Jesus in the Bible

Jesus is universally recognized to have been the Jewish rabbi who, in the period before the destruction of the Temple by the Roman armies, gathered disciples by his teaching and was condemned as a troublesome imposter by priests and other leading men among the Jews of Jerusalem, though his own disciples believed him to be the Messiah. There is little information about him to be found outside the books of the New Testament; but that little is enough to fix the figure of Jesus, the founder of Christianity, in a definite historical setting. The Roman world knew, through a letter of Pliny when he was governor of Bithynia and through an allusion in the works of the historian Tacitus, that Jesus was believed by his followers to be the Messiah of the Jews and the Son of God and also that he was an object of their worship as well as the founder of the Christian community. Jewish traditions recorded in the Talmud depict Jesus as a rabbi, list his disciples and allude to his condemnation for ‘practising sorcery and leading Israel astray’, as well as his execution on the eve of the Passover feast.

In the books of the New Testament apart from the Four Gospels, there is a considerable amount of evidence about the life of Jesus, particularly in the letters of Paul, who was a personal friend of Peter and other apostles knowing Jesus during his public ministry. In the Acts of the Apostles the speeches of Peter contain an account of the ministry and passion of Jesus, as well as an affirmation of his resurrection. Thus Peter said to Cornelius and others that his message to them was: ‘The word which was proclaimed throughout all Judea, beginning from Galilee after the baptism which John preached: how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power; how he went about doing good and healing all that were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him. And we are witnesses to all that he did both in the country of the Jews and in Jerusalem. They put him to death by hanging him on a tree; but God raised him on the third day ...’ (Acts 10:37-40a)

The Four Gospels

The Gospels, the principal source of our information, are probably the survivors of a considerable body of literature about Jesus which existed in the 1st century AD. They give written form to the oral tradition of the infant Christian Church. This tradition was developed, in the speeches and writings of the Christians of the first generation, in order to present the story of Jesus to those outside the Christian community and also to teach those who followed Jesus to apply his teaching in their lives. This was done not by making a complete biography of Jesus but by a careful selection of episodes in his ministry, with a full and continuous account of his passion and the events which followed it. Each evangelist or writer of a Gospel adapts the tradition to the needs of his particular readers; but it is possible to trace, in each Gospel, the general course of events from the baptism of Jesus by John the Baptist to the resurrection of Jesus. Each Gospel was written by a believer in Jesus and all the writers of the Gospels interpret what they record, having in mind their particular purposes and the needs of their readers.

The Gospel of Mark and the Gospel of John present a notable contrast in their presentations of the life and work of Jesus. Mark's account is generally thought to have been written between 64 and 67 AD, earlier than the other three Gospels. The Gospels of Matthew and Luke seem to have been written later and they contain a great deal of material also found in the Gospel of Mark. This first Gospel to be written in Greek is thought by many scholars to have been composed in Rome, at the time of crisis following the death of the Apostles Peter and Paul and during a persecution of the Christians in Rome. It is thought to contain the recollections of Peter, whose interpreter Mark is said to have been. It was written as a statement of the facts about Jesus for use in the presentation of the message of the Christian community. It forms a group with the Gospels of Matthew and Luke; these three are often called the Synoptic Gospels.

The author of the Gospel of John, often called the Fourth Gospel, wrote for the Christians of the second generation, at a time when almost all those who remembered the life and death of Jesus had died. It has often been said that he assisted Christianity to continue to be a living faith, by proclaiming the Jesus of history and the Jesus of inward experience to be one. In order to do this in a manner which the world of his time could understand, he virtually adapted the story he had to tell to the form of a Greek tragedy. He combined, by the use of his imagination, narrative and symbolism, words and actions of Jesus and his thoughts about their meaning. In another respect he differs from the writers of the Synoptic Gospels. They describe the ministry of Jesus in Galilee, followed by his passion and resurrection in Jerusalem. John lays the scene of a great part of the ministry of Jesus in and near Jerusalem. There are some indications in the Gospels of Mark, Matthew and Luke that Jesus conducted more of his ministry in Judea and Jerusalem than they actually record; in this way they confirm the account given in the Gospel of John. No writer of a Gospel would have claimed to have supplied a complete and accurate biography of Jesus. But Mark, at a time when biography was in vogue in Rome, wrote a coherent life of Jesus the Christ, while the author of the Gospel of John presented to the Greek-speaking world scenes from the life of Jesus the Son of God. (See John, Luke, Mark, Matthew)

The Birth Stories

No account of the circumstances of the birth of Jesus is found either in the Gospel of Mark or in the Gospel of John. According to the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, Jesus was born in Bethlehem before the death of Herod the Great in 4 BC, probably not more than three years earlier. The Gospel of Matthew begins with a genealogy tracing the ancestry of Jesus back to Abraham. Composed in a Hebraic manner, this genealogy consists of three divisions, each containing fourteen generations. The Gospel of Luke has a different genealogy of Jesus, going back to God the universal Father of Mankind, through David, Abraham and Adam. Both include David and both refer to Joseph, the betrothed husband of Mary, rather than to Mary herself.

The belief that Jesus had no human father, but was conceived in the womb of Mary his mother by the action of the Holy Spirit (the Christian doctrine of the Virgin Birth) is clearly stated both in the Gospel of Matthew and in the Gospel of Luke, where it is expressed in the story of the annunciation of Mary. ‘The angel Gabriel was sent from God to a city of Galilee named Nazareth, to a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph, of the House of David; and the virgin's name was Mary. And he came to her and said, Hail, O favoured one, the Lord is with you. But she was greatly troubled ... And the angel said to her, Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favour with God, and behold you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus ... ’ To this Mary replies, ‘ How can this be, since I have no husband? And the angel said to her, The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be called holy, the Son of God ... For with God nothing will be impossible. And Mary said, Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word. And the angel departed from her.’ It is noteworthy, however, that the speeches attributed to Peter in the Acts of the Apostles, giving the outlines of the life of Jesus the Christ, make no mention of the Virgin Birth and that the Gospels of Mark and John do not use it in support of the idea of the Messianic function of Jesus. The Christian Church has taken this doctrine from the Gospels of Matthew and Luke. (Matthew 1:18-25; Luke 1:26-38)

Matthew alone describes the dilemma of Joseph finding his spouse to be with child and his reassurance by an angel in a dream. This story could have come from Joseph. Many of the stories in the Gospel of Luke could have come from Mary the mother of Jesus. The Gospel of Matthew is concerned to show the birth of Jesus as the fulfilment of prophecy, in order to prove his Messiahship. He writes for a Christian community having Jews and Gentiles in its membership, so that he shows the child Jesus being welcomed by the Gentile wise men from the east, as King of the Jews. Only secular authority, represented by Herod the Great and his son Archelaus, is seen to reject Jesus. (Matthew 2:3-12; Matthew 2:22) This Gospel quotes Isaiah (7:10-14) to confirm the Virgin Birth, Micah (5:2) to indicate Bethlehem as the place of the birth of the Messiah, Jeremiah (31:15) in connection with the massacre of the children by Herod (Matthew 2:16) and Hosea as predicting the flight of Joseph and Mary with the child to Egypt. They return from Egypt ‘to fulfil what the Lord had spoken by the prophet, Out of Egypt have I called my son ’. The Gospel of Luke alone tells the story of the birth of John the Baptist, the cousin of Jesus, and the announcements by angels of the births of John and Jesus to the father of John, Zechariah, and Mary the mother of Jesus, with the meeting between the two mothers, Mary and Elizabeth. These stories are beautifully told and many believe that the writer of the Greek Gospel of Luke took them from an Aramaic document which he translated. He introduces into his story of the births of John and Jesus three songs, composed in a Hebraic manner. These may have been translations from Hebrew or Aramaic and are known and used in the Christian Church as hymns. In Western Christendom they are called the Magnificat (Luke 1:46-55), the Benedictus (Luke 1:68-79) and the Nunc Dimittis (Luke 2:29-32). In the last of these the old man who blesses the child Jesus in the Temple at Jerusalem says that he is to be ‘a light for revelation to the Gentiles and for glory to thy people Israel’.

