Archive for July, 2007

President Franklin Roosevelt’s moving and historic “Day of Infamy” speech on Monday, December 8th, 1941, the morning after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, is still remembered by those born before 1935, and to millions of us of the Baby Boomer generation (born 1946 and thereafter) was recounted firsthand by our parents as we came of age after the horrors of World War II. My father, like so many, joined the military that Monday morning. It was the most decisive geopolitical event of the 20th century and changed everything for all of us even after nearly 66 years. It is wonderfully preserved on the Web, in sound, film, and even the typed transcript from which the President read.

I have devoted my academic career to the study of Jesus and early Christianity. The 1st century AD also witnessed such a Day of Infamy. It was commemorated just last week, on Tuesday, July 24th, known by Jews as Tisha b’Av, the 9th day of the fifth month of Av on the Jewish/Hebrew calendar. It is a day of complete fasting and abject mourning, remembering the destruction of Jerusalem, including both Temples, the First and the Second, in 586 BCE and 70 CE respectively, as well as countless other sad and tragic days in Jewish history.

Over the years I have come to realize that when it comes to understanding the 1st century Jesus movement, which developed into the new religion called “Christianity,” there is no greater factor or event than the horrific destruction of Jerusalem in August of 70 CE by the Roman emperor Vespasian. Indeed, the Romans called this period caniculares dies, the “dog days of summer,” a name that has stuck until our time, falling between July 15 and August 15, and characterized by oppressively hot and sultry temperatures when all creatures become languid and forlorn. I would urge all my readers to carefully read through the account of the Roman destruction of Jerusalem in Josephus’ Jewish War, in a translation other than that of William Whiston, which is just too outdated (1793). The Penguin edition, though abridged, by Williamson, is one easily available alternative.

I think it would be hard to overemphasize the critical and vital importance of this watershed event in 1st century Jewish Palestine. After that date everything changed, for Jews living in the Roman empire, but most decidedly for the followers of Jesus, certainly in the Homeland, but also those scattered through the Mediterranean world. To put it succinctly–nothing was ever the same again. Jesus had died in 30 CE but his influential brother James (Jacob/Yaaqov) had taken over and offered new hope and direction for the movement. When he too was brutally murdered in 62 CE by the same family of High Priests connected to the “Godfather” Annas, the Jesus movement was absolutely devastated.

Ironically, none of our New Testament documents record the horrors of August, 70 CE, and everything we have was written either a decade before or a decade after that decisive Day of Infamy. Before that date we have the authentic letters of Paul and the Q source, dating to the 50s CE. These writings anticipate an apocalyptic climax of all things directly on the horizon. After 70 CE we get our four Gospels and other materials (later Pauline letters, Peter, John, Revelation, etc.), which are basically sketching out a vision of “post-War” existence with the “End of the Age” much delayed and postponed.

The New Testament scholar, John Dominic Crossan has called the period from 30-50 CE, before Paul’s letters, the “dark age” of Christianity, due to the lack of historical sources. In terms of the first followers of Jesus, that is, those Jewish messianists led by James the Just, brother of Jesus, the “black out” hardly ends with Paul, who had begun to propose a wholly alternative vision of the “faith” of Jesus. The double blow of the death of James and the destruction of Jerusalem, with the death and scattering of those Jerusalem witnesses who had known Jesus, effectively ended any possibility of our direct access to a non-Pauline version of things. When the “curtain” comes up after 70 CE, a modified version of Paul was clearly the “only game in town,” and hope of the “kingdom of God on earth,” with a restoration of the nation of Israel under its Davidic Messiah, was thoroughly dashed.

