Book Review - 'Jesus 100 Years Before Christ' by Alvar Ellegård
I read a lot of books on biblical scholarship and the like, but I rarely find them remarkable enough to post about. This one is an exception.
The general consensus among biblical scholars is that there was probably a radical Jewish teacher, a Yeshua ben Yosef, whose preachings in early 1st century Palestine caused the emergence of a new movement, and decades later on people who had not been eyewitnesses (though some hold the notion that the theoretical Synoptic Sayings document may have been originally written by eyewitnesses) wrote some pieces of highly fictionalized and politicized religious biography that became thought of as (pardon the pun) gospel truth to believers, and continues to be so to this day.
Mr. Ellegård makes quite a different case in his book. Biblical scholars have always worked to try to find the truth of things, discarding assumptions, but one assumption they have kept is that there was actually some sort of historical figure in Palestine around that time to cause such a fuss. It's natural to see why that assumption remains--it seems so obvious! How else could all of this have come about?
The problem, Ellegård contends, is that there is no convincing contemporary evidence that this is so.
So the question became, what would an investigation into Christianity's early history look like if one doesn't start with that assumption? This book gives one compelling answer to that question.
Ellegård starts by dating books a little differently than most scholars. He has solid reasons for his dates (which he goes into with great and sometimes annoying detail (something one gets used to in this genre of book)). He places the Pauline letters as the earliest Christian writings, along with other works like the Pastor of Hermas, 1 Clement, Didache, and some others. These books all have things in common, but the most telling thing for Ellegård is that they don't touch on Jesus's earthly life at all. They speak of visions of the risen christ, or christ in heaven, and there is discussion of his death on the cross... and that's it. In fact, they speak of him very much as someone killed in the distant past and now giving revelatory visions to the Saints (as they called themselves) because of the approach of the end times. This despite that if the traditional dating of the life of Jesus is taken as correct, Paul was Jesus's contemporary.
Then, in the early second century C.E., we suddenly begin to have stories of a Jesus Christ who lived a life in 1st century Palestine and was crucified under Pontius Pilate. We are told of his birth, his family, his travels, companions, preachings, and death. None of this appears before the writings of Ignatius--Paul, in particular, said nothing of the prominent religious leaders he met with in Jerusalem - Peter, James, and such - being the unlettered fishermen that the gospels say followed the earthly Jesus and witnessed his death and physical resurrection.
Why this discrepancy? Mr. Ellegård has a theory, which he supports fairly well: What was to be known as Christianity began as a branch of the para-Essene Church of God, a religious movement in the Jewish Diaspora. This movement has an essentially Jewish outlook, with a lot of Essene and some Gnostic influence. In particular, the Essene tradition of the Teacher of Righteousness, a leader and possibly founder of their movement, who was betrayed and killed by the political powers of his time. Into this movement comes Paul and his contemporaries, who have visions of this ancient leader, who Paul (or someone before him) names Jesus. Paul's message is that this man was not just a great teacher and prophet--he was also the messiah, the christ (both words translate as 'anointed'. In Jewish tradition, a messiah was generally a man of great spiritual importance, but by this time there was a tradition in Jewish thought of a singular messiah who would come to lift up the chosen people). Paul, in his vision, had seen Jesus in heaven, and now spread the word that this meant salvation - eternal life.
This is where Christianity (a word not to be used for decades yet) started to form as a truly separate entity. As time passed and it gathered followers throughout the Diaspora, different branches and traditions began to form. Gnostics, who had a lot in common with these early Christians, in particular began to convert and/or merge, and form influential branches of Christianity. From this was born what became known as the docetic heresy, the belief that Jesus was never truly a human, but merely a spiritual emissary who seemed to be a man.
It is Ellegård's theory that the biographical stories were written because of an early 2nd-century movement to combat that point of view, painting a definite picture of Jesus as a flesh-and-blood human They had the Synoptic Sayings document, they had oral traditions and Paul's mention of the names of his contemporaries in Jerusalem. All that remained was to build a story around that, and such was done. We call the fruits of this work the Gospels.
The rest of the story is pretty much the same as the generally understood story - the different sects of Christianity, each with their own favoured books and their own spokespeople, continued to exist and conflict, with no real 'mainstream' existing until the Council of Nicaea nailed down 'official' canonicity. By this time, the Gospels were so popular that their historicity was in no doubt. And that's how we got to the Christianity of today, roughly.
On the whole, I think Mr. Ellegård makes his case well, but when I hold myself away from bias I can see that it's not really more convincing than the traditional scholarly explanations... though it does raise some questions I'd like to see more mainstream scholars try to answer.
But here's the kicker--I want it to be true. So when I'm not holding myself away from bias, I'm all thumbs up, yep, uh-huh. Because I want the gospels to lose even the thin veneer of legitimacy they have as historical fiction. I want to stomp out these poisonous lies, and being able to think of them as pure, baseless fiction with no referent at all... feels good.
So, a good book. Whatever conclusions one comes to about its claims, it's a book that promotes thinking. Certainly did for me. About the bible, and about myself.
I love you.
Serafina