Both accounts of the birth of Jesus place it in Bethlehem. The Gospel of Luke says that the original home of Mary was at Nazareth in Galilee and that she and Joseph went to Bethlehem in response to the demands of a Roman census. During their stay in Bethlehem the child is born, visited by shepherds who have seen an angelic vision, circumcised on the eighth day after his birth and presented in the Temple at Jerusalem on the fortieth day. His parents, Mary and Joseph, then return with him to Nazareth. However, Luke says that Joseph went to Bethlehem because it was his own city, to which his family belonged. The Gospel of Matthew does not mention Nazareth until the return of the family from their escape into Egypt and seems to imply that they had a house in Bethlehem, into which the wise men from the east brought their gifts. There are some modern critical scholars who consider that the tradition about the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem grew out of the need to prove his Messiahship and that he is more likely to have been born in Nazareth. They draw our attention to a comment recorded in the Gospel of John: ‘When they heard these words, some of the people said, This is really the prophet. Others said, This is the Christ. But some said, Is the Christ to come from Galilee? Has not the scripture said that Christ is descended from David, and comes from Bethlehem, the village where David was? So there was a division among the people over him.’

The Bethlehem tradition soon crystallized in the Church and a cave in Bethlehem was pointed out as the birthplace of Christ. This is not mentioned in the Gospels. But about AD 155 Justin Martyr, a Christian whose birthplace was Neapolis in Samaria, wrote in Rome: ‘Should anyone desire other proof for the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem ... let him consider that in harmony with the Gospel story of his birth a cave is shown in Bethlehem where he was born and a manger in the cave where he lay wrapped in swaddling clothes.’ The apocryphal Christian Protoevangelium of James, said to have been written during the 2nd century AD, referred to the Cave of the Birth of Jesus. At the close of the 3rd century AD Eusebius, bishop of Caesarea, wrote: ‘The inhabitants of the place bear witness of the story that has come down to them from their fathers and they confirm the truth of it and point out the cave in which the Virgin brought forth and laid her child.’ The Church of the Holy Nativity was built over this cave in Bethlehem, on the initiative of the Empress Helena, the mother of the Emperor Constantine, in AD 325. From that time forward there is no question of the site being lost, although the church building was destroyed and rebuilt two centuries later.

The Boyhood and Youth of Jesus

About the childhood of Jesus in Nazareth there is only one story in the Gospels. During a visit made by the family to Jerusalem when he was twelve years old, his parents found him ‘in the Temple, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions’. His mother said to him, ‘your father and I have been looking for you anxiously.’ To this Jesus replied, ‘Did you not know that I must be in my Father's house?’ (An alternative translation is, ‘that I must be occupied with my Father's affairs’.) The Gospel of Luke goes on to say, ‘Jesus increased in wisdom and in stature and in favour with God and man.’ In the Gospel of Mark (and also in the Gospel of Matthew, dependent on Mark at this point in all probability) we are told that Jesus was known as ‘the carpenter, the son of Mary, and brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon’, in Nazareth. The Gospel of Matthew says that Jesus was ‘the carpenter's son’.

Jesus was educated. Unlike the other religions of the time, the religion of the Jews was essentially recorded in the Book of the Law and the Books of the Prophets, written in a language which people understood and which all children were taught to read. Jewish children were taught to hear, understand and study their sacred books. A synagogue was to be found in every village or town and schools attached to the synagogues were attended by all boys. The teachers were the rabbis, from whom the children learned the Law and its meaning, Hebrew history and the Hebrew language.

Nazareth overlooks that great highway and battlefield of history, the Plain of Esdraelon, which is the only flat corridor through the mountain ranges between the Mediterranean and the east. Thus through the plain below the hillside town many armies have marched, from the empires of Egypt, Assyria and Babylon, from Persia and from Macedonia and Rome. The plain continued to be the scene of battles until modern times. Through this plain passed the trade route between Damascus and Egypt, known as ‘The Way of the Sea’. In and near Nazareth, a market town of Galilee not far from this great road, caravans of silk and spices passed camels laden with grain and fish. The peasants of Galilee mingled with the merchants and travellers of the east. It has been contended that this made them, or at least some of them, adopt a more or less cosmopolitan outlook. Jesus may have watched the bargains driven in the market-place and listened there to the stories and gossip of the day. It was a rough and ready schooling for the hazards of an itinerant ministry, of open-air preaching and heckling by his opponents in the years of his public life.

The Baptism of Jesus by John and his Temptation in the Desert

It was as a man, ‘about thirty years of age’ (Luke 3:23), that Jesus came down to the fords of the River Jordan to be baptized by John. He associated himself with the revivalist message of John the Baptist. John, the son of Zechariah and Elizabeth, the cousin of Mary according to the Gospel of Luke, ‘came into all the region round about Jordan, preaching a baptism of repentance, for the forgiveness of sins’. According to the Gospel of Matthew his message was ‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.’ This became the message of Jesus after John was imprisoned by Herod Antipas. The story of the baptism of Jesus by John, as the Gospel of Mark describes it, is much more than an indication of the acceptance by Jesus of the message of John. It is an account of a personal experience of Jesus, a revelation to him both of his Messiahship and of the method of his Messiahship. ‘And when he came up out of the water, immediately he saw the heavens opened and the Spirit descending upon him like a dove; and a voice came from heaven, Thou art my beloved Son; with thee I am well pleased. ’ (Mark 1:10; Mark 1:11) Jesus must have told this story himself and cannot have failed to point out that the words of the voice were quoted from the Psalms and the Book of Isaiah. The first words come from Psalm 2, generally believed to refer to the King-Messiah: ‘The Lord hath said unto me, Thou art my son ’ (cf. Psalms 2:7: ‘I will tell of the decree of the Lord; He said to me You are my son.’) The other words of the voice came from the Suffering Servant passages of the Book of Isaiah, which Jesus repeatedly quoted during his ministry. (Isaiah 42:1-4: ‘Behold my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen, in whom my soul delights.’) Jesus constantly used the Suffering Servant passages of the Book of Isaiah to convince his disciples that he had come into the world in order ‘to give his life as a ransom for many’. (Mark 10:45 and compare Isaiah 53:11; Isaiah 53:12)

