JESUS CHRIST

Early Christian interest in the birth, infancy, and childhood of Jesus Christ was surprisingly only a peripheral concern for the writers of the New Testament. Only Matthew and Luke record any of the details of Jesus’ birth, whereas Mark, John, Paul, and others pass over that period in Jesus’ life with absolute silence. One of the key features of the earliest accounts is the events they record are bound directly to the eyewitness tradition; therefore, the events that were witnessed by the disciples or others are the ones reported by the evangelists. Only in a limited number of instances do the Gospels Interest in other events appears to have developed only in the second century, attested in part by the fact that early Christians celebrated the date of Jesus Christ’s baptism (January 6) before they celebrated the date of his birth. However, in the second century and later, Christian authors began reporting the legendary accounts of otherwise unknown acts and deeds of Jesus Christ not reported in the New Testament. These apocryphal accounts were successful in the second century and later because they built on a well-known canonical foundation that could be borrowed from to lend credibility; they also fed an interest in knowing more than the public accounts reported.

The following excerpt aptly represents the unlikely tenor of the infancy narratives: “Now after some days Jesus was playing on a roof in the upper storey, and one of the children who were playing with him fell down from the roof and died. And when the other children saw it they fled, and Jesus remained alone. And the parents of him that was dead came and accused him of having thrown him down. And Jesus replied: ‘I did not throw him down.’ But they continued to revile him. Then Jesus leaped down from the roof and stood by the body of the child, and cried with a loud voice: ‘Zenon’-for that was his name-‘arise and tell me, did I throw you down?’ And he arose at once and said: ‘No, Lord, you did not throw me down, but raised me up’ ” (The Infancy Story of Thomas 9.1-3, translated by Oscar Cullman, in New Testament Apocrypha 1:446).

The Jewish scriptures (the Hebrew Bible or Old Testament) were not finalized in its current form until the end of the New Testament period, about A.D. 90. Before this time, various Jewish groups or sects held differing views about which of the Jewish writings were authoritative. Virtually all groups accepted the five books of Moses, known as the Law (Torah). However, the Pharisees, unlike the Sadducees, also accepted the books that constitute the “Prophets” and the “Writings,” books such as Esther, the Psalms, and Job. Jesus Christ refers to this threefold division-Law, Prophets, and Psalms-during a post-resurrection appearance (see Luke 24:44).

Outside Jerusalem, Greek-speaking Diaspora Jews read their sacred writings in translation. The Septuagint, a Greek translation of the Hebrew bible, eventually played a much more significant role in the early Christian church than it did in Judaism. It contained more material than what is found in the Hebrew texts. The additional material found in the Greek Bible, but not in the Hebrew Bible, is now found in the Apocrypha.

The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, beginning in 1947, gave scholars a rare opportunity to study the process of transmission and selection of the Jewish writings that eventually were placed in the Hebrew Bible. Additionally, the scrolls included a variety of other documents, indicating that during this period of creativity, the Hebrew canon was still open, at least for some Jewish groups.

Some of the material connected with New Testament books in modern editions of the Bible was not part of the autographs, or original compositions, by the authors. Instead, these materials are translations of scribal additions and commentary and include titles, postscripts or subscriptions, and glosses.

When the writings of the New Testament began to be gathered and copied in groups-such as a codex of the four Gospels or a collection of Paul’s letters-or when a variety of gospels became available to a single congregation, it became necessary to identify books by titles. These titles were written as superscriptions above the beginning of the text being copied. For the four Gospels, all of which are internally anonymous and never explicitly name their authors in their texts, these titles represented early Christian traditions of who wrote the Gospel. Because they came to be seen as different versions or understandings of the same Gospel, each was entitled simply “according to,” with each individual evangelist writing a Gospel (euangellion) of Jesus Christ and with a later edition adding a designation to distinguish the author. The Joseph Smith Translation has re-titled two of the Gospels, Matthew and John, as “the testimony of.” The titles added to the epistles were originally quite simple, such as “To the Romans” (pros Rōmaious). The addressees, and later the authors, for these titles could usually be derived directly from references in the texts of the letters themselves; however, in some cases, such as Hebrews, the title “To the Hebrews” and the attribution to Paul had to be deduced from the overall content and from tradition.

