Bible Scandals

Introduction

I work at Tyndale House, a research institute in Cambridge which specialises in biblical studies. A huge number of scholars from all over the world come here for short or long visits, so I'm forever hearing the latest discoveries and theories, and I'm surrounded by all the books and facilities I need to research them further.

Some of these coffee-break length chapters started life as articles in Christianity magazine and I have added many others in a similar style. During the research and writing process I have been at different times annoyed, amazed, dismayed, delighted - and always surprised.

My personal presuppositions are that Jesus is who he claimed to be in the Gospels, and that these accounts represent what actually happened. But, of course, many people, including some of my academic colleagues, have different conclusions so often I address more sceptical viewpoints.

To understand Jesus we have to know something about Jews of the time, and to understand the Gospels it helps a great deal if we read them like a 1st century Jew or Gentile - the people for whom they were written. My specialist area of research is early rabbinic Judaism, but this book also delves into other forms of Judaism like that of the Dead Sea Scrolls, and into Roman and Greek culture. When we look at the Gospels through the eyes of someone from these cultures they appear very different - problems in understanding the text are often solved and unexpected details take us unawares.

This book may challenge many traditional interpretations, but its aim is to find a foundation for historical facts about Jesus. Surprisingly, as the first chapter shows, scandals are a good place to look.

(Buy from Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.com).

Why Look for Scandals?

Scandals are our best guarantee of historical truth in the Gospels. When disgraceful, embarrassing and shocking details about Jesus are recorded by his friends and supporters, it is much harder to disbelieve them.

Jesus was accused of being a bastard, blaspheming, abusing alcohol, partying with prostitutes and working for Satan - in other words, scandal followed him. And a huge part of his teaching and ministry tackled head-on the scandals that pervaded society and would have been regarded as scandalous by his audience.

Scandals are the inconvenient truths which the Gospels could not omit without being dismissed as fiction by their first readers. If there had been no scandals, the Gospel writers wouldn't have invented them - why create potential reasons for people to dismiss Jesus? And if there were scandals, the original readers would remember, so the Gospel writers had to mention them and make a reply.

These scandals supply inadvertent confirmation for Christian claims. The fact that Jesus was charged with blasphemy indicates that he did claim divinity. The fact that he was stigmatised as illegitimate gives at least some credence to the stories of a miraculous birth - though sceptics would say it was a reason for inventing such stories. The fact that he spent time with prostitutes and gangsters indicates that he really did teach that anyone could have their life transformed. And the fact that he was charged with doing miracles by Satan's power demonstrates that even his enemies believed his miracles were real.

The Gospels are a model of how not to win friends and influence people. Their primary audience consisted of Jews and those Gentiles who were friends of Jews, because most of the early converts came from these groups. And yet the Gospels regularly include criticisms of Jewish leaders and generally accepted Jewish beliefs and attitudes. From the financial scams of the Temple to the belief that God rejects all disabled people and that illness is due to sin, Jesus spoke against many of Jewish teachings and practices in embarrassingly public ways.

The Romans, too, didn't escape Jesus' caustic tongue. Their practice of using child slaves as sex-toys enraged him: he said their punishment would be worse than a mafia-style drowning wearing concrete boots. We can contrast this with the historian Josephus' multi-volume record of the Jewish-Roman wars. Written at about the same time as the Gospels, it included only mild criticisms of Roman culture.

As well as scandals that were taking place within society, other scandals are found within Jesus' teaching itself when he said things that no-one wanted to hear. He spoke more about eternal hell and coming judgement than about the popular subject of God's love - though he was also outspoken about this. The Gospel writers didn't try to help his image by editing what Jesus said, but included equally the things that made him unpopular and popular.