It would seem that at his baptism Jesus became supremely aware of his Sonship as the Messiah of his people and of the cost in suffering that his calling would demand from him. From that moment, as Peter said in his speech to Cornelius, ‘God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power’. (Acts 10:38) But the immediate effect of this experience was to drive him into the wilderness, to face the consequences of this new realization. There in an inward mental struggle he rejected various ways of winning the loyalty of men without winning their hearts. These took the form of three temptations. The first was the temptation to bribe a following by the offer of material gain, turning stones into bread to feed the hungry crowds. Another temptation was to astound men by a display of supernatural powers, leaping from the top of the Temple at Jerusalem and floating over the Kidron Valley supported by the angels of God. Thirdly, Jesus was tempted to make a compromise with the forces of evil by imposing his own personal will in opposition to the purpose of God for him; this is expressed in the offer of ‘all the kingdoms of the world’, in return for an act of prostration before Satan. (Luke 4:1-12; Matthew 4:1-11)

After his temptation, according to the Gospel of Luke, Jesus went back to Galilee, ‘in the power of the Spirit ... and a report concerning him went out through all the surrounding country. And he taught in their synagogues, being glorified by all.’

Whether the setting of the wilderness, the wild beasts, the devil and the angels was symbolical or not, the traditional place of the baptism of Jesus in the Jordan is the ford at Hajlah, not far from the mouth of the river at the north end of the Dead Sea. It is among the lowest points on the earth's surface; on the west of it is the mountainous wilderness of Judea, the traditional site of the temptation of Jesus. It seems that for some time John the Baptist lived on the east bank of the Jordan, perhaps to avoid conflict with the authorities in Judea and Jerusalem and because the regular flow of clean water from the Wadi el-Kharrar into the Jordan facilitated baptisms. Here too was an ideal place, off the road yet accessible from the ford. In the earlier centuries of the history of Christianity tradition seems to have placed the baptism of Jesus on the east bank of the Jordan. But the Greek Orthodox Monastery of St John, on the west bank, contains remains of a Christian shrine of the Byzantine period. Arculf, a pilgrim to the Jordan about 670, describes a small chapel at a lower level than the monastery and a stone bridge from the west bank of the river to a cross in the middle of the stream to indicate the actual place of the baptism of Jesus.

For the place of the temptation of Jesus, a tradition indicates a mountain about 820 feet high on the edge of the Jordan valley, overlooking ancient Jericho (Tel es-Sultan). The mountain is called Sarantarion Horos in Greek and Mons Quarantana in Latin, because of the forty days of the fast kept by Jesus. A pilgrim of the period of the Crusades, named Theodoric, describes a path leading up the mountain, first to a chapel dedicated to St Mary, the mother of Jesus, and then to an altar in the form of a cross, close to which was shown the place, halfway up the mountain, where Jesus sat on the rock. On the summit of the mountain was shown the seat of Satan the tempter. This site commands a magnificent view of the Jordan Valley and of the mountains of Moab, although not of ‘all the kingdoms of the world’.

The Kingdom of God

This was the opening theme of the teaching and preaching of Jesus. He declared that: ‘The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand.’ (Mark 1:15) From the beginning of their life as a nation, the Israelites had believed themselves to be under the rule of God. During their history, before and after their exile in Babylon, they came to think of the kingdom of God as including all nations, although the other nations did not acknowledge the rule of God. Over his own people God was the supreme ruler; but he was opposed by the other nations and this opposition would in the end be overcome. During and after the exile of the Jews in Babylon, the recovery of the independence of Israel was expected to be achieved under a prince of David's line, the Anointed of the Lord or the Messiah. Then God would reign in the whole world. The prophets of Israel had foretold a day of judgment and purging by suffering which would precede and usher in the universal rule of God. When the Jews were in the grip of alien occupation and persecution, under the empires of Babylon, Persia, Greece and Rome, they hoped for the triumph of the kingdom or empire of God, after the fall of all these empires, as the result of a supernatural intervention in human history. The writers of the Book of Daniel and the Book of Enoch foretold a ‘Son of Man’, descending through the clouds to establish the kingdom of God in the future, at the end of the period in which the world is dominated by the ‘Beasts’ which are the Gentile empires. This hope of supernatural deliverance is called ‘apocalyptic’, as it meant that God would reveal or unveil his purpose for his people (‘apocalypse’ means ‘revelation’).

The arrival of Jesus in Galilee, declaring that: ‘The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand’ (Mark 1:15), had a tremendous impact on the simple people and drew all of them, including the Scribes and Pharisees and Zealots, coming from all directions to hear his message. Jesus believed in the present sovereignty of God and the future universal manifestation of that sovereignty. But he also insisted that the power of the kingdom of God was already at work in the world, through his own coming. Jesus declared that the rule of God comes here and now, insofar as it is acknowledged, and becomes a reality at once to those who accept it. ‘But if it is by the Spirit of God that I cast out demons, then the Kingdom of God is come upon you.’ (Matthew 12:28) ‘But blessed are your eyes, for they see, and your ears, for they hear. Truly I say to you, many prophets and righteous men longed to see what you see, and did not see it, and to hear what you hear, and did not hear it.’ (Matthew 13:16; Matthew 13:17) At Nazareth Jesus read a passage from the Book of Isaiah, concerning the Messiah: ‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me to bring good tidings to the afflicted; he has sent me to bind up the broken-hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to those who are bound: to proclaim the year of the Lord's favour.’ (Isaiah 61:1-2) (Cf. Luke 4:18-19: ‘Because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.’) He then rolled up the scroll and declared: ‘Today has this scripture been fulfilled in your hearing.’ (Luke 4:21) When the Pharisees asked him to tell them when the kingdom of God would come, he replied, ‘Behold, the kingdom of God is in the midst of you.’ (Luke 17:21)

There is no inconsistency in this triple conception of the kingdom or rule of God the Father as eternal, present and also to be fully recognized in the future. According to the Gospel of John, Jesus identified the kingdom of God with eternal life. To accept the rule of God, to enter the kingdom of God and to inherit eternal life are the same. In the Gospel of John, except in the story of Nicodemus, the term ‘the kingdom of God’ is not used. The term ‘eternal life’ is constantly used instead of ‘the kingdom of God’ in John's Gospel, according to some scholars. This may have been because it was more comprehensible to the Greek world and less easily confused with Jewish national aspirations. The Zealots in their battle with Rome may well have said that they fought for the kingdom of God. But it is likely that Jesus used both phrases - with a similar meaning. The word ‘kingdom’ is found at crucial points in the Gospel of John. The word translated as ‘eternal’ in that Gospel, the Greek aionia, is derived from aion, translated ‘age’ or ‘world’, which is often found in the other three Gospels. The end of this aion and the beginning of the future or coming aion signify the time of the Messiah, which is the manifestation of the kingdom of God. Life (in Greek zoe) as the object of man's spiritual search and the gift of God is emphasized in all the Four Gospels.