Jews find many historic reasons to fast on Tisha b’Av, but I am thinking it might not be such a bad idea for Christians as well, at least for those who are interested in recovering the original faith of Jesus. In some ironic way I think one can say that the “end of the age” did indeed come during those dog days of the summer of 70 CE, and whether the new age that dawned was a loss or a gain is something with which all of us have to grapple. Christian pilgrims in the time of the emperor Constantine began to travel to Jerusalem to see the holy places that had become associated with the life of Jesus. One high point of the typical pilgrimage was to stand on the Mount of Olives, gazing over the plaza where the Temple once stood. We have accounts where they joyfully celebrate the confirmation of faith they received in thinking of how the Jews who had rejected “Christ” had been justly punished by the destruction of Jerusalem and their subsequent Exile. Luke offers us such a triumphant version of things as he rewrites Mark’s “little Apocalypse,” and Matthew as he reworks Mark’s narrative of the trial of Jesus:

“For great distress will be upon the earth and upon this people; they will fall by the edge of the sword, and be led captive among all nations; and Jerusalem will be trodden down by the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled” (Luke 21:23-24)

“And all the people answered, ‘His blood be on us and on our children!’” (Matthew 27:25)

Such post-War language echoes the brutally triumphant words of Paul, written decades earlier, when he speaks of “the Jews” who killed the Lord Jesus and “displease God and oppose all men,” but “God’s wrath has come upon them at last!” (1 Thessalonians 2:15-16).

Remembering Tisha b’Av…

I have mentioned a number of times in this series of posts that the gospel of John appears to have an underlying narrative framework that is most useful to the historian when it comes to matters of chronology and geography. In contrast, Mark has few chronological markers, so much so that halfway through his account (chapter 8 of 16 chapters total), Jesus is already on his final journey to Jerusalem where he is crucified. What goes on before that, essentially Jesus’ entire preaching career, narrated in chapters 1-8, is presented in a rapid and sweeping flow of events with no indication as to whether the time involved was days, weeks, months, or even years. In my book, The Jesus Dynasty, I adopted the three and one-half year chronological scheme of the gospel of John (Fall, 26 CE to Spring, 30 CE) and attempted to understand Mark’s fast paced narrative in that light.

I have posted a useful document charting the narrative movement in the gospel of John on my UNC Charlotte Web site. It is interesting that Mark provides a few “hooks” into John’s framework. The most obvious is the sequence of events with Jesus feeding a crowd, walking on the Sea of Galilee, and teaching in the area of Capernaum, found in Mark 6 and John 6. According to John’s account this is around the time of a 2nd Passover, which would be the spring of the year 29 CE. The most interesting and intriguing of these “hooks,” however, is the short statement in Mark 10:1:

“And he left there (Capernaum) and went to the region of Judea and beyond the Jordan, and crowds gathered to him again; and again, as his custom was, he taught them.”

Until the last week of Jesus’ life when Jesus goes to Jerusalem, Mark sets his entire rapid-paced narrative around the Sea of Galilee, but here he seems to at least be aware of the tradition that we find elaborated in John, that Jesus made these excursion-like forays south to Judea and east beyond the Jordan. Jesus’ move across the Jordan River during the final months of his life is something that really caught my attention in the spring of 1992. I was teaching my standard New Testament/Christian Origins class and we were working through the ending of the gospel of John when these words jumped off the page at me:

“He went away again across the Jordan to the place where John at first baptized, and there he remained. And many came to him…” (John 10:40)

I was showing the students how that verse tied into the one in Mark, and that, according to the gospel of John, Jesus had made a quick trip to Jerusalem at Hanukkah (December, 29 CE), and that Mark at least mentions him going “to the region of Judea” but with no details, but we know from the gospel of John that Jesus’ life was actually in danger and he was in need of a safe place to hide until he decided to make his final moves in Jerusalem the following Spring. But what caught my attention that day was John’s reference to a specific place. I had never noticed that before. I remembered that earlier in his gospel John had actually pinpointed that very place with this description:

“John also was baptizing at Aenon near Salim, because there were many pools there; and people came and were baptized” (John 3:22).