When Jesus healed the sick, for example, no-one complained. But when he did it on the Sabbath, or said that someone's sickness wasn't due to sin, he outraged almost everyone. The scandal attached to it highlights that it was an important aspect of Jesus' teaching. And what was scandalous in those days may simply be normal today. Letting women attend religious teaching, for example, is not scandalous in most cultures today, but in the 1st century, admitting that Jesus let this happen was detrimental to his standing as a religious teacher. In recognising this kind of historical perspective, we can better understand the emphasis of Jesus' teaching.

Even the early church and the disciples themselves are presented in a scandalous way in the Gospels. Jesus had to teach his followers not to hate each other but he also had to tell them how to forgive each other and set things straight when they did hate each other. His disciples are no super-heroes; rather they are portrayed as a motley bunch of idiots who persistently misunderstand Jesus and generally get in the way. But that's what real life is like and it shows that the Gospels are concerned with portraying reality, not fiction.

Scandals are memorable. You remember an outrageous story because everyone talks about it and you've probably passed it on to someone else yourself. When people nod, they are listening to you; when they shake their heads in disagreement they become more attentive; but when they are scandalised by something they memorise the details so that they can tell their friends about it!

Historians love scandals almost as much as newspapers do. When assessing whether an account is likely to be accurate they use terms like "criterion of embarrassment" (i.e. the more embarrassing it is for the person who records it, the more likely it is to be true) and "counter-cultural ethics" (i.e. if the subject's behaviour has been criticised by everyone else, then they are unlikely to have made it up). Of course scandals are biased, but scholars recognise that all records of history are biased and, at least with a scandal, the bias is out in the open.

Scholars are right to be sceptical. The early church must have been tempted to portray Jesus in the best possible light, and we have to assume that this is what they tried to do, just as we still do. This is what makes the scandals in the Gospels so valuable. The Gospels have been subjected to more scrutiny than any other ancient documents - and rightly so, because people don't base their lives on Caesar's Gallic Wars or the Dead Sea Scrolls. The life of Jesus is incomparable, so we need to know if the records are accurate.

Whole libraries have been written on the Gospels - I know, because I work in a library containing nothing but books in the realm of biblical study. I've distilled some of the most surprising and controversial scandals uncovered by scholarship so that you can judge for yourself about the real history and teaching of Jesus. The kinds of accusation made against Jesus are sometimes confirmed by sources from the same time as the Bible, so I have often highlighted evidence from the history and culture of the time. For example, we'll find that some historians have identified part of the original court records for Jesus trial, and some of Jesus' teaching on subjects as varied as hell and harmonious living are paralleled in the Dead Sea scrolls.

Each chapter in this book is self-contained, can be read in any order, and is short enough to read in a coffee break. They are also designed to be turned into talks - just add your own opening illustration and use your own words. At the end of each chapter I try to highlight something of particular relevance so that each one can be used as a discussion starter or a provocative short talk - you can perhaps change or omit this 'thought' to suit your audience. And when something you read particularly surprises you, why not store it up in your head to produce in a quiet conversational moment with friends. It is sure to get a good discussion going.

I'm an academic so I'm frequently sceptical, but I also know Jesus for myself so the Gospels are precious to me - especially the scandal of the cross.

... (more - buy from Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.com).

Illegitimate Birth

My father added his mother's family name to his own, in order to make a more impressive surname. He was a barrister who needed more work and he hoped to attract a better sort of client. The ploy didn't work…and it made me the butt of endless jokes at school. Over half a century ago, when my father did this, it was a relatively novel idea. Today, it is much more common to meet someone whose name includes their mother's surname, so my children don't suffer the quiet derision of their classmates as I did. But when the people of Nazareth called Jesus "son of Mary", the whispered sneers would have been deafening. His detractors gave him this name when he dared to preach at the synagogue in his home village. It's not until we take a look at the social background that we can recognise how great an insult this was.

