Paul Clark

TWO WAYS OF STUDYING THE BIBLE

There are two basic approaches to the study of the Bible. The first is faith-based: because the Bible is divinely inspired, everything in it must be true, either in a spiritual or a literal sense. The aim of faith-based Bible study is to understand what God is telling us.

The other approach is historical-critical. The books of the Bible are treated like any other historical document. The aim is to work out who wrote them, what we can learn about the authors and their world, and to what extent we can believe what they wrote.[1] Here, I will only concern myself with the work of historical-critical scholars. Some have been agnostics and atheists, but many have been intellectually honest Christians and Jews who have tried to go where the evidence takes them, however disconcerting that may be.

SIX BIBLICAL SOURCES

The majority of scholars agree that we have six Biblical sources about Jesus’ life:

1. Paul’s letters, written about 20 years after Jesus’ death, which in fact say very little.

2. The Gospel of Mark, written around 40 years after the crucifixion.

3. The “Q” source – most scholars believe the authors of Matthew and Luke took their narrative from Mark and drew on a now lost collection of Jesus’ sayings that academics have given the name Q.[2]

4. and 5. M and L: passages unique to either Matthew or Luke. For the most part these are the infancy and resurrection narratives plus a number of parables.

6. The Gospel of John, written 60-70 years after Jesus died.

OUTSIDE THE BIBLE

Our extra-Biblical sources are meagre and contested:

1. Of all the gospels never made it into the Bible, perhaps the only useful one for our purposes is The Gospel of Thomas, a collection of sayings discovered in 1945. This was probably composed in the second century, but scholars think some parts may predate the Q source.[3]

2. The writings of Flavius Josephus, written around 90 CE. Our main source for the history of the Jews in the first century, Josephus mentions Jesus in two passages. Many scholars believe the first passage has been heavily doctored by Christian scribes, though recent scholarship suggests instead that it has simply been mistranslated.[4] Whatever the case, most historians believe we can glean three things Josephus probably said: Jesus was a teacher whose followers believed he was the Messiah, he was crucified under Pilate and (in the second passage) he had a brother called James.[5]

All our other extra-Biblical sources (Tacitus, Pliny and Suetonius) come from the second century and contain no useful biographical information.

THE GOSPELS

A problem with the gospels as sources is that they contradict each other so much.[6] Matthew and Luke give completely incompatible accounts of Jesus’ birth.[7] The synoptic gospels (Matthew, Mark and Luke) basically tell the same story about his mission, but John comes from a completely different tradition. Almost all the events in the synoptic gospels don’t appear in John, and hardly any of the events in John are in the synoptics: scarcely a dozen appear in both.

For the synoptic gospels, Jesus’ mission mainly takes place in Galilee and lasts less than a year, with Jesus’ attack on the money changers in the Temple occurring near the end. But in John, at least half the incidents described happen in Judea, and Jesus’ mission lasts between two and three years. And the incident with the money changers comes near the beginning.[8]

EXPLAINING THE CONTRADICTIONS

The gospels were originally believed to be first- and second-hand eyewitness testimonies, and as such, the contradictions between them didn’t matter, since memories are fallible. But as Christians began to consider them divinely inspired and therefore without error, another explanation was needed.

The early church inherited from both Greeks and Jews the idea that religious texts and myths weren’t to be taken literally. Instead, they should be read allegorically to discover their hidden spiritual meaning. Some even took the view that these contradictions had been put there deliberately to remind us not to get hooked on the surface meaning of the text.[9]

Such an attitude served the church well until the printing press and the reformation democratised biblical interpretation and made it more common to take the gospels literally. This has led to heroic games of intellectual twister where conservative Christians attempt to smooth out these contradictions and demonstrate that they aren’t really there.[10]

NOT EYEWITNESS TESTIMONIES

Scholars who take a historical-critical approach are unanimous that the gospels aren’t eyewitness testimonies. We don’t know who wrote any of them; the names Matthew, Mark, Luke and John were ascribed to them in the second century.[11]

NOT BIOGRAPHIES AS WE UNDERSTAND THE TERM TODAY

Modern biographies aim to give factual information about someone’s life and help the reader to know that person. This wasn’t the purpose of biographies written in the classical era, which used episodes from life stories as a source of moral education about virtue.[12] Though these biographies contained factual information, their authors were willing to omit, exaggerate and distort in order to meet their didactic goals.

The gospels were written in a similar tradition and shouldn’t be read as modern biography. Rather, they are collections of episodes and sayings arranged like parables to make theological points.[13] They may contain factual information, but that isn’t their primary purpose.

