I intend to present a fair but starkly historical account of Jesus of Nazareth devoid of religious dogma and bias, if at all possible. The idea is to present Jesus, the Messiah very much as he would have been seen and understood by his early followers in his environment factoring in the prevailing political upheavals of his first century homeland. I will seek to present historical facts, some of which may be mainstream some of which may not be, there will be biblical as well as non-biblical references. However, since this is intended to be a secular treatise, wherever historical facts such as there may be, contradict biblical accounts, I will draw conclusions from the historical accounts. Where history is silent, I will draw conclusions from biblical accounts, I believe that is fair. I don’t ask that anyone accepts my conclusions or inferences only that you reason with me, I hope Christians and non-Christians alike will find something of interest.

A student of the historicity of the life, teachings and death of the man from the humble beginnings of the back-water Gallileean town of Nazareth who lived roughly two thousand years ago and was to become known as the Jewish Messiah would most surely be astonished by the lack of contemporary historical accounts of Jesus outside of the Gospels. Born sometime around 4BCE and put to death no later than 30CE (much sooner in my opinion) there is a curious lack of interest in his life by the likes of Philo Judaeus, the Jewish Philosopher contemporary to Jesus as well as others. Outside of the gospel writers with the exception of a few anecdotal references by the likes of Josephus, the Jewish historian and Tacitus there is very little by the way of credible secular accounts of the existence of Jesus let alone his works, how is this possible?

Even if we allow for the fact that Jesus’ ministry was short-lived, and it was, lasting no more than a year or two at the most, and the fact that his ministry was mostly subsumed within the Messianic movement of John the Baptist, it is not unreasonable to expect that contemporary secular historians would have made extraordinary attempts to place on record an historical account of a man who’s teachings were to so irretrievably change the world.

Those who doubt the existence of Jesus point to this paucity of historical accounts as evidence that Jesus never lived, those who believe in him point to the gospel accounts and the few extant secular sources such as Josephus, as evidence that Jesus did indeed live. Surely the view of a disinterested observer cannot be anything other than that, verifiable evidence provided so far, for or against the historicity of Jesus is simply insufficient. Personally, I accept that the Messiah lived and died but I do not agree with either side that the secular evidence provided so far is sufficient enough to substantiate a conclusion either way.

The question therefore remains to be asked; Apart from Gospel writers and early Church leaders who had an inherent bias (not necessarily a bad thing) in presenting Jesus of Nazareth in a particular light, what exactly do we know for a fact, about Jesus?

Following

In order to make sense of it all, a different perspective is required, we turn the premise on its head and I give you my first proposition;

That there was once a rich cache of historical traditions about Jesus of Nazareth among both the Jews and non-Christian Greeks and Romans.

My second proposition being that;

The material above was deliberately destroyed, or falsified, by a system of rigid censorship officially authorized ever since the time of Constantine I and reinstituted in the reigns of Theodosius II and Valentinian III.

A third proposition being that;
In spite of the tireless efforts of ecclesiastical censorship, enough information was preserved in certain corners of the world, among Jews and others as well as in quotations occurring in Christian polemic and apologetic literature, and that this information allows us to reconstruct with sufficient clarity and plausibility the fundamental features of Jesus' personality and his mission, particularly as they appeared to his enemies.

My fourth proposition being;
The life and historicity of Jesus the Messiah is linked intrinsically with that of his supposed relative, known as the “hidden One”, John the Baptist who undoubtedly according to historical sources outlived Jesus of Nazareth by at least fourteen years, as well as the Nazarean Messianist movement of which John and his followers were key members and that the history of this movement coincides with the history of the Jewish people and the Romans from the first appearance of John the Baptist.

Here is a good topic.
I believed the insufficient history life of Jesus was due to disinterest in part 1st Century scribe, or rather their maybe some kind of loss of credible data about his act.

His shortlived life and act may have being the reason why writter were not attracted to him apart from his follower, who took time to make research about his life and act.

In the part of Josephus, I think he disbelieved in Jesus, hence his reference to Jesus was weak, probably he was trying to make a point of reference not wanting to point to Jesus.