We pulled out the Oxford map of Galilee in the time of Jesus and quickly located Aenon near Salim, just south of Scythopolis, or Beth Shean today. Directly across the Jordan from that spot I noticed two things. There was a “Wadi” or ravine named Cherith, and just to the north the Decapolis town of Pella. Both rang different bells in my head. Cherith, of course, was the ravine where Elijah hid and was fed by the ravens when he fled from king Ahab and queen Jezebel when his life was in danger (1 Kings 18:1-7). And Pella was the traditional location where the followers of Jesus fled around 68 CE when Jerusalem was put under siege by the Romans prior to its destruction. Scholars have always had problems imagining this flight of the Nazarenes, led by Simon bar Clophas, to a pro-Roman Hellenistic city such as Pella. However, the idea came to me that perhaps the Pella tradition referred to the area of Pella, not the city itself. The Wadi Cherith is just six kilometers to the south, literally part of the “precincts” of what could be called Pella. In a matter of minutes it all began to fit together.

The Wadi Cherith, across the Jordan, would have been remembered as a “place of safety” for Elijah. Although some have located the Wadi Cherith to the south, the weight of evidence favors the northern Gilead location. It fits the description in 1 Kings 17 precisely, and the site of Jabesh-gilead (Abu el Kharaz) as well as Tishbe has been located in the Wadi. If Jesus also went “across the Jordan,” from Aenon near Salim, that would put him right into the Wadi Cherith, and thus provide an explanation for this odd choice of location for his flight. Finally, nearly 40 years later, his followers, some of whom would have been with him in the winter of 29 CE flight, would have returned to that area.

I had been to Jordan before but only to see the standard tourist sites. I had no idea what the Wadi Cherith might be like. On a modern map of Jordan I saw the name used today: Wadi el-Yabis, which actually connects to the name Cherith, referring to the rugged cut nature of the Wadi. I decided to make a trip to Jordan as soon as the semester was out and in June of that year I found myself hiking with some students and friends deep into the reaches of Wadi el-Yabis.

What we found was quite amazing. The Wadi was incredibly rugged with water falls, pools, and surrounding high cliffs on both sides, dotted with abundant caves. We searched some of the caves and found early Roman period pottery shards in abundance.

I asked the artist Balage Balogh, who was doing illustrations for my book, The Jesus Dynasty, to create a scene that would portray Jesus and his small band of followers living in this Wadi that last winter of Jesus’ life. He took great care in the details, as he always does, wanting to get the clothing, hairstyles, and other things just right. The result, in color, is quite stunning and I wanted to share it with my readers here:

Based on the traditions of both Mark and John regarding Jesus’ excursion “beyond the Jordan,” as well as the Pella flight tradition, I am convinced that the location of Wadi el-Yabis as a “Jesus Hideout” has good historical probability. If John’s chronology is correct this is where Jesus and his entourage spent the last winter of his life, from December until early April, when he hears of Lazarus being deathly ill and is summoned by Mary and Martha of Bethany to come to the Jerusalem area. It would also be the location where the band of fleeing Nazarenes went in 68 CE as the Roman laid siege to Jerusalem. A Wadi el-Yabis Survey Project (G. Palumbo, J. Mabry, I. Kuijt) begun in the 1990s has identified a number of Late Bronze Age and Early Iron Age sites but a specific concentration on potential early Roman habitation of the caves south of Pella remains to be done.

A precious fragmented copy of a portion of the lost Gospel of Peter was discovered in 1886 by the French archaeologist Urbain Bouriant, buried in the tomb of a monk at Akhmim in Upper Egypt. On the basis of the cursive script this copy dates to the 8th or 9th century CE. We don’t know how much of the Jesus story the text as a whole might have covered since this partial copy begins with a scene of Jesus’ trial before Herod and Pilate and takes one through the story of his crucifixion, burial, and a very dramatic resurrection account. It ends, rather strangely, with a second “empty tomb” story in which Mary Magdalene and her friends visit the grave and flee in fear, and the subsequent scattering of Jesus’ followers back to Galilee. There it abruptly breaks off. Whether the original text was a more complete narrative of Jesus’ career, or just an account of his last days we can’t be sure. According to Eusebius, the 4th century church historian, it was being used by the Syrian Christians around the year 200 CE, and Serapion, bishop of Antioch, raised doubts about its orthodoxy, while declaring that most of it reflected the “right teachings of the Savior” (Eccl. Hist. 6.12..2-6).

