Paul Clark

But who was Jesus? What can modern secular scholarship tell us about him? Are we sure he existed, and if so, what can we know about his life and his message?

In order to answer these questions, we need to examine a number of different issues. Part One will focus on the concept of a Messiah. In Part Two, I will look at our sources of information about Jesus. Part Three will set out what we can know about him.

A MESSIAH

A Messiah simply means an anointed one, and a number of figures in the Old Testament are described as such, including Saul, David and Solomon, the high priest Aaron and his sons, and even a foreign ruler, Cyrus the Great of Persia, who liberated the Jews from Babylonian captivity. But the idea of a Messiah at the time of Jesus is very different. It is a concept thrown up by the paradoxes generated by Jewish monotheism.

THE ONE TRUE GOD

Recent scholarship suggests that the Jews came to monotheism much later than is traditionally believed. Their Israelite ancestors were polytheists who worshipped the same gods as their neighbours, a pantheon headed by the god El (hence the name IsraEL).[i]

The god Yahweh seems to have joined this pantheon around the year 1000 BCE, perhaps introduced by a tribe that migrated north.[ii] He was a god of storms and war, associated with a legend of an exodus from Egypt.

YAHWEH AND DAVID

According to the Bible, the Israelites united in a single kingdom under Saul, David and Solomon. Many historians are sceptical about this, but there is extra-Biblical evidence for David as a historical figure.[iii] The Bible tells us that in 930 BCE the Israelite kingdom split in two, Israel in the north and Judah in the south. In both kingdoms, Yahweh had by now assumed the status of a national or royal god. This may have happened under David,[iv] to whom Yahweh promised that his dynasty would rule forever.[v] This expectation would later become central to the development of the idea of a Messiah.

YAHWEH’S REVENGE

One thing that set Israel and Judah apart from their neighbours was the emergence of prophets and priests who insisted that, because the Israelites had a covenant with Yahweh, they should worship only him, to the exclusion of all other gods.[vi] Both the Bible and archaeological evidence agree that most Israelites rejected this idea.

Both kingdoms were eventually destroyed, Israel by Assyria and Judah by Babylon 136 years later. These were catastrophic defeats. The Assyrians deported most of the population of Israel, never to return. The Babylonians overthrew the Davidic dynasty, destroyed the Jerusalem Temple and deported Judah’s elite, though unlike the Assyrians, they didn’t force them to assimilate.

For the Yahweh-only ideologues, these traumatic events didn’t occur because Yahweh was weaker than the Assyrian and Babylonian gods, or because he had abandoned his people. On the contrary, Yahweh himself used the Assyrians and Babylonians to punish the Israelites for the sin of worshipping other gods.[vii]

THE MONOTHEISTIC REVOLUTION

This promotion of Yahweh, giving him power over other nations, was the gateway to a massive religious shift, the monotheistic revolution. The earliest explicitly monotheistic document is the second part of Isaiah (chapters 40-55), which was probably written during the Babylonian Exile and the years after the Persians allowed the Jews to return home and build the Second Temple in Jerusalem.[viii]

It isn’t clear how quickly monotheism caught on, but during the Second Temple period, the Jews came to believe that Yahweh was the only God, a perfect, all-knowing and all-powerful being.[ix]

CONFLICT WITH THE GREEKS

This would eventually bring them into conflict with their foreign overlords. After Alexander the Great’s death, his generals carved up his dominions, and Judea became part of the Seleucid Empire. The Seleucids eventually decided their subject peoples should pay respect to their gods, and around 167 BCE, they set up a shrine to Zeus in the very heart of Judaism, the Jerusalem Temple.

This was an abomination in the eyes of monotheistic Jews, and it sparked the Maccabean Revolt, which eventually led to the creation of an independent Judea under the Hasmonean dynasty. With a little help from Rome, they established Judea as a regional power and extended their territories in all directions, including Galilee in the north. They settled Jews outside Judea and attempted to forcibly assimilate their non-Jewish subjects, but this, plus dynastic in-fighting, led to instability and civil war.

HEROD THE GREAT

By 37 BCE, the Romans had imposed a new ruler, Herod the Great. When he died, his kingdom was divided between his three surviving sons, including Herod Archelaus, whose dominions included Jerusalem. However, in 6 CE, the Romans overthrew Archelaus and instituted direct rule over his territories.

