The question “who killed Jesus” is a deceptively simple question. If you ask different people, you’ll get wildly different answers. Here are some that I’ve heard over the years: Let’s look at each of these answers and see what we can learn. We’ll see that they fall into two basic groups, depending on what they’re trying to explain. Did “Your Sins” Kill Jesus? It’s common for Christians to say that their sins killed Jesus. The first thing to notice is that this is a theological claim. And what do I mean by a theological claim? I mean that this is …
Jesus of Nazareth
The Job Titles of Jesus
To understand the story of Jesus, it’s helpful to ask what his job title was. If you asked a modern Christian, they’d probably say something like this: The job title of Jesus was to be the Messiah, which is the same thing as the biological Son of God, which is the same thing as the Second Person of the Trinity. But if you asked Jewish people in the first century, you’d have got a whole range of answers. Here is a list of a number of job titles that the New Testament tells us that Jewish people in the first …
The Violent World of Jesus of Nazareth
Jesus of Nazareth was born into a violent world. Much like ours, only different. At the time Jesus was born, Judea and Samaria and Galilee had been under the control of the Roman empire for about sixty years. King Herod the Great ruled over these regions as a “client king” of Rome—meaning that he answered to Caesar and ruled in Caesar’s name. Rome dominated its empire, usually by threats of violence, and (when necessary) by actual violence. Herod the Great dominated his kingdom in the same way, by threats and by force. Herod was an evil, violent man. He killed …
What Do We Really Know About Mary Magdalene?
Mary Magdalene is one of the most mysterious people mentioned in the Bible. Was she really a prostitute? Was she really married to Jesus of Nazareth? In this blog post, I’ll cover the 9 New Testament passages that mention Mary Magdalene in first-century sources. That’s right—there are only 9 passages in the entire Bible that mention Mary Magdalene. Financial Support in Galilee Luke 8 tells how Jesus walked around Galilee with 12 disciples and a number of women who gave him financial support. The first woman on the list is Mary Magdalene, and Luke tells us Jesus cast 7 demons …
The Mysterious Disciple Jesus Loved
The gospel of John refers several times to “the disciple Jesus loved.” But this gospel never tells us exactly who this disciple is. And no other book of the Bible gives us any direct evidence about this disciple’s identity. You’ve probably heard many times that it’s “obvious” that the Beloved Disciple was John the son of Zebedee, one of the Twelve. But many biblical scholars think that it’s not really obvious at all. They’ve suggested a number of other options. The problem is that there isn’t any consensus on this question among scholars. In this blog post, we’ll look at …
How We Know Jesus Existed
You might think that everybody at least agrees that Jesus of Nazareth existed. Because we have quite a lot of evidence for that, right? But a surprising number of people in the US actually think Jesus never existed, that he’s all a myth. Let’s be clear that they’re not claiming the resurrection of Jesus is a myth. They claim there wasn’t even a crucifixion of Jesus. They claim there wasn’t a Jesus to crucify. Many of them claim that Nazareth itself wasn’t populated at the time of Jesus. There’s a term for these people. They’re called “Jesus mythicists.” What the …
Jesus and the Third Way of Salvation
In the time of Jesus, his family and friends and countrymen thought there were two main ways to salvation, and they argued about which was the better way. Before we talk about these Two Ways of Salvation, we should first define what we mean by “salvation.” It meant something different two thousand years ago than it does today. If you ask an American Christian in the 21st century what “salvation” means, they’ll tell you that it has to do with going to heaven when you die. And making sure you avoid the other place. But that is not what Jews …
The Five Sons of Mother Mary
According to the gospel of Mark, (see Mark 6:3), Jesus of Nazareth had four brothers and at least two sisters. That raises the question of how, exactly, these siblings were related to Jesus. Over the centuries, people have suggested three theories: They were children of Mary and Joseph. They were children of Joseph by a previous wife. They were cousins of Jesus. I discussed all this in a previous blog post, Mother’s Day With Jesus, so I won’t go over that ground again. My own opinion is that the four “brothers of Jesus” were biological sons of both Mary and …
Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews
In my last blog post, Jesus and Palm Sunday, I talked about how Jesus committed sedition by climbing on a donkey and riding down the Mount of Olives into Jerusalem. Every Jew of his time knew the tradition of “Mashiach’s Donkey”—the oracle of the prophet Zechariah about a coming Mashiach (“Messiah” in English) who would someday enter Jerusalem riding on a donkey. They knew many other traditions about Mashiach from oracles in Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Zechariah, Micah, and various other prophets: That he would restore the kingdom of his father David. That he would reunite the two tribes of the …
Jesus and Palm Sunday
Palm Sunday celebrates the day Jesus entered Jerusalem in a remarkable procession that sealed his death warrant. Historians don’t agree on the exact year of this extraordinary event. According to the gospel of John, it was a year in which Passover Eve fell on a Friday. Most scholars would put this in either the year AD 33 or AD 30. I think the evidence leans a little toward AD 33, but it wouldn’t shock me if it was AD 30 instead. On that fateful Sunday, Jesus left Jericho in the morning and made the 16-mile climb up the Jericho Road …