The Ancients - Jesus of Nazareth

Episode Date: December 13, 2023

Jesus of Nazareth is one of the most famous figures in history. Believed to be the Son of God in Christianity, he is the central figure in one of the world’s most dominant religions.Today, Tristan and Dr Helen Bond, a Professor of Christian Origins at the University of Edinburgh, discuss what the sources tell us of the real man. They delve into what they reveal about his life and teachings, the world he lived in, the key figures in his life such as John the Baptist, as well as the narrative of his trial and death from a historical perspective. This episode was produced by Elena Guthrie and edited by Annie Coloe.Discover the past with exclusive history documentaries and ad-free podcasts presented by world-renowned historians from History Hit. Watch them on your smart TV or on the go with your mobile device. Get 50% off your first 3 months with code ANCIENTS sign up now for your 14-day free trial HERE.You can take part in our listener survey here.

Hi, I'm Tristan Hughes, and if you would like the Ancient ad-free, get early access and bonus episodes, sign up to History Hit. With a History Hit subscription, you can also watch hundreds of hours of original documentaries, including my recent documentary all about Petra and the Nabataeans, and enjoy a new release every week. Sign up now by visiting historyhit.com slash subscribe. It's the Entrance on History Hit. I'm Tristan Hughes, your host, and in today's episode we're talking about arguably the most famous figure in history, Jesus of Nazareth. What do the surviving sources, biblical and non-biblical, tell us about this figure who was born just over 2,000 years ago?

And what do they also reveal about the world he lived in, where the Romans ruled supreme? Well, to explain all, I was delighted to be joined by Dr Helen Bond, a Professor of Christian Origins at the University of Edinburgh. Helen has done extensive research on the historical Jesus, as well as the figures that surround his story, from John the Baptist, to Pontius Pilate, to Mary Magdalene. I really do hope you enjoy. And here's Helen. Helen, it is wonderful to have you on the podcast today. Thank you. Great to be here. It's wonderful to have you back. It's been too long since we last chatted about Mary Magdalene,

and this time looking at the historical Jesus. I mean, first off, wow. For all of you scholars attempting to reconstruct his life and learn more about this figure, Helen, it feels like such a titanic undertaking. I know. And it was one that I said, I will never write about the historical Jesus. I've done various other characters in the gospel tradition. Pontius Pilate was one that I spent a lot of time on. But I always thought not Jesus because it's just too big a thing, too big a topic. And too many people have written about Jesus. So many people, there's just book after book. But then I was asked if I would write a book about Jesus. And I thought, and it was only a short one. Maybe I can just about take that on. But yeah, it's a lot to get your head around. A lot to get your head around. But it also seems like, and I know you use this word in your book,

a quest that scholars have been undertaking since the 18th century has a long history in itself. Yes, exactly. I like the idea, this image of the quest. We're like knights in armour looking for the Holy Grail. And in some way, I think looking for're like knights in armour looking for the Holy Grail. And in some way, I think looking for Jesus is just as elusive as the Holy Grail. How do we know Jesus when we find him? And there's so many pitfalls along the way. More than any other character in history, I think people find the kind of Jesus they're looking for or what they want Jesus to be like. What checks and balances do we put there so that we're not doing that? I mean, first off, now, I'm a Christian and I grew up going to church regularly, but no such thing as a silly question. Helen, when looking at the evidence, can we be pretty sure that there was

a figure called Jesus that actually did exist? It's a good question to ask because I think increasingly people are doubting it. There was a recent poll that said that something like 25% of young people in Britain don't think that Jesus existed. So this mythicist view is actually gaining some traction, but it shouldn't do because there is very good evidence for Jesus. The thing you have to remember is that he's a peasant, a provincial, he's not a Roman citizen. So you wouldn't expect him to have inscriptions and to appear in loads of evidence. But what we do have are letters from a follower, St. Paul, that date to about 20 years after the execution of Jesus.

And already within about 70, 80 years, you do have the Romans taking notice of the movement that he founded. So you've got Tacitus and Suetonius, possibly not Suetonius, but Tacitus and Pliny, they're talking about Christians and Christ. They know him pretty, pretty quickly. So I think there's actually very good evidence that Jesus was a real historical person. And first off, let's explore these various different sources that you have when trying to learn more about this figure. And first off, let's explore these various different sources that you have when trying to learn more about this figure. And you mentioned these Roman sources already. So what are the likes of Tacitus and Suetonius, maybe even Pliny? How do they refer to Jesus?

Only very briefly. So Tacitus refers to Christians just very briefly. He's actually talking about Nero's persecution of Christians because they're blamed for the fire in Rome that was probably set by Nero himself. So he just very quickly says that Christians got their name from Christus, who was somebody in Judea who got crucified by Pontius Pilate. Pliny says a bit more about them. He talks about, he's really talking about the followers of Jesus. He says that they meet together and they sing hymns and they worship Jesus as if he was a god. And there's also a passage in Suetonius where he mentions somebody called Crestus and riots in the synagogue because of Crestus.