I want to believed that Jesus did live, because Biblical and historical record shows that, his disciples broadcast the story of his life, even though faced with treat of death sentence, in which no one will continued to defend a lie to the point of death, even after seeing example of those being killed.

The candidates of the "Jesus Seminar" are at it again.

"For Jesus, son of Sapphias, the leader of the "Galilean Boatmen" and the "party of the poor", who poured out their blood until the sea of Galilee ran red"

And so we begin in relation to my first proposition; Is it even possible that events as momentous such as those recorded in the Gospels took place completely unnoticed by the Roman government and its officials?

Is it even conceivable that a man should be proclaimed king of the Jews by the people at Jerusalem and then crucified for political reasons by a Roman governor, without any report being sent to the Emperor giving a full account of the entire matter? If, indeed such a report ought to, and would have been sent, why is there hardly an echo of it in the annals of Roman history?

This was no ordinary carpenter executed for just any crime. On the contrary, the execution in question was a political act of the highest importance, as were the events leading up to it, for that carpenter, Jesus had been hailed as the "Liberator of the Jews", as a saviour-king, and at a time, when the capital was filled with pilgrims from all over the known world. There was no reason to suppose that the Roman governor was not aware of his own actions ; the inscription of the cross, Jesus Nazoraeus Rex Judaeorum, is in fact the earliest of all non-Christian and anti-Christian documents, and it leaves no room for doubt whatsoever as regards the political character of the events. This document was the clearest possible expression of Roman official opinion of the case.

We know very well that Roman officials consistently declined to meddle with Jewish religious quarrels therefore there was no doubt as to the political aspect of the case. We know also that the Christian author Tertullian (155CE-240CE) took it for granted that a report of the case existed in the public records, how then is it that such a dramatic story was not repeated by a single contemporary historian ?

Voltaire, in his famous critique : God and human beings, pg.195 is convinced having first emphasised the fact that neither Justus of Tiberias nor Philo the Jew mentions the Galilaean Messiah, he adds :

"Are we to conclude from this that Jesus never existed, as some have ventured to conclude from the Pentateuch story that there never was a Moses ? Certainly not. Since after the death of Jesus people wrote not only for him but also against him, it is clear that he did exist."

In order to solve the conundrum we need to take into account all of what we know about what others thought about Jesus.

The famous persecutor of Christians, Sossianus Hierocles, who was in succession governor of Phoenicia, Arabia Libanitis, Bithynia, and prefect of Egypt during the reign of Diocletian, therefore a successor of Pilate. Stated that Jesus was overcome by the Jews after committing highway robberies he used the word (latrocinia) at the head of a band of 900 men.

The terms Latro and and latrocinium are technical terms, used by the likes of Josephus in reference to Jewish patriots, these terminologies are found in the gospels when the companions of Jesus on the cross were being described. The Gospel author of Mark uses the term revolution (Mk 15v7) in connection with the triumphal entry of Jesus into Jerusalem. The phraseology of Sossianus, is the equivalence of saying to “commit high treason,” or “ start a rebellion,” and his accusation is the exact equivalent of the indictment before the tribunal of Pontius Pilate, repeated, according to Roman legal usage, in the inscription on the cross.

The implications were clear, the Romans were led to believe that Jesus was intending to forment rebellion. The unfortunate position Jesus was cast in was that to the Jews, Jesus was a heretic and an agitator of the lower orders ; to the Pagans he was a magician who through sham miracles and with subversive words had incited the people to rebellion and as leader of a gang of desperate men had attempted to seize the royal crown of Judaea,as others had done before and after him.

If we accept that non-Christian writers referred to Jesus in quite derogatory terms as a wizard, a demagogue, and a rebel, it stands to reason that such statements were necessarily highly offensive to Christian readers, who naturally regarded them as outright blasphemies. Under these circumstances any such passage would simply have had to disappear, for instance the substitution, in the Talmud, of the expression “peloni,” i.e. " a certain one," for the name of Jesus, where this name occurred in the original text.

