Click here for an explanation of the color-coding used in the sayings and acts of Jesus.

"And after their punishment shall have come from the Lord, the priesthood shall fail. Then shall the Lord raise up a new priest. And to him all the words of the Lord shall be revealed;...And his star shall arise in heaven as of a king. Lighting up the light of knowledge as the sun the day, And he shall be magnified in the world. He shall shine forth as the sun on the earth, And shall remove all darkness from under heaven, And there shall be peace in all the earth.
The heavens shall exult in his days, And the earth shall be glad, And the clouds shall rejoice; And the angels of the glory of the presence of the Lord shall be glad in him. The heavens shall be opened, And from the temple of glory shall come upon him sanctification, With the Father's voice as from Abraham to Isaac. And the glory of the Most High shall be uttered over him, And the spirit of understanding and sanctification shall rest upon him. For he shall give the majesty of the Lord to His sons in truth for evermore; And there shall none succeed him for all generations for ever.
And in his priesthood the Gentiles shall be multiplied in knowledge upon the earth. And enlightened through the grace of the Lord: In his priesthood shall sin come to an end, And the lawless shall cease to do evil. And he shall open the gates of paradise,And shall remove the threatening sword against Adam. And he shall give to the saints to eat from the tree of life, And the spirit of holiness shall be on them. And Belial shall be bound by him, And he shall give power to His children to tread upon the evil spirits. And the Lord shall rejoice in His children, And be well pleased in His beloved ones for ever. Then shall Abraham and Isaac and Jacob exult, And I [Levi] will be glad, And all the saints shall clothe themselves with joy."
     - Testament of Levi 18:1-14 (Charles, Pseudepigrapha, pp. 314-15)

The oracle of Levi in the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs is believed to have referred to John Hyrcanus, the second century B.C.E. Maccabean high priest.

A God Incarnate

"Whereas Providence...has...adorned our lives with the highest good: Augustus...and has in her beneficence granted us and those who will come after us [a Savior] who has made war to cease and who shall put everything in p[eaceful] order...with the result that the birthday of our God signaled the beginning of Good News for the world because of him...therefore...the Greeks in Asia Decreed that the New Year begin for all the cities on September 23...and the first month shall...be observed as the Month of Caesar, beginning with 23 September, the birthday of Caesar."
     - Decree on marble stelae dedicated to the Roman Empire and Augustus, its first emperor

Julilus Caesar, while pursing his affair with Cleopatra, had been declared a god in Egypt. After Caesar's death, Octavian ascended the throne as the Emperor Augustus. He was worshipped as the "son of god" and the Roman people celebrated his birthday as a holiday.

"Which of the Gods now shall the people summon
To prop Rome's reeling sovereignty?...
Whom shall Jupiter appoint
As instrument of our atonement?...
thou, (Mercury), winged boy of gentle Maia. Put on the mortal shape of a young Roman; Descend, and well contented to be known As Caesar's avenger,
Stay gladly and long with Romulus' people, Delay thy homeward, skybound journey."
     - Horace, ode to Caesar Augustus as the God Mercury

"Descent as son of a god appointed by the chief deity to become incarnate as a man, atonement, restoration of a sovereignty, ascension to heaven - a gospel indeed, and so like the pattern of the Christian Gospels."
     - Randal Helms, Gospel Fictions (1988) p. 25

A Child Born of Woman
The Jews, however, believed that someone born of woman could not bear the glory of God.

"Blessed be thou my God, who hast opened the heart of thy servant to thy knowledge. Direct all his actions in righteousness, And give to the son of thy servant woman that which it hath pleased thee to accord to thy Chosen, To serve thee among men eternally! ... Who could bear thy glory? What is the son of man [human] among thy wondrous works? How could a child born of woman bear thy presence? For he is made of dust and his body shall be food for worms. He is made but of molded clay and will return to dust. What could this clay, shaped by the hand, reply? What plan could it understand?"
     - Community Rule 1QS 11.15-17, 20-22

"When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him? You made him a little lower than the heavenly beings [or 'than God'] and crowned him with glory and honor. You made him ruler over the works of your hands; you put everything under his feet:all flocks and herds, and the beasts of the field, the birds of the air, and the fish of the sea, all that swim the paths of the seas. O LORD, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!"
     - Psalms 8: 3-9

"The Genesis Apocryphon (1 Qap-Gen) (and 1 Enoch 106-107) prefigure the divine birth: In the latter texts, it is suspected that Noah does not have a natural father. His father Lamech suspects that his mother Batenosh has had an extramarital affair with an angel. In Matthew 1:18 and Luke 1:35, Mary's conception is through the overshadowing of the Holy Spirit."
     - Chris King, "The Apocalyptic Tradition"

"Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Behold, a young woman [Hebrew almah] shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Imman'u-el."
     - Isaiah 7:14

"Behold, the virgin shall be with Child, and shall bear a Son, and they shall call His Name 'Imman'u-el,' which translated means, 'God [El} is with us.'"
     - Matthew 1:23

"...The original situation for the prophecy in 734 or 733 B.C.E. was a failed attempt to persuade Ahaz, king of the southern Jewish kingdom of Judah, which was under attack from the combined forces of Syria and the northern Jewish kingdom of Israel, to trust in God rather than appeal to the Assyrian emperor for assistance. Since Ahaz refused assurance of divine assistance, he received instead a prophecy of doom, in Isaiah 7:14-25. Before any 'young woman shall conceive and bear a son' and that child 'knows how to refuse the evil and choose the good' - that is, grows to maturity - both the two attacking kingdoms and Ahaz's own kingdom would lie devastated. God will indeed be 'Immanuel', that is, 'God with him' - but in judgment, not salvation."
     - John Dominic Crossan, Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography (1994)

When Isaiah had been translated into Greek, the Hebrew wordalmah (veiled), which meant a young woman of marriageable age was mistranslated as parqenoV - virgin. Had Isaiah meant Emanuel's mother to be a virgin he would have called her bethulah, the proper meaning of which is a virgin maiden. (Genesis 24:16; Leviticus 21:13; Deuteronomy 22:14,23,28; Judges 11:37; I Kings 1:2).

"Emanuel's birth was one of several omens (including a man giving milk!) that Isayah had allegedly show King Ahaz as evidence that Yahweh would aid him against the kings of Syria and Israel (Isaiah 7). Emanuel, in fact, appears to have been Isaiah's son (Isaiah 7:13, 8:3-8), and certainly Isaiah made clear that his 'prophecy' of Emanuel's birth had been fulfilled at the time of writing [late eighth century B.C.E.]."
     - William Harwood, Mythologies Last Gods: Yahweh and Jesus

"Then I went to the prophetess, and she conceived and gave birth to a son. And the LORD said to me, 'Name him Maher-Shalal-Hash-Baz. Before the boy knows how to say "My father" or "My mother," the wealth of Damascus and the plunder of Samaria will be carried off by the king of Assyria.'"
     - Isaiah 7:13, 8:3-4

A Sign of the End Times
"The idea of the virginal conception, whatever its origins, is not rooted in pagan ideas of impregnation by a god. Rather, the theological affirmation being made by the evangelists - whatever its historical basis - is that the Holy Spirit, who in early Christian tradition was associated with the power that raised Jesus from the dead (cf. Romans 1:3-4, 8:11), is likewise the eschatological power that brought about Jesus' virginal conception. Both events are seen by the NT authors as signs of the end time."
     - John P. Meier, A Marginal Jew - Rethinking the Historical Jesus, Vol. 1.

"...Regarding his Son, who as to his human nature was a descendant of David, and who through the Spirit [or who as to his spirit] of holiness was declared with power to be the Son of God [or was appointed to be the Son of God with power] by his resurrection from the dead: Jesus Christ our Lord."
     - Romans 1:3

"Life in the Spirit was life that was whole, real, transcendent, and open. It was life through which God could be seen calling, healing, loving, and making all things new and whole. It was this life that Jesus came to bring."
     - John Shelby Spong, Liberating the Gospels, p. 232

The Holy Family Giuseppe Maria Crespi, c.1735

(2) Born in Bethlehem

The Invention of Story Tellers?
The Infancy Narratives "occur in only two places in the whole of the NT, the first two chapters of both Matthew and Luke. Even in these two Gospels, events in the Infancy Narratives are almost never referred to once Chapter 3 of each Gospel is reached. Thus, within Matthew and Luke themselves, the Infancy Narratives stand in relative isolation, they are distinct compositions stemming from traditions different from those found elsewhere in the Four Gospels - and indeed in the rest of the NT. The outline of early Christian preaching reflected in the Gospels of Mark and John, the sermons of Acts, and the early creeds and hymns in the NT epistles know nothing of the events in the Infancy Narratives. Even when preexistence and incarnation are affirmed (as in John 1:1-18 or Phil. 2.6-11), the text instantly jumps to the adult - and usually crucified - Jesus."
     - John P. Meier, A Marginal Jew - Rethinking the Historical Jesus, Vol. 1.

"He was with God in the beginning....He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him."
     - John 1:3, 10

Alfred Loisy, in his books on Luke and Acts (such as The Origins of the New Testament) in the early 20s, asserted that the first two chapters of Luke, which deal with the nativity, are an addition by a later hand (as are other significant parts of Luke.)

"Luke was essentially a novelist, and as such wanted to tell a complete story. Since nothing was (or is) known of Jesus prior to his immersion by John, Luke invented a birth fable borrowed from the now-lost Nativity of John the Immerser , supplemented by passages from Jubilees and Josephus."
     - William Harwood, Mythologies Last Gods: Yahweh and Jesus

A Ruler Born in Bethlehem
For his account of Jesus' birth, the author of Luke 1 borrowed from the Torah.