But it's debatable whether that is actually a reference to Jesus or not. It could be a corruption of Crestus, but Crestus is also a very common name, particularly for slaves. So it may be that it has nothing to do with Jesus at not. It could be a corruption of Christus, but Crestus is also a very common name, particularly for slaves. So it may be that it has nothing to do with Jesus at all. But we have people of the stature of Tacitus and Pliny knowing about Christians very early in the second century. They are still, as you mentioned, though, quite brief, as you say, in what they mention about him. But if we look at some of the other sources that we have before we get to the Bible itself, do we have Jewish sources talking about Jesus too? Yeah, we have a really interesting one, Josephus, Flavius Josephus, who was writing in the 90s. And he has a sort of a paragraph about Jesus, which is really weird because we know from

Josephus' works, he wrote loads and loads of stuff. And we know that he was a Pharisee and a Jew and certainly not a Christian. But in this little paragraph about Jesus, he says that Jesus was the Messiah and maybe he wasn't a proper man and he rose again on the third day. So this little paragraph has clearly had some tampering over the course of its transmission. And what people think is most likely is that Josephus did say something about Jesus, but then Christians, who were the ones actually who preserved his writing, rewrote his passage so that it sounded a little bit more Christian, a little bit more to their liking. But actually, when you take the Christian sounding bits away, you are left with a sort of fairly cohesive passage. And it probably

is something similar to what Josephus says. So then we have evidence of a Jewish writer from the late first century saying that Jesus was a prophetic figure. He did these amazing deeds, by which he probably means the miracles and the healings. And he was a teacher and that he was crucified by Pontius Pilate and that his followers believed that he had been raised again on the third day. So that's actually quite interesting in terms of an elite Jewish author. Jewish author. I would love to know, it's possible that Christians have also missed something out in what Josephus said, because this little paragraph is set amongst a list of tumults that all happened in the time of Pontius Pilate. So probably there was an account of some kind of tumult associated with Jesus, maybe something to do with what he did in the temple when he

overturns the tables of the money changers. And I would love to have that little paragraph where Josephus is actually giving from the point of view of a member of the Jewish elite, what somebody like him actually thought about Jesus at the end of the first century would be amazing evidence, but it's gone. But alas, and we will certainly get to that story of Jesus in the temple as we go on, because it is an extraordinary part of his story. I must ask about the Christian texts that we also have for this figure, but not texts that are in the Bible today. What are these texts? I mean, because Helen, I've got in my notes, and this is really good, the name apocryphal gospels. Yes, apocryphal gospels. So there are obviously, the canon is a fairly arbitrary thing. When Mark was writing a gospel, he didn't think, oh, I'm writing a gospel, which will be in the canon. And when whoever wrote the gospel of Thomas wrote, he wasn't thinking, oh, I'll sneak in a non-canonical gospel here.

This is later terminology. But there's actually loads and loads of Christian literature that didn't get into the New Testament. A lot of it is perfectly fine. Some of it didn't get into the New Testament because it's heretical in some way or ways that were later deemed to be heretical. You have actually lots and lots of gospels. You have the Gospel of Thomas, which I just mentioned, which is basically a list of sayings of Jesus. Some people think it goes back very early, and maybe it had an earlier draft, an earlier precursor. Most people nowadays, though, I think that it goes back to the second century, and it's not as old as the canonical Gospels. You have things like the Gospel of Peter, which is only in a fragment at the moment it probably was a full gospel at one point but the bit that we have now is just the passion narrative it

starts at the trial of Jesus and carries on till after the resurrection and you get lots and lots of other stories you get so-called Gnostic Gospels. This is a sort of a later, again, deemed to be heretical. It's a philosophical system in which these Gospels tend to have stories of the risen Jesus in dialogue with various disciples, quite often female disciples, quite often Mary or Salome. And I don't think there's anything historical in them, but they are all interesting as historical artifacts that tell you about the people who are writing them. So there's lots of these Gospels. We tend to think there's only four because quite early on in the second century, it was decided that we would just have the four in the canon. But there are lots more as well.

It's so interesting. I'd love to do a whole episode just exploring those other Gospels because they are absolutely insane in many cases. Some of them are crazy and some of them are just lovely. They did the backstory to Mary, for example, in the Proto-Evangelium of James, what Mary was like as a little girl, or extra infancy stories about Jesus. And quite often, he's quite a naughty boy. He's not the little saintly character you might expect all sorts of stuff in them we'll get to the early life of jesus very very soon but i also have

when we keep on these sources a bit longer the source q oh yes now very interesting very important as well when approaching this topic not everybody believes in q i'm a, but Q is when you put Matthew and Luke together with Mark, you can see that Mark wrote first and that Matthew and Luke copy from Mark, but they add bits of their own. And when you put Matthew and Luke together, you can see that there's actually some material that Matthew and Luke also share, but it's not come from Mark. This all sounds a bit complicated, but the dominant literary hypothesis today is that Mark wrote first, and then Matthew and Luke wrote independently of one another. They copied from Mark, but they also copied from another document, a written text, which has now been lost. And that is given the title Q, which stands for the German word

Quelle, just meaning source. So it's an unknown source, an unknown written source. People think it's written because it's in the same order throughout Matthew and Luke. So that suggests a written document rather than just oral tradition, which you would expect to be just random. So that's what Q is. I think most people still believe in Q, but there's a growing amount of New Testament scholars who think you don't actually need Q. You can just say Mark wrote first, and then Matthew, for example, and then Luke, and Luke used both of them, in which case you've no need for Q. And certainly Q has never been found. It's only a hypothesis. But I'm guessing then at the end of the day, we have all this different source material, but