Although the terms “postscripts” and “subscripts” in common parlance are sometimes used synonymously, a postscript was technically a formal summary of the contents or an addition made by the author himself, used to verify the letter, the body of which had been written by a scribe. An example of this is 2 Thessalonians 3:17, where Paul wrote, “The salutation of Paul with my own hand, which is the token in every epistle: so I write.” A subscription, on the other hand, was added by a copyist after the text had been copied. Early subscriptions sometimes simply indicated the end of the book but increasingly took to recording traditional information about where the book was thought to have been written and who either the scribe or the letter carrier had been. Because the earliest of these appear in the fourth century and were often only the scribes’ opinions, they sometimes appear to be wrong. For instance, the subscription to 1 Thessalonians says, “The first epistle unto the Thessalonians was written from Athens.” 1 Thessalonians 3:1-6, taken together with Acts 18:1-5, makes it clear that Paul wrote the letter from Corinth, after he had left Athens and when Timothy had come to Corinth with news about the church in Thessalonica.

Glosses are brief explanations of words and phrases that copyists wrote in the margins or between the lines of manuscripts. Longer interpretive explanations are called scholia. Examples of glosses include synonyms for difficult words that a copyist did not expect his readers to understand as well as phrases clarifying a particular word. Although the scholia were usually kept separate from the actual text, subsequent copyists sometimes included glosses within the text itself. As a result, some manuscripts of Mark 3:14 follow “And he ordained twelve” with the explanatory phrase “whom also he named apostles,” which is probably a gloss borrowed from Luke 6:13 to clarify exactly who these twelve men were. A longer gloss that made it into many English Bibles is John 5:4 about the angel who troubled the waters of the Pool of Bethesda, which does not appear in many manuscripts and which may be a scribal explanation.

A growing number of scholars are advocating that we replace the New Testament Gospels with some recently discovered texts from antiquity, primarily the Nag Hammadi codicies discovered in Egypt in 1945. They argue that these texts predate the canonical Gospels. The discovered texts from Egypt are important because they provide a window on the world of the second and third centuries A.D.

Even though the canonical texts are ostensibly our earliest sources for the study of Christianity in the first century, some scholars have advocated increasingly early dates for some of these newly discovered texts. If, for example, some text from Nag Hammadi predates our canonical Gospel, then we could rewrite Christian history from another perspective-namely, the perspective of Gnostic Christianity. The claim that a certain text promises to rewrite Christianity is continually used as a selling point for many of these textual discoveries.

Surprisingly, some texts in the New Testament itself-the pastoral letters (1-2 Timothy and Titus) and the epistles of John-have been dismissed as late Christian forgeries because they denounce Gnosticism. Scholars have long recognized that Gnosticism is a later Christian heresy that began in the latter half of the first century, yet when new textual discoveries that are written by Gnostic Christians surface, there is a general push to date them earlier than some of our canonical sources. If the Pastoral epistles and the epistles of John are widely recognized as late Christian texts because they treat the subject of Gnosticism, then other texts written by Gnostics should likewise be dated late.

The real questions that these texts should be encouraging are whether Gnostic Christians were in the majority by the end of the first century or whether the proliferation of Gnostic texts is a witness to the regional popularity of that movement in certain areas of the empire, such as Egypt. Dozens and dozens of Gnostic texts have been identified; for every canonical text, there are at least three or four surviving Gnostic texts. The sheer volume of texts testifies to the popularity of the movement.

But the volume of texts does not provide evidence about the earliness of these documents. They are widely recognized as late, and even in situations where a Gnostic text is dated early, there is a subsequent later dating for the Gnostic materials in the document. In other words, many of the texts that are dated early also contain information that should be dated late. So, for example, the Gospel of Thomas may contain some elements from the decades before A.D. 70, but much of it comes from the end of the first century.

The same statement is not generally true of the Gospels. They have early and late materials in them, but the time span covered by that dating is not as broad as with the non-canonical materials. The Gospel of Matthew, for example, contains materials that go directly back to Jesus Christ, whereas some of the information, such as the narrative settings and the genealogy composed by Matthew, are later, around the time of A.D. 70. Therefore, the Gospel of Matthew’s latest material is equal in time frame to the Gospel of Thomas’ earliest material. The New Testament Gospels and epistles are the earliest sources on what Jesus said and did.

Of the four gospels, only Matthew and Luke give an account of the Jesus Christ’s conception and birth. Written from two different perspectives and containing different details, these two narratives complement each other and together paint an important picture of the nativity, including that Jesus’ mother was named Mary, that she lived at one time in Nazareth, that he would be born near Jerusalem, and that his conception was a divine miracle.

