Another problem that confronts the approach of the Jesus Seminar is its inability to distinguish material that circulated in an oral tradition that originated from other sages, such as John the Baptist, that were simply attributed later to Jesus in the Gospels or in Q. Moreover, in an age of widespread illiteracy, much of this material, whether from the Gospels or from earlier Jewish-Christian sources, must have circulated orally, even after being written down. Containing features of oral preservation is simply not enough evidence to be able to source something to a historical Jesus with any confidence.
We neither dismiss nor ignore the work of these scholars—or that of any of the other serious students of the field. But we believe it to be insufficient for a complete understanding of Christianity’s origins.
2. Valliant, James S., “The New Testament Versus the American Revolution,” The Objective Standard, vol. 10, no. 2, Summer, 2015, pp. 35-47.
3. Mark 4:10-12, emphasis added; cf. Luke 8:9-10, Matthew 13:11-13, and John 10:1-10 (The New International Version of the New Testament is generally used in the notes that follow.)
4. e.g., Mark 5:42-43, Matthew 8:3-4, and Matthew 12:15-16
5. Matthew 16:20; cf. Mark 8:29-30
6. Mark 3:16, Luke 6:14, Matthew 16:17-19, John 1:42; Acts 1:23, Acts 4:36; Acts 13:9
7. John 13:23
8. NOTE: There are many outstanding sources on these questions, such as George H. Smith, Atheism: The Case Against God, 1974, Nash, new edition, 1979, Prometheus, and Richard Elliott Friedman, Who Wrote the Bible?, 1987, new edition and preface, 1997, Harper, and The Bible With Sources Revealed, 2003, Harper.
Dolphin and Anchor
I. Crux Dissimulata
1. With the possible exceptions of the epistle credited to James, which we shall consider in some detail, and the Apocalypse of John which appears to contain a combination of elements.
2. The timing of Vespasian’s son and successor Titus’s own birth—so shortly yet clearly after the Crucifixion of Christ—is strikingly convenient to the purpose of suggesting their separate and successive identities. A widespread belief in some form of such “reincarnation” among Jews, moreover, can be seen in the New Testament, in which people ask whether John the Baptist, for example, was himself “Elijah returned.” Although reincarnation is alien to the traditional Jewish context, John 1:19-23, “Now this was John’s testimony when the Jewish Leaders in Jerusalem sent priests and Levites to ask him who he was. He did not fail to confess, but confessed freely, ‘I am not the Messiah.’ ‘They asked him, ‘Then who are you? Are you Elijah?’ He said, ‘I am not.’ He answered, ‘No.’” He then goes on to identify himself as the voice crying in the wilderness predicted by the prophet Isaiah, an idea certainly more consistent with the theology of the New Testament. However, simply asking if he believed himself to be Elijah suggests that there were Jews who did so regard the Baptist and therefore believed in a kind of reincarnation. Furthermore, at Mark 6:14-16, we are told that some thought the same of Jesus. “King Herod heard about this, for Jesus’ name had become well known. Some were saying, ‘John the Baptist has been raised from the dead, and that is why miraculous powers are at work in him.’ Others said, ‘He is Elijah.’ And still others claimed, He is a prophet, like one of the prophets of long ago. But when Herod heard this, he said, ‘John, whom I beheaded, has been raised from the dead!’” Notice that among these notions is the idea that Jesus himself might be the Baptist “raised from the dead,” someone who was his alleged contemporary(!) This is an idea repeated again at Mark 8:28, and a concept toned down or explained in the Gospel of Luke in its prenatal prophecy about the nature of the Baptist, like this: “And he will go on before the Lord, in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the parents to their children and the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous—to make ready a people prepared for the Lord.” (Emphases added)
3. For an excellent description of the views of the famous Dead Sea Scrolls “sectarians,” and a comparison of those views to those of the first Christians, see Eisenman, Robert, The Dead Sea Scrolls and the First Christians (1996, Rockport, PA: Element Books).
4. The concept of the Trinity is itself a pagan-flavored one. The three Fates, the three Graces, and the three-faced goddess Hecate are just some of the many precedents of a triple-natured or triple-formed deity in pagan religion.
5. Matthew 4:19.
6. cf. Luke 5:1-11 and John 21:1-14
7. Mark 6:45-52, Matthew 14:22-33, and John 6:16-21
8. Mark 4:35-41, Luke 8:22-25, and Matthew 8:23-27
9. Mark 6:53-56 and Matthew 14:34-36
10. Mark 5:1-20 and Luke 8:26-39
11. Exodus 30:13
12. Matthew 17:24-27, emphasis added.
13. Mark 13:1-30, cf. Matthew 24:1-39
14. Mark 6:31-44, Luke 9:10-17, Matthew 14:13-21, and John 5:6-15
15. Mark 8:1-9
16. Matthew 15:32-39
17. John 6:35, 48 and 51
18. John 4:14-15 and 7:37
19. Mark 14:22-24, Luke 21:19-20, Matthew 26:26-28, and 1 Corinthians 11:23-25
20. Tertullian, "De Baptismo,” 1
21. St. Clement of Alexandria, Christ, the Instructor, Book III, Chapter XI
22. Herodotus. The Histories with Introduction and Notes by John M. Marincola, 2003, Penguin, p. 224.
23. Mark 8:34, cf. Luke 9:23, Matthew 16:24
24. Clement of Alexandria, Christ, The Instructor, Book I, Chapter III, “Isaac only bore the wood of the sacrifice, as the Lord the wood of the cross.”
25. See, e.g., Moss, Candida, The Myth of Persecution: How Early Christians Invented a Story of Martyrdom, 2013, HarperOne.
26. Scarre, Chris, Chronicle of the Roman Emperors: the Reign-by-Reign Record of the Rulers of Imperial Rome, 1995, Thames & Hudson, p. 170.
27. The Letters of the Younger Pliny, trans. Betty Radice, 1963, Penguin Classics, Book Ten, 96, 97, emphasis added.
28. Tacitus, The Annals, in Annals and Histories, E. Cowan, ed., trans. Alfred John Church and William Jackson Brodribb, 2009, Everyman’s Library (trans. orig. pub. 1876), Book XV, 44, emphasis added.
29. Pasachoff, Naomi E., and Littman, Robert J., A Concise History of the Jewish People, 2005, Rowman & Littlefield, p. 67; DellaPergola, Sergio, “World Jewish Population, 2012,” The American Jewish Year Book, 2012, Springer, pp. 212-283.
30. Suetonius, Claudius, 25, this and subsequent references to Suetonius are from The Twelve Caesars, trans. Robert Graves, rev. ed. 1979, (trans. first pub. 1957), Penguin Classics. NOTE: Suetonius’s actual language, impulsore chresto, may be rendered simply, “messianic insurgents.” This, in either case, would not alter the apparent confusion Tacitus, who obviously was talking about a person called “Christ,” exhibits with regard to the violent nature of Christians. Such a translation also still suggests that similar language was then used to describe both kinds of messianic adherents. Significantly, the original text of Tacitus read “Chrestiani” rather than “Christiani,” seemingly reflecting the same spelling used by Suetonius.