The text itself is complex and multilayered and scholars over the past 100 years have debated whether it is an independent composition or a secondary one, cobbled together in a derivative fashion from our canonical gospels. It does in fact have elements in common with Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John, but also much material independent from, and in sharp contrast to, these works. That the writer is not simply taking the canonical gospels and embellishing them by building up and expanding their narratives seems clear. John Crossan and others have argued that embedded in this fragment is indeed our earliest passion narrative, dating to the mid-1st century.

I encourage readers of this Blog who are not familiar with this text to read it through, as it is readily available on-line and in various printed editions of the so-called “New Testament Apocrypha.” I highly recommend the Early Christian Writings Web site as it has not only various translations of the text, but also commentary and critical discussion. If one is interested in a printed copy I recommend The Complete Gospels, edited by Robert Miller. It has many other texts of interest including the “Signs Source” taken from the gospel of John, the Q Source, and various fragments of the Hebrew/Ebionite gospels, all in fresh new translations.

Of the many fascinating elements in this text I wanted to note one in particular that is relevant to what I have written in The Jesus Dynasty, as well as some of my recent discussions on this Blog related to the last days of Jesus.

The GPeter has a different chronological scheme from the standard and traditional Friday-crucifixion and Sunday-morning-resurrection scheme that most assume from Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John. In the GPeter we are told that after Jesus died and was buried his disciples were in hiding and the Peter as narrator declares: “We fasted and sat mourning and weeping night and day until the Sabbath” (7:3). This would indicate that at least a day and a night passed between the crucifixion and burial and the arrival of the Sabbath, impossible with a traditional Good Friday crucifixion. This chronology does make sense if one assumes, as the GPeter has it, that the “Sabbath” immediately following the crucifixion at sundown was not the weekly Saturday but the annual Passover Sabbath of the 1st day of Unleavened Bread (see The Jesus Dynasty, pp. 198-200 for a chart and discussion). This fits in well with the gospel of John that says that Jesus was crucified before the Passover Seder, and that the “Sabbath” falling at sunset was a “high day” (John 13:1; 18:28; 19:31). Thus Jesus would have been crucified on a Thursday, not a Friday, buried at sundown, with the Passover “Sabbath” falling on Friday and the weekly Sabbath on Saturday. What one has then is two “Sabbaths” back-to-back.

According to the GPeter the sealed tomb of Jesus is dramatically opened by two men who descend from heaven in a blinding light on Saturday night, not Sunday morning. The stone is rolled back and while the guards watch in astonishment the two go into the tomb and lead out a third, namely Jesus, with a walking-talking cross following them. The heads of the two “reach up to heaven,” while the head of Jesus “reaches beyond the heavens,” which I take is a way of describing their ascent to heaven (9:1-3).

Early Sunday morning “Mary of Magdala,” who is, quite significantly I think, called a disciple of the Lord, comes with some friends to complete the rites of Jewish burial and mourning, completely unaware that the tomb has been opened and is empty. They encounter a young man in the tomb, just as in the gospel of Mark, who tells them Jesus is risen and gone to heaven. They flee the tomb in fear and amazement (13:1-3). A week passes, the Passover feast is over with the last of the seven days of Unleavened Bread, and the disciples return home to Galilee, with Peter and Andrew resuming their fishing. There the text abruptly ends, though the original clearly went on with some kind of closing which is now lost to us. Whether it included any appearance of Jesus in Galilee, we can’t be sure.

