The best way to confirm what the Gospels tell us of Jesus would be to find non-Christian documents that attest to the same events. Unfortunately, the only independent mention of Jesus is in Flavius Josephus’ Antiquities of the Jews (Book XVIII, Chapter 3), which has clearly been doctored. The passage as we have it reads:

Now there was about this time Jesus, a wise man, if it be lawful to call him a man; for he was a doer of wonderful works, a teacher of such men as receive the truth with pleasure. He drew over to him both many of the Jews and many of the Gentiles. He was [the] Christ. And when Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men amongst us, had condemned him to the cross, those that loved him at the first did not forsake him; for he appeared to them alive again the third day; as the divine prophets had foretold these and ten thousand other wonderful things concerning him. And the tribe of Christians, so named from him, are not extinct at this day.

this writer, although not believing in Jesus as the Christ, in seeking after the cause of the fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of the temple, whereas he ought to have said that the conspiracy against Jesus was the cause of these calamities befalling the people, since they put to death Christ, who was a prophet, says — being, although against his will, not far from the truth — that these disasters happened to the Jews as a punishment for the death of James the Just, who was a brother of Jesus (called Christ) — the Jews having put him to death, although he was a man most distinguished for his justice.

Some passages in the Talmud may possibly be references to Jesus, but if they are, the differences in detail are so big and so many that either they or the Gospels, or both, must have been severely corrupted. The closest match is in Sanhedrin 43a:

On the eve of the Passover Yeshu was hanged. For forty days before the execution took place, a herald went forth and cried, “He is going forth to be stoned because he has practised sorcery and enticed Israel to apostasy. Any one who can say anything in his favour, let him come forward and plead on his behalf.” But since nothing was brought forward in his favour he was hanged on the eve of the Passover!

Anyone reading Matthew, Mark and Luke side by side will immediately notice that they tell the same stories in almost exactly the same words. This is not simply because they record the same events; the Gospel of John is often very different. (For this reason, Matthew, Mark and Luke are collectively called the Synoptic Gospels.) Observe, for example, how the four gospel writers handle John the Baptist and his baptism of Jesus. The parallels between the first three Gospels in both wording and substance, and John’s thoroughly different treatment, should be clear:

The earliest manuscripts we have of the Gospels are in Greek. As Galileans in the first century CE, however, Jesus and his disciples would have spoken not Greek but Aramaic. Aramaic is closely related to Hebrew and uses the same alphabet, and the manuscripts call them both Hebraïkos (EbraikoV), which the King James faithfully if inaccurately renders as “Hebrew”. Mark, in particular, here and there records Aramaic words and explains them, rather than simply translating them into Greek. Examples can be found at 3:17, 5:41, 7:11, 7:34, 14:36 and 15:34. The first of these clearly shows that Mark is a translation of a written Aramaic source, not an oral tradition. Jesus calls two disciples “Boanerges, which is, The sons of thunder”. The Aramaic for “sons of thunder” is banī re‘em (בני רעם), of which the Greek Boanērges (BoanhrgeV) might seem a rather strained rendering. In fact it contains only one real mistake: Aramaic vowels are hard to write in other alphabets, and gamma (g) is as good a letter as any in Greek for the back-of-the-mouth sound of ‘ayin (ע), but the sigma (V) is inexplicable — unless the translator was working from an Aramaic text, and misread the final mem (ם) as a samech (ס).

Now Mark is considerably shorter than either Matthew or Luke; very nearly all of Mark’s material appears in one or both of the others. Several lines of evidence indicate that Mark was the source for the other two, rather than vice versa. Sometimes, for instance, Mark’s Greek is ungrammatical and hard to follow, whereas the parallel passage in the other Synoptics is clear and correct. It is more likely that Matthew and Luke’s Greek has been corrected than that Mark’s was pointlessly mangled. An instructive example is at Mark 9:11–13.

And they asked him, saying, Why say the scribes that Elias must first come?
       And he answered and told them, Elias verily cometh first, and restoreth all things; and how it is written of the Son of man, that he must suffer many things, and be set at nought. But I say unto you, That Elias is indeed come, and they have done unto him whatsoever they listed, as it is written of him.

And his disciples asked him, saying, Why then say the scribes that Elias must first come?
       And Jesus answered and said unto them, Elias truly shall first come, and restore all things. But I say unto you, That Elias is come already, and they knew him not, but have done unto him whatsoever they listed. Likewise shall also the Son of man suffer of them. Then the disciples understood that he spake unto them of John the Baptist.

On the other hand, a lot of information turns up in both Matthew and Luke but not Mark, and it mostly concerns Jesus’ sayings, whereas Mark concentrates on his actions. Nineteenth-century German scholars therefore deduced that this shared material derived from a now lost document which they simply called “the Source”; die Quelle in German, generally shortened to Q. Close study reveals that Q, like Mark, was originally written in Aramaic. Compare Matthew 23:25–26

Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye make clean the outside of the cup and of the platter, but within they are full of extortion and excess. Thou blind Pharisee, cleanse first that which is within the cup and platter, that the outside of them may be clean also.

And the Lord said unto him, Now do ye Pharisees make clean the outside of the cup and the platter; but your inward part is full of ravening and wickedness. Ye fools, did not he that made that which is without make that which is within also? But rather give alms of such things as ye have; and, behold, all things are clean unto you.

Some parts of John appear to be genuine eye-witness accounts: 19:31–37 is a good example. The practice of breaking the legs of crucified felons to speed their death is archaeologically attested — but only in Jewish areas, apparently in deference to their religious law (Deuteronomy 21:22–23), victims elsewhere generally being left to die over several days. Next, according to our witness, the dead Jesus’ side was pierced and “forthwith came there out blood and water”. The “water” was likely fluid accumulated in his lungs during his flogging and crucifixion. If we understand a detail better than the writer, it seems unlikely that he invented it. Unfortunately, since water is a major theme throughout John’s Gospel, we cannot be completely sure; and verses 36–37 may lead us to suspect that the whole passage was invented, albeit by someone familiar with crucifixions, as a fulfilment of prophecy:

For these things were done, that the scripture should be fulfilled, A bone of him shall not be broken. And again another scripture saith, They shall look on him whom they pierced.