In the Synoptic Gospels, especially in the Gospel of Matthew, many of the parables of Jesus begin with the phrase, ‘The kingdom of God is like ...’ It grows fast like the mustard-seed. It acts like leaven in the lump of God's world. It is like hidden treasure, worth selling everything in order to obtain it. It is like a dragnet full of every kind of fish, from which the contents must ultimately be sorted out. So at the final judgment at the end of the aion men will be sorted out. According to the Gospel of Mark, Jesus said to his disciples: ‘To you has been given the secret of the kingdom of God, but for those outside everything is in parables.’ ‘To his own disciples he explained everything.’

The miracles attributed to Jesus in the Gospels are regarded by the writers as signs of the coming of the kingdom of God. In the time of Jesus there was no dispute about the possibility of miracles and the reality of supernatural power was assumed. Two Greek words sometimes translated by the word ‘miracle’ appear in one sentence of a speech of Peter in Jerusalem, on the feast of Pentecost following the death and resurrection of Jesus. ‘Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested to you by God with mighty works [Greek dynameis] and portents and signs [Greek semeia] which God did through him, as you yourselves know,’ is the subject of Peter's speech. The first word used, dynameis, meant ‘acts of power’; the word translated ‘signs’ (semeia) alluded to the meanings of these acts of power. In modern times miracles are events thought to be beyond the known power of natural causes and therefore attributed to the supernatural by those who believe in it. In the days of Jesus, miracles were also signs of divine power of which the true importance lay in what they might signify. The parables of Jesus were homespun stories of real life with an inner spiritual meaning which could be perceived only by those whose listening and thinking was in tune with the mind of the teacher. The miracles of Jesus seem to have been acted parables; they and the stories about them have a meaning which could not be grasped except by those who believed in Jesus. According to the Gospels the Pharisees still asked Jesus for a sign, after seeing all his miracles. Jesus said to his disciples, ‘To you it has been given to know the secrets of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it has not been given.’ (Matthew 13:11) The writer of the Gospel of Matthew adds, as a comment, a quotation from the Book of isaiah: ‘You shall indeed hear but never understand, and you shall indeed see but never perceive. For this people's heart has grown dull, and their ears are heavy of hearing, and their eyes they have closed, lest they should perceive with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their heart, and turn for me to heal them.’ (Matthew 13:14; Matthew 13:15; cf. Isaiah 6:9; Isaiah 6:10) Without faith in Jesus in the minds and hearts of the eye-witnesses, the miracles of Jesus were not an effective means of showing his identity as the Messiah. Mark records that Jesus ‘could do no mighty work’ at Nazareth, ‘because of their unbelief’.

Physical disease was then regarded as the manifestation of evil. Talking about a man who had been born blind, the disciples of Jesus asked him, ‘Who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?’ The answer of Jesus is significant: ‘It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the work of God might be made manifest in him. We must work ...’ (John 9:2-4) In other words, we are to cure evils rather than to search for their causes. Among the contemporaries of Jesus the leper was considered to be unclean, spiritually as well as physically; and as such he was rejected. Thus Jesus, by curing the body, showed his power to heal the spirit. As the diseases of body and spirit were thought to be interdependent, those who had faith in Jesus believed him to have power over the bodies and spirits of men.

When Jesus healed the paralytic who was carried to him at Capernaum, seeing the patient on a pallet he said, ‘My son, your sins are forgiven.’ The scribes then accused him of blasphemy, saying: ‘Who can forgive sins, but God alone?’ Jesus asked them, ‘Which is easier, to say to the paralytic, Your sins are forgiven, or to say, Rise, take up your pallet and walk? But that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins.’ Jesus then said to the paralytic, ‘I say to you, rise, take up your pallet and go home.’ (Mark 2:5-11)

A prophecy about the Messiah in the Book of Isaiah (Isaiah 61) stated that his coming would be accompanied by the healing of disease and the liberation of men from the power of evil. Mental illness, like physical illness, was regarded as spiritual in origin. It was described as the possession of a person who was ill by evil spirits or demons. The exorcists of the time of Jesus employed magical formulas and spells, of a religious character. Jesus cast out demons by his own authority, ordering them to go out of the person possessed by them. This power was believed to demonstrate his Messiahship. ‘If it is by the finger of God that I cast out demons, then the kingdom of God is come upon you,’ he said in an argument with his opponents. (Luke 11:20) The demons are represented as recognizing his Messianic power, as they cry out with a loud voice, ‘What have you to do with us, O Son of God? Have you come here to torment us before the time?’ (Matthew 8:29) On another occasion the evil spirit shouts, ‘I know who you are, the Holy One of God.’ Jesus orders the demons to be silent. (Mark 1:24; Mark 1:25)

The miracles of Jesus in raising the dead, as they are found in the Gospels, have the same meaning. Power to restore life to the dead body is symbolical of divine power to give eternal life. The story of the raising of the daughter of Jairus, a ruler of the synagogue at a town in Galilee, comes at the climax of a series of miracles. Delay in the arrival of Jesus results in the death of the child and a message is brought to her father to say that it is too late for the healer to come. But for Jesus death is no ground for despair and he says to the child's father, ‘Do not fear, only believe.’ (Mark 5:31) In the raising of the daughter of Jairus there is no public display; the faith of the eye-witnesses is essential, so those present are only the parents of the child and his own disciples. The lesson to be learnt by the discerning readers of the Gospels may be that eternal life is not to be found only beyond the grave, but it is to be grasped by a spiritual rebirth, within this present life. Jesus said, in a conversation with Martha, the sister of Lazarus, before the raising of Lazarus in the Gospel of John: ‘I am the Resurrection and the Life; he who believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live ...’ (John 11:25; John 11:26)

The miracles of Jesus within the world of the forces of nature are also reported in the Gospels as signs of the kingdom of God. In many passages of the Hebrew Bible a storm at sea is a symbol of demonic forces, a fearsome monster epitomizing the uncontrollable forces against God. The story of the miracle by which Jesus calmed the stormy water in the Lake of Galilee may have a meaning related to this biblical imagery. The power of God is pre-eminently shown in Jesus's control of the sea. ‘A great storm of wind arose, and the waves beat into the boat, so that the boat was already filling. But he was in the stern, asleep on the cushion; and they woke him and said to him, Teacher, do you not care if we perish? And he awoke and rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, Peace! Be still! And the wind ceased, and there was a great calm. He said to them, Why are you afraid? Have you no faith? And they were filled with awe and said to one another, Who then is this, that even wind and sea obey him? ’ (Mark 4:37-41) Indeed, their own Jewish tradition might have supplied the answer: ‘This is God’. After Jesus is seen miraculously walking on the water of the lake, the Gospel of Mark comments that his followers were ‘utterly astounded’. (Mark 6:51) The Gospel of Matthew, in giving an account of the same incident, adds that ‘Those in the boat worshipped him, saying, Truly you are the Son of God. ’ (Matthew 14:33)

The Suffering Messiah

The Purpose of the Passion of Jesus

According to all the Four Gospels, Jesus foretold his own arrest, condemnation and crucifixion and believed that these were required in order that the Messianic purpose of his life might be carried out. The famous German historian of religion Albert Schweitzer thus answered the question: what did Jesus himself believe about his future suffering and death? ‘Jesus considered himself the spiritual ruler of mankind and he bent history to his purpose. He cast himself upon the wheel of the world and it crushed him, yet he hangs there still. That is his victory.’ This was written by one who did not believe in the resurrection of Christ. Certain historians of religion attribute to the Christian community, as represented by the writers of the Four Gospels, the association between the life of Jesus and the Suffering Servant passages in the Book of Isaiah, together with the purposeful element in the story of the sufferings of Jesus. Schweitzer, disagreeing with them, attributed it to Jesus himself, fully conscious of the consequences of his actions, including his death on the cross, and seeking to fulfil prophecy by forcing events to take place with this purpose in view.

