Jesus Source Documents

Recognized Books

1. Matthew
2. Mark
3. Luke
4. John
5. Acts
6. The thirteen Pauline Epistles
7. First Peter
8. First John
9. First Clement 

Disputed Books  

1. Hebrews
2. James
3. Second Peter
4. Second and Third John
5. Jude
6. Revelation 

Rejected Books 

1. The Gospel of Peter, Acts of Peter, Preaching of Peter, Revelation of Peter
2. Acts of Paul
3. Shepherd of Hermas
4. Second Clement
5. Epistle of Barnabas
6. Teachings of the Apostles
7. Gospel of Thomas
8. Gospel of Matthias
9. Gospel of the Hebrews
10. Acts of Andres
11. Acts of John

Since the whole church was never able to agree on an official canon each region of the church defined their own. The recognized western Bible of today mostly derives from a series of later local church councils such as the Council of Laodicea in 363 CE which agreed on what became the present New Testament but without the book of Revelation. The first list of what became the 27 books of the New Testament in the west was put out by the Bishop Athanasius of Alexandria in Egypt in 367 CE (Ehrman 2005). This list was confirmed by the later North African councils of Hippo (393) and Carthage (397). They included Revelation but stated that Hebrews was secondary in authority to the Pauline Epistles.​

References

This set of letters forms a tight coherent sequence through time such that placing other letters attributed to him within this scheme is problematic. Each letter except the very personal prison letters of Philippians and Philemon exhibits a style in which Paul mentions a worry and then proceeds to make suggestions that would eliminate his worry. Paul always has a section in these letters where he justifies his authority because that is often called into question. This sort of justification is not found in the other letters attributed to him such as Romans. Those other letters present him as an authority.​

In these authentic letters Paul never compromises his belief that all people, including his fellow Jews, can only inherit the apocalyptic Kingdom of God if they believe Jesus is the risen Messiah who will rule over the coming post apocalyptic kingdom of God, that is, declare him as lord and savior. This is not true in other letters traditionally assigned to Paul like Romans.​

Paul’s authentic letters have a rather rambling, just-in-time style indicating they were written down by a scribe as thoughts popped into Paul's head while he was pacing the floor. This style contrasts with the well thought out treatises on theology exhibited in the other letters attributed to him.​

No scholarly consensus exists regarding Pauline chronology (Dieter 1992). This confusion originates because some scholars cannot accept the evidence that Paul has a limited number of authentic letters. The confusion continues if Paul’s authentic letters are not given evidential priority when compared to the later book of Acts. The book of Acts incorrectly seeks to force Paul into the line of apostolic authority instead of treating him as the creative outsider that he was. If Paul had an idea which he believed was right then he taught it regardless of what the Jerusalem apostles thought.​

Galatians is the only letter of Paul’s that can be dated directly (even if uncertainty) to about 55 CE. This uncertainty arises because the date of his conversion near Damascus has to be estimated. A good estimated conversion date is 37 CE based upon the likely number of years (5 years) after the death of Jesus before a significant Jewish Christian community could have developed in Damascus. In any case Paul was certainly in Damascus before 40 CE because the King Aretas he mentions (2 Corinthians 11:32-33) was the King Aretas IV who ruled out of Petra between 9 B.C.E. and 40 CE (Donfried 1992).​

From that conversion date one can determine the date of Paul’s two visits to Jerusalem prior to his last one which resulted in his arrest: This puts his second visit to Jerusalem at 54 CE based upon the years mentioned in the following passage (37 + 3 + 14):

Consequently, Galatians was written shortly after this second Jerusalem visit where they discussed the status of the Gentile converts (this is known as the council of Jerusalem). Consequently, 55 CE is a good date for Galatians. Paul’s third and final visit to Jerusalem in 58 CE was for delivering the money to them that he collected from the churches which he had founded.​

Paul's letter to the Thessalonians was written from Athens (1 Thessalonians 3:1-2 and 3:6) during his first visit to Greece when he heard that the Thessalonians were undergoing some persecutions. After this, Paul left Athens and went to Corinth where he founded a church and stayed for some time before returning to Ephesus (Acts 18:18-19). From Ephesus he traveled on to Jerusalem (the church) via the port city of Caesarea Maritima for his second visit in 54 CE as described in Acts:

