Jesus of Nazareth

A Jewish life in Galilee

Bruce Shelley begins his history with a scene: a crowd shouting for Jesus' death. It is a dramatic place to start, because the death of Jesus, and what his followers said happened afterward, is the hinge of the whole story. But first we need to meet the man himself.

Jesus (in Hebrew or Aramaic, Yeshua, a common name) was born probably between 6 and 4 BC. The odd fact that he was born "BC" (before Christ) comes from a miscalculation by a monk in the 500s, who fixed the calendar's starting point a few years too late. Matthew and Luke place his birth in Bethlehem, the town of King David, and describe his mother Mary, mother of Jesus as a virgin. He grew up in Nazareth, a small village in Galilee, the northern region ruled by Herod Antipas. He probably worked as a tekton, a builder or carpenter, like Joseph, the husband of Mary.

He spoke Aramaic, the everyday language of Jews in the region. He knew the Hebrew Scriptures well, and he may have known some Greek. He was in every way a Jew of his time: he kept the festivals, taught in synagogues, quoted the Torah and prophets, and went up to the Temple in Jerusalem.

Palestine in the time of Jesus

John the Baptist

Jesus' public career began around AD 28 with a fiery desert preacher, John the Baptist. John called Jews to repent, because God's judgment was near. As a sign of this cleansing he dipped them in the Jordan River, which is the origin of Baptism. Jesus came to be baptized by John. All four Gospels treat this moment as the beginning of his mission. Soon afterward Herod Antipas arrested John and had him beheaded.

"The kingdom of God has come near"

Jesus' central message was the kingdom of God. For Jews hoping God would soon act (see Judaism in the Time of Jesus), these words were electrifying. But Jesus filled them with surprising content.

• The kingdom was arriving now, in his own words and deeds, not just at some future date. His healings and exorcisms were signs of God's rule breaking in.
• It turned the world's values upside down. "Blessed are the poor." The first will be last. Love your enemies. Forgive without limit.
• It was open to outsiders. He ate with tax collectors (collaborators with Rome) and "sinners," touched lepers, and spoke with women and Samaritans in ways that shocked respectable people.
• It demanded total commitment. Followers were told to leave family and property and "take up the cross."

He taught largely through parables, memorable short stories such as the Good Samaritan, the Prodigal Son and the Mustard Seed. They invited listeners to see the world differently. He also taught a famous prayer, the Lord's Prayer ("Our Father"), which Christians of every tradition still use.

The Twelve and the women

Jesus gathered a circle of disciples, and from them he chose twelve. The number deliberately echoed the twelve tribes of Israel. It was a sign that he was rebuilding God's people. Their leader was a Galilean fisherman named Simon, whom Jesus nicknamed Kephas (Aramaic) or Petros (Greek), meaning "Rock": Peter (Simon Peter). Women also followed and supported him, which was unusual for a Jewish teacher. The most prominent was Mary Magdalene.

Who did he think he was?

This is one of the hardest historical questions. Jesus seems to have avoided calling himself "Messiah" publicly, perhaps because the word suggested a military leader who would fight Rome. He often called himself "the Son of Man," a phrase that could mean simply "a human being" but also echoed the heavenly figure of the book of Daniel. He spoke with startling personal authority. He forgave sins, reinterpreted the law ("You have heard it said... but I say to you"), and addressed God intimately as Abba, "Father."

Historians who do not share Christian faith often see him as a prophet announcing the imminent end of the age. Christians believe he understood himself to be the Messiah and uniquely the Son of God. The debate is old. What is clear is that Jesus raised the question of his identity sharply enough that his followers spent the next five centuries trying to answer it. That story is told in Arius and Nicaea and Ephesus and Chalcedon.

The last week

Around AD 30, at Passover, the festival celebrating Israel's liberation from Egypt, Jesus went up to Jerusalem. The city was packed with pilgrims and tense with Roman soldiers. The Gospels describe a sequence of events that Christians still remember each year in Holy Week:

1. Entry into Jerusalem on a donkey, greeted by crowds waving branches. It was a symbolic act recalling a prophecy of a humble king.
2. Clearing the Temple: he overturned the tables of money-changers. To the Temple authorities this was a direct challenge.
3. The Last Supper: at a final meal with his disciples, he took bread and wine and said, "This is my body... this is my blood." The meal became the central act of Christian worship, the Eucharist.
4. Arrest at night in the garden of Gethsemane, after betrayal by one of the Twelve, Judas Iscariot.
5. Hearings before the high priest Caiaphas and the Jewish council, then before the Roman governor Pontius Pilate.
6. Crucifixion: Pilate condemned him to death. Above the cross the charge read "King of the Jews," a political crime of claiming to be king against Caesar.

Crucifixion was Rome's most humiliating punishment, reserved for slaves and rebels. A crucified Messiah was, as Paul later wrote, "a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles." Everyone expected Jesus' movement to collapse.

"He is risen"

It did not collapse. Within days his followers were claiming that the tomb was empty and that Jesus had appeared to them alive: first to women, including Mary Magdalene, and then to Peter, the Twelve and others. Paul, writing around AD 55, passes on an early list of these appearances that he says he had "received" (1 Corinthians 15). Many scholars date that tradition to within a few years of the crucifixion.

Historians cannot prove or disprove a miracle. But they can observe its effects. Something convinced a frightened band of followers that Jesus' death was not the end. It transformed them into bold preachers willing to die for their claim. It made them worship a crucified man alongside the God of Israel, and it shifted their holy day from Saturday to Sunday, "the Lord's day," the day of the Resurrection. Christianity, as both Shelley and MacCulloch note, is built on the Easter claim.

How do we know?

Our main sources are the four Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, written roughly between AD 65 and 100 (see Writing the New Testament). Paul's letters, written earlier, say little about Jesus' life but much about his death and resurrection. A few non-Christian writers mention him briefly. The Jewish historian Flavius Josephus refers to him (though Christians later edited one passage), and the Roman historian Tacitus notes that "Christus" was executed under Pontius Pilate. Nearly all historians, religious or not, agree that Jesus existed, taught in Galilee, and was crucified under Pilate.