According to the Gospels, Jesus made many references to the Suffering Servant passages in the Book of Isaiah in his teaching. (See Christ) He asked the disciples James and John this question: ‘Are you able to drink the cup that I drink, or to be baptized with the baptism with which I am baptized?’ (Mark 10:38) On another occasion he is reported in the Gospel of Luke as saying, ‘I came to cast fire upon the earth; and I would that it were already kindled! I have a baptism to be baptized with; and how I am constrained until it is accomplished!’ (Luke 12:49; Luke 12:50)

Jesus went up to Jerusalem on the last journey before his arrest and death, knowing that the kindling of fire on the earth depended on his drinking of the cup of suffering, according to his own belief about himself. The passion was not a martyrdom which he endured passively; it was the accomplishment of his own set purpose, an act of his own will. He need not have gone to Jerusalem and challenged the authorities by his actions there. He need not have stayed in the Garden of Gethsemane to await his arrest; in the Garden his vivid foreknowledge of the end cost him an agony of anticipation. According to the Gospel of John he said, ‘For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life, that I may take it again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again ...’ (John 10:17; John 10:18)

Jesus is represented as knowing himself to be the Messiah, although keeping his conviction a secret, told only to those disciples whom he was certain of not misleading about the nature of his work and purpose. He went to his death in the certainty that it was the will of God, completely aware of what was coming to him, completely accepting it and utterly determined that nothing should prevent the will of God being done.

The Passion of Jesus

The Passion narratives, continuous and coherent, occupy a considerable part of each of the Four Gospels. All the Gospels state that there was a meeting of Jewish leaders in which the downfall of Jesus was planned. The Gospel of John describes, in some detail, a meeting of chief priests and leaders of the Pharisees after the raising of Lazarus, at which they discussed the matter in these terms: ‘ What are we to do? For this man performs many signs. If we let him go on thus, everyone will believe in him, and the Romans will come and destroy both our holy place and our nation. But one of them, Caiaphas, who was high priest that year, said to them, You know nothing at all; you do not understand that it is expedient for you that one man should die for the people, and that the whole nation should not perish. ... So from that day on they took counsel how to put him to death.’ (John 11:47-53) There was a real danger of Roman intervention, in the form of a general attack on the Jews, if anyone claiming to be the Messiah had enough support to make him seem to be a danger to the Romans. For the Messianic hope was popularly associated with the end of Roman rule. Certainly there were other motives for an attack on Jesus. The chief priests and the party of the Sadducees might see his expulsion of the traders from the Temple at Jerusalem as a threat to their private interests, as well as to public security. To the party of the Pharisees and the leaders of the scribes and rabbis, his attitude to the traditional interpretation of the Law might appear subversive and dangerous.

The Gospels all give accounts of the treachery of Judas, one of the twelve disciples of Jesus, who betrayed him. The Gospel of Luke implies that the information given by Judas made it possible for the arrest of Jesus to be made secretly, avoiding an uproar among the crowds of people in Jerusalem for the Passover festival. It is also probable that evidence was given by Judas of the Messianic claim of Jesus, at his examination before the chief priests. The motives of Judas were mercenary according to all the Four Gospels. But it is possible that he had simply lost faith in Jesus and wished to provide for his own safety. Some imaginative writers have suggested that he tried to force the hand of Jesus, provoking him by treachery into an open declaration of his Messiahship, without being aware of the fatal consequences.

According to all the Gospels, Jesus ate a last supper with his disciples, on the night before his death. There is a difference between the Gospels about the date of this in the Jewish calendar. The Synoptic Gospels appear to identify the Last Supper with the Passover feast. The Gospel of John represents Jesus as crucified on the day of the Passover feast and places the Last Supper on the previous evening. However, the description of the Last Supper in the Gospels of Mark and Matthew may suggest that it is not the Passover feast, although the name of the Passover is given to it. A hymn is mentioned; but Mark and Matthew put the breaking of the bread before the cup is passed round. In the Gospel of Luke the cup comes before the breaking of the bread; this may indicate the Passover feast. John's account of the date is considered by many to be historical; a man with a group of followers who might be expected to defend him would not be arrested on the night of the Passover. The Synoptic Gospels seem to imply that the arrest was not intended to be on the feast of the Passover (which includes the previous evening). ‘They said, Not during the feast, lest there be a tumult of the people. ’ (Mark 14:2; Matthew 26:5) The Jewish leaders are described in the Gospel of John as fearing to be defiled, if they entered the Roman governor's headquarters for the trial of Jesus before Pilate. The Passover feast was still in the future at that point. The bodies of Jesus and of the thieves crucified with him were removed from the crosses late in the afternoon, before sunset, on the day of the crucifixion, so that there would be no evidence of the execution when the Sabbath of the Passover festival began. The symbolical significance of the date of the crucifixion, according to the Gospel of John, is remarkable. At noon, as the crucifixion took place, the Passover lambs were killed in the Temple. The resurrection, on the first day of the week, coincided with the offering of the first-fruits in the Temple. So in the letter of Paul to the Corinthian Christians he can write ‘Christ, our paschal lamb, has been sacrificed’ and ‘Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep.’ (1 Corinthians 5:7; 1 Corinthians 15:20)

The atmosphere at the Last Supper must have been heavy with a sense of the impending passion of Jesus combined with all the sacrificial associations of the Passover. The Gospel of John does not describe the supper itself, for the writer has already included in his Gospel, in the passage after the feeding of the five thousand (John 6:25-59), a long account of the teaching of the Church about Jesus as ‘the bread of life’. He, however, tells the wonderful story of Jesus washing the feet of his disciples after the supper, giving a last example of loving humility. The writers of the Synoptic Gospels relate the actions of Jesus, as they described them in their accounts of the feeding of the five thousand and other similar happenings during the ministry of Jesus in Galilee. ‘Taking the loaves ... he looked up to heaven, and blessed and broke the loaves and gave them to the disciples.’ (Mark 6:41) But this time the actual words of Jesus are given. ‘Take; this is my body,’ he said, as he gave the bread. ‘This is my blood of the covenant which is poured out for many,’ he said, giving the cup of wine. To his followers, the bread was a sign and more than a sign; like the live coal from the altar brought to the prophet Isaiah at his call, it was to purge them, that they might share his atoning power. Nor could they fail to remember the blood sprinkled by Moses, first upon the altar and then upon the people of Israel, ‘the blood of the covenant which the Lord has made with you’, at the foot of Mount Sinai. Thus Jesus is said to have instituted what became in the Christian community the Holy Eucharist, the sacrifice of the New Testament, the means of communion between him and his followers. For this purpose he had evaded arrest until then. As the Gospel of Luke records his words, he said at the Last Supper: ‘I have earnestly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer.’