"Jacob had parted from his father-in-law, Laban, and had been guarded by a heavenly host of angels (Gen. 32:1 ff.). He had wrestled with an angel at a place called Peniel, which means 'I have seen God and lived' (Gen. 32:22 ff.). Jacob had dispatched flocks of sheep and cattle as a peace offering to his brother, Esau (Gen. 32:13 ff.). He was then portrayed as being on the road to his homeland with his expectant wife (Gen. 35). Finally, he reached his home in Bethlehem, where Rachel's child, Benjamin, was born (Gen. 35:16-21)....The angel with whom Jacob had wrestled and the heavenly host that guarded him announced the birth of Jesus to the shepherds, who then journeyed to welcome the child."
     - John Shelby Spong, Liberating the Gospels, p. 133-134

As prophesized in Micah 5:2 seven hundred years earlier, a ruler born in Bethlehem would deliver the Jewish people.

"You, Bethlehem in Ephrathah, small as you are to be among Judah's clans, out of you shall come forth a governor for Israel, one whose roots are far back in the past, in days gone by."
     - Micah 5:2

"That is, the one who restores the dynasty will have the same roots, be of the same ancestry, as David of Bethlehem. Prophesying, it would appear, during the Babylonian exile, Micah (or actually a sixth-century B.C. interpolator whose words were included m the book of the eighth-century B.C. prophet) hoped for the restoration of the Judean monarchy destroyed in 586 B.C. Only Christians have traditionally read this passage in Micah as a prediction of a future birthplace rather than as a description of the origins of the Davidic dynasty..."
     - Randal Helms, Gospel Fictions (1988) p. 52

"Bethlehem was also the place, where something called the Migdal Eder, the tower of the flocks, was located. This tower, which was said to have helped in the guarding of the sheep, was mentioned twice in the Hebrew scriptures (Mic. 4:8 and Gen. 35:21)."
     - John Shelby Spong, Liberating the Gospels, p. 191

Unlike Luke and Matthew, the Gospel of John did not allege that Jesus was born in Bethlehem, the traditional birthplace of Jewish kings.

"...Some of the people said, 'This is really the prophet.' Others said, 'This is the Christ.' But some said, 'Is the Christ to come from Galilee? Has not the scripture said that the Christ is descended from David, and comes from Bethlehem, the village where David was?' So there was a division among the people over him."
     - John 7:40-43

(3) Dating Jesus' Birth

A Census in 6 CE?

"...Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea, during the time of King Herod..."
     - Matthew 2:1

"In the 19th century, critical scholars made a crucial decision to reject a total lunar eclipse in January 1 BC and to accept instead one in March 4 BC, as the chronological cornerstone for dating the death of Herod the Great, and thereby, the possible birth years for Jesus.
"By so doing, the critics could argue Jesus had to born before 4 BC, contradicting Luke, who tied Jesus' 30th year with the 15th year of Tiberius Caesar, 27-28 AD. Luke effectively placed the birth in 3 BC, as did many of the early church fathers. Ironically, even the date used by the Pope during the Christmas Eve midnight mass ritual is itself consistent with the last half of 3 BC."
     - "When Exactly Was Jesus Born?"

4 BCE would have been a particularly poor time for a pregnant women to travel from Galilee to Bethlehem. Starting from March 13, the area around Jerusalem became embroiled in a general insurrection. In a few months the fighting escalated into a bloody civil war which spread throughout Judea and into Galilee, resulting in the death of thousands. (See "The Revolt of 4 B.C.E" for more details.)
The author of the gospel of Luke, on the other hand, suggested that Jesus was born at the time of the census of Quinirius, an event reported by Josephus as having occurred in 6 CE.

"In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world. (This was the first census that took place while Quirinius was governor of Syria.) And everyone went to his own town to register."
     - Luke 2:1-3

"Luke shows Christians as good citizens of the Roman Empire, and has Joseph participate in a census that had been an occasion for mass civil disobedience, and which occurred a few years after Herod's death."
     - Ed Friedlander, M.D., "Jesus of Nazareth"

"...So Joseph went up to Judaea from the town of Nazareth in Galilee, to register at the city of David, called Bethlehem, because he was of the house of David by descent; and with him went Mary who was betrothed to him. She was expecting a child, and while they were there the time came for her baby to be born."
     - Luke 2:4-6

"...Luke's anxiety has involved him in some real absurdities, like the needless ninety mile journey of a woman in her last days of pregnancy-for it was the Davidic Joseph who supposedly had to be registered in the ancestral village, not the Levitical Mary. Worse yet, Luke has been forced to contrive a universal dislocation for a simple tax registration: who could imagine the efficient Romans requiring millions in the empire to journey scores or hundreds of miles to the villages of millennium-old ancestors merely to sign a tax form! Needless to say, no such event ever happened in the history of the Roman Empire."
     - Randal Helms, Gospel Fictions (1988) pp. 59-60

"First, there never was a worldwide census under Augustus. Second, the Palestinian census was undertaken by the Syrian legate, P. Sulpicius Quirinius, in 6 to 7 C.E., about a decade after the birth of Jesus...Its occasion was the annexation of Archelaus' [Herod's son] territories under a direct Roman prefecture. Third, and above all, even if Augustus had ordained a complete census of the Roman world, and even if Quirinius had overseen its administration in Archelaus' territories, the Roman custom was to count you in the place of your domicile or work and not in that of your ancestry or birth. That is little more than common sense. Census was for taxation; to record people in their ancestral rather than their occupational locations would have constituted a bureaucratic nightmare."
     - John Dominic Crossan, The Historical Jesus, The Life of a Mediterranean Peasant (1991)

"According to ancient records, Quirinius, who became governor of Syria in AD 6 conducted a census of Judea, but not of Galilee, in AD 6-7. Attempts to reconcile Luke 2:1 with the facts of ancient history are hopelessly contrived. Moreover, Mary would not have had to accompany Joseph to register, and her advanced pregnancy would have positively argued against accompanying him when there was no obligation to do so."
"...The Fourth Evangelist insists from Chapter 1 onward that Jesus does come from Nazareth (1:45-56), with all the scandal that causes even future believers (e.g., Nathaniel in 1:46)....While Jesus' birth in Bethlehem cannot be positively ruled out (one can rarely 'prove a negative' in ancient history), we must accept the fact that the predominant view in the Gospels and Acts is that Jesus came from Nazareth and - apart from Chapters 1-2 of Matthew and Luke - only from Nazareth."
     - John P. Meier, A Marginal Jew - Rethinking the Historical Jesus, Vol. 1.

An Earlier Census in 7 BCE?
There is evidence, however, that Quirinius could have been govenor during the period of Jesus' birth.

"An inscription found in Antioch tells of Quirinius being governor of Syria around 7 BC (evidently he was governor twice!)"
     - "Archaeological Support For The New Testament" (Christian Classics Ethereal Library)

"In 1912,however, the discovery by W. M. Ramsey of a fragmentary inscription at Antioch of Pisidia arguably established Quirinius was in Syria on a previous occasion. (1) His role was more military to lead a campaign against the Homanadenses, a tribe in the Taurus Mountains. This is confirmed by Tacitus. This means that Quirinius would have established a seat of government in Syria, including Palestine, from the years 10 to 7 BCE. In this position he would have been responsible for the census mentioned by Luke. This census of 7 BCE would therefore have been the 'first' census taken when Cyrenius was governor (Luke 2:2) and the historically documented census of 6/7 CE was really the second. There is further evidence of this first census of 7 BCE in the writings of Tertullian who records the census 'taken in Judea by Sentius Saturninus.' (2) C. Sentius Saturninus was Legate of Syria from 9 to 6 BCE. Another inscription, the Lapis Tiburtinus, was found in 1764 near Tivoli (Tibur). Composed after 14 CE, the inscription names an unknown personage who was legate of Syria twice. The man is described as having been victorious in war. There is considerable dissension among scholars as to whether the unnamed person is Quirinius. I think it is more likely that it refers to the famous consul and soldier."
"Josephus records in Antiquities of the Jews, XVI, ix 3 that Augustus was furious with Herod in 8 BCE and threatened to treat him no longer as a friend (Client), but as a subject (subject to taxes)."
"Scholars have debated about the historicity of this first census since there is no record of it in the Roman archives. Their chief argument is that Augustus would not have imposed a census for the purpose of taxation in the kingdom of a client king like Herod. Herod had his own tax collectors and paid tribute to Rome from the proceeds."
     - Jack Kilmon, "History and the New Testament"

Other scholars write that the census referred to in Luke was undertaken by Herod under orders from Rome.

"The census as Luke describes it was done by the Jewish pattern, i.e, numbering by tribe which explains the trip to Bethlehem. It took time for Herod to know of the order, and time to organize it. Further it took time for the tribes to make the visit to their ancestral seat. Hence, a date of Spring 5 BCE which fits all the astronomical data is now possible."
     - Tom Simms (CrossTalk)

(4) A Star in the East

The Star Prophesy

"I see him, but not now; I behold him, but not near. A star will come out of Jacob; a scepter will rise out of Israel."
     - Numbers 24:17a

"...the 'Star' prophecy finds its way into Christian tradition as the ' Star of Bethlehem' which heralds Jesus' birth."
     - Baigent and Leigh, The Dead Sea Scrolls Deception

"In 46 B.C.E. Julius [Caesar] had begun annual games dedicated to Venus, whom the Julian family claimed as their ancestor. After the death of Julius in March, 44, his adopted son Octavian staged the annual weeklong games in July and dedicated them in honor of Julius Caesar. A comet appeared 'about the eleventh hour' the day the games began. In popular lore it was seen as Caesar's soul ascending to heaven.
"On New Year's Day in 42 B.C.E., the Senate declared Julius Caesar to be a god."
     - Robert Funk (Editor), Jesus Seminar, The Acts of Jesus: The Search for the Authentic Deeds of Jesus, p. 128

"Behold, the star of Caesar came forth as a sign."
     - Virgil, Eclogue 9.47 (42 B.C.E.)

