Who Was Jesus Really? The Conclusion

Hi, this is Matt Baker. Last year, I did a series of videos on who was Jesus really. In these videos, I looked at some rather far out hypotheses. Not because I thought any of them were likely to be true, but because I thought it would be a fun way to introduce some of the historical context relating to Jesus. Well, in today's video, I'm going to switch gears and finally address the question in a more serious manner because there is in fact a general consensus among scholars about who the historical Jesus actually was. Of course, Christian scholars say that he was God incarnate. But what I'm talking about here is what secular scholars have concluded. And what most secular scholars have concluded is that Jesus was an apocalyptic prophet who was killed for stirring up trouble in Jerusalem during one of the annual Passover festivals. These days, the leading scholar on the historical Jesus is, in my opinion, Bart Erman. So take note that much of what I'll be covering today is based on his books. in particular, Jesus, the apocalyptic prophet of the new millennium, and how Jesus became God, the exaltation of a Jewish preacher from Galilee. But before we jump into it, I want to give you an update on another project I've been working on, and that is improving my French, thanks to today's sponsor, Babel. Babel is one of the top language learning apps in the world, and I've been using it for around 3 months now as a way to challenge myself to improve my pronunciation of foreign words. Of the many different languages it offers, I chose to start with French because, well, I'm Canadian and therefore I felt that I should at least be able to pronounce French words correctly. Let me show you a lesson I did recently and you tell me how I did. Bonjour. We say now, if you are also interested in trying Babel, but are not quite sure if it's going to work out well for you, the good news is that they have a 20-day money back guarantee. And right now is a great time to try it out because they're currently offering 55% off. So click on my link right now to give Babel a try. Now back to the historical Jesus. So the first thing I have to explain is what an apocalyptic prophet is. To do that, let's go back around 750 years before Jesus and look at the role that prophets originally played in ancient Israel and Judah. So this is my timeline of biblical composition chart. As you can see, the oldest books in the entire Hebrew Bible are Amos, Hosea, Micah, and Isaiah. Take note that both Micah and Isaiah were added to later. So when it comes to those two, I'm referring to the first portions of the books only. What all four of these early prophets have in common is that they were writing during the time when the northern kingdom of Israel was about to fall to the Assyrian Empire. So their goal was to prevent this from happening by trying to convince the Israelites to change their ways. But here's the important thing. Their message was to the nation as a whole, not to each person individually. And their focus was on one particular sin, not bad behavior in general. And that one particular sin was idolatry. So the message was stop worshiping other gods and turn back to the one true god, the one known by the four letters yhwh. If you do that, God will help you defeat the Assyrians. Well, we know how the story goes. The Israelites did not defeat the Assyrians, although the southern kingdom of Judah did. Thus, the worship of YHW flourished there, at least for a while. But then a new enemy entered the scene, the Babylonians. So, more prophets were sent again with a similar message to the entire nation. Stop worshiping other gods. If you turn back to the one true God, you will survive. But again, this didn't happen. Judah fell to the Babylonians. Now later the Persians did let the Judahites return to Jerusalem and rebuild their temple. But even though the Judahites, now called Jews, were careful to worship the one true God only, they remained under foreign rule. Thus, the message of the prophets started to change. To demonstrate this, let me show you two very different verses from the Hebrew Bible. The first one is from Exodus 20, which is part of a very old law code that was likely written way back here

around 750 B. CE. It says, "You shall not bow down to other gods or worship them. For I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation. " Contrast this with what was written about 300 years later in the book of Ezekiel around 450 B. CE. The one who sins is the one who will die. The child will not share the guilt of the parent, nor will the parent child. The righteousness of the righteous will be credited to them, and the wickedness of the wicked will be charged against them. So, first of all, there's a shift from national sins to individual sins. But that's not the only difference. In Ezekiel as well as in Zechariah and Joel, we find some of the earliest apocalyptic visions. The word apocalyptic comes from the Greek apocalypsis, which means an unveiling of something hidden. So instead of prophets talking about real physical armies that are about to attack, they instead start talking about invisible entities representing good and evil that are fighting each other in an unseen spirit realm. You see, the idea is that although the good guys always seem to lose down here on Earth, that's just because the unseen battle that is going on upstairs hasn't yet finished. But when it does, everything will be okay because then the triumphant forces of good will come down to earth and make things right here as well. Even the righteous dead will be resurrected. By the time we get to Daniel, which was the very last book in the Hebrew Bible to be written, these ideas had been