These three Gospels have been called “Synoptic,” a word which means “seeing together,” because they share in common a large amount of material, follow the same basic order, and stand apart from John, whose Gospel is unique among the four.

Long ago people realized you could display the text of the three Synoptic Gospels side by side in columns to form a synopsis or parallel Gospel or a harmony. When you do this you find that a large percentage of Matthew, Mark, and Luke are parallel. They share a large amount of verbatim agreement, though each of the three has unique ways of diverging from each other in small and large matters. Much is the same and some is different.

For a long time, people who have studied the Gospels in synopsis (parallel columns) have referred to “the Synoptic Problem.” That problem is: how do we account for the agreements and differences in the parallel accounts and in the other material in the Gospels? Many of the observations I will share here come from a book that I think is the simplest and best-explained handbook on the topic, by Mark Goodacre, The Synoptic Problem: A Way Through the Maze.

In this article I am focusing only on the way comparing the Gospels in synopsis helps us see that Mark was the first to be written. Many other fascinating topics arise from a comparison of the Gospels in this manner.

Here is one of the things you find when you put the Gospels in parallel columns and study the agreements and differences: Mark is the middle term between Matthew and Luke. What I mean is this: again and again in material that occurs in all three Gospels (material called Triple Tradition) Matthew and Mark have agreements in common and Mark and Luke have agreements in common far outweighing the fewer agreements Matthew and Luke have against Mark. In the differences of detail, both Matthew and Luke agree with Mark more than they agree with each other.

Goodacre proposes a way for students to see this for themselves. You can take a synopsis (or harmony or parallel) of the Gospels and work it out for yourself. Find all the Triple Tradition material (it occurs in all three Synoptic Gospels) and use colored pencils to do a survey of agreements and differences. Here is a list of some, not all, of the Triple Tradition material (from Goodacre, pgs 35-36):

• Matt 8:1-4 … Mark 1:40-45 … Luke 5:12-16 . . . . . . . . . . . Leper
• Matt 9:1-8 … Mark 2:1-12 … Luke 5:12-16 . . . . . . . . . . . . Paralytic
• Matt 9:9-13 … Mark 2:13-17… Luke 5:12-16 . . . . . . . . . . Call of Levi/Matthew
• Matt 9:14-17 … Mark 2:18-22 … Luke 5:12-16 . . . . . . . . Fasting, New Wine, Patches
• Matt 12:1-8 … Mark 2:23-28 … Luke 5:12-16 . . . . . . . . . . Grain on Sabbath
• Matt 12:9-14 … Mark 3:1-6 … Luke 5:12-16 . . . . . . . . . . . Man with Withered Hand
• Matt 10:1-4 … Mark 3:13-19 … Luke 5:12-16 . . . . . . . . . . The Twelve
• Matt 12:46-50 … Mark 3:31-35 … Luke 5:12-16 . . . . . . . . Mother and brothers
• Matt 13:1-23 … Mark 4:1-20… Luke 5:12-16 . . . . . . . . . . Sower Parable
• Matt 8:23-27 … Mark 4:35-41 … Luke 5:12-16 . . . . . . . . Calming Storm
• Matt 8:28-34 … Mark 5:1-20 … Luke 5:12-16 . . . . . . . . . Gerasene Demoniac
• Matt 9:18-26 … Mark 5:21-43 … Luke 5:12-16 . . . . . . . . Jairus, Bleeding Woman
• Matt 14:13-21 … Mark 6:30-44 … Luke 5:12-16 . . . . . . Feeding Five Thousand
• Matt 16:13-20 … Mark 8:27-30… Luke 5:12-16 . . . . . . . Peter’s Confession
• Matt 17:1-8 … Mark 9:2-8 … Luke 5:12-16 . . . . . . . . . . . Transfiguration
• Matt 17:14-20 … Mark 9:14-29 … Luke 5:12-16 . . . . . . . Epilectic Boy
• Matt 19:13-15 … Mark 10:13-16 … Luke 18:15-17 . . . . . . . Little Children
• Matt 19:16-30 … Mark 10:17-31… Luke 18:18-30 . . . . . . Rich Young Ruler
• Matt 20:29-34 … Mark 10:46-52 … Luke 18:35-43 . . . .Blind Bartimaeus
• Matt 21:1-9 … Mark 11:1-10… Luke 19:28-38 . . . . . . . . . Triumphal Entry
• Matt chs. 21-28 … Mark chs. 11-16 … Luke chs. 20-24 Passion Narratives

So here is Goodacre’s coloring project and here are the results you will get. Color words found only in Matthew blue. Words found only in Mark color red. Words unique to Luke should be yellow. Words shared only by Matthew and Mark would be purple. Words shared only by Matthew and Luke would be green. Words shared only by Mark and Luke would be orange. Finally, words found in all three will be brown.

Here is what you will find. There will be a lot of brown, some purple, some orange, but very little green. In other words, agreements between Matthew and Luke against Mark are rare. This shows that Mark is the middle term between the three. What does Goodacre mean by “middle term”? This can be illustrated as below:

TRIPLE TRADITION MATERIAL AGREEMENTS

. . . MATTHEW . . . MARK . . . LUKE . . .

. . . MATTHEW . . . MARK

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .MARK . . . LUKE

He means that Matthew used Mark as a source and also Luke used Mark as a source. If we propose that Mark was first and that both Matthew and Luke read Mark, it explains the fact that Matthew agrees more with Mark against Luke than with Luke against Mark. It explains how Luke agrees more with Mark against Matthew than with Matthew against Mark.

How we can tell that neither Matthew nor Luke was first: If Matthew was the first Gospel and if Mark and Luke both knew Matthew, then Matthew would be the middle term. If Luke was first, it would be the middle term. Mark is what Matthew and Luke have most in common. Therefore Mark was first.

More evidence: Another phenomenon in the Gospels is that there is a good body of material found in Matthew and Mark, but not Luke, and a good amount found in Mark and Luke, but not Matthew. And the Matthew-Mark material and Mark-Luke material follows the order of guess which Gospel? Mark. Again we see Mark as the middle term. Another line of evidence is the tendency of Mark to make statements in raw, unfiltered, almost scandalous terms. Whenever Mark describes Yeshua in a manner than might be controversial, we sometimes find that Matthew and Luke soften the description. If Mark makes the disciples look bad, we find that Matthew and Luke make them look less bad. Then there is the matter of material Mark does not include, things like the Lord’s Prayer and the various teachings that make up Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount and Luke’s Sermon on the Plain. Does it make sense, if Mark came later, that he would omit this material? In choosing what to include and what to leave out of a written Gospel (the community knew many more sayings and deeds of Yeshua than the Gospels record) why would Mark leave out the Lord’s Prayer once it was part of the Synoptic Gospel tradition? He would not be likely to. More likely, Mark was written before Matthew.

In short, the evidence stacks up that Mark is what Matthew and Luke have most in common and that Mark was the earliest to be written and circulated.

Let me begin with just a brief note on my appreciation for the accuracy of the Fourth Gospel on matters related to the Temple and feasts of the Torah. I first began to consider the possibility that John was more precise that the synoptic gospels at the Society of Biblical Literature meeting in New Orleans in 2009. Paul Anderson (The Fourth Gospel and the Quest for Jesus) gave a stunning presentation on the value of John for historical understanding (if you are skeptical, I suggest you take a look at the book). Then I read Richard Bauckham’s Jesus and the Eyewitnesses and The Testimony of the Beloved Disciple. I became convinced that the Fourth Gospel is written by a Jerusalem disciple (the elder John) who ran in priestly circles (if this notion sounds strange to you, you might acquaint yourself with the evidence before discounting it). My previous views (published in many articles here 2010 and earlier on MJ Musings) about the timing the crucifixion, Passover, and Last Supper all began to change. With that said, I think there is a great value in looking at John to ask questions about the chronology of Yeshua’s last week.

RESULTS
Knowing the short attention spans of many readers, I will give my conclusions first and then you can decide whether to read the notes and commentary below. I give two results tables depending on whether we think the crucifixion was on a Thursday or a Friday (see below, “Friday Is Not a Certainty”):

IF CRUCIFIXION IS THURSDAY & PASSOVER IS THUR NIGHT/FRIDAY:

• Saturday (possibly Friday night), Yeshua arrives in Bethany (Jn 12:1). If so, he would not have traveled far since it was the Sabbath.
• Saturday night they hold a dinner for him in Bethany (arguably, could be Friday night).
• Sunday morning is the Triumphal Entry (Jn 12:12; arguably, could be Saturday morning, which would be unlikely and render Thursday crucifixion unlikely).
• Wednesday night is the Last Supper.

IF CRUCIFIXION IS FRIDAY & PASSOVER IS FRI NIGHT/SATURDAY:

• Sunday (or Sat night), Yeshua arrives in Bethany.
• Monday morning (possibly Sunday) is the Triumphal Entry.
• Thursday night is the Last Supper.

**Note that a Wednesday crucifixion theory, if based on John, would have the Triumphal Entry on Saturday morning (possibly Friday).

**Note that with so many ambiguities (what does “six days before” mean exactly?), the Palm Sunday/Good Friday tradition could fit with John’s chronology (as Raymond Brown supposes is does).

**The only things we can be “sure of” from John’s chronology: the crucifixion is on Nisan 14 when the lambs would be slaughtered and the Last Supper is the night before the regular Passover Seder. We cannot be certain about the day of the week given all the ambiguities.