are the best sources for you and other scholars wanting to learn more about the historical Jesus, are they those main four gospels that are in the New Testament today? Yes, exactly. And particularly Mark's gospel, because it's usually thought of as being the first. The other three are basing their account on Mark. So yes, Mark's gospel, because it's usually thought of as being the first. The other three are basing their account on Mark. So yes, Mark's gospel in particular, I'd say. Last question on the sources before we kind of delve into Jesus himself. I mean, would these gospels like Mark, Luke, Matthew, would they have been talking with each other? And also, would they themselves have been using, let's say, eyewitness accounts, perhaps, of people who saw Jesus,

who were maybe in the crowds of people that flocked to him? Yeah, I think there must be some kind of eyewitness account at some point. But Mark is probably writing in the 70s. You've got 40 years between Jesus's death and Mark's gospel. So those stories have been circulating, they've been changed, they've been tweaked, they've been forgotten, remembered. A lot has happened in the transition from those times. And probably most of the eyewitnesses are already dead, even by the time that Mark is writing, particularly when you factor in that ancient life expectancy wouldn't have been as long as today. And certainly by the time that Matthew, Luke, John, maybe early second century by this time. We've no longer got eyewitnesses, but clearly there is this tradition which ultimately goes back to the people who knew Jesus.

Well, let's kind of look at the world at that time in that area of the Eastern Mediterranean. Helen, from the archaeology and the literature, I mean, into what kind of world was Jesus born? It's a world of occupation, Roman occupation. Jesus is born in Galilee in the north, and that was actually under a Jewish client king, Herod Antipas. But as soon as he goes down south, it's under direct Roman rule, which is why you have a Roman governor there and his auxiliary troops. So it's a time where Jewish people have hopes and ideas,

dreams of what the future might be like, maybe self-rule as they'd had in the past, not the rule of Rome as they have at the moment. So it's a time of longing for change, perhaps. It's, I suppose, like most of the Roman Empire. It's a place of peasants, of agrarian economy, people surviving on the land, people like Jesus who are, the Gospels say that he's a carpenter or a maker of things in wood or a stonemason even. He's some kind of skilled artisan. That's the level at which his family is existing in probably small communities in Galilee. And you mentioned the name Herod Antipas there.

Is this the same Herod as King Herod or is this a different figure? He's known to us as King Herod. Mark calls him King Herod, but he wasn't actually a king. His precise title was Tetrarch. He's a ruler of a quarter of a kingdom, but the New Testament tends to call him King Herod. So he's not the same as Herod I, though. So he's not the bad king in the birth stories who put the kids to death.

That's a different king. He was a very important king, King Herod. He was very pro-Roman, and he brought the land of Israel into sort of subjugation under Rome. But also because he was so pro-Roman, the Romans let the Jews get away with quite a lot. And they had quite a lot of freedom because of Herod the Great. But he was quite repressive as well. So the problem is they're all called Herod.

But the Herod in charge when Jesus was growing up was Herod Antipas. And he ruled over Galilee and another region called Perea. Yeah, I mean, that other Herod, Herod the Great, I mean, an extraordinary builder too, isn't he? And another episode entirely on that. But let's talk about the birth of Jesus then. Come on then, it's one of the best known parts of his life. But what do these sources, what do they actually say about Jesus's birth? Do they all agree or is there a difference? Oh, there's lots of difference. And in fact, most of our sources say nothing at all about his birth. It's only two of the gospels that mention his birth at all. And that's Luke and Matthew.

They agree on some basics. So they agree that Jesus was born in Bethlehem and that he grew up in Galilee and that his parents were called Mary and Joseph and they agree roughly about the time it's roughly a decade or so before zero but but almost everything else is different about them so Matthew is the one who has the magi following a star and the story of King Herod killing the children and it's Luke who has the story about the census and the shepherds and the angels and all of that stuff. So they are quite different. And the stories in each case reflect the interests of each evangelist. So Matthew has kings and rulers and wise men, and that reflects his interest in showing that Jesus is himself a king.

He's a kind of a King David figure. And in Luke, Luke is much more interested in the poor and the lonely and the lowly and the marginalized. And so he tells the story from the point of view of the women and has shepherds and no status people. So it's very difficult to know what kind of history to take from this, particularly since there was in antiquity this idea that a great man would automatically have a great birth that sort of somehow signalled to the people around him that this was going to be a great man. And this kind of biographical literature, which is what Matthew and Luke both are, is very commonly associated with great births for great men. Because that's, for instance, let's say the virginal birth story,

isn't it? Does that very much feed into that particular narrative that they would want to promote in the biographies of this figure? Yes, I think that's exactly it. The Jewish scriptures are full of stories of people who have unusual and astounding births. Very often people are born to a barren mother, for example, a mother who's elderly and God then overshadows her and she becomes pregnant. But it is in the normal way. The surprising thing is just that she's very old or she hasn't had a child till now. So I think the Christian scriptures want to go beyond that. The gospels want to say more than that about Jesus. And the way they do it, certainly

in Matthew, is to pick up on a prophecy in Isaiah that talks about, probably in the Hebrew, it just says a young woman will conceive and there's not a great stress on her virginity. But when it's translated into the Greek text, which is the text that all the early Christians know, they're all reading Greek versions of the Hebrew scriptures. Suddenly it uses the word parthenos, which does mean young woman, but also means virgin. And so they seize on this and say, ah, yes, that's talking about Jesus's mother, Mary. She was actually not just old or barren, but she was a virgin and there was no man involved at all. It was just God who's overshadowed her. So Jesus is growing up in Galilee under the rule, you see Herod Antipas there,

seems like he's overseeing some big changes, I'm presuming. But what, Helen Helen can we draw from the sources about Jesus's early life and that world we know very little there's only one story in Luke which again is very much the kind of type story that you get of a great teacher is going to have a story like what we get in Luke where he's found age 12 in the temple instruct instructing all the people there, so he knows better than everybody else. I would imagine that he grew up in a fairly normal Jewish family, and they're probably like every other Jewish family in Nazareth. He's going to the synagogue on the Saturday, he's hearing the scriptures, the story of the scriptures at home. He's learning about the Jewish law from his parents. So, yeah, and he's probably learning a trade from his father too.

