Historical Jesus

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The term "historical Jesus" refers to the life and teachings of Jesus as interpreted through critical historical methods, in contrast to what are traditionally religious interpretations.^[1][2] It also considers the historical and cultural contexts in which Jesus lived.^[3][4][5][6] Virtually all scholars of antiquity accept that Jesus was a historical figure, and the idea that Jesus was a mythical figure has been consistently rejected by the scholarly consensus as a fringe theory.^{[7][8][9][10][11]} Scholars differ about the beliefs and teachings of Jesus as well as the accuracy of the biblical accounts, with only two events being supported by nearly universal scholarly consensus: Jesus was baptized and Jesus was crucified.^{[12][13][14][15]}

Reconstructions of the historical Jesus are based on the

Virtually all scholars of antiquity agree that Jesus existed.

Since the 1970s, various scholars such as Joachim Jeremias, E. P. Sanders and Gerd Theissen have traced elements of Christianity to currents in first-century Judaism and have discarded nineteenth-century minority views that Jesus was based on previous pagan deities.^[35] Mentions of Jesus in extra-biblical texts exist and are supported as genuine by the majority of historians.^[8] Differences between the content of the Jewish Messianic prophecies and the life of Jesus undermine the idea that Jesus was invented as a Jewish Midrash or Peshar.^{[36]: 344–351} The presence of details of Jesus' life in Paul, and the differences between letters and Gospels, are sufficient for most scholars to dismiss mythicist claims concerning Paul.^{[36]: 208–233 [37]} Theissen says "there is broad scholarly consensus that we can best find access to the historical Jesus through the Synoptic tradition."^[38] Bart D. Ehrman adds: "To dismiss the Gospels from the historical record is neither fair nor scholarly."^[8]: 73 One book argues that if Jesus did not exist, "the origin of the faith of the early Christians remains a perplexing mystery."^[36]: 233 Eddy and Boyd say the best history can assert is probability, yet the probability of Jesus having existed is so high, Ehrman says "virtually all historians and scholars have concluded Jesus did exist as a historical figure."^{[39]: 12, 21 [40]} Historian James Dunn writes: "Today nearly all historians, whether Christians or not, accept that Jesus existed".^[41] In a 2011 review of the state of modern scholarship, Ehrman wrote: "He certainly existed, as virtually every competent scholar of antiquity, Christian or non-Christian, agrees."^{[42]: 15–22}

The

The New Testament represents sources that have become

The Synoptic Gospels are the primary sources of historical information about Jesus and of the religious movement he founded.

The fourth gospel, the Gospel of John, differs greatly from the Synoptic Gospels and scholars generally consider it to be less historical than the Synoptic Gospels. As James Crossley and Robert J. Myles explain, John "is of limited use for reconstructing the life of the historical Jesus."^[60] However, scholars usually agree that John is not entirely without historical value: certain sayings in John are as old as or older than their synoptic counterparts, his representation of the topography around Jerusalem is often superior to that of the synoptics, his testimony that Jesus was executed before, rather than on, Passover, might well be more accurate, and his presentation of Jesus in the garden and the prior meeting held by the Jewish authorities are more historically plausible than their synoptic parallels.^[61]

Historians often study the

The Pauline epistles are dated to between AD 50 and 60 (i.e., approximately twenty to thirty years after the generally accepted time period for the death of Jesus), and are the earliest surviving Christian texts that include information about Jesus.^[63]

Although

In addition to biblical sources, there are a number of mentions of Jesus in non-Christian sources that have been used in the historical analyses of the existence of Jesus.[71]^[16]

Thallos

Biblical scholar Frederick Fyvie Bruce says the earliest mention of Jesus outside the New Testament occurs c. 55 CE from a historian named Thallos. Thallos' history, like the vast majority of ancient literature, has been lost but not before it was quoted by Sextus Julius Africanus (c. 160 – c. 240 CE), a Christian writer, in his History of the World (c. 220). This book likewise was lost, but not before one of its citations of Thallos was taken up by the Byzantine historian George Syncellus in his Chronicle (c. 800). There is no means by which certainty can be established concerning this or any of the other lost references, partial references, and questionable references that mention some aspect of Jesus' life or death, but in evaluating evidence, it is appropriate to note they exist.^{[72]: 29–33 [73]: 20–23}