CHRONOLOGY OF THE END IN JOHN
Taking the statements about timing at face value from John (for example, we skip over possibilities such as the notion that the Lazarus story may be told out of chronological order), we find these helpful periods, events, and chronological notes leading to the crucifixion and Passover:

• 10:22, Hanukkah.
• 10:40-42, Interlude beyond the Jordan.
• Ch. 11, The raising of Lazarus.
• 11:54, Interlude in the town of Ephraim (no one knows where this town is located).
• 11:55, Passover at hand and many had come to Jerusalem to purify themselves (very important, see commentary below).
• 12:1, Six days before Passover (thus, five before the crucifixion).
• 12:2-10, Mary anoints Yeshua, chief priests plot and plan.
• 12:12, The next day (five days before Passover, four days before the crucifixion).
• 12:13-16, Triumphal Entry.
• 12:17-19, Pharisees concerned with his popularity.
• 12:20-36, Greeks are brought to him, heavenly voice.
• 12:37-50, Yeshua hides, sayings on belief and unbelief.
• 13:1, Before the Passover.
• 13:2-27, Last Supper.
• 13:28-30, They supposed Judas went to buy what was needed for the feast.
• The remainder of chs. 13-17, discourses at the Last Supper.
• 18:1-27, Nighttime arrest and first trials.
• 18:28, It was morning; priests would not enter as they feared being disqualified to eat the Passover (see commentary below).
• 19:1-13, Roman trial, flogging.
• 19:14, It was the day of preparation for the Passover.
• 19:15-30, Crucifixion and death.
• 19:31, It was the day of preparation, bodies to be buried before Sabbath, Sabbath was a high day.
• 19:32-41, Body removed and burial.
• 19:42, They laid him close since time was short and it was the day of preparation.
• 20:1, First day of the week, women come to tomb in the early morning.

MANY HAD COME TO JERUSALEM TO PURIFY THEMSELVES
According to Numbers 19, the period of time for purification after coming into contact with any kind of corpse impurity (contact with the dead, being under a roof where a corpse lay, or contact with people or objects that have corpse impurity, etc.) is seven days.

We know that people would come to feasts early in Jerusalem (not a strict requirement to fulfill the entire period in the city), with many arriving in time to spend the entire seven days purifying themselves. Paul purified himself seven days before his Nazirite vow (Acts 21:24-27). Josephus mentions the practice of many pilgrims coming from the countryside to Jerusalem and spending the seven days of purification in Jerusalem (War I.XI.6 #229). Thus, in 11:55, while Yeshua has not yet arrived near Jerusalem, some of those who have arrived wonder when he will show.

SO THAT THEY WOULD NOT BE DEFILED … COULD EAT THE PASSOVER
The chief priests would have to consider themselves impure if they went under Pilate’s roof (as violence happened there and a corpse under that roof was a real possibility). This would make them unfit to eat the Passover (Numb 9:6-12). Thus we see here, as in several other indications, that Yeshua’s morning trial and crucifixion happened on Nisan 14, when the lambs for Passover were slaughtered.

YESHUA CRUCIFIED ON NISAN 14
Every indication in John is that Yeshua was crucified starting the morning on which the Passover lambs were slaughtered. John 19:14 is clear that it was the day for preparing for the Passover (which is Nisan 14).

FRIDAY IS NOT A CERTAINTY
I have in the past defended the “Good Friday” notion (that Yeshua was crucified on Friday). But that was based on previous assumptions I held and harmonizing Mark with John (something I no longer feel the need to do). If Passover (the first day of Unleavened Bread) is a Sabbath, then the “Sabbath” mentioned could be the weekly Sabbath (Friday night till Saturday night) or any day of the week on which the Passover fell. If Yeshua was crucified before Passover started, then we have no reason for dogmatism about a Friday crucifixion (but neither is it impossible, Matthew 12:40 notwithstanding).

This short and very readable volume is valuable but flawed. The reason I say that: great information on historical “knowing” and application to historical Jesus studies, but poor application to the Jesus story once Le Donne turns his attention to it. First, the part I think is good.

When it comes to historical knowledge, how we know history, Le Donne explains in layman terms why modernism overreached. Modernism was too optimistic in some ways and too skeptical in others. It assumed we could find “the facts, just the facts” and view history objectively, in a one to one correspondence. All knowledge, even memory, is interpretation, says Le Donne, in what I deem to be a proper postmodern correction.

And Le Donne carefully and clearly explains how memory and historical knowledge actually work. If a reader wants a book showing how postmodernism is a great improvement on modernism, this one is perfect for the task. All new knowledge is filtered through our previous knowledge, and is a matter of interpretation. There is no un-interpreted fact. Memory itself, as Le Donne demonstrates, is “refracted” (to use his word) just as the view of deep space is subtly altered by the limits of our optical technology. And we put new data into categories we understand from previous things we have learned. Paradigm changes and new categories come slowly, building on previous knowledge. That is why, over time, our knowledge improves, as more and more data give us new categories of understanding. Knowledge is provisional, destined to be improved as our base of ideas grows.

When we experience something and access the memory of that experience, we categorize it according to pre-conceived ideas.

How does this apply to Jesus? He lived according to ideas and categories from the prophets. He spoke ideas that had precursors in Israelite thought. His followers and critics alike understood him in categories from the Hebrew Bible. He deliberately evoked themes shared by Jewish hearers and put his own twist on them. All of this, so far, is undeniable.

But when Le Donne creatively applies examples, that is where I think his work suffers. Here is a prime example of the dubious results of his application: the ascension never happened but was Luke superimposing Elijah typology on the memory of Jesus’ death. That is, Luke heard the accounts of eyewitnesses and read earlier gospels like Mark, but the pre-conceived categories of the Elijah story colored his perception of what happened to Jesus. His prior categories of knowledge boxed him into certain ways of thinking about Jesus. Elijah ascended and the disciples remembered Jesus according to many Elijah-like sayings and deeds. Thus, the ascension scene of Yeshua at the end of Luke, repeated at the beginning of Acts, is a the result of a chain of memory refraction passing from Mark to Luke, in which Elijah typology is taken too literally.

The mechanism Le Donne suggests for this is as follows: Luke had before him Mark 16:19 (that is already questionable as Mark 16:19 is thought to have a later origin than Luke and that Mark properly ends at 16:8). Mark 16:19 makes a simple literary statement about Yeshua being taken up into heaven. Luke interprets this literally through the Elijah story and assumes a bodily ascension into the sky. Luke then takes what is simple literary allusion to the death and then disappearance of Yeshua from the tomb to have been a resurrection and ascension into the sky.

But as creative as this reconstruction sounds, it is based on omitting certain things and allowing others which have no basis. Did Luke really have Mark 16:19 before him? Or is Mark 16:19 a scribal addition from later than the New Testament? Could it be that Mark 16:19 is actually based on Luke’s account of the ascension? And the greatest gap in Le Donne’s thinking, it seems to me, is that he finds a creative re-explanation of the ascension, but leaves untouched the empty tomb and resurrection appearance stories. Is he implying that the resurrection may have really happened but not the ascension?

I recommend Le Donne’s book for what it is great at: explaining historical knowledge, what it is, how memory is constrained to be an interpretation and not a mythically objective reporting of “what happened,” and a defense of traditional categories of historical Jesus studies as valid as long as the idea of authenticity is properly defined. I shudder when I read Le Donne’s applications, though, not only to the ascension, but also to the “triumphal entry” and “temple cleansing” incidents. Numerous pre-judgments about the state of Jesus’ disciple movement, the Temple authorities, and Jesus’ own psychology color Le Donne’s examples. There is much room to disagree with his application of his solidly helpful theory.

Who is this guy? Why is he so important (and I’m not talking Dan Brown material here!)?

This weekend (on June 5, 2011), I’m leading a seminar, “Eyewitnesses in the Gospels,” based on Richard Bauckham’s Jesus and the Eyewitnesses. I’m available to bring this 5-hour seminar to your group. The Beloved Disciple is one of many intriguing characters we need to get to know.

John 21:24 makes an authorship claim for the fourth gospel (one that contemporary scholarship largely rejects due, in my opinion, to some wrong directions taken by some excellent scholars such as Raymond Brown): This is the disciple who is bearing witness to these things, and who has written these things; and we know that his testimony is true.

Bottom line: Bauckham makes a case, one supported by many strands of evidence though not a lock-tight case by any stretch of the imagination, that the Beloved Disciple is the author of the gospel of John (the whole thing, with no layers or Johannine schools).

What is the Beloved Disciple’s relation to Peter (literarily) in the gospel? Hint: they are two kinds of discipleship.

What is the identity of the Beloved Disciple? Hint: It isn’t Lazarus, as simple evidence can show, nor the John son of Zebedee who is one of the Twelve.

To find out more: get Bauckham’s book or schedule me to come and do a seminar. How’s that for a commercial?

Recently an archaeology blogger, for whom I have nothing but respect although he is a skeptic when it comes to matters of faith, made a comment on his blog about the gospels being unreliable. He said that we find a pattern in human discourse about major events. Years after the event, people make up apocryphal stories. They often put the stories in the mouth of authority figures to give them more credibility and the stories pass down as if they really happened and were witnessed by important people.

This, he said, is what the gospels represent. Maybe there are some genuine stories in there, but most are apocryphal and put into the mouths of earlier authority figures. The blogger recommended that people read the book by Bart Ehrman called Forged for more details. Ehrman says that many biblical writings were forgeries perpetrated in the name of others to establish credibility for their religious structure.

I thought about these statements and compared them with the research I have been doing for several years now and found a complete disconnect. While my views on the Bible have changed and while I do see that some things are not as simple as I once thought them to be, I’m not finding the gospels to be documents capable of forged stories and invented tales. On the contrary, I’m seeing more clearly a deliberate pattern of eyewitness testimony and oral history as a source.

Oral history, by the way, is very different from oral tradition. Oral history is direct, related by eyewitnesses. Oral history is Simon of Cyrene speaking in the early congregations, telling his story. Oral history is Peter, teaching gathered groups and relating his direct experience of Yeshua. Oral tradition is when stories are passed from teller to teller. Variations get introduced. Words get attributed to people who may not have been the actual origin.

The gospels were written down at the time the eyewitnesses were dying out. It seems the stories were written when the time for direct oral history was disappearing.

I also think about the importance of this topic for another reason. I care very much about people knowing the stories of Yeshua and joining the community of his followers. I represent this story to many Jewish and intermarried families. I care how Jewish people in particular see the life and identity of Yeshua. I also encounter many non-Jewish thinkers in my writing and correspondence. I read many points of view. It is important to me to advocate the Jesus-is-the-Messiah-of-Israel-and-the-Nations point of view.

