The Puzzle of Christianity. Peter Vardy
very strong – but the details of His life are subject to more disagreement.
Christians used to see the four Gospel books as written by four separate figures but, as will become clear later (see Chapter 10), the Gospels of Matthew and Luke contain all of Mark’s Gospel and also have other material in common. Matthew, Mark and Luke are referred to as the ‘Synoptic Gospels’. The Gospel of John is rather different and is generally considered to have been written later (see here). The Synoptic Gospels were written as historical accounts of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Events are described, sayings are recorded and Jesus’ teachings are shared with the world. The authors of the Synoptic Gospels wanted to show that Jesus was the Messiah of Jewish expectation and to show how He lived among people on earth. They wanted to show that Jesus fulfilled all the prophecies in the Hebrew Scriptures. The nature of these prophecies is disputed among scholars but there is no doubt that the people of Israel expected a deliverer to be sent. The general expectation was of a great warrior who would drive out the occupying power and restore the independence of Israel as well as the Davidic kingdom. The Messiah that the Gospels portray was very different indeed from this and they show that Jesus challenged Jewish expectations. The Messiah was not to be a great warrior but God Himself who came from heaven to show human beings how to live, to deliver them from sin and to establish a new ‘kingdom of God’ in the world that was not based on military might or an independent Jewish state but was instead a kingdom of love and commitment to God founded in the hearts and minds of Jesus’ followers.
The Gospel of John is in a different category. It shows the divinity of Jesus and, in particular, that Jesus represented the coming of God as a human being into the world (God becoming incarnate). Jesus is shown as the culmination of a divine plan for the whole of creation. The Gospel of John is regarded by most scholars as much more theological and possibly, therefore, less historical. Almost all scholars agree that it was written much later than the other three Gospels, perhaps around AD 90–120 (Jesus died about AD 33). However, there are dissenting voices to this view and some, such as the late J. A. T. Robinson, argued for a much earlier dating. The general assumption is that a more theological gospel would be dated later, but this is not necessarily the case. Some of the earliest Christian documents are letters or epistles written by the apostle Paul, and these are also highly theological. However, the general academic consensus is for a later dating.
Because of disagreements about the historicity of the accounts of Jesus’ life, giving a summary of it is not at all easy. There is no single view in Christianity about Jesus’ life. All we have are the accounts in the Gospels and the stories passed down and accepted by Christians over the centuries. How historically accurate they are is almost impossible to determine. This might seem to imply that nothing can be known with any degree of confidence about Jesus, but this is not the case. In the next chapter, when Jesus’ message is outlined, this will become clear. For the moment, however, some account needs to be given of Jesus’ life and this will be done by reference to the stories in the Gospels.
In the Hebrew Scriptures, Isaiah 9:6–7 records that God will send someone who would reign on the throne of David and would be a ‘Mighty God’ and ‘Everlasting Father’. Christians see this as pointing to the life of Jesus.
Figure 1: This picture by Henry Tanner (1898) is of the Annunciation. Mary is shown sitting on a bed and the angel appears not as a human form but as a pillar of light.
The Gospels record Jesus as being born of a young girl called Mary who was engaged to a man named Joseph. Joseph was of the tribe of Benjamin and could trace his descent back to King David (something that Matthew’s Gospel spells out in detail). However, Joseph is not recorded in the Gospels as the natural father of Jesus. Luke’s Gospel records an angel telling Mary that God had chosen her to bear a son even though she had not slept with a man (this event is called the Annunciation). This was before she and Joseph had got married, while Mary was still a virgin. The father of Jesus is seen not to be a human being but God. Jesus, Christians believe, is the Son of God. (Although this phrase was also used of the great kings of Israel such as David, for Christians it means much more than this: that God became human in Jesus.) Christians tend to praise Mary because of her faithful obedience to the command of God and see her as the crucial female example of obedience and loving service to God as well as the ideal mother. It is significant that in Islam Mary is also revered as the mother of Jesus and that Mary was also a virgin. God, in Islam, is held to have conceived Jesus in Mary’s womb rather like God created Adam at the beginning of the creation story. There is much in common between Christians and Muslims in the reverence they accord to Mary, but Muslims would claim that Jesus is one of the leading prophets and not, as Christians claim, the incarnation of God’s Word.
The engaged couple, Mary and Joseph, were travelling to Bethlehem in response to a requirement by the Roman governor that everyone should return to their ancestral town to complete a census, when Mary went into labour. The inns were all full and, according to Luke, the birth took place in a stable (although in the Eastern Orthodox Christian tradition the birth is held to have taken place in a cave). This is portrayed as an extraordinary and pivotal event, with shepherds in the hills being visited by an angel to tell them of the birth, while Matthew’s Gospel has wise philosophers or astrologers from the East following an extraordinary star which led them to the house where the infant Jesus lay. Even King Herod, the vassal king who governed Israel under the Romans, was recorded as having a dream that ‘the king of the Jews’ had been born. Fearing for his crown, Herod sent out an order that all babies under two years old should be killed to ensure that no future king survived. Matthew’s Gospel records Jesus’ parents, having been warned in a dream about the danger, fleeing to Egypt and then coming back out of Egypt. This enabled Christians to argue that Jesus should be seen as the new Moses who had been prophesied to come out of Egypt to deliver his people from slavery (Deuteronomy 18:15–18).
There is no record of Jesus’ childhood except for one short scene (Luke 2:41–51) when His parents took Him to the Temple in Jerusalem. Surrounded by the huge crowds, He became lost and Mary and Joseph searched for Him. They eventually found Him talking to the wisest rabbis and impressing them with His depth of understanding. The young boy Jesus, when confronted by His concerned parents, expressed surprise and asked them why they did not expect Him to be about His Father’s business (clearly indicating that His father was not Joseph but God).
A tradition grew up among the early Christian Church that Mary remained a virgin and never slept with Joseph even after the birth of Jesus. There is no textual evidence for this and it was a belief intended to show Mary’s purity. The Gospels record Jesus having brothers but mainstream Christians who support the perpetual virginity of Mary say that this refers to spiritual brothers, or else they were children of Joseph from a former marriage, and that Mary had no children apart from Jesus.
Jesus’ actual ministry lasted either one or three years (the Gospels differ). What is clear is that He gathered a disparate group of close friends, followers or disciples around Him. They were outsiders to the world of power and influence – a tax collector, fishermen – ordinary people whom He called to give up everything and to follow Him, which they did willingly. He was clearly a charismatic person and His message of God’s love and forgiveness had huge appeal. Jesus’ ministry started with His baptism in the River Jordan (which meant immersion in the waters of the river as a symbol of being cleansed from sin and a new beginning) by an extraordinary man who was about the same age as Jesus. John the Baptist had spent years in the desert wilderness fasting and living very simply and calling for a renewal of commitment to God, demanding that people give up their complacent lives and live in a different way. He also prophesied the coming of the Messiah or Saviour. Jesus went to John for baptism and, in one of the most significant moments recorded in the Gospels, John recognises Jesus and declines to baptise Him because he considers that it is Jesus who should baptise him, not the other way round. John understands that this is the person about whom he has been prophesying and does not consider himself worthy to carry out the baptism. Jesus insists and, in a key moment, the heavens are recorded as opening; a dove descends on Jesus whilst God’s voice proclaims,