The Rest Is History - 288: Jesus Christ: The History

Episode Date: December 22, 2022

Join Tom and Dominic for the second of two episodes on 'Historical Jesus'. They discuss scepticism around his existence, the theories about resurrection and crucifixion, and the role of his disciples. *The Rest Is History Live Tour 2023*: Tom and Dominic are back on tour this autumn! See them live in London, New Zealand, and Australia! Buy your tickets here: restishistorypod.com Twitter:  @TheRestHistory @holland_tom @dcsandbrook Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thank you for listening to The Rest Is History. For weekly bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series, and membership of our much-loved chat community, go to therestishistory.com and join the club. That is therestishistory.com. And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. And lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them, and they were sore afraid. And the angel said unto them, Fear not, for behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David, a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord. And this shall be a sign unto you, you shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger. And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host,

praising God and saying, glory to God in the highest, and on earth, peace, goodwill towards men. Tom, that must be one of the most famous scenes in all human culture. It is, of course, the nativity, the shepherds having their vision and going in and gathering around the manger where the baby Jesus lies. I mean, it's the scene that you see every year. And certainly in Britain, in almost, I would guess, almost every primary school, certainly used to be in almost every primary school as children reenacted it. And all over the world, you see images of that. And we are now going, having set the scene in our previous podcast, we are going to try to reconstruct as best we can as historians, as skeptical historians, I suppose it's fair to say, the life of Jesus, aren't we? So we think he existed.

We definitely think Jesus existed. You established that in the previous episode, all these references, the Roman references and so on. So on that question, did he exist or not? I think when you read the Gospels, you have the definite sense of a remarkable teacher. So simply on the basis of the parables that he tells, the stories, they are the most memorable stories ever written. They are incredibly powerful and effective. His teachings are, you know, they stick in the mind. And so the question is, well, where did these teachings come from? If there is no historical Jesus, if there is no person that they derive from, then we have to assume that

basically they emerged from kind of assorted traditions that they were put together by the gospel writers. And if you think about, you know, you tell a writer, you've got to come up with a figure who in 2000 years time will be seen by millions and millions of people across the entire world as both human and divine, and he will have been seen as such for 2000 years, that would be a tough ask. It would, especially if you're getting a committee to do it. Oh my God. Yeah, exactly. You get four people doing it. So it seems to me that that is a much more improbable explanation that it was just made up than the fact that it does derive from someone extraordinary. And also the fact that he is an extraordinary figure is what explains why he comes to be seen as as what he was right so to

that extent i'm not skeptical however there are obviously aspects of the story that i am skeptical about uh and and i think pretty much anyone familiar with uh you know the the basic details would be skeptical about and very very sadly and i hate to play you know scrooge and the grinch rolled into one but i think all the christmas stuff is is most unlikely to be true okay this is very poor this is very poor tom and very disappointing so we began the last podcast with the decree from caesar augustusus, Joseph going from Nazareth to Bethlehem with his wife, Mary, who is pregnant, and they can't get room at the inn, and they go to presumably a cattle shed or something like that. And Jesus is born and lies in the manger, where he is later inspected

by assorted shepherds, wise men, and so on. And you don't believe this happened. So there are all kinds of problems with it. One of which anyone who listened to the previous episode will immediately have picked up on, which is that Jesus was not a Roman subject. And so his father living in Nazareth did not have to pay taxes. The other problem is that Joseph is having to travel to Bethlehem because that's where King David was born. He's descended from King David. The idea that the Romans would care about the line of descent from someone who'd lived centuries and centuries before is insane. Yeah. I mean, surely everybody would have to be on the move saying, where was my ancestor born? I must go to that place immediately. Absolutely. So that doesn't make sense at all.

And so you have to say, well, where has this story come from? And the basic thing is, is that biblical prophecy says that Bethlehem is where the Messiah will be born. And so therefore Jesus has to be got to Bethlehem. And essentially it seems as basic as that. There are further problems with the whole, you know, because our understanding of the Christmas narrative, it's a pooling of the two gospel accounts of Luke and Matthew, but they don't correspond. So when is Jesus being born? We're told in one account that the wise men come to Herod's court. Herod is anxious that a king of the Jews has been born in Bethlehem, and so launches the massacre of the innocents. But Herod dies in 4 bc we're also told that this census is being organized by corineus the

governor of syria but corineus is doing this in ad8 so it's absolutely impossible 12 years yeah to square them however what is in i mean what is interesting about luke's treatment of this is that it echoes josephus Because this isn't the only time that Luke mentions the census. In Acts, which describes how the apostles after Jesus' death spread the gospel across the Mediterranean world, there is a Judean elder called Gamaliel who is advising other members of the council not to persecute the Christians. And he does this with reference to a rebel called Judas the Galilean, who in Luke's account, Gamaliel says, arose in the days of the census and inspired rebellion in the people who followed him.

And this you also get in Josephus, that the census that is introduced when the Romans take over the province of Judea prompts this rebellion by this guy called Judas the Galilean. So there is a kind of nexus there of, I guess for Luke, even though Jesus isn't subject to Rome, the whole story is kind of illustrating what you also get in Josephus, the way in which this is an intrusive imposition by an imperial power. And of course, that then amplifies the contrast with the king of heaven being born in a stable. Right. So I think that's the dynamic that's going on there. This is a Christmassy podcast. Let's look at some of the Christmassy elements to that story.