I’m not a disinterested scholar. No scholars are actually disinterested anyway. I’m a Messianic Jewish rabbi and I think Yeshua’s story is the crux of meaning for the world.

I see faith eroding all over the place. People have new access to a broader spectrum of ideas. Critical scholarship is widely accessible. This should be a good thing. Yet, it has mostly been harmful for one very simple reason.

That reason is this: the people who represent faith tend not to read critical scholarship and the people who represent critical scholarship generally do not advocate faith. There is a lack of communication between the two.

It is my desire, then, to study the gospels and the life of Yeshua in order to communicate with people who may or may not read critical scholarship. I’ve given reading and study enough time to feel confident that critical study and faith in Yeshua are perfectly compatible.

One step in putting away false doubts about the reliability of the gospels is to address some of the evidence that they represent early written forms with sources in oral history. To say that another way: the gospels are the written record combining literary freedom with the oral reports of people who were there. There is no need to deny either the literary freedom the writers exercised or the oral history on which they largely based their accounts.

And in this podcast, I simply want to address the idea that Peter’s oral testimony stands largely behind the earliest gospel, Mark. But before I do, I am not saying that there are no exceptions to the oral history principle. The most famous example of something in the gospels that is not likely to be from oral history are the birth narratives in Matthew and Luke. Neither am I saying that the evangelists were mere recorders or claiming that all parts of their writing are equally close to the oral histories behind them.

But if I can convince someone that the essential basis of the gospels is direct testimony by people who were there, it would go a long way toward putting to rest all this doubt about the life and identity of Jesus, of Yeshua.

Amid the numerous books about the historical Jesus and the gospels, one that has become a particular focus for me is Richard Bauckham’s Jesus and the Eyewitnesses. On June 5, here in Atlanta, I am leading a seminar called “Eyewitnesses in the Gospels.” It is a seminar I’d like to give more than once and bring to other places as well.

In the seminar, we’ll examine topics including: the statements of Papias about the sources of the gospels, trends in named and unnamed characters in the gospels, the footprints of Peter in Mark, the footprints of the Beloved Disciple in John, and the meaning of the Yeshua who is revealed by testimony. The overall point is simple: the accounts in the gospels in many cases reflect early stories told by people who were there. They represent stories told in a community containing number of eyewitnesses. The possibility of fabricated stories about Yeshua is far less than many theories of gospel origins admit.

Or, to say it another way, the gospels are more reliable and more firmly grounded in the experiences related directly by people who had those experiences than many modern day authorities acknowledge. The stories about Yeshua are far more worth listening to than many people have been led to believe.

Consider for example the case that Richard Bauckham makes for the old theory, well-known to many readers of Mark, that Peter is largely the voice behind the stories in Mark. I will give a very short and in many ways inadequate summary of that case here. In the seminar, we’ll spend an hour on this issue and in Jesus and the Eyewitnesses you can read the thoroughly developed case.

Where did people first get the idea that Mark’s gospel is, in some way, shape, or form, relating stories originally sourced in Peter? They get that idea from a statement made by Papias, probably around the year 110 C.E., based on what Papias claims to have heard from the disciples of John the Elder, probably in 70’s or early 80’s of the first century. The statement of Papias is recorded in the writing of Eusebius in the fourth century and there are some problems with the statement.

The reason many people reject Papias’ statement outright is that Mark is clearly a literary gospel. Mark is clearly not simply the written account of oral teaching. There is too much literary artistry to take Mark as some sort of transcript.

But that is not what Papias said exactly in the first place and the idea of a literary gospel sourced in Peter’s oral teaching is worth investigating. Is there any evidence internal to Mark to back it up?

I’ll simply give three examples of that sort of internal evidence. These examples have behind them precedents in ancient biographies and are not simply literary theories based on thin air. Mark has done some things in his gospel comparable to what other biographers have done and fitting with theories of how history should be written as well. Skipping over all that complexity, here are three examples.

First, Mark goes out of his way to mention Peter by name first and last in his gospel. The two basic reasons that could explain this are either that Peter was so important in the early movement, he deserved special attention or it could be an indication by Mark that Peter is his main source. Many people have simply assumed that the importance of Peter in Mark is simply about Peter’s position in the early community. But Bauckham shows that the literary device which is now referred to as inclusio was used by ancient biographers in some cases to indicate their direct source.

Thus, we read in Mark 1:16, “And passing along by the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and Andrew the brother of Simon casting a net in the sea; for they were fishermen.” Note that Simon, who is Peter, is mentioned by name first and that his name is oddly repeated when Andrew is named. Much more can be said about the oddity of naming Simon Peter first in light of John’s account in which Andrew knew Yeshua before Peter.

And we read in Mark 16:7, “ But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going before you to Galilee; there you will see him, as he told you.” Note the odd naming of Peter even though telling the disciples would already include him. Mark has gone out of his way, in the next to last verse of the gospel, to name Peter.

Peter is named first and last among the disciples and major players in the gospels.

Now, let’s look at a second example and a different category of evidence. There is a curious feature that happens twenty-one times in Mark. It is a feature noted by many commentaries. Bauckham calls it the plural-to-singular literary device. Let me explain it by one example and suggest its possible origin.

In Mark 5:1-2, we read: “They came to the other side of the sea, to the country of the Gerasenes. And when he had come out of the boat, there met him out of the tombs a man with an unclean spirit.” Note that they came across the sea and yet that the action resume with just he getting out of the boat. Who is the “they” and who is the “he”? The answer, obviously, is the group of disciples and Yeshua.

Why does Mark write the scenes this way? A theory worth considering is that Mark knew the stories as told by Peter who would describe them in a similar manner. Let me restate Mark 5:1-2 changing the they to a we to illustrate what I mean: “We came to the other side of the sea, to the country of the Gerasenes. And when he had come out of the boat, there met him out of the tombs a man with an unclean spirit.”

It makes sense that a person who was part of a group might relate a story in this way. And the plural-to-singular narrative pattern in Mark looks like a residual feature of stories originally told by one who was in the “we” of the story. In terms used in the study of narrative, this is a device for internal focalization, which I will explain more in depth at the seminar. It basically means a literary device that allows the reader to view the story from the viewpoint of a character or group of characters. The reader becomes part of Mark’s literary “they.”

Finally, and as our last specific example of literary footprints of Peter in Mark’s gospel, consider the stories in which Peter stands out as the main character. Again, this could be simply due to his importance in the later community. But it could also be because Mark and others knew the stories primarily from Peter’s point of view.

So, in Mark 9:5 we read one of many examples of Peter as the main actor among the disciples, “And Peter said to Yeshua, ‘Master, it is well that we are here; let us make three booths, one for you and one for Moses and one for Elijah.’” The compound result of these stories is that the reader thinks Peter is almost the only disciple who speaks. This fits well with the idea that the source of the stories is Peter.

In conclusion, there is internal evidence that Papias’ statement is basically true. Mark’s gospel does show signs of being heavily based on Peter’s telling.

The Passion narrative in Mark (probably chapters 11 and 14-16, says Bauckham) likely comes from an earlier written or oral source that Mark is using. Several characters in this section are oddly anonymous. They seem like the sort of people who would be named as eyewitnesses. These unusual anonymous persons include:

(1) The owner of a certain donkey in 11:1-6 (on the theory that the lending of the donkey was pre-arranged).
(2) Possibly the same man was the owner of the upper room for the Last Supper in 14:13-15.
(3) A certain woman who anointed Yeshua shortly before his arrest in 14:3-9.
(4) A disciple who cut off the ear of the servant of the High Priest in 14:47.
(5) A young man who fled and his linen sheet came off leaving him naked in 14:51-52.

The possible reasons that these characters are unnamed is interesting.

Gerd Theissen proposed in 1991 that the issue here is “protective anonymity.”

In other words, these people had done things which might get them arrested. A man who supplied a donkey and a banquet room to Yeshua and his disciples on the week of his death, a woman who publicly anointed Yeshua, a disciple who attacked the Temple personnel, and a young man who made a scene while fleeing might all be at risk.

If the Passion narrative was written or started circulating orally in the 40′s, the priesthood was still in the family of Annas and Caiphas until 42 CE. Pilate was removed by Rome in 37 as a failure. But danger from the chief priests continued at least until 42 and perhaps later.

Yet, some of the unnamed characters in Mark’s account are named in the much later account of John. By the time of John’s writing, the danger of arrest was over. Bauckham lists the phenomenon of unnamed Markan characters named in John:

the woman who anoints . . . . . . . . . Mary, sister of Martha (John 12:3)
the man who wield the sword . . . . . Simon Peter (John 18:10)
the servant of the High Priest . . . . . Malchus (John 18:10)

This leads Bauckham to another very interesting point: why is the story of Lazarus only told in John? This is a major puzzle and has led many to suggest the Lazarus story is invented completely by the author of John.

Perhaps it was thought too dangerous for Lazarus to write the story down in the early days.

When the women showed up at the tomb on Sunday morning, the word Luke uses to describe their emotion is perplexity. When the angels, who seemed to be men, spoke to them, the theme of their communication was remembrance. When two disciples encountered Yeshua along the road, their experience was a mystery. When Yeshua spoke to the Eleven and other disciples gathered, his theme was continuation.

Perplexity. Remembrance. Mystery. Continuation.

Perplexity. None of the disciples, men or women, expected what they found. In the first place, they did not believe he would die. Now that he was dead, they did not believe he was the one they were hoping him to be. And they certainly did not know he would rise.

Luke 24:4 notes that they were perplexed when they found the stone rolled away and the body gone. Vs. 5 describes them as terrified, with faces bowed to the ground. When they went to report on things to the Eleven, we read in vs. 11 that all this seemed “as nonsense” to them.