Acts describes the council of Jerusalem earlier in chapter 15 and ignores it in this passage in an attempt to give Paul apostolic legitimacy before he sets out on his missionary journeys, a fact contradicted by Paul’s own letters which show him going out on his own authority.​

 Paul’s letter of 1 Corinthians was written from Ephesus (1 Corinthians 16:8) during this later set of visits through Galatia and Phrygia. This letter was written due to his concern about raising money for the church at Jerusalem. Fund raising implies that the church at Corinth had been in operation for some time so this letter would not have been written near the time of the Corinthian church’s founding. Consequently, the year 56 CE is a good date for 1 Corinthians.

References

Donfried, K.P (1992) “Chronology”, In Anchor Bible Dictionary, vol 1 (ed. David Noel Freedman; New York: Doubleday) 1002-22.

Josephus mentions the persecutions which his fellow Jews suffered outside of their land of Judea during the war in his autobiography:

The persecutions of the Christians by both Romans and Jews during the war is mentioned in Mark:

The destruction of the temple is mentioned in Mark and it is the main anchor for dating this gospel.  Here is this important passage:

The above passage likely derived from a rumor which spread while Jesus was in Jerusalem which was that he was seeking to destroy the temple. This rumor probably was the trigger which led to his betrayal by Judas and arrest by the Romans. Yet only Mark has Jesus actually saying that the temple will be destroyed. The other gospels have other people saying it. All we can say for sure is that Jesus would have opposed the temple with its claim that people can be made right with God by doing sacrifices instead of improving their inner being.

The Jesus Christ of Mark was a powerful king and such kings were supposed to show anger when their exalted status was not respected. Thus the Jesus of Mark was more angry than compassionate. This angry Jesus of Mark was softened by Matthew and Luke. For example Mark 3:5 has Jesus looking around in anger at people in a synagogue. Luke removes this reference to anger and Matthew rewrites the scene so that sentence is eliminated. Mark 10:14 has Jesus becoming aggravated by his disciples but Matthew and Luke remove this anger reference. Finally, the original phrase in Mark 1:41 of “feeling anger” towards a presumptive request for healing is preserved in some old manuscripts Mark but later copiers replaced by the phrase with “feeling compassion” (Ehrman 2005 page 133).​

References

Due to increasing differences in theology during the time which Luke was written, the lineage of apostolic authority was emphasized. As mentioned in the Pauline letters section, Paul’s travels in the book of Acts were changed so that he could be presented as first gaining authority from the original Jerusalem apostles.​

 The author of Luke de-emphasized the more ritualistic practices of Jesus' magical healing practices (only the laying on of hands was acceptable). He also made Jesus more aloof and unemotional. Towards this end Luke does not copy a large section of Mark (Mark 6:45 to 8:27) and this is called the "Great Omission" by Biblical scholars. The Great Omission contains the following: 

1. an insulting Jesus ("are you so dull" he says to his disciples,
2. a parable comparing Gentiles to dogs),
3. a set of overtly magical miracles performed by Jesus (spitting onto a tongue or into the eyes),
4. a repeat of the "Feeding the Multitudes miracle,
5. the miracle of walking on the water on the Sea of Galilee.  

Besides eliminating the section comparing Gentiles to dogs, the author of Luke also emphasized that the Jews did not know what they were doing when they rejected Jesus. Luke is the only source which has Jesus saying on the cross: “Father forgive them for they know not what they do” (Luke 23:34). He also adds a similar phrase when the early Christian martyr Stephen dies from being stoned by the Jews: “Lord do not hold this sin against them” (Acts 7:60). Significantly, this reconciliation attempt was not well received in some regions as these sayings were dropped in many early gospel copies (Ehrman 2005).​

The name “Luke” is meant to convey that this gospel is in the tradition of the apostle Paul because Luke was one of his followers. “Luke is first mentioned in Colossians 4:14 which is a letter attributed to Paul but was actually written later by someone else. Then Luke and Mark are paired in 2 Timothy 4:11 and Philemon 1:24, which are even later letters attributed to Paul but actually written by someone else as well.​

 Luke was likely written in Asia Minor, a region heavily influenced by Paul yet in between the source locations of Mark in Greece and Q in Alexandria, Egypt. Asia Minor is also far enough away from the Levant where Matthew could be written independently at nearly the same time.