The Arrest and Trials of Jesus

Judas had already slipped out into the darkness when, with a sense of foreboding, Jesus and his remaining disciples went down into the Kidron Valley and crossed the brook to reach the Garden of Gethsemane. It is probable that this was their regular resting-place and their meeting-place, before they came into the city together or returned from the city to their lodgings at Bethany or elsewhere for the night. The Gospel of Luke indicates that on occasions they used to spend the night on the Mount of Olives. The Gospel of John says ‘across the Kidron valley ... there was a garden, which he and his disciples entered. Now Judas, who betrayed him, also knew the place; for Jesus often met there with his disciples.’ Although no doubt he could have returned over the hill to Bethany, Jesus remained there, purposefully, to await his arrest. In a final human agony of anticipation, he submitted himself to the divine will. On the arrival of Judas with those who were sent to arrest Jesus, he was identified and apprehended and his disciples fled. From the Garden of Gethsemane the prisoner and his escort returned to the Western Hill of Jerusalem, passing down the Kidron, in at the Fountain Gate and up the ancient stairway that led from the Pool of Siloam to the palace of the high priest, in which the scribes and elders were assembled.

At a place which many believe to have been the site of the house of Caiaphas the high priest, there are striking remains of ancient buildings that illustrate the story of the trial of Jesus there. On this site, under the Church of St Peter, there are remains of buildings at several levels, cut into the rocky face of the hill. Above is the courtroom, with a raised dock at one end and the bottleneck of a cell for the condemned in the centre of the rock floor. Below this is the guardroom, with whipping-block and with staples for the prisoners' chains. Further down is the cell for the condemned, where Jesus may have spent the night before his crucifixion in the darkness, remembering the words of Psalm 88: ‘I am reckoned among those who go down to the pit ... in the regions dark and deep ... afflicted and close to death ... I am helpless ...’

The descriptions in the Gospels of the trial or examination before the religious authorities vary considerably. The Gospels of Mark and Matthew agree closely; the Gospels of Luke and John give different accounts. The Gospel of Mark, followed by that of Matthew, describes the trial of Jesus before the ‘whole Council’ (the Sanhedrin) as taking place on the night of his arrest. The first charge of blasphemy was that he had said that he would destroy the Temple. The witnesses did not agree and the charge was not proved. The next charge was that he had claimed to be the Messiah. Judas could have given evidence on this charge and perhaps did so. Peter was sitting within earshot and could have been pressed into giving evidence. Perhaps that is why he was asked three times and denied three times that he knew anything about Jesus. Jesus, when directly questioned on this charge by the high priest, said ‘I am,’ according to the Gospel of Mark, and ‘You have said so,’ according to the Gospels of Matthew and Luke. According to the Gospel of John he refused to answer about his disciples and his teaching. But in the three other Gospels his answer to the question of the high priest about his Messianic claim includes a reference to ‘the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of power and coming with the clouds of heaven’. This brought about his conviction for blasphemy. According to the Gospels of Matthew and Mark, ‘they all condemned him as deserving death’. The Council met early on the following morning to formulate the charges which they were to present before Pilate the Roman governor. He was waiting for the prisoner and his accusers at the Praetorium. According to the somewhat different account in the Gospel of Luke the trial at the house of the high priest was not held until the morning after the arrest of Jesus. This would be lawful, whereas it was unlawful to hold a trial during the night. Peter denies that he knows Jesus, not during his trial, but in the course of the night before it. At the trial there is no mention of the charge that Jesus said he would destroy the Temple. The Council does not condemn Jesus to death on the charge of claiming to be the Messiah, the one charge mentioned. Jesus is mocked before the trial by the servants of the high priest, in the account given by Luke; in the Gospels of Matthew and Mark the members of the Council appear to mock him during the trial.

The Praetorium was probably within the Antonia Fortress. This is described thus by the great Dominican scholar Vincent: ‘This gigantic quadrilateral, cut almost entirely out of the rocky hill, covered an area of 150 metres east to west, by 80 metres north to south. It was protected by powerful corner towers and enclosed installations as complex and diverse as a palace and camp. The outstanding but characteristic feature of this complex was, without doubt, the courtyard, about 2,500 metres square, serving as a place of meeting between the city and the Antonia. Extending over deep water cisterns, covered with a massive polished pavement, surrounded by tall cloisters, this courtyard was really the heart of the fortress whose activity it regulated ... Pilate had his tribunal set up within the courtyard, transformed for the occasion into the Praetorium, called indeed the Pavement par excellence.’ Where could one find more appropriate a setting for the place where Pilate pronounced the sentence which sent Jesus on his way to Calvary? On to this Pavement the prisoner and his escort proceeded, while the crowd of those not entering the castle for fear of ceremonial defilement on the day of the Passover were left standing in and around the great double gateway. Pilate, seated in his curial chair at the head of a stairway, may well have gazed down on the Pavement in disgust.

According to the Gospels of Mark and Matthew, Jesus was accused by the chief priests of treason against the Roman authority in declaring himself to be the King of the Jews. The description is one of a perfunctory routine. The Gospel of Luke, however, gives detailed and specific charges: ‘We found this man perverting our nation, and forbidding us to give tribute to Caesar, and saying that he himself is Christ a king ... He stirs up the people, teaching throughout all Judea, from Galilee even to this place.’ The high priest intends to place the responsibility for the death of Jesus on the shoulders of Pilate, claiming that he himself is a loyal supporter of the Roman administration. He wants to make the case of Jesus seem to be similar to that of any other self-appointed leader of an uprising against authority. In the Gospel of Luke the crowd, incited by the chief priests, demands the release of Barabbas, ‘a man who had been thrown into prison for an insurrection started in the city, and for murder’. According to the other Synoptic Gospels and the Gospel of John, Pilate offered to release either of the two prisoners, Barabbas or Jesus, as it was customary to release a prisoner on the day of the Passover feast. The assembled crowd, no doubt under the influence of the priests and the Council, demanded the release of Barabbas and the crucifixion of Jesus. After making a feeble gesture of protest, Pilate condemned Jesus to the customary sequence of execution: scourging, mocking and crucifixion. Luke seems particularly anxious to show that the Roman governor did not want to crucify Jesus. Pilate believes in his innocence and declares it three times. An attempt is made to pass Jesus over to the jurisdiction of Herod, to whom Pilate sends him; but Herod, after ridiculing him, returns him to Pilate. Luke mentions no mocking by the soldiers in the Praetorium, described in the Gospels of Mark and Matthew. Pilate finally offers to flog Jesus and then to release him; but he is faced with something like a riot among the crowd and so releases Barabbas and condemns Jesus to death.