In fact, we could say that the whole story of the empty tomb and the appearances of Yeshua is perplexing. N.T. Wright (The Resurrection of the Son of God, 600-611) notes that there are four very strange features in the resurrection accounts:
(1) The resurrection accounts lack references to the Hebrew Bible even though the crucifixion accounts had been full of them.
(2) The resurrection accounts do not mention personal hope, the idea that Yeshua’s resurrection holds promise for our own resurrection.
(3) The resurrection accounts include women as the primary witnesses of the empty tomb though women were thought of poorly as witnesses.
(4) The resurrection accounts describe Yeshua’s body in surprising ways: no radiant light, he has wounds, he walks through things, he eats.

Wright concludes that the gospel writers felt obliged to tell the story in ways the communities of their time were used to hearing them. Eyewitnesses related what they had seen to eager groups wanting access to the story of what had happened in and through Yeshua. Many people had heard the stories told in a similar manner. The early forms of resurrection stories were not like sermons on the afterlife. They were lifelike, unidealized accounts of how a few men and women encountered the strangest event in history.

Perplexed is how we would we would have felt. Perplexed is a good way to describe the surprise of a missing body of a beloved teacher by people who were already devastated and disappointed that he did not turn out to be the One they hoped for.

It may be difficult to go back now and imagine how stupefied and disconcerted we would be. Knowing the end of the story it is hard to put ourselves back closer to the beginning.

But we should. It should occur to us repeatedly that the risen body of our great Teacher, Yeshua, is an astounding reality.

Furthermore, it should occur to us that this did not happen in a painting or an illustration in a children’s Bible. Neither were there glorious sets and movie orchestras playing the score in the background. There was no formal public relations firm handling the early Yeshua movement’s documents.

What we read in the gospels, and in particular, Luke, is raw. It happened to a few people deemed insignificant in their world. And Luke, like the other gospel writers, did not feel it permissible to tell the story in a different way. Quite likely these kind of eyewitness-focused accounts were what people were used to hearing.

That’s not to say that good faith-based writing and theology on the resurrection was impossible. Paul had already, long before Luke wrote, given to the Yeshua movement a theological account. He had already said that without the resurrection event, our faith is vain. He’d said that without the resurrection, the cross could not erase sins and death would not ever be reversed. Without the resurrection, said Paul, the dead are gone forever, the guilty remain unforgiven, those dead in Adam remain under the sentence of death, and there is no future resurrection for any of us to look forward to. Paul said all that in 1 Corinthians 15 before Luke ever set pen to papyrus.

But there is more than one purpose in the perplexity theme in Luke’s telling of the story. The first purpose is to faithfully record the kinds of things eyewitnesses had said. And that is important to us now, because we need to know these accounts are not invented. They don’t read like propaganda for a movement. They read like the inexplicable experiences of people trying desperately to figure out what God is up to. And the second purpose is to remind us that the things that happened in and through Yeshua are larger than life. They change us if we deal with what we observe. They may leave us perplexed, but they do so because they are too wonderful to accept easily and without serious thought about our own situation, our own future, and our own response.

First, I accept the basic order of Mark, then Matthew, then Luke, and then John.

Second, I currently lean toward Mark Goodacre’s skepticism about the existence of Q (a sayings source thought to be used by both Matthew and Luke).

Third, I like much of Richard Bauckham’s eyewitness theory about Mark and Luke especially (and in a different way, John). I keep in mind the warning Scot McKnight gave me (in an email) to factor in much direct (verbatim) literary dependence from Mark to Matthew to Luke (which he would say undermines some aspects of Bauckham’s theory).

Fourth, I like so far what I know of Bauckham’s theory in Testimony of the Beloved Disciple, but I want to see how Paul Anderson’s work meshes with that (The Fourth Gospel and the Quest for Jesus).

Something like this seems to be going on (for the moment this outline makes sense to me):

Mark, not one of the Twelve or a disciple, writes his gospel first (the first written work on Yeshua’s life perhaps). There is some basis for the idea of Peter as the source through Mark’s overhearing him. Mark has other eyewitness background as well, as per Bauckham. This may be John Mark from Acts.

Matthew, not one of the Twelve (else why would he use Mark?) and perhaps not even named Matthew, adds much sayings material. Where did he get this sayings material? Is Papias’ statement about a (lost) Hebrew Matthew a clue here?

Luke, in the circle of Paul, uses Mark and Matthew and has a free hand in re-ordering sayings especially. Luke also seems to have his own eyewitness information gathered separately from Mark, as per Bauckham.

John, perhaps a disciple but not the John of the Twelve, perhaps the elder John from Papias’ statement, assumes knowledge of Mark and writes a different sort of gospel. I think the Beloved Disciple theory of his identity is believable. Where does John get these long discourses? I would not dismiss them as ahistorical entirely. I think at least there is a possibility that the beloved disciple has certain sayings in his memory that form the core of these long discourses. My reading of Paul Philip Levertoff’s Love and the Messianic Age has me thinking about some ways that a small saying here or there by Yeshua might have been developed into expanded discourses emphasizing the mystical side of Yeshua (Levertoff’s book is not about history or gospel origins, but his comparison of John and Chassidus is simply forming for me a small bit of a theory).

What are some of the kinds of observations and questions that lead Richard Bauckham to the eyewitness theory of the formation of the gospels? The first is foundational to the whole theory:

(1) Why are some characters named and some unnamed in the gospels?

That question and a few other considerations lead to a chain of questions, which are behind and in support of the eyewitness theory.

(2) Why are some characters named in some gospels but unnamed in one or more parallels?

(3) Were there conventions in comparable historiographical writings concerning witnesses and naming them in accounts? (Bauckham discusses at length the use of inclusio as a convention).

(4) What do the names, patronymics, variant forms of names, nicknames, and so on in the gospels tell us when compared with our knowledge of Palestinian Jewish names?

(5) What internal evidence is there in the apostolic writings for the importance of eyewitnesses? (Bauckham discusses, for example, the phrase “witnesses from the beginning”).

(6) A common theory of gospel formation has been one of long “oral tradition.” Does the use of names in the gospels support the common theory? (There is a difference between “oral tradition” and “oral history”).

(7) Is there external evidence for the importance of eyewitnesses in gospel formation? (Hint: Papias).

I read an interview with a scholar recently in which he talked about the patronizing concept of the Jewishness of Jesus. I’m not precisely sure what he had in mind as the interview did not get specific enough on this point and I have not read enough of this scholar’s work to be sure what opinions he holds. I do know one complaint he had: people who say their historical presentation of Jesus is a Jewish Jesus and then proceed to explain how Jesus is radically different from their notion of the Judaism of his time.

He seemed to be ready to dismiss the value of speaking of the Jewish Jesus completely, and yet I know he did not mean by this that we should view the historical Jesus through some other cultural lens (such as the Cynic philosopher theory of Crossan). That got me thinking: what value is there, overall, in speaking of the Jewishness of Jesus? Is that a description and a category we could better live without? What are the simplistic ideas of a Jewish Jesus we want to avoid? What are the alternatives to a Jewish Jesus in our way of speaking of the historical Jesus? I would have to start with my own story: because the “Jewish Jesus” idea is the very basis of what impelled me to study and to become what and who I am today. I cannot exaggerate the importance of the “Jewish Jesus” idea for me personally.

Perhaps some scholars, knowing the complexity and diversity of Judaism, and lamenting the ways popular presentations can distort our potential knowledge of the historical Jesus, might wish people simply wouldn’t use the language of a Jewish Jesus at all. Yet I can say that for me, in late 1987, as a college student with no religious background, the notion was life-changing.

I had just come from an agnostic background into full-on belief in God and in the person of Jesus. I had not yet read the gospels. A Sunday School teacher at a nearby church was stupefied that my faith was based on a reading of the historical narratives of the “Old Testament” and half a book by C.S. Lewis. He castigated me: “You have to read the New Testament.”

Being very impressionable at the time, I woke at 6:30 the next morning to start reading the New Testament. I had an eight o’clock class and the church told me I was supposed to read the Bible in the morning, so even though it was hard to wake so early, I thought I had to do it that way. But I was about to develop a bit more independent thinking and to become less naive.

Matthew 1:1 is where the New Testament starts and it is where I discovered the Jewish Jesus. It says he is the Son of David and the Son of Abraham. I had read recently the stories of David and Abraham. They were fresh in my mind. I can say that the moment in fraternity room reading the gospels was a turning point.

It was a turning point because I saw in an instant that there was a difference between the historical Jesus, and the Jesus of the gospels as well, and the church Jesus. And, though I want to be more forgiving, though I believe in the goodness of Christianity, even after years of reflection I have to chastise the shepherds who have allowed and continue to allow this distortion to continue.

Why doesn’t the average church and the average pastor present a fuller picture of who Jesus was and is? Why aren’t the gospels read and taken seriously? I could do a series of podcasts on that one. But my point is that the Jewish Jesus idea, as I encountered it early one morning at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta in my Zeta Beta Tau house, specifically led me to the place I met and married my wife, led to my choice of career, and has been the basis of all my work since then.

I guess you could say that Jewish Jesus idea is not something I’m ready to toss away.

I’ve heard one interesting way of talking about the perception people have of Jesus. Some see him as the “first Christian.” That is an interesting way of putting it. No one, as far as I know, actually uses that terminology. But it is between the lines of much, maybe most, writing about Jesus. The really bad stuff, the all-too-common rhetoric that makes us wince, is the Pharisees-as-Judaism and Jesus-as-the-first-Christian approach.

But the Christian Jesus idea is rampant even in less naive presentations. As this scholar said in his interview, many say their presentation includes the Jewishness of Jesus and then they proceed to explain how Jesus radically departed from the Judaism of his time. Many people are unaware of how supple, how diverse, how stretchable the various streams and ideas within broader Jewish religion and practice really were in Jesus’ time. Much of what people see as the Christian Jesus departing from his own culture and religious context is actually not new. Jewish thought and practice was full of potential reformers and renewers.