Jews in the time of Jesus took their father's name as their surname. Matthew's list of disciples includes "James son of Zebedee" and "James son of Alphaeus" (see Mt.10.2-4). In Aramaic, the Jewish language of the time, this would have been "James bar Zebedee" and "James bar Alphaeus", just like "Simon bar Jonah" (Mt.16.17). This is the pattern found in all Jewish literature of that period and, like our surnames, they kept these names even after their father had died. For common names (like Simon) they sometimes used other naming strategies, so one of the disciples called Simon has a nickname (Peter, i.e. "Rocky") and the other is named after a place (Mt.10.2-4). Significantly, there are no other instances in ancient literature of a Jew who was named, like Jesus, after his mother.

In Nazareth, everyone knew the scandal of Jesus' birth - it occurred less than nine months after his parents' marriage and everyone could count. In fact, after spending three months at Elizabeth's house (Lk.1.56) and other delays, Mary probably had a visible bump on her wedding day. It would have been slightly more socially acceptable if Joseph had been the father, but he denied this. So when Jesus had the temerity to preach at his home village, the gossiping turned into public outrage: "Isn't this the carpenter, the son of Mary, the brother of James, Joseph, Judas and Simon, and aren't his sisters here?" (Mk.6.3). This tirade is all the more damning because of who it leaves out - Jesus' father! It was outrageously insulting to identify him in this way and list all these family members without naming his father. Even if the subject's father had died, he would have been named - in fact it would have been even more important to name him because his eldest son should carry his name forward for posterity. This glaring omission proclaimed the scandalous fact loudly and clearly: no-one knew who Jesus' father was.

While only Mark records the insult at Nazareth, the other Gospels do not ignore this scandal, and each one responds to it in different ways, reflecting their different styles and perspectives. Mark reads like a tabloid newspaper with its short sentences, immediacy, and friendly naivete; Matthew, like the Times, is concerned about political and religious establishments and seeks to highlight corruption and hypocrisy; Luke is similar to the Guardian - more interested in social concerns and the disadvantaged such as lepers, women and the poor; and the Gospel of John is like a more thoughtful weekly digest, such as Newsweek or Time magazine, because it was written after a considerable time of theological reflection.

... (more - buy from Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.com).

Ineligible Bachelor

The day my first child was born I realised that getting married hadn't changed my life much at all, in comparison. Her arrival started a completely new adventure full of excitement, fear, happiness, agonising, fun, worry, relief, and enjoyment. For some, the prospect of marriage and/or children is not so attractive and they choose to remain single and childless, while for others for this is a sad burden rather than a lifestyle choice. But for Jesus, singleness was a scandal.

Jesus' singleness in 1st century Palestine, represented profound impiety and hinted at a well-known scandal. For a Jew of that time the highest ideal was to obey God, and all Jews at every level of society were aware of God's commands in Scripture. And it wasn't just the ten given at Mount Sinai; the Jews eventually counted 613 commandments in Scripture. The very first was given to Adam - "Go forth and multiply" - and every male Jew attempted to obey it. And it was pretty obvious to your family and neighbours whether or not you were obeying it!

In the ancient Jewish literature of the time we can read about hundreds of individuals, but there is only one instance of an unmarried man- a studious rabbi named Simeon ben Azzi. He said that he was married to the Bible, so he didn't have time for a wife! Actually, he was probably a widower, but his friends still urged him to remarry because singleness was so unacceptable.

Girls were mostly married by the age of twelve, and if a man wasn't married by the age of twenty the gossips started comparing notes and looking for a reason. Girls were married early because when they reached the age of twelve and a half they became entitled to refuse the husband their parents had arranged for them. Men had a little longer to make up their minds about who they would marry, but people soon grew suspicious. For example, although a single man was allowed to teach school children, he had to be constantly chaperoned. And if he was still single in his twenties, it was assumed there was something terribly wrong with him. Singleness was so rare and despised that no-one willingly accepted this state.