Josephus and Tacitus

There are two passages in the writings of the Jewish historian Josephus, and one from the Roman historian Tacitus, that are generally considered good evidence.^[71][73]

Josephus'

Roman historian Tacitus referred to "Christus" and his execution by Pontius Pilate in his Annals (written c. AD 116), book 15, chapter 44.^[80] Robert E. Van Voorst states that the very negative tone of Tacitus' comments on Christians makes the passage extremely unlikely to have been forged by a Christian scribe^[73] and the Tacitus reference is now widely accepted as an independent confirmation of Jesus's crucifixion.^[81][82]

Talmud

Main article: Jesus in the Talmud

Other considerations outside Christendom include the possible mentions of Jesus in the Talmud. The Talmud speaks in some detail of the conduct of criminal cases of Israel whose texts were gathered together from 200 to 500 CE. Johann Maier and Bart D. Ehrman argue this material is too late to be of much use. Ehrman explains that "Jesus is never mentioned in the oldest part of the Talmud, the Mishnah, but appears only in the later commentaries of the Gemara."^{[83][42]: 67–69} Jesus is not mentioned by name, but there is a subtle attack on the virgin birth that refers to the illegitimate son of a Roman soldier Pantera (Ehrman says, "In Greek the word for virgin is parthenos"), and a reference to Jesus' miracles as "black magic" learned when he lived in Egypt (as a toddler). Ehrman writes that few contemporary scholars treat this as historical.^{[42]: 67 [84]}

Mara bar Serapion

Main article: Mara bar Serapion on Jesus

There is only one classical writer who refers positively to Jesus and that is Mara bar Serapion, a Syriac Stoic, who wrote a letter to his son, who was also named Serapion, from a Roman prison. He speaks of the execution of 'the wise king of the Jews' and compares his death to that of Socrates at the hands of the Athenians. He links the death of the 'wise king' to the Jews being driven from their kingdom. He also states that the 'wise king' lives on because of the "new laws he laid down". The dating of the letter is disputed but was probably soon after 73 AD.^[85]

Scholars such as Robert Van Voorst see little doubt that the reference to the execution of the "king of the Jews" is about the death of Jesus.^[86] Others such as Craig A. Evans see less value in the letter, given its uncertain date, and the ambiguity in the reference.^[87]

Critical-historical research

Main articles: Historical criticism, Textual criticism, and Biblical hermeneutics

Historical criticism, also known as the historical-critical method or higher criticism, is a branch of criticism that investigates the origins of ancient texts in order to understand "the world behind the text".^[88] The primary goal of historical criticism is to discover the text's primitive or original meaning in its original historical context and its literal sense. Historical criticism began in the 17th century and gained popular recognition in the 19th and 20th centuries.

Historical reliability of the Gospels

Main article: Historical reliability of the Gospels

The historical reliability of the gospels refers to the reliability and historic character of the four New Testament gospels as historical documents. Historical reliability is not dependent on a source being inerrant or void of agendas since there are sources that are considered generally reliable despite having such traits (e.g. Josephus).^[89] The question of reliability is a matter of ongoing debate.^{[90][91][92][93][94][95]}

Historians subject the gospels to critical analysis by differentiating authentic, reliable information from possible inventions, exaggerations, and alterations.

Tanakh

, has made incorrect claims about geography, if the author appears to have hidden information, or if the author has fabricated a prophecy. Finally, scholars turn to external sources, including the testimony of early church leaders, to writers outside the church, primarily Jewish and Greco-Roman historians, who would have been more likely to have criticized the church, and to archaeological evidence.