Jesus the first Christian is the Jesus I heard about, if I heard about Jesus at all in my early church experience. Mostly talk about Jesus was limited to three things: (1) the savior dying on a cross so I could have a very pleasant afterlife, (2) the resurrected man whose return to life meant I could believe in a very pleasant afterlife, and (3) the man in heaven next to the Father to whom all our prayers were directed. Sermons on the actual deeds or sayings of Jesus were quite rare. If I did hear them, the point of the sermon was always the same as the point of every sermon: you should ask Jesus into your heart so you will have a very pleasant afterlife.

An aspect of Jesus-the-first-Christian I heard more often was the converse: the Pharisees-as-what-is-wrong-with-all-religion. And Pharisees meant Jews in general.

I asked people at church during this formative stage: if Jesus was Jewish, why don’t we do anything Jewish?

I was told in various ways that: (1) the Old Testament was hard and unspiritual, (2) that Jesus died on the cross to set us free from Judaism, and (3) that Jewishness is the opposite of having Jesus in your heart so that you can have a very pleasant afterlife.

I decided that my Christian teachers were wrong about this. I decided this within the first month of my new-found faith. It wasn’t easy to resist the pull. But, fortunately, I found a few resources early on to help.

I found a Jewish Christian who saw Jesus and Judaism in a bit more of a synthesis than the other Christians I talked to. Through him I found out about and went on a trip to Israel, where my interest in the historical Jesus, Jesus the Jew, increased all the more. And I found out about Messianic Judaism. I wasn’t ready to sign on to the Messianic Jewish movement as yet, but I attended and learned from afar.

The Jewish Jesus made so much more sense to me for a number of reasons than the first-Christian-Jesus. He quoted sacred texts from Deuteronomy and Samuel and Isaiah with ease. He went to synagogue on Saturday. He read from a scroll. He kept Passover. He gave an important speech at Hanukkah. I understood his crucifixion largely through the lens of Isaiah 53. His resurrection, I found out, was part of a Jewish theme of bodily afterlife.

My understanding of the Jesus of the gospels and the Jesus of history needed a lot more work. It still does, of course. I got side-tracked for over a decade on my path of discovery. I was fooled for a long time by certain distortions of the message of Jesus and the apostles. But through this long period of confusion I did some things right. I am especially glad that I decided to engage in a long study of the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament), including a Masters degree from Emory in Atlanta in Hebrew Bible. I never went on to doctoral work and don’t know if I will, but the Hebrew Bible continues to be a love of mine even though I am specializing in the gospels and the life and message of Jesus.

My basic point is that the idea of a Jewish Jesus is far from an unnecessary correction. And the notion is much needed. And those who want to understand Jesus would do well to understand the first five books of the Bible and at least some of the Psalms, wisdom literature, and prophets.

Another distorted view of Jesus I have encountered is Jesus, the last Jew. I do not mean, of course, that Jewish people disappeared or ceased to exist after Jesus, but that the people of God were the Jews until and through Jesus, after which, everyone needed to be a Christian.

It was okay for Jesus to be Jewish, such interpreters tell us, but he was the last Jew in terms of God’s election and inclusion of people. Thus, we should read in Jesus’ teachings advanced notions that will take his disciples outside of the orbit of Judaism.

This Jesus-the-last-Jew approach is a way of affirming that Jesus is Jewish while denying and/or ignoring the fact that his deeds and message are equally Jewish and that his renewal movement is a Jewish movement.

I am not at all saying that I think non-Jews must become Jewish in order to follow Jesus. Perhaps that is the kind of distortion that well-meaning teachers of Jesus-the-first-Christian and Jesus-the-last-Jew were hoping to avoid. But I don’t think Christians can benefit from making Jesus a gentile. The path of discipleship must include and recognize the Jewish Jesus. Non-Jews follow a Jewish Messiah. I don’t care how simplistic that may sound in some academic ears. The Jesus of the gospels, and I would argue of history as well, is the Jewish Messiah. I will grant you that the term Messiah has been grossly over-simplified as well.

I first picked up on the Jewish Jesus theme from Matthew’s gospel, but all of the gospels begin with a theme of continuation, not discontinuity.

What I read in Matthew was about Jesus the son of David and the son of Abraham. That characterization of Jesus continues in Matthew’s gospel. Some have considered Matthew to be the product of a Jewish Christian, or as I would prefer to call it, a Messianic Jewish, movement in the early days.

But the other two synoptic gospels and even John begin equally with a theme of continuity. The arrival of Jesus on the scene in the gospels’ literary presentation of him is Jewish and continuous with the tradition of Israel.

Mark begins with the good news of Messiah and Son of God, Jewish terms best understood from the Hebrew Bible and Second Temple Judaism. Mark locates Jesus from the movement of John the Baptist and identifies his message as the reign or kingdom of God, a central theme of Judaism and the Hebrew Bible.

Luke begins with a priestly family in Jerusalem and writes in the style of the Greek or Septuagint version of the book of Judges. Luke’s Jesus leaps off the pages of the Hebrew Bible and has more to do with Jerusalem than Mark or Matthew have indicated.

And then there is John. His gospel has a prologue, generally thought to be added at a later stage of formation. The prologue presents Jesus as the Word. Many have sought in this a Greek notion of the Logos, and perhaps that is secondary. But the Jewish idea of the Memra, the Dibbur, the spoken words of God by which all things were created, is evident. And John, like the other gospels, locates the origins of Jesus’ movement in the work of the Jewish prophet John.

From this theme of continuation, the idea that Jesus is the next chapter in the unfolding drama of God and Israel, is matched by the theme of renewal in the gospels. This has been mistaken for a theme of replacement. The idea of the Jewish jesus is essential for rightly interpreting Jesus’ stance on things like the Temple.

To say that Jesus is anti-Temple is a gross error. It is his Father’s house. He has a zeal for it that his disciples remark about in John. He affirms its sanctity specifically in Matthew. His infancy is shrouded in a Temple community of the faithful in Luke. Even Mark is careful to show that the testimony about Jesus as a Temple-destroyer is false testimony.

Jesus is against the Temple state, the organizational entity running the Temple. His protest, the one that got him arrested and killed, is not against the edifice of God, but against its desecration and against its injustices toward the common people. It is a Temple state which demands the religious and economic obedience of the people, but which does not practice the economic redistribution of God’s Torah.

So, while I understand, probably, some of the frustration of the scholar who was interviewed, I think the statement that the historical Jesus is best understood in a Jewish context has lasting value. In fact, I think it is essential. Maybe if history had not developed the Jesus-the-first-Christian or Jesus-the-last-Jew notions we’d have been fine without using the adjective “Jewish” in our description of Jesus. But the fact that Jesus is Jewish and that his teaching and deeds are Jewish is far from obvious to most people. And the idea of the Jewish Jesus is very much needed.

I’m already leaning against some ways of conceiving gospel transmission. Goodacre has me nearly convinced that Q is a too-convenient scholarly chimera. Bauckham has me convinced the form-critical view of a long process of oral tradition is off base. Anderson has me convinced the background relationships between streams in gospel transmission are not as simple as New Testament Introduction books make them out to be.

I will start this series in what may seem an unusual place. I think Richard Bauckham makes good sense beginning his Jesus and the Eyewitnesses here: in the lost writings of one bishop of Hierapolis, the good Papias, whose writings fortunately we at least have in the fragmentary form of quotations in later writers. What can the bishop of Hierapolis tell us about gospel transmission?

Papias was bishop in Hierapolis, not far from Colossae and Laodicea. Hierapolis was on the crossroads between the huge cities of Ephesus in the west and Antioch in Syria in the east as well as on a road between Smyrna and Attalia in Pamphylia. Many travelers would pass through Hierapolis.

Papias wrote a lost work called Exposition of the Logia of the Lord (logia means “sayings”). The work is lost except for quotations from it in later writers, especially in Eusebius of Caesarea (263-339 CE).

When was Papias’ book written? A standard date with evidence from an ancient source is 130 CE. But there is reason to believe this is wrong and that Papias’ work was during the time of Trajan (98-117 CE) and not Hadrian (117-138 CE). Bauckham prefers the date 110 CE. Here is what Papias said, some commentary to help understand it, and why it matters for theories about the formation of the gospels:

I shall not hesitate to put into properly ordered form for you everything I learned carefully in the past from the elders and noted down well, for the truth of which I vouch. For unlike most people I did not enjoy those who have a great deal to say, but those who teach the truth. Nor did I enjoy those who recall someone else’s commandments, but those who remember the commandments given by the Lord to the faith and proceeding from the truth itself. And if by chance anyone who had been in attendance on the elders should come my way, I inquired about the words of the elders — that is, what Andrew or Peter said, or Philip, or Thomas, or James, or John, or Matthew, or any other of the Lord’s disciples, and whatever Aristion and the elder John, the Lord’s disciples, were saying. For I did not think that information from books would profit me as much as information from a living and surviving voice.
–cited in Eusebius, Hist. Eccl. 3.39.3-4.

It is very important, as Bauckham reminds us, that Papias is not talking about something that happened at the time he wrote his account in 110 CE, but some that happened in the past. Bauckham suggests a reasonable date of 80 CE as the rough time period Papias “inquired about” the words of the elders. This makes sense as approximately the same era in which the gospels were written down (except Mark, being earlier).

The point is, Papias has no reason to exaggerate these “modest claims,” as Bauckham calls them. He could easily have been alive at the time of eyewitnesses and made notes about his inquiries into exact words and stories.

Bauckham notes that Papias describes four categories of people he talked to:
(1) Those who had been in attendance on the elders.
(2) The elders themselves, meaning leaders of regions of disciples in Asia Minor.
(3) The Lord’s disciples to whom Papias did not speak.
and (4) the Lord’s disciples John the Elder and Aristion to whom Papias did speak.

In case there is confusion, the difference between (3) and (4) is in the verb. Papias speaks of what those in (3) “said” and what those in (4) “were saying.” This explains why he separated out John the Elder and Aristion from the others.

