Author: Alan Z.

Page on the resurrection is now up

Today I finally finished my page assessing the evidence for the resurrection of Jesus. I cover Paul’s list of appearances in 1 Corinthians, the empty tomb story in the four gospels, and the three gospel accounts of Jesus’ appearances. I published the page this afternoon and invite you to take a look.

Honestly, I did not expect to reach all of the “conclusions” (always tentative) that I did. It is surprising how much a close reading of the scriptures, even those you are very familiar with, may give you a different perspective.

Alan

Why didn’t this occur to me?

In a post a few days ago I mentioned that both Luke and John tell the story of Peter returning to the empty tomb to see it for himself, and that it caused me to question whether John knew one at least one of the synoptic gospels, the gospel of Luke. I was working on the assumption that John did not know the synoptics, therefore he and Mark must have been drawing from an independent narrative known to both.

My thinking was this. If Mark did not know the story of Peter returning to the tomb, it couldn’t have been in the earlier narrative. Then how did John know it? He must have gotten it from Luke, therefore John at least knew the gospel of Luke. Right?

Wrong! It occurred to me today that there was a simpler explanation. An early copyist of the gospel of Luke added the one line telling the story of Peter to harmonize it with the story in John. I checked and sure enough, the line (Lk 24:12) is not found in all the early manuscripts. It doesn’t look like there is a consensus on whether it was in the original Luke, but it is certainly possible, and to me likely.

So I wasn’t on my toes when first thinking about this. The good thing is that it did send me looking into more recent research on the independence of John from the synoptics and finding that the experts’ views on this have been changing over the last decade or so. As a result I am being more careful about the idea that John and the synoptics represent independent attestation of an earlier narrative, an example of where my previous knowledge has become outdated.

I didn’t expect to be posting so often, so I hope you don’t mind. I am learning new things as I work on this website, and thought my subscribers would like to follow along and perhaps learn something new themselves.

More on the Temple event and the death of Jesus

Over the weekend I was a virtual attendee at the New Insights on the New Testament Conference 2025. I saw four good presentations by outstanding Biblical scholars, and one half a good presentation when the presenter’s internet connection from Europe lagged too much to understand him.

Two of the presentations were particularly relevant to my page on this website about the Execution of Jesus. Paula Fredriksen gave a thorough discussion of the episode of Jesus’ disruption at the Temple. Helen Bond talked about the last 24 hours in the life of Jesus. I was gratified that neither of these presentations conflicted with the findings on my page! I did slightly revise the page and added a bit of new material to it in light of what they had to say.

Helen Cook emphasized that we don’t know for sure that the Jewish council that condemned Jesus was an official gathering of the full Sanhedrin, and that Jesus’ hearing before Pilate was not a formal “trial” in the way we are accustomed to think of them. Pilate could have condemned Jesus simply on the basis of reports about him if he deemed it necessary; he brought Jesus in for questioning to get a better sense of the person he was dealing with.

I thought both points were sound and so revised my page to remove references to the Sanhedrin and to change the word “trial” when it appeared to “questioning” or “hearing.” Small change but I don’t want my page to have even small inaccuracies when I become aware of them.

Paula Fredriksen had a lot to say about Herod’s Temple and how it functioned. She doubted that Jesus would not have been arrested right away if his disruption actually happened, as there were soldiers watching everything from easy vantage points around the court of the nations where the financial transactions were taking place. As the gospel accounts of the incident conflict on when it happened–John moved it way back to the beginning of Jesus’ public life rather than at the end–she regards it as a separate story from the narrative of Jesus’ final days which the gospel authors placed where they did for literary purposes. Specifically, she suggested Mark inserted it between Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem and his arrest as a transitional device between Jesus’ conflict with Pharisees in Galilee and his conflict with the high priests in Jerusalem. She said it made more sense for Jesus to be arrested quickly after his entry into Jerusalem to avoid any potential problems before they happened. She also used this to explain why Jesus’ disciples were not also arrested.

I thought that was an interesting suggestion and incorporated some of it into my own discussion of the arrest of Jesus, as you will see if you take another look at the final paragraphs.

Unfortunately, none of the presentations were on the resurrection, which I am currently working on. Yeah, I know I keep promising it will soon be ready to publish, but it is getting close. Stay tuned.

Alan

The independence of the gospel of John

Well, here I am posting again much sooner than I thought I would.

I changed my mind about something important while researching the gospel accounts of the discovery of the empty tomb. That led me to do some revision of my already published page on the execution of Jesus, so I wanted to let you know about that change and why I made it.

In writing the page on Jesus’ execution I relied on my memory that the majority opinion of Biblical scholars was that the author of the gospel of John did not know the synoptic gospels (Mark, Matthew and Luke), although there was still a lot of dissenters from that opinion. Looking into this the last day or so, it seems a consensus is emerging that John DID know of the synoptics. The upshot is that I should not treat John as an independent source for the events of Jesus’ life and death.

And life after death! The thing that caught me while comparing the gospel accounts of the empty tomb was that Luke and John say Peter inspected the tomb but Mark and Matthew do not say this. I could not think of a reason why Mark would neglect that story if he knew of it, or why both Luke and John would insert it–unless John knew the gospel of Luke.