He's learning how to be a carpenter or a stonemason or whatever it was that he actually worked at. I like the idea actually that he was a shipbuilder because the people he seems to associate with particularly are these fishermen down by the Lake of Galilee. It's quite possible that he was a woodworker who made boats as well, but that's quite hypothetical. Quite hypothetical, but that's an important point to highlight. The Lake of Galilee, or the Sea of Galilee, is this also an important area for the people who were living in Galilee during that time? Was that an important area for resources, let's say? Yes, massively. It's not so close to Nazareth. You've got to take a winding path down to that. But certainly people who are living on the shores of the lake, this is really

thriving industry. So you have people who have small businesses there, but you actually also have quite big business. And as well as taking the fish out of the lake, they're drying the fish and they're salting it and making it into garum paste or kind of like the ketchup of the ancient world. So they're making this fish paste and exporting dried fish. So there are some really wealthy people on the Lake of Galilee. It's not just poor fishermen eking out a living, but you would have got a variety of people there. And certainly for the local population, the presence of fish there was an important part of their diet.

An important part of their diet. And you also mentioned earlier how another really interesting part of this whole story is the taking of a census. I must ask, for the local population, was there much interaction, do we think, between this population and, let's say, higher up officials like Herod Antipas and his magistrates, those serving in his administration? Would there have been for someone, a figure like Jesus, growing up in probably a Jewish family in this area of the world, would there have been much interaction with the people higher up? I think there would have been quite an amount of interaction, yes. Not so much with the Romans, because Galilee itself wasn't under direct Roman control at this point.

So all the films have Roman soldiers marching about in their red legionary costumes. There wouldn't have been any of that. But you did have Herod Antipas, as you said, and his Jewish forces. So he would have had auxiliary troops. There would also have been plenty of tax collectors. People levied taxes for all kinds of things. So you would have needed taxes to fishing rights on the sea. We hear of tax collectors in the Gospels too, tolls for traveling along roads, all kinds of import-export taxes. So yeah, I think tax collectors of varying levels would have been well known. Some of them were just local people collecting taxes,

others would have been quite high up officials. And they are the ones who are really disliked, I think, in the gospel narratives, because they were legally allowed to ask for a third more than the actual price, because obviously they wanted to make something out of the taxes. They would give the taxes that they collected to the ruler, but they also wanted to make something themselves. And so they were the ones who were asking more than the actual price. So yeah, I think you've got a whole range of higher and lesser officials. And in this society, another big question, but I know it's something that you find really, really interesting. Do you have any idea how Jesus would have looked, what language he would have spoken or languages potentially? Yeah, as to the language, virtually everybody in this part of the whole sort of eastern Mediterranean spoke Aramaic.

So that was the language of this region well into Syria and that area. People would have had a smattering of Greek because Greek was already the lingua franca of the eastern empire because of Alexander the Great and his campaigns. So the higher echelons knew Greek and a craftsman probably needed to know a little bit just to be able to interact and make his orders. So Jesus may have known a bit of Greek, but probably not much else. He probably just knew Aramaic and that would be his normal language. Hebrew was just the language for the synagogue and people generally didn't know Hebrew all that well at the time. In terms of what he looked like, we have very strong

images from films and art and things, this sort of Bedouin look, but actually it's probably much more likely that he had a shorter tunic. He's a workman. He's not floating about all day. He doesn't want long robes. And he probably had his hair short because the Augustus look was in at the time. Everybody's looking like the emperor. Probably shorter hair, probably no beard and a tunic with a belt. That's probably what he would have looked like. Sandals on his feet. And we know that they wore little sock like things to presumably stop their sandals rubbing. Yeah, the Jesus look was certainly sported by Jesus. Yeah, I think we'd be a little bit surprised by what he looked like, actually.

Not quite the dominant picture. And of course, dark, dark-skinned, dark-haired, not that sort of blonde picture that you get from art. I can't believe I'm also asking this question, but you did mention it in passing in the past. I mean, do you have any idea about underpants with this figure? I'm always wanting to know what exactly did people look like? What was life like for them? I have made an extensive study of underpants. And although there is no direct evidence, it does seem likely that there was some kind of loincloth or something because I think particularly a man who's working is going to need something to maybe cover his decency it may be that sometimes he has to hoist his tunic up and I would imagine some kind of a

loincloth but yeah and quite possibly he had lice most people in the ancient world of his class would probably have had lice because unless you have more than one tunic and unless you're able to wash it fairly regularly, yeah, it's probably quite scratchy. Because in the grand scale of things in those village town economies at that time, I mean, how important a profession was carpentry? Different views on this. Some say it was a despised trade, but I don't think that's likely. I think it's, again, probably depends how good he was. If he's quite skilled, if he's working on boats, he may have eked out quite a decent living. It's clearly a family profession. It's perhaps not quite as stable as having a large farm or something like