So why was Jesus still single at the age of thirty? It was clear to all who knew him. No-one would let his daughter marry someone of questionable parentage since, if there was any irregularity in their birth, it could cast doubt on the legitimacy of their children for ten generations. And Jesus' birth, as everyone knew, was very irregular. For one thing it occurred too soon after his parents' wedding, and for another Joseph admitted that he wasn't the father. Most people would have regarded the story of angels and a virgin birth as a pathetic attempt to cover up the obvious - that Jesus was conceived illegitimately.

... (more - buy from Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.com).

Fraudulent Miracles

A week after a service of prayer for healing at my church, an elderly lady came forward to testify. She came to the front beaming and boomed into the microphone as though she didn't really trust it to work: "My piles are completely healed!" Then she started telling us many more details than we wanted to know! Eventually I wrested the microphone from her as politely as I could. We gave thanks for her healing, though my reaction to the unsavoury details made me realise that one reason why many might think that the age of healing miracles is over is that often we simply don't talk them. We don't tell our doctor that our church is praying for us and we are embarrassed to tell work colleagues that we are praying for solutions to problems. As a result, when our prayer is answered, it seems false to talk about it.

In the Bible, amazing miracles seem to happen all the time - that is, until you count them all and divide by a few thousand years. The only person in the Bible whose life really is full of wonderful miracles is Jesus. More instances of healing are recorded during his three-year ministry than in the rest of the Bible added together and some of those included large groups of ill people. {see 34 miracles of Jesus at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miracles_attributed_to_Jesus} It would be understandable to think that the Gospel writers reported Jesus' miracles so often because they gave him such credibility and were something that people really wanted to hear about. In fact, quite the opposite was true.

Healing miracles were a frequent source of scandal in the 1st century - in fact the whole subject of miracles was viewed with distaste. They were regarded as scams that were carried out on the gullible - a way to start a new religion and get rich quick. Oenomaus and Lucian, Greek writers and philosophers in the 2nd century, wrote some telling exposés of so-called 'miracles'. They discovered, for example, that the phenomenon of one religion's 'talking statues' was nothing more than cleverly-concealed speaking tubes. When Josephus rewrote the Old Testament for 1st century Roman readers (his Antiquities of the Jews) he omitted most of the healing miracles because his readers wouldn't think them genuine. Belief in miracle-workers was out of fashion - too many charlatans had claimed fake 'wonders' to promote themselves.

Jews, too, were embarrassed about miracles. When Philo commented on the Old Testament for Jewish readers, he interpreted miracles 'philosophically' - that is, as non-literal events. But most Jews were even less accepting: Jesus' enemies accused him of doing miracles by the power of the devil, a reflection of how low their opinion of the miraculous had sunk. Jewish political rulers (mainly Sadducees) didn't believe in anything supernatural, while the religious leaders (mainly Pharisees) did believe in miracles, though only in theory - they relegated them to the "good old days" of Old Testament times, hundreds of years previously.

... (more - buy from Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.com).

Bad Table Manners

My mother said that good manners are a sign of respect for others. They are supposed to minimise conflict because they are rules which everyone follows without needing to be reminded. But sometimes they become a battle zone, as all parents know.

Our waiter at a posh London club used rules as his weapons. I was extremely hot - we'd walked hurriedly to arrive in time for an evening meal - so I hung my jacket over my chair to cool off. Up stepped the waiter: "Excuse me, sir, but jackets must be worn for dinner." I duly complied and then tried ordering a meal: "As it says on the menu, sir, no cooked meals can be ordered after 9 pm. But you may order a cold sandwich." My watch said 9:02 pm, but the waiter wouldn't budge from the written rule. Then an Australian in our group took up the challenge: "Well, there's no rule on the menu about breakfast times, so I'd like to order a cooked breakfast." The rest of us looked at each other. British manners weren't getting us very far. Without speaking we came to a unanimous decision: we would follow "Australian rules". The defeated waiter reluctantly went off, no doubt to tell the kitchen staff about his uncouth customers.