"The Julian star outshines all others just as the Moon outshines the lesser lights."
     - Horace, Odes 1.12.46-48 (c. 24 B.C.E.)

A Sign in the Sky

"After Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea, during the time of King Herod, Magi [traditionally Wise Men] from the east came to Jerusalem and asked, 'Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews? We saw his star in the east [or star when it rose] and have come to worship him.'"
     - Mathew 2:1-2

"In the original Greek, however, Matthew's text contains far more evidence of the Magi's astrological talents than either Latin or English translations are able to carry. In the Authorized Version, for example, Matthew's Magi come 'from the east' and see their star 'in the east.' The Greek has magoi coming from anatolai -'the east,' usually written in the plural - yet seeing their star en te anatole, the singular form and thus not a reference to where they were when they saw the star. No writer of Greek in antiquity would employ two different usages to mean the same thing; but anatole also has a specific astronomical and astrological application. It refers to the achronychal rising of a star or planet - when the object is in direct opposition to the sun, rising in the east as the sun is setting in the west and visible throughout the night in an arc. We know from cuneiform tablets now in various museums that the Babylonian astrologers, for instance, regarded such a phenomenon as exceptionally significant, calculating positions for its occurrence with enormous accuracy for the potent outer planets of Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn, and able to predict astronomical events far into the future…"
     - Paul William Roberts, Journey of the Magi (1995) p. 356

Triple Conjunction (Popular Science)

"On 17 December 1603 the Tügingen-educated German astronomer John Kepler observed a striking conjunction of the planets Saturn and Jupiter in the constellation Pisces, and calculated that a similar conjunction must have occurred in 7 B.C.E. He speculated that this might have been the true year of Jesus' birth, it generally being agreed that the original dating of the nativity to the year 1 C.E., by the sixth-century monk Dionysius Exiguus, derived from a miscalculation. Kepler found support for his theory in a Jewish rabbinical reference to the Messiah appearing when Saturn and Jupiter were in conjunction in the constellation of Pisces."
     - Ian Wilson, Jesus, The Evidence

"Excavations at the site of Abu-Habbah [the ancient Sumerian city of Sippar] during the latter part of the 19th century unearthed the remains of a temple and ziggurat dedicated to Shamash and the ancient scribal School of Astrology. The most important discovery were tens of thousands of clay tablets from the school archives that dated from the Old Babylonian and Neo-Babylonian periods. In 1925, the German Scholar P. Schnabel found, among the endless cuneiform records of dates and observations, a note on a conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn in the constellation of Pisces. The position of Jupiter and Saturn, converged in Pisces, had been recorded over a period of five months in 7 B.C.E!!"
     - Jack Kilmon, "History and the New Testament"

The conjunction was actually a very rare triple conjunction, where Saturn and Jupiter appeared to do a cosmic waltz - approaching, almost merging, then receding again. The first encounter was May 27, the second September 15 (when the Earth, Saturn and Jupiter were almost perfectly aligned - with Saturn rising in the east as the sun set in the west) and the third on October 6.
"It was followed by a near-conjunction of Mars, Jupiter and Saturn in September of 6 B.C.
     - "Science Solves the Ancient Mysteries of the Bible", Popular Science, December 96

Other "During Herod's…brief audience with the Magi, all Matthew has the king ask these visitors is an inordinately precise inquiry about 'what time the star appeared.' Neither Latin nor English has a word for 'appeared' that also carries a specific astronomical connotation the way the Greek phainestai does. In fact, the Vulgate Bible acknowledges this shortcoming by providing a Latin gloss on the Greek phrase, defining it more clearly tempus quo coeperat lucere, basically 'the time when it was first visible.' But even this does not quite convey the specific meaning of the Greek term, which refers to a star's helical rising - the earliest moment at dawn when it can be seen emerging over the horizon. Such an event takes place only once a year in the case of any star or planet in the ecliptic, and in Herod's day astrologers connected the helical rising with a person's exact date of birth. The king is thus bluntly asking the Magi exactly when this 'king of the Jews' was born."
     - Paul William Roberts, Journey of the Magi (1995) p. 357

"'In the east' is a mistranslation of en th anatolh which also means 'at first light of dawn' which, of course, comes from the east. If the triple conjunction of 7/6 BCE was interpreted by the gospel writers as the 'Star of Bethlehem,' it was indeed visible only at dawn and would have been viewed in the constellation of Pisces in the southern sky....coincidentally over Bethlehem if one is traveling south from Jerusalem."
     - Jack Kilmon (CrossTalk)

"Pisces was reputedly the sign of the Jews. The symbol appears in Mark's feeding of the 5,000 with five loaves and two fish.
"...The Age of Pisces, i.e. the rise of the constellation Pisces (two fish) on the horizon at the Spring equinox was an important 'change in fortune' for most of the ancient world. J Caesar, who fancied himself a competent astrologer, heralded the coming new age before his death. Sure enough, Pisces did arrive c.18 CE! The phenomenon is due to the 'precession of the equinoxes', the 'wobbling' of Earth in its rotation so that a complete circle is made by its projected axis in the northern sky. The visual distances between constellations varies, of course. On average, a 'new age' comes about every 2,115 years or so (depending on who does the averaging!) We discount astrology today, but astrological observation was a highly important priestly function, the world over, whether it was by the zodiacal, solar or lunar spans of time."
     - Philip B. Lewis (CrossTalk)

"An alternate theory arises from records kept by Chinese astronomers, says Nick Strobel of the University of Washington Astronomy Department. Strobel says their records report a new star--most likely a nova--in the constellation Capricorn in March and April of 5 B.C., which was visible for more than 70 days."
     - "Science Solves the Ancient Mysteries of the Bible", Popular Science, December 96

(5) Two Unique Accounts

The Babe in Swaddling Clothes
"Luke alone...has the shepherds and the angels, the inn and the manger, the earlier presentation and the later finding in the Temple, while Matthew alone has Herod and the Magi, the slaughter of the innocents, and the flight into Egypt."
     - John Dominic Crossan, Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography (1994)

"She was expecting a child, and while they were there, the time came for her baby to be born, and she gave birth to a son, her first-born. She wrapped him in his swaddling-clothes, and laid him in a manger [phatni], because there was no room for them to lodge in the house."
- Luke 2:6-7 NEB

"Luke's community, like Matthew's, scoured the Old Testament for references that could be interpreted as predictions of Jesus."
     - Randal Helms, Gospel Fictions (1988) p. 60

"The ox knows its owner, and the ass his master's manger [phainen]; but Israel does not know me, and the people has not regarded me."
     - Isaiah 1:3 LXX

"I was nursed with care in swaddling clothes, for no king has had a different beginning of existence."
     - Wisdom of Solomon 7:4, 5

"I took thee from the stables of the sheep, that thou shouldest be a prince over my people, over Israel."
     - II Samuel [II Kings] 7:8 LXX)

"'Today in the city of David a deliverer [soter] has been born to you, Christ the Lord. And this is a sign for you, you will find a baby wrapped in his swaddling clothes, in a manger"
     - Luke 2:11-12 NEB

Gold, Frankincense and Myrrh
"When the eastern ruler Tiradates, whom Pliny calls a 'magus,' came to pay homage to Nero, 'He had brought magi with him.' Approaching the Caesar, 'He knelt upon the ground, and with arms crossed called him master and did obeisance,' writes Dio Cassius. In Matthew, when the magi entered the presence of Jesus, they 'bowed to the ground in homage to him' (Matt. 2:1 1). And not only Nero and Jesus received such honors; Suetonius writes in his life of Augustus that when young Octavius Caesar was born, 'Publius Nigidius Figulus the astrologer, hearing at what hour the child had been delivered, cried out, "The ruler of the world is now born." Everyone believes this tale.' In the same section of this work, Suetonius adds that when Augustus entered the house of Theogenes the astrologer, the man 'rose and flung himself at his feet'."
     - Randal Helms, Gospel Fictions (1988) p. 55

The camels, star and wise men "were in fact the product of the Jewish midrashic tradition developed by the creativity of the author of Matthew's gospel....In Isaiah 60 kings are said to have come to the light, to the brightness of God's dawn (v. 4). They came on camels (v. 6) and, not coincidentally, they brought gold and frankincense (v. 6). No myrrh was mentioned in this Isaiah chapter, but that text did say that kings also came from Sheba (v. 6)."
     - John Shelby Spong, Liberating the Gospels, p. 187

"Never again did spices come in such quantity as that which the queen of Sheba gave to king Solomon."
     - 1 Kings 10:10

"The most popular spice in the Middle East was myrrh, a fragrant resin found in various shrubs and trees in south Arabia that was used in perfumes, in beauty treatment, in the scenting of clothes, and in embalming."
     - John Shelby Spong, Liberating the Gospels, p. 188

Departure from Bethlehem
"Matthew has it that Mary and Joseph lived in Bethlehem when Jesus was born, and continued there for about two years, fleeing then to Egypt; they returned to Palestine only after Herod's death. For fear of Herod's son, they did not resettle in Bethlehem, but moved rather to another country, Galilee, finding a new home in Nazareth. Luke, on the other hand, writes that Mary and apparently Joseph lived in Nazareth, traveling to Bethlehem just before Jesus' birth to register for a tax census. They left Bethlehem forty days later to visit the temple in Jerusalem for the required ritual of the first-born, returning then to their hometown of Nazareth."
     - Randal Helms, Gospel Fictions (1988) p. 52

(6) Slaughter of the Innocents

Matthew's Account of the Massacre

"According to Julius Marathus, a public portent warned the Roman people some months before Augustus' birth that Nature was making ready to provide them with a king; and this caused the Senate such consternation that they issued a decree which forbade the rearing of any male child for a whole year."
     - Suetonius, The Deified Augustus, 94

"Likewise Matthew 2:16-18 says that Herod 'gave orders for the massacre of all children in Bethlehem and its neighborhood, of the age of two years or less,' citing a strangely irrelevant passage in Jeremiah as an oracle about the event:"
     - Randal Helms, Gospel Fictions (1988) p. 55

"The tradition [of the 'Star Prophesy'] states that the Messiah would be born two years after this star's appearance."
     - - Paul William Roberts, Journey of the Magi (1995) p. 358

"When Herod realized that he had been outwitted by the Magi, he was furious, and he gave orders to kill all the boys in Bethlehem and its vicinity who were two years old and under, in accordance with the time he had learned from the Magi. Then what was said through the prophet Jeremiah was fulfilled: 'A voice is heard in Ramah, weeping and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted, because they are no more.' [Jeremiah 31:15]"
     - Matthew 2:16-18

"The crime for which today Herod is most notorious...was the massacre of the little children recorded in the Gospel of Matthew. The historian Josephus, who was of Hasmonaean descent, takes great delight in cataloguing Herod's crimes. Yet he does not mention this. This is extraordinary for if it happened it must surely have been regarded as the worst of the king's atrocities. This omission by Josephus places it in the realm of belief rather than history."
     - Peter Connolly, Living in the Time of Jesus of Nazareth

OT Precedents
Aside from the reference to Jeremiah, there are other precedents in the Old Testament which may have provided the basis for the story of the slaughter of innocents.

