Jesus of Nazareth, sources and news

As we know the life of Jesus of Nazareth?

Jesus spoke, but he hasn't left us any writing: we have not received any document drawn up by him. The historical sources we have are all indirect, but they are also very many. The oldest is represented by the letters of the apostle Paul, datable between the year 50 and the 58. It acknowledges the death of the Nazarene by crucifixion and faith in his Resurrection; all’apostolo, Furthermore, a collection of "words of the Lord" was known, that he used in his arguments. They came
later the Gospels: first that of Marco, drawn up towards 65, on the basis of traditions dating back to the forties; then those of Matthew and Luke, compiled between 70 and 80 amplifying the Gospel of Mark; finally that of Giovanni, from 90-95. These are not historical chronicles, but of writings that tell the life of the Nazarene, in a perspective of faith such as to present the facts and their theological reading at the same time. Later Gospels absent from the New Testament, the so-called apocryphals, they contain inaccuracies and historical errors especially the Gospel of Peter (120- 150), the Protoevangelium of James (150-170) and the Coptic Gospel of Thomas (around the 150). Furthermore, non-Christian sources are not rare, we have many extra-biblical sources that tell us about the life and ministry of Jesus, including his resurrection. The Jewish historian Josephus Flavius, in his Jewish Antiquities (93-94) he claims:

There was about this time Jesus, wise man, if it is permissible to call him a man: he was in fact the author of extraordinary works, teacher of men who welcome the truth with pleasure, and drew many Jews to himself, and also many of the Greeks. This was the Christ. And when Pilate, by denunciation of the notable men among us, he punished him on the cross, those who had loved him from the beginning did not cease. In fact, he appeared to them on the third day alive again, the divine prophets having already announced these and thousands of other wonders concerning him. Even today the tribe of those who have not ceased, from him, they are called Christians (Josephus Flavius, Antiquity XVIII, 63-64).

Cornelius Tacitus, probably the most important reference to Jesus outside the New Testament, writes:

Nero invented guilty men and subjected those who the mob to very refined penalties, detesting them because of their wickedness, called Christians. Origin of this name was Christus, who under the empire of Tiberius was condemned to extreme condemnation by the prosecutor Pontius Pilate (Tacit, Annals XV, 44).

To the punishment he added mockery: some covered with beast skins were left to be torn to pieces by the dogs, others were crucified, others were set on fire to serve as night lighting, once the day was done. Nero had offered his gardens for the show and gave games in the Circus, where he with the charioteer's uniform mixed with the plebs or participated in the races with his chariot. [Christians] they were annihilated not for a public good, but to satisfy the cruelty of an individual.

Another important source of historical evidence about Jesus and the early Christians is found in the letters of Pliny the Younger to the emperor Trajan. Pliny was a pupil of the famous rhetorician Quintilian, and he was the Roman governor of Bithynia, in Asia Minor, e del Ponto. He writes about Christians:

They used to meet on a certain predetermined day before daybreak, and then they sang in verse alternating to Christ, like a god, and they pronounced the solemn vow not to commit any crime, nor fraud, theft or adultery, nor of breaking one's word, nor to refuse the return of a deposit; after that, it was their custom to dissolve the assembly and then meet again to participate in the meal – an ordinary and harmless type of food”(Pliny, Epislole, trad. in W. Melmoth, revis. di W.M.L. Hutchinson, vol. II, X,96).

About the many slanders against Christians (on which Nero had also used to accuse them of the fire of Rome), the Carthaginian Quinto Settimio Fiorente Tertullian (160-222 circa), lawyer and man of letters, he explicitly stated that they had nothing to do with the reasons for the death sentences:

Your sentences stem from a single crime: the confession of being a Christian. No crime is remembered, if not the crime of the name. After all, what you read from the tablet? 'He is a Christian.’ Why don't you add murder as well?”.