Jews have lots of rules about eating and table manners. My favourite is the rule that forbids reading books at mealtimes. The reason is not that it is rude or distracting, but that bookworms (tiny larvae which eat paper) may fall out into the food. This is bad because bookworms aren't kosher!

The Jews of Jesus' day had to follow a mountain of rules about table manners and sometimes these created anything but harmony. We have records of some of the disagreements about the exact details. For example, everyone agreed that at the end of a meal, the head of the group would say a final prayer of Thanksgiving for it over a full goblet of wine. Three things had to happen before this blessing: wiping crumbs off the table; pouring the wine; and washing hands. But there were disputes about the order in which these should happen. Hillelite Pharisees said it should begin with pouring, then washing and finally wiping; but Shammaite Pharisees set down the order as wiping, washing and then pouring the wine. This disagreement was very serious because accidentally eating crumbs could theoretically make one liable to the death penalty!

Before you dismiss all ancient Jews as crazy, I'd better explain. The Old Testament Law stipulated that a tenth of all food must be given to the tribe of Levi, so that they could spend their time on religious tasks instead of farming. The priests (who were part of that tribe) got a tenth of that tenth (i.e. a hundredth) - a portion that should never be eaten by anyone who was not a priest on pain of death.

Food was normally tithed by the farmers, but a good market-stall owner would tithe it again just in case, and good cooks tithed it yet again, just to be certain. However, the Pharisees wanted to make absolutely sure that that they never ate the priests' portion even by accident, so if they weren't completely sure that the food had been tithed, they removed a hundredth of what was on their plate before eating any. They cut off a tiny piece and threw it in the fire or crumbled it up to make sure that no-one ate it. (If a priest was sitting at the table, they might have given it to him, though I doubt that he'd have wanted it). As a result of this practice, even some of the crumbs on the table might be deadly!

... (more - buy from Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.com).

Alcohol Abuse

The first funeral I took as a minister was of a man in his early twenties who didn't go to church. Talking with his family I found that he didn't go to college, to work, or even out with friends much. But one night some 'mates' managed to drag him out for a drink. To get him 'in the mood' they encouraged him to consume almost a whole bottle of brandy. Then they helped him home where he slept so deeply that he didn't wake up when he was sick. He inhaled his vomit and died.

Statistically, alcohol is the most dangerous drug in the UK. It kills about nine thousand people a year through accidents, illnesses or alcohol-related violence - over four times the total for all illegal drugs put together. But alcohol does have some benefits. As a relaxant it lowers blood pressure and reduces inhibitions which stop some people from enjoying themselves. As Psalm 104.15 says, it "gladdens the heart". But almost every other reference to alcohol in the Bible is negative - from Noah's drunkenness which led to a family split (Gen.9.20-27), to the picture of the drunk prostitute who will rule the world in Revelation 17.

Drunkenness was at the heart of a religion which became popular in New Testament times. According to Euripides' play, The Bacchae, it started half a millennium earlier when a strikingly handsome stranger strode into Greece with a troop of beautiful Turkish dancing girls who worshipped him as a god. Dionysis (known as Bacchus in Roman mythology) was portrayed as having androgynous features, blond curls (almost unknown to southern Europeans) and a charismatic personality which soon won admirers and followers for his new religion. Preparation for worship was easy - you got drunk - and the rites involved dancing to lively music, 'prophesying' and orgies. Evidence of this worship is found everywhere the Roman civilisation spread, including Palestine.

On Pentecost morning, the crowd that gathered probably thought the excited and babbling Christians were worshipping Bacchus. Peter tried to disabuse them of this saying, "It's only nine am," (Bacchus worship happened at night), "and we aren't full of wine but full of the Spirit." Peter quoted Joel who said: "Your sons and daughters will prophesy ... and old men dream dreams." He was pointing to one way in which Christianity and Bacchus worship were similar - they both promoted social cohesion by involving old and young, male and female - but Christian worship involved real prophesy and real joy, instead of the temporary highs of drunkenness.