Many are the afflictions of the righteous: but the LORD delivereth him out of them all. He keepeth all his bones: not one of them is broken.

And I will pour upon the house of David, and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the spirit of grace and of supplications: and they shall look upon me whom they have pierced, and they shall mourn for him, as one mourneth for his only son, and shall be in bitterness for him, as one that is in bitterness for his firstborn.

• Jesus performs his “beginning of miracles” at 2:11, and his “second miracle” at 4:54. Meanwhile, he has done other miracles at 2:23.
• Jesus comes into Judaea in 3:22, having been there since 2:23.
• In chapter 5 Jesus goes to Jerusalem for a feast. He heals a man, discourses on Sabbath observance, and immediately afterwards goes “over the sea of Galilee, which is the sea of Tiberias” (6:1) — never having left Jerusalem, some 95km distant.
• The oldest manuscripts we have of John’s Gospel lack the story of the woman taken in adultery (7:53–8:11). Some manuscripts of Luke have it, but it doesn’t fit very well there either. Papias’ writings are now lost, but according to one reader he “relates another story of a woman, who was accused of many sins before the Lord, which is contained in the Gospel according to the Hebrews.” It’s possible, though far from proven, that this was the story we now read in John.
• Jesus makes a long speech to his disciples at 12:12–14:31, finally saying “Arise, let us go hence.” Then the discourse goes on for three more chapters (15:1–17:26).
• “None of you asketh me, Whither goest thou?” says Jesus at 16:5. Simon Peter had asked that very question at 13:36.

In the middle of the Gospel comes the raising of Lazarus, which concludes Jesus’ miraculous ministry and introduces the theme of death and resurrection. Then we follow Jesus’ own death and resurrection, including a speech whose great length ensures that this episode takes up the second half of the book. But I am here mainly concerned with the first half, whose major theme — as edited — is Jesus’ superiority to the Jews. Their most sacred purity law is to be broken (6:53–58); they do not know God (8:19); their father is not Abraham (8:39–40) but the Devil (8:44); they are liars (8:55) and they do not belong to Jesus (10:25–26). Clearly, these passages belong to the time when the new narrative structure was imposed, and we should not be surprised that the writer did not speak Aramaic; he was not a Jew, indeed he disliked Jews. We’ll return to this issue later. Here, I’ll just point out that it’s only in these long discourses, and nowhere else either in John or in the other Gospels, that Jesus claims to be God. The most explicit example is 10:24–30:

Then came the Jews round about him, and said unto him, How long dost thou make us to doubt? If thou be the Christ, tell us plainly.
       Jesus answered them, I told you, and ye believed not: the works that I do in my Father’s name, they bear witness of me. But ye believe not, because ye are not of my sheep, as I said unto you. My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me: and I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand. My Father, which gave them me, is greater than all; and no man is able to pluck them out of my Father’s hand. I and my Father are one.

The problem with that theory is simply that Jesus was not a Hindu but a Jew! When he said “God”, neither he nor his hearers meant Brahman, the impersonal, pantheistic, immanent all; he meant Yahweh, the personal, theistic, transcendent Creator. It is utterly unhistorical to see Jesus as a mystic, a Jewish guru. He taught prayer, not meditation. His God is a person, not a pudding. He said he was God but not that everyone was.

Then the Jews took up stones again to stone him. Jesus answered them, Many good works have I shewed you from my Father; for which of those works do ye stone me?
       The Jews answered him, saying, For a good work we stone thee not; but for blasphemy; and because that thou, being a man, makest thyself God.
       Jesus answered them, Is it not written in your law, I said, Ye are gods? If he called them gods, unto whom the word of God came, and the scripture cannot be broken; say ye of him, whom the Father hath sanctified, and sent into the world, Thou blasphemest; because I said, I am the Son of God?

at his side let us place the just man in his nobleness and simplicity, wishing, as Aeschylus says, to be and not to seem good. There must be no seeming, for if he seem to be just he will be honoured and rewarded, and then we shall not know whether he is just for the sake of justice or for the sake of honours and rewards; therefore, let him be clothed in justice only, and have no other covering; and he must be imagined in a state of life the opposite of the former. Let him be the best of men, and let him be thought the worst; then he will have been put to the proof; and we shall see whether he will be affected by the fear of infamy and its consequences. And let him continue thus to the hour of death... the just man who is thought unjust will be scourged, racked, bound — will have his eyes burnt out; and, at last, after suffering every kind of evil, he will be impaled.

Let us now consider when the Gospels were first written. With the Gospel of John, this is fairly easy. A scrap of papyrus was discovered in Egypt in the 1920s; although small, the Greek writing on both sides is sufficient to identify it as a fragment of John 18, and to date it to the early second century CE. Such fragments have been found for the Synoptics also, but their dates are still highly controversial. An important clue comes from Mark 13:5–33. Most of Jesus’ dire prophecy of the events preceding his return is vague as to details of time and place, but verses 14–16 get specific:

But when ye shall see the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, standing where it ought not, (let him that readeth understand,) then let them that be in Judaea flee to the mountains: and let him that is on the housetop not go down into the house, neither enter therein, to take any thing out of his house: and let him that is in the field not turn back again for to take up his garment.

Finally, the four Gospels we have are not the only Gospels ever written. The Gospel of the Hebrews alluded to by Papias is lost to us. But in 1945 a collection of fourth-century Coptic texts was found at Nag Hammadi in Egypt, and one was identified as a translation of an older Greek work, fragments of which had turned up in the ruins of an early Christian settlement called Oxyrhynchus. This is the Gospel of Thomas, a collection of sayings of Jesus, and some of them are immediately recognisable:

There was a good man who owned a vineyard. He leased it to tenant farmers so that they might work it and he might collect the produce from them. He sent his servant so that the tenants might give him the produce of the vineyard. They seized his servant and beat him, all but killing him. The servant went back and told his master. The master said, “Perhaps he did not recognize them.” He sent another servant. The tenants beat this one as well. Then the owner sent his son and said, “Perhaps they will show respect to my son.” Because the tenants knew that it was he who was the heir to the vineyard, they seized him and killed him. Let him who has ears hear.