What I find particularly significant about these sections of the text is that like Mark it has no appearances of Jesus, the women flee the tomb, and the disciples return home to their fishing in Galilee. There are no appearances in Jerusalem—to Mary Magdalene, to Peter, or to the Twelve. Also, in this text there are really “two” empty tomb narratives, one on Saturday night, when the tomb is vacated, and the other Sunday morning when the women visit and discover it empty.

I am convinced that the GPeter does indeed preserve an independent and early version of the last days of Jesus but with dramatic miraculous embellishments inserted at a later time. But even with these fantastic elements (the flashing angels and “talking cross”), the bare narrative sequence is most interesting—both in terms of chronology and content. Notice these elements:

• Jesus is crucified on a Thursday, with double Sabbaths falling on Friday and Saturday
• The tomb is empty on Saturday night after the Sabbath is over
• The women find the empty tomb on Sunday morning and flee the scene
• The disciples return to their homes and resume their work as fishermen in Galilee

These elements correspond closely to my own reconstruction of events based on a critical reading of our canonical gospels of Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John as I present them in The Jesus Dynasty, though I did not base my conclusions on the GPeter. I think the fourth element, regarding the return to Galilee, is particularly intriguing. Most everyone has in his or her head the movie version of the post-resurrection scenes that one finds in Luke 24 and John 20 where Jesus appears to his disciples on several occasions in Jerusalem. Luke not only reports nothing of the Galilee tradition but he seems to explicitly counter it in the scene where Jesus tells his disciples to stay in the city until Shavuot/Pentecost (Luke 24:49). In contrast the Galilee tradition is all that Mark knows, and Matthew follows him wholly in that regard. John 21, which is an appended ending to that Gospel, offers a most interesting account of Jesus encountering the disciples in Galilee when they have gone back to their fishing business. It is that tradition that the GPeter also seems to know, placing the return home, as one would expect, following the seven days of Unleavened Bread at the end of the Passover holiday. If one accepts that the empty tomb visit by Mary Magdalene and the women early Sunday morning belongs to a more original or earlier strata of the GPeter, as I am convinced is the case, then we have another independent witness to this all but forgotten post-resurrection scenario with no appearances of Jesus to the disciples in Jerusalem following the discovery of the empty tomb and their return to their fishing business in Galilee. This essential outline of things is supported by Mark, Matthew, John 21, and the GPeter with the alternative Jerusalem scenario found only in Luke 24 and John 20.

There is a very intriguing story, unique to the gospel of John, about a wedding attended by Jesus and his disciples at the Galilean village of Cana (John 2:1-11). Within the gospel of John the story functions in a theological and even allegorical manner–it is the “first” of seven signs, the “water into wine” story, but that is not to say it lacks any historical foundation. The story is part of an earlier written narrative that scholars call the “Signs Source,” now embedded in the gospel of John much like the Q source is embedded in Matthew and Luke. Many scholars consider the Signs Source to be our most primitive gospel narrative, earlier than, and independent from, the gospel of Mark. Most readers of John’s gospel concentrate on the long “red letter” speeches and dialogues of Jesus with the lofty language about him as the “Son” sent from heaven, in cosmic struggle with “the Jews” who are cast in a pejorative light. Such elements are apparently a much later theological overlay, as they are absent from this primitive narrative source. The work was written to promote the simple affirmation that Jesus was the Messiah, the anointed King of the line of David, and to explain how his death was part of the plan of God. This narrative source is written in a completely different style from the later material now in John’s gospel. It moves along from scene to scene with vivid details and in gripping narrative flow.

The elements of the Cana story are fascinating. Jesus and his disciples, who have been down in the Jordan valley with John the Baptizer, return to the area to join the wedding celebration. Jesus’ mother Mary (though unnamed in John) and his brothers are already there (2:12), so it seems to be some kind of “family affair.” Indeed, Mary seems to be at some level officially involved in the celebration as a kind of co-hostess since she takes charge of things when the wine planned for the occasion, unexpectedly runs out, indicating either that the crowd was larger than expected or that things became quite festive, or both. Mary turns to Jesus and the rest of the story is well known to everyone–he miraculously turns six stone vessels, filled initially with water, into the finest wine. But beyond the “miracle” or the “sign,” a number of other quite interesting questions arise.