fleshed out even more. In Daniel 7, we learned that one like a son of man would eventually appear in the clouds and that this figure with God's permission would then come down to earth and rule all nations. Now in the Hebrew Bible, the term son of man or sons of man occurs about 100 times and in each case it always refers to a human being or humans in general. So, in other words, the phrase son of man can basically be swapped out for the word human. But take note, the author of Daniel doesn't say that a human would appear in the clouds. He says that one like a human would. So, the idea is that some sort of spiritual being that looks like a human, perhaps an angel, would eventually appear. In subsequent apocalyptic literature, this spiritual being is simply referred to as the son of man. And his future rule on earth is simply referred to as the kingdom of God. But remember, the son of man was not God, nor was he a human. He was something in between. Again, the closest concept we have for such a being is that of an angel. And we do know that the ancient Jews did believe in angels. So the message that an apocalyptic prophet brings is don't worry, the evil world that you're experiencing right now is going to end very soon. So shape up and be good so that when the son of man comes, you can be part of the new kingdom of God. Which brings us to Jesus because a lot of what Jesus said was along these same lines especially when we look at Matthew, Mark, and Luke which are our earliest sources as opposed to John which was written later. For example, Jesus often references this son of man character like in Mark where he says, "Whoever is ashamed of me and my words of that person will the son of man also be ashamed when he comes. " Now, if you're a Christian or a former Christian, you're probably used to assuming that whenever Jesus refers to the Son of Man, he's referring to himself. But if you take his words at face value and put yourself in the place of the people who first heard those words, it actually makes more sense to assume that he is talking about someone else, a figure that everyone was familiar with who had not yet come. Jesus also talked a lot about the kingdom of God. In fact, his very first words in Mark are, "The time has come. The kingdom of God is almost here. " A few chapters later, he's way more specific. He says, "I tell you the truth, there are some standing here today who will not taste death until they see the kingdom of God come in power. " Now, Christians are taught to understand this as referring to Jesus's resurrection and the giving of the Holy Spirit. But to the people who were listening at the time, they would definitely have interpreted it in the Jewish apocalyptic sense, they would have understood it to mean that the Romans were about to be crushed and that

the kingdom of God was about to be established on earth within their own lifetimes. Hence, the urgency to repent and make changes to their life right then and there. On top of this, all of Jesus's actions were basically him modeling what the sooncoming kingdom of God was going to look like. So soon there would be no more disease, hence Jesus healed the sick. Soon there would be no more war, hence Jesus encouraged nonviolence. And soon there would be no more poverty, hence Jesus told people to give away their possessions in order to help the poor. But here's the really important one. Soon the current temple would be replaced with a new one. Hence, Jesus went to the temple and flipped over a bunch of tables, creating a scene. It was this final symbolic gesture that likely got him in trouble. From the Christian perspective, the story of Jesus and the money changers at the temple is not all that important. It's just one of the many strange things that Jesus did during his time on Earth. But when it comes to the historical Jesus, it very well might be the most important part of the story. You see, it's included in all four gospels. Yet, like I say, it's not really all that central to the Christian message. In fact, it kind of goes against how Jesus is usually portrayed, which is very gentle and nonviolent. Therefore, it is very likely that this is one of the events recorded in the Gospels that did in fact actually happen. Now, it may seem odd that the Romans would have killed a guy just for flipping over some tables. But you see, there was an additional aspect to Jesus's teachings that only he and his inner circle knew about. In fact, the gospel writers make it super clear that he wanted to keep this part secret. And the secret was that when the kingdom of God was established, Jesus was going to be in charge with his 12 disciples ruling directly under him. Now the word used in the gospels for Jesus being in charge is Messiah. And here once again it's important to put aside later notions of what the word Messiah means and think about what it meant in its original context because it simply meant anointed one or king or ruler. So let me set the scene for you. It's Passover week and the situation is really tense because Jerusalem is super crowded, especially with out oftowners who the Romans saw as potential troublemakers. Remember also that Passover was literally a holiday designed to remind the Jews of a time when they escaped from foreign rule. So, the Romans would definitely have been on guard for any potential threats. Then during this intense week, the normally passive Jesus makes a big scene at the temple and all of the sudden he and his disciples are under close scrutiny. One of the 12, Judas, gets scared and basically rats Jesus out, telling the authorities what Jesus had said in secret about being a future ruler. Then Jesus gets pulled in before Pilate doesn't deny it. So just to be on the safe