Here is some support for the idea of a historical Jesus. But I suspect it will not be to the liking of believers.
Credible Historical Context
The Gospels describe an environment that existed in Jerusalem and its vicinity somewhere around 30 CE. Pilate is prefect of Judaea. The Second Temple still stands and the Sadducees are in charge. Many Jews make the Passover pilgrimage to Jerusalem. The House of Shammai, with its emphasis on strict observance of rules, is the dominant Pharisee sect.
When the Gospels were written sometime after the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 CE, this world no longer existed. Pilate is gone for decades, the Temple is destroyed, there are no more pilgrimages, the Sadducees and Shammai Pharisees are virtually extinct – wiped out at Jerusalem. The Pharisees in the Gospel writing age are of the House of Hillel, having refused to fight the Romans and leaving Jerusalem before the end.
This aspect of the Gospels – this accurately detailed portrayal of an earlier time – suggests a tradition handed down from that time.
Credible Original Message of Jesus in the Context of the Times
The original concept of death we see in the Jewish scriptures was that it was permanent, the end. But as the people of Israel continued to suffer indignity after indignity at the hands of oppressors, external and internal, the question arose: How can God be just if the righteous suffer while the unrighteous prosper? The concept of a future resurrection and judgment appeared, wherein all who ever lived would be raised from the dead to be rewarded or punished according to how they had lived their lives. The idea of a judgment after death was certainly not new in the word but it was new to Judaism. But a general future resurrection was I believe unique. Paganism had other non-worldly realms in which spirits dwelt for better or worse but to Jews life necessarily meant a body. One clear reference to an expected future resurrection in canonical Jewish scriptures (Ezekiel 37) has it as definitely physical in nature.
According to the tradition of apocalypticism (in Ehrman’s phrase) God would send a judge to mete out the rewards and punishments. Or maybe being brought back to life in a more perfect world was the reward and the punishment was to stay dead. Opinions varied. There were also varying notions about this person God would send. On the one hand he was a human being descended from David. But Daniel depicts a supernatural (if human-like) being descending from heaven.
At the putative time of Jesus there was much discontent with Roman rule. The Zealots were not going to wait for any Messiah. They were going to throw out the Romans themselves, possibly justifying themselves worthy of God’s assistance. Others chose a less active stance, hoping for God to send someone to save Israel from oppression. Messianic fervor was in the air, in one form or another.
A young man of around thirty years in the time of Pilate (as Luke has it anyway) would have been growing up when Hillel was head of the Sanhedrin. Hillel was more interested in the spirit of the Law than in fine attention to all the plethora of rules and regulations. His successor Shammai was the opposite, concentrating on strict literal adherence to the letter of the Law.
The message that we see the Jesus of the Gospels preaching is that of a return to true righteousness to thereby create the messianic age by justifying Israel in the sight of God as worthy of a Messiah. His quarrel with the Shammai Pharisees is that they were concerned with man-made rituals whereas they should have been concerned with obeying the Laws that God gave directly. And not just the letter of the Law but its spirit. This message is exactly that of the prophets of old such as Isaiah and especially Amos.
We can imagine a young man,
influenced by Hillel in his youth,
who has studied the Law and the Prophets and the apocalyptic writings of the age,
upset by the misplaced literalness and resulting hypocrisy of the Pharisees
and the ostentatiousness (and money-grubbing) of the Sadducees,
who is inspired to offer a more spiritual answer to the pressing problem of evil, an answer different and more traditional than the violence of the Zealots, an answer that would in turn inspire the oppressed classes. An entirely believable scenario.
Paul’s Efforts to Explain the Death of Jesus
It is also a believable scenario that such a person would run afoul of the powers that be and end up nailed to a cross. For those who thought of him as the Messiah or something like that this would have been a disaster. What happened to the Kingdom of God? And what about the Romans?
I see Paul going to great lengths to turn this disaster on its head and make it a victory instead. He grabs bits and pieces from here and there to turn the death of the supposed Messiah into an intentional self-sacrifice for the forgiveness of sins. Jesus is the blood sacrifice to forgive sins, Jesus is the Passover Lamb sacrifice, Jesus is the first fruits sacrifice.
However:
The blood sacrifice in Exodus 29 is for consecration of a priest. The blood sacrifice in Leviticus 4 is for the forgiveness of unintentional violation of one of the many mitzvoth. Both are performed by a priest according to very precise ritual. Nether involves a male lamb.