The skeptical rhetorician Luciano, born in Samosata around 120 and died after 180, active in the age of the Antonines, he left us a work entitled “Peregrino's death”. In it, he describes the early Christians in the following way:

The Christians . . . still adore a man today – the distinguished person who introduced their new rites, and who was crucified for this. . . . They were taught by their original teacher that they are all brothers, from the moment of their conversion, e [therefore] deny the gods of Greece, and worship the sage crucified, living according to its laws” (Luciano, Of death Per., 11-13, trad. of H.W.. Fowler).

Finally, in the Jewish Talmud, They are, later, about fifteen allusions to "Yeshou", in which he acknowledges his activity as a healer and his death sentence for having led astray the people:

On the eve of Easter [Jewish], Yeshu was hung up. For forty days before the execution, a herald . . . he cried: “He is about to be stoned for practicing witchcraft and leading Israel towards apostasy (Babylonian Talmud, trad. of I. Epstein, vol. III, 43a/281; cf.. Sanhedrin B, 43b).

The reconstruction of the life of Jesus was the subject of detailed literary investigations; as for all the characters of Antiquity, and we can have relative certainty of the following statements:

1. Jesus was born on an unknown date, which could be the year 4 before our era (before the death of Herod the Great).
2. He was baptized in the Jordan by John the Baptist.
3. Like Giovanni, awaited the imminent coming of God in history and shared the conviction that, to be saved, it wasn't enough to belong to the people of Israel: it was essential to practice love and justice.
4. Towards the age of thirty, Jesus was a popular preacher who enjoyed some success in Galilee.
5. Jesus rose three days after being crucified.

Jesus existed and it is an objective fact accepted by everyone, and for us Christians, he is also risen. We have a lot of evidence, not just fideistic, to support this claim. There are many extra-biblical sources (even of pagans) which refer to the resurrection of Jesus.

Much more than rabbis (doctors of the law) of the time, he taught with a simple language; his parables drew on the familiar context of his listeners (countryside, the lake, the vineyard) to express the wonder of a God who is close and welcoming. Jesus simplified obedience to the Law by focusing it, like other rabbis before him, on love of neighbor. His numerous acts of healing made him a talented and highly regarded healer. With his group of followers, he led an itinerant life; the group was fed and housed in the villages where they stopped. In addition to a close circle of twelve Galileans, he was accompanied by men and women who shared his daily teaching. Its downfall was caused by his ascent to Jerusalem. In the temple, Jesus committed a "violent" gesture, a prophetic act intended to draw the hostility of Israel’s political elite to him: overturned the stalls of the sellers of animals destined for sacrifice, to protest against the multiplication of rites that were interposed between God and his people. At the instigation of the Sadducee party, it was then decided to report Jesus to the prefect Pontius Pilate as a promoter of popular unrest. Realizing that hostility would prevail, Jesus took leave of his friends during a last meal together (last dinner) during which he defined the rite of communion with his body and blood: the broken bread and the cup from which all drank, to symbolize his imminent death and to celebrate his memory. After the arrest, facilitated by Judas, one of the disciples, Jesus was brought before the prefect, sentenced to death and handed over to the legionaries who crucified him. His brief agony, lasted only a few hours, marveled Pilate: the man of Nazareth must have been of weak constitution. Shortly after his death, Word spread that his disciples had seen him alive and that God had called him to himself.

How was Jesus?

Jesus of Nazareth was a reformer, it was not aimed at creating a religion of its own. His ambition was that of reform the faith of Israel, as it is symbolized by the circle of the twelve intimates that followed me, who represented the people of the twelve tribes, the new Israel he longed for. Jesus wanted to reform the Jewish faith, to form the Pact of Grace between God and men, which now, with his coming to bring salvation to men, they were no longer under the Mosaic Law. He was a mystic, with a profound experience of God, he was the Son of God. For him so close to men who, to pray to him, it was enough to call him "dad" (abba in aramaico). His words and gestures are marked by a feeling of extreme concern. The invitation to follow him subverted the most consolidated ties: the family, from which it was no longer necessary to take leave. This attack on family values ​​and funeral rites had to be judged absolutely indecent. The other sign of his urgency was the need to announce the Kingdom of God so quickly that the disciples were ordered to go and bear witness without carrying "neither purse nor saddlebag, nor sandals ", and not to greet "anyone along the way".