... (more - buy from Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.com).

Exposing Temple Scams

Terry Herbert was an unemployed metal-detector enthusiast who in 2009 stumbled on the largest hoard of Saxon gold in history in a Staffordshire field. He and the landowner shared its value – £3.3 million. The objects he found were military – mostly gold ornaments from swords and helmets – and the soldiers who owned them were probably Christians because they carried some crosses and a band of gold inscribed: “Rise up, Lord; may Your enemies be scattered.” Instead, it seems likely that their enemies defeated them and then buried their gold. No doubt the conquerors meant to come back later to retrieve the treasure, but for some reason this never happened – perhaps they fought another battle in which they themselves were defeated.

Until recent centuries burying your coins or gold ornaments was a common way of protecting your property when fleeing home and often people were not able to return for it. In 1960 a hoard of money dating back to the time of Jesus was found buried on Mount Carmel. It was probably a collection of Temple tax from an outlying village that was being carried to Jerusalem because it added up to an exact number of half shekels plus the percentage charged by Temple money-changers. These people taking the villagers’ payment to the Temple had presumably fallen victim to bandits but managed to hide the coins before they were killed.

Although the Temple tax in Jesus’ day was the focus of several scandals, most Jews respected the Temple and paid it religiously. However, Jesus was one of the few Temple-using Jews who didn’t believe it was compulsory to pay the tax, as we see from the mild reproof he gave Peter (Matthew 17:24–27). And he certainly didn’t like the money-changers – he drove them out of the Temple with a whip (John 2:15). He was angry, of course, because he believed that the Temple was being desecrated; it had been turned into a noisy house of commerce rather than a “house of prayer” (Matthew 21:13). But his fury was probably also prompted by something else: the financial scandals.

... (more - buy from Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.com).

Supplanting Passover

I once gave my wife an anniversary present a day late. I remember feeling slightly apprehensive about what she would say, but to my relief she admitted that she’d forgotten too. Perhaps she was just being extra-forgiving. But the correct date for a celebration is important, and Jews in New Testament times couldn’t simply decide, for the sake of convenience, to celebrate a festival on another day. That would, perhaps, be even more disrespectful than Christians celebrating the resurrection on Good Friday! And yet it appears that Jesus did exactly that when he ate his last supper with the disciples as a Passover meal.

The Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark and Luke) clearly say that Jesus celebrated Passover that evening (Matthew 26:17–19; Mark 14:12–16; Luke 22:7–15), but John says that the priests, and presumably everyone else, ate the Passover meal on the next evening (John 18:28). This suggests that Jesus ate Passover a day early.

Several other potential scandals marred this final Passover. First, Jesus refused to drink the last cup of wine, only drinking three of the four cups that were essential to the ceremony. Second, he persuaded his disciples to eat some extra bread after the meal had finished, which detracted from the importance of the lamb. And third, Jesus identified himself with the bread and wine in a way that was close to idolatry.

These changes have much more importance than the fact that they are deviations from the normal Passover customs. When Jesus did these things differently, he knew it would stand out in the disciples’ memories and that they’d want to know what it meant. Imagine that Jesus was celebrating Christmas but neglected to give any gifts and refused to accept any. We would conclude that he was opposed to Christmas presents, and we might think that he was making a statement against materialism. In the same way, everything that Jesus did contrary to a normal Passover became a message. But in order to find out what this message was, we need to know what would normally happen at a Passover meal.

Although it’s surprising to us that Jesus celebrated Passover a day early, it wouldn’t actually have been too much of a shock for Jews of the period. We know that some Jews did celebrate Passover a day early in Jesus’ time, though even a few decades later no one could remember the reason why.

... (more - buy from Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.com).

