Searching for the Real Jesus. Geza Vermes

14 Gerhard Kittel, 1933–1976, Theologisches Wörterbuch zum Neuen Testament, Stuttgart: Kohlhammer.

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      Jesus: God in Spite of Himself

      An Interview with the Parisian Magazine Le Point

      The real Jesus was to begin with a healer and exorcist endowed with astonishing charismatic power. Devoted to the cause of God till his death, he intended first of all to regenerate Judaism.

      What is known about Jesus?

      Very little. His life is recounted in the four Gospels recorded between 40 and 80 years after his death. Some factual information has been handed down by later historians, the Jewish Josephus and the Roman Tacitus. One fact is clearly established: he was crucified under Pontius Pilate, prefect of Judaea between 26 and 36 CE. The Gospels describe Jesus as a Galilean who was active around the Lake of Gennesaret. According to Matthew and Luke he was born under the reign of Herod the Great who died in 4 BCE. With the exception of the anecdote of the 12 year-old Jesus teaching in the Temple, the Gospels say nothing about his childhood.

      Do we know anything regarding his family and his social circumstances?

      He was poor and unmarried. He lived for 30 years in the townlet of Nazareth with his parents, Joseph and Mary, his four brothers and at least two sisters. The Church, which has made a dogma out of the virginity of Mary, asserts that the siblings issued from an earlier marriage of Joseph, who was a widower. The oldest Gospels, the Synoptics (Mark, Matthew and Luke) allude to a tense relationship between Jesus and his family, including his mother. Mark and Matthew report that the family sought to discourage Jesus from accomplishing his mission. In a passage in the Synoptics Jesus rejects his mother and brothers when they tried to interrupt his teaching. The more recent Gospel of John presents a different scenario; Jesus is invited with his mother and brothers to a wedding in Cana. Mary reappears at the foot of the cross. However, the role attributed to her by the Church has nothing to do with the texts.

      What was Jesus’ education like?

      He was a builder or a carpenter, but his vocabulary and the images he employs make one think rather of a countryman. The famous anecdote of the 12-year-old Jesus instructing the Scripture experts in the Temple is a later invention. Against the divinized picture which started to be formulated by the apostle Paul, Jesus was a simple and modest man. He was a prophet in the tradition of the prophets Elijah and Elisha of the Bible, who were also active in the northern area of Palestine. Like Elijah and Elisha, Jesus also was endowed with outstanding charismatic power. The Gospels act as witnesses: Jesus is a healer able to cure diseases (paralysis, blindness . . . ), an exorcist who expels demons, a wonder worker. This was in no way extraordinary in those days: rabbinic literature refers to other known healers and Flavius Josephus speaks of Jesus as a ‘wise man’ and a ‘performer of prodigies’.

      When did Jesus start to preach?

      The beginning of his public career coincided with the ministry of John the Baptist, which is dated by Luke to the 15th year of the reign of Tiberius, in 29 CE. According to Mark and Luke, when Jesus received baptism from John, a heavenly voice informed him that he was God’s beloved son. Matthew and John advance that it was John the Baptist who heard the voice and announced the election of Jesus. The statements relative to the duration of his ministry are contradictory: in the Synoptics he was preaching only one year while John speaks of three Passover festivals, which imply about three years. Later Church tradition is based on John.

      Who formed the audience of Jesus?

      The Gospels claim that he recruited 12 apostles and 70 disciples who were to help him with his mission. As an itinerant preacher, he delivered his message in the streets, in various places, on the shore of the lake. Straightaway he encountered much success. The crowds greeted him as ‘the prophet from Nazareth’. It is important to note that only the Gospel of John accuses the Jewish people and the chief priests of having plotted his death before the last (and according to the Synoptics, the unique) visit of Jesus to Jerusalem.

      What was Jesus’ message?

      Jesus was an eschatological prophet who proclaimed the arrival of the Kingdom of God in the near future, as it were tomorrow. Hence he demanded a total devotion to the cause of God, a renunciation by the faithful of all material possessions and even the abandonment of their families. It is to be underlined that this appeal was addressed only to the Jewish people, the ‘lost sheep of the house of Israel’. The texts are clear: the apostles of Jesus were ordered not to seek to persuade non-Jews. It was Paul, a Greek-speaking Jew and a Roman citizen, who 20 to 30 years after the crucifixion set out to convert the pagans when he failed to win over the Jews resident outside Palestine. It is Paul who must be recognized today as the real founder of Christianity. He fought with Jewish Christians and obtained the other apostles’ agreement to exempt his pagan flock from the obligation to adopt Judaism and undergo circumcision in order to become Christians. But Jesus’ message, which was directed towards Jews alone, was centred on the Law of Moses which he aimed to renew internally by insisting on its spiritual significance.

      Do we know why Jesus died?

      Jesus was arrested on the eve of Passover by the Jewish authorities, and was subsequently delivered to the Romans and was crucified. This horrible death on the cross lies at the heart of Christianity.

      The only event that can explain his arrest by the Jewish authorities of Jerusalem is the upheaval he caused when he attacked the merchants in the Temple. This happened in the midst of the preparations for Passover with a surcharged atmosphere of the city which was under Roman occupation. Although he was not a political rebel, he incited trouble during a revolutionary period. The provocative attitude he displayed before the priestly authorities – ‘I will answer you if you tell me what you think of John the Baptist’ – did not help the situation.

      How can the resurrection be explained?

      For the evangelists, and afterwards for the Church, the proof of the resurrection consisted in the numerous apparitions after the death of Jesus. One can also think that the apostles, traumatized by the cross, needed to feel that Jesus was with them and experience again his charisma for carrying on with their mission and announcing their message. According to the Acts of the Apostles, reinforced by the Holy Spirit, they continued to heal in the name of Jesus who was believed to support them having risen in their hearts.

      Did Jesus think that he was of divine nature?

      The texts must be read in their context.

      The phrase ‘son of God’ was current among Jews and was synonymous with ‘son of Israel’ or ‘a Jew very close to God’. Jesus’ deification was progressive. The first Jesus, the Jesus of the Synoptics, was a healer and a teacher. In the Acts of the Apostles he was a prophet, Lord and Messiah. In Paul, he became ‘Son of God’ after the resurrection, and a universal redeemer. Finally, the Gospel of John written between 100 and 110 CE, the theologically most developed book of the New Testament, turned him into a supernatural being, the eternal Word of God, a stranger from heaven who became human for a short while to reveal the heavenly Father to humankind. It is on this notion, developed by the neo-Platonic philosophy of the Greek Church fathers, that the Christian Creed was built.