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Today we want to talk about: how much can we know about the historical Jesus? The truth about Jesus is too important to be left to our own feelings or imaginations. Today, people want to believe that Jesus was all love and all inclusive, regardless of what the Gospels may say about him. Is that for real, or is it fantasy? There are all sorts of wildly different answers to the question “What Would Jesus Do?” Would Jesus have sex outside of marriage? Was Jesus permissive, or was he a Puritan? Would Jesus use drugs? Would he go to war? We need facts, not wishful opinions. Many people try to pin far too many of their own moral and political views onto Jesus. If our picture of Jesus doesn’t shove us into our discomfort zone at times, it’s not the real Jesus.
It is too easy to invent a Jesus who believes exactly what we do and lets us do whatever we want, a Savior who never contradicts us or gets in our way. Contrary to what a large portion of today’s world thinks, I am not free to make Jesus into whomever I want him to be.
None of us has direct access to human figures from the past. We cannot touch them in the flesh. We have no video or sound recordings. All we have is the traces or memories they leave behind, chiefly written records of oral testimony about them. Nevertheless, what we do have is enough to construct a true-to-life picture of what they said and did, enough to make the faith decisions we must make about Jesus.
Jesus scholars have developed their famous “criteria of authenticity” to identify pieces of indisputable bedrock in the reported words and events from the life of Jesus. I discuss these criteria in my book The Historical Jesus and the Historical Joseph Smith. These criteria include the following:
1. Multiple independent sources – Skeptics have a difficult time dismissing a supernatural event like the Feeding of the 5000 that is found in all four Gospels, all with independent wording in the Greek originals. Granted, we may wonder why only one of the seven famous sound bites of Jesus from the cross is recorded in more than one Gospel, but even this fact points to the independence of the four crucifixion accounts.
2. Embarrassment – Do friendly sources report unflattering information about Jesus? Ancient sources tend to leave out details that make the hero of the story look bad. Why all four canonical Gospels tell us that an all-knowing Jesus chose a traitor for his inner circle must be because the facts compelled them to say so.
3. Dissimilarity – Does the information make Jesus stand out from his Jewish heritage and/or from the early church? The less that Jesus looks like a carbon-copy of Judaism or the early church, the better. The danger of pressing this criterion too far is that we end up with a Jesus who got nothing from his Jewish heritage, and left no impact on the early church! But neither can we assume that Jesus’ views or behavior were just like those of his fellow Jews, or that the early church copied all of their teachings and practices straight from him. If Jesus had not been unique, who would have noticed him? Areas where Jesus stands out as unique from both Judaism and the early church tend to be the places where we can be most confident that they are historical. The Golden Rule taught by Jesus (Matthew 7:12) is not unique; it is found in both Judaism and in pagan philosophy. But Jesus’ rejection of divorce was unprecedented in Judaism, and the early church was already trying to soften it. Regardless of how we handle the issue of divorce, here is historical bedrock in the teaching of Jesus. Nobody made this up.
4. Coherence – Does the saying or event in question fit with the rest of what we know about Jesus? What about Luke 22:36, where Jesus advises his followers to buy swords to protect themselves? These words do not seem to fit the non-violent character of the rest of Jesus’ teaching, and yet for that very reason we might argue that they are authentic.
5. Rejection – Do these words or events help explain why Jesus was arrested and crucified? The fact that Jesus goes around acting and talking like he is God would fit this criterion. Jesus driving people out of the temple with a whip might also fit.
One or two of these criteria can be enough. There are plenty of rock-solid historical events from Jesus’ life that are only recorded in one source, or do not trigger the criteria of embarrassment or dissimilarity. But the more of these criteria that are met for any saying or event in the Gospels, the stronger the likelihood that we are standing on historical bedrock.
So when we look at an account like Jesus forgiving the woman caught in adultery, we find it in only one source, and even there, few copies contain this passage. But this event meets every other criterion of authenticity. It meets the criterion of embarrassment by making Jesus look scandalously permissive. It meets the criterion of dissimilarity: Jesus’ mercy is unlike anything seen in Judaism or the early church. It meets the criterion of coherence: we already know that Jesus is famous for his mercy toward sinners, for which this would be the most amazing example. But like the Jesus we know from elsewhere, he also says “Go and sin no more.” This event even helps explain why the authorities wanted to get rid of him.