"In Judaism the earliest intended victim [of a massacre of children] was Abraham, whom the jealous King Nimrod of Babylon had tried to destroy when he learned of Abraham's birth through the sudden appearance of a new star (just as the magi learned of Zarathustra's birth through the appearance of a new star.)"
     - William Harwood, Mythologies Last Gods: Yahweh and Jesus

"On the night when [Abraham] was born, Terah's friends, among whom were councilors and soothsayers of Nimrod, were feasting in his house, and on leaving late at night they observed a star which swallowed up four other stars.... They forthwith hastened to Nimrod and said, 'Of a certainty a lad has been born who is destined to conquer this world and the next."
     - Jewish midrash

"On learning that Nimrod wanted to kill Abraham, his father 'Terah then went home and hid his son in a cave for three years.'
"This Jewish legend...is a fictional embellishment...of the Genesis and Exodus legends of the births of Abraham and Moses, enlarged by combination with the story of Balaam in the Book of Numbers. Balaam, like the stargazers in the Jewish and Christian birthlegends, is from Mesopotamia, 'from the east' (the phrases in Num. 22:7 LXX and Matt. 2:1 are identical- ap anatolon). A well-known astrologer and diviner of omens, he has been summoned by Balak, king of Moab, who fears the Israelites, recent intruders into his realm. In this as in all the stories descended from it, the king and astrologers consult together concerning the newcomers into the realm who threaten the ruler (Balak, Nimrod, Herod). In all the stories, the astrologers point to a special star, symbol of the arrival of the new force (Israel, Abraham, Jesus). Says Balaam: 'A star shall rise [anatelei astron] out of Jacob, a man shall spring out of Israel, and shall crush the princes of Moab' (Num. 24:17 LXX). The astrologers in Matthew likewise point to a star: 'We observed the rising of his star' (ton astera en ti anotole - Matt. 2:2)."
     - Randal Helms, Gospel Fictions (1988) p. 56

"The story of Pharaoh seeking to kill the Jewish boy babies in Egypt (Exodus 1:22ff.) is surely connected to the story of Herod seeking to kill the Jewish boy babies in Bethlehem."
     - John Shelby Spong, Liberating the Gospels, p. 34

"The king of Egypt said to the Hebrew midwives, whose names were Shiphrah and Puah, 'When you help the Hebrew women in childbirth and observe them on the delivery stool, if it is a boy, kill him; but if it is a girl, let her live.'
The midwives, however, feared God and did not do what the king of Egypt had told them to do; they let the boys live."
     - Exodus 1:15-17

"It is not the bare biblical account but the expanded popular versions of Moses' birth that served Matthew as the model for the birth of Jesus, Just as Pharaoh heard of the predestined child's arrival and sought to kill him by killing all the infant males, so did Herod the Great with Jesus."
     - John Dominic Crossan, Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography (1994)

(7) Flight into Egypt

"And the Lord said unto Moses in Midian, 'Go, depart into Egypt, for all that sought thy life are dead (tethnekasi gar pantes hoi zetountes sou fen psychen.""
     - Exodus 4:19 LXX

"When Herod died, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt, saying, 'Rise, take the child and his mother, and go to the land of Israel, for those who sought the Child's life are dead (tethfnekasin gar hoi zetountes fen psychen tou paidiou).'"
     - Matthew 2:20

"Of course, Moses flees from Egypt to Midian, while the Holy Family flees to Egypt through Midian....As the stories of Moses and Balaam had supplied the star, the basis for Herod's wrath, and the Holy Family's flight, so Hosea I 1: I was found to "predict" where they would flee and thence return:"
     - Randal Helms, Gospel Fictions (1988) p. 57

"When Israel was a child I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son. The more I called them, the more they went from me; they kept sacrificing to the Baals, and burning incense to idols."
     - Hosea 11: 1

"So Joseph arose, "took mother and child with him, and came to the land of Israel" (Matt. 2:21), paralleling Moses who 'took his wife and children, mounted them on an ass and set out" (Ex. 4:20)."
     - Randal Helms, Gospel Fictions (1988) p. 58

"Hearing, however, that Archelaus had succeeded his father Herod as king of Judaea, [Joseph] was afraid to go there. And being warned by a dream, he withdrew to the region of Galilee; there he settled in a town called Nazareth."
     - Matthew 2:22-23

"...Matthew himself has apparently forgotten, if he ever knew, that another son of Herod, namely Antipas, was also in control of the province of Galilee; by Matthew's criterion, that province ought to be as dangerous as Judaea. Still, to Nazareth must he go, for "This was to fulfill the words spoken through the prophets: 'He shall be called a Nazarene'" (Matt. 2:23). There is, however, no such passage in all the Old Testament..."
     - Randal Helms, Gospel Fictions (1988) p. 59

A Carpenter in Nazareth

"But there will be no more gloom for her who was in anguish; in earlier times He treated the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali with contempt, but later on He shall make it glorious, by the way of the sea, on the other side of the Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles."
     - Isaiah 9:1

"Following a victory in Galilee, the northern half of the former kingdom of Israel, in 163 B.C.E.[?], he [Jonathan MaccabaeusJ] led all Galilean Jews south and abandoned Galilee to its totally gentile remaining population. Between gentile Galilee and Jewish Judah, he left unhindered the buffer state of Samaria, an area inhabited by a tribe whose adherence to the Torah did not make them any less gentile in the eyes of orthodox Judaeans."
     - William Harwood, Mythologies Last Gods: Yahweh and Jesus

"These two Galilees [Upper and Lower], of so great largeness, and encompassed with so many nations of foreigners, have been always able to make a strong resistance on all occasions of war; for the Galileans are inured to war from their infancy, and have been always very numerous; nor hath the country been ever destitute of men of courage, or wanted a numerous set of them; for their soil is universally rich and fruitful, and full of the plantations of trees of all sorts, insomuch that it invites the most slothful to take pains in its cultivation, by its fruitfulness; accordingly, it is all cultivated by its inhabitants, and no part of it lies idle. Moreover, the cities lie here very thick, and the very many villages there are here are every where so full of people, by the richness of their soil, that the very least of them contain above fifteen thousand inhabitants."
     - Flavius Josephus, War of the Jews, Bk III, Ch III, Sn 2

"...The Jewish province called Galilee was all but unconquerable as far as the Romans were concerned. So it was that this region itself became a synonym for the hostility that Romans had for Jews. Galilee was a land of rugged terrain inhabited by fierce, fearless, and warlike people against whom Rome was required to keep constant vigilance."
     - John Shelby Spong, Liberating the Gospels, p. 43

"While Galilee was part of ancient Israel, Solomon was the last Judean ruler until the Hasmonean conquest. And we must remember that the northern Israelite tribes expressly rejected and rebelled against the whole package of Solomon's innovations that became fundamental to Judean tradition (centralization of authority, temple, taxation, etc.). The native Israelite traditions that the northerners espoused were based on oral lore that antedated the codification of the written Torah by centuries. During the 9th c. BCE Galileans again joined a revolt led by rustic Golanite 'prophets' against the urbanized innovators, Ahab and Jezebel.
"The rugged geology and geography of the 'region of the gentiles' (as Judeans continued to call it) made most of Galilee a relatively inaccessible cultural backwater. Ancient Galilee had no cities and few towns of any size. Sepphoris, the largest settlement in the region, was established only in the Persian period as a Persian administrative center. It was enlarged by the Greeks and finally conquered by Aristobulus I ca. 104 BCE. According to Josephus, Aristobulus and his successors tried to guarantee Judean control of the region by requiring Galileans to observe 'the laws of the Judeans' (=Torah?).