First, one has to ask why the lack of wine would be a concern of Mary, Jesus’ mother? And what do we know about Cana? And most important, whose wedding was this and why was Jesus and his family present in the first place?

Let’s begin with Cana itself. What do we know about it? Most tourists are taken to the traditional site of Cana (Kefr Kenna) near Nazareth on the road to Tiberius that the Franciscans maintain. The problem is this location has no Roman period ruins and most certainly is not the place mentioned in the New Testament. Its veneration began sometime in the Middle Ages. An alternative site, Khirbet Qana, is 8 miles northwest of Nazareth and 12 miles west of the Sea of Galilee. It is high on a hill overlooking the Bet Netofa valley. This location has much more evidence in its favor. Professor Doug Edwards, of the University of Puget Sound, has been excavating there since 1998 and what he has found seems fairly decisive, including 2nd Temple period tombs, houses, and possibly a beth midrash or synagogue. Evidence of Christian veneration at this site dates back to the 6th century CE.

Right after the wedding, according to John 2:12, Jesus goes to Capernaum and with him are his disciples, but also his mother and his brothers. I think that implies the whole family, including the brothers (and thus the sisters) were not only at the wedding but are now traveling with him. They go to Capernaum, where he sets up a kind “residence” or operational HQ, according to the tradition that Mark has received (see Mark 2:1; 3:19; 9:33 and the references to the house and being ‘at home.”). Mark knows nothing of Cana but John mentions it again when Jesus returns from a trip to Judea where he stirred up a considerable amount of trouble and needs someplace to “lay low.” He and his disciples go back to Cana (John 4:46). Why go back there if the first visit was just for a wedding and had no connection to him? I think this is important in that it seems to become for Jesus a kind of “safe house” or place of operations when he needs to retreat to Galilee, much like Capernaum.

There is definitely a “Jesus connection” to Cana, parallel to the one that Mark reports regarding Capernaum. Peter Richardson, of the University of Toronto, has written a significant academic article on this point titled “What Has Cana to Do with Capernaum?” (New Testament Studies 2002:48: 314-331) that I highly recommend. He argues that the significant differences on geographical matters between the Synoptics with their sources and John with its sources–especially the question of Jesus’ “place”–should not be resolved simply in favor of Mark. Cana as a place in John is as significant as Capernaum in Mark. In fact, Richardson argues that Cana served as an operational base for Jesus according to the tradition that John reflects. It is interesting to note that during the Jewish Revolt Josephus, commander of the Jewish forces in Galilee, made Cana his strategic headquarters for a time (Life 86). Its prime location, overlooking Sepphoris and the cities of the Bet Netofa valley made it an ideal location.

John indicates the connection in the last chapter of his gospel, where he says that the disciple Nathanael, mentioned only in the gospel of John (see previous post on names in Mark and John), is from Cana in Galilee (21:2). Nathanael is mentioned earlier in the gospel of John as an early follower or disciple, associated with Andrew of Bethsaida (1:45). He is most often identified as one of the Twelve, under his father’s name, Bar-Tholomew or “Bar Tolmai” in Aramaic, in Mark’s list of the disciples (Mark 3:18). I find this identification likely.

Given this background all we can do is speculate. I think we can assume that Mary, the mother of Jesus, is somehow involved in the wedding and since we know Jesus and his disciples, as well as his brothers are there, it is not a passing event but some kind of family affair. And since he returns to the place when things get heated for him and his disciples in Judea, it is a safe place for him, and one to which he is connected. So whose was the wedding? Or can we even make a wild guess?