THE FIRST WAVE

The first wave of serious academic efforts to examine the gospels critically began in the 19^th century, driven by liberal German Protestants. They noted that Matthew and Luke tended to exaggerate Mark’s version of events. For example, when Jesus was arrested, Mark has one of his followers draw his sword and cut off the ear of one of the temple guards. Jesus shouts at him and tells him not to resist. In Matthew, Jesus makes a little speech, and in Luke, he touches the guard’s ear and heals it.

In Mark, Jesus is more human, more limited. He sometimes asks the disciples what they think, but in Matthew and Luke, there is none of this, as if Jesus has superpowers and can read their minds.

From these and other clues, scholars worked out that Mark was the oldest gospel and was the source of most of Matthew and Luke’s narrative.

Some first-wave scholars argued that the gospels distorted Jesus’ message: when Jesus talked about the Kingdom of Heaven, he wasn’t talking about the end of the world but about a time when God would rule our hearts and we would all go round being nice to each other. Basically, they believed Jesus was a liberal Protestant humanist just like them.[14]

In 1906, philosopher and theologian Albert Schweitzer mocked their naivety, noting that those who go looking for the historical Jesus tend to find their own reflection.[15] For him, Jesus was no mild-mannered liberal. Schweitzer came up with quote after quote from the gospels to show that Jesus literally believed the world was about to end: “the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light; the stars will fall from the sky…the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven, with power and great glory…this generation will not pass away until all these things have happened.”[16]

BULTMANN AND THE LIMITS OF WHAT WE CAN KNOW

By the 1920s, the first wave of the quest for the historical Jesus had dissipated, partly because Schweitzer had discredited it and partly because of the influence of German theologian Rudolf Bultmann, who was sceptical about whether we can learn much beyond the fact that Jesus was a preacher who spoke of the love and faith and charity and the dawning of God’s eschatological kingdom.

Even so, Bultmann and his colleagues pioneered a technique called form criticism, with which they attempted to look through the gospel texts to categorise them so as to better understand the oral traditions that lay behind them. They used the metaphor of a pearl necklace: the different stories and sayings of Jesus that were handed down were pearls, and the authors of the three synoptic gospels supplied the narrative string to hold them together. Bultmann believed that if you have an oral tradition for 30 to 40 years, it becomes unreliable, and things get distorted as they pass from one person to another.

NEW TECHNIQUES

If Bultmann believed he had shown the limits of the quest for the historical Jesus, the next few decades proved him wrong. Scholars continued to develop techniques to help them judge the authenticity of gospel passages.

One criterion was multiple attestation. If something can be found in two different sources, it is more likely to be authentic. This doesn’t necessarily prove it happened, but it suggests we can trace it back to the very early church (for example, Jesus walking on water, which appears in both Mark and John).

Another criterion was language-based. The gospels were written in Greek, but Jesus and the disciples spoke Aramaic, so where the Greek looks as if it has been translated from Aramaic, it is more likely to be authentic. An example is Matthew 3:7–10 and Luke 3:7–9, where John the Baptist attacks the Pharisees and Sadducees using a pun that is only apparent in Aramaic.[17] Contrast this with John 3, where the discussion between Jesus and Nicodemus revolves around a pun in Greek, and so is usually rejected as inauthentic.[18]

Does a passage fit the historical context? If not, it is unlikely to be authentic. A good example is Jesus’ trial by Pontius Pilate. Some scholars argue that the Romans didn’t need the governor to try a troublesome peasant preacher to get rid of him. They would simply have arrested Jesus and crucified him without trial.[19]

Another new technique was redaction criticism: comparing what two different sources say about the same thing. For example, contrast these two passages:

• Mark 1:15 – “The time has come,” he said, “The Kingdom of God has come near.”
• Luke 17:21 – “…the Kingdom of God is within you” (alternatively, “…the Kingdom of God is in your midst”).

For Mark, the earliest gospel, the arrival of the Kingdom of God is an imminent eschatological event. For Luke, the Kingdom of God is not eschatological but either something spiritual that lives within those who follow Jesus, or it is personified by Jesus, depending on the translation preferred. These two passages will be discussed further in Part Three.

THE SECOND WAVE

In the 1950s, a second wave of research into the historical Jesus took off, aided by recent discoveries such as the Gospel of St Thomas and the Dead Sea Scrolls. Once again dominated by German Protestants, this wave’s most important contribution was perhaps the criterion of embarrassment: if something in the gospels undermines the credibility of the early church, it is liable to be authentic, since the early Christians were hardly likely to have made it up. I will give examples in Part Three when I ask whether Jesus really existed.

THE THIRD WAVE

A third wave gained momentum in the late 1970s, with Catholic, Jewish and secular scholars also playing a prominent role, and a multi-disciplinary approach that generated a greater focus on the Jewish context of Jesus’ life.

