History and Our Christian Faith

1. We say we are “Christians” and the summit of God’s revelation is in Jesus Christ. Because we call ourselves Christ-ians, we admit that Jesus Christ is central to our faith. Jesus is like the center of a wheel and everything else rays from the center. So our faith in him is really important for us. Let us reflect more on this faith in Jesus.
2. “This Jesus God raised up, and of that we all are witnesses... God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified" (Act2/32 and 36). The ancient Christians were saying this as a matter of faith. Notice what they say—they believed in something that happened in history. It was a confession of faith in a historical event. The event of Jesus living and then crucified was a historical event. God raised him and made him both Lord and Christ is a declaration of faith. Until today this is the Christian faith.
3. Today in our Eucharistic celebration (during Mass) we pray the “I believe” after the Gospel reading and the homily, if there is one. Look at that prayer and notice how we affirm our faith. See the contents of that prayer. That prayer has come down to us over a long period of time. We are born Christian-Catholic in our families and maybe in our societies. Our confession of faith is already “ready-made”. But what about history behind it? Do we realize how historical our faith-affirmation is?  Over the centuries this faith passed through many processes. Then, also, throughout history, faith faced challenges. Let us see one challenge that stems from modernity.

Very early times of the Church: everything accepted without question

4. During the very early years of Church history believers had a simple approach to knowing Christ. People accepted without question the reports of the gospels. Jesus, for those people, really walked on water. He really multiplied bread. Etc. The resurrection did not have resistance—people accepted it as a fact. Jesus Christ was divine—it was not questioned. Faith accepted these as historically true. The Bible as read was accepted as an authority of faith.

At the start of modernity: rationalism and the question about authority

5. Many centuries afterwards, when modernity came rising, people started to question the link between history and faith. Sometime in the 16th-17th centuries of Europe, there was a growing rejection of religious tradition and Church authority.  Instead of relying on what priests and elders would say, it would be more appropriate to see what “reason” itself can say. The human person can “think on his/her own” without authorities telling what to think.
6. So, if religious authority was getting rejected, it was possible to affirm reason.

Applying to knowing Jesus

7. What about the way Jesus was treated? It was less acceptable to see him in the light of what the Church said. Remember that authority, especially religious, at this point, has been highly questioned. So if Church authority cannot be basis for understanding Jesus, what can be basis? The understanding of “what is human” at this point made people think that the human is a “rational” creature with the autonomy to think and decide for oneself. So this too was applied to Jesus.
8. Many preferred to see Jesus as a “rational man” who can think and decide on his own. To say he was “son of God” was to accept the authority of the Church. So it was best to avoid saying Jesus was “son of God” and better to say that Jesus was a “rational man”. The study about Jesus became more of a “rational philosophy”. Jesus was seen as a good model of a moral and rational man. Remove the “superstitions” like the notion of “Son of Man” or “Savior”. Many people preferred to see Jesus as a pure rational man. Jesus was a “model” of being a rational man.

Modernity and the development of science

9. Later on, at around late 1700’s and way into the 1800’s, modern science became highly successful. It had a strong influence in the minds of people. The modern natural sciences were considered the best approaches to understanding reality. All studies had to be influenced by the natural sciences and mathematics. It was really the height of modernism. So the science of history had to pattern itself from natural science.

Applied to knowing Jesus

10. The growing success of modern science had an impact on understanding who is Jesus. Knowing Jesus scientifically would mean removing the aspects of faith far from science. So then the study about Jesus made some people say that historical science can prove that Jesus was a man of “vision”; he was a “rebel” from Galilee. He was controversial with the leaders of Palestine. Jesus was a “liberal man” and he had a strong influence in the social life of his time. Jesus was an “exceptional man” and he was “a great man”. Notice that nothing was said about Jesus as divine. It was not necessary. Looking at historical facts was enough.

But there came a new question: Was Jesus even historically true?