We have nothing like the rigorous proof a historian would demand, but, with only a few decades between Jesus’ supposed time and the earliest stories about him, the idea that he was simply invented seems rather implausible. There is, nevertheless, a school of New Testament criticism, currently championed by Earl Doherty, which maintains precisely that. Doherty’s case is founded on the fact that the very earliest documents which definitely refer to Jesus as a human being, a contemporary of Herod, son of a woman named Mary, put to death by Pontius Pilate, are the writings of Ignatius, Bishop of Antioch in the early second century CE. Even if all the educated guesswork about the Gospels that we’ve just trekked through is correct, that still makes a maximum of two independent first-century sources: the Aramaic Mark, and the older text of John. There is, as Doherty says, a big, gaping silence. St Paul found Christian communities wherever he went — founded by whom? Where are their Jesus traditions? What happened to all the other apostles who fall out of the Book of Acts around chapter 8? Why have they left no writings?

Well, we know that Christian copyists in the early centuries had no problem with doctoring texts to make sure they’d got things “right”; after all, look what somebody did to Josephus. If Jesus did exist, then lots of people must have written about his human life in the first century. If so, all those writings are gone. The only reasonable explanation, still assuming that Jesus existed, is that they were deliberately destroyed. This isn’t as implausible as it sounds; there was no printing then, and few copies would have been made of any document. All it would have taken to destroy a book, especially one circulating mainly in the Christian community (as books about Jesus would have been), would be to refuse to copy it. But, for the early Church to do that, the documents must have said things about Jesus that they didn’t want spread around. What sort of things might those have been?

I can’t help noticing I’m piling one “if” on another at this point. I cannot say with certainty that Doherty isn’t right after all; I merely think it’s rather unlikely. But if I am right, and Jesus did exist and his human life was something the early Christians didn’t want it to be, then it doesn’t take much thought to find the single biggest difference between the culture of the Church and the Jewish culture Jesus grew up in. In Judaism, there was no requirement, no expectation of any kind, that a rabbi or any other variety of holy man would abstain from marriage. There is only one argument for Jesus being celibate, and it’s the Augustinian view of sex, which we encountered in Part 4.

In contrast to St Augustine, Jesus’ attitude to women and sexuality seems to have been extraordinarily enlightened for his time. His contemporaries censure him for associating with prostitutes. Jewish law forbids women to dishonour their husbands or fathers by selling sex; in the male-dominated first-century world, those who lacked either would have few other options. Jesus’ views on divorce (Mark 10:2–12) must be read in this light. His opinion “that whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart” (Matthew 5:28) is often quoted, agreeably and disagreeably, as supporting the Augustinian ideal. Note, however, that Jesus lays the blame entirely on the man for looking, and not on the woman for enticing him, in complete contrast both to his Jewish predecessors (Proverbs 6:23–29, 7:10–27) and to his followers (I Timothy 2:9–15). All four Gospels recount an incident where a woman pours ointment on Jesus’ feet, kisses them, and wipes them with her hair, in front of the disciples, with his approval (Matthew 26:6–12, Mark 14:3–11, Luke 7:36–50, John 12:1–8), though Luke’s version may refer to a different event from the others. Even by our society’s standards, this was a startlingly sensual action; much more so for a Jewish rabbi of the first century. Given that the traditional, repressive Christian attitude to women began with St Paul, very soon after Jesus, it’s hard to see what motive a later writer of fictional Gospels would have for inventing such a story.

Or, indeed, there may be a still simpler reason. The fourth-century historian Eusebius described a group of early “heretics” called the Ebionites, from Hebrew ’ebyōnīm (אביונים), “poor ones”, who did not believe Jesus was God but “considered him a plain and common man, who was justified only because of his superior virtue.” If the first Christians held that sort of opinion, it’s easy to see why their writings would disappear in later years. At any rate, from now on I shall proceed on the understanding that Jesus did exist, and that at least some of the stories about him have a factual basis. Immediately the apologists have a major foot-hold. If the Gospels were written in the mid-first century, they must surely be true, for the early Christians were willing martyrs, and nobody dies for a lie. Peter Kreeft explains:

What was the motive of whoever first invented the myth...? What did they get out of this elaborate, blasphemous hoax? For it must have been a deliberate lie, not a sincere confusion. No Jew confuses Creator with creature, God with man. And no man confuses a dead body with a resurrected, living one.
       Here is what they got out of their hoax. Their friends and families scorned them. Their social standing, possessions, and political privileges were stolen from them by both Jews and Romans. They were persecuted, imprisoned, whipped, tortured, exiled, crucified, eaten by lions, and cut to pieces by gladiators. So some silly Jews invented the whole elaborate, incredible lie of Chrisitanity for absolutely no reason, and millions of Gentiles believed it, devoted their lives to it, and died for it — for no reason. It was only a fantastic practical joke, a hoax. Yes, there is a hoax indeed, but the perpetrators of it are the twentieth-century theologians, not the Gospel writers.

Cohen’s father had taken him to a mountain top, when he was no more than a lad, and explained to him the hero’s creed and told him that there was no greater joy than to die in battle.
       Cohen had seen the flaw in this straight away, and a lifetime’s experience had reinforced his belief that in fact a greater joy was to kill the other bugger in battle and end up sitting on a heap of gold higher than your horse.