The identity of John the Elder and the John from the first list of the Lord’s disciples seems apparent: John the Elder is not John the son of Zebedee, one of the Twelve. John the Elder is a different John. Bauckham thinks John the Elder is the same as the Beloved Disciple and author of the Gospel of John.

Whether that is correct or not is irrelevant for the purpose of this discussion.

What Bauckham is trying to show here is that Papias had a certain sense of historiographical integrity. It was about the importance of “the living and surviving voice.”

Bauckham will go on to show that the same principles of historiographical integrity are evident in the gospels, not only in Luke’s prologue, but in the use of named eyewitnesses. Bauckham has more than circumstantial evidence to back up his claim. He has clear and discernible patterns regarding named characters in the gospels.

For the purpose of this first installment, let me simply say that Papias wrote a book we wish we had in our possession. In this book he recorded the reminiscences and sayings of Yeshua that he gathered from two different chains of transmission:

THE DIRECT CHAIN: From (1) the Lord’s Disciples Aristion and John the Elder to (2) the disciples of the elders to (3) Papias.

THE INDIRECT CHAIN: From (1) the Lord’s Disciples (Andrew, Peter, Philip, Thomas, James, John, Matthew) to (2) a possible intervening stage to (3) the elders (still living) to (4) the disciples of the elders to (5) Papias.

In Part 2, we’ll consider ideas of historiography from the time of Papias and the evangelists. We’ll consider the red herring of Form Criticism and its assumption of a long chain of oral tradition. We’ll discuss Oral Tradition versus Eyewitness Testimony. We’ll look at some evidence that the evangelists shared Papias’ concerns about historiography. Most importantly, we’ll consider the evidence that the gospels were written in the time of living memory and not from some abstract chain of oral tradition which took on a life of its own.

Only two out of four gospels have birth narratives about Yeshua. And the two birth narratives we have are so very different. They agree on major points, twelve of them, which I will list, but they are so different in other ways. It has often been said, and I think this is valid, that the gospel tradition developed backwards: the Passion and Resurrection narratives were first. Then the miracles, deeds, and sayings traditions developed. Last were the birth narratives. Childhood stories about Yeshua were not included until later gospels in the second century, gospels which the Yeshua-communities did not accept as apostolic in authority.

Meanwhile, we have the birth narratives of Matthew and Luke. They have agreements such as Yeshua’s Davidic origins, his virginal conception, and his birth at Bethlehem. They have major differences which are often smoothed over with little thought about the difficulties in harmonizing them. Luke doesn’t mention a trip to Egypt. Matthew doesn’t mention that Joseph and Mary were from Nazareth.

The Yeshua-story has birth issues. How reliable are these narratives? Should we who accept them as inspired tradition expect the world to subscribe to them as history? What is at stake in the birth story of the Messiah?

From the outset, I have to say that in a less-than-fifteen-minute talk on the birth of Messiah, I can only summarize large issues. Let me say as well that accepting tradition and theology from the Bible does not depend on historical verifiability. We do not have to limit our faith to things that have strong historical evidence. If we believe that God inspired a set of traditions coming from ancient Israel — the Hebrew Bible — and from the early Yeshua-movement — the New Testament — then our faith is not in historical reconstruction. I highly recommend Luke Timothy Johnson’s chapter in The Historical Jesus: Five Views for those who want more information about this approach.

So, let me begin by stirring the waters and showing some of the problems. These are problems precisely for people who do take the tradition seriously and who read with attention to details.

Consider Mark 3:21 and 31-35. Mary and the brothers of Yeshua come to Capernaum to remove Yeshua from a crowd scene. They heard people saying Yeshua is “beside himself.” They have doubts or concerns about what Yeshua is doing.

But wait! Is this the same Mary to whom the angel spoke in Luke 1:26-38? She was told that this child would be born without a human father, that he would be conceived by the Holy Spirit, and that he will reign as king. How could Mary have doubts about such a son? How could Yeshua’s brothers not understand? How could this all not have become known earlier? Why, when Yeshua comes back to Nazareth in Luke 4:16-30 do his townspeople not know he is a miraculously conceived man destined to be king?

I’m not saying there are not possible ways of understanding both lines of tradition. I’m just saying: we have a tension here between Mary’s knowing the origins of Yeshua and yet doubting him. Mary is not among the disciples before the resurrection, but only after.

And that is another way of showing the tension. It is the resurrection of Yeshua that quite obviously changed the view of the disciples and others about him. How could his greatness have gone relatively unknown until then in light of angels appearing and a virginal conception?

And let’s look at the birth issues surrounding Yeshua another way. The stories in Matthew and Luke are very different. Some believe they can be harmonized. Others do not.

Here is Matthew’s story in outline form: an angel appeared to Joseph in an unspecified location to explain the virginal conception, Yeshua was born in Bethlehem, magi came looking for him and this caused Herod to slaughter babes in Bethlehem, the Yeshua-family fled to Egypt, and after Herod died they came back but settled in Nazareth to hide from Herod.

Here is Luke’s story in outline, leaving out the John the Baptist material: an angel appeared to Mary in Nazareth to explain the virginal conception, the Yeshua-family came to Bethlehem for a census registration and Yeshua was born there, the family came to Jerusalem for a time to fulfill the Torah, and then they returned to Nazareth after the census and obligations in Jerusalem.

Can these stories be harmonized into one account? Some think they can and would place the order roughly this way: Luke 1, Matthew 1, Luke 2, and untold story of a return to Bethlehem, and then Matthew 2 (Raymond Brown mentions this common harmonization in The Birth of Messiah in a footnote on pg. 35). Here is the possible order of events if the stories go together:
…an angel appeared to Mary in Nazareth to explain the virginal conception
…an angel appeared to Joseph in an unspecified location to explain the virginal conception
…the Yeshua-family came to Bethlehem for a census registration
…Yeshua was born there
…the family came to Jerusalem for a time to fulfill the Torah
…the family returned to Bethlehem after Jerusalem for a time, though no gospel mentions it
…magi came looking for him in Bethlehem and this caused Herod to slaughter babes
…the Yeshua-family fled to Egypt
…after Herod died they came back but settled in Nazareth to hide from Herod

This harmonized account is possible. So why have any doubts about it?

First, what are the sources of Matthew’s and Luke’s information? It is not possible that Joseph could be a source. Every indication is that Joseph is dead before the resurrection. If Mary is the source, how could the two accounts be so different?

Second, how can we harmonize two accounts that are so different? Luke knows nothing of a flight to Egypt. Matthew knows nothing of Nazareth as the original home of Joseph and Mary. And why would Matthew omit the Jerusalem scenes, since it is Matthew’s purpose to show Yeshua as a fulfiller of Torah?

Having considered the difficulty in harmonizing, now let us consider what the two accounts have in common. Both Raymond Brown in The Birth of the Messiah and Joseph Fitzmeyer in The Gospel According to Luke I-IX list the common points. I will use Fitzmeyer’s basic points:
(1) Yeshua’s birth is related to the reign of Herod.
(2) Mary is a virgin betrothed to Joseph and they do not live together.
(3) Joseph is of the house of David.
(4) An angel announces Yeshua’s birth.
(5) Yeshua is recognized as a son of David.
(6) He is conceived by the Holy Spirit.
(7) Joseph is not involved in the conception.
(8) The name “Yeshua” is given by God through angels.
(9) Yeshua is proclaimed beforehand a Savior.
(10) Yeshua is born after Mary and Joseph come to live together.
(11) He is born at Bethlehem.
(12) Yeshua settles in Nazareth.

I am not saying that these points must all be taken as verifiable history simply because they are common to both gospels. But consider: the two stories in Matthew and Luke are completely independent. How did they develop? And why do they have similarities as well as differences?

The only reasonable conclusion, with coincidence being unreasonable on so many specific points of convergence, is that Matthew and Luke independently wrote birth narratives based on earlier sources. These could be oral or written. They cannot have exactly the same sources or, if they do, they took a lot of freedom in filling in the gaps.

The possibilities of how these earlier sources could have become known is too complex to consider here. It is possible and even likely that Mary gave testimony in the early Yeshua-movement. But the tension remains: if Mary made her story known, how did the divergences develop?

And the most important issue is the tradition that Yeshua was conceived by the Holy Spirit. Often called the “Virgin Birth,” this story should more properly be called the “Virginal Conception.” How did this tradition develop?

Here is one theory, one I will reject, but which even we believers in the gospels should be aware of:
…Those who came to believe through the resurrection of Yeshua that he was the Son of God realized a problem.
…Yeshua could not have suddenly “become” Son of God at his resurrection.
…So he had to be Son of God before the resurrection, even if his identity was not widely recognized.
…But it does not seem that someone with a human father could be Son of God in the full sense like Yeshua is.
…Therefore, he must not have had a human father.

From here, some people think, early believers turned to pagan myths about divine conceptions.

Some others think that Isaiah 7:14 was interpreted in Hellenistic Judaism as being about a virginal conception. But there is no evidence for this and linguistic evidence is actually to the contrary.

As Raymond Brown says, though, there is no reason to believe that early Yeshua-followers would know about or make use of pagan myths to solve a puzzle about Yeshua’s identity.

But where did the story come from. It is easy to think it may have come from Mary. But why didn’t Mark use it? And why did John skip the birth altogether and solve the origins of Yeshua question another way, with the idea that he is the forever-pre-existent Word of God?

Some people think the pre-existence idea about Yeshua’s identity is not compatible with the virginal conception idea. I don’t agree.

We who believe in the gospels as inspired tradition do not have to assume the evangelists got all their stories “right” in terms of history. As we see in many cases, it is possible for inspired scriptures to have discrepancies.

But the virginal conception is a teaching about which we will have to say that: (a) it cannot be verified historically, (b) it comes from an earlier tradition than the gospels, (c) it has possible sources in eyewitness testimony, (d) it is hard to explain tensions in the divergent accounts, (e) it is hard to explain tensions in the seeming lack of faith by Mary prior to the resurrection, and (f) yet there is no good explanation for it by which it might have been invented fictitiously.

