The Historical Jesus

Many bible scholars today separate the real Jesus from the one who is recorded in the Gospels. Let me explain their thinking.

1. Jesus lived, built a following and then for whatever reason was crucified and buried. Most scholars of all types (even unbelievers) would agree with this.

2. From Jesus' ministry the early Christians created stories by word of mouth about Jesus. The early church passed down these sayings from group to group and person to person, adding to and taking from the original stories. Every time it was passed on to another, it took slightly different form. Additions were made to address immediate issues and some things were left out because they were not important to the early believers. The stories that fared best were those stories that met the needs of a young growing church. These stories were eventually tied together and put into writing - not necessarily by an apostle or the friend of the apostle, but by a scribe who simply pieced together different stories written or oral. Decades later Church leaders claimed the writings were written by certain apostles or friends of apostles.

3. There were also those who held on to sayings that Jesus said and repeated those to others until Gospels were written with only the sayings of Jesus - such as the Gospel of Thomas (found among the Nag Hammadi texts) and the yet unproven gospel called "Q."

4. Eventually Mark used Q and other stories to build his Gospel.

5. Matthew and then Luke borrowed from Mark and from the other sources to create what is now their gospels. There is disagreement as to how each gospel was built, but this idea remains the same -- the real Jesus was lost to the stories that were created about him after he died.

6. The real Jesus is called "The Jesus of History," and the Jesus that has been handed down to us from the early church stories is "The Jesus of Faith."

7. Many modern scholars believe that with the proper tools we can strip away the layers of legend and discover a closer look at the Jesus of History. In fact, the "Jesus Seminar" was created to do just that.

There have been several periods in history when scholars have returned to what is called the "Search for the Historical Jesus." The 19th Century, Mid 20th and now the past few decades have witnessed the attempt to find the real Jesus.

In their attempts to discover So there are some who claim that Jesus was homosexual and held homosexual rituals, some who believe Jesus was a dilusioned messiah wannabe who thought he that God would come to his rescue, some believed that Jesus practiced certain magic and some believe that Jesus was trying to create a political revolution fighting against the wealthy and the powerful, ie. the Roman government and their supporters - the Sadducees and the Pharisees.