— Terry Pratchett, Interesting Times

When I was fourteen, my church youth-group leader told us the true story of a man who took LSD in Bali. Strange creatures came down out of the sky and danced with him; the following day, he saw the same creatures carved in stone on a Hindu temple. So you see, said the youth-group leader, demons are real, and they’re behind both drugs and Hinduism. Well, I was convinced. But when I told this story to a sceptical classmate, he replied that the man had probably seen similar carvings earlier in his visit, and his dance partners were just the acid working on his brain. Somewhat taken aback, I reasoned as follows:

1. The story definitely proved our youth-group leader’s point.
2. Therefore, he must have told us that the man didn’t see the carvings before he took the LSD.
3. And I must just have forgotten that bit.

Just occasionally, the exaggerations are plain to see. Compare Matthew 21:18–22

Now in the morning as he returned into the city, he hungered. And when he saw a fig tree in the way, he came to it, and found nothing thereon, but leaves only, and said unto it, Let no fruit grow on thee henceforward for ever. And presently the fig tree withered away. And when the disciples saw it, they marvelled, saying, How soon is the fig tree withered away! Jesus answered and said unto them, Verily I say unto you, If ye have faith, and doubt not, ye shall not only do this which is done to the fig tree, but also if ye shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; it shall be done. And all things, whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer, believing, ye shall receive.

And on the morrow, when they were come from Bethany, he was hungry: and seeing a fig tree afar off having leaves, he came, if haply he might find any thing thereon: and when he came to it, he found nothing but leaves; for the time of figs was not yet. And Jesus answered and said unto it, No man eat fruit of thee hereafter for ever. And his disciples heard it...
       ...And when even was come, he went out of the city. And in the morning, as they passed by, they saw the fig tree dried up from the roots. And Peter calling to remembrance saith unto him, Master, behold, the fig tree which thou cursedst is withered away. And Jesus answering saith unto them, Have faith in God. For verily I say unto you, That whosoever shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; and shall not doubt in his heart, but shall believe that those things which he saith shall come to pass; he shall have whatsoever he saith. Therefore I say unto you, What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them.

In the latter story, Peter’s command, “Look on us”, provides an important clue to the mystery. Hypnosis, which we discussed briefly in Part 3, consists of persuading subjects to abandon their power of choice to the hynotist, generally by starting with easy commands such as “Relax” or “Look at me”. Having done so, the hypnotist’s words become as strong an influence as the senses in promoting patterns of brain activity (see Part 2), so that not only the subjects’ actions but their perceptions are under the hypnotist’s control. Making people drunk on water is a classic stage hypnotist’s trick (see John 2:1–11). The power of hypnosis to produce illusions is almost limitless. Subjects might believe that five thousand people were fed on five loaves and two fish (Matthew 14:13–21, Mark 6:30–44, Luke 9:10–17, John 6:1–14), or that a human had walked on water (Matthew 14:22–33, Mark 6:45–52, John 6:15–21) or turned into a being of light (Matthew 17:1–8, Mark 9:2–8, Luke 9:28–36). But to persuade people to obey you so completely you must first impress them with your authority, which is difficult if you don’t believe in it yourself (see Matthew 17:19–20) or if they know you too well (Mark 6:1–6). It is not necessary, however, to be aware that your power is purely deceptive, or to be using it for selfish ends. Jesus believed that God was working through him, and he used his skill to heal and comfort.

It is well known that many illnesses can be alleviated or even cured simply by the belief that this will happen. New medicines are routinely tested by giving some patients the real drug and others placebos, identical pills with no active ingredients. The medicine is only approved if it works better than the placebo, and so we have got into the bad habit of thinking that placebo healing isn’t “real” healing at all. In fact, placebos are merely one of many ways in which our minds can influence health for better or worse; not because the mind is supernatural and superior to the body, but because it is a bodily process, and as integral to the proper workings of the whole as circulation or digestion. The effects of stress and social control on the immune system, via neurotransmitters such as cortisol and serotonin, are well known; and all can be boosted by hypnosis. It can be used to treat skin infections, and also to dramatically lower blood pressure, even to the extent of causing cardiac arrest (see Acts 5:1–10). Jesus’ power depended on his patients’ faith, as he himself told them (at Mark 5:34, for example).

What about Lazarus (John 11)? What about Jairus’ daughter (Mark 5:22–23, 35–43)? It would take more than hypnosis to return a corpse to life. But were they really dead? In the latter case we have Jesus’ word as a healer that “the damsel is not dead, but sleepeth”, and I think we can believe him. Concerning Lazarus he says “This sickness is not unto death,” but this is followed by one of John’s philosophical discourses, which, as we’ve seen, probably weren’t in the original material. However, as our edited version of John’s Gospel goes out of its way to assure us that Jesus always knew everything in advance, his expression of relief, and the awkward attempt to explain it away, at verses 41–42, show that the Lazarus story belongs to the earlier layer. Here the Secret Gospel of Mark must be mentioned. A highly disputed manuscript, published by Morton Smith in 1966, inserts a short version of the Lazarus story into Mark’s Gospel; the relevant detail is that “a great cry was heard from the tomb” before Jesus opened it. If genuine, the case for Lazarus having still been alive is greatly strengthened. Until scholars like Maurice Casey, working on reconstructing the original Aramaic Gospels, get their hands on Smith’s manuscript, we are unlikely to know for sure.

In that case, however, we have to ask what Lazarus and Jairus’ daughter were actually suffering from, to be pronounced dead and yet return to life on command. Hypnosis can fool people, but it can only heal people insofar as their illness can be reached by the mind. Can the great crowds who came to Jesus for healing in the Gospels all have been suffering mental illnesses? Indeed they can. Since minds are formed by social interaction (see Parts 2 and 3), and since minds are so important to bodily health, it follows that health problems can be caused by social conditions. One class of mind-generated (psychosomatic) illness is indeed culturally specific. Common symptoms include hallucinations, delusions, and a loss of the sense of self. Sufferers often exhibit impulsively ritualistic behaviour aimed at self-transformation. Multiple Personality Disorder is one such illness, specific to Western cultures; others include koro in China, latah in Indonesia, wiitiko among indigenous people in Canada, and susto and ataque de nervios in different parts of Latin America — and, we may surmise, demonic possession in first-century Judaea. Possession shares many features in common with prophecy (discussed in Part 4), but whereas prophets were under God’s command, the possessed were read as being controlled by evil spirits. An unsatisfied need for communitas is a likely cause of these culture-bound syndromes. We will explore communitas further in Part 6.