The writings of Celsus and of Sossianus Hierocles have been preserved in fragments only, thanks to the verbal quotations of their attacks in the detailed answers of the Church fathers Origen, Eusebius, and Lactantius In the same way the anti-Christian works of Porphyry, which were drawn on by Sossianus Hierocles, fell victim to ecclesiastical censure. The State had given the Church the discretionary power to suppress all anti- Christian literature. In fact the wholesale erasing and blotting out of all anti-Christian passages in Jewish and Pagan writings began during the time of Constantine, Diocletian passed the law, Improbatae lecturae against pagan and Jewish owners of books hostile to Christianity, which in many cases led to capital punishment.

Only a person naive enough to believe that Christians might have found in Jewish and Pagan writings of this type statements flattering to the founder of their religion or to his disciples, or facts of an edifying nature, can be astonished at the almost complete disappearance of anti-Christian books. It is a curious quirk of fate that precisely this material would now be of the greatest value in defending the Church against the charge of having arbitrarily invented a founder of its religion, who never existed at all.

The same considerations that account for the complete disappearance of most of the anti-Christian literary sources about Jesus of Nazareth also explain the loss of all official documents referring to the trial and passion of Jesus.

Doubts were expressed very early on about the trustworthiness of Christian historical material and the tradition of the Church leading to an insistent demand for the production of official documents. The letter of Ignatius to the Philadelphians show, for example, how irritated the clergy felt at the taunts of certain recalcitrant Jews, who frankly told them that they would refuse to believe the Gospel narrative so long as they could not find the story also in the archives.

We know from the Egyptian papyri, the so-called “Pagan acts of martyrs”' the habits and procedures of the Roman bureaucracy, which kept a running index of even the smallest incidents of their official life as they came up. Such notices were collected to form the official diary (commentarii) of the governor, copies of which were kept in provincial and central archives, whilst extracts were regularly sent to the Emperor in Rome. Further, the governors themselves would have duplicates of certain acts posted for public awareness. In cases which were of public interest interest larger extracts of the official judicial proceedings were made and distributed by the advocates of the accused or condemned.

For instance one could obtain the so-called acta sincera, i.e. the genuine acts of Christian martyrs, which are extracts of the commentarii supplied by the official notarii or exceptores. 200 denarii was the exact cost to Christians to obtain copies of the acts of the Christian martyrs Tarachus, Probus, and Andronicus, it is under these circumstances we understand how Justinus and Tertullian can take it for granted that such records about the trial of Jesus were to be found in the state archives.

*cracks knuckle* ... this should be fun

Wilgrea7:
*cracks knuckle* ... this should be fun

Very interesting

No capital cases in the Roman State were ever tried without proper documentary records being kept. Once read in court and approved by the judge, such documents could not be altered after the close of the matter, and the officials were compelled by law to deposit one copy in the archive of the governor or whoever else had the supreme authority in a given region. To suspect the Roman governor of neglecting the proper judicial procedure in such an affair only demonstrates sheer ignorance of the obligatory steps in the Roman administrative and judicial procedures.

It is hugely remarkable that the accounts of the trial of Jesus in the Gospels are not based on anything like an extract from the acts of the trial. They resemble in no way the prior mentioned acta sincera with their abundant correct detail about the legal procedure, beginning with the date of the trial and ending with the correct formula of the judgment pronounced. On the contrary, they are full of legal impossibilities which are quite simply puzzling in this tragic case.

In any event, it is very certainly curious that the Christians never took the trouble to procure for their own libraries the trial records and extracts (commentarii), which should have been most precious to them. In other words, they failed to do for Jesus what they commonly did, at great expense, for various martyrs of the early Church, why?

The answer to the above question must surely be apparent. There is clear evidence of the existence of the records of Jesus’ trial, the genuine Acts of Pilate. The reason why the Christians did not choose to avail themselves of this document was simply that these Acta contained material highly offensive to them and hence was of no use for missionary purposes. Those Acta contained the justification of the capital sentence passed on Jesus, and what in Roman eyes constituted his guilt. Such a document could obviously be of use only to anti-Christian polemists, who on this basis could attempt to prove that Jesus had indeed been a magician, a demagogue and what not.

In the course of the trial of Jesus, witnesses would have been summoned to determine whether Jesus was of royal blood, a "son of David," or a mere impostor of humble origin claiming to belong to a still existing family which, no doubt, took great pains to disclaim any such relationship.