The Gospels were written, in all cases, either shortly before the war between the Jews and the Roman Empire of AD 66-70 or during the period after that war. The Romans associated the Christians with the Jews, although recognizing a difference between the two communities. The conviction of Jesus by a Roman governor and his death by a Roman form of capital punishment, crucifixion, were facts about the account of Jesus given by the Christians. They were an embarrassment to those who sought to stop the Roman persecution of Christianity. This may well have influenced the way in which the trials of Jesus were presented to the readers of the Gospels. The Council of the Jews, the Sanhedrin, was described as morally responsible for the sentence of death pronounced by the Roman governor. But Pilate may well have been influenced by the stories of the cleansing of the Temple by Jesus and his alleged intention to destroy the Temple. Though aware of the lack of evidence for any charge of treason, he must have been afraid of Messianic claims, since all associated the coming of the Messiah with the end of the Roman rule. He could not dismiss the charge of treason, if Jesus refused to refute it and remained silent. Having secured his own conviction for blasphemy, before Caiaphas, Jesus did nothing to secure his own release, before Pilate. The Gospel of John gives an account of a conversation between Jesus and Pilate, about the nature of the kingship of Jesus. It is not possible to know how such a conversation could have been recorded. It may well have been meant by the writer of the Gospel to explain the situation to his readers a generation later. Jesus declared, ‘My kingship is not of this world; if my kingship were of this world, my servants would fight ... but my kingship is not from the world ... You say that I am a king. For this I was born and for this I have come into the world, to bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth hears my voice.’ (John 18:36; John 18:37)

The Crucifixion of Jesus

The crowd continued to call for the crucifixion of Jesus until Pilate pronounced the desired judgment, washed his hands publicly and returned to his quarters. After the necessary preparations three prisoners, Jesus and two bandits or robbers, formed a procession on the Pavement with their escort and passed out of the Antonia Fortress through the great double gate with its two guardrooms, one on each side, the prisoners carrying their huge crosses along the way to Calvary, known later among Christians as the Via Dolorosa.

The Gospels of Mark and Matthew agree in their accounts of the crucifixion, although Matthew adds the earthquake in which ‘the rocks were split’. A remarkable fissure in the whole height of what now remains of a great rock has been treated since c. 350 as evidence for the truth of this story in the Gospels and for the authenticity of the traditional site of the place which local Christian tradition regards as Calvary. The description of the crucifixion in the Gospel of Mark is a stark and grim account of the death of the strong and silent Son of God, the Master still in control of the situation, ‘bending history to his purpose’. It is unrelieved by the pity and sympathy shown in the Gospel of Luke. Jesus is too weak to carry his cross. He refuses the drugged wine, choosing to remain conscious. The soldiers strip him, crucify him and then share out his clothing. The passers-by jeer at him, taunt him, and tell him to get down from the cross, if he has miraculous powers. Those crucified with him revile him. The only words he is heard to utter are ‘My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?’ But supernatural events accompany his death, the sudden descent of the darkness and the split in the curtain in the Temple, which should hide but then reveals the Holy of Holies. The only man to recognize Jesus as the Son of God at the moment of his death is the Roman centurion in charge of his execution.

The account in the Gospel of Luke has been contrasted with the other accounts of the crucifixion, as an appeal to the pity of the readers. Crowds follow Jesus to his crucifixion, including wailing women and sympathetic watchers. One of the bandits who are crucified with Jesus is penitent and confesses his own guilt, recognizing the innocence of Jesus. The Roman centurion says that ‘Certainly this man was innocent’. This description has been characterized as that of a martyr's death, surrounded by sympathy. The Gospel of Mark tells the story of a man willing to die. Mark's story carries with it a Christian interpretation. For every event a prediction is found in the Psalms and the Prophets of Israel. The words ascribed to Jesus are taken from the beginning of Psalm 22, which he may be thought to have been saying in prayer. The end of that Psalm is a picture of the universal reign of God: ‘Yea, to him shall all the proud of the earth bow down ... men shall tell of the Lord to the coming generation, and proclaim his deliverance to a people yet unborn, that he hath wrought it.’

The burial regulations of the Book of Deuteronomy (21:23) demanded that crucified criminals - or indeed any executed criminals - should be buried before sunset. This may have been especially important when the Passover Sabbath began in the evening, and the Romans respected local laws and customs in such matters. If the body of Jesus had not been claimed, it might have been buried in a common grave. But Joseph of Arimathea begged the permission of Pilate to bury Jesus in his own tomb cut in the rock. Mark says: ‘Joseph of Arimathea, a respected member of the Council, who was also himself looking for the kingdom of God, took courage and went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus.’ The Gospel of Matthew describes Joseph of Arimathea as ‘a rich man ... and a disciple of Jesus’. Luke says that he was ‘a member of the Council, a good and righteous man, who had not consented to their purpose and deed’. John calls him ‘a disciple of Jesus, but secretly’, who, together with Nicodemus, another secret friend of Jesus, anointed the body of Jesus, and buried it in a new tomb very near the place of his crucifixion.

The tomb was in a garden or grove of trees, presumably the private property of Joseph of Arimathea. Even if Herod Agrippa, at the building of the ‘Third Wall’ in the year 43, enclosed the garden within the walled city, it would have been untouched as a place of burial and the Christians, even if they did not own it, could have pointed it out to one another. Even the destruction of Jerusalem in the year 70 would not cause tombs cut in the rock or rocks split by earthquakes to disappear. When the city was rebuilt by the Romans in the year 138, after the Bar-Kokhba rebellion of 135, it is certain that the traditional site of the death and burial of Jesus Christ was covered by a terrace on which a Roman forum and temples of the deities of Rome were built. Recent archaeological investigation seems to show that the place which Christian tradition regards as Calvary was in a deep quarry, probably used for the defence of the ‘Second Wall’. In this quarry the rock split by an earthquake is 32 feet higher than the level of the natural rock on all sides of it. What remains of it is 14 feet square. There were several tombs cut in the rock in the sides of the quarry. The Roman builders in the year 138 filled this trench with earth and built upon it, as their walled city was to be on both sides of the line of the ‘Second Wall’. They may well have done this without intending the desecration of a holy place, belonging to a new community of which they knew little or nothing. But it was said by Christians in later centuries that the Emperor Hadrian felt it to be necessary thus to desecrate, systematically and thoroughly, the sites of the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ. In this way he marked the sites for the Christian excavations in 323-5, when the first Church of the Holy Resurrection of Christ was built, by the orders of the first Christian Roman emperor, Constantine the Great. The shrines then built included the rock split by an earthquake at Calvary (still to be seen in the church) and the tomb identified as the Holy Sepulchre of Jesus Christ. The traditional tomb was destroyed to a very great extent in the 11th century; the shrine contains remains of it. This is the central shrine in the church which Western Christians call the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, known to local Christians and to Eastern Christendom as the Church of the Holy Resurrection.

The Resurrection

The followers of Jesus of Nazareth believed that he had shown himself to be alive. In the New Testament we find three ways of presenting the resurrection of Jesus Christ. First of all the Christian community or Church exists and the life of that community is the continuation of the life of Jesus of Nazareth. Secondly, followers of Jesus of Nazareth say and write that on the first day of the week, the day after the Sabbath which followed his death, his tomb was found to be empty. Thirdly, many of the followers of Jesus state in the books of the New Testament that during the six weeks after his death he appeared to them and showed them that he was alive.