Although Matthew testifies that Mary conceived by the power of God, he emphasizes that Jesus Christ was the son of David by the genealogy at the beginning of the birth narrative and by his focus on the role of Joseph, Jesus’ legal father. Through dreams, Joseph received instructions to wed Mary, accept and name the infant Jesus, and move the family when threatened by Herod and then his son Archelaus. Through the use of quotations from the Old Testament, Matthew further demonstrates how Jesus Christ’s birth fulfilled messianic prophecies.

Luke’s account, on the other hand, frequently illustrates Mary’s perspective and includes more personal and family information. His retelling of the annunciation preserves the stirring angelic instruction that Mary received, and her visit to Elizabeth provided both of them with spiritual confirmations regarding the roles their sons would play. In addition to details of the night of Jesus’ birth, Luke’s narrative also includes accounts of the naming and circumcision of Jesus, his presentation in the temple, and his teaching in the temple as a twelve-year-old.

Some of the aspects of the two narratives that traditional tellings of the Christmas story frequently harmonize provide interesting details when read separately. Matthew gives no indication that Joseph himself was from Nazareth, perhaps suggesting that he or his family were from Bethlehem or owned property there, the traditional home of King David, or that Mary was from Bethlehem, perhaps owning land there. In Luke’s account, when Joseph took Mary to Bethlehem shortly after their marriage, their accommodations seemed improvised. Interestingly, the word katalyma, traditionally translated as “inn” and often interpreted to mean a caravansary or camp, can also mean “guest room” (the other time Luke uses this word, it is for the “upper room” of the Last Supper in Luke 22:11-12). Luke’s account features angels and shepherds, who find the child in the well-known manger, whereas Matthew’s account has the Magi arrive later, and they find the family by that time living in an actual house.

Joseph seems to have intended to keep the family in Bethlehem, leaving only when warned that Herod wanted to kill the child. Herod’s death in 4 B.C. helps date the account, for that is when Joseph brought the family back from Egypt to Nazareth. Finding Herod’s unstable son Archelaus ruling in Judea, Joseph, again warned in a dream, decided to take the family instead to Nazareth which may have been Mary’s home. His fears were justified; ten years later, in A. D. 6, the Romans deposed Archelaus at the instigation of the Jews themselves because of his violence and misrule. This was also the year that P. Sulpicius Quirinus, or “Cyrenius,” began his governorship in Syria. Although B.C. 6 is the date Luke seems to give for Jesus Christ’s birth, historically, it was the year when Judea became a province.

Even the most casual reader of the Bible senses vast differences in the types of materials included in the Old and New Testaments. One obvious example of differences that we encounter between the Old and New Testaments appears in common personal names. In the Old Testament, we become familiar with the names Jacob, Joshua, Miriam, Hannah, and Elijah. In the New Testament, we read regularly of James, Jesus, Mary, Anna, and Elias. In actuality, those New Testament names are the English equivalents of the Greek and Hebrew names in the Bible. The case is much like the names of Paul and Paulo. They are the same name, but one is English and the other is Italian.

The Old Testament has come down to us in Hebrew, with a few Aramaic sections, and the New Testament comes to us in Greek. Some New Testament names have no Old Testament equivalents, as Greek and Latin names had been introduced into Jewish nomenclature by the beginning of the first century. For example, Andreas (Andrew) and Philippos (Phillip) both were Greek names. Marcus (Mark) andPaulus (Paul) are Latin names. As we would expect, when the gospel message spread throughout the Mediterranean basin, Paul encountered an increasing number of people who bore Greek and Roman names that had no relationship to the names of the Old Testament.

Some names found in the New Testament are of Jewish origin but do not appear in the Old Testament. For example, Martha and Cephas are Aramaic names. The New Testament preserves several Aramaic names through transliteration, with the transliterated name in Greek, followed by a translation of the Aramaic into Greek. For example, Mark preserves the Aramaic name of the blind man Jesus Christ met in Jericho and then translated it for his audience as “Bartimaeus, the son of Timaeus” (Mark 10:46). In some cases, the author did not provide a translation of the name-for example, “And they appointed two, Joseph called Barsabas, who was surnamed Justus” (Act 1:23). Barsabas derives from the two Aramaic words bar and sabas. The passage could be rendered, “Joseph, the son of the elder, whose surname was Justus.” Justus is Latin.

In one example, the English form of a name (James) is used in the New Testament even though the Greek provides the transliteration lakōbos of the Hebrew name Yakob. In another, the Old Testament and the New Testament preserve the same name of Joseph.

