The Historical Jesus Did Not

What kind of literature are the Synoptic Gospels and what implications doesa the answer to this question have for how we read and interpret them?

I believe that the genre of the synoptic gospels is partly historical biography and partly mythology, with Jesus as a real healer who lived 2000 years ago but whose miracles were either psychosomatic or mythological stories which were merely endorsed by a supposedly divine god, not caused by him. By mythological I mean that succeeded from ancient Greek and Roman myths rather than were fabrications. I shall show this by firstly stating that Jesus was a historical man who did exist, and secondly I shall show that Jesus was a healer although not a divine healer, just by endorsement. Thirdly I shall argue that Jesus was also a mythical man through his nature miracles which occurred through group hallucination or oral transmission via belief system. And fourthly I shall propose that the resurrection is similarly a progressive myth. The conclusion shall be that the synoptic gospels are a genre mix of historical biography and myth, and that Jesus had a low Christology in reality although not apparently.

So how do we read the synoptic text to tell if its genre is historical biography, memoirs, folklore, myth, or some combination of them? Historical-Critical Method pulls from a number of different literary criticisms to ascertain the original meaning of ancient texts. Its criticisms are source, form (1920s), redaction (1950s), narrative, social-scientific approaches (1970s), and more. The latter is a modern HCM:

“Social-scientific approaches…pay attention to the analysis of the social and contextual context(s) of the text and its environment using models, theories and perspectives from the modern social sciences.“

Exploring the New Testament, Chapter 5, David Wenham and Steve Walton

Michael J Bird contends that a mix of the oral tradition (word of mouth exchanges about Jesus), setting variables and memorisation techniques (through e.g. Hebrew poetry) fuelled and explain how the authors wrote the synagogue texts, whether or not the oral tradition was informally or formally controlled, because I believe that when writing writers do indeed respect social currents and societal flows, however informal or formal they some be. But recently Jesus myth theory has emerged which to me seems to posit, worryingly, that the historical Jesus did not exist at all.

We must seek Jesus synoptic identity, and here we find that Jesus was called “saviour” poignantly, albeit only three times (in Luke): he was predicted as the saviour when born (Luke 2:11), his mother sung about him pre-birth as Israel’s saviour (Luke 1:47), and he was considered to be endowed with kingly qualities (Luke 1:69). He was also a teacher who had many sayings, which I believe were more human-centred than is thought. I Matthew 22:36-40 the second commandment, which is to love your neighbour as you love yourself, is said to be “like” the first commandment, which is to love the Lord your god with everything you have. This “like” in implies that we must desire our neighbour’s happiness just as much as we desire god’s. Not the priest’s, and not necessarily our fellow believers in Jesus, but anyone - whoever may be next door. Jesus had teachings, parables and answers questions. And Jesus was the chosen messiah many times in Matthew, a few times in Mark and sometimes in Luke, although his apocalyptic predictions could easily retrospectively be interpreted politically and culturally and not physically, where Jesus spoke of himself and of his kingdom as reigning universally and not ruling physically in every land after his death. This new human morality would be respected by every government of every nation which would see the divine kingdom come.

Jesus life evolved in the synoptics just like any literary character, suggesting Jesus humanity. Matthew promises from Jesus the kingdom of heaven as the Son of God, Mark sees Jesus as a messenger who has god’s kingdom in his hand, and finally with Luke identifies Jesus as the Son of Man who secures god’s kingdom. Jesus is called the Son of Man more times than any other term, certainly far more than the Son of God, and it is his human acceptance and assimilation which the synoptic authors note. Jesus was so controversial in society that, after his death, in Mark he ascended “into heaven and sat down on right side of god.” Sabbath law was constantly revoked, and the fig tree in Matthew 24:32-35, Mark 13:28-31, and Luke 21:29-33 which is allegorical of the kingdom of god that beckons a more human, all-inclusive, egalitarian approach to people. Richard Bauckham advocates the gospels are historical biographies because the Evangelists were eyewitnesses.

In ancient times a gospel was a proclamation by the Roman government to announce the arrival of a new emperor who would improve society. So the gospels attempt to announce Jesus’s entitlement to reign in a nation: ‘“gospel” is associated primarily with the news of military victory and with the benefits associated with the emperor’s birth”. A king has a life and a country as opposed to a god who lives in heaven, and although Burrage classifies the synoptics as true biographies in their entirety, their external features such as structure and style do not exclude certain healings as psychosomatic because internal features such as settings, topics, content, values and attitudes are congruent with ancient Roman life. Healing, which in ancient Greek also means worship, was mostly practised in the temple by priests, although some Hippocratic doctors practiced using a more rational approach. Whether or not the Luke who was mentioned in the synoptics was one of these philosophers is a question because he may have been instrumental in making healings external to the temple for all people to access. Religious connotations would have echoed outside it nonetheless for security so we must not dismiss Jesus healings as purely psychosomatic but only valid by god as an afterthought which was purely verbal, as HCM suggests.