that. But farming also brought instability in terms of what the weather was doing. So I think he's part of the peasant class. He's an artisan, but he's probably doing all right in terms of that. Of course, you've got to think in terms of that low level. There's no middle class in the ancient world as we understand it. He's part of this broad sort of group of people who are living from, if not from one day to the next, from one week to the next, certainly. Because it is such an important and a big part of his life alongside, of course, the teachings and the end of his life that we focus a lot on today. I mean, let's move on

towards Jesus's teachings now. And first of all, I've got another figure I'd like to ask a bit about in his relationship with Jesus. Helen, who was the figure of John the Baptist? Jesus was not the first nor the last of these sort of prophetic Messiah type figures in the first century. And the one we know most about besides Jesus is John the Baptist, who came just before Jesus. Josephus mentions him as well as the Gospels. And he seems to have been what's known as an apocalyptic prophet. So he's a prophetic kind of figure. He emerges in the wilderness, scantily clad, though in a costume that sort of evokes Elijah, this figure from the Jewish past. And he's calling people to repentance.

And particularly he's saying the end of the world is coming. God is going to come and judge you. So get ready now because it's going to be soon. And that's what an apocalyptic figure is, somebody who's announcing the end of the world is coming very soon. And he does seem, according to the Gospels and also according to Josephus, to have had quite a lot of success. People are streaming out to him in the wilderness. And he has this special sign so that people know

that they're part of, they're prepared, they're ready, they're part of this new group of people. And he's putting people in the water and baptizing them. He's putting the water over them and that's a symbol that they are now ready for God to come. So he seems to be just before Jesus and the gospels suggest that Jesus himself was part of John's movement. So Jesus is presumably already interested in spiritual things, interested in this idea of is God going to come? What's going to happen? What should people do to prepare for this? That's interesting in itself and that kind of inspiration almost for Jesus, the figure of John the Baptist, because that kind of leads into my next question. You mentioned how John has this kind of apocalyptic outlook. Now, is there this great debate between scholars like yourself, amongst

scholars, about whether Jesus had a similar apocalyptic outlook? There is a debate, but I don't think there should be. It seems to me that Jesus is also in that apocalyptic line of thought and that he's got that from John. And the reason why I say that, one of the reasons why I say that is because the movement that followed him is also apocalyptic. So in his earlier letters, Paul also thinks the end of the world is going to come soon. Get yourself ready for it. But I think there is a slight shift in Jesus's preaching that it's not all about the end of the world is coming. God is coming in judgment. Prepare yourself. There's also in Jesus something about how you prepare and how you make ready and how you live as a community expecting

the end. And so I think there is a little bit more of a focus on the here and now. And that's the aspect that some scholars pick up. Some scholars pick that up and say, actually, that was Jesus's main thrust. Jesus was really about the kingdom of God as it's growing around him, this new sort of community that's forming around Jesus himself. Others like me would say that's there, but it's secondary to Jesus's sense that the end of the world is coming soon because that's quite interesting in itself i mean the main message of jesus that you mentioned it's kind of a bit different to john the baptist in itself is his message therefore when you kind of see it in the sources that come after him like saint paul and so on what is this main central distinctive message that he carries throughout

his teachings i think the central message is that the kingdom of god is going to come very soon and by the kingdom of god he seems to mean this sort of realm where god is in control. So it's not Rome, it's not the Herods, it's not any of these other people that we've had lately. It's the world as it would be if God were in control. And so this is about to become manifest in some way or other. And he's not very clear on how this is going to happen because God is going to do it. And it's going to happen fairly soon. So he says, it's at hand, it's nigh, it's knocking at the door. So you just have to get yourself ready for that. And I think that's the central focus of it. He's also interested in the idea of Jewish restoration. He appoints 12 apostles, 12 disciples. And that's a really weird thing because the lists of the 12

are slightly different. And we also know that he actually had a lot more than 12 disciples. He had women for a start who don't even get a look in this list, but he also had other men as well. So it seems important that there were 12 people with him. And to a Jew of the first century, that clearly meant the 12 tribes of Israel. And of the first century, that clearly meant the 12 tribes of Israel. And in the first century, there were only two tribes left. The other 10 had been obliterated by various foreign campaigns. And so for a Jewish prophet to walk around with 12 men and talk about the kingdom of God coming, what people are imagining is that God is going to come, establish his kingdom, and it is going to be in the great glory days with the 12 tribes

re-established. So he's being accompanied not just by 12 figures, by crowds of men and women. Is it with this context that we then get all of these stories of Jesus and his healing powers, or are those sometimes more secluded events? No, I think it's actually the other way around. It's the healings and exorcisms that attract the crowds. So people like to hear about the kingdom of God and the teaching. That's fine, but it's not going to attract a huge crowd. What's really getting the crowds, I think, are the healings. So at some point, Jesus clearly finds that he has some kind of gift of healing. He's not the only one in the ancient world. We hear of other healing people

with powers of healing or Asclepius, the god, was thought to have powers to be able to heal people too. Whatever is going on here, people are thinking that Jesus has this ability to heal them and to exorcise demons. And it seems to be working. So everywhere he goes, people are flocking to him because you imagine what it's like with no health service, very little ability to get to a doctor, or most people are going to have something wrong with them most of the time. And they're bringing all of these people to Jesus and he's healing them. And I think that's what gets the crowds. And then once he's got the crowd, then he starts telling them about the kingdom of