Quest for the historical Jesus

Main article: Quest for the historical Jesus

Since the 18th century, three scholarly quests for the historical Jesus have taken place, each with distinct characteristics and based on different research criteria, which were often developed during each specific phase.

historical-critical method to study biblical narratives. While textual analysis of biblical sources had taken place for centuries, these quests introduced new methods and specific techniques in the attempt to establish the historical validity of their conclusions.^[99]

First quest

The scholarly effort to reconstruct an "authentic" historical picture of Jesus was a product of the

G. E. Lessing (1729–1781) in the library at Wolfenbüttel where Lessing was the librarian. Reimarus had left permission for his work to be published after his death, and Lessing did so between 1774 and 1778, publishing them as Die Fragmente eines unbekannten Autors (The Fragments of an Unknown Author). Over time, they came to be known as the Wolfenbüttel Fragments after the library where Lessing worked. Reimarus distinguished between what Jesus taught and how he is portrayed in the New Testament. According to Reimarus, Jesus was a political messiah who failed at creating political change and was executed. His disciples then stole the body and invented the story of the resurrection for personal gain.^{[101][102]: 46–48} Reimarus' controversial work prompted a response from "the father of historical critical research" Johann Semler in 1779, Beantwortung der Fragmente eines Ungenannten (Answering the Fragments of an Unknown).^[103] Semler refuted Reimarus' arguments, but it was of little consequence. Reimarus' writings had already made lasting changes by making it clear criticism could exist independently of theology and faith, and by founding historical Jesus studies within that non-sectarian view.^[104][102]

^: 48

According to

Protestant theologian David Strauss's Das Leben Jesu ('The Life of Jesus', 1835), in which Strauss expresses his conclusion that Jesus existed, but that his godship is the result of "a historic nucleus [being] worked over and reshaped into an ideal form by the first Christians under the influence of Old Testament models and the idea of the messiah found in Daniel."^[105]

, whose book coined the phrase Quest [for] the Historical Jesus

The enthusiasm shown during the first quest diminished after Albert Schweitzer's critique of 1906 in which he pointed out various shortcomings in the approaches used at the time. After Schweitzer's Von Reimarus zu Wrede was translated and published in English as The Quest of the Historical Jesus in 1910, the book's title provided the label for the field of study for eighty years.^{[106]: 779–}

Second quest

The second quest began in 1953 and introduced a number of new techniques, but faded away in the 1970s.^[107]

Third quest

In the 1980s a number of scholars gradually began to introduce new research ideas,

Judea during the time of Jesus.^[110] A further characteristic of the third quest has been the interdisciplinary and global nature of its scholarship.^[111] While the first two quests were mostly carried out by European Protestant theologians, a modern aspect of the third quest is the worldwide influx of scholars from multiple disciplines.^[111] More recently, historicists have focused their attention on the historical writings associated with the era in which Jesus lived^[112][113] or on the evidence concerning his family.^{[114][115][116][117]}

By the end of the twentieth century, scholar Tom Holmén writes that Enlightenment skepticism had given way to a more "trustful attitude toward the historical reliability of the sources ... [Currently] the conviction of Sanders, (we know quite a lot about Jesus) characterizes the majority of contemporary studies."[118]^: 43 Reflecting this shift, the phrase "quest for the historical Jesus" has largely been replaced by life of Jesus research.^[119]: 33

Demise of authenticity and the "Next Quest"

Since the late 1900s, concerns have been growing about the usefulness of the criteria of authenticity.^[120] According to Le Donne, the usage of such criteria is a form of "

early Christians, and as part of a larger process of accounting for how and why early Christians came to view Jesus in the ways that they did." According to Keith, "these two models are methodologically and epistemologically incompatible," calling into question the methods and aim of the first model.^[122]

In 2021, James Crossley (editor of the Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus) announced that historical Jesus scholarship now had moved to the era of the Next Quest. The Next Quest has moved on from the criteria, obsessions with the uniqueness of Jesus, and the supersessionism still implicit in scholarly questions of the Jewishness of Jesus. Instead, sober scholarship now focuses on treating the subject matter as part of the wider human phenomenon of religion, cultural comparison, class relations, slave culture and economy, and the social history of historical Jesus scholarship and wider reception histories of the historical Jesus.^[123] The book by Crossley and Robert J. Myles, Jesus: A Life in Class Conflict, is indicative of this new tendency.^[124]

Methods

Main articles: Criterion of multiple attestation, Criterion of embarrassment, Criterion of dissimilarity, and Koine Greek