And it’s not hard to figure out what social conditions were to blame. Judaea was occupied by the Romans, who had liberated Judaea from the tyranny of the Seleucids (I Maccabees 8). Herod the Great, who had been Judaea’s client king under Rome for thirty-seven years despite not being a Jew, passed the sceptre on to his son Archelaus, as both Matthew 2:22 and Josephus (Antiquities XVII, 8) tell us, while Galilee and other outlying lands went to another son, Herod Antipas. Some ten years later Archelaus was deposed by Caesar for abuses of power (XVII, 13) and his kingdom came under the jurisdiction of the new governor of Syria: Cyrenius, or Quirinius, to give him his Roman name. Cyrenius began his administration by taxing his enlarged province (XVIII, 1, and Luke 2:1–2); this did not endear him to the Jews, who, from that time on, agitated to have the kingdom restored to them. Rome, perhaps pained by the Jews’ lack of gratitude, responded the only way it knew how — by pointing weapons at them. In the Hebrew Bible, foreign oppression is often understood as God’s punishment for national sins, so the Roman occupation must have made many feel a heavy weight of guilt. Hence Jesus’ message of forgiveness with his healing ministry (Mark 2:3–12). This of course sparked more and more violent resistance until the Jewish Rebellion of 66–70 CE alluded to above, when the Emperor Titus razed the Temple and left much of Jerusalem in ruins.

If you’ve been paying attention, you’ll have realized that in the Gospel passages I have just cited, Matthew has Jesus already born at Archelaus’ accession, while in Luke he is not born until after Cyrenius’ tax. Thus any semblance of consistency between the two birth-stories is ruined. As we saw in Part 4, the Virgin Birth story is based on a mistranslation in the Septuagint. But how could a mistranslation have become such a central doctrine? Many important figures in Graeco-Roman myth are demigods, offspring of Zeus and a mortal woman. And many of them go on to vanquish evil, in the form of monsters, and descend to the world of the dead and return alive. Hercules in particular had more worshippers than many of the gods. When the Christian message began to spread among Gentiles, they received Jesus as just such a demigod, thanks to the Resurrection story, and they inflated the Virgin Birth confusion accordingly.

The important point here, though, is that for all Herod’s iron grip on power, he was still ultimately a lackey of the Romans. To us, the word “king” suggests an absolute ruler, seated on a towering throne and robed in majesty. But kings only became absolute rulers in the fifteenth century. A contemporary of Jesus wishing to convey such an image would have said “emperor” or “Caesar”. Kings, like governors, were officials of the Empire. The difference was that kings were drawn from the native leadership, whereas governors were high-ranking Romans appointed to the post as a promotion — or a punishment, depending on the province. Jesus and his followers hoped and worked for what they called the Kingdom of God. What was this kingdom they were seeking?

In our time, Jesus is almost always referred to as “Christ”, Greek Christos (CristoV), that is to say Anointed. The Aramaic equivalent Mashīacha’ (משיחא) is the same word as the Hebrew Mashīāch (משיח), which occurs frequently in the Scriptures, associated first with priests (Leviticus 4:3) and later with kings (note I Samuel 24:4–7 and Psalm 89:38). By the time of Jesus the Jewish royal line had ended, and Mashīacha’, eventually Englished as Messiah, denoted the anticipated heroic servant of God who would restore it. But no Jew has ever believed that the Anointed would actually be God. Sometimes the Anointed was referred to as God’s son, but this did not make him divine or sinless, as God told David at II Samuel 7:12–15:

And when thy days be fulfilled, and thou shalt sleep with thy fathers, I will set up thy seed after thee, which shall proceed out of thy bowels, and I will establish his kingdom. He shall build an house for my name, and I will stablish the throne of his kingdom for ever. I will be his father, and he shall be my son. If he commit iniquity, I will chasten him with the rod of men, and with the stripes of the children of men: but my mercy shall not depart away from him, as I took it from Saul, whom I put away before thee.

Throughout the Gospels Jesus runs up against the Pharisees. In Matthew, particularly, they are vilified as religious hypocrites. Luke has a more balanced perspective: though Jesus rails against them, he also dines with them (7:36–39, 11:37, 14:1), they warn him of danger (13:31–32), and in the book of Acts, which was probably written by the same person, they support the Christians (5:33–39, 23:9). And in truth the Pharisees’ doctrine was not far away from Jesus’. According to Josephus’ Antiquities (Book XVIII, Chapter 1), the Pharisees believed that souls were immortal and that the virtuous would be resurrected after death, and their moral lifestyle won them the people’s deep respect. The Sadducees, by contrast, taught that death was the end for individuals, and pursued riches and prestige. (See Acts 23:6–8). The Sadducees controlled the Temple as chief priests with Roman support, and were thoroughly unpopular. Many Pharisaic teachings will seem distinctly familiar to Christians. This anecdote from the Talmud (Shabbath 31a), for example, reminds us immediately of Matthew 22:34–40 and Luke 6:31:

On another occasion it happened that a certain heathen came before Shammai and said to him, “Make me a proselyte, on condition that you teach me the whole Torah while I stand on one foot.” Thereupon he repulsed him with the builder’s cubit which was in his hand. When he went before Hillel, he said to him, “What is hateful to you, do not to your neighbour: that is the whole Torah, while the rest is the commentary thereof; go and learn it.”