"Thus, the introduction of Judean Torah into Galilee less than three generations before the birth of Jesus was itself a radical cultural innovation based in Galilee's single city. (Ptolemais on the coast remained totally Hellenized and never really influenced the region's internal culture). It has been widely assumed that Jews colonized Galilee during the Hasmonean period. But there is absolutely no literary or archeological evidence of this. Thus, the culture of the villages of Galilee must have remained essentially old Israelite with only a thin verneer of Judaic elements practically down to Jesus' own lifetime. Since Nazareth was a satellite village of Sepphoris, it possibly became more 'Jewish' than most of Galilee. But there is no evidence to measure the level of its inhabitants' knowledge or of commitment to Jewish Torah. So all descriptions of Jesus' 'Jewish' upbringing are based on pure unsubstantiated speculation. Like most artisans of any period the family and neighbors of Yosef of Nazareth probably appropriated whatever elements of the religion they were exposed to that made sense to them and conveniently ignored the rest"
      Mahlon H. Smith (CrossTalk)

(2) The Son of Yoseph

A Hint of Scandal

"Is this not the carpenter, the son of Mary?"
     - Mark 6:3a

"...Mark, the first gospel writer, accorded the mother of Jesus no status. He did not place Mary at the scene of the crucifixion, nor did he locate her at the tomb of Jesus on Easter day. He certainly did not honor her as a special receptacle of God's divine favor. There was also a hint of scandal in the phrase that this second Marcan passage used when it referred to Jesus as 'the son of Mary' [Mark 6:3]. To call a Jewish man, in this era, the son of a woman was to suggest that his paternity was in question or at least unknown. That scandalous note would be heard again in the later gospels, the most noteworthy reference being found in a verse in John where an angry crowd hurled an enigmatic charge at Jesus in the words, 'We were not born of fornication' (John 8:41)....These verse remain in the New Testament as unsuppressed clues to an early battle that clearly centered on the legitimacy of Jesus' origins."
     - John Shelby Spong, Liberating the Gospels, p. 205

"In Semitic usage, to refer to a man as the son of his mother was to indicate that his father's identity was uncertain. Matthew (12.55) recast the reference to avoid the implication, Luke (4.22) replaced 'Mary' with 'Joseph.' Another version of the saying, in Jn. 6.42, also has Joseph."
"Matthew's genealogy of Jesus (1.2-16) refers to only four women besides Mary: they are Tamar, whose children were born of incest; Rahab, the madam of a brothel; Ruth, A non-Israelite, who got her second husband by solicitation, if not fornication, and so became the great-grandmother of David (Ruth 4.21f); and Bathsheba ('the wife of Uriah'), whose relations with David began in adultery, though she became the mother of Solomon. That the author of a genealogy for a Messiah should have chosen to mention only these four women requires an explanation. The most likely one is that Matthew wanted to excuse Mary by these implied analogies."
     - Morton Smith, Jesus the Magician: Charlatan or Son of God? (1978) pp. 33-34

"The inclusion of these women in this genealogy has intrigued and frustrated interpreters through the ages. Tamar and Rahab were both Canaanites, Ruth was a Moabite, and Bathsheba is thought to have been Hittite. Of them, only Mary was what we would call a Hebrew."
     - "Way #10: The Messiah Projects: Jesus, Son of Isis"

The theme of Mary as a fallen woman is elaborated upon in early Jewish and Talmudic accounts of Jesus' origin.

"Acceptance of the Gentiles is foreshadowed not only in the reference in 1:1 to Jesus as 'the son of Abraham' but also in the genealogy itself....The women are included probably because in first century Judaism they were all considered to be non-Jews. Matthew's point is that even the genealogy of Jesus shows that with his coming the bound of Judaism will be broken."
     - Graham N. Stanton, The Gospels and Jesus, The Oxford Bible Series (1989), paperback, p. 67

The author of Matthew " would use a miraculous birth story to counter the charges of Jesus' base birth that were abroad in conservative Jewish circles. He would demonstrate that those who called Jesus 'the son of Mary', as if he were one whose paternity was in question, simply did not understand his origins. He would reject their charge that he was of Beelzebub by asserting that was born at the initiation of the Holy Spirit. He would place that truth into a literal narrative that would support the words of Jesus that anyone who thought that his origins were base was in fact guilty of the unforgivable sin of blasphemy against the Holy Spirit."
     - John Shelby Spong, Liberating the Gospels, p. 230

A Question of Paternity

"We have found him of whom Moses in the law and also the prophets wrote, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph."
     - John 1:45

Joseph as the name of Jesus' father does not appear in the earliest gospel, Mark.

"Before Matthew wrote his gospel, the name of Joseph had never been mentioned in connection with the story of Jesus' origin."
"...Since Joseph appeared nowhere in Christian writings before the ninth decade [when the birth narratives in Matthew and Luke for appeared], he was clearly neither an original nor an early part of the Christian story."
     - John Shelby Spong, Liberating the Gospels, p. 210, 208

Spong argues that the author of Matthew chose the name Joseph as using the Midrashic principle.

"This first Joshua/Jesus [successor to Moses] was a descendant of the tribe of Joseph, who was given an inheritance in Ephraim (the son of Joseph) and who was buried in Ephraim (Josh. 19:49-50, 24:30)."
"The second Joshua/Jesus of significance in the Hebrew scriptures...was a priestly leader of the post-exilic period of Jewish history and was mentioned in Zechariah (1-8) and in Haggai (1:2). This Joshua and his co-ruler, the political leader named Zerubbabel, were called in Zechariah God's 'annointed ones' (Zech. 4:14)."
     - John Shelby Spong, Liberating the Gospels, p. 212

"So he said, 'These are the two who are anointed to serve the Lord of all the earth'."
     - Zechariah 4:14

"So a bilical reference toJoshua, the annointed one' in the book of Zechariah, when read in the Geek translation, would be very close to 'Jesus the Messiah or Christ'." His father 's name "was variously spelled Jozadak, Jehozadak, Josedech, and Josedek.. I submit that this is too close to Joseph to be ignored."
     - John Shelby Spong, Liberating the Gospels, p. 212

Perhaps more importantly, Isaiah's Suffering Servant, who prefigured the passion of Jehoshua ben Yoseph (Jesus son of Joseph) in the gospels, is identified in Jewish legend as Messiah ben Yoseph.
Casting further doubt on Joseph's paternity are Jewish sources which claim that Jesus was the illegitimate son of a Roman soldier named Pandera.

An Affirmation of Joseph
"These options were considered [by the Jesus Seminar] but ultimately rejected for the following reason:
1. If Jesus was a 1st c. Jewish male he would have had to have been known by a patronym as Yeshu bar/ben Somebody-or-Other. Yosef is the only option preserved in early tradition (the rabbinic ben Pandira cannot be dated before the mid 2nd c. CE and was clearly formulated as a reply to claim of Virgin birth).
2. The identification of Jesus as 'son of Joseph' occurs in passages that are not designed to put him on a pedestal. It is presented as a put down by those who were not his followers. Hence, any link to a Messiah b. Yosef tradition is highly unlikely. And again, this tradition was not prevalent among Jews and evidence for it cannot be dated before the 2nd c. CE. Therefore, the identification of Jesus as offspring of Yosef is more probably a residue of skepticism by people who knew him than an invention by his fans.
3. The gospels that identify Joseph as Jesus' father figure (Matt and Luke) go out of their way to stress that he was NOT Jesus' real father. This would have been unnecessary if bar Yosef were not already known as Jesus' patronym by detractors and fans alike. Moreover, the probability that Luke was NOT literarily dependent on Matthew or the Gospel of John dependent on either [Luke or Matthew] reduces the probability to virtually nil that Joseph was a literary fiction."
     - Mahlon H. Smith (private correspondence)

The Jesus Seminar, therefore, voted in favor of Joseph as the supposed name of Jesus' father.

"And Jacob was the father of Joseph, the husband of Mary, who was the mother of Jesus."
     - Matthew 1:16a

In rebuttal it should be noted that a number of other pieces of information shared by the synoptic gospels and the Gospel of John (i.e., Joseph of Arimathea, who retrieved Jesus' body), are considered literary inventions by the Jesus Seminar.

Matthew's Genealogy
"...Matthew insists that Joseph Jesus' father: 'It is by the Holy Spirit that she has this child' (1:20). Why, to show that Jesus is 'son of the ancestry of a man who is not his father? The obvious answer is that the list of names was constructed not by the author of Matthew but by earlier Jewish Christians who believed in all sincerity that Jesus had a human father; such Jewish Christians were perhaps the forebears of the group known in the second century as the Ebionites, to whom the Davidic ancestry of the messiah was essential and who believed, according to the second-century Christian, Justin Martyr, that Jesus was 'the son of Joseph and Mary according to the ordinary course of human generation.'' Certain ancient manuscripts of Matthew give some credence to this view. For whereas the received text of Matt. 1: 16 (dating from the fourth century) reads, 'Jacob begat Joseph, the husband of Mary, who bore Jesus,' the Sinaitic Syriac version, dating from the early fifth century, has it: 'Jacob begat Joseph. Joseph, to whom was betrothed the virgin Mary, begat Jesus.' Another ancient manuscript in the Vatican Library reads, 'Jacob begat Joseph, and Joseph begat Jesus.'"
     - Randal Helms, Gospel Fictions (1988) p. 45

"Matthew's original wording has been preserved only in an early Syriac codex, in which the genealogy concluded:

"And Jacob fathered Joseph, the husband of Mary, and he fathered Jesus, the reputed Messiah."
     - Matthew 1:16

"All surviving Greek manuscripts contain the revised genealogy:

"And Jacob fathered Joseph, the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus, the reputed Messiah."
     - Matthew 1:16

"Where Mark had written, 'Is not this the carpenter?' [Mark 6:3] Matthew changed it to read, 'Is this not the carpenter's son?' ....With just a few slight changes, Matthew had placed a father who was a carpenter into the narrative...He had removed the hint of scandal."
     - John Shelby Spong, Liberating the Gospels, p. 207

Luke's Genealogy
"Like Matthew, Luke included...a genealogy composed to prove that he [Jesus] was Davidic. However, not being aware of the existence of Matthew and therefore unable to borrow its genealogy, Luke inserted into his gospel a genealogy that gave Jesus a different paternal grandfather from the man named in Matthew, traced his descent from a different son of David, and consisted of forty three generations from David to Jesus, compared with Matthew's twenty-eight."
     - William Harwood, Mythologies Last Gods: Yahweh and Jesus

Biblical scholars, such as E. P. Sanders and John Shelby Spong dispute the assertion that Luke was unaware of Matthew, and argue that Luke copied from Matthew.