Textual, source and form-criticism

The first quest, which started in 1778, was almost entirely based on biblical criticism. This took the form of textual and source criticism originally, which were supplemented with form criticism in 1919, and redaction criticism in 1948.^[99] Form criticism began as an attempt to trace the history of the biblical material during the oral period before it was written in its current form, and may be seen as starting where textual criticism ends.^[125] Form criticism views Gospel writers as editors, not authors. Redaction criticism may be viewed as the child of source criticism and form criticism.^[126] and views the Gospel writers as authors and early theologians and tries to understand how the redactor(s) has (have) molded the narrative to express their own perspectives.^[126]

Criteria of authenticity

When form criticism questioned the historical reliability of the Gospels, scholars began looking for other criteria. Taken from other areas of study such as source criticism, the "criteria of authenticity" emerged gradually, becoming a distinct branch of methodology associated with life of Jesus research.^{[118]: 43–54} The criteria are a variety of rules used to determine if some event or person is more or less likely to be historical. These criteria are primarily, though not exclusively, used to assess the sayings and actions of Jesus.^{[127]: 193–199 [128]: 3–33}

In view of the skepticism produced in the mid-twentieth century by form criticism concerning the historical reliability of the gospels, the burden shifted in historical Jesus studies from attempting to identify an authentic life of Jesus to attempting to prove authenticity. The criteria developed within this framework, therefore, are tools that provide arguments solely for authenticity, not inauthenticity.

F. C. Burkitt and B. H. Streeter provided the foundation for multiple attestation. The Second Quest introduced the criterion of embarrassment.^[99] By the 1950s, coherence was also included. By 1987, D. Polkow lists 25 separate criteria being used by scholars to test for historical authenticity including the criterion of "historical plausibility".^[99][127]

^{: 193–199}

Criticism

Main articles: Quest for the historical Jesus § Criticism, and Criticism

A number of scholars have criticized the various approaches used in the study of the historical Jesus—on one hand, for the lack of rigor in research methods; on the other, for being driven by "specific agendas" that interpret ancient sources to fit specific goals.^{[129][130][131]} By the 21st century, the "maximalist" approaches of the 19th century, which accepted all the gospels, and the "minimalist" trends of the early 20th century, which totally rejected them, were abandoned and scholars began to focus on what is historically probable and plausible about Jesus.^{[132][133][134]}

Baptism and crucifixion

There is widespread disagreement among scholars on the details of the life of Jesus mentioned in the gospel narratives, and on the meaning of his teachings.[15] Scholars differ on the historicity of specific episodes described in the biblical accounts of Jesus,^[15][23] but almost all modern scholars consider his baptism and crucifixion to be historical facts.^[12][135]

Baptism

The existence of

Most scholars in the third quest for the historical Jesus consider the crucifixion indisputable,^{[14][146][147][148]} as do Bart Ehrman,^[148] John Dominic Crossan^[14] and James Dunn.^[12] Although scholars agree on the historicity of the crucifixion, they differ on the reason and context for it, e.g. both E. P. Sanders and Paula Fredriksen support the historicity of the crucifixion, but contend that Jesus did not foretell his own crucifixion, and that his prediction of the crucifixion is a Christian story.^[149] Géza Vermes also views the crucifixion as a historical event but believes this was due to Jesus’ challenging of Roman authority.^[149] On the other hand, Maurice Casey and John P. Meier state that Jesus did predict his death, and this actually strengthened his followers' belief in his Resurrection.^[150][151]

Other possibly historical elements

In addition to the two historical elements of baptism and crucifixion, scholars attribute varying levels of certainty to various other aspects of the life of Jesus, although there is no universal agreement among scholars on these items:^{[152][note 5]}