The New Testament name Jesus (Greek lēsuos) is based on the Hebrew Yēshua (meaning “salvation”; see it in use in Isaiah 12:2, last word). Although linguistically related, Joshua (Hebrew Yehoshua, meaning “Jehovah saves”) and Yeshua are not the same name. The following list attempts to approximate the possible etymological origins of several prominent names in the four Gospel narratives (the Hebrew Old Testament name and the New Testament equivalent). In each case, the name has been transliterated into English: Eleazar (Lazarus); Elisheba (Elizabeth); Elijah (Elias); Hannah (Anna); Miriam (Mary); Noah (Noe); Simeon (Simon); Jonah (Jonas/Jona); Isaiah (Isaias); Judah (Judas/Jude).

Modern readers are usually familiar with the term Messiah both in its Hebrew form (transliterated into modern English as “Messiah”) and in its Greek form (Christ, a modernized spelling of Christos). Both terms mean “anointed” and can be used in a general sense, such as in a sacrifice that is anointed before being offered, and in a technical sense to refer to someone who will come and fulfill the role of the Messiah.

Typically, Christians in the modern era think of the Messiah as a distinct person, Jesus Christ, and speak of the Messiah as having already lived. This refined and specific definition of Messiah has encouraged Christian scholars to look back into the story of Jesus Christ and speak of what the Jews of the first century expected in their Messiah, as though their expectations were parallel to what modern Christians think about the Messiah. This process often causes modern readers to speak of the Jews as having missed their Messiah, in part to emphasize that they were looking for the wrong type of Messiah.

Looking at the same issue from a Jewish perspective yields a very different set of conclusions. First, in the first century AD it is not clear from the surviving evidence that the Jews thought of the messiah as a divine person: rather, they thought of people like Cyrus of Persia as a messiah who delivered the Jewish people from Babylonian captivity (Daniel 9:25-26). Other people, who were anointed by the Lord to deliver the Jewish people, could be considered messiahs. Second, some Jewish groups like those who wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls expected two messiahs, each with a different role to fulfill. One role of the Dead Sea Scroll community’s messiah was to lead the members into war against foreign oppressors and thereby to redeem Israel. Finally, the subjugation of Judea and Galilee, first by Seleucid rulers in the post-Alexander era and then eventually by Roman occupiers of the land in the first century BC, likely heightened Jewish emphasis on the expectation that the Lord would send a messiah who would deliver the Lord’s people from oppression. Those who looked for this deliverer appear to have thought of him in terms of Joshua, Cyrus, Zerubbabel, and later Simon bar Kochba.

Today Jews are divided with respect to the role the messiah will play. Some, like orthodox Jews, look for a future redemptive messiah who will help Israel regain its former glory. Others, such as reform Jews, look at those who help the Jews, both nationally and individually, as messiahs. Because of their contributions in helping the Jews, these individuals can be considered messiahs.

Christians on the other hand, think of the return of the Messiah, and they interpret that return in specific ways. The return of the Messiah is often described using apocalyptic terminology and the coming of the Messiah will initiate an age in which the righteous will overthrow the oppressive domination of the kingdoms of the world and establish a new Messianic kingdom. The Messiah will return to earth as a Savior, although the return will be a heavenly descent rather than through birth as in the first coming. Specifically, many Christians look forward to a time when the Messiah will return to earth and appear in Jerusalem on the Mount of Olives, where he will split the mount and save Israel from its enemies (Zechariah 14:1-7).

The genealogy that opens Matthew’s Gospel begins with the formula, “The book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham” (Matthew 1:1). Beginning with Abraham, it ends with Joseph, “the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus, who is called Christ” (Matthew 1:16). Although the subsequent text makes it clear that the infant Jesus was conceived by the power of the Holy Ghost, Joseph accepted full responsibility for Jesus Christ, as illustrated by his formal naming of the baby in Matthew 1:25. This act constituted legal recognition of Jesus as Joseph’s son and helps explain the prominence of Joseph in Matthew’s infancy narrative-as compared to Luke’s, where Mary takes the more central role.

The Matthean genealogy is broken into three sets of fourteen generations. These divisions stretch from Abraham to David, from David to the exile, and from the exile to Jesus Christ. The first of these periods was roughly 750 years, the second 400, and the third 600, making it unlikely that each period actually consisted of fourteen generations. By being selective about which names he included in the list, Matthew was able to stress the significance of the number fourteen, the numerical equivalent of the name David, emphasizing the Gospel theme that Jesus Christ was the rightful son of David.