11. There were people who asked about the guarantee to identify the true historical facts of Jesus. And so there were persons who said that maybe it was not even possible to know the actual historical Jesus. Maybe it was impossible to have a real, concrete and true historical account of Jesus. Historical science would not be as exact as natural science anyway.
12. Some people then said that the Bible, and especially the gospel stories, were “confessions of faith”. Faith influenced the way the Bible texts were written. So all ideas about the divinity of Jesus did not have a scientific basis. All the Christians say about Jesus as “son of God”, “Christ (Messiah)” were all expressions of faith and not truly real in the concrete world.
13. This had a major consequence. If the Bible—and the four gospels—only spoke of faith expressions then these texts cannot be even be considered historical texts. There is no access to the real historical Jesus because the documents about him have been marked by the imaginative affirmations of faith. We cannot know the real Jesus. We can only know what gospel authors wrote about them; and the gospel stories were not historically true they were faith expressions only.  
14. If nothing can said about the historical Jesus, then all that would be left is the bias of faith. Everything about Jesus could only be the “faith stories” of the ancient Christians, like the gospel authors, who wrote the New Testament.
15. Notice this new element. A criticism can be put against faith. Faith can be “dogmatic”, it can be imaginative, it can be cultural but it is not scientific. Faith can be imaginative statements about Jesus but faith does not tell us the real Jesus.

Let us pause for a while: Some Catholics did not join the debate

16. Well, let us note in passing that there was a big population in the Catholic Church that kept distance from all these debates. They did not want to get involved with debates with science, history and scientific study of the Bible. Many Catholics stuck it out with the old tradition with the dogmatic affirmations about Jesus. The dogmas were left unquestioned. There was no need to verify their historical roots. Just accept faith dogmatically.
17. Notice that some Catholics remained in the past. They did not want to pay too much attention to the movements of modernity. They did not want to mix science, reason with faith. They felt that faith was enough and the use of rational-scientific thinking had to part in Christian life.
18. We can say that this is ok…but in a limited way. We can join the population of Christians who will not dialogue with science and history. We can stay within the confines of believing in Church dogma. But we surrounded by a world that is marked by many questions. When we reach out to people and talk to them about our faith we will be getting to contact with people of many modern questions. We cannot be indifferent to their struggles.

Bultmann and the “message” of Jesus

19. It seemed that science was dominating the world of knowledge. The scientific approach to history became more and more critical. It was accepted that when studying about Jesus there cannot be an accurate historical science.
20. But then something new emerged. During the late 1800’s and well into the 1900’s, a strong theological school became influential in Bible studies. This was exemplified by a protestant Lutheran theologian named Bultmann. Bultmann radically separated history from faith. He agreed that it was impossible to know the real, concrete historical Jesus. So what?
21. It was not necessary to worry about the real, concrete historical Jesus. What was most important, for Bultmann, was the message of Jesus in the gospels. The message, and not the historical reality, was most important.
22. Think well about this position. It looks attractive. If we cannot be sure about the “real Jesus” we can still rely on the message. We can still rely on “meaning”. Maybe we are not sure about what Jesus really said; we are not sure about what Jesus really did. But if we read the gospels we can get meaning and lessons that we can apply to our lives.
23. This is attractive. It is less stressful because we do not have to worry about the truth about Jesus. We already get meaningful lessons for life.

