is known today as the Mandean religion in the Mesopotamia valley)."
- Robert W. Funk, Roy W. Hoover, and the Jesus Seminar, The Five Gospels
"Now John's disciples and the Pharisees were fasting. Some people came and asked Jesus, 'How is it that John's disciples and the disciples of the Pharisees are fasting, but yours are not?'"
- Mark 2:18
"We know that many very early Christian circles continued to fast. This is simply assumed to be a normal Christian religious observance in Matt. 6:16-18 and in the Didache chapter 8 which may date from about AD 100. In both cases Christians are told not to fast 'like the hypocrites', but the practice is not called into question. Since the failure of Jesus to fast cannot have been 'taken over' either from contemporary Jewish teaching or 'created' by Christians in the immediate post-Easter period, this much be an authentic tradition."
- Graham N. Stanton, The Gospels and Jesus, The Oxford Bible Series (1989), paperback, p. 160
"...A number of John's disciples (at least Andrew and Philip, probably Peter and Nathanael are to be considered his disciples as well) transfer their allegiance to Jesus."
- John P. Meier, A Marginal Jew - Rethinking the Historical Jesus, Vol. 2.
"...Jesus changed his view of John's mission and message. John's vision of awaiting the apocalyptic God, the Coming One, as a repentant sinner, which Jesus had originally accepted and even defended in the crisis of John's death, was no longer deemed adequate. It is not enough to await a future kingdom; one must enter a present one here and now."
- John Dominic Crossan, Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography (1994)
The tradition of a schism between John the Baptist Jesus is preserved by the Mandeans who view Jesus as "a heretic who led men astray".
"After John was put in prison, Jesus went into Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God."
- Mark 1:14
(2) Driven From His Village
Wrath in the Synagogue
"As far as our meager sources allow us to know, before his baptism by John, Jesus was a respectable, unexceptional, and unnoticed woodworker in Nazareth. Both family and neighbors were shocked and offended by Jesus once he undertook his ministry..."
- John P. Meier, A Marginal Jew - Rethinking the Historical Jesus, Vol. 2.
"He went to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, and on the Sabbath day he went into the synagogue, as was his custom. And he stood up to read. The scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to him. Unrolling it, he found the place where it is written: 'The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.' (Isaiah 61:1,2)
- Luke 4:14-18
"But instead of doing what a rabbi was normally expected to do, which was to provide an exposition of the text that compared and contrasted earlier interpretations and then applied the text to the hearers", he did the totally unexpected.
- Jaroslav Pelikan, Jesus Through the Centuries
"Then he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant and sat down. The eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fastened on him, and he began by saying to them, 'Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.'"
- Luke 4:19-21
"The quotation from the Greek scriptures, with the claim of fulfillment, is a major theme in Luke (for example, 1:1-4; 24:27, 44). In addition...it is not a saying that would have circulated independently during the oral period."
- Robert W. Funk, Roy W. Hoover, and the Jesus Seminar, The Five Gospels
"Although the initial reaction even to this audacious declaration was said to be wonderment 'at the gracious words which proceeded out of his mouth,' his further explanation produced the opposite reaction, and everyone was 'filled with wrath'."
- Jaroslav Pelikan, Jesus Through the Centuries
"'Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary and brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon, and are not his sisters here with us?' And they took offense at him."
"And Jesus said to them, 'A prophet is not without honor, except in his own country, and among his own kin, and in his own house.' And he could do no mighty work there, except that he laid his hands upon a few sick people and healed them. And he marveled because of their unbelief. And he went about among the villages teaching."
- Mark 6:3-4; (Matthew 13:55-57; Luke 4:24; Thomas 31:1; John 4:44)
"The saying about the prophet has a proverbial ring to it, and there are some similar sayings in pagan literature, although none about a prophet. There is no clear precedent or parallel in Israelite or Judean source."
- Robert W. Funk, Roy W. Hoover, and the Jesus Seminar, The Five Gospels
Jesus then related the cleansing of Na'aman the Syrian, the leper, by the prophet Eli'sha who order Na'ama to ritually dip himself in the Jordan (2 Kings 5). When Jesus drew a paralled between members of his village and those who would not be cleansed (baptized), members of his home village reacted angrily:
"When they heard this, all in the synagogue were filled with wrath. And they rose up and put him [Jesus] out of the city, and led him to the brow of the hill on which their city was built, that they might throw him down headlong. But passing through the midst of them he went away."
- Luke 4:28-30
"Nazareth is not built on or near a cliff face. Luke generally seems poorly informed about Palestinian geography. Aspects of his geography may therefore be fictive."
- The Compete Gospels, Robert J. Miller, Editor (1994), p. 126
Luke was correct, however, in stating that Nazareth was build on a hill..
Accusations of Demonic Possession
"Jesus and his disciples went on to the villages around Caesarea Philippi. On the way he asked them, 'Who do people say I am?'
They replied, 'Some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah; and still others, one of the prophets.'"
- Mark 8:27-28 (Matthew 16:13-14; Luke 9:18-19
"...Jesus was called 'John' because it was believed that he...was possessed by the spirit of the Baptist....It was generally believed that the spirit of any human being who had come to an just, violent, or otherwise untimely end was of enormous power. If a magician could call up and get control of, or identify with such a spirit, he could then control inferior spirits or powers. (In third-century Smyrna, Christians were believed to do their miracles by using just such necromantic control of the spirit of Jesus, because he had been crucified.) More frequent are spells by which spirits of the dead are themselves given assignments. Particularly interesting in relation to Mk. 6.14 is a prayer to Helios-Iao-Horus to assign to the magician, as perpetual 'assistant and defender,' the soul of a man wrongfully killed. This would establish approximately the sort of relation Jesus was believed to have with the soul of John....A little later, after Jesus had been executed, the Samaritan magician, Simon, was similarly thought to 'be' Jesus. The Christians, of course, maintained that the spirit by which Simon did his miracles was not Jesus but merely a murdered boy."
"...Important groups of Jesus' followers, and of his opponents, maintained that his miracles were not done by a ghost, but by a supernatural being of a higher order than men. His followers called it 'the holy spirit,' his opponents 'the ruler of the demons' (Mk. 3.22p., 29p.)"
- Morton Smith, Jesus the Magician: Charlatan or Son of God? (1978) pp. 44-45, 129
In Capernaum Jesus fights accusations by his family that he is out of his mind.
"Then Jesus entered a house, and again a crowd gathered, so that he and his disciples were not even able to eat. When his family heard about this, they went to take charge of him, for they said, 'He is out of his mind.' And the teachers of the law who came down from Jerusalem said, 'He is possessed by Beelzebub! By the prince of demons he is driving out demons.'"