One of the most important scholars in this period was Geza Vermes. His parents were Jewish but converted to Catholicism when he was a small child. Unfortunately, that didn’t save them from the Nazis. Vermes himself only survived the Holocaust because he was hidden in a succession of Catholic seminaries. He grew up to become a priest and a theologian, and he was one of the first to examine the Dead Sea Scrolls. In his 30s, he abandoned Catholicism and went back to being a Jew. In his day, he was widely regarded as the world’s greatest living expert on the historical Jesus.

Vermes and the others focused on the pericopes, the “pearls” of the sayings and deeds of Jesus in the Gospels. They said Bultmann exaggerated the extent to which the early Christians were different from Jesus. After all, the church’s first leaders had known him personally and would have wanted to preserve his memory intact.

THE AUTHENTIC GOSPEL OF JESUS

Scholars use over 20 different techniques to assess the authenticity of passages about Jesus. Some, like typology (repeating the pattern of an earlier myth)[20] or presenting something as the fulfilment of prophecy, act as red flags that warn of probable inauthenticity.[21]

Vermes believed it was possible to strip the gospels back and reveal the Authentic Gospel of Jesus (the title of one of his books).[22] He didn’t claim this could take us inside Jesus’ head, but it could give us a reasonable idea of some of the things he probably said and did.

CONTINUING CONTROVERSY

Authenticity is not without its critics, some of whom argue that it doesn’t amount to much more than educated guesswork.[23] Debates continue concerning almost every aspect of the quest for the historical Jesus. A large-scale collaborative initiative known as The Jesus Seminar was active from the mid-1980s to the early 2000s.[24] At its peak, up to 150 scholars were involved. It concluded that only 16% of the sayings attributed to Jesus in the gospels are authentic, provoking a furious backlash from conservative Christians, plus fierce criticisms of its methodology from some liberals. An attempt at another large-scale undertaking in 2007, the Jesus Project, broke up acrimoniously two years later.[25]

THE HISTORICAL JESUS

But the historical Jesus isn’t entirely hidden from view, and to find him, we need a two-pronged approach. One the one hand, we must use what historians, archaeologists and surviving extra-biblical texts can tell us about the context that shaped Jesus’ life. And on the other hand, we must cautiously examine our biblical sources using the techniques developed over the last 200 years.

In Part Three, I will attempt to paint a picture of the Jesus this reveals. Where there isn’t a consensus among historical-critical scholars, I will outline some of the disagreements.

Click here to go to Part Three.

Click here to go to Part One, which deals with the historical and religious context.

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[1] Martin, Dale B., New Testament History and Literature (Kindle Edition), Yale University Press 2012, p. 5.

[2] Op cit, p. 97.

[3] Op cit, p. 110.

[4] Schmidt, TC: Josephus and Jesus: New Evidence for the One Called Christ, Oxford University Press, 2025. See my review of this book at https://paulclark42.com/2025/08/30/review-of-josephus-and-jesus-by-tc-schmidt/ (accessed 04/09/2025).

[5] Ehrman, Bart D: Did Jesus Exist?: The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth (Kindle Edition), HarperCollins, 2012, pp. 59-66.

[6] For a discussion of the most glaring contradictions, see https://sites.google.com/site/errorsinthebible/shredding-the-gospels-contradictions-errors-mistakes-fictions (accessed 09/01/2025).

[7] See my blog post https://paulclark42.com/2024/04/15/how-reliable-is-the-nativity-story/

[8] The chasm of contradiction that separates the synoptics and John is widely noted. See for example: Lane Fox, Robin: The Unauthorised Version: Truth and Fiction in the Bible, Viking, London 1991, pp. 202-5; Neill, Stephen and Wright, Tom: The Interpretation of the New Testament 1861-1986, Second Edition. Oxford University Press, Oxford 1988, p. 28, 112-3; Rowland, Christopher: Christian Origins, SPCK, London 1985, pp. 126-8, 324-7; Sanders, EP: The Historical Figure of Jesus, Penguin Books, London 1995, pp. 66-73; Vermes, Geza: The Authentic Gospel of Jesus, Penguin, London 2004, pp. xii-xiii.

[9] Martin, Dale B., New Testament History and Literature (Kindle Edition), p. 329.

[10] For an example, see https://alwaysbeready.com/are-there-contradictions-in-the-gospels/ (accessed 09/01/2025).

[11] For an excellent summary, see https://www.bartehrman.com/who-wrote-the-gospels/ (accessed 10/01/2025).

[12] Neill, Stephen and Wright, Tom: The Interpretation of the New Testament 1861-1986, Second Edition. Oxford University Press, Oxford 1988, pp. 278-279.

[13] Sanders, EP: The Historical Figure of Jesus, Penguin Books, London 1995, pp. 73-75.

[14] Neill, Stephen and Wright, Tom: The Interpretation of the New Testament 1861-1986, pp. 140-146.