Early Gentile Christians, including the Gospel-writers, were not anxious to associate themselves with the Jewish rebels that were giving Rome so much trouble. The loyalty of martyrs extends only so far. Most Christians today are not consciously anti-Semitic. Strictly speaking, treating the living Jewish faith as a mere half-way stage to your own (“the Old Law”) is anti-Semitic, but most Christians don’t actually extend this attitude to the Jewish people. They regard the persecution of Jews as a tragic but fortunately brief episode in Christian history, of which the church has now been cleansed by the wisdom of God. They are wrong. Christian Anti-Semitism began with the Greek Gospels and became a minority belief only in the twentieth century. Today’s tolerance is the oddity, the first light after eighteen hundred years of unbroken hate. Here is a very small sample of Christian writings on the Jews through the ages:

They answered and said unto him, Abraham is our father.
       Jesus saith unto them, If ye were Abraham's children, ye would do the works of Abraham. But now ye seek to kill me, a man that hath told you the truth, which I have heard of God: this did not Abraham. Ye do the deeds of your father.
       Then said they to him, We be not born of fornication; we have one Father, even God.
       Jesus said unto them, If God were your Father, ye would love me: for I proceeded forth and came from God; neither came I of myself, but he sent me. Why do ye not understand my speech? even because ye cannot hear my word. Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it. And because I tell you the truth, ye believe me not.

— John 8:39–44

Although such beasts are unfit for work, they are fit for killing. And this is what happened to the Jews: while they were making themselves unfit for work, they grew fit for slaughter. This is why Christ said: “But as for these my enemies, who did not want me to be king over them, bring them here and slay them.” You Jews should have fasted then, when drunkenness was doing those terrible things to you, when your gluttony was giving birth to your ungodliness — not now. Now your fasting is untimely and an abomination.

— St John Chrysostom, 387

Now from the time of the Passion of our Lord there ceased not amongst the Jewish people, who chose the seditious robber and rejected Christ the Saviour, either external wars or civil discord... The Lord shews how Jerusalem and the province of Judaea merited the infliction of such calamities, in the following words: “But take heed to yourselves: for they shall deliver you up to councils; and in the synagogues ye shall be beaten.” For the greatest cause of destruction to the Jewish people was, that after slaying the Saviour, they also tormented the heralds of His name and faith with wicked cruelty.

— The Venerable Bede, between 709 and 726

As a proof of the truth and credibility of the matter we now adduce something which we have heard from the lips of Theobald, who was once a Jew, and afterwards a monk. He verily told us that in the ancient writings of his fathers it was written that the Jews, without the shedding of human blood, could neither obtain their freedom, nor could they ever return to their fatherland. Hence it was laid down by them in ancient times that every year they must sacrifice a Christian in some part of the world to the Most High God in scorn and contempt of Christ, that so they might avenge their sufferings on Him; inasmuch as it was because of Christ’s death that they had been shut out from their own country, and were in exile as slaves in a foreign land.

— Thomas of Monmouth, 1173

They are real liars and bloodhounds who have not only continually perverted and falsified all of Scripture with their mendacious glosses from the beginning until the present day. Their heart’s most ardent sighing and yearning and hoping is set on the day on which they can deal with us Gentiles as they did with the Gentiles in Persia at the time of Esther. Oh, how fond they are of the book of Esther, which is so beautifully attuned to their bloodthirsty, vengeful, murderous yearning and hope. The sun has never shone on a more bloodthirsty and vengeful people than they are who imagine that they are God’s people who have been commissioned and commanded to murder and to slay the Gentiles. In fact, the most important thing that they expect of their Messiah is that he will murder and kill the entire world with their sword. They treated us Christians in this manner at the very beginning through out all the world. They would still like to do this if they had the power, and often enough have made the attempt, for which they have got their snouts boxed lustily.

— Martin Luther, 1543

We reject the absurdity and the neo-Marxist-Leninist distortion that somehow all men are created equal. We believe that this Humanistic tenet of philosophy from the so-called “Age of Enlightenment” is diametrically opposed to true Christian teaching. Thus, if you believe, as the Bible teaches, that no comes to the Father except through Jesus Christ, the Son; and that there is no other name or authority given under Heaven or earth whereby men may be saved; and that the Apostle Paul was right in saying that the religions of the heathen were nothing but demon-worship, then you too are a Christian Supremacist, a bigot, and the object of hatred by Talmudic Jews, Jewish, Zionistic supremacists, neo-Marxist supremacists, and Humanist supremacists, all of whom hate the Living Christ, His Holy Word, and His Holy People.

— The Christian Separatist Church Society, 2001

Once in Jerusalem, Jesus’ target was the Temple complex. This was a vast edifice commissioned by Herod the Great, and still under construction in Jesus’ time. The main entrance opened onto a basilica, where animals were sold for sacrifices, and Roman coins with graven images exchanged for Torah-compliant ones that could be given as offerings. This was no village church fête, but Judaea’s main financial centre. And Jesus attacked the traders, drove their livestock out, and tipped the cash onto the floor (Matthew 21:12–13, Mark 11:15–19, Luke 19:45–48, John 2:13–17). The Gospels rather understate the ramifications, and if Josephus wrote about this it was deleted by the copyist. But some hints remain. Barabbas, released when Jesus was executed, “had committed murder in the insurrection” (Mark 15:7) — what insurrection? Two “thieves” were crucified with Jesus; the Greek word is lēstai (lhstai), which in modern terms could as well be translated “guerrillas” or “insurgents”. Jesus generally pursued his ends by non-violent means, but in tense times political demonstrations have a way of stirring things up, and the outcome is seldom easy to control.

Having thus taken over the Temple, Jesus taught there day after day. The Sadducee priests cannot have been happy about this, but they could do little about it without bloodshed on the sacred ground. The Romans, having learned by bitter experience that, if they wanted any semblance of peace in Judaea, then the Temple must be left alone, accordingly allowed the Jews to execute any Gentile who entered the court beyond the basilica, even Roman citizens — an astonishing concession, but attested by archaeology as well as Josephus (Wars of the Jews VI, 2) — and hence were powerless to intervene. But eventually Jesus’ enemies conceived a plan to kill him.