God. Right, right. And because then you also get, isn't it, once you have those crowds, I mean, the popular story, I mean, the one that I always remember is like the feeding of the 5,000 and those kind of natural, wondrous events that no one can really explain how he does it, except that this is someone who's evidently, you know, there's something about him. Do we have any idea what the origin of that particular story might be? Yeah, these so-called sort of nature miracles are difficult historically. You can put up a good case that in terms of healings and exorcisms, there was something happening and people seem to have agreed, even opponents seem to have agreed that Jesus could do these amazing things. But when it comes to things like stopping a storm or walking on water, and particularly this one, the feeding

of the 5,000, it's very difficult to explain what's going on there. And particularly in that story, there are scriptural resonances to it. So there's a story told of where he fed 100 people and there were all these lots of food left over later on. There's also images there of the manor in the wilderness where Moses provided for people in the wilderness. And, of course, this story is manor in the wilderness where Moses provided for people in the wilderness. And of course, this story is also set in the wilderness. And so any Jewish reader would see those connections. There's also links here with the Eucharist because Jesus lifts his eyes,

he blesses the bread before he breaks it and sends it off to the crowd. So it's difficult to know what the background to this story is. Did it just happen as the Gospels describe it? Or I think more likely there's perhaps something there or perhaps nothing there and it's just been created from the story of Elisha and then all these other elements have been added to it. I think some of these sort of natural stories like this, where Jesus is doing something in the natural world, I think what they're really trying to say

in the Gospels is something about Jesus. So Jesus is this character who has the power to stop storms, to walk on water, to feed people out of nothing. It's building up this picture of who Jesus is, whether it's historical or not, I think is less important to the evangelists than what it tells us about Jesus. And it evokes, this story evokes all those stories about Moses and prophets of old and the Eucharist in the present church. And whilst he's doing his teachings, I'm also quite interested in, before he goes to Jerusalem at the end, which we'll get to very shortly, but where does he go? Are there very interesting cases of places that he doesn't visit? I mean, what are the places that he does choose to visit?

He seems to be much more at home in the sort of the small rural communities of Galilee and then Judea. You see him in small towns and villages, you see him in the wilderness. The places he doesn't go to are perhaps the ones you might expect, which are to the big cities in Galilee. And Herod Antipas, like his father, Herod the Great, was a great builder and he had built two cities by this time, Sepphoris and Tiberias. Plenty of people there to listen to Jesus' message, Jews as well as Gentiles. So it is curious that we never hear of him going to these cities at all. Maybe that's just because the evidence is lacking. You don't know what you've not been told.

But it's also possible that he deliberately avoided these cities, perhaps because of what had happened to John the Baptist. Herod had killed John the Baptist and Jesus wants to keep out of the radar of Herod Antipas a bit. Well, one place that we know that he ultimately does go to is Jerusalem. Now, once again, so we can kind of get an idea of this setting. Helen, what does Jerusalem look like at the time that he emerges, that he enters the scene of the city? I think amazing. It's a pretty amazing place today, but Herod the Great had completely rebuilt Jerusalem to make it into the temple in Jerusalem was considered one of the

wonders of the ancient world. Herod made it into this massive sort of, he even extended the hill, the mountain that Jerusalem is built on, so that he could build an even bigger temple. The sort of the outer courtyards were amazingly large. They were white, they were covered in gold. People came from all over the place just to see the temple. But even the rest of the city too, Herod had built his palace there. He'd built walls with beautiful towers and he'd paved the roads. This would be an amazing sight, particularly for someone from rural Nazareth turning up here and seeing this beautiful place. And of course, it's absolutely imbued with the stories of Israel, with holiness, with the idea that the God of Israel is most close to humans in this temple. So it's an amazing place, I think.

So this temple is one of these great wonders of the ancient world. But come on then, how does Jesus, how does he interact with the temple? Perhaps a surprising way. does he interact with the temple? Perhaps a surprising way. He goes in and he looks around and then he has this sort of episode. He overturns the tables of the money changers. He kicks over the cellars of doves and he stops people moving from one part of the temple to another. And then he leaves. And he says, my father's house shouldn't be a den of robbers. And then he leaves. And he says, my father's house shouldn't be a den of robbers. And then he leaves. And scholars have debated for a long time. What is what's the meaning of this? What's going on here? It used to be thought that this was a cleansing and that actually what he was against was traders in the in the temple,

which is what it looks like at first. But then people realized that actually the presence of traders and the presence of sacrifice is all part of what it should be. The Jewish scriptures talk about the sacrifices that have to be offered in the temple and enter the temple, because then you're sure that it's going to be fine. And paying the tax, which is what the money changers are there to pay a Jewish tax that's paid to the temple. Again, that's all required by God. So nobody is doing anything wrong here. More recent scholars, I think, have realized that what Jesus is actually doing here is prophesying that the temple is going to be destroyed. So rather like Jeremiah back in the day and other prophets, he's saying, you know, here it is, this beautiful temple, the home of God, but don't put all your

reliance in it because God is going to come soon and destroy this. And maybe he expected a new temple to be raised up in some way. He doesn't say much about that. But this is all part and parcel, I think, of this general teaching about the kingdom of God, that God is going to come soon and he's going to wipe away things as we know them and establish his kingdom. I'm trying to put myself in the Roman perspective or those kind of watching this as it's going on as someone like Jesus he's come from the countryside he's got this reputation of having crowds around him and going to these rural villages and then enters the great city and then straight away well is a bit of a wrecking ball a bowling ball going into one of these great

wonders of the ancient world and upsetting everything that was there before him. If you're a Roman or one of the priests or someone like that, can you kind of understand why they think, okay, this guy looks like a bit of a troublemaker who could cause us a lot of problems if we don't deal with him? Absolutely. And I think that's something that we sometimes miss because we're so familiar with these stories and we have such a different view of Jesus. Certainly people in churches who are reading these stories. But yes, and particularly if there's any truth to the story that he rode into Jerusalem on the back of a donkey. This is not necessarily a lowly thing. This is somebody riding in when everybody else is on foot and people hailing him as a great king.