I know we've got lots to get through, so we don't want to get completely bogged down. But is Jesus born in Bethlehemlehem yes or no do you think no he's born in nazareth he's clearly born in nazareth he's jesus of nazareth okay so no manger no stable you don't think that's plausible i mean where are those details from uh so the the reference to the cattle you know gazing down at the baby in the manger i think it's 10th century i think it's as late as that but it again it derives from um from biblical prophecy uh and so this is this is again is part of the challenge of deciding how historically accurate details within the gospels are because they're retrofitting to match prophecies now this doesn't necessarily you know if you know, if you get Jesus doing something that's in accordance with biblical prophecy, this doesn't necessarily mean that it didn't happen,

because Jesus has agency. So when he goes into Jerusalem before his arrest, he famously goes in on a donkey. And this echoes a passage in Zechariah where it's foretold that the Messiah will do this. So it's perfectly possible to think that Jesus is aware of this and is kind of acting out a role, which seems much likelier. And also, I think that just because events get kind of biblicized, if you want to put it that way, they are described by the gospel writers with allusions to prophecy. Again, it doesn't mean that it didn't happen because that is what the gospel writers would do. But I think in this case, it's pretty clear that it didn't happen. And again, this does not disprove the existence of Jesus, the fact that there are miraculous stories that are told about his birth. Because Augustus, in Suetonius' biography of him, you get an almost identical description.

Suetonius describes it's narrated by a freedman of Augustus called Julius Marathas, who some have thought might have come from the region of Palestine or Syria, that a prodigy alerted everyone in Rome to the fact that nature was in labor with a child who would come to reign as a king over the Roman people. The Senate, thrown into panic, duly voted that no one born that year should be allowed to live. So, you know, that's very like Herod. So there's a definite element of a formula there, isn't there? Yeah, I think, you know, again, I think this is what's interesting is that the whole Christmas tradition, the whole story is, it's absolutely coming from the inheritance of Judean scripture,

but it's also part of the broader flux that you get across the Roman world and which is exemplified by the figure of Augustus. Yeah. And also, of course, Tom, I mean, we were talking in the previous podcast about an enormous ancient world figure, Alexander the Great, merely because there are elements of his story that we now think are very spurious. it doesn't mean that the whole story is invented that must be true jesus as well otherwise men that's obviously i would assume a formula as well yeah i think so tom before we leave the nativity just one uh more quick question about jesus's birth um well a couple of quick questions. Any idea of a year, roughly?

Kind of maybe, well, no. I mean, sometime between 4 BC and 88. Okay. And Joseph and Mary, any reason to doubt that they're the names of Jesus' parents? Don't think so. So don't think so, as in we may as well just take them on trust. Yeah. Okay. So once Luke, so go back to Luke's gospel.

Once he's done the nativity, the next chapter, so chapter three, he gets back into a little bit of history, which I like. The 15th year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, Pontius Pilate being governor of Judea and Herod being tetrarch of Galilee, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Annas and Caiaphas being the high priests. The word of god came unto john the son of zacharias in the wilderness this is john the baptist and he came into all the country about the river jordan preaching the baptism of repentance for the remission of sins so now we've moved on in the story to a different character which is john the baptist who is do you know what i've actually i'm actually quite hazy about john the baptist he

is the foreigner of jesus who's going around saying you know he's a sort of eschatological apocalyptic prophet is he is that what he's about yes which we should probably explain yeah it's a lot of syllables that so basically he is um he's preaching repentance he's saying that the day of judgment is coming. He compares the coming day of judgment to the cutting down of a fruitless tree. And this is an image that Jesus himself will then repeat. It's a very unusual image. It's not something that you get elsewhere in scripture. So that does suggest that it's John's and then Jesus picks it up. And this is why most scholars, I mean, even the most skeptical would accept that

Jesus was crucified and they would accept that Jesus was baptized by John because it's a source of some embarrassment. Because it implies if John is washing people clean so that they're ready for the day of judgment, then it implies that Jesus needs to be washed clean. And there's a bit of kind of, you know, there's a bit of skirting around that issue in the Gospels or kind of reframing of it. So John is a kind of holy man, kind of wandering the wilderness. Yeah, yeah. Preaching to people and washing them. And I would guess, I mean, I'm not an expert on the first century AD or the first century BC by any means, but I'm guessing there are lots of people like John in this world.

There are quite a lot, but he is remembered as a significant figure. So he's mentioned by Josephus, talked about that in the last episode, and he comes to a kind of grisly end. He gets put to death by Herod Antipas as a troublemaker. And the story that gets told about him is that, you know, John the Baptist's head gets chopped up because Salome, Herod's daughter, does this erotic dance and all that kind of stuff. I mean, that is, I think, perhaps a slight novelization of what happened. But I think there's no doubt, because both Josephus says it, and it seems to be taken for granted in the Gospels, that John the Baptist is put to death by Herod antipas and that this upsets jesus that jesus is either a follower or in the gospels he's his cousin that um so far as we can tell from the gospels jesus seems to

have regarded antipas with a peculiar contempt because of this so he's very there's no reason to doubt i guess the carpentry is there that they are from a carpentry family his father's carpenter yeah he's a carpenter yeah so he's a workman of some kind but not the poorest of the poor by any means no but not the richest of the rich either so a skilled artisan skilled artisan background and that he now i'm trying to approach this with as a very much 20th century historian that john the the Baptist is, to use modern terminology, the leader of a kind of cult, a baptism cult, that Jesus is his relative or his follower who has been attracted to this. And then having been received into the cult is then very put out when

the leader is executed as a troublemaker. No, I think Jesus is much more independent than that. I think that he gets inspiration perhaps from John. I mean, he comes to John, he learns from John. But the thing that is manifest in the Gospels, and as far as we can tell, is something that is taken for granted by everybody who becomes a Christian, as early as back as we can trace the evidence, is that Jesus has, to put it mildly, a very elevated sense of his role. So he is making incredible claims about himself. But he's not claiming, am I right in thinking, Tom, that he is not explicitly claiming to be the son of God? That's not something he goes around saying.