- Mark 3:20-22 (Matthew 12:24; Luke 11:15)
"The logic of the charge may...indicate that Jesus healed and exorcised in a state of ecstatic trance. Such entranced healing would be quite normal in terms of cross-cultural anthropology and comparative religion."
- John Dominic Crossan, The Essential Jesus: Original Sayings and Earliest Images (1998), p. 163
"It was thought that demons, like dogs, would obey if you called them by their names. In this case, the scribes from Jerusalem say the name is Beelzebul, the title, 'the ruler of the demons'; the two are presented as if they referred to the same being, but elsewhere we find, 'He casts out demons by the ruler of the demons,' without any mention of Beelzebul (Mt 9.34) In other situations, people are said to have called Jesus 'Beelzebul' (but not 'the ruler of demons,' Mt. 10.25). Jesus' question, 'Can Satan cast out Satan?' suggests that others identified Jesus' demon as Satan....Particularly interesting is the final saying attributed to Jesus, that blasphemy against 'the holy spirit' is unforgivable. 'The holy spirit' is the spirit by which some Christians thought Jesus did his miracles, the blasphemy is calling it a demon, and the saying shows that at least some Christians were willing to admit that Jesus did 'have a spirit,' but insisted that is was a (or 'the') holy one."
- Morton Smith, Jesus the Magician: Charlatan or Son of God? (1978) p. 42-43
Alienation Within the Family
"Is there not a common core: alienation clearly derives from Jesus' own life?"
- James H. Charlesworth, Jesus Within Judaism
"Luke has added his own theological touch in vv. 25-27: the widow of Zarephath, whose son Elijah brought back to life (1 Kings 17:1-16), and Naaman the Syrian, whose leprosy Elisha cured (2 Kings 5:1-14) were both gentiles; Jesus' rejection at Nazareth is Luke's symbolic foreshadowing of the church's mission to the gentiles in the book of Acts."
- Robert Funk (Editor), Jesus Seminar, The Acts of Jesus: The Search for the Authentic Deeds of Jesus, p. 158
"Then Jesus' mother and brothers arrived. Standing outside, they sent someone in to call him. A crowd was sitting around him, and they told him, ' Your mother and brothers are outside looking for you.'
' Who are my mother and my brothers?' he asked. Then he looked at those seated in a circle around him and said, 'Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does God's will is my brother and sister and mother."
- Mark 3:31-35; (Luke 8:19-21; Matthew 12:46-50; Thomas 99:1-3)
"...The dialogue contrasts those who are 'outside' with those in the inner circle around Jesus, who are 'insiders.' Jesus may be raising both questions form a literal to a metaphorical level. Such moves are characteristic of Jesus style" but may have originated with the Christian community after Jesus."
- Robert W. Funk, Roy W. Hoover, and the Jesus Seminar, The Five Gospels
"Individuals had no real existence apart from their ties to blood relatives, especially parents. If one did not belong to a family, one had no real social existence. Jesus is therefore confronting the social structures that governed his society at their core. For Jesus, family ties faded into insignificance in relation to God's imperial rule, which he regarded as the fundamental claim on human loyalty."
- Robert W. Funk, Roy W. Hoover, and the Jesus Seminar, The Five Gospels
"If any one comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple."
- Luke 14:26 // Matthew 10:37
Compare with a more complete saying of the same verse.
"Jesus said), 'Whoever does not hate his fath[er] in my way will not be able to be a d[isciple] to me. And whoever does [not] love h[is father] and his mother in my way will not be able to be a d[isciple t]o me..."
- Thomas 101:1-3
"...Here the first saying is joined by its opposite (v.2), which makes it a paradox. One cannot both hate and love parents at the same time. The rest of the saying in Thomas is fragmentary, but enough remains to suggest that Thomas was making a distinction between two different kinds of mothers and fathers...Thomas has revised an authentic tradition and developed it in some new but unknown direction."
- Robert W. Funk, Roy W. Hoover, and the Jesus Seminar, The Five Gospels
It is equally probable, however, that Thomas' version is closer to the original.
"The parallelism of Thomas' statement, with a dual exhortation centered first on hate and then on love, is typical of Jesus' sayings. Many of them, especially when retroverted back into Aramaic, are couched in pleasing Semitic poetic parallelism."
- James H. Charlesworth, Jesus Within Judaism
Was the exhortation "to hate" a Greek mistranslation of an original Aramaic saying?
"When I consider that the Aramaic for 'hate' is
The correct rendering would thus be:
"Jesus said), 'Whoever does not set aside his fath[er] in my way will not be able to be a d[isciple] to me" etc.
"If Jesus was a well-known magician, healer, or miracle worker, first, his immediate family, and next, his village, would expect to benefit from and partake in the handling of that fame and those gifts. Any Mediterranean peasant would expect an expanding ripple of patronage-clientage to go out from Jesus, through his family and his village, to the outside world. But what Jesus did, in turning his back on Nazareth and on his family, was repudiate such brokerage, and that, rather than belief or disbelief, was the heart of the problem." "And how is it possible that a man who has nothing, who is naked, houseless, without a hearth, squalid, without a slave, without a city, can pass a life that flows easily? See, God has sent you a man to show you that it is possible. Look at me, who am without a city, without a house, without possessions, without a slave; I sleep on the ground; I have no wife, no children, no praetorium [official power], but only the earth and heavens, and one poor cloak. And what do I want? Am I not without sorrow? Am I not without fear? Am I not free? When did any of you see me failing in the object of my desire? or ever falling into that which I would avoid? Did I ever blame God or man? Did I ever accuse any man? Did any of you ever see me with sorrowful countenance? And how do I meet with those whom you are afraid of and admire? Do not I treat them like slaves? Who, when he sees me, does not think that he see his king and master?"
(3) No Honor, No Shame
Unlike the strict Qumranians [more properly the Yahad who did not necessarily live at Qumran], Jesus included "the 'unclean' - such as married men, cripples and, most surprising of all, even women. To Jesus they were all equally able to sin in the sight of God and therefore had as much, if not more, need of salvation that the others. This idea of equality was revolutionary for the time and became the hallmark of his teachings."
"From Luke 3:12 and 7:29 we learn that John the Baptist also associated with tax collectors. So it must remain at least possible that something which was characteristic of the prophet-teacher John was transferred to Jesus."
Jesus "seems to have followed in the footsteps of John the Baptist who, as Jesus himself remarked, attracted his own following of tax-collectors and prostitutes (Matthew 21:32). The same unconventional approach has also been noted by Dr. Gez Vermes [The Dead Sea Scrolls in English] as typical of other Jewish nabi and hasidic holy men."