As a matter of fact, as we know from Eusebius that the Acta in question was published by the Roman Government at the order of Emperor Maximinus Daia, in 311CE. It was published in vast numbers and listed as prescribed readings for all schools in the Empire. These must have appeared to the Christians as a collection of the worst blasphemies. It is understandable that the Church, thus driven into a comer by the publication of this exposure, should have used the first opportunity to destroy the obnoxious documents root and branch. The early church fathers found a very clever and elegant solution, they falsified the chronology of Josephus’ historical accounts.

What we know so far about the historical Jesus.

In rabbinical writings, there is the extraordinary document of a certain Jacob of Sekhanjah who states that in his youth he had heard from the mouth of his teacher, Jesu han-Nasorean (the Nazarene) about an attack on the temple of Jerusalem suggesting that the temple appeared to him totally defiled by an unworthy priesthood. The description given by Jacob of Sekhanjah is curiously close to the account given by Jesus himself in the synoptic Gospels.

We can surmise from the above that a man called Jesu han-Nasorean hated by the rabbis as an agitator and a heretic, did live and interprete the law in an unorthodox spirit, and that certain sayings of his, closely agreed with passages of the same tendency in the Gospels.

What gives it such decisive weight in the discussion of the historicity of Jesus is the fact that Jacob of Sekhanjah quoted it to Rabbi. 'Eli'ezer b. Hyrkanos, a witness to the destruction of the temple in A.D. 70. 'Eli'ezer, then an old man, told it to Rabbi. 'Aqiba in the year A.D. 110. The transmission of the testimony of an eye-witness who saw and heard Jesus is then known in its exact words comprising no more than two generations. The transmitters are well-known historical personages who deserve absolute confidence in such matters, since in their unrelenting hostility towards Christians, they wouldn’t make it up.

The execution of one "Christus" by the Roman governor Pilate under Tiberius, as a criminal and founder of a band of conspirators hostile to the whole human race, is established thanks to the testimony of Tacitus.

The nature of the Roman charges against Jesus is clear, first from Pilate's inscription on the cross, second from the attacks of Celsus and Sossianus Hierocles. Jesus was considered a rebel king proclaimed by the Jews-that is, legally, a robber chief, a leader of bandits armed against the safety of the Roman Empire. His authority over his following was attributed to the performing of sham miracles by magical arts, as well as to a sophistic, i.e. demagogical, power of oratory. The remains of anti-Christian literature prove that the opponents of Christianity described him as a fomenter of rebellion, a demagogue, rebel and a robber chief.

This is chiefly what history tells us about how Jesus of Nazareth was perceived by those who opposed him during and immediately after his death.

Mister Sarassin
This Long Article and intellectual need to be kept somewhere safe, Nairaland might crashed again

Interesting

I still got respect for Jesus but i'm Anti-Yahweh.

Extreme ordinary claims require extra ordinary evidence. Christianity thrives on faith, no concrete evidence. That's why we have so many denominations and sects.

I believe Jesus of Nazareth walked this earth. His true nature and personality is what I am not sure about. Can anyone tell me what happened from his age of 13 - 30 yrs? History is quiet over this.

I see Jesus as a Jew who was fed up with the status quo and did all he could to liberate his people. He did great in that sense. (Think about what Nnamdi KANU is currently doing sth like that )

GoodMuyis:
Mister Sarassin
This Long Article and intellectual need to be kept somewhere safe, Nairaland might crashed again

Thanks. Let's hope we don't have a repeat of the great crash.

onyenze123:
Extreme ordinary claims require extra ordinary evidence. Christianity thrives on faith, no concrete evidence. That's why we have so many denominations and sects.

I believe Jesus of Nazareth walked this earth. His true nature and personality is what I am not sure about. Can anyone tell me what happened from his age of 13 - 30 yrs? History is quiet over this.

I see Jesus as a Jew who was fed up with the status quo and did all he could to liberate his people. He did great in that sense. (Think about what Nnamdi KANU is currently doing sth like that )

Christianity thrives on “belief in belief”

Contemporary history is silent on the activities of Jesus during his younger years. However what history tells us about the norms of the day are that a teenage Jesus would have been sent for religious studies, as well as carrying on his father's trade. The Christian bible, as it often does gives us clues to be picked up by the discerning;

The schools of Shammai and Hillel were two of the most well known schools of thought in Pharisaic Judaism. Most Pharisees (which would have been ‘most Jews’) would have been aligned with one or the other of those schools, broadly speaking.