I think the Jewish priests and the Roman administration would have been very wary about Jesus. They would have known about him already. They had systems of spies and informers. They would have known what he was up to in Galilee. They would have known that he was attracting large crowds. And here he is bringing a crowd of people with him to Jerusalem. He's out of control. They don't know what he's going to do next. And it's not just the Romans that the Jewish priests would also have been worried for legitimate reasons. You know, it's really important that everything about the feast runs properly as God has dictated in the Holy Scriptures. So the last thing they need is this self-proclaimed

prophet with his gathering, you know, disrupting things. So from their point of view, it's much better to get rid of him quickly. And so, come on, Helen, we're nearly there at the end now, but what do these events, what do they spark? How does this lead to this very well-known part of the narrative, the story of the Last Supper? What do they spark? How does this lead to this very well-known part of the narrative, the story of the Last Supper? What do we know? Yeah, the Last Supper seems to be, presumably, he did have some kind of Last Supper. And the Gospel suggests that Jesus knew what was coming. And I think that's probably right. You didn't have to be a great prophet to realise that if you turn up in Jerusalem at Passover, the city is crowded to bursting. There's tens of thousands of people come from all over the world. Pilate is there with his troops specifically

because riots always break out at Passover. So everybody knows this is a very volatile situation. So if you arrive in the city just teaching people, let alone doing things in the temple, you must know that your days are numbered. I think it's very likely that Jesus did have some reflection on what's going to happen. Am I going to be killed? What does this mean for those of you who are left behind? And the tradition is that he instituted this, the Eucharist, the commemoration of his body and his blood and the commemoration of his death the night before, whether it was the night before or reasonably close, I think it's fairly likely to be historical. Because, of course, then you get the figure of Judas and the betrayal of Jesus.

But I mean, does it almost feel like he would have been captured either sooner or later? I mean, what's the whole purpose of the betrayal part of the story at the supper? The story of Judas is a strange one. And people tend to think it's historical because it would be a strange story to make up to say that one of Jesus's followers betrayed him to the Jewish high priests. That's not a very strong argument. But assuming that Judas is a historical character, he seems to have betrayed where they could find him on his own quietly. Because I think part of the problem for the priests and for the Romans is that if they picked him up in the middle of a great act of healing or talking to crowds, there could be some kind of riot. So what they want to do is to pick him up quietly when he's on his own with just the innermost group.

And so that seems to be what Judas betrays to them. And so, Helen, this takes us on nicely to one of the last parts of the narrative, of course, which is the narrative of his trial and his death. Should we talk about the trial first and then kind of go on to the execution itself? Yeah, the trial, it's almost certain that the trial accounts as we have them in the Gospels are not verbatim accounts of what happened simply because nobody would have been there. They're written a lot later and they are full of theological ideas and concepts and irony and things like that. But probably Jesus did have some kind of trial. and things like that. But probably Jesus did have some kind of trial. We know from other characters similar to Jesus that there may have been just a hearing of some kind in front of Pilate. Pilate

would want to get the measure of this person. And particularly, he'd be wanting to know, do I just need to get rid of the ringleader? Is it going to be enough to get rid of Jesus? Or do I need to take out more people too? In the end, he clearly decided that just getting rid of Jesus was enough. So there may have been a very sort of brief interrogation at the hands of the chief priests, who then passed him on to Pilate, who again, brief interrogation. But I don't imagine there would have been much need for very much. Roman law only really kicked in if you were a citizen.

Jesus is not of that level. So it's really up to the prefect to do what he likes with Jesus. And it may sound strange to us. We imagine that law had to be seen to be done. But that wasn't the case in the Roman Empire, particularly not with a provincial like Jesus. Human life was disastrously low. Romans didn't really care. The main thing from Pilate's point of view was just to make sure that there weren't riots on his watch in Passover. And so I think it wouldn't have taken very much for Pilate to decide that it's better just to get rid of this guy. I mean, he deserves an episode in himself, Pontius Pilate, and actually,

what do we know about this figure? Oh, he's a good one it was good of you once again to stress there you know how jesus this figure he's he's not a roman citizen and of course therefore doesn't have the same rights of roman citizens he is a provincial a lowly provincial in the eyes of figures like pilot and the priests i mean why is crucifixion chosen i mean what do we know about this method of execution at that time why that particular method yeah crucifixion chosen? I mean, what do we know about this method of execution at that time? Why that particular method? Yeah, crucifixion is a hideous penalty largely reserved for slaves. So it's known as the slave's death. It's for slaves, it's for rebels against Rome, insurrectionists.