"The meal was also a feature of Jesus' teaching, particularly the wedding banquet with all its eschatological overtones of God's final acceptance (Mk 2:19 pars.; Mt 22:1-14; 25:10; Lk 14:16-24; 22:30). Hence, the power of the parable of the prodigal son: the welcome back to the table of celebration marks the son's acceptance as 'son,' the transition from death back to life again (Lk 15:23-24, 32). Hence too the seriousness of the warning in Luke 13:26-27-to have participated in table-fellowship with Jesus is no guarantee of final salvation - and the significance of Matthew 8:11-12//Luke 13:28-29 (also Lk 12:35-37). Not least in importance is the fact that Jesus saw it as desirable that contemporary practice of table-fellowship should be determined by (and thus foreshadow) the eschatological banquet in character (Lk 14:13, 21)."
The Enochian Jews "They shall eat in common....And when the table has been prepared for eating, and the new wine for drinking, the Priest shall be the first to stretch out his hand to bless the first-fruits of the bread and the new wine."
With the later Essenes, the daily meals continued to be sacred occasions.
"After this purification...they repair to the refectory, as to some sacred shrine (els hagion ti temenos). When they have taken their seats in silence, the baker serves out the loaves in order, and the cook sets before each one plate with a single course. Before meat the priest says a grace, and none may partake until after the prayer. When breakfast is ended, he pronounces a further grace; thus at the beginning and at the close they do homage to God as the bountiful giver of life. Then laying aside their raiment, as holy vestments, they again betake themselves to their labors until the evening. On their return they sup in like manner... No clamor or disturbance ever pollutes their dwelling.... To persons outside the silence of those within appears like some awful mystery..."
The Pharisees "Of the 341 individual Houses' legal pericopae, no fewer than 229, approximately 67 percent of the whole, directly or indirectly concern table-fellowship.... The Houses' laws of ritual cleanness apply in the main to the ritual cleanness of food, and of people, dishes, and implements involved in its preparation. Pharisaic laws regarding Sabbath and festivals, moreover, involve in large measure the preparation and preservation of food."
(Note that not all Pharisees were necessarily haberim [associates].)
"Neusner also draws out two points of particular interest to this inquiry.
(2) Breaking with Tradition
Co-equals at the Table [When] they shall gather for the common [tab]le, to eat and [to drink] new wine, when the common table shall be set for eating and the new wine [poured] for drinking, let no man extend his hand over the firstfruits of bread and wine before the Priest; for [it is he] who shall bless the first-fruits of bread and wine, and shall be the first [to extend] his hand over the bread. Thereafter the Messiah of Israel shall extend his hand over the bread....
In contrast, the Open commensality of Jesus' meals recognized all present as coequals, leveling class barriers and social status. The hierarchical ordering of the meals held by the Yahad was inverted in Luke's account.
"And there was also a strife among them, which of them should be accounted the greatest. He said to them...'the greatest among you must behave as a beginner, and the leader as one who serves. Who is the greater, after all: the one reclining at a banquet or the one doing the serving? Isn't it the one who reclines? Among you I am the one doing the serving.'"
Dining with Sinners
"The games children play in the marketplace are used as an analogy for the responses elicited by both John and Jesus (vv. 16-17....The analogy itself is commonplace in the lore of the period and so cannot be traced specifically to Jesus."
"This generation refused to join in John's Dies irae intoned over the present world. They dismissed the dismal prophet from the desert who ate only locusts and wild honey with contempt: the poor man must be mad (= in religious terms, he has a demon). Jesus the bon vivant issued a very different call to repentance. By extending table fellowship to the religious outcasts of Jewish society, the toll collectors and sinners, Jesus offered an easy, joyous way into the kingdom of God that he proclaimed." Both calls to repentance were rejected by this generation.
The Dinner Party
"It is obvious from the Gospel traditions that much of Jesus' ministry took place in the context of the meal table. He is remembered as one who often was a guest at another's table (Mk 2:15-16 pars.; 14:3 par.; Lk 7:36; 10:39; 11:37; 14:1; 19:5-7), and he seems to have acted as host on a number of occasions (Lk 15:2; Mk 14:22-23 pars.; cf. Mk 6:41 pars.; Lk 24:30-3 1). Evidently guest friendship as expressed in the shared meal was so much a feature of Jesus' ministry that it was regarded as something notorious. Fasting was typical of other religious groups, but not of the group around Jesus (Mk 2:18-19 pars.). In contrast to John the Baptist's asceticism, Jesus' enjoyment of the table was almost proverbial:"
"No man smitten with any human uncleanness shall enter the assembly of God....No man smitten in his flesh, or paralyzed in his feet or hands, or lame (psh), or blind ('wr), or deaf, or dumb, or smitten in his flesh with a visible blemish (mwm) [Leviticus 21:17-21]...for the angels of holiness are [with] their [congregation]... let him not enter among [the congregation], for he is smitten."
(See also 1QM 7.4-6; 4QCDb; 11QTemple 45.12-14.)
Contrast the purity norms of the closed community with Jesus' table-fellowship as described in the parable of the dinner party. A rich man prepared a great banquet, but his guests made excuses not to come.
"The servant came back and reported this to his master. Then the owner of the house became angry and ordered his servant, 'Go out quickly into the streets and alleys of the town and bring in the poor, the crippled, the blind and the lame.'
"In the Palestinian Jesus movement the table of God was open to all the poor, and not least to the disabled, the lame, and the blind - those specifically excluded by the self-styled 'poor' of Qumran."
"In the parable of the banquet in Luke 14:15-24, Jesus condemns those who seek places of rank in his kingdom, perhaps in polemic response to the Essene exclusion from their banquet of all except the elite of the desert who shared their goods and were 'men of renown.'."
"The parable has been preserved in three different versions. Thomas' edition contains some revision, but not as many as Matthew's version. In Matthew, the story is elevated from a dinner party to a royal wedding feast and turned into an allegory of the history of salvation..."
A Radical Vision
"It is the random and open commensality of the parable's meal that is its most startling element. One could, in such a situation, have classes, sexes, ranks, and grades all mixed up together. The social challenge of such egalitarian commensality is the radical threat of the parable's vision."
Such a radical vision "nearly always implies a society of brotherhood in which there will be no rich and poor, in which no distinctions of rank and status (save those between believers and non-believers) will exist....All unjust claims to taxes, rents, and tribute are to be nullified. The envisioned utopia may also include a self-yielding and abundant nature as well as a radically transformed human nature in which greed, envy, and hatred will disappear. While the earthly utopia is thus an anticipation of the future, it often harks back to a mythic Eden from which mankind has fallen away."
"The point of honor is the basis of the moral code of an individual who sees himself always through the eyes of others, who has need of others for his existence, because the image he has of himself is indistinguishable from that presented to him by other people...Respectability, the reverse of shame, is the characteristic of a person who needs other people in order to grasp his own identity and whose consciousness is a kind of interiorization of others, since these fulfill for him the role of witness and judge....He who has lost his honor no longer exists. He ceases to exist for other people, and at the same time he ceases to exist for himself."