The facts about the life of Jesus can withstand the most intense scrutiny of the most skeptical scholarship. I happen to accept all of what the four canonical Gospels tell us about Jesus, but even for those who are not committed to belief in the Bible, there is much that we can know for certain about the historical Jesus. Some of the most solid pieces of historical bedrock we have for the life of Jesus are his connection with John the Baptist, his Palm Sunday parade, his cleansing of the Temple, the Last Supper, the cross, and his resurrection.
The miracles of Jesus offer strong evidence of historicity. Nobody made these up! Our Gospels give us accounts of at least 6 exorcisms, 17 healings (including 3 resurrections), and 8 nature miracles, plus countless more acts they refer to, like the 7 demons cast out of Mary Magdalene. In the 90’s, Josephus (a non-Christian) testifies to Jesus’ reputation as a man of “extraordinary deeds.” The Talmud charges Jesus with sorcery. One liberal scholar admits that the echoes of Jesus’ miracle-working power outside the church are too strong to dismiss.
Another liberal scholar, who doubts most of Jesus’ parables, makes a passionate case that Jesus truly performed miracles. He says the multiple sources for them are overwhelming. The early dating of these miracles, he says, is “unparalleled for the period” – these reports are within 40 years, not 200 years later. The kinds of miracles Jesus does are totally unlike the kinds reportedly done by Jews or pagans. This scholar says, “Nowhere else do we find such a combination of popular preacher + authoritative teacher of morality + miracle-worker.” He says, “if the miracle tradition from Jesus’ public ministry were to be rejected in toto as unhistorical, so should every other Gospel tradition about him.”
If there’s one evil the historical Jesus couldn’t stand, it was hypocrisy. All thirteen times the word “hypocrite” is used in the New Testament, we find it in the mouth of Jesus. Jesus complains about phoniness in giving, prayer, and fasting, places where it’s easy to pretend or put on a show. Jesus criticizes those who point the finger at others’ sins while they are blind to their own, plus those who criticize him for breaking rabbinic tradition while they themselves excuse the breaking of God’s law. The historical Jesus is passionately opposed to phonies, play-actors, and pretenders. Jesus wants people who are what they claim to be, people who do what they say.
But while the historical Jesus was tough on sin, there is strong evidence that he also showed unprecedented love for sinners. Neither Jew nor Christian would have made up a leader who eats with outcasts. The huge issue for us today is whether Jesus not only welcomed them but also condoned the sinful lifestyles of these groups, as is claimed by today’s progressives.
Actual evidence does not allow us to imagine that Jesus gave Zacchaeus permission to continue practicing extortion. Nor did Jesus excuse the woman caught in adultery. One is on much firmer ground to argue that Jesus’ approach to the tax collectors and harlots would have been like John the Baptist, who welcomed groups that no one else would welcome, but who challenged them to radical change in their lifestyles.
Despite modern attempts to invent a permissive Jesus, all of the actual evidence points to an historical Jesus who was a Puritan on sexual morality. We see this from his teaching in Matthew 5:28 that “whoever looks at a woman in order to desire her has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” Jesus says it’s not just acts; looks also count. He says sin is not just in the bed, but even in the head. How much more Puritan can you get?
We also see that Jesus is far from permissive in his strict teaching on divorce, which is confirmed by the historical criteria of multiple independent witnesses (Matthew 5:31-32, Matthew 19:6-9, Mark 10:2-12, Luke 16:18), dissimilarity (it contradicted Judaism, and the early church tried to soften it), and embarrassment (even in Matthew 19:10, the disciples hit the panic button here). Some see Jesus’ words as an absolute prohibition of divorce. Some see his words as simply a reminder that we cannot erase a sexual relationship. Either way, Jesus’ teaching about divorce is as historically bedrock as it gets. Take that together with his teaching on looking with lust, and how can we argue for a permissive Jesus, who utters such strict teachings?
Jesus’ teaching on divorce is tied to the Law of Moses’s declaration “The two [a man and a woman] shall become one flesh” (Genesis 2:24), words that are reaffirmed twice by Jesus and twice by Paul. Jesus affirms the Bible’s central teaching on sexuality: sex is only for lifelong loving marriage between a man and a woman. (We’ll talk more about that on Mother’s Day.) If Jesus disagreed with the Law of Moses and mainstream Judaism on sexual morality, his teaching on divorce was proof that he had the courage to speak up and say so.