I think it's not clear. One of the telling things in the gospels, I think, is that Jesus in his parables and so on, when he portrays kings, seem to be allying the role of the king with himself rather than with God the Father, if you want to put it like that. And he's preaching the coming of the kingdom of God, and we'll perhaps come on to what he means by the kingdom of God. But he is, I mean, I think that he is claiming quite high things for himself because I think otherwise it's impossible to explain why his followers come to assume these things about him. So I guess two really salient pieces of evidence for that would be that he summons, according to the Gospels, 12 followers, 12 disciples, and these approximate to the 12 tribes of Israel, and that the 12 tribes of Israel will be gathered at the end of days by God.

So this seems to be what Jesus is doing. And the other thing is that Jesus is executed for claiming to be king of the Judeans. He is claiming a kingly role. Now, whether that is as God's deputy, whether in some way it's determinist with God's rule, impossible to say. But the seeds of what will become the Christian understanding of Jesus's role, I think, from the evidence of the Gospels and from the evidence of Paul's letters and the trace elements of pre-Pauline teachings within Paul's letters seem to derive from Jesus himself. And I think that this was very much not the consensus, say, in the 70s. And I think now it is much more the consensus. Okay.

So it's something probably that Bart Ehrman, who is veryical in general about what we can learn from the Gospels, I mean, he basically accepts that this very, very early understanding of Jesus's elevated role is there pretty much from the beginning. But to go back to Jesus the man, I mean, he lives for, till his early, till 30, early 30s, mid 30s, I'm guessing, or late 20s, maybe. He, for most of that time, he's not doing anything. Am I right? He's presumably just doing carpentry. Well, that's what the gospels imply. And that passage from Luke that you read, you know,

you have the kind of the more mythical elements and then suddenly it's being named, it's specific year, Tiberius, governors, all this, you know, prefects, all this kind you know, prefects, all this kind of thing being absolutely nailed down. And suddenly we're into a record that doesn't really seem to be very long, maybe a year, maybe in John's gospel, three years. And what is Jesus doing in this period? Well, he seems to be claiming the role of a prophet, you know, so that's the John the Baptist role. He's preaching the fact that the day of judgment is coming and that the fruitless tree will be cut down, all that kind of stuff.

He's a healer. So that's a very important aspect of the stories. And that must be a very, again, just thinking about the stuff that I did when I was at university about holy men in late antiquity. people going around claiming to have powers of various kinds to be healers to cast out demons to exorcise spirits all these kinds of things yeah they're kind of ten a penny aren't they in the levant um in the ancient world in the in the late antique world not ten penny but certainly uh i mean it's not absolutely unheard of. There are a lot of people who are doing this. Yeah. So Jesus is, he's healing people. He's exercising people.

He's casting out demons. And this is all clearly part of his charismatic appeal. What we as skeptical people in the 21st century are to make of it, I think it's the wrong question. I mean, he's in a world where people accept that these things happen. And whatever it is that he's doing or that people are imagining about him, his charisma is such that clearly people think that he has these powers.

But Tom, what surely is legitimate to say from the perspective of the 21st century is he's not alone in that. That there must have been people over the next hill or three villages away who are doing the same. Absolutely. And not just in Palestine. I mean, this is stuff that's going on across the Roman world. I mean, it wouldn't surprise me if the, you know, the Gaul that we mentioned in the beginning of the first episode

was similarly kind of performing prodigies of healing or whatever. This is something that is happening. The idea that charismatic figures are touched by the supernatural and have power is current. Now, the question is, of course, for Jesus's contemporaries in Galilee and Judea is, is this a malevolent power? Is this a power that is demonic, which is what the rabbis over the course of late antiquity will teach, that Jesus was a disciple of demons. Or is it expressive of what Jesus claims, which is the imminence of the kingdom of God and eschatological, i.e. the idea that the end times are coming. And that's what Albert Schweitzer argued at the beginning of the 20th century. And I think he seems to me clearly right. So eschatology, this is the idea that the world is going to end, that there'll be some sort of apocalypse, that there'll be some kind of- The judgment is coming.

Rebirth or whatever. And why is this so common in this period? So the age of the reign of Augustus? Or is it- I don't think it is particularly. Is this absolutely just standard? No, I don't think it is. And I think that that's what makes John the Baptist distinctive. That's what he's preaching. And I think that's what makes Jesus distinctive. And what makes Jesus even more distinctive is that he is laying claim to the role of the judge in this day of judgment. As far as we can tell.

I mean, that is the implication of the parables. So normally when people tell you the end of the world is nigh, they don't then say, and I will be the person who, you know, divides people into sheep and goats. No. They give that role to somebody more potent than themselves. But are you saying Jesus is explicitly saying, and I'm going to be the one who chooses heaven and hell or whatever?

Well, on the evidence of the gospels, and of course, you know, they're not gospel. But on the evidence of the gospels, and of course, they're not gospel. But on the evidence of the gospels, Jesus is constantly provoking confusion. He's provoking confusion among his critics because he's laying claim to all kinds of things and he's doing all kinds of things that Judeans shouldn't do. He's hanging out with tax collectors.

He's hanging out with prostitutes, all this kind of stuff. He's hanging out with the lowest of the low. But his disciples are also confused. And this is arising from the fact that he is claiming an absolutely unheard of authority. But the further strangeness is that this authority, so there is this long tradition going back to the Enlightenment that Jesus was actually a freedom fighter that he was a rebel and in fact it goes back even beyond the enlightenment it goes back so in the time of of diocletian just before um constantine there are skeptical pagan philosophers who are saying that jesus was a rebel that he took to the hills that he was a kind of bandit

at the head of rebels yeah so that is a tradition But based on the evidence of the gospels, this is not the case at all. And had Jesus been a rebel, again, it's hard to see why he would have been enshrined as Christian tradition enshrines him, the gospel writers, Paul, the people who exist before Paul. Because the one thing that you get again and again and again throughout the Gospels is that Jesus is proclaiming what he calls the kingdom of God. And this kingdom is not one that is founded in military exploits. It's not one that is founded in the kind of the appurtenances of power. So what Jesus is doing is he's announcing the presence, the imminence, the near arrival of a kingdom that has no political substance whatsoever. And its authority is something that can be felt in the heart. It can't be experienced