All the Four Gospels record visits made to the tomb of Jesus by his disciples, who found it to be empty. The Gospels of Luke, Matthew and John, as well as the Acts of the Apostles and the First Letter of Paul to the Corinthians, record appearances of Jesus after the resurrection. The Gospel of Mark says that women who were disciples of Jesus bought spices after sunset on the Sabbath day following the crucifixion, in order to anoint his body. Very early in the morning on the first day of the week they came to the tomb of Jesus. They found that the stone in the entrance of the tomb was rolled back. ‘And on entering the tomb, they saw a young man sitting on the right side, dressed in a white robe; and they were amazed. And he said to them, Do not be amazed; you seek Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has risen, he is not here; see the place where they laid him. But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going before you to Galilee; there you will see him, as he told you. And they went out and fled from the tomb, for trembling and astonishment had come upon them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.’ (Mark 16:5-8) At this point the Gospel of Mark ends. It is universally recognized that the verses which follow are a later addition, an attempt to finish an unfinished work which appears differently in various manuscripts. The writer of the Gospel of Mark may have stopped at that point, with the words ‘they were afraid’, or may have added something now lost.

The Gospel of Matthew says that the Council of the Jews asked Pilate to put a guard on the tomb of Jesus, that he told them to send their own men as guards. This they did and sealed the entrance of the tomb. There was an earthquake during the night, ‘For an angel of the Lord descended from heaven and came and rolled back the stone, and sat upon it ... And for fear of him the guards trembled and became like dead men.’ When the women who were disciples of Jesus came early next morning, it was this angel who gave them the message recorded in the Gospel of Mark as given by ‘a young man’. As they went away, ‘Behold, Jesus met them and said, Hail. And they came up and took hold of his feet and worshipped him.’ Jesus repeats the command of the angel: ‘Go and tell my brethren to go to Galilee.’ The guards report the matter to the chief priests, who instruct them to say that while they were asleep the disciples of Jesus stole his body. The disciples then meet Jesus at an appointed place in Galilee.

In the Gospel of Luke, when the women enter the tomb and are perplexed to find that the body of Jesus is not there, two men suddenly appear beside them. ‘The men said to them, Why do you seek the living among the dead? Remember how he told you, while he was still in Galilee, that the Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men, and be crucified, and on the third day rise. And they remembered his words ...’ When the Gospel of Luke describes appearances of Jesus after his resurrection, they occur in Judea, first on the road to Emmaus and then at Jerusalem in the Upper Room. He shows the scars of his crucifixion and eats with his disciples.

The Gospel of John gives an account coming from the women, and particularly from Mary of Magdala, together with the recollections of the Apostle Peter and of another disciple, ‘the one whom Jesus loved’. The women went to the tomb early in the morning, found it empty and ran to summon the men. When Peter and the other disciple came to the tomb, they looked into it. Peter went into the tomb, in which he had seen that there was no dead body, and it is reported that ‘he saw the linen cloths lying, and the napkin, which had been on his head, not lying with the linen cloths, but rolled up in a place by itself.’ The disciple other than Peter, ‘the one whom Jesus loved’, grasped what had happened, as soon as he went in: ‘he saw and believed’. But Peter did not grasp it, ‘for as yet they did not know the scripture, that he must rise from the dead’. They went home. Meanwhile Mary of Magdala saw two angels in white sitting in the tomb. When they asked her why she was weeping, she said that some people had taken the dead body of Jesus away and had hidden it in some unknown place. Turning round outside the tomb, she suddenly saw through her tears the figure of someone whom she imagined to be the gardener and begged him to tell her where the body of Jesus could be found. It was Jesus and he called her by her name, ‘Mary’. She fell at his feet and said to him in Hebrew, ‘Rabboni’ (Master). ‘Jesus said to her, Do not hold me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father; but go to my brethren and say to them, I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God. ’

On the evening of that day and also a week later Jesus appeared to his disciples in Jerusalem. He showed them the marks of the nails in his hands and in his side, where the lance of a soldier had pierced his body. He is reported as saying to one of them, Thomas, who needed proof, ‘do not be faithless, but believing ... Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those that have not seen and yet believe.’

In the last chapter of the Gospel of John, which many scholars regard as a kind of appendix, coming after the original end of the book, there is the story of the appearance of Jesus on the shore of the Sea of Galilee. After a fruitless night of fishing in deep water, Peter and seven other disciples of Jesus were approaching the shore at dawn when a voice hailed them, saying, ‘Children, have you any fish?’ They answered, ‘No.’ The voice then said, ‘Cast the net on the right side of the boat, and you will find some.’ They did so and there were so many fish in the net that they could not haul it into the boat. It was then that the disciple, ‘the one whom Jesus loved,’ recognized the voice of Jesus and said, ‘It is the Lord’. Peter jumped into the water, while the others brought the boat to the land, dragging with it the net full of fish. On the beach Jesus gave them bread and fish and ate with them. ‘They saw a charcoal fire, with fish lying on it, and bread ... Jesus came and took the bread and gave it to them and ... the fish.’ Afterwards he questioned Peter three times and three times ordered him to take care of the other disciples. ‘Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these? ... Feed my lambs ... Do you love me? ... Tend my sheep ... Do you love me? ... Feed my sheep.’ It seems that Jesus is regarded by the authors of the Gospel of John as thus making Peter the leader of the Church. The fact that Peter had three times denied all knowledge of Jesus at the time of his trial before the chief priests is overlooked. The promise given to Peter according to the Gospel of Matthew is confirmed.

The Book of the Acts of the Apostles is a sequel to the Gospel of Luke, written by the same author. It is said there that Jesus presented himself alive (to the apostles whom he had chosen) ‘after his passion by many proofs, appearing to them during forty days’. In the same book, in the speech of Peter to Cornelius, he says that God raised Jesus from the dead ‘and made him manifest, not to all the people but to us who were chosen by God as witnesses, who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead’.

The Ascension

Only the author of the Gospel of Luke relates the story of the ascension of Jesus Christ into heaven from the Mount of Olives. In the Gospel he writes, ‘Then he led them out as far as Bethany, and lifting up his hand he blessed them. While he blessed them, he parted from them.’ In the Acts of the Apostles there is more description, ‘And when he had said this, as they were looking on, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him from their sight ... they were gazing up into heaven as he went ... Then they returned to Jerusalem from the mount called Olivet ...’

The Gospel of John, however, uses the word ‘ascend’. Jesus in that Gospel says to Mary of Magdala, ‘I am ascending.’ And on an earlier occasion asks, ‘What if you were to see the Son of Man ascending where he was before?’ Paul in his letter to the Ephesians writes, about the risen Jesus Christ, ‘he also ascended far above all the heavens, that he might fill all things. And his gifts were that some should be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers.’

According to the Gospels there is a great difference between the appearance of Jesus Christ during the six weeks after his crucifixion and all later visions of him seen by his followers. After the time which may be called his ascension, he is seen, ‘sitting at the right hand of God’, in a state which is outside earthly space and time. Before the ascension, he is in Judea or in Galilee, and he is present in a bodily form. He is not a spirit, in the sense of a vision. Yet he promises that he will be with his followers. As he says in the Gospel of Matthew, ‘Lo I am with you always, to the close of the age.’ [Matt., Mark, Luke, John, and all books of the New Testament]

Who's Who in the New Testament, © 1971, 1993, 2002 by Ronald Brownrigg.