That goes also for the question of whether Jesus was OK with same-sex intimacy. It is commonly argued (as Jimmy Carter does) that Jesus did not speak one word on this subject. But Jesus clearly affirms sex only between a man and a woman. Furthermore, on Jesus’ sin list in Mark 7:21-22, Jesus names not only fornication (porneia) and adultery (moicheia), but also the sin of aselgeia, translated “lasciviousness” in the KJV and “lewdness” or “licentiousness” in other versions. The word aselgeia means shocking sexual behavior beyond mere fornication or adultery. Go to my website BiblicalEthic.org for an article I have written on this word.
Jesus teaches a sky-high ethic. One item of historical bedrock in Jesus’ teaching is unlimited forgiveness of wrongs done to us. This teaching is unparalleled anywhere in Judaism or paganism. And we find that teaching in at least 5 independent sound bites. Added to this teaching is Jesus’ command to love our enemies. If I were inventing my own Jesus, I would not have included this part of the historical Jesus. Forgiveness and love of enemies are definitely where Jesus pushes me out of my comfort zone. I know he’s right, and I only hurt myself if I fail to do what he says. But I can’t avoid this section of historical bedrock, even though it makes it sound like God will only forgive us if we have forgiven everyone who has ever wronged us.
Jesus’ unique teaching on servanthood can be found in multiple independent witnesses: Mark 9:35 and 10:35-45 (= Matthew 20:20-28), Matthew 23:11-12, Luke 22:24-27, and John 13:1-17. Luke gives us the closest connection to John. Both of them report what Jesus said about servanthood at the Last Supper, although in John, Jesus gives a dramatic demonstration of his teaching in action when he washes his followers’ feet. Jesus uses the verbs “lord it over” and “domineer” or “pull rank” to describe the Gentile approach to power (the Jewish approach was not much different). Jesus declares, “It shall not be so among you.” (Matthew 20:26) In his teaching on this occasion, Jesus turns King of the Hill upside down. The criteria of multiple witnesses, embarrassment (the disciples don’t look good in this scene), and dissimilarity all indicate that this teaching is another piece of undeniable historical bedrock in the life of Jesus.
Jesus gives us an ethic that is sky high. He preaches love of enemies, and practices what he preached on the cross. He tells his followers, “Unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you shall by no means enter the kingdom of heaven.” (Matthew 5:20) Jesus goes so far as to say, “Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father who is in heaven is perfect.” (Matthew 5:48) Even the early church tries to soften such teaching, as we see in the DidachÄ“, the earliest Christian book from outside the Bible, where we read, “For if you are able to bear all the yoke of the Lord, you shall be perfect, but if you are not able, do whatever you can.” If we think we can earn our way to God, the historical Jesus demands perfection.
So when we see how tough on sin the historical Jesus was, we have to ask: is Jesus giving us a roadmap on how to save ourselves by doing what God requires? If not, then what exactly is Jesus trying to tell us?
I think we find the answer in Jesus’ parable about the Pharisee and the Tax Collector in Luke 18:9-14. A story where a tax collector is the hero meets the criterion of dissimilarity: it does not fit either the Judaism of Jesus’ day or the early church. The Pharisee prays to God that he treats people fairly and honestly, he lives by the law of chastity, he practices self-denial, and he tithes every cent of his income, while the tax collector grieves over how badly he’s sinned against God, beats himself, and prays, “God, be merciful to me [literally “atone for” me], a sinner!” The shocking punch line is where Jesus declares that it was not the Pharisee, but the slimy tax collector, who went home “justified,” that is, “made righteous” in the sight of God.
Luke says that Jesus told this story for people “who trusted in themselves that they were righteous.” Here is Jesus’ clearest teaching about grace: God’s mercy is not for those who trust in their own goodness, but for those who know they cannot save themselves. Without this message of grace, without Jesus’ atoning sacrifice that takes away every sin we’ve ever done, Jesus’ teaching becomes a law we can never obey. Jesus is not some figure from the past who gave us burdens too heavy for us to carry, but who then leaves it to us to save ourselves. He has completely removed the barrier of sin between us and God.
But now, how can we come to such conclusions about Jesus? Why would we ever do so? What makes Jesus the one who can take our sin away? Good question! If not for Jesus’ resurrection, we would not have much reason to pay much attention to the historical Jesus other than as an interesting curiosity. Jesus’ resurrection is the bedrock for all historical bedrock, the event that helps us make sense out of why Jesus goes around acting and talking like he is God. We’ll talk about that next Sunday on Biblical Words and World!