as something that is upheld by soldiers or courts or laws or judges or anything like that. So basically what he's doing, he is preaching the idea of a kingdom of virtue. And this is such a momentous idea. We live with the effects of that in 2022. This idea that there is a kingdom of virtue that transcends the churn of politics, it's such a potent idea. And if it doesn't come from Jesus, then where does it come from? Are the gospel writers just making it up? I mean, it seems improbable. And so the likeliest explanation as far as I'm concerned is that it does derive from Jesus, then where does it come from? Are the gospel writers just making it up? I mean, it seems improbable. And so the likeliest explanation, as far as I'm concerned, is that it does derive from Jesus, you know, on the principle of Occam's razor. He isn't drawing on something, I don't know, all kinds of strands and traditions that are around in the first century AD. He is.

Absolutely. I mean, he's deeply steeped in scripture. Of course he is, but he is, I don't know, he's, he's laying claim to a rock that he's going to sit in judgment, that he, he is going to preside over the kingdom of God. And again, I think it goes back to this idea that we talked, I talked about at the very end of the previous episode, this idea that he is situated between the dimension of the temple and the temple authorities and all that kind of stuff and the kind of the Roman world of supernatural power. And he is saying that he is emancipating himself and those who follow him from those dimensions because I think he sees the supernatural dimension of the temple, let alone the supernatural dimension of Roman power,

as being too much a part of the world. And the kingdom of God is not, in that sense, when he comes before Pilate and he says, my kingdom is not of this world, that's what he's meaning. But it's something that in the context of the world that he is in, is experienced as something strange and kind of unfathomable, and yet also incredibly powerful. And that, I think, is the key of why he gets the followers that he does and why he's commemorated in the way that he is. So there are two elements I want to ask about, Tom, before we go to a break. Number one follows on from what you've been saying. So in the first podcast, you were talking about the context of Galilee in the first century AD and about what I rather tritely called a kind of emerging culture war between people who liked Roman pots and metropolitan things like you

and people like me who were earthy, authentic, salt of the earth kind of people. And the way you're describing Jesus there, he's appealing to people at the bottom. He's saying there'll be a kingdom that is not one of power and wealth and all that sort of stuff. The last shall be first and the first shall be last. Precisely. So there are people who've written about him, kind of biographers and people exploring the historical Jesus, who've seen him as a kind of, dare I say, a kind of proto-socialist, a kind of social radical, a prophet of social change. Is that at all reasonable? The kingdom of God is not of this earth.

So he's not a socialist in that sense. He's preaching something stranger. He's preaching the idea that in some way, the just will be rewarded, the hungry will be fed, the thirsty will get water, and the last last will be first and the first will be last tom you'd be a great vicar you're such a loss to the vicaring profession and the strangeness of it i think is what leads him to be put to death because he is seen as a menacing figure by both the judean temple authorities and in the due course by the Romans, because he's attacking the claims to divine authority of both the temple priesthood and of Pilate as Caesar's representative. Yeah.

But he is still appealing to people who are not normally appealed to, isn't he? He is. You know, prostitutes, tax collectors, whatever. He is. I mean, so the kingdom of heaven manifests itself in all kinds of subversions. Right. Okay. So he's a subversive. He all kinds of subversions. Right. Okay.

So he's a subversive. He's a very subversive. He's a very subversive figure. Yeah. He's an incredibly subversive figure. Now, my second question slightly cuts against that. Is he the Jewish Messiah? or maybe you would say Judean, prophetic tradition that a king, a descendant of David, will arise and lead the children of Israel to who knows what, some new golden age.

Is he consciously laying claim to that? I think he is, because I think that it's very difficult to understand otherwise why the Romans would have crucified him. And it's also very difficult to understand why after his death his followers would have enshrined him as the messiah would have thought of him as the messiah because you know i mean okay so they think he's risen from the dead that in itself would not be sufficient to make it obvious that he's the messiah so i think that that all the evidence suggests that jesus must have laid claim to that and the whole thing about him entering jerusalem say on the on the donkey all that evidence suggests that Jesus must have laid claim to that. And the whole thing about him entering Jerusalem, say, on the donkey, all that kind of stuff suggests that this is, I think, part of what he's teaching.

So we are going to come to a break in a second. But just before, you were talking a little bit earlier about this thing about whether or not he's a freedom fighter, bandit who takes the hills or whatever. But if he is proclaiming himself the Jewish Messiah, that is an explicitly political claim, isn't it? It's not just a kind of theological supernatural claim. We go back to the strangeness of this idea of the kingdom of God, that he is situating the kingdom of God beyond the dimensions of, as he sees it earthly kingdom so you know he goes to the temple and in

the synoptic accounts it's after that that he's brought this question by the pharisees who are trying to trip him up should we pay taxes to caesar yeah and he asks for a coin and he can do this because in galilee there are no roman coins but in judea there are and he's shown that the coin and he says whose head is that and the pharisee replies caesar and so he famously replies render unto caesar what is caesar's and render unto god what is god and this is it's a brilliant riposte but it's also an acorn from which a mighty oak will grow it's it and that oak is you know it's the secular tradition that we inhabit so that oak is your book dominion tom pretty much pretty much and and this is a kind of you know this is an

incredibly radical subversive and yet poetic teaching it's not the teaching of of a revolutionary it's not the teacher of someone who is raising the sword against the romans or anything like that but it is the teaching of someone whose concept of a kingdom that transcends earthly power will have this stupefying, I mean, kind of an impact so profound that it's almost impossible to measure. Its impact has been so overwhelming that we don't even recognize it for what it is. And this is where it begins. To play the skeptic again though, Tom, is it not possible that that is a detail inserted later on precisely because the early Christians want this creed to thrive in the Roman world? So they put in this detail, which is unthreatening,