Ancient healing was inexorably linked to Jesus identity as saviour, because he was the saviour from disease, dysentery and influenza due to an insufficient sewer system, few home baths and a poor diet which lacked meat. C N Truman says “poor hygiene by people was a constant source of disease, so any improvement in public health was to have a major impact on society,” and that “In the early years of the Roman Empire there were no people in what would be a separate medical profession. It was believed that each head of the household knew enough about herbal cures and medicine to treat illnesses in his household.” According to Richard Carrier a number of healers existed around Jesus’ time who were identified by prefixing their names with “Ben”. Jesus Ben Ananias, Jonathan ben Uzziel, ben Ezra, Isaiah ben Amos, Jesus ben Sira, Jesus ben Jehozadak (legendary), Ben Stada, Ben Pandera and Jesus ben Damneus who did miraculous acts of healing towards the poor. They were all young men rejected by society and the name Ben Stada means “son of the unfaithful”. According to the Apocalypse of Zerubbabel, there was supposed to come a Messiah ben David and a Messiah ben Joseph, but these two saviours were obviously rolled into one in Jesus Christ. Why is Jesus considered to be the first miracle worker who healed people external to the temple? I believe Jesus saved ancient Rome from the ravage of disease and thus from destruction, by anchoring egalitarianism and faith for all with the agreed assistance of god by believers.

Indeed it is wrong to say that all the scenes are literal. Jesus cured a man born blind by spitting into his eyes to emphasis that everyday hygiene is necessary: Jesus was semiotically connected with baptism and washing, because Israeli society was not yet hygienic. So I agree with the deist Hermann Samuel Reimaras that Jesus miracles were “absurd” and can be rationalised, because there is a demarkation between the Jesus of history and the Jesus of the Christian faith. When Jesus walked on water (Mark 6:45-52), I think this means he was just a fast and strong swimmer, and when 5000 people needed to eat (Matthew 14:13-21; Mark 6:30-44; Luke 9:10-17; John 6:1-15), Jesus got out his own sandwich which caused everyone else to produce theirs also, thus Jesus “fed” the crowd by instigation. When Jesus turned the water into wine, he only ordered the servants to offer wine because this was not an easy instruction to give. Resurrection theories exist today from scholars like William Barkley which contradict historicity believers, such as the disciples stole Jesus body, Jesus didn't die on the cross but only swooned, the disciples visited the wrong tomb, I believe that Jesus was cremated by the gardener who firstly opened his tomb, then he cremated him, and then he claimed to be the Lord.

What a miracle and a healing was back then is a question, because a social-scientific interpretation of the synoptics includes a controversial Christ who was anti-jewish at face value, and anti-Roman. A slang definition of miracle is surprise or shock, and C S Lewis begs us to believe in the “true myth”. Joseph Baumgartner argues that because Christians say that their belief is not myth, then simply it is not myth flatly, saying that the revelation of god to humankind “occurs within this mythical horizon”. However, arguments have propositions which can be contradicted using opposing propositions, and simple deflection is not enough here. Although Christians openly claim faith as opposed to rational analysis, the faith assumption is often ignored but here we must include it in our argument for a mythical man, because we comparing biography with other genres.

Likewise, the resurrection was mythology, but not lie. Richard Carrier says at least five dying and rising gods existed prior to Jesus: Osiris, Romulus, Inanna, Anoni, Zalmoxis. These gods were all euhemerized, which was “the taking of a cosmic god and placing him at a definite point in history who was later defined.”

I conclude that the synoptic gospels are a dynamic combination of the genres of historical biography and myth, not memoirs or folklore because Israel was ripe for a social saviour. They tell the story of the healer Jesus who pointed to god for validation and who, finding the Greco-Roman religious mythological culture implicit to him, was said to rise from the dead. Christ the controversialist instantiated a movement which claimed that he had risen from the dead because his cause was true - immortal, and it was that you should love others truly, anyone. The god of this principle must be right, but may not be there metaphysically. The inquiry must be into the god meme, not god the supernatural being. Ancient history includes the healer man Jesus who took aromatics, herbs, oils and, using the modern term, neurological stretches out of religious temples and mosques to free medicine from prayer. So, to turn to Jesus was a humanist stance on efficacy, through the first combination of humanity, the physical, the basis of the self. Christology is a matter of faith, not text. I believe in this Jesus, the man-myth who existed through progressive culture’s evolving societies to initiate a religion which would overtake the world.

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