References

 Ehrman, B.D (2005) Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why . HarperCollins

 Johnson, L.T. (1992) “ Luke-Acts, Book of”, In Anchor Bible Dictionary, vol 4 (ed. David Noel Freedman; New York: Doubleday) 403-420.​

In contrast to the author of Luke who uses Old Testament sources to reconstruct the life of Jesus, the author of Matthew uses Old Testament sources to promote the idea that Jesus was the Messiah for Jewish Christians. This is also evidenced at the very beginning of the book with the story about the virgin birth:

This quote referenced here is from Isaiah which was originally a prediction that the then enemy of Israel, Assyria, would pass away before a young boy reaches maturity but not before Israel had been punished. The word translated as “virgin” here is Greek meaning “young unmarried woman” who was assumed to be a virgin. This virgin interpretation led to the virgin birth stories. Its original use in the Hebrew Scriptures is shown below:

The divine promises to Israel about an eternal kingdom in exhibit two stages. The first stage shown in the passages below represents the time before 586 B.C.E. when the line of King David was still intact. They promise that both Israel (the kingdom) and David's line (his house) will endure forever:

The second stage occurs after the first destruction of Jerusalem in 586 B.C.E. and the resulting exile to Babylon of most of Israel’s remaining population. During this time, the promise is made conditional in some writings:

In contrast the promise is made even more permanent in other writings such as in a later addition to the book of Isaiah who attributes the first destruction of Jerusalem to God's momentary anger:

Therefore, if Jewish Christians were to be the true inheritors of this Kingdom, then Jesus had to be this “Son” and God had to be the “Father.” Jesus also had to represent the new Israel and because of that representation, he had to come out of Egypt:

Hence the author of Matthew added that information to his gospel:

The person “Matthew” is first mentioned as a disciple in the earlier book of Mark with the gospel of Matthew adding some additional information such as Matthew was a tax collector. This and other additional Matthew information is found only in the gospel of Matthew (9:9-10) and that seems to be why Matthew's name came to be associated with this book.

References

Jesus became the new temple for a new people with his body being the place where the name of God resides (along with God's heart and eyes). Jesus was seen as a connective network channel (Logos) for God’s interaction with people  which was analogous to a temple. 

In John, Jesus represents the new people of God, the new Israel, or in poetic terms, the true vineyard which is equated with Israel in Isaiah:

The Gospel of John came to be associated with the name of John who was the son of Zebedee, a Galilean fisherman. John’s main characteristic is one of impulsiveness and zealotry. The Gospel of Mark gives John and his brother James the title "sons of thunder" (Mark 3:17).​

While John is only second to Peter in discipleship status, he was the one who was twice rebuked by Jesus. The first was where he forbade an exorcist from working in Jesus' name (Mark 9:38-41). The second time was when John and his brother wanted to be seated next to Jesus (Mark 10:35-45).​

The best date for the Gospel of John seems to be 90 CE. It was written after Mark, Matthew, and Luke because it drops the mention of the Kingdom.  Yet John cannot have been written too long after the Roman-Jewish war because John’s local community still retained the memory that anyone who acknowledged Jesus was turned out of the synagogue (John 9:22, 12:42, 16:2). Consequently, a composition date of 90 CE is good and that is the scholarly consensus although suggested dates range from 80 to 95 CE (Kysar 1992).