ostentatiously unthreatening to Roman political order. I mean, that is one perspective that you could bring, but I think that that is reflective of someone who's been steeped in the study of 20th century political propaganda, or the way that things are marketed. Because why would Christians be risking their lives to preach something that they were simultaneously faking. And the other thing is that that formulation, render unto Caesar, I mean, it's brilliant and it's subversive. Yeah. Who would make it up? I mean, who would come up with that if not someone who was a brilliant preacher and had a very, very weird understanding in the context of the age

of what power was and it seems likely to me that that person was jesus because that's what the gospels are claiming and that's what the evidence of of how he comes to be reverenced by his followers after his death is pointing to rather than that it's some you know slimy uh pr guy trying to trying to market his new you know this new cult to gullible Romans. The Peter Mandelson of the... Yeah, I mean, that seems a very, very 21st century perspective that does not, I think, correspond to the evidence.

Oh, shame. I've let myself down. I've let you down. I've let the Bobcats down. You've let God down. I have done. Right. And on that note, I think we should take a break while I try to recover my composure

and some degree of self-respect. And we will return with the rest of the life of Jesus and the death and the resurrections. What on earth is going on there? Tom is going to solve the mystery, which is so exciting. So we'll be back after the break. And I'm Richard Osman, and together we host The Rest Is Entertainment. It's your weekly fix of entertainment news, reviews, splash of showbiz gossip, and on our Q&A we pull back the curtain on entertainment and we tell you how it all works. We have just launched our Members Club. If you want ad-free listening, bonus episodes and early access to live tickets, head to therestisentertainment.com. That's therestisentertainment.com Welcome back to The Rest Is History. So there's been some strange goings on in this podcast, Tom. You pouring cold water on the nativity, a very dark moment in the history of The Rest Is History.

But we've got some really strange stuff to come because we've got, of course, Jesus' passion, the crucifixion, the resurrection, and then the growth of his reputation. I was about to say his cult. Well, that's one way of putting it. Yes, the growth of his reputation. The growth of his reputation. Well, he had a tremendous fan club, Tom. Indeed. Okay, so where did we get to?

So Jesus has been wandering around. He's been healing people or appearing to heal people. He's been appearing to or indeed carrying out miracles. He has been preaching the arrival of the kingdom of heaven. Yeah. And he has gone into Jerusalem. Well, so according to the synoptic gospel, say Mark, Matthew and Luke,

this is the one time he's been in Galilee and then he says he's going to Jerusalem for the Passover. And there's a sense in which going to Jerusalem, he's putting his head in the noose because he's coming up against both the temple authorities and the Romans. He's not really in favor of either of them. And this is what will culminate in his death.

And again, there's the question of what is he doing? So there are two things that he does that kind of attracts the eye. There's the thing, you know, he rides in on the donkey. And then there's the thing that he overturns the tables of the money changers in the temple. Yeah. And he genuinely, he causes a ruckus. I mean, he seems to kind of, you know, get kind of really annoyed. I mean, the presence of currency in the temple seems to infuriate him,

you know, in a way that he's not shown as getting infuriated in any other way. And again, I think it's hard to know otherwise why he would have provoked the fury of the temple authorities unless this was something that actually happened. So again, I'm happy to think that this is something that happened and that it's reflective of everything that he most hates about the temple, the way in which the worship of God, the kingdom of God has been corrupted and polluted by people making money. The riding in on the donkey. So this is either a conscious attempt to- I think it's a conscious attempt. To live up to the prophecies of

i don't know to brand himself as the messiah so it's been prophesied that the messiah will arrive in jerusalem on a donkey why why a donkey well it's you know the prophecy is rejoice greatly o daughter of zion shout aloud o daughter of jerusalem lo your king comes to you triumphant and victorious is he humble and riding on a donkey on a colt the foal of a donkey that's a weird detail isn't it i mean why would it is a a donkey. That's a weird detail, isn't it? I mean, why would someone have to say that? It is a weird detail. And yet I think that the thing that's weird about it is that a king would ride on a donkey. Yeah, exactly.

Rather than on a war horse, on Persepolis. I suspect that Jesus has meditated on the implications of this. Because the idea that the kingdom is not of this earth seems to be the bedrock of his take on things. And so you can see why that's a prophecy that perhaps would particularly appeal to him. And the subversive element of it, that a king on a donkey, he must have enjoyed that.

Well, it's there. Yes, exactly. Yes. And it's something perhaps that he's picked up on that others haven't. And then the tables of the money changers always amuse me. So anyone who's ever changed money at an airport will have strong views as I do about travel. Yeah, you want to smash them up.

Yes. Why are people changing money in the temple? What's going on there? What's they changing? They're changing currency? What are they doing? Because if you're making a temple offering, you can't present it with the heads of, say, of Caesar on it or anything that would be offensive to God.

So they have to be changed. Okay. And so why does he object to this? Because he sees it as the intrusion of everything that is most earthly and corrupting into the place that properly should be holiest. If the kingdom of God is not of this earth, that sense of the tension between the kingdom of God and the earthliness of the way that humans live is most manifest in the temple. Yeah.