The birth story of Messiah is a good example of why our faith is not based on rationalism or mere historical investigation. History does matter, but it is not the final court of belief. This is not only true in religion, but in all matters of what people believe about life.

Those of us who believe Yeshua is the pre-existent Word of God have no trouble believing that he was conceived by the Holy Spirit. We can simply wonder about the struggles of the evangelists to find out how it all came about and the apparently confusing sources and traditions through which they sought to go back, long after the fact, and find out how Yeshua entered the world.

With the various problems the birth narratives present to us, it is reassuring to consider the common elements in Matthew and Luke’s accounts, which suggest a tradition that pre-dated both of them. Fitzmeyer gives a suprisingly detailed list of the doubly attested traditions of Yeshua’s birth and some of these elements may surprise you:

SOURCE: Joseph A. Fitzmeyer, The Gospel According to Luke (Anchor Bible, 307).

(1) Yeshua’s birth is related to the reign of Herod (Luke 1:5; Matt 2:1).

(2) Mary is a virgin engaged to Joseph but they have not yet lived together (Luke 1:27, 34; 2:5; Matt 1:18).

(3) Joseph is of the house of David (Luke 1:27; 2:4; Matt 1:16, 20).

(4) An angel announces the birth of Yeshua (Luke 1:28-30; Matt 1:20-21).

(5) Yeshua is recognized as the Son of David (Luke 1:32; Matt 1:1).

(6) His conception takes place through the Holy Spirit (Luke 1:35; Matt 1:18, 20).

(7) Joseph is not involved in the conception (Luke 1:34; Matt 1:18-25).

(8) The name Yeshua is imposed by heaven prior to the birth (Luke 1:31; Matt 1:21).

(9) The angel identifies Yeshua as Savior (Luke 2:11; Matt 1:21).

(10) Yeshua is born after Joseph and Mary come to live together (Luke 2:4-7; Matt 1:24-25).

(11) Yeshua is born in Bethlehem (Luke 2:4-7; Matt 2:1).

(12) Yeshua, Joseph, and Mary settle in Nazareth (Luke 2:39, 51; Matt 2:22-23).

I said there we have three basic options: (1) decide Mark is right and John wrong (Maurice Casey does this in Aramaic Sources of Mark’s Gospel), (2) decide John is right and Mark wrong (McKnight in Jesus and His Death and Brown in The Death of the Messiah, Vol. 2), or (3) harmonize them in some way (I used to follow Edersheim’s harmonization but never gave much weight to the two calendars theory of Jaubert).

In this post, I want to clarify matters a bit and discuss why I opt for (2). The Last Supper was not exactly a Passover Seder, though it was a Passover-like festal meal held one night before. Mark erred in his account. John did not err. But theologically, the Last Supper is filled with Passover meaning. Mark may have erred, but he wasn’t completely wrong. Yeshua put a lot of Passover into his not-quite-Passover meal.

The Discrepancy Between John and Mark

Mark 14:12 says it was the first day of Unleavened Bread “when they were sacrificing the Passover lamb.” But John 13:1 says it was “before the feast of Passover.”

Mark 14:14 and 16 say the meal was “Passover.” But John 19:14, 31, and 42 the crucifixion was on “the day of preparation,” and 19:14 specifies “of the Passover.”

Mark 14:17-18 say that Yeshua and the twelve ate what was prepared, which had been called Passover in vss. 14 and 16. But John 18:28 says that the chief priests, the next morning, did not enter Pilate’s hall in order to remain pure “so that they might eat the Passover.”

Arguments in Favor of Last-Supper-Equals-Passover vs. Weaknesses
The wording here is mine but much of what I say is found in Scot McKnight’s Jesus and His Death and Raymond Brown’s The Death of the Messiah, Vol. 2.

Mark calls the meal the night before Yeshua died “Passover.” But John says Passover was the next night after Yeshua died.

The meal took place after dark while normal meals happened earlier. A meal on the festal days of purification and preparation before Passover (pilgrims arrived early says Josephus) could just as well be at night.

Yeshua broke bread in the middle of the meal, whereas at normal meals this is at the beginning. In anticipation of Passover, it may not have been uncommon for people to have festal meals with symbolic portions and perhaps multiple breakings of bread.

In John 13, some thought Judas was sent away to give money to the poor (a concern in Passover haggadahs now and perhaps then). They may have thought this about any night leading up to Passover as well, since Yeshua would have been sensitive to this issue at all times, and the festal season lent itself to such almsgiving even before Passover.

They sang a hymn after, possibly the Hallel (Psalm 113-118). A hymn, possibly the Hallel, could have been sung at a festal meal in anticipation of Passover and in the enthusiasm of the pilgrims gathered.

In John 13:23 and 25, the Beloved Disciple was lying at Yeshua’s breast (reclining is a Passover custom). The reclining posture of the symposium meal, a Greco-Roman custom brought into the Passover, would fit well with any festal or significant meal.

Arguments Against Last-Supper-Equals-Passover

There is no mention of lamb at the meal. Mark 14:12 may possibly mean that Yeshua and disciples slaughtered a lamb, but even if so, it is never mentioned again.

A Jewish trial is much less likely on Passover than it is on the day of preparation for Passover.

Early Christianity had a weekly celebration of remembrance of the body and blood (1 Cor 11; Didache), not an annual celebration.

It seems (Maurice Casey argues otherwise) that only the Twelve were present at the Last Supper, but Passover would include everyone and women too.

What Probably Happened

On the night before Passover, Yeshua had a festal meal with the Twelve. They reclined and Yeshua taught them. They sang Hallel after supper. Yeshua evoked strong Passover themes such as blood atonement, covenant, and coming into the kingdom.

Mark erred in relating what he read in his sources. He thought the Last Supper was a Passover. He had some justification for his mistake. Yeshua made the meal like Passover in some ways.

Theologically, the Last Supper was a sort of “renewed Passover” looking ahead to the Passover the disciples expected to celebrate the next night. Yeshua explained his death as a sacrifice re-constituting the people of Israel in a new covenant (and including the nations, as understood later). The atonement theology of Yeshua is nowhere more explicit than here. The Last Supper is not a Passover-replacement. Jewish thinking is so much more “both-and” and not “either-or.” The Last Supper is a reinterpretation of and reapplication of Passover, adding a new Exodus theme to the existing Exodus theme.

In many ways, it is true that the Last Supper is and isn’t a Passover. It is a Passover without a lamb. It is part of a larger set of rituals and stories about redemption. It is about Passover finding its goal in Yeshua without ceasing to be relevant in its progress from Egypt to the history of Israel in the land to the coming of the Lamb of God to inaugurate final redemption.

The Last Supper Was / Wasn’t a Passover Seder
To keep things simple, I am only comparing Mark and John’s accounts here. Matthew, Luke, and Paul follow Mark mainly (there is complexity overlooked in that statement, though, since Luke is influenced by John in some way–see Fitzmeyer’s commentary on Luke or Paul Anderson’s study on The Fourth Gospel and the Quest for Jesus for more about this).

Let me lay out the argument that Mark and John do not agree on the timing of the Last Supper as clearly as I can:

(a) Mark says that the disciples asked Yeshua about preparing for Passover on the first day of Unleavened Bread and when the Passover lamb is sacrificed. This statement already involves a slight complication due to differences in reckoning days (to keep it simple, let’s just talk about two ways: the Jewish and the Roman). By the Roman reckoning (see Adela Yarbro Collins’ commentary citing Pliny) a day ordinarily means “dawn till dark.” This is the reckoning Mark is using. The Passover lambs are sacrificed on Nisan 14 and the Passover’s first day (same thing as first day of Unleavened Bread) begins after sundown, which in the Jewish reckoning is another day, Nisan 15). It is noteworthy that Mark says nothing about Yeshua or the disciples bringing the required burnt offering (the “appearance” offering of the festivals) or the Passover lamb. Is this because Mark is reluctant to show Yeshua offering a sacrifice? Is it because Mark has his facts wrong and it was not yet Passover (and thus, nothing in Mark’s sources for this account suggest that Yeshua made a sacrifice)?

(b) John says that the Last Supper of Yeshua and the disciples happened before the feast of Passover. This is already enough to say: Mark and John have a disagreement. John’s clear assertion about this timing continues in a number of ways. When Yeshua is brought to Pilate after the meal and the time in the olive grove, the chief priests do not want to enter the Praetorium so as to avoid ritual defilement and to be able to eat the Passover (18:28). The flogging of Yeshua occurred on the day of preparation for the Passover (19:14), which would mean Nisan 14 when the lambs were to be slaughtered for the Seder. The body of Yeshua was taken down more hurriedly than the norm for a crucifixion because it was the day of preparation (19:31), which here clearly means “preparation for Passover” since John goes on to say the Jews did not want bodies left on the cross during the sabbath, especially since it was a high day. Apparently, sometimes bodies were left during sabbaths (at least John says so), but this being such an important Sabbath (Passover and Sabbath on the same day), they did not want to allow this to happen. Finally, in 19:36, John compares Yeshua directly to the Passover lambs, whose bones were not to be broken.

(c) In order to harmonize these two accounts, the only options are: (i) to propose multiple calendars, (ii) to propose that Yeshua deliberately had a Passover Seder a day early, (iii) or to interpret John’s account in every case as though the “Passover” means the festal offering of the first day and not the Passover lambs for the Seder offered on the day of preparation (this is Alfred Edersheim’s harmonization and the one I have used in previous years).

(d) I will discuss possible harmonizations as well as many other angles regarding the timing of the Passover-Last Supper-Crucifixion in future posts. For now, let me say that I do not think harmonization is possible. We have here variant traditions about the timing and nature of the Last Supper. But what we do not have is a disagreement about the overall purpose and symbolism of Yeshua’s death. He is the Passover and prepares a New Exodus for his movement of renewed Israel (which will be extended to include the nations). Both accounts make this point in various ways. So the theology of the Last Supper and crucifixion is harmonious while the historical details are not.