[15] Rowland, Christopher: Christian Origins, SPCK, London 1985, p. 123.

[16] Matthew 29-34.

[17] Vermes, Geza, Christian Beginnings: From Nazareth to Nicaea, AD 30-325 (Kindle Edition), Penguin Books 2012, p.31.

[18] Martin, Dale B., New Testament History and Literature (Kindle Edition), p. 189.

[19] Op cit, p. 181.

[20] Brettler, Marc Zvi: The Creation of History in Ancient Israel, Routledge, London 1995; pp. 48-61, Sanders: The Historical Figure of Jesus, pp. 83-5.

[21] Sanders op cit, p. 88; Barton, John: A History of the Bible, p. 253.

[22] Vermes, Geza: The Authentic Gospel of Jesus, Penguin, London 2004, pp. 370-397. Ehrman, Bart: How Jesus became God: the exaltation of a Jewish preacher from Galilee (Kindle Edition), HarperOne, 2014, Loc.1467

[23] See for example Keith, Chris and Le Donne Anthony (Ed.), Jesus, Criteria, and the Demise of Authenticity, T&T Clark International, 2012.

[24] See https://www.westarinstitute.org/about/the-jesus-seminar (accessed 09/01/2025).

[25] See https://bibleinterp.arizona.edu/opeds/hoffman1044 (accessed 09/01/2025).

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[1] Martin, Dale B., New Testament History and Literature (Kindle Edition), Yale University Press 2012, p. 5.

[2] Op cit, p. 97.

[3] Op cit, p. 110.

[4] Ehrman, Bart D: Did Jesus Exist?: The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth (Kindle Edition), HarperCollins, 2012, pp. 59-66.

[5] For a discussion of the most glaring contradictions, see https://sites.google.com/site/errorsinthebible/shredding-the-gospels-contradictions-errors-mistakes-fictions (accessed 09/01/2025).

[6] See my blog post https://paulclark42.com/2024/04/15/how-reliable-is-the-nativity-story/

[7] The chasm of contradiction that separates the synoptics from John is widely noted. See for example: Lane Fox, Robin: The Unauthorised Version: Truth and Fiction in the Bible, Viking, London 1991, pp. 202-5; Neill, Stephen and Wright, Tom: The Interpretation of the New Testament 1861-1986, Second Edition. Oxford University Press, Oxford 1988, p. 28, 112-3; Rowland, Christopher: Christian Origins, SPCK, London 1985, pp. 126-8, 324-7; Sanders, EP: The Historical Figure of Jesus, Penguin Books, London 1995, pp. 66-73; Vermes, Geza: The Authentic Gospel of Jesus, Penguin, London 2004, pp. xii-xiii.

[8] Martin, Dale B., New Testament History and Literature (Kindle Edition), p. 329.

[9] For an example, see https://alwaysbeready.com/are-there-contradictions-in-the-gospels/ (accessed 09/01/2025).

[10] For an excellent summary, see https://www.bartehrman.com/who-wrote-the-gospels/ (accessed 10/01/2025).

[11] Neill, Stephen and Wright, Tom: The Interpretation of the New Testament 1861-1986, Second Edition. Oxford University Press, Oxford 1988, pp. 278-279.

[12] Sanders, EP: The Historical Figure of Jesus, Penguin Books, London 1995, pp. 73-75.

[13] Neill, Stephen and Wright, Tom: The Interpretation of the New Testament 1861-1986, pp. 140-146.

[14] Rowland, Christopher: Christian Origins, SPCK, London 1985, p. 123.

[15] Matthew 29-34.

[16] Vermes, Geza, Christian Beginnings: From Nazareth to Nicaea, AD 30-325 (Kindle Edition), Penguin Books 2012, p.31.

[17] Martin, Dale B., New Testament History and Literature (Kindle Edition), p. 189. This view isn’t universally accepted!

[18] Op cit, p. 181.

[19] Brettler, Marc Zvi: The Creation of History in Ancient Israel, Routledge, London 1995; pp. 48-61, Sanders: The Historical Figure of Jesus, pp. 83-5.

[20] Sanders op cit, p. 88; Barton, John: A History of the Bible, p. 253.

[21] Vermes, Geza: The Authentic Gospel of Jesus, Penguin, London 2004, pp. 370-397. Ehrman, Bart: How Jesus became God: the exaltation of a Jewish preacher from Galilee (Kindle Edition), HarperOne, 2014, Loc.1467

[22] See for example Keith, Chris and Le Donne Anthony (Ed.), Jesus, Criteria, and the Demise of Authenticity, T&T Clark International, 2012.

[23] See https://www.westarinstitute.org/about/the-jesus-seminar (accessed 09/01/2025).

[24] See https://bibleinterp.arizona.edu/opeds/hoffman1044 (accessed 09/01/2025).