The emphasis on Jesus’ descent from Abraham suggest another, often overlooked, theme-that Jesus Christ was the seed of Abraham through which all the nations of the earth would be blessed (Genesis 22:18). In addition to Mary-and rather than the expected four matriarchs of Genesis (Sarah, Rebekah, Rachel, and Leah)-the genealogy surprisingly includes four different women, all with colorful histories: Thamar (Tamar, Genesis 38), Rachab (Rahab, Joshua 2); Ruth (Ruth 2-4); and the wife of Uriah (Bathsheba, 2 Samuel 11-12). These women acted instead of being acted upon. Furthermore, because they were foreigners or outsiders, their positions in the ancestry of Jesus Christ may symbolize that everyone has a part in Christ.

A supposed letter of Clement of Alexandria (c. A.D. 150-c. 200) refers to a second edition of the Gospel of Mark, a private account, known today as the “Secret Gospel of Mark.” A medieval copy of the letter was purportedly discovered in the Greek Orthodox monastery of Mar Saba in the Judean wilderness in 1958 and was published in 1973 (see The Secret Gospel of Mark, 15-17).

The letter provided a previously unknown tradition about Mark and his writing activities. “As for Mark, then, during Peter’s stay in Rome he wrote an account of the lord’s doings, not, however, declaring all of them, nor yet hinting at the secret ones, but selecting those he thought most useful for increasing the faith of those who were being instructed. But when Peter died a martyr, Mark came over to Alexandria, bringing both his own notes and those of Peter, from which he transferred to his former book the things suitable to whatever makes for progress toward knowledge (gnōsis). Thus he composed a more spiritual Gospel for the use of those who were being perfected. Nevertheless, he yet did not divulge the things not to be uttered, nor did he write down the hierophantic teaching of the Lord, but to the stories already written he added yet others and, moreover, brought in certain sayings of which he knew the interpretation would, as a mystagogue, lead the hearers into the innermost sanctuary of that truth hidden by seven veils. Thus, in sum, he prearranged matters, neither grudgingly nor incautiously, in my opinion, and, dying, he left his composition to the church in Alexandria, where it even yet is most carefully guarded, being read only to those who are being initiated into the great mysteries.”

A second passage, although extremely short, fills the well-known awkward gap in Mark 10:46 when Jesus Christ came to Jericho. Following Mark 10:46a, “And they came to Jericho,” and before Mark 10:46b, “and as he went out of Jericho,” the Secret Gospel of Mark add the phrase, “And the sister of the youth whom Jesus loved and his mother and Salome were there, and Jesus did not receive them.” This interesting addition includes a reference to Salome, who is mentioned only in Mark (see Mark 15:40; 16:1) and in a parallel to the story of the “beloved disciple” in John (see John 13:23; 19:26; 20:2; 21:7, 20, 24).

Scholarly debate on the validity of the report of the discovery and the authenticity of the letter itself has been at times acrimonious, and there have been charges of forgery-some suggesting the document is an ancient forgery and/or that the discoverer forged it and fabricated the story of discovery itself. Although some scholars reject the “Secret Gospel,” as they do all other non-canonical texts, others have argued that canonical Mark postdates the Secret Gospel, believing that the canonical Mark is based on the Secret Mark. Additionally, interpretations of the Secret Gospel passages preserved in Clement’s letter also generate debate among scholars, some of whom have provided highly controversial interpretations of the meaning. Unless scholars can access the original document, many believe that it is not fruitful to consider it as an authentic ancient text that provides additional insights to the Gospel of Mark.

In the Gospel of Mark, Jesus Christ is identified as a tektōn, often translated as “carpenter” in many New Testament versions (Mark 6:3). In Matthew, Joseph is also indentified as the same (Matthew 13:55). It was not uncommon for a son or dependent to follow in the trade of his father or guardian, so it is not surprising that Joseph and Jesus are identified with the same trade in the Gospels. Additionally people were some times identified with their trade (see Acts 10:5).

Tektōn has been interpreted in various ways since New Testament times, including the generally accepted terms “carpenter” or “builder.” Joseph and Jesus may have built household furniture or homes working specifically with lintels and joists (the main wood components in a first-century house). Later traditions describe his employment as “making plows and yokes” for oxen (Didache 88:8). Another tradition prefers interpreting the word for carpenter as a homebuilder (Gospel of James 9:3). Some modern scholars point out the tektōn can also mean a stonemason. In a small village like Nazareth, we could expect Joseph and Jesus Christ to use their talents in various ways, including working with wood and stone.