2.27 What We Know About the Life of Jesus

History in the Bible

Garry Stevens

Judaism, Religion & Spirituality, Christianity

4.4 • 711 Ratings

🗓️ 16 September 2018

⏱️ 35 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Our earliest pagan sources for the life of Jesus - the historians Josephus, Tacitus, and Suetonius - tell us almost nothing about Jesus. The letters of St Paul are uninformative, as are rabbinic sources. We have to rely on the four gospels. These have their own agendas. In this episode I explore the relationships between the synoptic gospels: Mark, Matthew, and Luke. Today, we believe that Mark was the first gospel, and that both Matthew and Luke drew upon Mark. But Matthew and Luke have material in common, material not found in Mark. Where did that come from? Most scholars say it was the mysterious source called "Q". Others disagree.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Gide. I'm Gary Stevens. And welcome to the second series of the History in the Bible podcast.
0:13.1	More of the history in more of the books in all the Bibles.
0:19.8	Episode 2.27. What We Know About the Life of Jesus.
0:27.0	In the last episode, I presented the earliest witness to Christianity.
0:32.8	Paul's first letter to the Thessalonians.
0:36.1	In this episode, I want to introduce all the sources we have
0:41.2	for Jesus' life. Let's start with what early pagan sources tell us of Jesus and his followers. The earliest
0:50.5	reference may, or may not, occur in a letter, written from prison by the little
0:57.4	known Stoic writer Mara Bar Serapian.
1:01.8	Many scholars pin the date of the letter to soon after the destruction of the temple,
1:07.7	40 years after the death of Jesus, around the time that Mark was writing his gospel.
1:14.7	Mara writes to his son about the deaths of Socrates, Pythagoras and a wise king.
1:22.5	Quote, what else can we say when the wise are forcibly dragged off by tyrants?
1:29.1	Their wisdom is captured by insults, and their minds are oppressed.
1:35.0	What advantage did the Athenians gain from murdering Socrates?
1:39.7	What advantage did the men of Samos gain from burning Pythagoras?
1:44.9	What advantage did the Jews of Samos gain from burning Pythagoras? What advantage did the Jews gain from executing their wise king?
1:50.4	It was just after that that their kingdom was abolished.
1:55.1	God justly avenged these three wise men.
1:59.2	The Athenians died of hunger.
2:02.0	The Samians were overwhelmed by the sea.
2:05.4	And the Jews, desolate and driven from their own kingdom.
	...

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