The rejection against Bultmann

24. Many theologians did not agree with Bultmann. (We mention names like Kähler, Bornkamm and Pannenberg from the Protestant side and Rahner, Thüsing and Kasper from the Catholic side. But we need not go into details of their works). What was this new position?
25. This new position would say that the Jesus Christ preached by faith is also the Jesus Christ of history. There is a continuity between them, they are connected and linked. Faith in Jesus Christ cannot be separated from the real history of Jesus Christ. What led the new theologians to say this?
26. They would say that the gospels were written to show Jesus of Nazareth. There must have been a reason for writing the gospels. The gospels were not made simply to make an expression of faith. The gospels had something more. Ok, let agree that the gospels were written as faith expressions. But they were written because of a historical event. The ancient Christians were “triggered” by the encounter with Jesus.
27. The historical event was real and it was what the gospels responded to. If we look closely at the gospels, then, we can see how the historical weight of Jesus was affecting it.
28. Our Christian faith. Christianity is inscribed within history. It is not just a religion of wise ideas and moral norms. It is not just about meaningful lessons from the Bible. It is not just a product of human culture. The Christian faith is rooted in actual history—what really happened in a particular place and in a particular time: the Jesus-event.
29. The presence of Jesus was a revelation to the Apostles and the early Christians. The Apostles and the early Christians said many things about Jesus but what they said were not pure fiction and imagination. They were rooted in the concrete historical experience with the man named Jesus from Nazareth. The Jesus event really happened and the gospels stories are proofs of that event. Even if they were written with some literary styles, they were written out of concrete experiences with Jesus.
30. A historical event motivated the writing of the gospels. Before even preaching about Jesus and before even making faith affirmations there was the historical encounter with Jesus. The “real Jesus” of history—the Jesus-event—was the motivation for faith and the motivation for expressing in terms of faith. Before the faith that we now have was developed and before the early Christians expressed their faith there was the encounter with the man Jesus—a true historical man. The confession of faith—and the writing of the gospels—were responses to the experience of having encountered Jesus.
31. There are versions about Jesus and we know of four. They are the gospels according to Mark, Matthew, Luke and John. Note that we say versions. They are “points of view” regarding the same historical man.
32. So if we follow the thinking of the recent theologians we can see that we are still in the line of revelation. We are not following a faith that is merely invented by the Apostles and the early Christians. Yes, we have many cultural elements in our faith, especially the cultural elements of Judaism. Remember that the encounter with Jesus was in Palestine, in full Jewish culture. The Apostles and the early Christians were marked by their Jewish roots. So their versions and interpretations about Jesus were influenced by their Jewish culture and tradition. But the historical revelation of the actual presence of Jesus was not an invention. That revelation really happened historical—in the concrete.
33. Jesus of Nazareth was Christ, Lord and Saviour. This is what the Apostles saw. Christ was this historical man Jesus. This is what the gospel authors said.

The consequence for our faith

34. The gospels do not prohibit us from studying the historical Jesus. In fact, the gospels were really attempts of the early Christians to resist making Jesus a myth. They are proofs that a historical encounter happened and it was such a powerful experience that gospel writers had to mention the experience but in the language of faith. The gospel stories prove that faith begins with a historical encounter. The fact that they are written as story-telling of what happened is proof that a real historical event—the Jesus-event—really happened. The story-telling was written with certain literary styles but the styles do not stop us from seeing the historical reality.
35. When we read the gospels, even if we read texts of faith, we can discern the historical content underneath. Through the gospels we can have access to the historical Jesus. The gospels are like windows opening and allowing us to view the “real Jesus” of history.
36. The Jesus-event really happened, then it is bound to be in the same human conditions are we are in. In principle, therefore, faith is also open to the sciences. History, anthropology, sociology, psychology, etc. have a place in the study of our Christian faith. Theology and the Christian faith, in general, do not necessarily have to close itself from the sciences. We say that we do not exclude science from the study about Jesus Christ.
37. This is a challenge to us, actually. We may be doing so many practices in Christianity—and we wonder if we are really doing something purely cultural or doing something rooted in the Jesus-event. We have practices that characterize our lives, and we might want to ask: are these practices really from Jesus Christ or are they simply the creative products of culture?
38. If we read the four gospels and if we pray the “I believe” during mass, will we say that they are simply results of imaginative cultural faith confessions far from the real historical Jesus? The answer is…..WHAT DO YOU THINK?
39. Faith does not stop us from looking at the historical Jesus. In fact, faith is the refusal to make imaginative stories about Jesus. It is the refusal to make a myth out of Jesus. The gospels are not mythical stories. The gospels are faith proclamations about an event—the presence of Jesus—in history. It is possible to do history through the veil of the gospels. Faith includes the courage to face the historical conditions behind what we affirm.
40. We must also verify the history behind our faith. We must see how history supports our faith. If we do not do this, we will be having a “cultural” religion. (Remember what we were saying at the start of the semester about religion.) The gospels are not cultural because they suppose the revelation of God. God has entered into history. History is very relevant to faith. The Christian believes in a historical Jesus.
41. Faith and reason, faith and history, are not separated. Faith needs a historical base.History and faith come together. Our affirmations of faith should not contradict the historical reality of Jesus. Our faith cannot be imaginary and cannot be a mere creative product of humans. Between the historical Jesus and our faith affirmation there is no break. We must discern the historical Jesus through our faith. We are not afraid of using science especially history science.
42. Faith has a historical base and history opens up to faith. The Christian cannot understand Jesus of Nazareth outside faith—considering that the main access to Jesus are the gospel texts. Yet this faith makes no sense if it has no historical content.