"...For those who take their very identity from the eyes of their peers, the idea of eating together and living together without any distinctions, differences, discriminations, or hierarchies is close to the irrational and the absurd. And the one who advocates or does it is close to the deviant and the perverted. He has no honor. He has no shame."
"...There were a number of predominantly gentile cities in Galilee. The most important of these were Tiberias, on the shore of the lake, and Sepphoris, a rather short distance from Jesus' home village of Nazareth (ca. 7 km. as the crow flies). But these cities are conspicuous in the gospel tradition by their absence! The geographical information we have, such as it is, suggests that Jesus restricted his activity for the most part to the Jewish villages of rural Galilee."
"I think it is very likely, but not 'provable' that Jesus' followers were made up principally of people healed and exorcised by him, that those who came to him were those who went with him. It is strongly attested in anthropology that a spirit-possessed healer will use altered states of consciousness in his techniques of healing." "Jesus went throughout Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the good news of the kingdom, and healing every disease and sickness among the people. News about him spread all over Syria, and people brought to him all who were ill with various diseases, those suffering severe pain, the demon-possessed, those having seizures, and the paralyzed, and he healed them. Large crowds from Galilee, the Decapolis [that is, the Ten Cities], Jerusalem, Judea and the region across the Jordan followed him." "Exaggeration is the rule among devoted reporters of famous sages..." "When it became certain that he had arrived, people flocked to him from all over Greece aglow with anticipation; never had so many gathered for an Olympic festival as on this occasion. People came straight from Elis and Sparta, from as far away as Corinth; even the Athenians came, although they are not from the Peloponnesus...And there were people from Megara who were then lodging at Olympia, together with many form Boeotia, and from Argos, as well as leading citizens of Phocis and Thessaly." "...The crowds who flock to Jesus come not only from various areas in Israel, but also from Idumea, Transjordan, and the territories of the coastal cities of Tyre and Sidon. The presence of the pigs in the story of the Gerasene demoniac (Mark 5:1-20) and the reference to the Decapolis confirms its setting in non-Jewish territory. Jesus himself visits the region of Tyre and Sidon and is approached by a Greek woman, 'a Syrophoenician by birth' (Mark 7:26), whose plea for assistance is eventually accepted. The incident which follows is set in the Decapolis and implies that the deaf man is healed is a Gentile."
"All over the Empire there were tax collectors at ports and frontier towns. They had to levy tax on goods passing from one place to another. The rate of this tax is uncertain; it may have been quite low, about one fortieth (2.5 per cent) of the value of the merchandise. Collecting it could be very profitable, for it would be the tax collector's task to estimate the value, and he could easily over-estimate it. The men who did this work were not government officials but businessmen (publicani) who bought the rights to collect in specific areas."
"...Jesus undertook an itinerant mission throughout Galilee, parts of Judea, parts of Perea, parts of the Decapolis, and perhaps areas north of Galilee reaching as far as Tyre and Sidon - as well as engaging in numerous journeys to Jerusalem....Jesus was consciously reaching out to all Israel in its last hour, especially to marginal groups like tax collectors, prostitutes, and sinners in general, as well as to the not-especially-sinful but not-especially-well-shepherded poor." "'The time has come,' he said. 'The kingdom of God is near. Repent and believe the good news!'
"The evangelists rarely put the call to repentance on the lips of Jesus, but it is characteristic of the message of John the Baptist (Matthew 3:7-11 // Luke 3:7-14). As in the case of the apocalyptic view of history, the disciples may have learned the call to repentance from John and later attributed it to Jesus."
"The task of Jesus as Messiah was to influence others - more especially, 'the lost sheep of the house of Israel'. Repentance was the passport to deliverance. His business, therefore, was with the masses, whose condition under oppression had largely destroyed faith and morality and had fostered a spirit of violence and retaliation. He had to woo them back to the ways of God."
"In short, Jesus moved the emphasis from God's holiness (exclusive) to God's mercy (inclusive). Instead of the message 'No undesirables allowed', he proclaimed, 'In God's kingdom there are no undesirables.' By going out of his way to meet with Gentiles, eat with sinners, and touch the sick, he extended the realm of God's mercy."
(2) Sinners
"...Jesus said to them, 'It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.'"
"The saying about the able-bodied and sick is a secular proverb, which Jesus may have quoted. The version found in Gospel Fragment 1224: 5:2, a fragment from an unknown gospel, is considered the earliest because it is the simplest form: 'Those in good health don't need a doctor.'"
(3) Women
"And it came to pass afterward, that he went throughout every city and village, preaching and shewing the glad tidings of the kingdom of God: and the twelve were with him, And certain women, which had been healed of evil spirits and infirmities, Mary called Magdalene, out of whom went seven devils, And Joanna the wife of Chuza Herod's steward, and Susanna, and many others, which ministered unto him of their substance."
"How did Jesus support himself? In the Middle East of that day, teachers lived off the gifts of appreciative listeners. Luke points out that certain women who had been healed by Jesus - including the wife of Herod's finance minister! helped provide for him. Touchingly, some of these women made the long and dangerous journey from Galilee to Jerusalem at the time of the Passover Feast, and stayed by Jesus at the cross after his closest disciples had deserted him."
"In those days, at every synagogue service Jewish men prayed, 'Blessed art thou, O Lord, who hast not made me a woman.' Women sat in a separate section, were not counted in quorums, and were rarely taught the Torah. In social life, few women would talk to men outside of their families, and a woman was to touch no man but her spouse. Yet Jesus associated freely with women and taught some as his disciples. A Samaritan woman who had been through five husbands, Jesus tapped to lead a spiritual revival (notably, he began the conversation by asking her for help). A prostitute's anointing, he accepted with gratitude. Women traveled with his band of followers, not doubt stirring up much gossip. Women populated Jesus' parables and illustrations, and frequently he did miracles on their behalf. According to biblical scholar Walter Wink, Jesus violated the mores of his time in every single encounter with women recorded in the four Gospels. Truly, as Paul would later say, in Christ 'There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female...'" "Simon Peter said to them, 'Let Mary leave us, for women are not worthy of life.'
"The Petrine tradition is not notably kind to women. In 1 Peter 3:106, women are given a subordinate role. In the Gospel of Mary and the Pistis Sophia, Peter is portrayed as critical of women, especially Mary. While some gnostic groups were egalitarian with regard to the sexes, some were misogynist; they identified the origin of evil and sin with the feminine."
"Needless to say, Simon Peter was not suggesting that all women should be killed when he said they were not 'worthy of life'; this was a reference to the fact she needed to leave the room whilst members of the highest order of the movement (the 'living') discussed secret matters. Jesus must have caused amazement amongst his followers when he replied that he would personally 'raise her from the dead' to be the first woman member of the elite and that every woman had the right to do the same."