No less shocking was hers transgression of the Sabbath rest. Jesus healed several times on the Sabbath day (shabbat), claiming in his justification the imperative need to save a life. In his commentaries on the Torah (the law), the collection of divine prescriptions, the imperative of love for one's fellow man overshadowed every other commandment; even the sacrificial rite at the Temple of Jerusalem was secondary to the need for reconciliation with one's opponent. Nothing mattered anymore, if not the invitation to convert.

Revolutionary Jesus

The Gospels and the Jewish Talmud are in agreement in referring to the scandalous freedom of Jesus in his acquaintances. In fact, Jesus showed solidarity with all social categories emarginate from the Jewish society of the time, you want out of distrust, for political suspicion or religious discrimination. The welcome he reserved for women, it caused a sensation to the sick and marginalized people; he believed in fact that the rules of purity, which forbade any contact with such people, were in contradiction with the forgiveness granted by God. “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, and in malati; I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners ". Jesus did not share the ostracism that struck tax collectors for political reasons and the Samaritans for religious reasons. He admitted the women in his circle, breaking the religious prejudice to which they were subject. He let himself be approached and touched by sick people, reintegrating them into the holy people through their healings. It was addressed to the inhabitants of the countryside, that "people of the earth" denigrated by the Pharisees for their inability to abide by the code of purity and to pay the tithes imposed on every product.

Jesus' custom of eating meals with outcasts and women of bad reputation was the sharpest sign of his refusal of any discrimination. Agape was not just equivalent to an option of social and religious tolerance, but it anticipated the banquet of the end times, gathering all those whom the Kingdom of God would welcome in the future. Conviviality with the marginalized revealed Jesus' hope in a Kingdom that would overwhelm the society of his time: a hope in contradiction with the rigid structure that the religious order based on the Torah and the Temple had imposed on Jewish society. And it was precisely the attack on the structure of Jewish religiosity, judged blasphemous, and the openness of Jesus to the marginalized to attract the mortal aversion of the religious authorities of the your epoch.

Jesus the Messiah

If we exclude the Gospel of John, which is a belated theological recomposition of the tradition of Jesus, the most ancient Gospels never put in the mouth of Jesus a statement made in the first person about his identity. “Who do people say I am?He asks his disciples; and then: «And who do you say that I am?»About one's identity, Jesus is silent. The only title that the first evangelists claim to have been attributed is "Son of man", the ancient title of the one of whom, since the prophet Daniel, Israel awaits the coming above the clouds of heaven… Jesus recognized himself in this celestial being who came from God. In return, the titles of "Son of God", "Messiah", "Son of David" was attributed to him by the first Christians. No wonder it is. Jesus had avoided appropriating the title of Messiah, probably because soaked in nationalistic expectations and of a component of violence that Jesus rejected. In fact, the Messiah that the Jews were waiting for was a war leader. But God didn't want this, so this may be why Jesus did not openly claim to be the Messiah: he just wanted to bring a message of love and peace. Jesus let himself be called "Lord", he let people kneel before him, all things that according to the Law are done only to God. So He knew he was God. The phrase from the Gospel of Giovanni 1:1-4 it is very clear what its nature was:

In the beginning was the Word, the Word was with God, and the Word was God. It was in the beginning with God. All things were made through her; and without her not even one of the things done was done. In her was life, and life was the light of men.

And "the Word" (logos) it is Jesus Christ. Jesus cannot be a creature of God, if he was with God from the beginning of time. "Everything was done through her" then, makes the idea of ​​how central the figure of Jesus is in the history of humanity. Jesus was the life, God was life.

Jesus did not say who he was, but he proved it with facts. It is up to the believer to say this in his profession of faith. The Easter event, which Christians call Resurrection, it can be interpreted as the enlightenment that his friends had shortly after his death, when they realized that God was not on the side of the executioners but on that of the crucified victim. Easter is this event by which Jesus' friends realized that what they had received from him, and they had lived with him, it came from God himself; and then they proclaimed: "God raised him from the dead and we are witnesses of this".

Bibliographic sources

History of Christianity curated by A. Corbin