The historical Jesus

1. Christianity is rooted in history. We say that whatever is from God is not in an imagination. Christianity sees God as having historically engaged—in Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is a historical person for the Christian.
2. Archaeology is one branch of science that helps us see the historical world during the time of Jesus. But who exactly is Jesus? What was in his thoughts, in his way of living, in his understanding about himself? Archaeology cannot help with these questions.

Roman sources

3. We can look at documents. There are non-Christian documents. These are not plenty. Once a “Pilate Stone” was discovered with the name of Pontius Pilate in it. This stone is a block (82 cm x 65 cm) of limestone with a carved inscription. It reads: “To the Divine Augusti Tiberieum ...Pontius Pilate...prefect of Judea...has dedicated [this]”. This is proof that Julius Caesar was a true historical man.
4. There is another Roman document from a historian named Publius (or Gaius) Cornelius Tacitus (AD 56 – AD 117). He was a historian (and senator) of the Roman Empire. He wrote one book, Annals. In this book (15/44), written at around 116 AD, Christ and Pontius Pilate are mentioned. There was a mass execution of Christians. Tacitus wrote: “…Nero …inflicted the most exquisite tortures on…Christians by the populace. Christus…suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus….”
5. There was a Roman historian named Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus. He is more known simply as Suetonius (ca. 69/75 – after 130). He was historian and a good horse-rider. He wrote a book Life of Claudius (25/4) and there he wrote about the emperor Nero expelling Jews from Rome: "As the Jews were making constant disturbances at the instigation of Chrestus, he expelled them from Rome." Suetonius spelled Christ as “Chrestus”.
6. And then there was another Roman historian named Gaius Plinius Caecilius Secundus (61 AD – ca. 112 AD). He is better known as “Pliny the Younger”. He was a historian and lawyer. Why was he called “the younger”? Well, someone was older: Pliny's uncle was “Pliny the Elder” who helped raise and educate him. Pliny the Younger wrote, in around 110AD, about Christians: “They were accustomed to meet on a fixed day before dawn and sing responsively a hymn to Christ as to a god….” (Epistulae X.96)

Jewish sources

7. The Jews themselves had their own historians, one of which was Flavius Josephus. He wrote a text sometime in the 90-95, also very close to the time of Jesus. In his books he mentioned the Pharisees, the Sadducees, and the Herodians. He mentioned Caiaphas, Pontius Pilate, John the Baptist, and of course Jesus. He mentioned “James the brother of Jesus”. He even mentioned the “Essenes” of the Qumran community. In his book Antiquities (20.200), he said that in AD 62, the high priest Ananus (or Ananias) had assembled “…the Sanhedrin. He had brought before them the brother of Jesus the so-called Christ, who was called James, and some other men, whom he accused of having broken the law, and handed them over to be stoned”. See, he mentioned Jesus Christ.
8. There are a few other documents referring to the time of Jesus and the people around Jesus, but those texts were written already in the 10th century. Historians find them important for the historical studies about Jesus, but we need not mention them here.
9. Let us conclude: From the non-Christian documentary point of view, there are evidence of the historical truth about Jesus Christ. But these non-Christian documents only mention Christ. They do not give more information than that. The best documents we have about Jesus Christ is the New Testament, and in particular the gospels.