"...Jesus is not suggesting a sex-change operation, but is using 'male' and 'female' metaphorically to refer to the higher and lower aspects of human nature. Mary is thus to undergo a spiritual transformation from her earthly, material, passionate nature (which the evangelist equates with the female) to a heavenly, spiritual, intellectual nature (which the evangelist equates with the male.) This transformation may possibly have involved ritual acts or ascetic practices. This metaphorical use of gender language is foreign to the historical Jesus." "Do we not have the right to be accompanied by a believing wife [
adelfhn gunaika], as do the other apostles and the brothers of the Lord and Cephas?"
"The literal Greek 'sister wife' is translated into English as 'believing wife'....My proposal is that a 'sister wife' means exactly what it says: a female missionary who travels with a male missionary as if, for the world at large, she is his wife. The obvious function of such a tactic would be to furnish the best social protections for a traveling female missionary in a world of male power and violence."
(4) Fishermen and Freedom Fighters
"When he had gone a little farther, he saw James son of Zebedee and his brother John in a boat, preparing their nets. Without delay he called them, and they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired men and followed him."
"In first-century Galilee, fishermen were...the 'businessmen' of their community; James and John were affluent enough to have 'hired servants'. The disciples were reasonably well-educated; as well as their local Galilean Aramaic dialect, they probably used some Greek in order to trade."
Although fishermen may have been the businessmen of their community, they were still close to the bottom rung of the social hierarchy.
1. "Archaeological evidence in Galilean fishing communities...points to clusters of modest sized homes, no large estates or evidence of a fishing cartel or conglomerate comparable to even a modest-sized landholder's homestead." "Least respectable of all are those trades that cater to sensual pleasures 'Fishmongers, butchers, cooks & poulterers & FISHERMEN'."
There are also indications that least some of the fishermen following Jesus were Zealots.
"And James the son of Zebedee, and John the brother of James; and he surnamed them Boanerges, which is, the sons of thunder..."
In Greek, the word 'Thunder' is feminine.
"I am barren and many are my sons."
"The second largest Jewish center [after Jerusalem] was Galilee, which at the end of the Second Temple period was a highly prosperous area with many villages and towns. Galilee played a vital part in Jewish life, and was the source of some of the most significant religious and political movements. From Galilee came some of the most extreme fighters for freedom."
The area where Jesus was raised was historically a hotbed of Zealot activity. Nazareth was just outside Sepphoris, the first target of rebels during the insurrection which followed Herod's death in 4 B.C.E. "When morning came, he called his disciples to him and chose twelve of them, whom he also designated apostles: Simon (whom he named Peter), his brother Andrew, James, John, Philip, Bartholomew, Matthew, Thomas, James son of Alphaeus, Simon who was called the Zealot, Judas son of James, and Judas Iscariot, who became a traitor."
"Several of Jesus's disciples has connections to the radical Zealots. Peter's nickname was 'Barjonah', which corresponds closely to an Aramaic term for 'outlaw'. James and John were called the 'Sons of Thunder', a euphemism for Zealot. Judas Iscariot's name probably derives from the Latin word 'sicarius', meaning 'dagger' - a reference to an elite group of Zealots known as the Assassins, the Dagger-men. And of course there was always Simon Zelotes, Simon the Zealot."
"It is to be noted, however, that both Mark and Matthew, who wrote prior to Luke, refer to this Simon not as the Zealot, but as the Canaanean (Mark 3:18, Matthew 10:4). So this point is certainly not established. It is only hinted."
Simon Zebedee was "known as Simon
KananiteV (Greek, the fanatic). This was later mistranslated as Simon the Canaanite."
"For centuries, baffled by Greek appellations, biblical commentators believed 'Judas Iscariot' to denote 'Judas of Kerioth'. But as the late Professor S. G. F. Brandon of Manchester University has convincingly argued, 'Judas Iscariot' now seems more likely to be a corruption of 'Judas the Sicarius' - or Zealot."
The Sicarii were the most fanatical of the Zealots and often merged with crowds to carry out their murderous tasks against other Jews. It was the Sicarii who made the last stand against the Romans at Masada.
"If Jesus took a special interest in the tax-collectors, he cannot have had close links or sympathies with resistance fighters."
"...It is a one-sided distortion of...to lump him [Jesus] together with 'the zealots' for three very basic reasons:
There was a "general expectation that millennial prophets and their followers will be unarmed since they expect divine power to solve a sociocultural problem already far beyond human redress. It is not so much that they are pacific, as that force, power, and violence with be of transcendental rather than human derivation. Their part is to enact or reenact the ritual act that invokes the eschatological scenario."
(5) The "Twelve"
"Then he goes up on the mountain and summons those he wanted, and they came to him. He formed a group of twelve to be his companions, and to be sent out to speak, and to have authority to drive out demons."
"In the section of the Torah that described the celebration of Tabernacles (Lev. 23-24), the people were encamped at the foot of Sinai, while Moses went up the mountain to receive the Lord's statues. Moses took with him the names of the twelve tribes. Later, Moses would send twelve men to go spy out the Promised land. One of them was named Joshua, which was simply the Hebrew way of spelling Jesus. So Mark, in the lections that would be read during this festival, had Jesus go up the mountain and call to himself twelve disciples. These disciples would then be sent out to preach and to have power over demons." "You are those who have continued with me in my trials; as my Father appointed a kingdom for me, so do I appoint for you that you may eat and drink at my table in my kingdom, and sit on thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel."
"The point of the Twelve is that Jesus' community forms a New Israel in miniature, a new People of God with twelve new patriarchs to replace the twelve sons of Jacob from the Old Testament. The question, however, is whether such an institution derives from the time of the historical Jesus or whether it was created after his death among certain early Christian groups. I accept the second alternative for two reasons. One is that I find it almost impossible to imagine thirteen men traveling around together among the small villages of Lower Galilee in the first century. Imagine that group arriving in a hamlet with all the men out working in the fields and only women and small children at home, especially in an honor-and-shame culture divided among gender lines. Bandits! Jesus surrounded by the Twelve would fit well as a sort of philosophical school in a city, but such a grouping is unthinkable moving among the tiny hamlets of rural Galilee."
According to Mark, the twelve do not carry on their ministry as a group, but in pairs, one of whom may have been a "sister-wife".
"Calling the Twelve to him, he sent them out two by two and gave them authority over evil [unclean] spirits."
