The Historical Side of Jesus.

What most people knows about this great character called Jesus is what the scriptures and religions tell them, because the scriptures and religions are meant to raise spirit, faith, hope, and all morality in the human being (or they should); however, truth is, the scriptures were written by people who loved Jesus dearly, Christians, and people who were not historians but good people who desired to build a myth or an uplifting story for you.  And the early Christians were mostly illiterate, and stories about Jesus were passed on orally; thereby growing in the telling of imaginative invention or adding personal beliefs by the individual telling the story.  And they weren’t written down until at least 30 years after Jesus’s death, and often much later. Then, in subsequent decades, the gospels were repeatedly edited.

1) On the one hand (the scriptures side), we have the divine being preaching salvation, the perfect God-man who abhorred any kind of violence against the tyranny of The Romans.

2) On the other hand (the texts of history side), there is a wise yet rebellious man in the TRADITION of Jewish popular revolution; that is, a good and strategic man who heard the cries of The Jewish people, was strongly moved by them, and honestly desired to free them, not only spiritually but physically as well.  And historically there is good evidence that this 2nd man was more real than the first:  For example, the earliest of the New Testament gospels, Mark, does not describe Jesus’s birth or infancy.  The story of the virgin birth is found first in Matthew and Luke, who were attempting to show that Jesus’s birth fulfilled Old Testament prophecy, and thus that he was the messiah–the promised leader who would free Jews from the Romans.  And personally, I see this as an attempt to create a greater divinity and heavenly myth around the man called Jesus, to give future generations hope and faith and a way to believe in something greater than themselves.

Luke also says Joseph (Jesus’s father) was descended from King David, from whose line the messiah was supposed to come; and so build the story of a Roman census so Jesus seems to be born in Bethlehem, King David’s birthplace.  Now, the scriptures say that Mary and Joseph traveled to their place of origin for the census; however, there is no historical record of a census at that time, and the idea that the Romans would require people to return to their place of family origin to be counted is not accurate at all.  And various more inaccuracies appear in the scriptures’ accounts.

Now, historian Josephus says about the Zealots–who were a political movement which sought to incite the people of Judea Province to rebel against the Roman Empire and expel it from the Holy Land by force of arms:  “They persuaded the Jews to revolt, inflicting death on those who continued in obedience to the Roman government, and plundered the houses of this great men.”  So, these revolutions or rebellions were often led by many self-proclaimed Messiahs and men who honestly preached salvation–something common in those days because everybody was waiting for a messiah already.  Josephus then of these men states, “Deceivers and impostors, who under the pretense of divine inspiration fostering revolutionary changes, persuaded the multitude to act like madmen.”

Jesus was not born poor, as the scripture paints this image of great material humility or scarcity.  Joseph was a carpenter, and in those days the whole of society was rock and wood; so his skills in carpentry were well paid, and history tells us that he was in charge of other carpenters as well.  Jesus then inherited his land and his company when Joseph died; he was an artisan who traveled vastly and also became wise in all knowledge.  But Jesus was close to peasant society; all of the images in his parables and his aphorisms are firmly rooted in peasant society and call upon everyday things like a sower, or sowing seed.  But they also call upon images of land owners and relationships between slave owners and slaves, masters and servants.  So Jesus seems to have been aware of that level of the socio-economic mix.  So, he was a very well-known and respected artisan and wise man before starting his ministry as teacher.

History points to the fact that he was prepared to lead the way into a revolution, and that being loved by the great masses he did lead them against the Romans.  And so, think to yourself, why would The Romans kill a lowly spiritual teacher if he was not an actual threat to their POLITICAL rule then…??  But it makes sense that Jesus was crucified for being a physical revolutionary.  By the way, The Jewish people had nothing to do with Jesus’s killing on history’s account; because by Jewish law death by crucifixion was NOT permitted back then.  The fact that Jesus was made into a martyr, gives people a better, more faithful and emotive story; and this helps religion to grow more members.