A DOUBLE PARADOX

It has become customary to view monotheism as an advance on polytheism, but it can be argued that it is less coherent and is inherently unstable because of the problem of evil: how can a perfect God allow suffering and evil?[x] One solution to this paradox is to give God an antagonist: Satan. But God is greater than Satan, which leads to the idea that there will one day be a great, apocalyptic battle between good and evil that will result in God’s final victory. This eschatological event will bring the world as we know it to an end.[xi]

For the Jews, another major paradox lay in the contradiction between their place as God’s chosen people and the fact that they were a small nation repeatedly overpowered and subjugated by their much stronger neighbours.

One response was an expectation that God would send an Anointed One (Messiah), who would sweep away the Jews’ enemies. Over time, this idea joined forces with eschatological beliefs, leading to the belief that the Messiah would not only defeat the Jews’ enemies, he would also defeat Satan and establish God’s kingdom on earth.[xii]

A DIVERSITY OF DOCTRINES

Second Temple Judaism contained some very different ideas about eschatology and Messiahs, as can be seen from documents that have survived. Some Jews weren’t interested at all. Maccabees 1 and 2 and The Testament of Moses didn’t mention either idea[xiii] and Philo of Alexandria and Flavius Josephus (our main source about first-century Palestine) paid them scant attention.[xiv]

The apocalyptic visions in The Book of Daniel, written during the Maccabean revolt, portray the clash between the Jews and the Seleucids in eschatological terms and include a passage (7:13-14) in which the Son of Man comes in the clouds of heaven to rule the world. This is frequently read as a messianic prophecy, but most scholars think it was just a metaphor referring to the Jewish nation.[xv]

The third part of Isaiah, written quite early during the Second Temple period, is explicitly eschatological but doesn’t mention a Messiah.[xvi] Christians have read more than one messianic prophecy into Isaiah, but this is post-hoc imposition that doesn’t reflect the intentions of its authors.[xvii]

For the author of Ecclesiasticus, who never used the word Messiah, the Jews would be saved by the return of the prophet Elijah. According to The Book of Enoch, the Chosen One or Son of Man would be a transcendent, semi-divine figure, who would sit in judgement over fallen angels and all the wicked kings of the world.[xviii]

The Psalms of Solomon told of the return of the Davidic dynasty, with a king who would liberate the Jews, drive out foreigners and judge the wicked.[xix] The Book of Jubilees was vague about exactly what would happen, but we see within it the concept of two Messiahs, one priestly, the other a warrior king. The Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs took this idea further and insisted that the priestly Messiah would be paramount.[xx]

THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS

In the Dead Sea Scrolls, we find a variety of ideas. Some texts speak of priestly and royal Messiahs, and possibly a third whose role is unclear. In others, the Archangel Michael is the key player. Most references to a Messiah are eschatological, but a few aren’t, suggesting the Messiahs will intervene in history, but they won’t bring it to an end. They will simply secure a massive victory for Israel and the restoration of the Davidic dynasty.

One fragmentary document, known as the Aramaic Apocalypse, contains ideas that appear to parallel Christian doctrine: the Messiah will bring history as we know it to an end; he will rule the world and will be called the Son of God.[xxi]

A CACOFANY OF JUDAISMS

Different concepts of eschatology and the Messiah weren’t the only things that divided the Jews. Josephus describes three main religious factions: the priestly Sadducees, who favoured and benefitted from collaboration with the Romans, plus the Pharisees and the Essenes. If the latter two can be seen as expressions of cultural resistance to the influence of Greece and Rome, it is ironic that it was they who imported the Greek idea of an afterlife into Judaism, while the Sadducees stuck with the traditional Jewish assumption that this life is all we have.[xxii]

The three groups also differed in their approach to Jewish law. The Sadducees stuck to the written law of the Torah with an emphasis on sacrifice in the Temple, whilst the Pharisees (who were often more humane than their depiction in the gospels) highlighted the importance of unwritten traditions and everyday observance of the law. The Essenes were more extreme[xxiii] and viewed the majority of Jews as so irredeemably corrupt that they had defiled the Temple and made worship there invalid.[xxiv] They eagerly awaited the arrival of vengeful priestly and warrior Messiahs.[xxv]

It has been suggested that Second Temple Judaism was so riven by factions and theological disputes that it is better to speak of Judaisms in the plural rather than a single Jewish religion.[xxvi]

ROMAN RULE

The first Roman procurator of Judea ordered a census to help determine how much tax it was possible to extract (it didn’t cover Galilee and there would have been no reason for a carpenter from Nazareth to take part). The census provoked an armed rebellion, which was quickly crushed but which inspired Zealot anti-Roman agitation in the decades that followed.