Secondly, "whole groups in the early church seem never to have heard of this most important and symbolic institution. Paul mentions a tradition about 'the Twelve' in 1 Corinthians 15:5, but he distinguishes them from 'all the apostles' in 15:7, and they never appear as any sort of authoritative source or group in his epistles. Neither the Gospel of Thomas nor the Q Gospel ever mentions them. The Teaching or Didache...speaks of 'apostles' only in the sense of itinerant missionaries who are given temporary hospitality as they pass through to found new communities elsewhere. The eleventh-century manuscript that alone contains this complete text is entitled, first, The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles, and, then, The Teaching of the Lord through the Twelve Apostles to the Pagans. Neither of those external titles reflects the text's internal understanding of 'apostles' and must be considered as later additions. Neither do the Twelve Apostles appear in First Clement, a letter written around 96 or 97 C.E. from the church at Rome to that at Corinth. Finally, they are not mentioned in the letters that Ignatius of Antioch, traveling under guard to martyrdom in Rome between 110 and 117 C.E. wrote to various 'Christian communities along his route."
"The missionaries of the Kingdom were sent not to announce or proclaim Jesus' power but to enact and perform the Kingdom's presence. The emphasis is not on them. The emphasis is not on Jesus. But on God. Originally."
"My proposal is that the itinerancy of Jesus' movement is radical because it is a symbolic representation of unbrokered egalitarianism. Neither Jesus nor his followers are supposed to settle down in one place and establish there a brokered presence. And, as healers, we would expect them to stay in one place, to establish around them a group of followers, and to have people come to them. Instead, they go out to people and have, as it were, to start anew each morning." "When you go into any region and walk about in the countryside, when people take you in, eat what they serve you and heal the sick among them."
In the above passage, "the author's interest is focused on dietary laws and other religious practices." "When you enter a house, first say, 'Peace to this house.' If a man of peace is there, your peace will rest on him; if not, it will return to you."
"...This 'peace' is a spirit - if no one in the house is worthy of it, it will return to the senders."
"But when you enter a town and are not welcomed, go into its streets and say, 'Even the dust of your town that sticks to our feet we wipe off against you. Yet be sure of this: The kingdom of God is near.'"
"They can also curse. If no one in a city will receive them, they have only, on leaving, to knock the dust off their shoes in order to designate that city for special punishment in the day of judgment. Obviously we here have to do with Jewish magic, though exact parallels are not preserved."
"When Jesus came into Peter's house, he saw Peter's mother-in-law lying in bed with a fever. He touched her hand and the fever left her, and she got up and began to wait on him. When evening came, many who were demon-possessed were brought to him, and he drove out the spirits with a word and healed all the sick."
"After his arrival, Jesus spent only a few days in Capernaum before Sabbath. The locals did not have time to know him as a man. There was something mysterious about him, caused by his praying, his aloofness and his 'essenish' ways. The fishermen he knew were saying good things in his favor. The people wondered: Who was he? Then came, and within a short time, the 'exorcism' in the synagogue and the mother-in-law back on her feet. Suddenly, the hysteria started and grew even more after the 'leper' got clean. Jesus became the 'man of God' who could heal you by touching you."
"That Jesus was active in Capernaum, perhaps even making it his 'home base' in Galilee, is supported by multiple attestation of both sources and forms. Mark has Jesus entering Capernaum in 1:21; 2:1; and 9:33. The first two references introduce miracle stories, all three contexts present Jesus teaching, and all three contexts have Jesus exercising his ministry in someone's house in Capernaum. Both Matthew and Luke follow Mark's basic view of things, Matthew going so far as to make Jesus' move to Capernaum an object of prophecy (4:12-17) and to call Capernaum 'his [Jesus'] own city' (9:1)." When Jesus heard that John had been put in prison, he returned to Galilee. Leaving Nazareth, he went and lived in Capernaum, which was by the lake in the area of Zebulun and Naphtali-- to fulfill what was said through the prophet Isaiah:'Land of Zebulun and land of Naphtali, the way to the sea, along the Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles-- the people living in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of the shadow of death a light has dawned.'" [Isaiah 9:1,2 ] "After this [the miracle at Cana], he went down to Capernaum with his mother and brothers and his disciples. There they stayed for a few days."
"John presents Jesus - as well as his mother, his brothers, and his disciples - descending from Cana to Capernaum after his first sign (2:12). Curiously, the presence of Jesus' mother, brothers, and disciples (or at least a receptive audience) all together in Capernaum coincides with Mark's depiction of an otherwise different incident in Mark 3:20-35 [accusations that Jesus was possessed by Beelzebub]."
Excavations of First Century House
"The first-century walls of the house are too weak to support a tiled roof, as in Rome or Pompeii. The roof would have been constructed of tree branches covered with palm leaves and caked mud." "And when he returned to Capernaum after some days, it was reported that he was at home. And many were gathered together, so that there was no longer room for them, not even about the door; and he was preaching the word to them. And they came, bringing to him a paralytic carried by four men. And when they could not get near him because of the crowd, they removed the roof above him; and when they had made an opening, they let down the pallet on which the paralytic lay. And when Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, 'My son, your sins are forgiven'."
According to the gospels, Jesus had a falling out with Capernaum which brings into question the idea of a continuing tradition in that city.
"And you, Capernaum, will you be exalted to heaven? You shall be brought down to Hades."
"The Fellows were almost unanimous in their opinion that they were created by a later Christian prophet in Galilee speaking in the spirit and the name of Jesus, rather than being spoken by Jesus himself. They doubt that Jesus would have told the towns that did not accept him to go to Hell, especially after teaching this disciples to love their enemies."
- Jack Kilmon (CrossTalk 2)
- Thomas 101:1
- John Dominic Crossan, The Historical Jesus, The Life of a Mediterranean Peasant (1991)
- Epictetus, "On the Calling of a Cynic", Discourses 3:22
- Christopher Knight & Robert Lomas, The Hiram Key: Pharaohs, Freemasons and the Discovery of the Secret Scrolls of Jesus
- Graham N. Stanton, The Gospels and Jesus, The Oxford Bible Series (1989), paperback, p. 161
- Ian Wilson, Jesus, The Evidence
Table Fellowship
"Jesus evidently saw the fellowship of the meal table as an expression of life under the rule of God (particularly Mt 22:2; 25:1); in his own social relationships he sought to live in accordance with his vision of the kingdom (cf. particularly Lk 6:20 with 14:13, 21). It was this lived-out vision of acceptability before God as expressed in tablefellowship which, according to the Synoptics, was one of the major causes of complaint against Jesus among some of his contemporaries."
- James D. G. Dunn, "Jesus, Table-Fellowship, and Qumran" in Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls (James H. Charlesworth, Ed. - 1992), pp. 255-256
"As with Jesus, so also with the Essenes [Yahad], the current practice of table-fellowship seems to have been seen as an expression and a foretaste of the fellowship of the future age. For both groups the meal table was an eschatological symbol, an enacted conviction, commitment, and promise."