There is some debate, not relevant here, on whether Jesus’ Last Supper with his disciples was really a Passover meal or not. He seems to have anticipated that there would be violent repercussions, but in the circumstances that would not have taken any supernatural prescience. In any case, they left the town to go to the Mount of Olives, there to meet Judas Iscariot and an arrest party (Matthew 26:47–50, Mark 14:43–46, Luke 22:47–48, John 18:2–9). Here the Gospel-writers’ bias is palpable. Jesus, who utterly rejected material gain, would hardly have accepted a follower who cared only for money, but the Synoptics have Judas seek payment from the chief priests (Matthew 26:14–16, Mark 14:10–11, Luke 22:3–6), and John makes him a common thief (12:4–6 — so why didn’t he just abscond with the cash-box?) Matthew and Acts recount his untimely death with more relish than consistency (Matthew 27:3–10, Acts 1:18–20). Evidently he was not remembered with kindness. We can only speculate on his real motive, or, for that matter, his real fate.

And now we come to an episode that has been seriously tampered with. Having been arrested, how was Jesus convicted? Matthew 26:57–68 and Mark 14:53–65 have the council of the chief priests try him overnight. He is falsely accused of offering to rebuild the destroyed Temple in three days (not so falsely, according to John 2:18–22). He is then convicted on his own testimony, and sentenced to death on the spot. Any one of these points would render a capital trial invalid under Talmudic law (Sanhedrin 32a and 32b). Then, for no readily apparent reason, they try him all over again the next morning (Matthew 27:1, Mark 15:1). Luke 22:63–71 drops the nocturnal trial and the false witnesses, but retains the self-accusation and the immediate sentence. John 18:12–24 doesn’t mention any trial by Jewry; Jesus is questioned privately by the high priest, and instead of a vicious beating he is slapped once. Since John is usually the most anti-Semitic Gospel, we should take its moderation here seriously.

Jesus is then brought before Pilate (Matthew 27:2 and 11–31, Mark 15:1–20, Luke 23:1–25, John 18:28–19:16). This is awkward for Gentile Christians wanting to avoid any suggestion of Roman injustice, and is therefore unlikely to be an invention. But what follows is out of character for Pilate. Josephus (Antiquities XVIII, 3) portrays him as a violent, ruthless man, and not one to care about justice when his will was flouted. A real taste of his management style is found at Luke 13:1. Yet even Mark has him plead Jesus’ innocence before his soldiers flog and mock him; each of the other Gospels adds implausible details. Matthew follows Mark’s story fairly closely, but includes a little exchange where Pilate, who neither knew nor cared for any Jewish custom, enacts Deuteronomy 21:6–9, meanwhile quoting II Samuel 3:28; the crowd oblige with a rendition of II Samuel 3:29 — conveniently, if implausibly, passing on the guilt for Jesus’ death to the Jewish communities of Christian Europe. Luke, whose writer really didn’t like the Herods at all, solves the problem of Roman brutality by giving the flogging and mockery to Herod Antipas’ soldiers. John, after a theological discourse between Jesus and Pilate, has the Jews say they would kill Jesus themselves except that “It is not lawful for us to put any man to death,” which we have seen is false, and which is also contradicted by the martyrdom of Stephen in Acts 6–7.

But the translator of Mark may have confused his facts here. Four years before the Rebellion, according to Josephus (Wars VI, 5), one Jesus son of Ananus came to the Feast of Tabernacles in Jerusalem and began shouting “A voice from the east, a voice from the west, a voice from the four winds, a voice against Jerusalem and the holy house, a voice against the bridegrooms and the brides, and a voice against this whole people!” Day and night he refused to stop. Some leading Jews took exception, and had him beaten, but his only response was to keep up his lament. So they took him to the Roman governor, Albinus, who had him severely flogged and then interrogated him personally; again, he only answered “Woe, woe to Jerusalem!” until Albinus dismissed him as a lunatic. He continued to cry “Woe to Jerusalem!” until he was killed by a shot from a Roman catapult in the final siege, over seven years later. Apart from the time-frame this is suspiciously similar to the Gospel story of Pilate.

So Jesus was led away and crucified (Matthew 27:32–54, Mark 15:21–39, Luke 23:26–48, John 19:17–37). Again, crucifixion, being a Roman death, is inconvenient and therefore probably genuine. The Synoptics compensate by having a centurion praise Jesus. They also tell us that the sun was darkened, and that the Temple curtain was torn in half. Neither is mentioned by John or Josephus — the Christian who altered the latter’s work would surely have left that part in as confirmation of the Gospels. Matthew’s great earthquake and resurrection of the saints don’t seem to have been noticed by anybody else in the world. All four Gospels describe the superscription identifying Jesus as “the King of the Jews”, and indeed John makes much of it. But kings, as we have seen, were not exactly revered; all it means is that Jesus was executed for being a rebel leader.

According to Mark and Matthew, Jesus’ last words were “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” followed by a loud cry. Some Christians explain that, at the moment of his death, Jesus took the sins of the world on himself, and God, being holy, turned his face away. Others hold that Jesus was quoting the beginning of Psalm 22, and hinting at the upbeat ending. Unfortunately, the verb in the Psalm is ‘azabtanī (עזבתני), whereas Jesus used the Aramaic shabaqtanī (שבקתני), so it was not a direct quote. I suspect that the explanation is far simpler: Jesus expected God to come to his aid, and was disappointed. No wonder Luke and John felt a bit uncomfortable about it. Luke in particular has Jesus deliver several pious speeches from the cross — despite the fact that crucifixion kills by asphyxiation, which would have made it difficult to talk — in which he forgives his killers, invites a fellow victim to Paradise, and ends with “Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit.”