Thus a hurried search of current academic opinion on John’s independence, and my realization that I had relied too heavily on my assumption that there were two sources for the story of his execution. I revised that page but found that this new insight did not change my main conclusions.

By the way, I am about two-thirds of the way through a draft of my soon-to-be published page on the resurrection. It’s taking longer than I thought because I keep noticing and discovering new things, so I guess that is a positive.

Onward!

Alan

Why I am writing about Jesus

I was thinking this morning about why I am doing this, spending so much time of late intensely focused on reviewing recent research about Jesus as an historical figure and writing up my evolving views about the subject. It then occurred to me I haven’t explained that anywhere on the website.

So I rewrote the beginning of the homepage again, this time to spell out my motivations. Here is what I added:

My motivations are both personal and political.

On a personal level, I was raised as a Roman Catholic Christian and the teachings and example of Jesus as portrayed in the Christian scriptures are deeply embedded in me. My beliefs about Christianity have altered over time, but I still derive inspiration and guidance from how I understand Jesus. I want to insure that my understanding is well-grounded, and determine how honestly I can consider myself a follower of Jesus.

On a political level, for many years now I have been concerned about the political activities of people who regard themselves as conservative Christians. More recently the rise of Christian nationalism in the U.S., and its hold on many members of the MAGA alliance supporting Donald Trump, is something I want to challenge with better information and understanding of what Jesus actually did and taught.

That is it in a nutshell. I think you deserve to know that as people who have shown enough interest to sign up for my blog, and I think those who take the time to read any of what I’ve written also deserve to know.

Thanks again for your interest and I always appreciation hearing from people.

Alan

I’ve rewritten the page on the execution of Jesus

Hello again. I’ve still been busy reading about recent research and taking notes for reference. In the last couple of days I did an extensive revision on the page about the execution of Jesus, adding some information, correcting a few errors, and clarifying various points. The basic thrust of it is the same, but I think it is a better explanation of the reasons for my conclusions.

I also did some minor editing of the pages on Jesus and history, 1st century Galilee and Judea, and the home page, which I’ve retitled “Welcome to my webiste & blog” to distinguish it from the page on Jesus and history.

Tomorrow I plan to return to working on my draft for the next page, one on the resurrection. It necessitates me doing more research on an unfamiliar argument in order to better assess it, but I expect to have a complete draft ready to publish relatively soon.

Hope this finds you well!

Alan

I’ve rewritten the page on the historicity of Jesus

Today I rewrote the page now re-titled “Jesus and history,” adding some more about my overall view of the historicity of Jesus and clarifying a few points. I also slightly edited two more pages, the homepage “What can we know about Jesus” and the page “1st century Galilee and Judea.”

I haven’t been working on the blog much lately because I’ve been doing a lot of reading and listening to recent podcasts and online lectures about the historical Jesus. New research keeps on being published!

A page on the resurrection appearances was almost ready for me to publish when I came across something I had not heard of before–or if I had, I did not remember it. I hope to get back to that page soon and get it out for your perusal.

New page on the execution of Jesus

Today I uploaded a new page on the circumstances surrounding the execution of Jesus, trying to answer the questions of who was primarily responsible for the decision and what their motivations were. In the course of writing it I carefully re-read and compared the relevant passages of the four canonical Christian gospels and re-read a 2022 book by a Jewish scholar that I originally read sometime in the last couple of years.

I surprised myself with the some of the conclusions I arrived at, particularly that Jesus actually may have seen himself as a Messiah who suffered to atone for the sins of others. This was not the dominant Jewish conception of the Messiah at the time, but it was one mentioned in the famous Dead Sea Scrolls discovered in 1947. I also decided that the relevant passages in the gospels were based on a widely disseminated oral narrative that developed very soon after the death of Jesus.

In addition to publishing the new page, I revised and added to the page on whether Jesus was a real person, and slightly revised the home page.

Next up: the resurrection.

–Alan

Update on Jesus Reconstructed

Hello.

My production of new pages for this website is now slowing somewhat because I am getting to the meatier topics. After completing the page featuring a brief background on life in 1st century Galilee and Judea, I did not want to jump right into Jesus’ life and teachings. First I need to discuss his execution and resurrection, as the authors of our main sources for Jesus’ life–the four gospels of the canonical Christian scriptures–had these very much in mind as they composed their narratives.

I hope to have the page on Jesus’ execution up within a week, followed not too long after by a page on the resurrection.

In the meantime I put up a page with some recent sources I will be referencing on the site or that I am consulting to update my knowledge. Also, a friend noted that I neglected to provide a way to subscribe to this blog! So I added a subscription box at the end of the text on each page. Please subscribe if you would like to keep informed of my progress in adding to and revising the site.

Speaking of revisions, I want to revise the Was Jesus a Real Person? page to make some sections a little clearer. I am waiting until after Saturday, when I will be listening to an online lecture from Bart Ehrman on that very topic. We’ll see if I learn anything new or change my mind about anything.