- James D. G. Dunn, "Jesus, Table-Fellowship, and Qumran" in Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls (James H. Charlesworth, Ed. - 1992), p. 263
- Community Rule 1QS 6.2, 4-5
Josephus, War 2.129-33; LCL
The preparation and consumption of food were central to rabbinic (Pharisaic haberim) tradition in the period before 70 C.E.
- J. Neusner, From Politics to Piety (1973), p. 86
1. "...This concern to maintain ritual purity in respect of the meal table was a primary expression of Pharisees' desire to live as though they were serving as priests in the Temple - to regard, we might say, the whole land as sharing the sanctity of the Temple and thus requiring the same degree of holiness as for the Temple priest.
2. "...This concern did not focus on special or ritual meals, but came to expression in all meals; it was precisely in their daily life, in the daily meal table, that the test of their priestlike dedication would be proved."
"Table-fellowship was at the heart of many Pharisees' self-identity; for them Sirach's counsel, 'Let righteous men be your table companions,' would be a basic rule of life. A practice of table-fellowship that rode roughshod over and called into sharp question the deeply held convictions of these Pharisees was liable to trigger a strong reaction on the part of at least some of them. Jesus' table-fellowship seems to have been just such and was evidently perceived by at least some Pharisees as a threat to their ritually expressed and maintained boundaries."
- James D. G. Dunn, "Jesus, Table-Fellowship, and Qumran" in Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls (James H. Charlesworth, Ed. - 1992), pp. 255-256
"Hierarchical rank rather than egalitarian commonalty was emphasized symbolically in the ritual meals of the Qumran Essenes [Yahad]."
- John Dominic Crossan, The Historical Jesus, The Life of a Mediterranean Peasant (1991)
- Rule of the Congregation lQSa 2.17-21
- Luke 22:24, 26
- Matthew 11:16-18 // Luke 7:31-33
"What does this generation remind me of? It is like children sitting in marketplaces who call out to other:
We played the flute for you,
but you wouldn't dance;
we sang a dirge
but you wouldn't mourn."For John [the Baptist] came neither eating nor drinking and you say: 'He has a demon'."
"For the Son of Man came eating and drinking, and you say: 'Behold an eater and drinker, a friend of toll collectors and sinners'."
"If 'son of Adam [Man]' were understood as a circumlocution for the personal pronoun 'I' (Jesus referring to himself in the third person)...the saying reflected accurate characterizations of Joan and Jesus..."
- Robert W. Funk, Roy W. Hoover, and the Jesus Seminar, The Five Gospels
"It was to these wicked that Jesus dared to offer forgiveness and a place in the kingdom of God, without apparently making it a prior condition that they go through the usual process of reintegration into Jewish religious society: prayers of repentance, restitution of ill-gotten goods or recompense for harm committed, temple sacrifice, and commitment to follow the Mosaic law. His bon vivant existence with robbers [read zealots?] and sinners was therefore something much more scandalous and ominous than a mere matter of breaking purity rules dear to the haberim or the Pharisees."
- John P. Meier, A Marginal Jew - Rethinking the Historical Jesus, Vol. 2.
"To invite a man to a meal was an honor. It was an offer of peace, trust, brotherhood and forgiveness; in short, sharing a table meant sharing life....In Judaism in particular, table-fellowship means fellowship before God, for the eating of a piece of broken bread by everyone who shares in the meal brings out the fact that they all have a share in the blessing which the master of the house had spoken over the unbroken bread."
- J. Jeremias, New Testament Theology, Vol 1 (1971) p. 115
- James D. G. Dunn, "Jesus, Table-Fellowship, and Qumran" in Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls (James H. Charlesworth, Ed. - 1992), p. 255
- Rule of the Congregation lQSa 2.3-10
'Sir,' the servant said, 'what you ordered has been done, but there is still room.'
Then the master told his servant, 'Go out to the roads and country lanes and make them come in, so that my house will be full. I tell you, not one of those men who were invited will get a taste of my banquet.'"
- Luke 14:21-24 // Matthew 22:7-13; Thomas 66:10-11
- James D. G. Dunn, "Jesus, Table-Fellowship, and Qumran" in Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls (James H. Charlesworth, Ed. - 1992), p. 267
- Frank Moore Cross, Jr., "Dead Sea Scrolls: Overview"
"Luke's version is much nearer the original, in the judgment of most scholars, although it, too, has undergone some editorial modifications....The first invitation to the surprised villagers in v. 21 is a reiteration of the advice given in v. 14 to those who organize a lunch or a dinner: they are to invite the poor, the crippled, the blind, and the lame. This is a favorite theme of Luke note 4:18-19, 7:22, which indicate that the list of those to be included was inspired by the Hebrew scriptures."
- Robert W. Funk, Roy W. Hoover, and the Jesus Seminar, The Five Gospels
Commensality: "the rules of tabling and eating as miniature models for the rules of association and socialization. It means table fellowship as a map of economic discrimination, social hierarchy, and political differentiation."
- John Dominic Crossan, Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography (1994)
- John Dominic Crossan, The Historical Jesus, The Life of a Mediterranean Peasant (1991)
- James Scott, "Protest and Profanation: Agrarian Revolt and the Little Tradition." Theory and Society 4:1-38 and 211-246 (1977
- Pierre Bourdieu, "The Sentiment of Honour in Kabyle Society", in Honour and Shame: The Values of Mediterranean Society (1994)
- John Dominic Crossan, Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography (1994)
Jesus' Followers
- Birger A. Pearson "The Gospel According to the Jesus Seminar"
- Stevan Davies' review of his book Jesus the Healer: Possession, Trance, and the Origins of Christianity, Continuum Press, New York 1995
- Mark 3:7-8 (Matthew 4:22-25, Luke:6:17)
- Robert Funk (Editor), Jesus Seminar, The Acts of Jesus: The Search for the Authentic Deeds of Jesus, p. 158
- Philostratus, Life of Apollonius, 8:15
- Graham N. Stanton, The Gospels and Jesus, The Oxford Bible Series (1989), paperback, p. 54
"Within any area the actual collecting was done by employees of the concessionaire. Levi, or Matthew (one of Jesus' twelve apostles), was one of these. At his tax-collecting booth by Lake Galilee he probably assessed the value of goods carried across the Lake to or from other regions..."
"Not surprisingly, people hated the 'publicans' and their agents. They worked for the occupying power, and they lined their own pockets in the process...To the religious people the fact that they worked with non-Jews (Gentiles) made these men 'unclean'."
- Alan Millard, Discoveries From the Time of Jesus, pp. 74-75
- John P. Meier, A Marginal Jew - Rethinking the Historical Jesus, Vol. 2.
