Re-Claiming the Bible for a Non-Religious World by Bishop John Shelby Spong

Author:Bishop John Shelby Spong [Spong, Bishop John Shelby]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780062098696
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers Australia
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 28

Dating the Historical Jesus

In order to understand the New Testament with any real integrity, that document must also, as we have just demonstrated with the Old Testament, be placed into its historical setting. The events in the life of Jesus of Nazareth did not happen in a vacuum, nor are these biblically described events necessarily history, as history is now defined. Understanding the New Testament requires both of these realities to be embraced. Not only was Jesus born in, shaped by and interpreted through a particular period of history, but the narrative details of his life found in the gospels were not recorded until somewhere between two and three generations after his life had come to its end. Both of these facts are ignored in many church circles today.

First we need to seek to fix the dates around the life of Jesus. That is accomplished by an appeal to both the remembered story of his life and the secular records that we can locate, which date other people who appear in his story. It is not an exact science, but it is the best we have and is, I believe, in general a trustworthy guide.

Accounts of Jesus’ birth are recorded in only two of the gospels, Matthew and Luke. While no reputable scholar today thinks of these stories as literal history, we do find some historical links in the stories that we can use for dating purposes. Both gospels associate the birth of Jesus with the reign of King Herod, who was known as Herod the Great. Matthew, the earlier of these two sources, weaves his story of the wise men around references to the reign of Herod. He also casts Herod in the familiar Jewish role of the wicked king who sought to destroy God’s promised deliverer. Matthew, in effect, retells the story of Moses as if it were a Jesus story, simply substituting Herod for the pharaoh. While these human stories are messianic interpretations and not remembered history, there is no reason to suggest that this means the anchoring of the birth of Jesus to the reign of Herod was itself fanciful. Matthew is even more specific than this, suggesting that the birth of Jesus took place near the end of Herod’s reign, just prior to his death. When we turn to secular records, we learn that Herod reigned in this Jewish nation from 37 BCE until his death in 4 BCE.

We also know from historical records that, at the time of Herod’s death, the Jewish nation was subdivided into three provinces, each ruled first by the sons of Herod and later, at least in the case of the province known as Judea, which was the partial successor to the nation of Judah, by an appointed Roman procurator.

Luke confirms this tradition when he dates the births of both John the Baptist and Jesus as occurring when Herod was king of Judea. Luke adds that this was also when Caesar Augustus was on the throne of the Roman Empire and Quirinius was governor of Syria.

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