Looking for the Historical Jesus

EDGY THEOLOGY
 
Easily one of the most influential books in my own understanding of the Gospels is Father John P. Meier’s A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus, Volume 1. [1991] A Marginal Jew is the first of a five-volume study of Jesus’ human existence upon the earth; Meier died in 2022 while compiling the sixth volume, which has never been finished. The New York Times carried his obituary. I never attempted to read all five volumes; the first volume provides enough introduction to open new doors of understanding how to decipher a historical core of the historical Jesus in the New Testament. Though it has been thirty years since Meier began his project, his work is still timely, though the next generation of Scriptural historians is hard at work. Sitting on my desk here is an early Christmas present from the Café staff; in the newly released The Next Quest for the Historical Jesus [2024], thirty-four essays from biblical scholars address new questions in the Biblical/historical quest for a core narrative.
 
We consider the sacred scriptures unique among history books because of the Holy Spirit’s inspiration; there is a reality to the Gospels beyond human sciences that draws us to Baptism and the promise of a future life where “data” in the Microsoft sense becomes irrelevant. Because God delivered ultimate truth to an imperfect world, it should not be surprising that the Bible, as literature and history, is not a perfect document. Since 1943, when Pius XII issued his groundbreaking Divino Afflante Spiritu, all popes have promoted the critical study of Sacred Scripture from the vantage of all the sciences for better translations and deeper understandings of Jesus of Nazareth.
 
It may be that some readers, unaware of the Catholic Church’s endorsement of scientific as well as spiritual study of sacred texts, find the idea of “discovering the historical Jesus” either irrelevant, irreverent, or outright dangerous. Some will say that we know already everything we need to know from the Bible, such as the Ten Commandments. True enough, but the Fifth Commandment has exceptions we would abhor, [as in Deuteronomy 21: 18-21] that needed closer study and revision. Others would criticize deep probing of Scripture as an insult to God, even though Christianity is the seeking of God’s perfect will and pleasure. And yet others may be shocked or distressed at what is not historically certifiable, forgetting that Scripture was composed under different methods, in contrasting times, in varying tongues and dialects. For example, what precisely did a carpenter do in Jesus’ time? We know today that carpentry was house framing and construction—a profession that paid well. So well that the Romans demanded Joseph and his pregnant wife come to Bethlehem to file their taxes in person.
 
For Catholics, let me hasten to note that Meier’s work enjoys the Imprimatur and the Nihil Obstat of the Vatican: “Let it be printed” and “Nothing stands in the way.” In effect, there is nothing in Meier’s writing that endangers the faith of Catholics. On the contrary, the reader will be empowered in seeking to be of one mind with Christ by the content of the works, though in ways never previously imagined. I thought I knew a lot about Jesus, but after a few years of studying under folks like Meier, I realized I had only scratched the surface.
 
 
The four Gospels came to be written late in the first century from an oral preaching tradition [traditions, actually] that extended forty years after the Resurrection. The earliest official written Gospel is that of St. Mark, composed shortly before the fall of Jerusalem in 70 A.D. St. Luke and St. Matthew composed their Gospels in the 80’s A.D. borrowing from St. Mark’s text, plus a stand-alone collection of Jesus’ words and parables called “the Q Source,” material found in Matthew and Luke but not in Mark. [Wikipedia explains the Q Source theory quite well.] Finally, St. John’s Gospel is dated from around 100 A.D. It is notably different from the other gospels, but the explanation for this difference is understandable: John’s generation was facing different problems from his predecessors. Studying the historical Jesus in each Gospel depends in part upon the theological issues each evangelist’s community was facing.
 
Another factor facing the new Church was the establishment of what we call the New Testament canon or collection of books considered inspired. Put another way, which books are God’s direct communication? Many books purporting to record the life of Jesus were circulating through the Church, leading several Church councils to define precisely what books belonged in the Christian bible. The criteria included [1] apostolic authorship or inspiration; [2] agreement with the professed beliefs of the local churches; and [3] frequency of proclamation at the celebration of the Eucharist. Yes, the Church did establish the New Testament, its most crucial decision, and not the other way around. Without the Church, there would have been no New Testament. The number of New Testament books arrived at by the fourth and fifth centuries was 27, and the canon was solemnly proclaimed at the Council of Trent [1545-1563], with St. Jerome’s 400 A.D. Latin translation of the Bible, The Vulgate, designated the official text of the Roman Catholic Church. The Vulgate Bible remained in the official Scriptural text for the Mass and other sacraments till the 1960’s, though by then the many translation mistakes of Jerome were quite evident to modern scholars and new translations were approved by the Vatican. Here in the States the New American Bible was approved for widespread use, including the liturgy, in 1970, in the English language. As luck would have it, I was living with one of the three general editors of the NAB who appeared on “The Today Show” to explain the advance in Scripture study that made possible the NAB [or NABRE]. The translator of the Book of Tobit also lived in my friary. Interesting times indeed.
 
THE QUEST FOR JESUS INSIDE AND OUTSIDE THE SACRED TEXTS.
 
The study of the Bible—specifically, the words and deeds of Jesus—is immensely complex, and I can’t do full justice to how it was done, or for that matter, how it continues to be done. Suffice to say that since I received The Next Quest for the Historical Jesus, [2024] this Christmas, I am curious to see how the quest has progressed in recent years since John Meier’s 1990’s work. It is fair to say that the Catholic Church had settled several important questions by 400 A.D., notably the makeup of the New Testament canon itself, and an official Latin translation, St. Jerome’s Vulgate edition. “Vulgate” comes from the Latin word for “vulgar,” or “of the common people.” Jerome’s Vulgate Bible is the Latin text that lent itself to liturgical and popular usage for 1900 years.
 