Many have suggested that the wedding at Cana was that of Jesus. I find this unlikely. Even though the account is very “allegorical” as it comes to us in John, and it is accordingly hard to derive historical material therefrom, the way in which Jesus shows up with his disciples, when his mother and brothers are already there, indicates to me that the wedding is of someone else. My own guess would be that it is the wedding of either one of his brothers or sisters. Since Mary is involved, but not, as I read it, the hostess, and the wedding is held in Cana, my guess is that it is most likely the wedding of Jesus’ brother James to a sister or daughter of Nathanael, thus accounting for it being held in that village. Cana then becomes a place to which Jesus can return, and as with Capernaum, it served as a kind of “home” for him.

I have of late become persuaded that Jesus well might have been married, and this represents a change of mind for me that I have detailed elsewhere on this Blog. If such be the case it seems impossible to tell whether he would have been married long before this point in his life, perhaps in his 20s, or whether he chose not to be married into his adult life, and only subsequently did so closer to the end.

I am reading with the greatest benefit, pleasure, and admiration, Richard Bauckham’s massive new study, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses: The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony (Eerdmans, 2006).

For those who know my own work, and that of Bauckham, this high praise might come as a surprise, since it seems Richard and I are on opposite poles of the earth when it comes to theological perspectives and outlooks. Bauckham is such a thorough and careful researcher and a clear writer, I have benefited greatly from all his works, particularly, what I consider to be his masterpiece, Jude and the Relatives of Jesus in the Early Church.

This latest work is truly monumental and the data that Bauckham collects, as well as his methods and arguments in the work, merit careful consideration by historians of early Christianity. On Bauckham’s central thesis, namely that our N.T. gospels are based on eyewitness testimony of those who personally encountered Jesus, and what he concludes therefrom, I have serious reservations. On the other hand, I do indeed think that our two main narrative sources (Mark and John), and our primary teaching source (Q), are far from theological creations of anonymous communities, significantly removed from the historical Jesus. I also agree that within these sources are embedded something very close to what one might call “eyewitness” material, that is, material that is not simply created out of whole cloth as some type of theological fiction. What I think has to be factored in, however, are the sharp and diametrically opposing theological “camps” that were part and parcel of the first forty years of the movement, namely the views of Paul and those of James and Jesus’ original followers. In other words, the “products” we finally get in our gospels are wholly influenced by the triumph of Paul’s theology and perspective, his “Christ faith,” as Bousset, Reitzenstein, Baur, Bultmann, Schweitzer, Klausner, and others have called it. And the master narrative, really the “only” narrative, in the ears of most of us, is that of Luke’s account in Acts, that I take to be almost wholly contrary to what was actually going on in the Jerusalem based Jesus movement of the Nazarenes before Paul came along. Those issues I will argue more fully in my forthcoming book on Paul, but in this post I wanted to pick up on an aspect of Bauckham’s latest work, namely the carefully work he has done on the proper names mentioned in our gospel sources, that I think is as fascinating as it is valuable for historical purposes.

If we take the names mentioned in Mark and John, excluding public persons such as Herod or Pilate, and the names of the Twelve, we get the following very interesting lists for comparison:

Levi of Alphaeus (2:14)*

Jairus (5:22)

Mary mother of Jesus (6:3)

Jesus’ brothers: James, Joses, Judas, and Simon (6:3)

Bartimaeus son of Timaeus (10:46)

Simon the leper of Bethany (14:3)

Simon of Cyrene and his sons Alexander and Rufus (15:21)

Joseph of Arimathea (15:21)

Mary Magdalene (15:40, 47; 16:1)

Mary, mother of James and Joses (15:40, 47; 16:1)*

Salome (15:40)

Nathanael (1:45)*

Nicodemus (3:1)

Joseph, father of Jesus (1:45; 6:42)

Lazarus, Mary & Martha (11:1)

Malchus (18:10)

Mary Magdalene (19:25; 20:1, 18)

Mary of Clopas (19:25)

Joseph of Arimathea (19:38)

I have put a * by the italicized names of Levi of Alphaeus in Mark, and Nathanael in John, as some traditions identify Levi as the apostle Matthew and Nathanael as Bartholomew, both of the Twelve.