A few events recorded in the NT gospels involve ‘a certain pharisee’ asking Jesus a question about a topic which just happened to be one of the topics on which Shammai and Hillel disagreed. In other words, they were attempting to ascertain whether Jesus was ‘according to the school of Hillel’ or ‘according to the school of ‘Shammai’.

On the matter of divorce, for instance: Hillel was lenient on the definition of a man marrying and finding ‘something’ non-pleasing in his wife, thus being allowed to divorce her. Shammai, however, was of the opinion that the ‘something’ had to be specifically adultery. Jesus opinion on this was according to the school of Shammai.

But then there is Hillel’s famous (among Jews at least) statement, when asked by a non-Jew to teach him everything in the Torah ‘while standing on one foot’, Hillel said:

"What is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbour. That is the whole of Torah (the Law), the rest is commentary. Now go and study".

And we all know Jesus’ saying: "Do not do to others what is hateful to you".

Biblical authors are making it clear that Jesus was aware of the teachings of the two greatest Rabbinical authorities of his time, in other words he would have spent an enormous amount of time learning from followers of Hillel and most likely directly from Shammai who was contemporary to him.

Jesus of Nazareth was an erstwhile disciple of the controversial messianic and revolutionary priest, John the Baptist. He was put to death on the cross for agitating for the liberation of his people from the yoke of the Romans, the rulers of this world.

Perhaps one of the greatest difficulties encountered in any attempt to present the historical life and work of Jesus according to the evidence of his own words are the sharp, irreconcilable contradictions in the words attributed to him in the New Testament, for instance between the so-called 'fire and sword' sayings in the Gospel of Matthew on one hand and the beatitudes on the peacemakers, the meek, the prohibition to kill, to be angry, to resist wrong, and the command to love one's enemy, contained in the sermon on the mount, on the other hand.

This sharp contradiction occurs only in the Gospel of Matthew. Where we find side by side the saying about the sword, and the beatitudes.

We know that the Church from the days of Paul consistently followed the path of reconciliation with the empire, those fiery words of 'fire and sword' would certainly have been deleted had it been possible to do so, i.e. had they not been too surely attested as genuine. As a matter of fact, though not suppressed outright, those words have in the course of time been toned down as much as possible.

Where Matthew makes Jesus say, ' Think not that I came to cast peace on the earth; I came not to cast peace, but a sword,' Luke, in the extant text weakens the hard word, replacing 'a sword ' by ' division'. But the damage remains since both exhortations originate from polar end of the spectrum. Who exactly was Jesus of Nazareth and what was his message or mission and was he a revolutionary or peacemaker?

In order to fully answer the question as to the true mission of Jesus of Nazareth it is necessary to understand two issues, the first being the connection between the two Messiah-centered movements that existed in the first century; the one focused on a military messiah who would liberate the Jewish nation from the oppression it suffered at the hands of the Romans; the other focused on a spiritual messiah who would liberate all humanity from the burden of its sins.

The second issue being that the archetypal personages of Christianity, I.e John the Baptist, Jesus, Simon Peter, and ultimately James, were in fact leaders of the anti-Roman resistance of their time, but that the record of their actual activities was mostly overwritten, with generally reverse significance, by the enemies who ultimately defeated them, more specifically by the ideological representatives of these enemies.

Western civilization is a synthesis of Hellenic and Judaic cultures. The actual synthesis took place by the most violent struggle, in which Rome (heir to Hellenic culture) defeated the Jewish rebellion. It is when we fully understand the context of the early Jewish uprisings and the personages involved that we are fully able to understand the actual historical mission of Jesus of Nazareth.

Taxes by the Romans in Judea became oppressive, which gave rise to all manner of resistance, the first of these was organized by Judas the Galilean in 4 BCE which lasted until 7CE, this resistance developed through several stages, inviting harsh reprisals and arbitrary treatment of the population, which fanned generalized resentment and ultimately rebellion.