In 26 CE, Pontius Pilate was installed as procurator. He was a brutal and insensitive character who didn’t think much of his Jewish subjects or their traditions. After 10 years, his superiors decided he was stirring up too much conflict and removed him.

Friction between Jews and Romans was by no means universal – Jewish attitudes ranged from collaboration and acceptance to passive resentment and armed resistance, which exploded in 67 CE, with a massive rebellion that ultimately led to the destruction of the Second Temple.

JESUS OF NAZARETH

This is the historical and religious context that shaped Jesus of Nazareth: a small and weak nation dominated by an empire whose religion was anathema to it, and messianic and eschatological traditions that promised liberation both from foreign oppression and from the harsh conditions of life.

Part Two of this blog post will examine our sources of information about him, and Part Three will set out what we can know about the man and his message.

Click here to go to Part Two.

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NOTES

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[i] Römer, Thomas: The Invention of God, Harvard University Press, 2015, pp. 72-74, 78.

[ii] Op cit, pp. 71-85, 87.

[iii] This is the Tel Dan Steele, a 9^th century Aramean record of a victory over “the house of David”: see https://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/daily/biblical-artifacts/the-tel-dan-inscription-the-first-historical-evidence-of-the-king-david-bible-story/ (accessed 09/01/2025).

[iv] Römer, Thomas: The Invention of God, pp. 85, 88-89. (David is one of several possibilities.)

[v] 2 Samuel 7:12–16.

[vi] Finkelstein, Israel and Silberman, Neil Asher: The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology’s New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of its Sacred Texts, Simon and Schuster, 2001, pp. 247-249.

[vii] Römer, Thomas: The Invention of God, pp. 214-216.

[viii] Hayes, Christine, Introduction to the Bible (Kindle Edition), Yale University Press 2012, Loc 5222.

[ix] Römer, Thomas: The Invention of God, pp. 216-218; See also Hayes, Christine, Introduction to the Bible (Kindle Edition), Loc 476.

[x] Harari, Yuval Noah: Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind (Kindle Edition), Harvill Secker, 2014, Loc 3176. Wray, TJ & Mobley, Gregory: The Birth of Satan: Tracing the Devil’s Biblical Roots (Kindle Edition), Palgrave MacMillan 2005, Loc 194, 3246; Römer, Thomas: The Invention of God, pp.218-9; Hayes, Christine: Introduction to the Bible, Loc 6707.

[xi] Wray & Mobley: The Birth of Satan, Loc 1899-1907; Römer, T: The Invention of God, pp. 243-244.

[xii] Martin, Dale B: New Testament History and Literature (Kindle Edition), Yale University Press, 2012, Loc 6353-6359; Stark, Thom, The Human Faces of God, What Scripture Reveals When It Gets God Wrong (And Why Inerrancy Tries to Hide It) (Kindle Edition), WIPF & Stock, 2011, Loc 5292-5362.

[xiii] Bejarano Gutierrez, Juan Marcos: Messianic Expectations: From the Second Temple Era through the Early Centuries of the Common Era (Kindle Edition), Yaron Publishing 2017, pp. 29-32.

[xiv] Op cit, pp 32-33.

[xv] Op cit, p. 389. Stark, Thom: The Human Faces of God (Kindle Edition), Loc 852.

[xvi] Hayes, Christine: Introduction to the Bible, p. 380.

[xvii] Barton, John: A History of the Bible: The Book and its Faiths. Penguin Random House, 2019, pp.89-111, especially p.90 and pp. 99-107. Hayes, Christine: Introduction to the Bible, p. 237. Stark, Thom: The Human Faces of God, Loc 1076.

[xviii] Bejarano Gutierrez, Juan Marcos: Messianic Expectations, p. 48.

[xix] Op cit p. 64.

[xx] Op cit p. 65.

[xxi] Op cit pp. 70-81.

[xxii] Goodman, Martin: Rome and Jerusalem: The Clash of Ancient Civilisations, Allen Lane, 2007, pp. 254-257.

[xxiii] Barton, John: A History of the Bible, pp. 156-157.

[xxiv] Ehrman, Bart: Did Jesus Exist? The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth (Kindle Edition), Harper Collins 2012, p. 279.

[xxv] Op cit, p. 216.

[xxvi] Martin, Dale B., New Testament History and Literature (Kindle Edition), Yale University Press, 2012, p. 65.