"There is a budding universalism in Luke that is either not found, or not found in as total a way, in either Mark or Matthew. Matthew, for example, began his genealogy of Jesus with Abraham, the father of the Jewish nation. Luke, in contradistinction, traced the genealogy of Jesus all the way back to Adam."

Luke's lecterns, followed the Torah (as it was read during Jewish liturgical year.) At the point where he "broke his gospel narrative...to supply the genealogical table of Jesus' ancestors...the order found in the Book of Genesis is determining the order of Luke's gospel. To demonstrate this further, the names of the patriarchs of the Book of Genesis were all over this table. Jesus' first, seventh, and thirty-third ancestors were all named. Joseph. The other sons of Jacob were also included: Simeon, twice; Levi, twice; Judah, twice. The patriarchal names of Jacob, Isaac, and Abraham, who dominate the Book of Genesis, also obviously appear."
     - John Shelby Spong, Liberating the Gospels, p. 122, 135

(3) Jesus and the Tradition of Joshua

Yeshu'a the Savior
The name "Jesus" [ IhsouV] is the Greek spelling of the Aramaic "Yeshu."

"Yeshu'a is the Aramaic corruption of Hebrew Yehoshu'a (YHWH saves) which the English...mispronounced as Joshua [of the Old Testament]...Galileans had a tendency to drop initial and final vowel sounds. So Elazar was pronounced Lazar and Yeshu'a was shortened to Yeshu (ye-SHOO)."
"The final S was originally added [[to IhsouV] to as the normal Greek nominative ending of any Semitic masculine name that ended in a vowel sound, since in Greek only feminine names end in a vowel. The J was introduced as the standard long form I in the gothic script of the high medieval period. Each of these orthographic developments in turn produced changes in the way the name was pronounced."
     - Mahlon Smith (CrossTalk 2)

"In the first century C.E. it would have been an extremely common name."
     - Ian Wilson, Jesus, The Evidence

"Working from the index of the complete works of Josephus we find reference to no less than fourteen people named 'Jesus'."
1. Jesus, son of Phabet - priest
2. Jesus, son of Ananus - prophesied the destruction of the temple.
3. Jesus, or Jason
4. Jesus, son of Sapphias, governor of Tiberias
5. Jesus, brother of Onias - priest
6. Jesus, son of Gamaliel - priest
7. Jesus, eldest priest after Ananus - priest
8. Jesus, son of Damneus - priest
9. Jesus, son of Gamala (Josephus' friend)
10. Jesus, [or Joshua] son of Nun
11. Jesus, son of Saphet - ringleader of robbers
12. Jesus, son of Thebuthus - priest
13. Jesus, son of Josedek
14. Jesus of Galilee & his 600 followers
15. Jesus, the Christ (dubious reference)
"In the works of Josephus, Jesus, as a name, is exceeded only by Simon (20 times) and Joseph (16). Josephus was a close personal friend of several Jesuses, especially the Jesus who was one of the last high priests before the war.
"Most of the Jesuses were either priests, prophets or bandits. It was not only a popular name, but one of distinction."
     - Cliff Carrington, "The Flavian Testament"

Joshua, the Military Savior
"The best known Joshua in the Hebrew scriptures was the successor to Moses, who fought the battle of Jericho and who led the Israelite conquest of Canaan."
     - John Shelby Spong, Liberating the Gospels, p. 212

"...Joshua/Jesus [ IhsouV] somehow fits into the developing pattern or patterns of 'two messiahs,' one a military (later royal) savior and the other priestly, like Moses and Aaron."
"This Joshua messianology was primarily based on the eschatological exegesis of passages such as Ex. 23.20f (the Angel), Num. 24.17 (the Star & Scepter), and Dt. 18.15ff (the Prophet like Moses)."
     - Robert A. Kraft, "Was there a 'Messiah-Joshua Tradition at the Turn of the Era?"

"My angel will go ahead of you and bring you into the land of the Amorites, Hittites, Perizzites, Canaanites, Hivites and Jebusites, and I will wipe them out."
     - Exodus 23:23

"I see him, but not now; I behold him, but not near. A star will come out of Jacob; a scepter will rise out of Israel. He will crush the foreheads of Moab [Samaritan Pentateuch (see also Jer. 48:45); the meaning of the word in the Masoretic Text is uncertain.], the skulls of [or possibly Moab, 'batter'] all the sons of Sheth [or 'all the noisy boasters']." "
     - Numbers 24:17 (Balaam's oracle)

"The LORD your God will raise up for you a prophet like me [Moses] from among your own brothers. You must listen to him."
     - Deuteronomy 18:15

(Note that all of the passages above refer to the Joshua of the Exodus.)

Joshua, the High Priest
"This material is complicated all the more by the appearance later in Jewish biblical tradition (Zech 1-6) of a high priestly Joshua/Jesus, side by side with a royal 'messianic' counterpart [Zerubbabel who rebuilt the temple after the Babylonian exile] (Zech 4.14), opposed by Satan (3.1) and somehow connected or identified with the figure of one called 'branch' or (in Greek) 'rising' = anatolh (3.8, 6.12)"
     - Robert A. Kraft, "Was there a 'Messiah-Joshua Tradition at the Turn of the Era?"

"Then he showed me Joshua the high priest standing before the angel of the LORD, and Satan ['Accuser'] standing at his right side to accuse him."
     - Zechariah 3:1

"Listen, O high priest Joshua and your associates seated before you, who are men symbolic of things to come: I am going to bring my servant, the Branch [ anatolh]."
     - Zechariah 3.8

"Because of the expectation of a priestly as well as a military/royal Messiah, later Greek interpretation could also integrate the high priestly Joshua figure into this Joshua messianology by means of the anatolh- anatellein similarities between Zech 3-6 and Num 24.17 ('a scepter shall arise...')."
     - Robert A. Kraft, "Was there a 'Messiah-Joshua Tradition at the Turn of the Era?"

Note that similarities between Zech 3-6 ( anatolh - "branch") and Num 24.17 ( anatellein - "scepter") only exist in Greek translation from the Hebrew (the Septuagint). The Hebrew for "branch" is [tsemach]; and for "scepter" is [shebet]. While Jews living in the Hellenized cities would have spoken Greek, the original followers of Jesus who were uneducated peasants who spoke little or no Greek and would not have followed this course of reasoning.

The Melchizedek and Samaritan Connections
"Probably the royal and priestly figure of Melchizedek also influenced this development, especially through the use of Ps 110 (109) in messianic speculation."
     - Robert A. Kraft, "Was there a 'Messiah-Joshua Tradition at the Turn of the Era?"

The identification of Jesus with Melchizedek is most prominent in the Epistle to the Hebrews 5-7.

The Joshua/Jesus [ IhsouV] messianology from Numbers 24:17 can also be found in Samaritan tradition.

"In 1927, Moses Gaster published a translation and commentary on the Samaritan book of the 'Secrets of Moses' or 'The Asatir.' According to Gaster, the Asatir was compiled around the end of the third century BCE, and has close affinities with the Palestinian Targum to the Pentateuch, and with some of Josephus' extra-canonical traditions. In its comments on the Oracles of Balaam, we find the following passage"
     - Robert A. Kraft, "Was there a 'Messiah-Joshua Tradition at the Turn of the Era?"

"'A star shall arise from Jacob'
     this refers to Phineas,
'and a scepter shall come from Israel'
     this refers to Joshua."
     - Asatir 10.45 to Nu 24.17

"Now Phineas was the young priest hero, the grandson of Aaron, who had applied preventative measures against the plague sent upon Israel for immoral conduct by impaling on his spear a young Israelite and his Midianite sexual partner. In Rabbinic thought, one sometimes meets with the idea that Phineas will return in the form of Elijah in the last days for the battle with the false messiah (has Phineas been substituted for an original IhsouV here?) and once in commentary on the Jewish scriptural statement that Phineas 'made atonement for the children of Israel,' the Rabbinic sources apply Isa 53.12a to him -- 'I will divide him a portion with the great' (Sifre)."
"In Asatir, it seems that Phineas (not his father, Eleazar) and Joshua are pictured respectively as the priestly and royal successors to Aaron and Moses -- the priestly and kingly Messiahs, if you will (cf Qumran!).

"The usual application of the 'star and scepter' passage in later Samaritan literature, however, is not to Phineas and Joshua but to the expected 'Restorer,' the Ta'eb, who fulfills the role of the 'Prophet like Moses' promised in Dt 18.15ff. The Ta'eb is, indeed, a second Moses. He will rebuild the Gerizim Temple and give his Law to the world; he will be of the house of LEVI (or, according to Volz, will be accompanied by a high priest from the order of Phineas) and will restore the favor of God to his people."
As to the origins of the Joshua messianology, "if indeed it had any one place of origin, the Northern Kingdom and particularly Samaria is the most likely candidate with its reverence for Joseph-Ephraim and its antipathy to any suggestions of a Davidic Messiah. From Samaria, and perhaps by means of diaspora Samaritan communities such as we encounter in Alexandria, the rudimentary Joshua messianology came to influence Greek as well as Semitic Judaism."
     - Robert A. Kraft, "Was there a 'Messiah-Joshua Tradition at the Turn of the Era?"