The Passover sacrifice, the strongest of Paul’s images, is not a sin atonement sacrifice
Sacrifices of any kind can only be performed by a priest who follows certain precise rules. They are performed in the Temple and must be painless and not involve mutilation.
Human sacrifice is strictly forbidden. So is cannibalism. So is drinking any kind of blood.
If Paul’s audience were not previously aware that Jesus had been crucified and Paul was telling them about that for the first time and adding that this was a sin atonement sacrifice, they would have thought he was insane. His arguments were all over the place. But if they had already known that Jesus was crucified and were troubled by that unexpected and catastrophic event, Paul’s explanation would have been welcomed, as improbable as it might sound to anyone else.
If there had not been an unexpected and disastrous crucifixion of a real historic Jesus, why would any explanation at all be needed, and why would such a collection of lame excuses be so taken to heart?
The Empty Tomb
All the Gospels, even individualist John, agree that the tomb in which Jesus was laid was found to be empty and that stranger(s) said that Jesus rose from the dead and went someplace. They all have creatively divergent versions of what happened next, each according to his own agenda. But if the empty tomb were just a story, why such an unimaginative and suspicious sounding one? A risen Jesus would be proof that such a thing is possible and that the apocalyptic expectations of an imminent eschaton were justified. If the story were woven from whole cloth why not a really dramatic resurrection event with lots of witnesses? Later apocryphal accounts do offer such elaborate stories. But those nearest in time to the alleged event do not. When Jesus rising from the dead would take some of the sting out of Jesus getting killed, an empty tomb and a stranger’s strange story would not be all that surprising.
The Evolution of Parousia
Paul, and Jesus followers in general, seem to expect the eschaton to happen any day now. By the time Mark wrote his Gospel sometime after 70 CE, people were worried. If we take the death of Jesus to be about 30 CE and Mark writing not too long after 70 CE, those who heard Jesus would be getting old.
Mark introduces the idea that the appearance of Daniel’s Son of Man and the universal judgment would happen within the lifetime of some of the people who heard the living Jesus speak. He then has the destruction of Jerusalem be the signal that the Son of Man was about to arrive. In this way he revives hope in that fading expectation.
Matthew, writing 80 CE or so, continues Mark’s Olivet Discourse / immediate Son of Man meme but hedges his bet a little by adding that no one knows just when that will be. Luke, writing even after that, also includes the Olivet Discourse but adds his own hedge in the form of the parable of the king who has traveled to a far land and not yet returned. When he returns those who were unfaithful to him are killed, surprisingly bloodthirsty for the usually mild mannered Luke. Luke also introduces an idea not clearly presented in prior Gospels, that of reward or punishment immediately after death as in the story of Lazarus and the Rich Man.
John omits the Olivet Discourse entirely and makes no mention of any immediate expectations. Jesus will return but when? John subtly shifts the emphasis from a horizontal timeline to a vertical viewpoint – Jesus re-joining his Father in heaven from whence he came. John’s Gospel seems to end with chapter 20. Chapter 21 appears to even be presented as additional material. It refers to the previous story as originating from the ‘beloved disciple’ (traditionally called John) who has apparently died. The idea of Jesus returning before his last hearer passed away is turned inside out. It turns out Jesus never said any such thing. It was a misunderstanding!
Luke in Acts, written sometime down the road, has an even cleverer explanation. It is not that Jesus himself will return soon but the Holy Spirit will endow the church with heavenly authority. In Acts this happens on Pentecost a matter of months after Jesus is crucified. Jesus is off the hook timeline-wise and can stay away as long as he wants. That Luke in his own Gospel ties the highly visible return of Jesus in the clouds with angels to the same timeframe expectations as Mark and Matthew does not seem to bother him at all.
John of Patmos, author of Revelation, wants to reinstate the original short timeline belief. But instead of just mentioning it almost in passing, he builds an elaborate and exotic prophesy about the end of the world with the signs of its immediate arrival being veiled references to events that have already happened. His conscious adoption of the style and framework of Daniel, the origin of the Son of Man meme brings immediate apocalyptic expectations back around full circle.
This ongoing evolution of presentation makes sense if it is intended to explain and re-explain the passage of time since what was perceived as a historic event at a certain point in time.
The credible historic context, the credible original message of Jesus in the context of the times, Paul’s efforts to explain the death of Jesus, the empty tomb and the evolution of
parousia all suggest to me that a real historic Jesus is an entirely believable story. Proof? Of course not. Enough to accept it as a working hypothesis? I think so.
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