I think that that's what's getting his goat. And that, of course, is then what makes him, you he's he's kind of thrown a gauntlet down yeah because i've secretly been doing my own reading on this tom have you believe i read an essay by e.p sanders of duke university and he said that it was this who died a couple of weeks ago very sad right exactly this this sort of alleged misconduct in the temple this ruckus was actually what did for Jesus, because the temple authorities were absolutely aghast and said, he's got to go. Yeah. And I think that the reason they're aghast isn't just that they feel that Jesus is striking

at their authority. I think more importantly, they're anxious about the trigger-happy nature of the Romans, because this is Passover, the city is heaving. The whole basis of priestly power depends on their ability to serve up to the Romans, you know, a stable, riot-free scenario over the Passover. And so Jesus is clearly a threat. And that, I think, is why he gets arrested. And I think that looking at the evidence from Josephus, there's nothing about this narrative that seems particularly implausible. I mean, to repeat, some of the details of the passion narrative, I think are garnished, are probably implausible, but the overall sweep of it does seem to be true. And it revolves around this issue that we still don't really know is,

does the high priest have the power to put people to death or does he have to get the Romans to do it? And the only way that they can get the Romans to do it is to persuade the Romans that Jesus is actually a rebel. And so that again is kind of the bedrock of the passion narrative, Jesus being handed over to Pilate, who then interrogates him, and Jesus refusing to answer. So I think that, again, I suspect that this is something that is historical, that Jesus accepts his fate, that he willingly accepts his fate. This is something that is emphasized within the Gospels and that he maintains his silence because he's not there to engage in political debate or religious debate with the Romans or with the high priests. Because the thing is, is that it's not as though the priests, by sending Jesus to Pilate, is sending him to a secular authority. He isn't. Pilate is based in Caesarea, which is the city named after the divine Augustus, the deified Augustus. Pilate is the representative, again, of a kind of distinctively supernatural understanding of the world that to Jesus is is profoundly offensive and so that's why i think he's not engaging with it but jesus has already had the last supper at which he has basically

implied that he's going that he's going and there's the stuff with the body and the blood and again the detail that the record of this is incredibly early because it's attested to in paul's letters as something that is already a formula. So presumably this is being repeated maybe, you know, years after, very, very soon after Jesus' death. And do we know, Tom, where this comes from? Where does all this come from? Well, I think it probably comes from memories of Jesus. Now that doesn't mean that it's exact, you know, they're not taking, you know, they're not filming it on iPhones or anything. It's not an exact transcription, but almost everything that Jesus says, and almost everything perhaps more in the way that, say, a journalist today

might or a historian today might. You know, the disciples have been going around with Jesus. He's got his stump speech. He's got these formulations. He's got these kind of memorable phrases. He's got these memorable stories, and they remember them. And they may not be exactly word for word. They may not be verbatim. But I think the likelihood is that they do reflect the authentic speeches of this man because they have a kind of inherent integrity. They have an inherent coherence and they are so striking and they're so memorable that if they didn't come from Jesus, then where did they come from? Who's making them up? So the body and the blood, are they rooted in Jewish thought, Tom? This seems to revolve around the idea that Jesus is the lamb that gets sacrificed at the Passover.

Right. And again, it's such a kind of odd idea. I mean, it's kind of simultaneously rooted in Judean tradition and yet kind of so offensive to it. But it seems very Jesus-ish. I mean, it's such a word. And again, it's very, very early. So the likelihood is, it seems to me, that it corresponds to something that actually happened and that the lamb goes willingly to its death. And But Celsus says, Jesus on the cross, he ends up kind of complaining against God. And this is very undignified behavior.

This is not the kind of thing. But actually, the thing that's really striking about the parish narratives is that Jesus says almost nothing. It's only at the very end that he has this. Yeah. You know, he cries out in his agony. And he's crucified as a slave. That's standard Roman. He's crucified as a slave. That's standard Roman. He's crucified as a rebel.

Right. But it's a punishment for slaves, isn't it? For outcasts, for people on the fringe. Yes. It's the most humiliating death that you can devise. And for the King of the Jews to suffer the death of a slave is obviously a way for the Romans to affirm the triumph of the Roman order. And Paul, writing maybe 20 years later, is very specific that Jesus is put to death by the rulers of this age. So again, this is kind of counterpointing the eternity that is the kingdom of heaven against the specific earthly claim to status of Caesar and his servants.

But then, Tom, the twist that elevates this above all other stories, the resurrection. And this is something, so going back to what I was reading from E.P. Sanders, he says, pretty much what you were saying, if you were going to create a fraud, if you were going to make this up, you would at least make sure that the stories matched and that they weren't full of inconsistencies and they weren't so strange. And E.P. Sanders says, you know, Jesus, it's very clear he's not a ghost, nor is he somebody who has survived crucifixion and is kind of covered in blood. So in the Gospels, the resurrected Jesus is kind of defined almost in terms of what he's not. The sense you get is that they are struggling to explain what it is that they've experienced.

And again, I have no doubt that they did experience something. Now, what that experience was is a totally different question. That's beyond the remit of a history podcast to discuss. But it does seem to me a basic historical fact that they must have experienced something. Because again, it's why otherwise would they have believed what they believed? And the thing is that the resurrection in itself is not what proves to them that Jesus is the Messiah and in due course, the son of God. That seems to be rooted in what Jesus himself had taught.

But the fact that he rises from the dead seems to them to have suddenly things that Jesus had told them made sense, and it kind of clicks. Now, of course, there are all kinds of other theories as to what might have happened. And one of them is mentioned in the gospels itself. So it's mentioned by Matthew. So he describes how some of the guard went into the city and told the chief priests everything that had happened. So this is the discovery of the guard went into the city and told the chief priests everything that happened. So this is, you know, the discovery of the empty tomb. And after the priests had assembled with the elders, they devised a plan to give a large sum of money to the soldiers, telling them, you must say his disciples came by night and stole him away while we were asleep.