• Jesus was a
  Jew who was born between 7 and 2 BC and died 30–36 AD.^{[156][157][158]}
• Jesus lived only in Galilee and Judea:
  Andreas Kostenberger and Robert Van Voorst hold that some of these references are to Jesus.^[163][162] Nazareth is not mentioned in the Hebrew Bible and the Christian gospels portray it as an insignificant village, John 1:46 asking "Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?"^[164] Craig S. Keener states that it is rarely disputed that Jesus was from Nazareth, an obscure small village not worthy of invention.^[164][165] Gerd Theissen concurs with that conclusion.^[166]
• Jesus
  Judea during the 1st century include the Semitic Aramaic and Hebrew languages as well as Greek, with Aramaic being the predominant language.^[167][168]
• Jesus
  called disciples: John P. Meier sees the calling of disciples a natural consequence of the information available about Jesus.^{[152][13][171]} N. T. Wright accepts that there were twelve disciples, but holds that the list of their names cannot be determined with certainty. John Dominic Crossan disagrees, stating that Jesus did not call disciples and had an "open to all" egalitarian approach, imposed no hierarchy and preached to all in equal terms.^[13] However, James Crossley and Robert J. Myles and the emerging consensus disagree with Crossan, arguing that "we should dispel romantic notions that this movement was proudly egalitarian and progressive in the sense of the 'radical liberalism' of today" and instead point out that the core Twelve may have been "a central committee or politburo with membership sometimes changing."^[172]
• Jesus caused a controversy at the Temple.^{[152][13][171]}
• After his death his disciples continued, and some of his disciples were persecuted.^[152][13]
• Jesus had a Burial.^[173]

Some scholars have proposed further additional historical possibilities such as:

• An approximate chronology of Jesus can be estimated from non-Christian sources, and confirmed by correlating them with New Testament accounts.^[156][174]
• Claims about the appearance or ethnicity of Jesus are mostly subjective, based on cultural stereotypes and societal trends rather than on scientific analysis.^{[175][176][177]}
• The baptism of Jesus by John the Baptist can be dated approximately from Josephus' references (Antiquities 18.5.2) to a date before AD 28–35.^{[136][178][179][180][181]}
• The main topic of his teaching was the Kingdom of God, and he presented this teaching in parables that were surprising and sometimes confounding.^[182]
• Jesus taught an ethic of forgiveness, as expressed in aphorisms such as "turn the other cheek" or "go the extra mile."^[182] Within the traditional ethic of "Christian forgiveness" there are some significantly differing views about exactly what type of forgiveness Jesus taught.^[183]
• An emerging scholarly consensus suggests Jesus and his inner-circle claimed "a degree of hardened 'servant' masculinity for themselves as an example to the world."^[184]
• The date of the crucifixion of Jesus was earlier than 36 AD, based on the dates of the prefecture of
  Roman Judea from 26 AD until 36 AD.^{[185][186][187]}

Scholars involved in the third and next quests for the historical Jesus have constructed a variety of portraits and profiles for Jesus.[24]^[25][188] However, there is little scholarly agreement on the portraits, or the methods used in constructing them.^{[23][28][29][189]} The portraits of Jesus that have been constructed in the quest for the historical Jesus have often differed from each other, and from the image portrayed in the gospel accounts.^[23] These portraits include that of Jesus as an apocalyptic prophet, charismatic healer, Cynic philosopher, Jewish Messiah and prophet of social change,^[24][25] but there is little scholarly agreement on a single portrait, or the methods needed to construct it.^[23][28][29] There are, however, overlapping attributes among the various portraits, and scholars who differ on some attributes may agree on others.^[24][25][30] The conception of a "Historical Jesus" is limited to the abductions from modern scholars on the sources and the results can only produce fragments of what the "real Jesus" or "Jesus of history" may have been.^[190] Such conceptions are merely a sketch or model which may inform about but never will be the real Jesus of history; similar to how models exist in the natural sciences that inform about phenomena without specifying a particular object.^[191] W.R. Herzog has stated that: "What we call the historical Jesus is the composite of the recoverable bits and pieces of historical information and speculation about him that we assemble, construct, and reconstruct. For this reason, the historical Jesus is, in Meier's words, 'a modern abstraction and construct.'"^[192]

Contemporary scholarship, representing the "third quest" and the "next quest" places Jesus firmly in the Jewish tradition. Jesus was a Jewish preacher who taught that he was the path to

Given that Jesus was poor, long-established historiographical approaches associated with the study of the poor in the past, such as microhistory, are relevant to the study of his life.^[194]

Mainstream views

Despite the significant differences among scholars on what constitutes a suitable portrait for Jesus, the mainstream views supported by a number of scholars may be grouped together based on certain distinct, primary themes.^[24][25] These portraits often include overlapping elements, and there are also differences among the followers of each portrait. The subsections below present the main portraits that are supported by multiple mainstream scholars.^[24][25]