Jesus died on a Friday. The Jewish calendar day lasts from one sunset to the next, and so it was urgent that he be buried before the Sabbath began that evening (Matthew 27:55–61, Mark 15:40–47, Luke 23:49–56, John 19:38–42). Joseph of Arimathaea, a Jewish leader, accordingly requested his body from Pilate, and had it wrapped in cloths and placed in a new rolling-stone tomb “wherein was never man yet laid”. Tombs of the period have a bench for fresh corpses, and also niches for stone boxes — ossuaries — containing the bones of previous occupants. The entrance of such tombs is not sealed, but covered with a large stone disk that rolls along a groove, so that they can be used many times over. This one would have been intended for Joseph himself and several generations of descendants. The burial was evidently incomplete, for the women of Jesus’ following “returned, and prepared spices and ointments” afterwards. Early on Sunday morning, they went back to the tomb to finish the task. The Gospels differ sharply on what happened next.

In Mark 16:1–8, they meet a young man in a long white garment, who tells them that, having risen, Jesus is not there, but will be going to Galilee, and they are to tell the disciples, at which they leave the tomb in fear. Verses 9–20, which conclude the Gospel, are not found in the earliest manuscripts, but in the Greek verse 8 breaks off in the middle of a sentence. What originally followed, we will never know.

Matthew’s version (chapter 28) has a complication. Earlier, at 27:62–66, the chief priests and Pharisees go to Pilate and ask him to order the tomb guarded, to prevent Jesus’ disciples from faking a resurrection. The juxtaposition of “chief priests and Pharisees”, who were of opposing factions, should warn us that this is a later addition. A mighty angel, blazing with light, descends from heaven and rolls away the stone. The guards all faint, and the angel takes the rôle of Mark’s young man in white; then Jesus himself appears and repeats the angel’s instructions. The guards report their failure to the priests, who bribe them to spread the rumour that they fell asleep at their posts, thus allowing the disciples to steal the body, and promise to help them out of trouble, should Pilate hear of their dereliction of duty. It is not clear from the earlier passage whether Pilate granted or refused their request, and whether, therefore, these guards were Roman soldiers or temple police. If the latter, they were answerable to the priests, and the promise was pointless; if the former, the priests could do nothing, and the promise was unavailing. The whole incident is suspect. Finally, the disciples go to Galilee as instructed, where Jesus tells them to spread the Gospel to all nations.

Luke 24 begins much like Mark’s account, but this time there are two men in shining garments. The women tell the disciples, and Peter, checking their story, finds the tomb empty. That same afternoon, two disciples walking to nearby Emmaus meet a mysterious fellow-traveller, who vanishes as soon as they recognise him as Jesus. The disciples immediately return to Jerusalem to tell their story to the others; then Jesus himself appears among them. He tells them to stay in Jerusalem “until ye be endued with power from on high”, and leads them out to Bethany where he is carried up into heaven. Acts 1:1–12, by the same author, tells the same story, but adds that Jesus remained in Jerusalem with the disciples for forty days before his ascension.

In John 20 Mary Magdalene goes to the tomb alone, and finds it open. She runs to tell Peter and “the other disciple, whom Jesus loved” (traditionally but insecurely identified with John son of Zebedee) that the body has been stolen. They investigate and find the grave-clothes strewn and abandoned. Only then does Mary go into the tomb. Two angels in white ask her why she is crying, and again she says that the body has been removed. She turns to see a man behind her, and, under the impression that he is a gardener, she asks him where he has taken the body; then suddenly she realizes he is Jesus. Jesus then appears to the disciples twice, eight days apart, both times in a locked room. Finally, in chapter 21, Jesus performs the miracle which Luke puts at the beginning of his ministry (5:1–11).

Could Jesus’ resurrection appearances have been hallucinations? Christians usually object that the disciples were not mentally ill; but perfectly sane people are known to hallucinate when there is something weighing on their minds, and the recent death of someone they love or respect is perhaps the most common trigger. The Bible scholar J. B. Phillips saw C. S. Lewis appear and speak to him twice in the weeks following the latter’s death in 1963, and the astronomer Carl Sagan repeatedly heard his dead parents’ voices. Hallucinations have several logic features, or rather alogic features, in common with dreams: it is quite normal for things to have contradictory attributes, for example, or for things or people to change into other things or people without the change ever actually happening (so that the dreamer rationalizes it later as a sudden realization). A gardener, or a fellow-traveller, suddenly turning out to have been Jesus all along is well within the realms of this quirky logic. But how could the disciples have had the same hallucination? This does not pose a difficulty if they had indeed learned hypnosis from him; one charismatic disciple could then easily share it with all the others. Some argue that, in that case, the visions of the risen Jesus should not have stopped abruptly at the Ascension — and nor did they (Acts 7:54–56, 9:1–9).

We still have the empty tomb to deal with. But with the story of the guards discredited, this is not so puzzling. Remember, Jesus’ burial was incomplete and hasty, because of the Sabbath. Remember, the tomb would have been built for Joseph of Arimathaea’s family. Surely Jesus’ interment there would have been a temporary arrangement. Remember also that the Sabbath begins and ends at sunset, not at dawn. Therefore, when the women came in the morning, the Sabbath had been over for twelve hours. Is it absurdly implausible to suppose that Joseph had completed the ceremony after sunset on Saturday, and taken the body elsewhere? It has been argued that the priests would surely have mounted an investigation and quickly found the body; but at the time the resurrection story would have been merely a wild rumour among the followers of a dead rebel — certainly no cause for ceremonially defiling oneself by opening a tomb.

And so our case is complete. Jesus was an inspiring man, but he was not God and never claimed to be. His miracles and his resurrection are easily explained without any reference to the supernatural. That being so, he does not add anything to the case for God’s existence. The Problem of Evil stands unchallenged as evidence against God, and we must conclude that there is no such person. I could close my arguments here if the hardest task didn’t still lie ahead of me. Most Christians will have been completely unimpressed by my series so far. They themselves have overwhelming evidence — direct, personal evidence. They have heard God speak to them personally. They have felt the inner voice confirming their sacred faith. And they are quite sure that, without God, the world would be too cold, cramped, and purposeless to be worth living in. To these points I turn in the final instalment.

Last updated: 21 March 2007