side, Pilate has him crucified. And that's basically who Jesus was. Just one of many apocalyptic prophets in first century Judea who were out there telling people that the world as they knew it was about to end and who got himself in deep trouble for doing so. So how did he go from that to being thought of as God incarnate? Well, first of all, imagine it from the perspective of his followers. They like many others over the centuries really believed that the world was about to end and that they had been chosen by God for a very special purpose. Thus, instead of simply abandoning all their deeply held beliefs after Jesus died, they simply tweaked them a bit. We know that it's a very common psychological phenomenon for people to have visions of dead loved ones, especially in cases when the death was very unexpected and/or traumatic. We also know that it's a very common psychological phenomenon for people in tight-knit religious groups to all claim to have had the same experience. So, think about it from the perspective of someone who believed in apocalyptic Judaism. They think that the resurrection of the dead is coming soon. And now they have a dead person, their leader, [clears throat] talking to them. So, maybe he's just the first of many to be raised from the dead. Maybe he's the son of man who's going to return soon to usher in the kingdom of God. That would make sense to them because after all, he said he was going to be the anointed one. Thus, the earliest form of Christianity is born. One in which Jesus was a human who then after death was exalted by God to a

special position in preparation for the sooncoming apocalypse. Bart Earman calls this early form of the religion exaltation Christianity. And interestingly within the writings of Paul, we have the traces of some very early creeds which were most likely originally oral creeds that quite clearly represent this view. For example, at the very beginning of the epistle to the Romans, there's a section that stands out as being highly structured and which uses words that Paul does not use anywhere else. It goes like this. Who was descended from the seed of David according to the flesh who was appointed son of God in power according to the spirit of holiness. Take note that there's no mention of an empty tomb here. And no mention of Jesus ever having existed prior to his earthly life. Just him being appointed or exalted after his death. And just because it uses the phrase son of God, that doesn't mean that whoever wrote this thought of Jesus as being equal to God. In fact, in those days, the term son or sons of God was often used to refer to angels. In fact, there is another verse in the Pauline epistles that makes it clear that Paul thought of Jesus as an angel, not as God. In Galatians 4:14, he writes, "Though my condition was a trial to you, you did not scorn or despise me, but received me as an angel of God, as Christ Jesus. " Now, the assumption made by Christians is that he meant you treated me like an angel. No, even better. Jesus. But the Greek here is actually quite clear. It means you treated me like an angel. an angel such as Jesus. Okay, so the earliest form of Christianity had Jesus simply being exalted to an angel-like position after death so that he could now take on the role of the Son of Man, who would appear in the clouds and usher in the kingdom of God. All of which the earliest Christians still expected would occur within their own lifetimes. One piece of evidence for this is the fact that Paul says in 1 Thessalonians, "For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, and the dead in Christ will rise first. After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. " So, the expectation was that some would die, but also that some would still be living when Jesus came back. Now, pretty quickly, debates arose over the exact details of who Jesus was. Some started to think that maybe he had already been an angel while he was here on earth. Others thought that maybe he had been an angel before he was born on earth. This last idea quickly evolved into what man calls incarnation Christianity. The idea being that Jesus was an already existing spiritual being who was then incarnated into a human body. Paul in particular liked this idea and combined it with the idea that Jesus's death paid for our sins. But then the author of John who wrote the very last gospel 70 plus years after the crucifixion took things even further. He equated Jesus with God himself. You see, by this point, Jerusalem and its temple had been completely destroyed, and Jesus had quite clearly not come back. Therefore, Christianity started to shift away from its original apocalyptic message and more towards its salvation message, which now had Jesus as the replacement for the now destroyed temple. But don't assume that everybody was happy with this particular version of Christianity this early on because it would take the new religion over 200 more years for the majority of its leaders to finally agree on it and several more hundred years before all the other variations of Christianity were stamped out. So there you have it. That is who Jesus was according to most secular scholars. He was an apocalyptic prophet who taught that the world was going to end soon. But he got himself killed by stating that he was going to be the ruler in the future kingdom of God. Only later in the decades after his death was Jesus reinterpreted to fit the needs of those he left behind. So that brings us to the end of this particular series. In another month or so, I'll do what I've done with my other religion series, and that is to combine all of the episodes into one single video for easier sharing and accessing in the future. Thanks for watching.