I want to draw out a number of observations about these two lists. First, In terms of the names themselves, notice the following four sharp contrasts:

* Mark mentions Jesus’ mother Mary and the names of his four brothers but never mentions his father Joseph.
* John in contrast, never mentions the names of any of Jesus’ brothers nor that of his mother.

* Mark knows nothing of the family of Lazarus and his two sisters, Martha and Mary, and he has the anointing of Jesus at Bethany done by an anonymous woman in the house of Simon the Leper.
* John knows nothing of Simon the Leper and states that Mary of Bethany was the one who anointed Jesus.

* Mark knows nothing of Nicodemus, involved in burial of Jesus, whom John gives a prominent role.
* John knows nothing of Simon, father of Alexander and Rufus, carrying Jesus cross.

* Mark has a blind begger, Bartimus, healed by Jesus at Jericho and John knows no such person or story.
* John says the man’s whose ear was cut off by Peter at the arrest of Jesus was named Malchus, something Mark does not know.

What stands out here I think is that Mark and John together have precious few names, and the names they have, other than the ones in bold, do not in any way correspond to one another. Mark and John seem to clearly be drawing upon different traditions, given the unique names that each knows, unknown or unmentioned by the other. Also, the named individuals suddenly seem to cluster at the end of each gospel, in contrast to the opening chapters (Mark 1-9 and John 1-10).

In contrast, in terms of who was at the crucifixion scene, and involved in the burial, they suddenly agree on three names: Mary Magdalene, Joseph of Arimathea, and a mysterious “Mary” that Matthew calls “the other Mary,” whom Mark says was the mother of James and Joses, and John says was “of Clophas” (probably, but not certainly meaning “wife of”). I have argued elsewhere, on this Blog and in my book, The Jesus Dynasty, that this “other Mary” is actually the mother of Jesus, married to Joseph’s brother Clophas, but for my purposes here I will not go into this. My point is that in terms of named individuals Mark and John have an impressive agreement about this particular scene in the life of Jesus, and that the roles of the two Marys, and of Joseph of Arimathea are crucial to each of them. This is all the more impressive in the light of the fact, as seen here, that they never share any other of these unique names in common.

I think this supports further the idea I have been discussing in this series of posts comparing Mark and John, that they reflect independent traditions, each drawing upon their separate sources, and here I agree with Bauckham, that eyewitness materials play a part in this process. Both the gospel of Mark and the gospel of John are wholly shaped by theological concerns, there is no doubting that. However, when it comes to these names, various core stories, certain narrative frameworks, places and locations, chronological indications (especially in John), and a basic story flow, I am not convinced we are dealing with materials that are simply “constructed,” as if one is writing theological fiction. The trick is to identify the theologically embellished material and separate it out from its underlying core. I think this can often be done, not perfectly, but with some degree of assurance. For example, we can be quite sure Jesus ate a last meal with his disciples, as both John and Mark report, but whether the words associated with the “bread” and the “wine” that Mark records are historical is quite questionable on many grounds. In the same way, I think we can be quite sure that Jesus was put in a temporary tomb after his crucifixion and that Joseph of Arimathea was involved in that burial, attended minimally by Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of James and Joses. In the same way I lean strongly toward accepting the “historicity” of the empty tomb narratives, at their core, with Jesus’ corpse moved to another location for permanent burial, while the accounts of the various “appearances,” first in Matthew, then greatly expanded by Luke and John, are closer to theological/apologetic testimony than history per se. The task of sorting through this material is perhaps more “art” than “science,” but it is not “unscientific,” in that it relies upon the critical methods historians use to evaluate any textual materials.

I find the unique names in Mark and John, with minimal exceptions of Joseph and the two Marys at the cross and burial, to be quite important in support of the position I hold that Mark and John offer us independent traditions and I am grateful to Bauckham for working all this out in the fashion he does in his book with some very detailed charts that include names in all four gospels.