It's very much the way you get rid of expendables. People like Jesus, people from the lower classes, you get rid of expendables. People like Jesus, people from the lower classes, it wasn't allowed for Roman citizens, although sometimes Romans did use it. But Romans were so worried about status all the time. But because Jesus is of low status, he can be crucified. So he goes to this slave's death, which is hugely painful, hugely shaming. You're naked, it takes a long time to die. It's a hideous way to go. And of course, it's very public. The whole point of it is that it's public and that people can see it and it acts as a deterrent. People can see it and people can record it as well, which I guess maybe is also why it's such an ingrained part of the narrative down to the present day. And then, of course, ultimately Jesus does die on the cross and is buried. The burial of Jesus, as mentioned in our sources, when you look at that,

and when you look at the archaeology of the time, is that burial in line with what we know about Jewish burial at that time? It seems unlikely. And I think for very good reasons, the evangelists want to make Jesus's burial grander. He is, he's the Christ, he's the Lord. They want to make his burial sort of something important. And also they're very keen because of the sequel, when the women come back and they find an empty tomb, they're very keen to make sure that we know there is a tomb. It's a new tomb. No one else has been buried there. And so when the women come back, there's no doubt whatsoever about the place and about the fact that there's now nobody there. I mean, in actual fact, somebody who has been crucified is far more likely to have been disposed of fairly quickly, is far more likely to have been disposed of fairly quickly, probably in some kind of a mass grave or a shallow grave. And when Mark's Gospel talks about Joseph of Arimathea being a member of the council,

it may well be that's an actual historical fact, but it may be that his post, his role in the council, was to get rid of people who had been victims of execution like this. And there is some, there's a reference in rabbinic writings in the Mishnah that talks about a burial space for criminals. So I think it's much more likely that after the crucifixion, Jesus was buried in some kind of a shallow grave very quickly and probably without ceremony and honour by someone whose task it was to get rid of the bodies. And that in itself is actually quite surprising because part of the horror of crucifixion is that you usually get no burial. Your body is allowed to

dangle on the cross until it becomes food for the vultures and the dogs. And that's one of the really hideous things that you have no memorial, no burial. So Jews in the first century do seem to be keen and were probably allowed to bury corpses, but it's very unlikely that Jesus had any kind of grand tomb. We could talk about so much more in regards to this figure for hours, and it's been an absolutely fascinating chat so far, Helen. Now that we've got to the burial and of course with the story of Jesus there is later of course his resurrection and Paul meeting him supposedly and all of those stories so the story of Jesus is absolutely is far

from over however when looking at the historical Jesus and scholars like yourself does Jesus's burial almost is it almost an end point in a way when you're trying to say, is this plausible? Is this not plausible? Because once you get to the resurrection, this is a time of the figure coming back to life. Yeah. A lot of historical Jesus critics will just say, I'll end with the burial because everything after that is a matter of faith. And to a large extent, I do agree with that. I think once it comes to the resurrection, we are now going beyond the normal rules of physics. People do not rise from the dead. And this is a matter of faith. Do you think that God has raised Jesus? And this is the Christian claim. And it goes beyond anything that can be proved by

historians. People try to put together historical proofs, but I think they're wasting their time because the whole point here is that it relies on faith. Either you believe it or you don't. One thing that people often do is to look at the reaction of the disciples as a historical phenomenon and say something happened to change these men who were completely wiped out one moment. Their whole sort of being was wiped out when Jesus was executed. They're hiding in upper rooms for fear of the Jews. They have nothing going for them. And the next minute you see them, they seem to be preaching openly and with great authority and power. So people say clearly something happened and

something happened to suggest to them that things have changed. And that's a viable way of going about it. But I think in the end, really, we can't say anything historical about the resurrection of Jesus. You either believe it or you don't. And I think that's what it comes down to. To wrap this chat all up, I would like to kind of ask one more question about the sources, because it is really interesting exploring the context and how we think he might have looked and so on and so forth. And also getting that Roman perspective, for instance, of Jesus in the temple and so on. a likelihood that in the future with new archaeological discoveries that more textual information might come to light, more mentions of this figure, that we might be able to learn more about the historical figure of Jesus in time when new discoveries in that area of the world are made?

I live in hope. Like I said before, I would love to read an unadulterated version of Josephus. Our earliest texts of Josephus come from about the 11th century and the tampering probably happened around about the 3rd. I will be looking for a very early copy, but texts do come up. Nobody imagined in the late 30s of the 20th century

that we would find the Nag Hammadi texts, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and they have all massively changed our understanding of Judaism at the time of Jesus and early Christian texts, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and they have all massively changed our understanding of Judaism at the time of Jesus and early Christian texts, Gnostic texts in particular. Archaeology is bringing up things all the time. Things are moving on. And I do think that it's possible that we may find new texts or new archaeological discoveries that might shed new light on what we know about Jesus. It's very exciting indeed. Helen, this has been brilliant. Lastly, you have got a podcast which focuses on your research and is called? It's called Biblical Time Machine. We go back

in the past and not just my research, but anything to do with the Bible. So in its broadest sense, anything to do with the Hebrew Bible or the its broadest sense, anything to do with the Hebrew Bible or the New Testament and everything in between. And we interview loads of really interesting scholars who tell us what they're working on in nice, easy language so that we can all understand what they're talking about. Fantastic. And of course, you have written a book all about the historical Jesus, which is called? The Historical Jesus, A Guide for the Perplexed, published by Bloomsbury. Wonderful. Well, Helen, on that note, it just goes for me to say thank you so much for taking the time to come on the podcast today. Thank you. It's been great talking to you.

Well, there you go. There was Professor Helen Bond explaining all the things the historical Jesus. I hope you enjoyed today's episode. Now, please be sure to like, to follow, to subscribe, wherever you get your podcasts from. Make sure that you are notified when we release new episodes twice every week. But that's enough from me, and I will see you in the next episode.