The reader should be aware that some of the content of this book is likely to be controversial. This is not unusual for a book on the topic of religion. Almost any book worthy of reading, informative or inspiring on its subject, will present something new and challenging, and when the subject is religion, “new and challenging” will necessarily cause concern to someone. I have endeavored to provide substantial new information and inspiration for debate and contemplation.
The stakes are high and could not be higher. The religious faith of two billion or more persons is being influenced by the opinions of a small number of academics. Some translations of the Bible have already been adjusted on the basis of new scholarship. This is not a conspiracy: the translation of the Bible is a process that necessarily requires decisions about which primary texts are authoritative and which readings are more accurate or true to the original. Without reservation, translation sometimes demands a scholarly judgment about the original purpose and meaning of the text, of the ideas and events described, and even of Jesus himself.
This book is primarily concerned with the emergence of Christianity and the formation of the New Testament historically. We are going to address the story of the early Church with a fresh approach. Most, if not all, religions retain vital stories about their beginnings— how the divine transmitted wisdom and power to humans. These stories provide a rationale or justification for the practices and the beliefs.
Today, all forms of Christianity share the same story for the earliest period. Jesus was divine or divinely guided from birth, with supernatural powers and accompanied by many miraculous signs. Around thirty years old, Jesus took on apostles and followers, who were mostly thick-headed with rare moments of inspiration. Jesus preached in an indirect manner that he was the Messiah, knew he was the Son of God, and voluntarily submitted to humiliation, torture, and crucifixion in order to save the world. After the death and resurrection, Jesus soon ascended from the earth to reside in heaven, sending the Holy Spirit to inspire and guide the apostles to create the Church. The early years of the Church were full of miracles, and Christianity spread easily, divinely, although facing some irrational opposition and persecution by some Hellenists, some Jews, and some unwitting Romans. Internally, the Church started out unified, peaceful, and divinely inspired— golden. Later, human inconsistency diluted the influence of the Holy Spirit, causing some degradation in the holy institution. This narrative has been from ancient times a fundamental doctrine of Christianity.
In the 16th century, especially with the Reformation, scholars started to look at the texts in the Bible and especially the New Testament in a more rigorous and objective fashion. The resurgence of natural sciences offered a systematic approach to studying nature and everything in it, including humans. Noble scholars began to apply these principles to many spheres of human knowledge, and even to the holy texts. They learned that the Bible we currently have was not necessarily the original in every detail and that numerous versions existed differing from what we now call the received text. The list of possible originals continues to grow as more texts and fragments are found by archaeologists. By the 19th century, the scientific spirit had inspired scholars to question even the most fundamental beliefs of the Christian narrative, albeit tentatively and diplomatically.
In 1906, Albert Schweitzer wrote the Quest of the Historical Jesus in which he concluded that Jesus did not claim to be the Messiah, arguing that Jesus must be understood as an apocalyptic Jewish rabbi from the first century and not as a superhuman. This view has since dominated research into the origins of Christianity, creating a growing dissonance between the Jesus of faith and the Jesus of scholarship.
The driving force behind this approach has been a scholarly conservatism, which attempts to employ the same kind of systematic skepticism that has served the natural sciences so well. In the scholarship of Biblical studies, and other historical studies, conservatism means to avoid dramatic, unsubstantiated claims. Belief is set aside to achieve a level of objective distance. Evidence is reduced to what we can actually know without belief or speculation. Consequently, a conservative scholar must not argue that Jesus was God, because that is an unprovable speculation. In fact, Jesus could not even have claimed to be God, because that would not fit the known facts that show Jesus to be an apocalyptic Jewish rabbi of the first century. Unless, we had acceptable evidence otherwise, which we do not.
Or so we think. Because a major effect of scholarly conservatism has been that much of the evidence has been ignored or adulterated to fit a conservative sense of propriety. This plays out in many ways, such as distancing Jesus and even the apostles from Christianity as we know it. Another example of a scholarly bias is found in dating objects, texts, events, etc., because this often requires a subjective judgment. My favorite example of scholarly conservative bias, because it is so obvious, is that Zarathushtra, the founder of Zoroastrian religion, is routinely placed by many scholars in the seventh century BCE, although the best scholars in this area, including Mary Boyce, have placed him in the 17th century BCE or before based on language and culture. I am not going to argue that case here because it is off subject, but the reason for the perpetuation of this one thousand year error is that the earliest datable archaeology is the first Persian empire in the later sixth century BCE. So, the “conservative” dating for Zarathushtra, making the minimal claim, does not put much time between him and the Persian empire.
In Christianity, we see dating with the opposite tendency for the same reason of conservatism. Texts and objects that might impact the story of Christianity are dated more distantly from the events in order to prevent the dramatic impact they imply— the texts and objects are subjectively dated either much earlier or much later than Jesus and the apostles. Similarly, many of the texts, by tradition or even internal statements, have been identified with important historical persons, but the conservative approach is to doubt the potentially important attribution in order to nullify the consequential implications, precisely because the implications might have a disturbingly dramatic impact. In this manner, scholarly conservatism preserves a calm and unquestionable simplicity within a bubble of self-imposed ignorance, in spite of the fact that very little in history is really that simple.
In this book, we will seek to risk error in the opposite direction. Redefining conservatism, I will suggest that the texts and traditions are accurate unless better evidence shows that they are not. By bringing in more evidence, we will find that the complications actually clarify the story and carry the narrative in new, exciting— ahem— more sober and less dramatic directions.
It is natural and generally wise that the reader should wonder about the biases influencing the author. Any worthy author— and I endeavor to be worthy— will seek to suppress and overcome their natural biases to present the truth without prejudice. Of course, some residual bias is almost inevitable, but I am hopeful that someone reading this book will not be able to judge with confidence my religious or philosophical background, because I have presented the evidence faithfully and argued with candor for the sake of reason alone.
Still, I feel that the reader deserves to consider how my views may have colored the picture as I have drawn it. My early education was as a Roman Catholic, which I practiced faithfully for all of my childhood and adolescent years. I gradually opened myself to the great variety of approaches to the Christian tradition. Eventually, however, I rejected all denominations. I opened myself to other religious traditions, and I have found tremendous value in most of them. I remain a Christian by philosophy, but I do appreciate many other philosophies too, especially Judaism and Buddhism. Since I do not reject any particular religious approach, my openness led me to study anthropology at the University of Arizona. My approach is scholarly, philosophic, and scientific. I studied Greek on my own, and the translations are mine except where otherwise indicated. This book was borne out of twenty years of effort and one simple idea: the texts and traditions must be evaluated without prejudice. Let us see where they take us.
