Salt & Light; The Complete Jesus

263 Pages·2022·16.663 MB·English

by  Jonathan G Dean

Copyright © 2022 by Jonathan Geoffrey Dean
First Edition July 2022
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form, or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying,
recording, or any information browsing, storage, or retrieval system, without permission in writing from Jonathan Geoffrey Dean,
except by reviewers, who may quote brief passages in a review.
ISBN
978-1-7782504-2-2 (Hardcover)
978-1-7782504-0-8 (Paperback)
978-1-7782504-1-5 (eBook)
Front cover image by Alexander Awerin. The image shows a portion of one of the doors of the unfinished Sagrada Familia
basilica in Barcelona, Spain.
Genres: Nonfiction, History, Historical Jesus, Christianity, Biography
RELIGION / Biblical Criticism & Interpretation / New Testament
RELIGION / Biblical Commentary / New Testament / Jesus, the Gospels & Acts
RELIGION / Biblical Studies / New Testament / Jesus, the Gospels & Acts
RELIGION / Christian Theology / Christology
BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Religious
Keywords: Popular non-fiction, historical non-fiction, Jesus, historical Jesus, religion
& spirituality, New Testament studies, Christology, Christian books, ancient history.
#jesus #christ #christianity #christian #bible #atheism #jesuschrist #gospel
Distributed to the trade by The Ingram Book Company
Visit www.saltandlight.ca
THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED TO ALL THOSE WHO ARE SEARCHING—
EVEN IF THEY’RE NOT SURE WHAT THEY’RE SEARCHING FOR—IN
THE HOPE THAT THEY MAY FIND SOME MEASURE OF TRUTH,
KNOWLEDGE, AND PEACE THROUGH THIS BOOK.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PREFACE AND WELCOME
INTRODUCTION
CHAPTER 1 DID JESUS EXIST?
CHAPTER 2 VIEWS OF JESUS
CHAPTER 3 THE ROAD MAP
CHAPTER 4 COMPILING MY SOURCE LIST
CHAPTER 5 THE DATE RULE
CHAPTER 6 JEWISH SOURCES
CHAPTER 7 MUSLIM SOURCES
CHAPTER 8 CHRISTIAN SOURCES
CHAPTER 9 WHAT MAKES A SOURCE “USEFUL”?
CHAPTER 10 PAGAN SOURCES
CHAPTER 11 APPLYING THE DATE RULE
CHAPTER 12 APPLYING THE CREDIBLE FACTS RULE
CHAPTER 13 ASSESSING THE FOUR GOSPELS (PLUS ACTS)
CHAPTER 14 THE SYNOPTIC PROBLEM
CHAPTER 15 Q
CHAPTER 16 THE GOSPEL OF MARK
CHAPTER 17 THE GOSPEL OF MATTHEW, THE GOSPEL OF LUKE, AND
ACTS OF THE APOSTLES
CHAPTER 18 THE GOSPEL OF JOHN
CHAPTER 19 JOHN AND PETER
CHAPTER 20 PAUL OF TARSUS
CHAPTER 21 APPLYING THE CUSTODY RULE
CHAPTER 22 APPLYING THE REPETITION RULE
CHAPTER 23 THE LAST SOURCES
CHAPTER 24 MY SOURCE LIST
CHAPTER 25 THE EARLY LIFE OF JESUS
CHAPTER 26 THE DATES OF JESUS
CHAPTER 27 JESUS’ ITINERARY
CHAPTER 28 THE PASSION STORY
CHAPTER 29 THE MIRACLES
CHAPTER 30 WHAT DID JESUS SAY?
CHAPTER 31 WHO WAS JESUS?
CHAPTER 32 CONCLUSION
APPENDIX 1. ASSESSMENT OF THE JEWISH SCRIPTURE
APPENDIX 2. MARK’S CHAPTER 13
APPENDIX 3. MARK’S LONGER ENDING
APPENDIX 4. THE SITES OF THE CRUCIFIXION AND THE TOMB
APPENDIX 5. RELICS FROM THE PASSION STORY?
APPENDIX 6. SUBSUMMATION
APPENDIX 7. STARTING AND ENDING SOURCE LIST
BIBLIOGRAPHY
PREFACE AND WELCOME
Ihave written Salt & Light for those, like myself, who want to learn about the authentic Jesus.