I welcome dialogue by comment or by email at yeshuaincontext at gmail. I cannot read 10,000 words essays on the matter. Feel free to suggest possibilities briefly. Feel free to ask questions or challenge.

Mark’s account is the best of all four gospels to help us reconstruct what happened. This incident is of great importance, probably being what sealed Yeshua’s doom in the eyes of the Temple state and Rome. We should read Yeshua’s actions in the giant Temple complex as a commotion, not bringing the whole Temple activity to a standstill. Yeshua acted alone and did not ask his disciples to participate.

In the comments that follow, I will point to some resources for further study, consider the sequence as narrated in Mark, and put this crucial incident in Yeshua’s life in its context.

RESOURCES FOR FURTHER STUDY
Maurice Casey, Jesus of Nazareth is a monumental summary of historical scholarship by an expert in the Aramaic of Yeshua’s time. Casey has written on the Aramaic sources of Mark’s gospel and his work has interested me so much I am working with a rabbi friend and mentor this year to start learning Galilean Aramaic and will work through Casey’s research and read DSS texts and Midrashic texts in Galilean Aramaic over the next few years. Casey covers the Temple protest on pgs 408-415.

Adela Yarbro Collins, Mark: A Commentary, in the Hermeneia series. Collins is excellent at providing examples from the Greco-Roman and Jewish sources to provide historical context. I first learned from her some of the issues surrounding Herod’s expansion of the Temple complex and how it informs Yeshua’s action of protest.

Daniel J. Harrington, The Gospel of Mark, in the Sacra Pagina series. Harrington is a well-informed and balanced commentator who values both tradition and context. I think his comments are a sane balance between mere historical inquiry (like Casey) and traditional understandings of the gospel. I do not think what we can know about Yeshua is limited to what historians can give evidence for. I think a storied epistemology (see my Yeshua in Context and an appreciation for the living presence of Yeshua in the tradition should also inform our knowledge.

COMMENTARY ON MARK 11:15-19
The following sequence from Mark is helpful to restate:
(1) Yeshua enters the Temple, likely the outer courts.
(2) Yeshua begins driving out traders and overturning some tables.
(3) Yeshua preaches against and takes action to prevent people carrying vessels (baskets, bowls, money bags) through the outer courts.
(4) Yeshua preaches from Isaiah 56:7 and Jeremiah 7:11.
(5) Yeshua’s protest becomes known to the chief priests and also the scribes.
(6) Yeshua’s action draws a crowd which prevents his immediate arrest.

What should be obvious is that Yeshua reveres the Temple and protests the Temple state. Any interpretation which assumes Yeshua wanted the Temple to be destroyed is incorrect. The proper running of the Temple would involve redistributing tithes to the poor and make it a place of God’s Presence, of shared resources, and of joy. The Temple state has made it a place of taxation without redistribution and a source of power and position for the elite.

What does Yeshua specifically oppose here? He opposes trading in the Temple courts, carrying vessels through, and filling the place of prayer in such a way as to prevent the main activity which should be here: prayer.

Collins explains that the idea of commerce in the Temple courts began with Herod enlarging the Temple area and including a Portico, like the Greco-Roman markets on their temples. Prior to this, tradition says the necessary trade (selling animals, changing money) happened on the Mount of Olives.

Maurice Casey (Jesus of Nazareth) explains Yeshua’s very plausible prohibition of carrying vessels through holy space, which is similar to the later rabbinic law, “one should not enter the Temple mount with . . . his moneybag” (m. Berakhot 9:5, see also Harrington).

Isaiah 56 is about foreigners and eunuchs in the Temple, but also describes its courts as a place for prayer. Yeshua’s main objection seems to have nothing to do with gentiles (the outer courts were used by Jews and non-Jews for prayer, as numerous New Testament texts and other sources confirm). The commerce here at Passover crowded the courts and prevented prayer. Instead of worship, the Temple was a market. This is also the point of the Jeremiah 7 text, where the prophet complains that the leadership have made of the Temple a source of personal power and enrichment instead of a place of prayer and worship.

An additional issue in the money-changing is that the Temple state required the Tyrian shekel, which was more pure in its metal content, but which had an image of Baal Melkart on it (the Syrian Hercules) and was therefore idolatrous (Collins, Casey).

The Temple state’s priority was not holiness, but commerce, power, and wealth. Yeshua’s protest action did not stop Temple commerce and was symbolic. But it drew the attention of the Temple state and also a large crowd. By the time Yeshua completed it, his arrest was certain and the chief priests had what they would need to convince Rome to execute him.

If you are not religious, the idea of some great importance being attached to the figure of Yeshua might seem ludicrous. Religious figures (Buddha, Mohammed, Zeus, Krishna, Israel’s God) are a dime a dozen. Why should Yeshua command any special inquiry or attention?

If you are religious and, in fact, Christian, the same question may be at the back of your thoughts. Are we overemphasizing this guy from Galilee?

If you are religious and not Christian or Messianic Jewish, you may be absolutely convinced that Yeshua is not worthy of such devotion, study, and faith. So, is Yeshua just another religious figure?

Some religious figures present a philosophy which you may or may not find compelling (Buddha). Yeshua does more than that. Even if you have grave doubts about some of his sayings, he left an impression on history that is tangible, real, and hard to explain away. Perhaps you have not evaluated the evidence that Yeshua did, in fact, rise from the tomb and leave behind a Presence in this world that is not easily dismissed.

Some religious figures are not credible in their literal sense (Zeus), although the meaning of myth is much deeper than the literal sense. Much can be learned from myth on the level of human needs and archetypes. Yeshua is more than that. He is myth become real, the Presence of Omnipotence in the real world (or at least that’s what he claimed and left signs indicating was true). He deserves a closer look than mythical figures do.

Some religious figures came along late to the scene and simply modified existing religious ideas in ways that are not credible (Mohammed). Yeshua is not like this. His take on the Hebrew Bible, the identity and ways of God, the realization of the hopes of Judaism, is compelling. His message is beloved even by those who do not follow him explicitly (look at the impact of the image of the cross and sacrificial death and resurrection in art and literature).

Yeshua is not just another religious figure. He broke into history and changed something fundamental (the finality of death). He left an imprint that is about more than sociology (a religious movement) and more than philosophy (a teaching). He left a movement of eyewitnesses claiming that the Realm Above broke through to Here Below. It is history as surely as events you more readily accept as true.

The real question is why so few people give Yeshua the inquiry and attention his legacy deserves.

For an in-depth and rather academic case that the resurrection of Yeshua truly happened, see N.T. Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God. For a simpler case, see Jesus, the Final Days by Craig Evans and N.T. Wright.

This helpful way of looking at named characters in the gospels as all thanks to Richard Bauckham and his book, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses.

Simon of Cyrene is interesting for several reasons. One of them is that Mark also names his sons, Alexander and Rufus (15:21), while Matthew (27:32) and Luke 23:26) do not. What could be the reason?

Another interesting feature of Mark’s naming of Simon (and Mark is the earliest gospel we have) is that Peter drops out as a character after 14:72 and the women at the cross aren’t in the story until 15:40. Simon of Cyrene is in 15:21 — right in between. It appears Simon of Cyrene, or perhaps his sons Alexander and Rufus, is the source for the story of Yeshua’s carrying the cross through the streets.

Notice that Luke 23:27-32, a story about some of Yeshua’s sayings along the road to Golgotha, is unique. Simon of Cyrene was a living witness. Where might Luke have gained this extra information? One possible source is Q (if you read literature about the gospels, you know about the hypothetical source of Yeshua-sayings known as Q). Another would be an interview with Simon. Luke says he interviewed the witnesses. Maybe he got more out of Simon that Mark did before him.

Why would Mark name Simon and his sons, Alexander and Rufus, whereas the other evangelists did not name the sons? Part of Bauckham’s theory is that evangelists only named people they knew or whose testimony they had heard. If the theory that Mark was in Rome has any merit, could it be that Alexander and Rufus were known in Rome? Just a guess. Maybe Mark did not interview Simon, but only his sons.

The case continues to add veracity to the historical realism of the gospels. Named characters, especially considering that they are rare, suggest known eyewitnesses in the Yeshua community. The evangelists do not appear to be inventing stories after all.

Why is only one of them named? And what else do we know about Cleopas? Here is where we get into some fascinating material from Richard Bauckham’s Jesus and the Eyewitnesses: The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony. Cleopas is perhaps the most interesting case. And this evidence is the kind of simple, memorable material to silence skeptics who doubt completely that the story of Yeshua has a solid historical basis.

First, a few things we know about Cleopas:

(1) Cleopas is one of the two disciples on the road to Emmaus (Luke 24:18).

(2) His wife is named Mary and she was at the cross (John 19:25, Clopas is a form of Cleopas and the name is rare).

(3) Cleopas was Yeshua’s uncle (Joseph’s brother) spoken of in Eusebius (citing Hegesippus) in Hist. Ecclus. 3.11; 4.22.

(4) Cleopas’ son, Simon, the cousin of Jacob (James) and Yeshua, was the leader who replaced Jacob (James) over the Jerusalem congregation.

But here is the most important thing: Cleopas is a perfect example of a trend in the gospels. The people who are named are treated so for a very important reason. The only consistent answer that explains why some are named and some are not (Baukham mounts his case with overwhelming evidence of detail) is that the named characters were known to the evangelists as eyewitnesses.

They lived and told their story of encountering Yeshua again and again. Cleopas is one example, a person of great importance in the Yeshua movement after the events the gospels narrate. He is a rare case of someone we know from later historical records as well.

And the fact that he is named and not the other disciple illustrates the truth. The only plausible reason the other disciple is not named is that Luke did not have a record of his story or that he was not generally known afterward as one of the eyewitnesses in the movement. But Cleopas, apparently, was.

Look for more on this theme under the categories “Disciples & Named Characters” and “Eyewitnesses.” See Richard Bauckham’s book for a full analysis, including charts of gospel names and variants.