Apocalyptic prophet

The apocalyptic prophet view primarily emphasizes Jesus preparing his fellow Jews for the End Times. The first proponent of this hypothesis was Albert Schweitzer in his 1906 book The Quest of the Historical Jesus.^[195]

The works of E. P. Sanders and

The characterization of Jesus as an apocalyptic or millenarian prophet can also be combined with other categories, such as in the work of James Crossley and Robert J. Myles (see below) who regard the end-time teaching of Jesus as a culturally credible way of responding to social and material upheaval in Galilee and Judea.[2]

Charismatic healer

The charismatic healer portrait positions Jesus as a pious and holy man in the view of Géza Vermes, whose profile draws on the Talmudic representations of Jewish figures such as Hanina ben Dosa and Honi the Circle Drawer and presents Jesus as a Hasid.^[201][202] Marcus Borg views Jesus as a charismatic "man of the spirit", a mystic or visionary who acts as a conduit for the "Spirit of God". Borg sees this as a well-defined religious personality type, whose actions often involve healing.^[203] Borg sees Jesus as a non-eschatological figure who did not intend to start a new religion, but his message set him at odds with the Jewish powers of his time based on the "politics of holiness".^[30] Both Sanders and Casey agree that Jesus was also a charismatic healer in addition to an apocalyptic prophet.^{[197]: 132–168 [198]: 237–279}

Cynic philosopher

In the Cynic philosopher profile, Jesus is presented as a Cynic, a traveling sage and philosopher preaching a cynical and radical message of change to abolish the existing hierarchical structure of the society of his time.^[30][204] In John Dominic Crossan's view Jesus was crucified not for religious reasons but because his social teachings challenged the seat of power held by the Jewish authorities.^[204] Crossan believes Galilee was a place where Greek and Jewish culture heavily interacted,^[205] with Gadara, a day's walk from Nazareth, being a center of Cynic philosophy.^[206][207] Burton Mack also holds that Jesus was a Cynic whose teachings were so different from those of his time that they shocked the audience and forced them to think, but Mack views his death as accidental and not due to his challenge to Jewish authority.^[30]

Jewish Messiah

The

S. G. F. Brandon, Fernando Bermejo Rubio, and Reza Aslan argue that Jesus was an anti-Roman revolutionary that tried to overthrow Roman rule in Palestine and re-establish the Kingdom of Israel.^{[213][214][215]}

Rabbi

The rabbi portrait advances the idea that Jesus was simply a rabbi who sought to reform certain ideas within Judaism. This idea can be traced to the late nineteenth century, when various liberal Jews sought to emphasize the Jewish nature of Jesus, and saw him as something of a proto-Reform Jew.^[216] Perhaps the most prominent of these was Rabbi Emil G. Hirsch, who in The Doctrine of Jesus wrote:

We quote the rabbis of the Talmud; shall we then, not also quote the rabbi of Bethlehem? Shall not he in whom there burned, if it burned in anyone, the spirit and the light of Judaism, be reclaimed by the synagogue?^[217]

Bruce Chilton, in his book Rabbi Jesus: An Intimate Biography, painted Jesus as a devout student of John the Baptist who came to see it as his mission to restore the Temple to purity, and purge the Romans and the corrupt priests from its midst.^[218] Jaroslav Pelikan, in The Illustrated Jesus Through the Centuries stated:

Alongside Immanuel, "God with us" – the Hebrew title given to the child in the prophecy of Isaiah (7:14) and applied by Matthew (1:23) to Jesus, but not used to address him except in such apostrophes as the medieval antiphon Veni, Veni, Immanuel that forms the epigraph to this chapter – four Aramaic words appear as titles for Jesus: Rabbi, or teacher; Amen, or prophet; Messias, or Christ; and Mar, or Lord.