John the Baptist had himself incurred the wrath of Herod Antipas who feared that his preaching would incite rebellion, quite apart from the fact that by carrying out his baptismal rites in the rank and stagnant waters of the Jordan he was in direct opposition to the Jewish High Priests,
It was into this boiling and festering cauldron that Jesus of Nazareth calmly walks right into.

Caro mia, are you done? Very interesting.

analice107:

Caro mia, are you done?
Very interesting.

Not quite dear but your comments are welcome, thank you.

onyenze123:
Extreme ordinary claims require extra ordinary evidence. Christianity thrives on faith, no concrete evidence. That's why we have so many denominations and sects.

I believe Jesus of Nazareth walked this earth. His true nature and personality is what I am not sure about. Can anyone tell me what happened from his age of 13 - 30 yrs? History is quiet over this.

I see Jesus as a Jew who was fed up with the status quo and did all he could to liberate his people. He did great in that sense. (Think about what Nnamdi KANU is currently doing sth like that )

Caro Mia, this is what the Bible says concerning Jesus of Nazareth as regards his background.
Now about the midst of the feast Jesus went up into the temple, and taught.

And the Jews marvelled, saying, How knoweth this man letters, having never learned?
John:7: 14-15

If Jesus of Nazareth went to school, his village people whose Children he grew up together with, will know and won't be amazed at his speech.


Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary, the brother of James, and Joses, and of Juda, and Simon? and are not his sisters here with us? And they were offended at him.
Mark:6:3

Why were the people he grew up offended at him?
In my opinion, this is why. "What gives this Carpenter the temerity to come out speaking boldly as if he is some big shot?". Isn't he an ordinary Carpenter here? they must have said.

If Jesus went to school, the pharisees who hated him so much and wanted to find out ways to implicate Him would have mentioned it, Caro mia, it won't be hidden.
We wont be left to guess.

Even though I've never - and (probably) never will - had a sustained interest in the history of religions/figures in religion - mainly because I do not see the practicality/use of it in contemporary society, it's hard to ignore that this is one thoroughly researched and coherently put write-up.

Did you offer Religious Studies as a course in school or is this merely the result of many hours of arduous study? Whichever it happens to be, a life-sized kudos to you!

Sarassin abg finish this interesting writeup

analice107:

Caro Mia, this is what the Bible says concerning Jesus of Nazareth as regards his background.
Now about the midst of the feast Jesus went up into the temple, and taught.

And the Jews marvelled, saying, How knoweth this man letters, having never learned?
John:7: 14-15

If Jesus of Nazareth went to school, his village people whose Children he grew up together with, will know and won't be amazed at his speech.


Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary, the brother of James, and Joses, and of Juda, and Simon? and are not his sisters here with us? And they were offended at him.
Mark:6:3

Why were the people he grew up offended at him?
In my opinion, this is why. "What gives this Carpenter to temerity to come out speaking boldly as if he is some big shot?". Isn't he an ordinary Carpenter here? they must have said.

If Jesus went to school, the pharisees who hated him so much and wanted to find out ways to implicate Him would have mentioned it, Caro mia, it won't be hidden.
We wont be left to guess.

Jesus of Nazareth was a Pharisaical Jew, of that there is no doubt, he observed the Torah. Jesus quotes from the Septuagint, I believe Isaiah 29:13 in an age when only the Pharisee's, Saduccee's and Zadokites who had been taught had access to the Tanakh. Historically speaking Jesus' apocalyptic message was the transposed message of John the Baptist, his teachings on forbearance, forgiveness and humility were the teachings of Hillel almost word for word, I gave examples in a prior post, the communal doctrines i.e, communal meals, common purser e.t.c were those of the Essene community.

It is a hundred times harder to make the case that Jesus had no Pharisaical training. The Book of John concerns itself only with the business of attributing divinity to Jesus, it is very much a latecomer to the party.

DarkRebel69:
Even though I've never - and (probably) never will - had a sustained interest in the history of religions/figures in religion - mainly because I do not see the practicality/use of it in comtemporary society, it's hard to ignore that this is one thoroughly researched and coherently put write-up.

Did you offer Religious Studies as a course in school or is this merely the result of many hours of arduous study? Whichever it happens to be, a life-sized kudos to you!

Thank you. It is more a labour of love.