References

Gnosticism was a general cultural paradigm which adopted dualism yet rejected the lordification of the deities. Dualism was an idea which originated in the Persian Zoroastrian religion and began permeating Mediterranean culture around 500 BCE. It perceived reality in terms of absolute “good” versus “evil” with the cosmic order was a battle between Good and Evil. Because the Divine realm was good, the material earthly realm became inherently evil. Most of the west was dualist by 200 BCE yet the authentic Jesus teachings show that he was not a dualist.​

Yet by not accepting deity lordification, Gnosticism retained the Ancient Pagan Paradigm of treating divine realm as a collection of powers with the optional personification of those powers into people. This idea was preserved in Greek Platonic philosophy and that is what allowed Christian theology define the Trinity by claiming that God as a person was defined by the powers of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit who could also be personified.​

According to the Gnosticism which entered Christianity, the evil world was not created by the God of Light but by the foolish God of Darkness. A good God could not create evil. This God of Darkness was called the demiurge and he was the god of the Old Testament. The other God, the God of Light provided humanity with their soul or spirit, their divine spark, which if properly understood and used would allow each individual to transcend the evil material world and reconnect with the good spiritual realm (the Kingdom of Light) thus being saved. Developing "gnosis" or self-awareness is what provided this deep understanding.​

Consequently, the Gnostics held that Jesus could not have arisen in the material flesh because material flesh is evil. This led to the disciple, “doubting Thomas,” of John 20:24-28 to become associated with this sayings gospel. His full name is Didymus Judas Thomas who was a disciple especially revered among the churches of Syria. Thomas was considered to be one of the original 12 disciples as written in Mark 3:16. Both Syria and Egypt were end points on the Roman-Mesopotamian/Persian/India trade routes.

References

This passage is considered authentic for the following reasons (John Meier 1991):

1. Unlike the inauthentic passage this passage is found in all the Greek transcripts with little variation. 
2. The church historian, Eusebius quotes it in his work dating from 314 CE indicating it existed prior to that date.   
3. Jesus and his brother James are mentioned in passing and not as the main subject of the paragraph which is centered on the illegal execution of James which causes Ananus to be deposed.
4. Since James was a common name (the Aramaic form of Jacob) he had to be distinguished from other Jameses by mentioning his brother who just happened to be Jesus making the mentioning of Jesus even less central.   
5. No early Christian source uses the phrase “James, the brother of Jesus”. Instead he is mentioned as “James the brother of the Lord,” or “James the brother of the Savior”.

Josephus' account of the death of James differs from the early Christian tradition given by the second century historian Hegesippus. Josephus has the death occur around 62 CE before the Jewish war occurs. In contrast, Hegesippus has it occur just before the siege of Jerusalem around 70 CE.   

A second and more disputed passage in the Jewish Antiquities also mentions Jesus:

Most scholars think this passage is a mix of authentic Josephus material and later Christian editorial additions. John Meier thinks the following is the original Josephus material (Meier 1991) and I concur. As told by Josephus himself, the Romans had a hard time keeping the peace in Judea and would have not had any hesitation about getting rid of any leader with a popular following, especially one from rebellious Galilee:

John Meier’s reasons for its authenticity are as follows:

1. All three existing Greek manuscripts of book 18 have the Christian edited passage, the earliest of which only dates to the 11th century. Latin copies which first originated in the 6th century from the school of Cassiodorus also have the Christian edited version indicating this passage had to have been edited early which lessens the likelihood that it a complete fraud.
2. The text and grammar of the non-edited section cohere with the style of Josephus and does not cohere with the text of the New Testament.
3. The non-edited section flows together well indicating that an editing process could have taken place after the composition of the original passage.   
4. The original passage has the tone of surprise that despite the shameful death of their leader the Christians have not yet faded away.   
5. Josephus was acquainted with Jesus as indicated by his mention in book 20 so multiple passages about Jesus would be likely.   
6. Josephus also describes the work of John the Baptist in book 18, chapter 5, paragraph 2 so describing Jesus is fully coherent with Josephus' purpose and interest. Additionally, the mention of John the Baptist occurs after the mention of Jesus contrary to the Christian tradition which mentions Jesus then John the Baptist. This placement again suggests that the non-edited passage is not of Christian origin.   
7. Early Christian writers, most notably Origen (184-253 CE), viewed this passage as indicating that Josephus did not believe Jesus was the Christ even though the passage explicitly mentions that Jesus was the Christ. This indicates that the Christ passage was a later insertion. For Origin this knowing about Jesus and not believing was worse than not knowing about him in the first place. This would have been the motivation to edit the passage to be more in alignment with Christianity which was probably done during the 400's.

References