(4) Born in Nazareth

"The Nazarene"

"And coming he dwelt in a city called Nazareth; that it might be fulfilled which was said by the prophets: That he shall be called a Nazarene."
     - Matthew 2:23

"More problematic is the appellation 'the Nazarene' which is linked with Jesus' name both in the gospels and...in the Jewish record. Where it occurs in the latter it takes the form 'Hanorzri', not particularly meaningful even to Jews."
"Nasrani", the Arab word for the Nasoreans, the followers of Jesus, also means "little fishes".
     - Christopher Knight & Robert Lomas, The Hiram Key: Pharaohs, Freemasons and the Discovery of the Secret Scrolls of Jesus

"There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse [Yishay], and a branch [netser] shall grow out of his roots. And the Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord."
     - Isaiah 11:1-2

"It might refer to netzer, as in Isaiah 2:1, to mean 'a branch', used in Christian tradition with a messianic connotation. It might allude to Jesus as the source of the Nazarene sect. It might be a derivative fromnoter,which would describe those who keep the [new] Law of Jesus. It might mean, as is generally understood, 'of Nazareth'."
     - Rabbi Morris Goldstein, Jesus in the Jewish Tradition

"Could the forerunners of the Christian sect have been called both 'Jesseans' and 'Branchers?' Epiphanius suggests that the Yeshuine group was called IESSAIOI very early on (Panarion 29 1, 3-9; 4,9) and that they were also called the NOZRIM is well known. Acts 13:22-23, Romans 15:12, Romans 5:5, 22:16 give witness to some of these early designations."
     - Jack Kilmon, "The Essenes and the Nazarenes"

"After removing Saul, he [God] made David their king. He testified concerning him: 'I have found David son of Jesse a man after my own heart; he will do everything I want him to do.' From this man's descendants God has brought to Israel the Savior Jesus, as he promised."
     - Acts 13:22-23

"And again, Isaiah says, 'The Root of Jesse will spring up, one who will arise to rule over the nations; the Gentiles will hope in him.'"
     - Romans 15:12

"If Jesus' group was called the 'Jesseans,' or Iessaioi, these forerunners may also have been called 'root' people or Nazarioi. We also find Epiphanius speaking about a sect in Bashan and Galaatides called Nasaraioi (Panarion 18; 20, 3; 29, 6, 1; 19, 5) who rejected temple sacrifice and the Torah but adhered to other Jewish practice....Nazorei was used by Jerome in de vir. ill. 3 to refer to the Nazarenes and by Filaster to refer to the Nasarenes. Given the juxtaposition of 'Jesse' and 'Root/Branch' in Isaiah 11:1-10 and that Jesus would have been considered that 'branch' of Jesse by his followers, the new sect just may have been called 'Branchers' (Netzarim)....The name of this whistlestop [where Jesus was raised] in the Galilean hill country may have been lost and it later became known in Christian circles as 'Branchville' hence Nazareth. In other words, the town may be named after Jesus (or what his followers believed he represented) rather than the other way around."
     - Jack Kilmon, "The Essenes and the Nazarenes"

The Archaeological Evidence
"The historian Josephus, in command of Galilee during the Jewish revolt, lists in his writings what appear to be all the region's main towns and villages, but he makes no mention of Nazareth. The earliest the name appears in Jewish literature is in a poem of about the seventh century C.E.
"However, what appear to be pre-Christian remains were found in 1955 under the Church of the Annunciation in the present-day town of Nazareth. These suggest that the site was occupied in the first century C.E. And in 1962 at Caesarea, where the first-century Romans had their administrative headquarters, archaeologists discovered a fragmentary third- or fourth-century inscription incorporating the name 'Nazareth', which probably formed part of a marble tablet displayed on a synagogue wall."
     - Ian Wilson, Jesus, The Evidence

"Despite the Hellenization of the general region and the probability that Greek was known to many people it seems likely that Nazareth remained a conservative Jewish village. After the Jewish war with the Romans from AD 66-70 it was necessary to re-settle Jewish priests and their families. Such groups would only settle in unmixed towns, that is towns without Gentile inhabitants. According to an inscription discovered in 1962 in Caesarea Maritima the priests of the order of Elkalir made their home in Nazareth."
     - Paul Barnett, "Behind the Scenes of the New Testament", IVP:1990, p.42

"These relocated from Judea to Galilee only after the Hadrianic war of 135 CE. Between 70 CE and 135 CE the rabbinical schools were still based in Judea (at Javneh, Lydda, etc.). Only after the Roman persecution resulting from R. Aqiva's support of Shim'on bar Koseba's messianic claims were Judean 'religious leaders' persuaded that it was prudent to forsake Judea and settle among the am ha-aretz of the Galil of the Goyim."
     - Mahon Smith (CrossTalk - 30 Nov 1998)

"...Nazareth was tiny, with two or three clans living in 35 homes spread over about two hectares...The homes later were razed by invaders."
"In the time of Jesus, his fellow villagers in Nazareth made their living by growing grapes, olives and grain on terraces cut into the limestone.
"At harvest time, all 300 villagers - Jesus likely included - would stomp grapes to extract juice and huddle in watchtowers at night to guard their produce against thieves."
     - Associated Press, December 24, 1997

A Traumatic Event
In 6 C.E., Judas of Galilee failed in his attempt to drive out the Romans. Two thousand Zealots were crucified and six thousand young Galileans were carried off into slavery.

"Almost certainly this event had a considerable influence on the young Jesus. It would have occurred at approximately the same time that the Gospels record the 12 year old Jesus taking his vows at the Temple. Friends of the family, as well as relatives, may have been sent to slavery in the west. Most seem to have been sent to Spain and Sardinia. Are these deported and enslaved relatives and friends of Jesus' on his mind as 'the lost sheep of the house of Israel' (Mt. 10:6) and when John (10:16) records him saying , '..and other sheep I have, which are not of this fold; them also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice?'"
     - Jack Kilmon, Scriptorium

(Scholars are divided on whether the reference in Matthew, which is part of Jesus' instructions to his disciples, originates with Jesus or the early Christian community. The quote from John is taken from a long segment which symbolically portrays Jesus as the Good Shepherd.)

(5) At the Crossroads of the Empire

Nearby Sepphoris
"The isolation that often is associated with the Galilean personality is...quite inappropriate when we speak of Jesus of Nazareth, who is growing up along one of the busiest trade routes of ancient Palestine at the very administrative center of the Roman provincial government."
     - Eric M. Meyers, "The Cultural Setting of Galilee: The Case of Regionalism and Early Judaism", ANRW (1979)

There was "an unusually large number of urban and larger village centers in lower Galilee, an area roughly 15 miles by 25 miles...this makes lower Galilee one of the most densely populated regions of the entire Roman Empire....Life in lower Galilee in the first century was as urbanized and urbane as anywhere else in the empire."
     - Andrew J. Overman, "Who Were the First Urban Christians? Urbanization in Galilee in the First Century", SBLSP (1988)

Sepphoris, located over the ridge 3.5 miles from Nazareth, contained "courts, a fortress, a theater seating 3-4000, a palace, a colonnaded street on top of the acropolis, two city walls, two markets (upper and lower), archives, the royal bank, and the arsenal...[and a] populations...around 30,000."
     - Andrew J. Overman, "Who Were the First Urban Christians? Urbanization in Galilee in the First Century", SBLSP (1988)

"In 3 BC Sepphoris was chosen by Herod Antipas (son of Herod the Great) as his capital for Galilee."
     - Graham N. Stanton, The Gospels and Jesus, The Oxford Bible Series (1989), paperback, p. 146

In 4 B.C.E., Roman troops and their allies, quelling a major revolt in Judea, "made an attack upon the enemy, and put them to flight, and took Sepphoris, and made its inhabitants slaves, and burnt the city." (Flavius Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews, Bk XVII, Ch X, Sn 9.)

"Josephus tells us that the city [Sepphoris] was rebuilt in such splendid style that it became 'the ornament of all Galilee'. "
     - Graham N. Stanton, The Gospels and Jesus, The Oxford Bible Series (1989), paperback, p. 146

The Urban Lifestyle
"So Antipas beautified the city, but it was not yet a great city of the Roman East....This happened later when the theater is erected and when Roman Legionnaires and soldiers come and establish their presence and make themselves known at the beginning of the second century. There's one other clue that tells us very much about the character of first century Sepphoris. And that surprisingly, comes from the bones that we find in these houses and in these villas. We have virtually no pig bones attested in the early Roman period at Sepphoris. Occasionally, we find an odd bone here or there of swine, but virtually none. When we go up to other centuries, even the second century, we find a significant increase, up to 8 or 10 percent of the bones are pigs, and no doubt these are being presented, by virtue of the presence of the Roman Army. And by the fourth century when there are Christians there we've got 18 percent, 20 percent pig bones....
"I think the beginnings of Jewish culture in Sepphoris, as we can reconstruct them now from archaeology in the first century, might be characterized as upscale, living very much as some of the Jews from Jerusalem might have lived at the same time in the Jewish quarter. We have frescoed rooms. We have houses, each with its own private ritual bath. That's an extravagance, considering where the water had to be brought from and the kind of technical [manueverings] it took to get pure water mixed with standing water. But it was very much in the mainstream. I don't think they were doing anything that they shouldn't have done. It was not an assimilating community. The picture we get is a community very much in the mainstream, but on the high end of the scale. It was an upscale city in the making. Not yet a real city of the east, but a city surely that was born in the time of Antipas."
     - Eric Meyers, "From Jesus to Christ", PBS Frontline online

"In 1931 a Greek theater was discovered and provisionally dated to the second century AD. More recent excavation, however, has led to the strong possibility that the theater existed in the time of Jesus. Since the theater was so close to Nazareth, could Jesus have remained ignorant of the great Greek theatrical tradition? Did Jesus attend this theater? Is this the origin of his repeated use of the term 'hypocrite', the primary meaning of which is 'stage actor'?"
     - Graham N. Stanton, The Gospels and Jesus, The Oxford Bible Series (1989), paperback, pp. 146-147

The New Testment nowhere mentions Sepphoris although Jesus may have labored there before he began his ministy. Jesus appears to have preached exclusively in the countryside and avoided cities altogether.