So the fact that that's in Matthew's gospel implies that that is a theory that is kind of current. So they cut him down before he was dead? Well, that's another theory. That's another theory. But the theory that is mentioned in Matthew's Gospels is that the disciples came and stole the body from the tomb. Right. So in other words, it's a fraud perpetrated by the disciples. But that wouldn't explain the walking around and hobnobbing with people on roads to Emmaus

or whatever. Okay. So again, the priests would probably say this is all just made on roads to Emmaus or whatever. Okay. So again, the priest would probably say this is all just made up, that this is a fantasy. Yeah. There is another theory that Jesus was never crucified. So that's the theory that you get in the Gospel of Basilides,

where this other guy, Simon of Cyrene, who carries the cross is supposed to have been crucified. It's also the story that you get in the Quran in due course. Right. Celsus, the guy who has his run in with origin so this is in the early third century he says that these are hallucinations that these are a kind of ignorant peasants who you know are prone to mad fantasies put on your 21st century skeptic hat your humanist hat if you like if you will you would say these are

uneducated members of cult who are just saying what they want to believe. Yeah. Well, but you don't have to be 20th century to say that, because that's what the priest is saying. That's what Celsus is saying. And into the 20th century, you do have all kinds of people as the kind of tide of skepticism rises. So you have ever more theory. So you have D.H lawrence wrote a story about in which jesus isn't dead and he kind of wakes up and he kind of totters off right and again this is this is a theory that is dearly held by the ahmadis who are a strain of it strain of muslims in particularly in uh kashmir who say that jesus went to kashmir and is buried there you can see his

tomb japanese claim that that jesus traveled all the way to japan so that's another theory who say that Jesus went to Kashmir and is buried there. You can see his tomb. Japanese claim that Jesus traveled all the way to Japan. So that's another theory. Another very popular theory that developed in the 60s, well, actually before the 60s, it's kind of the golden bow and all that kind of stuff in the Victorian period. But it takes on a particularly distinctive form in the 60s and 70s is that the whole resurrection story, the whole existence of Jesus, it's a myth that it's like Osiris rising from the dead, the Egyptian god, or Adonis, who we talked about in our World Cup of Gods with his unfortunate wedding. And the brilliant

formulation of this theory in the 60s and 70s is by a guy who was a very distinguished scholar of the Dead Sea Scrolls called John Marco Allegro, who claimed that it was prompted by the ingestion of magic mushrooms and that this was a cult that took magic mushrooms and that Jesus was actually a magic mushroom. A mushroom? Yeah. That's a very 60s idea, isn't it? It's very, very 60s. So with those series, the idea that it's mythic, that's a very kind of late Victorian idea. It's there in the Golden Bough that people are obsessed by all this kind of stuff. And the idea and the other another theory that also emerged in the 70s that also is very much bread of the age is that jesus was an extraterrestrial so this is bread of eric von daniken right uh the angels who are seen by mary magdalene when jesus has risen

you know they they wear what they're clothed in white they shine this is clearly reflective of a kind of radioactivity uh And in due course, Jesus will ascend to heaven. He's being teleported up to a flying saucer. So we don't know. But I would say, I would say, for whatever reason, probably to do with what Jesus himself had taught before his death. And some strangeness, something weird that happens after it, whether the body gets stolen, whatever. I mean, we don't know. People very very early on think that jesus has risen that he is the messiah and pretty quickly they're coming to the the conclusion you know they're making very very exalted claims for jesus that he's included with god as a kind of recipient of the cultic devotion of early Christians.

Because people are not worshipping him during his lifetime. Is that right? They're following him, but they're not. They don't think he's God. If the Gospels can be relied upon, they seem unsure as to who or what he is. They just know that he's something very, well, the special one. But at some basic level, they must know he's the carpenter guy from Nazareth. So, you know, no prophet has honor in his own land this is jesus quotes this so yes i mean maybe people who he's grown up among are less inclined to yeah you know if you pay lip service to all

this kind of mad stuff he's coming out if you were playing football with him in the reign of augustus you're less likely to yeah exactly so look at the earliest christian text we have yeah which is probably the first letter that paul writes to the thessalonians in that jesus is hailed by paul as as kyrgios as lord and that's a word that is also applied to god by greek-speaking judeans um he is described as the son of god. Paul is saying that Jesus will come and he will rescue the elect. He will rescue the saved. And this is a tradition that you also get in Mark, who is the earliest gospel, probably, where he says that people will sit. The son of man will come in clouds with power and glory, and he will send the angels out and he will gather up the

elect and and you know it's all going to be tremendous and hurrah so mark doesn't i i can't actually remember what the thinking is on whether mark is familiar with paul i think it probably isn't but if he's not then that that's you know those are clearly traditions you know both of both texts are drawing on the kind of yeah the same traditions so i i think it's all very odd to go back it's it's odd in the way that the quran is odd and that oddness seems to me the kind of the radioactive source of power at the heart of the the you know of the power station because if you go right up to the point where he's crucified nothing about that story is is actually that strange or implausible, is it? Because as we've said, there are other holy men, there are other

preachers, miracle workers, healers, and so on. And it's as you described in the very first episode, there was that fellow in Gaul who Vitellius executed. So right up to that point, nothing about the story of Jesus of Nazareth is necessarily implausible, unusual. You know, he's just a remarkable character with remarkable teachings. Well, it's all the kind of chucking demons into pigs. Yeah, but presumably if stories had been written about other miracle workers, they would have also had dealings with pigs and whatever. But what is unusual is followers affirm very vigorously that he was resurrected, that he ascended into heaven, and that they spread across the eastern Mediterranean with this story and that it catches on. That is what elevates it, isn't it? It's the resurrection and what follows.