However, the first manuscripts of the Gospels in the first century—the surviving ones--were not written in Latin—a common street language. The Gospel manuscripts which have survived are in Greek, the stately philosophical and literary language of the educated. The Renaissance [c. 1400] and the Reformation [c. 1500]—not to mention the printing press—were major factors in deeper studies of the historical Jesus among Protestants and some Catholic scholars. There was, in many quarters, a new freedom from church authorities to speculate and discuss what Jesus taught and meant. The nineteenth century was a time of considerable research and debate about Jesus—how he experienced life, details of his work and home life, and particularly the precise nature of his mission as he understood himself. In an excellent if lengthy post, Wikipedia lays out the course of the “first quest,” noting that in the 1800’s there were hundreds of lives of Jesus published and sold. My Catholic professors of fifty years ago critiqued this nineteenth century era quest as psychological projection—everyone made a case for Jesus according to his expectations. Thus, there was Jesus the Marxist, Jesus the social worker, Jesus the socialist, Jesus the father of a new social order, etc.
 
This first quest came crashing to an end as speculation about Jesus became more and more extreme, and his identity morphed into a failed, executed prophet whose followers came together to await God’s apocalyptic arrival to raise his prophet. What followed was several generations of scholars who focused on evangelistic faith and worship in the literal text of the Scriptures. However, by the 1940’s Protestant theology and method has improved significantly, to the point that in 1943 Pope Pius XII allowed Catholic scholars to work with Protestant colleagues in deciphering the meaning of the historical Jesus.
 
The second “quest” came to several important conclusions. The first was a humbler approach toward the person of Jesus. To “psychoanalyze Jesus” was a theological and historical fool’s mission. Reputable scholars now stayed within the guard rail of Jesus’ words and deeds as reported in the canon of the four Gospels. It is certainly legitimate for Christians to study what Jesus said and did in the context of the time, the culture, and the impact on the early Church.
 
The second conclusion of this twentieth century quest is a consensus that the Bible is a composite of identifiable “forms” of literature. For example, the Gospels themselves contain hymns, sermons, miracles, prayers, genealogies, and other literary types and historical narrations. But when we look at these forms from a distance, we notice that the evangelists did not use them in the same order, or did not describe them in the same way, or even use some of them at all. St. Mark and St. John have no infancy narratives of Jesus at all!
 
This analysis led to the most important insight of the twentieth century historians: each of the four evangelists was a divinely inspired theologian who composed their Gospels to provide four distinct but unified understandings of Jesus, God and Man. Think of the four Gospels like a jewel held up to the sun. Turn the jewel slowly and you get an infinite range of beautiful colors and hues. For a Christian believer, the jewel of the Gospels renders new truth and beauty with every turn, which is why we are encouraged to read and reflect the Gospels every day.
 
Each Gospel has a distinct “theological identity”—which is why Scripture courses and written commentaries are so critical to adult Catholic faith and prayer when engaging the Gospel. But we still have the history question—is there a core of history around which we can study Jesus? There are several references in Roman documents that refer obliquely to a “Crestus” who was venerated “as a god” in a sacred banquet setting by his followers. A more pointed non-religious reference to Jesus can be found in the writings of the Jewish/Roman historian Josephus, who also knew John the Baptist. And even within the Gospels, there is faith reinforced by historical clues.
 
Late twentieth century writers such as Meier developed basic principles to estimate the chances of a Gospel text containing hardcore history that even a non-Christian pagan could not deny. Here are a few principles:
 
The Law of multiple attestation: A text or event which appears in all the Gospels has a strong chance of historical probability. The Baptism of Jesus, [some] miracles, the collection of followers, a final supper, Pontius Pilate, and the crucifixion appear in all four Gospels, although the details vary considerably considering each evangelist’s “take” or basic message of his Gospel.
 
The Law of embarrassment. Why would a devout evangelist create from whole cloth false information that would embarrass Jesus and/or his followers? Episodes where Judas betrays Jesus at the Last Supper, or the disciples fall asleep in the Garden of Olives, or Peter betrays Jesus three times? These narratives are unlikely inventions; more likely they are candid admissions that faith and understanding took some time to develop.
 
The Criterion of rejection and execution: If Jesus' ministry came to a violent, public end, how did Jesus' words or deeds alienate people, especially powerful people? Put another way, who went to so much trouble to engineer the death sentence and execution of Jesus? And why would they do it? Jesus was not just another holy figure in the Bible. He was saying and doing things that led to a wholesale public execution overseen by the governor, Pilate himself. We can say, with certainty, that the actual historical Jesus was a figure noted for his words, signs, and wonders—and that his underlying message was in some way so new and challenging that people [Jews? Romans?] hastened to kill him in a very public way.
 
There are other rules and principles in Gospel studies. What if one evangelist differs on some point in his narrative from the others? A good example: St. Mark’s sentence in 8:34—"Then he called the crowd to him along with his disciples and said: “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.” But 20-30 years later St. Luke, in 9:23, writes this: “And he said to them all, if any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me.” Luke has added the word “daily,” as in “over the course of your whole life.” What do we see here? Mark was writing in a time of persecution; he may have believed that the Second Coming was extremely near. Luke, writing later, began to see the Church as a long-term institution with a need for a detailed way of daily living. Luke provides an early ideal for common daily Christian living in his Acts of the Apostles [2: 42-47]
 
We could go and on here, but I hope at least one thought remains with you as we begin a new year. Specifically, that you and I are both blessed with greater wonder, greater insight, and greater curiosity into the life of Jesus of Nazareth; that a hunger for the Gospels stirs us every day. I will do what I can periodically to offer access to Gospel commentaries, to connect you with the best publishers and reviewers of Gospel texts. I will get to that soon. In the meantime, have a Happy New Year!