This work is intended to be of interest to all people of any and no religious background. I
welcome both the New Testament academic and the person on the street who has never had
exposure to Jesus in any form. I assume no prior knowledge of the sources about Jesus and no
special training, just an open mind and common sense.
This book, the first in a two-book series, has been built using widely disparate research from
the academic world. However, I have unified this information into a straightforward and easy to
grasp form. I provide all the references for further reading and appendices with side discussions
if the gentle reader wishes to dig deeper into any topic.
Salt & Light is the product of more than ten years of reading and thinking on my part. Why
did I write it? Because I am interested in Western Civilization. I am indeed a product of it, part of
it, living in it. And I am thus, albeit in a modest way, contributing to its politics, history, arts,
literature, and culture. Western culture is staggeringly rich, but the most influential work it
produced is undeniably the Christian Bible.
I have read the entire Christian Bible numerous times, and, despite being completely
overwhelmed by the scope of its contents, for me the most compelling part is the stories about
Jesus, namely the four Gospels’1 accounts in the New Testament section of the Bible. Jesus,
incredibly, is the single most important influencer of Western civilization, and perhaps the world.
He was a poor man who taught for a few years in a backwater of the Roman Empire and was
then killed for sedition 2,000 years ago. However, Jesus started the world’s largest movement,
and to billions of people now and in the past, somehow he has served in some form or other as a
model for our humanity. He is compelling and allusive, so, indeed, time spent studying Jesus is
time well spent. After putting the Bible down, I came away wanting to know everything about
him, to get to the complete Jesus once and for all—and this book is the result. I hope you come
along with me on this fascinating journey to discover the Complete Jesus.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
“If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants.”
– Sir Isaac Newton, Letter to Robert Hooke
I gratefully acknowledge the unwavering patience of my wife, Lynn, who has always been “in
my corner” and supportive throughout the creation of this book. I also gratefully acknowledge
the tremendous work of editor-extraordinaire Ariane Magny, whose comments and suggestions I
accepted without hesitation (almost) all the time. I thank those volunteers, including my mother,
Shirley, who read the manuscript in various forms and provided me with vital feedback. I want to
thank all the scholars and researchers in this field, as their diligent work is the bedrock upon
which this book stands. We are lucky to live in a time of rational and free inquiry into matters of
faith. Also, I acknowledge those people and institutions who gave their permissions freely so I
could include certain images for the benefit of the reader.
I have made every effort to attribute works. Any factual errors, errors in attribution, or
uncritical thinking are my fault. You are free to disagree, of course, in whole or in part with
anything I say!
A FEW PRELIMINARIES
• I will use CE (Common Era) and BCE (Before Common Era) for date eras, as they are more
commonly used and therefore less religiously charged, instead of the older AD (Anno
Domini = “in the year of the Lord”) and BC (= Before Christ).
• I will try to use actual dates versus century designations. For instance, instead of saying
“mid-second century CE,” I will write “around 150 CE” or “c. 150 CE.”2 It is less confusing,
although, for the first century CE (years 1–99), I will use the phrase “first century.”3
• I place the death of Jesus on April 1, 33 CE.4
• I will use the traditional names for sources. For instance, I will use the title Gospel of Peter
for that source, even though the disciple Peter did not write the work. I also will refer to John
the Baptist as “the Baptist” to distinguish him from other Johns.
• When it is clear, I will refer to gospels by their traditionally attributed name, for instance,
Mark for the Gospel of Mark.
• I often quote from the New Testament (NT) section of the Christian Bible.5 The New
Testament was written initially in koine Greek, the ancient world’s English. Since then, there
have been many translations of the Bible into most modern and ancient languages (over
2,000 languages!). And within any one language, there are various versions, because a
translation is also an interpretation. This is especially true in modern English, as there are
over 100 major versions of the Bible, all the way from the American Standard Version
(ASV) to the Young Literal Translation (YLT). These include Wycliffe’s Bible (WYC), the
first English version from 1388, the famous King James Version (KJV) of 1611, and The
Message (MSG,) a modern paraphrase in contemporary English from 2002. I will be quoting
from the best seller New International Version (NIV) unless otherwise noted. The NIV is a
popular and scholarly version first published in 1978. I will follow its chapter and verse
notations. There are also many online Bible resources available, including free downloadable
copies of the NIV. As you read through this book, you will find it helpful to have a copy of
the New Testament handy to look up the context and specifics of NT references.