"There is no evidence that Jesus is any way involved in the urban life of Sepphoris, which is within viewing distance of Nazareth. But to live close to a city in the ancient world was not necessarily a good thing."
"He would know that aqueducts take the water from the countryside into the city. And aqueducts run in only one direction. And the city people were the washed, they're the people with the public baths. So, from the countryside into the city, and I don't see any aqueduct coming back, Jesus was sophisticated [enough] to know what the city was, which was the seat of peasant oppression."
     - John Dominic Crossan, "From Jesus to Christ", PBS Frontline online

(6) The Trade of a Carpenter

A Member of the Artisan Class
"It's believed Jesus followed the trade of his father, Joseph, a carpenter. Joseph may have chosen to settle in Nazareth because it was within walking distance of Sepphoris, the capital of Galilee, which was being completely rebuilt following its destruction by the Romans."
     - Associated Press, December 24, 1997

"Is this not the carpenter [Greek: tektwn]...?"
     - Mark 6:3b

At the top of the social hierarchy of the Roman Empire were "the Ruler and the Governors who together made up 1 percent of the population but owned at least half of the land. Also on that same side were three other classes: the Priests, who could own as much as 15 percent of the land; the Retainers, ranging from military generals to expert bureaucrats; and the Merchants...On the other side were, above all, the Peasants - that vast majority of the population about two-thirds of whose annual crop went to support the upper classes. If they were lucky they lived at subsistence level, barely able to support family, animals, and social obligations and still have enough for the next year's seed supply. If they were not lucky, drought, debt, disease, or death forced them off their own land and into share-cropping, tenant farming, or worse. Next came the Artisans, about 5 percent of the populations, below the Peasants in social class because they were usually recruited and replenished from its dispossessed members. Beneath them were the Degraded and Expendable classes - the former with origins, occupations, or conditions rendering them outcasts; the latter, maybe as much as 10 percent of the population, ranging from beggars and outlaws to hustlers, day laborers, and slaves.
"If Jesus was a carpenter, therefore, he belonged to the Artisan class, that group pushed into the dangerous space between Peasants and Degradeds or Expendables."
     - John Dominic Crossan, Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography (1994)

An Affluent Builder?
"...The term carpenter in New Testament times would have meant something nearer to our 'builder' today. Just as the imagery of a countryman is present in Jesus' sayings, so too is that of a carpenter or builder." [Matthew 7:3-5; Luke 6: 41; Luke 6: 47-49]
     - Ian Wilson, Jesus: The Evidence, p. 71

If Jesus were a "builder" he would have been more than just a humble artisan - he would have been a person of relative affluence and standing in his community.

"Haven't you read this scripture: 'The stone the builders rejected has become the capstone [or cornerstone]'?" [Psalms 188:22]
     - Mark 12:10 (Matthew 21:42; Luke 20:17)

"Pheidias was the tektwn - TEKTON - of the Parthenon while the designers ( arciteknon- ARCITEKNON) were Ictinus and Callicrates. The stone masons who created the friezes were not tektwn."
     - Tom Simms (Crosstalk)

An Itinerant Worker
"Besides the rebuilding of Sepphoris, "there was a ton of work for a tektwn in Antipas' even more ambitious construction of Tiberias on the shores of Galilee (19+ CE) -- plenty of work, that is, for any Jew who did not have religious scruples against constructing dwellings on top of a necropolis! There was a ton of work for a tektwn in Herod Philip's elevation of Bethsaida-Julias to the status of POLIS (30 CE).
"Aside from these royal projects, however, there is no archeological evidence of major 1st c. construction in Galilee. Hence, a tektwn would have to support himself largely by repair jobs. Is it any wonder then that Jesus abandoned his trade and was joined by other lower class laborers and civil employees, especially fishermen and tax collectors?
"Rousseau made an intriguing suggestion in this regard. The fishing trade was the most prosperous segment of Galilee's economy. Fishing depended on boats constructed of wood. Wooden fishing boats were often in need of repair (witness the boat found at Kinnereth that was constructed originally of cedar [probably early 1st c. CE] then repaired with no less than 5 other types of wood over the next century). If Jesus was really a tektwn from Nazareth, his early years may have been spent at Sepphoris. The shift in Herodian construction projects to the Sea of Galilee after 19 CE may have led Jesus to seek work in this region. The discovery of the necropolis at Tiberias may then have led him to seek work just up the coast in the ship repair yards at Migdal (Magdala), the major harbor on the west shore of Galilee. As an itinerant laborer it would have been natural for him to move up the coast from harbor to harbor. Somewhere in this migration he may have become familiar with the fishermen sons of Zebedee and Yohanan."
     - Mahlon H. Smith (Crosstalk)

(7) Language and Education

The Prevalence of Aramaic and Greek
"The language used by peasants and by the uneducated workmen was Aramaic. "
     - Alan Millard, Discoveries From the Time of Jesus

"There were several dialects of Aramaic in 'Palestine' during the first centuries CE/BCE, and Galilean Aramaic shows some promise as a everyday language, which differed from the regal Aramaic inherited from the Babylonian exile. The king of Assyria, at the time of the Assyrian deportation and exile of the ten northern tribes of Israel, relocated peoples from northern Mesopotamia into Galilee in the 8th century BCE. Aramaic, like all the Semitic tongues, is a resilient language capable of absorbing loan words and integrating them without extreme awareness of their origins and differences. Aramaic borrowed from Persian and Arabic, just as those languages borrowed from Aramaic. Even to this day the Aramaic is a stubborn heartfelt language of many peoples in Syria and Lebanon...such as the town of Masulah, Syria. Though the younger peoples have grown up on Arabic the mature local Syrians who are not Muslem have tried to carry on the ancient tongue and speak in private and secret."
     - Don Hargis (private correspondence)

"...Fresh evidence confirms that Greek was widely spoken in Judea and Galilee at the time of Jesus. During the period of their oral transmission (which lasted thirty to forty years) some of the gospel traditions may have been translated into Greek at a very early stage (perhaps even in the lifetime of Jesus) and then translated back into Aramaic for use in some communities, before eventually finding their way into our Greek gospels."
     - Graham N. Stanton, The Gospels and Jesus, The Oxford Bible Series (1989), paperback, pp. 162-163

Hebrew as a Living Language
"Analysis of Mishnaic Hebrew (very different from Biblical Hebrew) has shown it to be a spoken, not a merely literary, language. There is now good reason to think that Jesus was a fluent Hebrew-speaker."
     -Hyam Maccoby, CrossTalk 2 (April 25, 2001)

"Hebrew was probably taught in synagogue schools everywhere and spoken in some places near Jerusalem, by religious zealots and by nationalists. Except for those in the remotest villages, craftsmen, businessmen and traders would have learnt enough Greek for commercial purposes at least. A Jewish craftsman's son brought up in Nazareth...could be expected to talk in Aramaic, to use Greek when necessary, and to have more than a reading knowledge of Hebrew."
     - Alan Millard, Discoveries From the Time of Jesus

Jesus may actually have been as, or more, conversant in Hebrew than Aramaic.

"From the "many Hebrew poems found in the caves [as part of the Dead Sea scrolls] that have no apparent sectarian bias...we may note the lyrical richness of ancient Hebrew up to the very destruction of the Second Temple in A.D. 70; and we observe that virtually all of this poetry, as well as over three quarters of the prose texts, was composed in Hebrew, disproving the view that Aramaic had overtaken Hebrew as the main language of the Jews of Palestine in the first century A.D."
     - Norman Golb, Who Wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls?, (1995) p. 361

"According to Acts 22:2 Paul spoke 'Hebrew' to the people, and the heavenly voice spoke 'Hebrew' to Paul (26:7). The word 'Hebrew' is also used in John 5:2,;19:13,17,20 of place names with Aramaic endings, thus the argument is that 'Hebrew' in Acts means 'Aramaic'. However...some words from one language can be used in another. Interesting is also that 'Hebrew' ABBADWN in Rev 9:11 which may have Aramaic roots is used in Hebrew texts such as Job 26:6. hAR MAGEDWN in Rev 16:16, seems to have Hebrew roots so 'Hebrew' in this verse seems in any case to mean 'Hebrew'.
In Josephus' The War of the Jews VI.2.1 "he says that the besieged inhabitants of Jerusalem spoke 'Hebrew', and in V.2 he calls this language e patriw glwssa [father tongue]. In view of the fact that Josephus clearly differentiates between Hebrew and Syriac (Aramaic) in Ant XII.2 how could he mean anything but 'Hebrew' in the two references from The Wars?"
     - Rolf Furuli (Crosstalk)

A likely explanation is that "Aramaic [was] the common tongue of the larger percentage of the population (peasant class) and ...Hebrew continued as a living language (resulting in the development of dialects) among the religious and literary classes."
     - Jack Kilman (Crosstalk)

Alan Millard, Discoveries From the Time of Jesus (p. 35) refers to those who spoke Hebrew in daily discourse as "religious zealots and...nationalists."

A Question of Literacy
"...Since between 95 and 97 percent of the Jewish state was illiterate at the time of Jesus, it must be presumed that Jesus also was illiterate, that he knew, like the vast majority of his contemporaries in an oral culture, the foundational narratives, basic stories, and general expectations of his tradition but not the exact texts, precise citations, or intricate arguments of its scribal elites."
     - John Dominic Crossan, Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography (1994)

According to Luke, Jesus was an exception.

"When he was twelve years old, they went up to the Feast, according to the custom. After the Feast was over, while his parents were returning home, the boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem, but they were unaware of it....After three days they found him in the temple courts, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions. Everyone who heard him was amazed at his understanding and his answers."
     - Luke 2:42-47

Compare with Josephus' account of his own precociousness.

"Moreover, when I was a child, and about fourteen years of age, I was commended by all for the love I had to learning; on which account the high priests and principal men of the city came then frequently to me together, in order to know my opinion about the accurate understanding of points of the law."
     - The Life of Flavius Josephus, 2