- Mark 1:15; Matthew 4:17
- Robert W. Funk, Roy W. Hoover, and the Jesus Seminar, The Five Gospels
- Hugh J. Schonfield, After the Cross
- Philip Yancey, The Jesus I Never Knew (1995)
- Mark 2:17; (Matthew 9:13b, Luke 5:32)
"...The 'I' saying of Mark is a theological affirmation of the early community put on the lips of Jesus; he probably did not think of his work as a program he was sent to carry out."
- Robert W. Funk, Roy W. Hoover, and the Jesus Seminar, The Five Gospels
Christ in the House of Martha and Mary
Jan Vermeer, 1654-55
- Luke 8:1
- Philip Yancey, The Jesus I Never Knew (1995)
Jesus said, 'I myself shall lead her in order to make her male, so that she too may become a living spirit resembling you males. For every woman who will make herself male will enter the kingdom of heaven."
- Thomas 114
- Robert W. Funk, Roy W. Hoover, and the Jesus Seminar, The Five Gospels
- Christopher Knight & Robert Lomas, The Hiram Key: Pharaohs, Freemasons and the Discovery of the Secret Scrolls of Jesus
- Robert W. Funk, Roy W. Hoover, and the Jesus Seminar, The Five Gospels
- 1 Corinthians 9:5
- John Dominic Crossan, Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography (1994)
- Mark 1:19-20 (Matthew 4:20-22)
- Graham N. Stanton, The Gospels and Jesus, The Oxford Bible Series (1989), paperback, p. 186
2. "Fishing families would generally own 1 boat (about 20-30 ft long x 6-7 ft wide), capable of carrying 6-8 men and nets. At least half that crew would provide the motor power (rowing, steering) to guide the craft -- the sort of hard labor that Roman aristocracy regularly assigned to slaves.
3. "While it is possible that Zebedee and Yohanan could afford hired hands, the fact that Simon, Andreas, Yakob and Yohanan -- the sons of the fishing boat owners -- are portrayed in the gospels as hauling in nets and even rowing makes it more likely that Jesus' disciples were from the lower echelon of subsistence level fishing families who made up the bulk of the local population of the towns that dotted the shores of Yam Kinnereth.
4. "If Cicero is any judge of 1st c. Mediterranean social standards, fishermen were regarded as close to the bottom of the agrarian economic pyramid that had farmers at the top:"
- Mahlon Smith (Crosstalk)
- Terence, de Officiis 1.150)
-Mark 3:17
- The Thunder, Perfect Mind, The Nag Hammadi Library
- The Jews in Their Land (David Ben-Gurion Editor)
In 66 C.E, Sepphorus was again a focal point of rebellion when Galileans under Josephus took the city during the Jewish war. (Flavius Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews, Bk XVII, Ch X, Sn 5.)
- Luke 6:13-16
- Tad Davis
- John Shelby Spong, Liberating the Gospels, p. 43
- Laurence Gardner, Bloodline of the Holy Grail, p. 50
- Baigent, Leigh & Lincoln, The Messianic Legacy
- Graham N. Stanton, The Gospels and Jesus, The Oxford Bible Series (1989), paperback, p. 239
a. It ignores the emphasis on love of enemies and non-violent reaction to oppression in Q that is impossible to explain on the premise that Jesus was a revolutionary who advocated force and violence.
b. It ignores the fact that apart from (and even within) Matt there is no basis for representing the historical Jesus as committed to the defence of Jewish tradition and institutions. and
c. It makes it virtually impossible to account for Paul's mission to the gentiles, the honored status of Jesus's brother among conservative authorities in Jerusalem and the pervasive insistence on the part of Christian sources that (despite appearances to the contrary) Jesus was not a bandit like other Jewish charismatic leaders."
Mahlon H. Smith (CrossTalk)
- John Dominic Crossan, The Historical Jesus, The Life of a Mediterranean Peasant (1991)
- Mark 3:13
- John Shelby Spong, Liberating the Gospels, p. 97
- Luke 22:28; Matthew 19:28
- John Dominic Crossan, Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography (1994)
- Mark 6:7
- John Dominic Crossan, Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography (1994)
- John Dominic Crossan, The Essential Jesus: Original Sayings and Earliest Images (1998), p. 149
- John Dominic Crossan, The Historical Jesus, The Life of a Mediterranean Peasant (1991)
- Thomas 14:4, Luke 10:8-9
- Robert W. Funk, Roy W. Hoover, and the Jesus Seminar, The Five Gospels
- Luke 10:5-6 (Matthew 10:13)
- Morton Smith, Jesus the Magician: Charlatan or Son of God? (1978) pp. 150-151
- Luke 10:10-11 (Mark 6:11, Matthew 10:14)
- Morton Smith, Jesus the Magician: Charlatan or Son of God? (1978) pp. 150-151
Peter's House
- Matthew 8:14-16
- Bernard Muller, "The Historical Jesus"
- John P. Meier, A Marginal Jew - Rethinking the Historical Jesus, Vol. 2.
- Matthew 4:12-16
- John 2:12
- John P. Meier, A Marginal Jew - Rethinking the Historical Jesus, Vol. 2.
"The first-century house recently excavated at Capernaum beneath the octagonal church of St. Peter may well be the house Peter owned (Mark 1:29; Matthew 8:14-16) and the house-church in which the earliest followers of Jesus gathered for worship and study.
"Seven stages in research lead to the conclusion that Peter's house may have been discovered. First early pilgrims, like Egeria, who visited Capernaum between 381 and 384 C.E., identify the site as the place of Peter's house and of early Christian worship. Second, the house contains etched crosses, a boat, and over one hundred Greek, Aramaic, Syriac, Latin, and Hebrew graffiti from second- and third-century Christians who venerated the place. Third, the house is situated under a fifth-century octagonal church, a type of architecture that was used especially to venerate earlier sacred sties. Fourth, the house can be traced back to the first century B.C.E. (it probably was constructed originally sometime between 100 and 60 B.C.E.), because of the stratigraphic conditions and the recovery of early Herodian lamps and coins. Fifth, fishhooks have been found under the pavement of what is identified to be a house-church; hence it is conceivable that a fisherman lived there. Sixth, early paving is evident, notably the early Roman Pavement B, but what is remarkable is the discovery that the floor and walls of the house were plastered no less than three times, beginning about the middle of the first century C.E. The large room was apparently altered for some public used around the middle of the first century C.E. Seventh, the large room after it was plastered, was probably converted into a 'house-church' (no other houses in Capernaum have been discovered with plaster). In this large room only large storage jars and oil lamps have been unearthed; no ordinary household pottery has been recovered."
- James H. Charlesworth, Jesus Within Judaism
- Mark 2:1-5
- Matthew 11:23 // Luke 10:15
- Robert W. Funk, Roy W. Hoover, and the Jesus Seminar, The Five Gospels , p. 181