• I will avoid the term “Jesus Christ,” since it relies on assumptions yet to be examined, for
instance, that Jesus is the Jewish Messiah6. For that same reason, I will use “he” or “him” to
refer to Jesus instead of “He” or “Him.” “Christ” is from the Greek Christos, meaning “the
anointed,” which in Hebrew is masiah, or “messiah.” The expressions “Jesus the Anointed”
and “Jesus the Messiah” will also be avoided. Jesus’ actual Aramaic7 name was Yeshua, or
Yahushua, meaning “God’s deliverance.” The name was transliterated into Greek as Iesous,
since Greek masculine names did not end with a vowel. In the 400s CE, scribes transliterated
the Greek into the Latin equivalent, Iesous (Eel-ay-sous). In 1526 CE, William Tyndale’s
translation of the Bible from Latin into English used the English-Germanic “J” to render the
name “Jesus.” However, it was still pronounced “Eel-ay-sous.” Later pronunciation in
English changed to “jay-sous” and then the current “jee-zuz.” I will stick with the English
name “Jesus” or “Jesus of Nazareth.” 8
• In a few cases, where noted, I use images made available under the Creative Commons
Licence, via Wikimedia Commons. For example, “CC BY-SA 3.0” means the Creative
Commons Attribution-ShareAlike Licence version 3.0. I thank the original images
contributors for making the images available. Here is the link to the various licenses used,
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/, and a link to Wikimedia Commons
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page.
1 The Gospel of Mark, the Gospel of John, the Gospel of Luke, and the Gospel of Matthew. The word “gospel” was ultimately
derived from the ancient Greek word euángélion, which means “good news.” It translates into Latin as bonus nuntius (or
evangelium), and to old English as gfldspel, a portmanteau of “good” (god) and “story” (spel). Originally, the expression “the
good news” applied to the Christian message, but over time, it came to mean the major works describing Jesus’ life and
deeds. As we shall see, there are, in fact, more than four gospels.
2 “c.” stands for “circa,” which is the Latin for “approximately.”
3 Although I use the Chicago Manual of Style 17, I have deviated from it in a number of areas to improve clarity.
4 I will thoroughly discuss the reasoning for this date in the Chapter 26.
5 I will use the title New Testament (NT) for clarity, although I will argue this is a misnomer, as it implies a previous
“Testament.”
6 In the Jewish religion the Messiah was an illdefined liberator descended from King David, either a political or religious
leader, who would free the Jews and rule them according to God’s laws. For more information see (The Editors of
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Messiah 2020).
7 Aramaic was the language that Jesus and his followers primarily spoke. Greek and Hebrew also existed, the former being the
common language of non-Jews and the primary written language, while the latter was more the preserve of the religious
establishment. For more information see (The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica, Aramaic language 2018).
8 (Weyler 2008, 54).
INTRODUCTION
Figure 1 Jesus Obscured.
This detail is from a damaged wall painting depicting the story of Jesus (right) and his follower
Peter (left) walking on water. Peter steps out of a boat onto the water with Jesus, but then Peter
starts to sink—one can indeed see the waves starting to come up over him, and he is reaching out
to Jesus to save him. This is a crude picture, taken from the house church in Dura-Europos,
Syria; it could be the oldest datable depiction of Jesus. Archaeologists have dated the work to
233–256 CE, painted a mere 200 years after the alleged event took place. Image courtesy of Yale
University Art Gallery.
Ithink this is a very appropriate picture to start the book. We see a story about Jesus, yet the
figure of Jesus is shadowy, incomplete and ill-defined. It sums up the starting point—Jesus
obscured.
This book is a definitive and complete inquiry into the authentic Jesus. This Jesus is based on
rational thinking, the simplest conjectures, and the best available sources of information. This
project’s building blocks are ideas derived from the critical method of inquiry, often inspired by
academic sources. The critical method is concerned with avoiding, in the case of religious
writings, religious doctrine and human bias by applying a non-sectarian, reason-based approach