Yeah, but the resurrection in itself, I think, is insufficient to explain it. Even if you're seeing a risen, you know, there is no other story is told of a Judean rising from the dead. So that in itself is kind of weird and distinctive. But even so, it would be insufficient, I think, because there are quite a lot of stories of people rising from the dead. So in and of itself, I mean, you know, it's obviously a very weird, exceptional thing to happen, but it's not wholly unheard of. I mean, Jesus raises Lazarus from the dead, according to the Gospels. So I think it's three things. I think undoubtedly the resurrection or people believing in the resurrection is a crucial part of it. I think the drama of his death, which in some way Jesus seems to have embraced, he seems to have knowingly gone to his death. And the way in which it is possible for the disciples and the apostles and his followers to frame it and to see it as

the expression of prophecies that are in Judean scripture that had never been previously been understood in that light, that actually God will manifest himself through humiliation and death. I mean, that's the kind of the blinding insight that Paul, for instance, clearly has. It's something that he sees, he recognizes having always been there in Judean scripture and Jesus' death has kind of made it manifest. But neither of those things I think would happen had Jesus himself not been the most remarkable teacher, because I think it's the stickability of his sayings, of his teachings. So Nietzsche brilliantly described Jesus as having had a flair for language that today would see him sent to Siberia. Right. It's the fact that Jesus is preaching something very odd, unsettling, disturbing, and yet attractive to his listeners, and that he preaches it in a way that sticks in the mind.

You don't have to believe everything in the Gospels is literally the words of Jesus, is literally gospel. I think to accept that this kind of body of sayings is so consistent, it's so coherent, it's so distinctive, that it's very hard to explain where they would have come from, if not from a remarkable figure. And Christians see Jesus, obviously, as having been a remarkable figure. And so the fact that Jesus was a remarkable figure, and that this is what prompted Christians to write about him seems to me the likeliest explanation for it. That's a hunch derived from my reading of the material. There are, of course, a whole range of other explanations that would be possible. And so to an extent, that is my formulation of a position that ultimately I'm agnostic about. So just on other explanations, your explanation focuses very much on the personality of Jesus.

Is there another explanation which would be focused more on the context, which would be there is not on supply, as it were, but on demand, that there is a particular context in the first century AD in which people are craved for whatever reason? I don't know, economic, political. People are craving this. And so they almost create it. Is that plausible? I don't think so. Because this isn't a particularly troubled or difficult period for people in the Eastern Mediterranean? Not particularly, no. The idea that Palestine was heaving with kind of revolutionary instincts is one that's been very popular, but I think is not true. We did two episodes on the Judean revolt. I think it was basically,

it was kind of accident. It was contingency that prompted it. And so then we read back to it. But, you know, as I say, right at the beginning, there are people who are making, you know, Roman rule is pretty brutal. Conditions are pretty tough. There are people who are claiming divine sanction for claims for a kingship, but I think, you know, none of the others inspired what Jesus inspired. So there's something about Jesus. That's what you're basically,

there is something special. I mean, I think that you could, and indeed I have explain, explain the 2000 years of Western, you know, of history as attempts to answer who Jesus was. Christians have done it and post-Christians have done it. It's the question of who he was. And by that, I mean more than, you know, was he a real person, but was he, you know, what exactly was he? I think this is not a back projected strangeness. I think the strangeness

was hardwired into him. And you don't have to be a Christian to accept that because Nietzsche said Jesus is the strangest person who ever lived. You mentioned Occam's razor before. I mean, if you're using Occam's razor, the simplest explanation is that Jesus was the son of God. I mean, historians wouldn't make, well, do historians make that claim? Do other historians who would end their book by saying? No, they don't. Because, you know, Stephen Jay Gould said that they're a rival magisteria, the magisteria of science and of religion. And I guess historians would capture it in similar terms that, you know, that history and religion are rival magisteria. Basically, you know, so Gibbon

in the, back in the 18th century you know he he articulated this very well he said the theologian may indulge the pleasing task of describing religion as she descended from heaven a raid in her native purity a more melancholy duty is imposed on the historian i mean i think that historians do not accept supernatural explanations they may be christian i mean there's nothing nothing to stop a historian being a Christian or believing in the supernatural. But I think when they come to write history, by and large, they don't adduce supernatural explanations. And I don't think that you need supernatural explanations to explain Jesus and the emergence of Christianity. But having said that, I think there are lots of reasons why one might choose not to believe in God, and specifically perhaps not believe in the

Christian understanding of God. But I would say that the inadequacy of the New Testament as source would not be one of them that I would adduce. So I've come to this from studying both the origins of Islam and from studying classical sources. And the closer up I get to them, the more, you know, I'm pretty impressed by actually how much evidence there is for Jesus. Okay. Well, Tom, we've been talking for a long time now about this. And actually, I kind of feel like we've only scratched the surface, don't you? As you said, there are people who've given up, you know, this and actually i kind of feel like we've only scratched the surface don't you i mean i mean this

as you said there are people who've given up you know their entire working life to studying a single passage or a single line from the bible so um i really do feel like uh there's so much more to be said by people who are much more well certainly much better versed in this than i am and perhaps even better versed than you dare i I say it. Oh, definitely. I mean, you know, people study it for their entire career, great professors, great, I mean, of course. I mean, we are literally only scratching the surface. Is it the biggest story in history, do you think? Because it's so foundational for our entire understanding

of ourselves and the world, our culture, our literature, our assumptions, our moral landscape landscape all these kinds of things so i i remember years when i was at school we were doing roman history and a teacher saying what was the most significant event in the lifetime of augustus and so you know battle of actium or whatever and, of course, it's the birth of Jesus. And he was saying that not as a Christian, but because that is the most significant event. What happens with the lifetime of Jesus, had Jesus not existed,

I think the world would be unfathomably different. Right. Shall I end with a Bible reading? Oh, Tom, I'd love that. I really would. I'm going to end with the very last verse of the Gospel of St. John. And there are also many other things which Jesus did, the which, if they should be written every one,

I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that should be written. And that would be a problem for us, wouldn't it? It certainly would. Yes, it is. We've finished the podcast. Yeah. And that's it. Amen.

Jolly good. Bye-bye, everybody. Bye finished the podcast. Yeah. And that's it. Amen. Jolly good. Bye-bye everybody. Bye-bye. Happy Christmas. Happy Christmas. Thanks for listening to The Rest Is History. For bonus episodes, early access,

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