The most neutral and least controversial of these words is probably Rabbi, along with the related Rabbouni. Except for two passages, the Gospels apply the Aramaic word only to Jesus; and if we conclude that the title "teacher" or "master" (didaskalos in Greek) was intended as a translation of that Aramaic name, it seems safe to say that it was as Rabbi that Jesus was known and addressed.^[26]

The conservative evangelical scholar Andreas J. Köstenberger in Jesus as Rabbi in the Fourth Gospel also reached the conclusion that Jesus was seen by his contemporaries as a rabbi.^[27]

In 2012, the book

Non-mainstream views

Other portraits have been presented by individual scholars:

• Ben Witherington supports the "Wisdom Sage" view and states that Jesus is best understood as a teacher of wisdom who saw himself as the embodiment or incarnation of God's Wisdom.^[204][212]
• Marginal Jew is built on the view that Jesus knowingly marginalized himself in a number of ways, first by abandoning his profession as a carpenter and becoming a preacher with no means of support, then arguing against the teachings and traditions of the time while he had no formal rabbinic training.^[30][204]

• Apostle Paul as pro-Roman propaganda.^[221]
• Essene.^[223]
• Morton Smith views Jesus as a magician, a view based on the presentation of Jesus in later Jewish sources and on (dubious) apocryphal writings such as the Secret Gospel of Mark.^[224]
• Leo Tolstoy saw Jesus as championing Christian anarchism (although Tolstoy never actually used the term "Christian anarchism"; reviews of his book following its publication in 1894 coined the term.)^[225]
• It has been suggested by psychiatrists Oskar Panizza,^{[226][227][228]} George de Loosten,^[229] William Hirsch,^[230] William Sargant,^[231] Anthony Storr,^{[232][233][234]} Raj Persaud,^[235] psychologist Charles Binet-Sanglé^[236] and others that Jesus had a mental disorder or psychiatric condition.^[237] This theory is based on the fact that the Gospel of Mark (Mark 3:21) reports that When his family heard this they went out to restrain him, for they said, ″He is out of his mind.″^[238] Psychologist Władysław Witwicki states that Jesus had difficulties communicating with the outside world and suffered from dissociative identity disorder (formerly known as multiple personality disorder), which made him a schizothymic or even schizophrenic type.^[239][240] In 1998–2000 Polish author Leszek Nowak (born 1962) from Poznań authored a study in which, based on his own history of delusions of mission and overvalued ideas, and information communicated in the Gospels, made an attempt at reconstructing Jesus’ psyche^[241] with the view of the apocalyptic prophet.^[242]

See also

• Biblical archaeology
• Biblical manuscript
• Census of Quirinius, a census of Judaea which was taken by Publius Sulpicius Quirinius, Roman governor of Syria, upon the imposition of direct Roman rule in AD 6.
• Christ myth theory
• Criterion of dissimilarity
• Criticism of the Bible
• Chronology of Jesus
• Gospel harmony
• Historical background of the New Testament
• Historicity of the Bible
• Jesus in comparative mythology
• Jesus Seminar
• Life of Jesus in the New Testament
• Mental health of Jesus
• New Testament places associated with Jesus
• Race and appearance of Jesus
• Sexuality of Jesus
• Scholarly interpretation of Gospel elements
• Timeline of Christianity
• The World's Sixteen Crucified Saviors

Notes

1. ^ Ehrman says, "There is historical information about Jesus in the Gospels."^[42]: 14
2. born of a woman
   ."
3. ^ In Romans 1:3, Paul states that Jesus was "born under the law."
4. ^ That Jesus had a brother named James is corroborated by Josephus.^[70]
5. ^ Additional elements:
   * Bible scholars James Beilby and Paul Eddy write that consensus is "elusive but not entirely absent".^[153] According to Beilby and Eddy, "Jesus was a first-century Jew, who was baptized by John, went about teaching and preaching, had followers, was believed to be a miracle worker and exorcist, went to Jerusalem where there was an "incident", was subsequently arrested, convicted and crucified."^[154]
   * Amy-Jill Levine has stated that "there is a consensus of sorts on the basic outline of Jesus' life. Most scholars agree that Jesus was baptized by John, debated with fellow Jews on how best to live according to God’s will, engaged in healings and exorcisms, taught in parables, gathered male and female followers in Galilee, went to Jerusalem, and was crucified by Roman soldiers during the governorship of Pontius Pilate (26–36 CE)."^[155]

References