Christian Sources

10. Experts note that the oral Aramaic at times found its way in the Greek writing. When gospel authors recall the words of Jesus, they would write in Greek but with the Aramaic turns of Jesus. So, this tells us how historically “near” the gospel texts are to the man himself, Jesus.
11. Let us not forget that the gospel accounts were written for the communities of the evangelists. Mark had his community to write too, Matthew, Luke and John had their own communities. So when the gospel authors were writing, they had in mind the context and the needs of their communities. They organized their text according to those needs. This explains why they are versions of the same event—the Jesus event. In our synoptic class we spoke about “the Jesus for Mark”, “the Jesus for Matthew”, “the Jesus for Luke”. It is not that there were three Jesus, but it was that they showed profiles—versions—of Jesus.
12. The gospel texts were primarily confessions of faith. They were expressing the faith of the authors and the communities. So, in a way, it would be difficult to see them as “historical texts”. The authors did not write the Jesus-history like modern historians. They wrote with the influence of faith. In fact, they wrote to promote and support the faith. So we cannot—and should not—read the texts as historical texts in the modern style. But through them we can discern the historical Jesus.
13. Jesus had such an impact on the lives and minds of people. So when people shared their faith in Jesus, they also kept memory of his presence. Through the faith colour of the texts we therefore can see how people—the early Christians—had historical memory of Jesus. We can see the impact Jesus had on their lives—and the impact was so powerful that it left a mark on the written texts.
14. The gospel texts, therefore, cannot be considered purely “non-historical”. No. In and through them the memories of the early Christians were stamped.
15. Do not forget that in the early times—a little before the resurrection of Jesus—the early Christians believed in the presence of Jesus. Jesus had risen from the dead and although he was not visible he was still present. How? There was the belief in the Spirit. But then also, through the apostles and through St. Paul, the words and gestures of Jesus were still present. The activity of the Apostles, including St. Paul was preaching or proclaiming about Jesus: kerygma. There was still a strong sense of the presence of Jesus among the communities through those preaching. In fact whenever the early Christians would make major decisions, they would call for the inspiration of the Spirit and ask what would Jesus do in their situations.
16. People kept memory of Jesus. They recalled the Passion and death as a Prelude to the Resurrection. The risen Lord suffered and died…and then rose again. So it was one big story: Passion-Death-Resurrection. It was a story of someone present in their lives.
17. But then over time the Apostles started to die. Those who actually saw Jesus were also dying. Memory had to shift. Suddenly, the early Christians began to realize that they were having a memory of the “past”. The kerygma had to be supplemented by didache, or “teaching”. It was then from proclaiming to teaching and giving lessons. In the time of preaching there was a strong sense of Christ being present among the communities. When the time of didache came, it became important to make that sense of presence felt and accepted. This time, it was no longer the words and gestures of the Apostles that made Jesus present. It was the time of the gospel texts. They had the role of making Jesus actual in the lives of the communities.
18. The communities needed a “foundation story”—the Jesus-event story. The words and deeds of Jesus were recorded so that the early communities could have reference and make Jesus actual in their lives. So the gospel texts were marked by a memory of the historical Jesus actualized in the faith of the people.
19. The Jesus that the gospels were referring to was living sometime in the 1st century Palestine. There is a large agreement among experts that Jesus died under Pontius Pilate. It was perhaps in the year 30…and some would specify the date as April 7,30. This is still a matter of verification, as experts are still working out the dates. Jesus became known, and therefore started his ministry, at around the 15th year of the reign of the Roman Emperor Caesar Tiberius. As for the date of the birth of Jesus, a lot of researches are still on going. There are indications that Jesus was born a little before the death of Herod the Great.
20. Let us leave the debate on details to the experts. Let our data be enough for us. The experts read the Gospel texts and try to make dates comparing with the historical dates outside the Bible. It is a technical job. One thing is for sure: Jesus was a historical man. He lived and died at the time of Pontius Pilate, at the time of Herod Antipas, and at the time of the Baptists—the Pharisees, Saducees, Zealots, Essenes etc. In other words, Jesus really lived in the 1st century Palestine.