Contemplating Suicide

One of the horrors of Hitler’s Germany was Aktion T4 – a programme to carry out “mercy deaths”. Its purpose was the elimination of “life unworthy of life”, a definition including the mentally or incurably ill and physically disabled adults and children. Death by gassing, injection or starvation was carried out by physicians without consulting the patient. Doctors in Holland were the only ones in the occupied countries who refused to comply with the decree.

Ironically, Holland is now famous for its Euthanasia Act (2002) which legalized a convention practised by the Dutch medical community for over twenty years. Assisted killing is now allowed even for severely disabled children and for depressed patients who are otherwise healthy. Analysis of the figures is disturbing. In 2005 almost 10 per cent of all deaths in Holland were medically assisted. Some studies suggest that another 10 per cent were not officially reported and that physicians acted without consulting patients or relatives in 45 per cent of these cases. As a result, many Dutch citizens carry a card in their wallet in case they are hospitalized, stating their wish that “no treatment be administered with the intention to terminate life”.

Euthanasia is threatening to become an acceptable way to commit suicide, and even suicide in the absence of illness is rarely regarded as immoral. In New Testament times suicide was totally respectable among Romans. They regarded it as honourable to end your life if you had brought shame on your family or your legion. Famous Greek and Roman suicides include Pythagoras, Socrates, Zeno, Demosthenes, Marc Antony, and Seneca. Two Roman emperors committed suicide in a single year – Nero and Otho, in AD 68. Their deaths couldn’t have been more different. Nero, who was infamous for his tyranny, decided to kill himself when he heard he’d been sentenced to be flogged to death. But he couldn’t go through with it, so he asked a companion to show him how to do it by killing himself. When he heard the arrest party approaching he quickly managed to stab his throat, with some help from his secretary. People rioted with joy at the news of his death. However, when Otho killed himself crowds mourned and some of his officers threw themselves on his funeral pyre. He had ended his own life in order to save others by preventing the need for a battle between two rival Roman armies.

Ancient Jews, unlike the Romans, regarded suicide as murder in most instances...

... (more - buy from Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.com).

Censored Arrest Warrant

The Talmud is a key text in mainstream Judaism in the form of a record of rabbinic discussions about Jewish law, ethics, philosophy, customs and history. Many of the oldest and most valuable of these traditions are in the Babylonian Talmud which compiles documents written in late antiquity (the first to fifth centuries AD). However, all the original references to Jesus in the Babylonian Talmud were censored out in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Surprisingly, perhaps, this was the fault of the church – it certainly wasn’t a conspiracy by Jews.

Almost all manuscripts of the Talmud were destroyed in countless book burnings and persecutions. It survived largely thanks to Daniel Bomberg, a sixteenth-century Christian who spent his family fortune and worked tirelessly to print most of the great Jewish works. Because multiple copies were printed these books were not completely eradicated. They were, however, censored. Every book that was printed had to be authorized by the Pope, and the church required publishers to remove everything referring to Jesus before it would give them a licence.

The ancient Jewish writings about Jesus that were removed from the printed copies have survived in only a handful of manuscripts which escaped burning. Most of them were recorded a few centuries after Jesus and are anti-Christian slurs such as descriptions of Mary as a loose woman and Jesus as a disgruntled Jew who learned Gentile magic. It isn’t surprising the Pope didn’t like them! There is, however, one passage which probably comes from the time of Jesus himself – and, incredibly, it is hugely significant. It is a passage that preserves the original arrest warrant or charge sheet against Jesus.

... (more - buy from Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.com).

Shameful Execution

Over fifty years ago a member of my family was an inmate in a UK prison where executions were occasionally carried out. He told me that on the morning of a hanging, the prisoners would be uncharacteristically quiet. Even though they didn’t witness what was happening, it affected them all. Perhaps they were thinking more deeply about their own lives, or maybe they were simply thankful that they’d escaped this fate themselves.

UK society has largely moved away from wanting capital punishment, but executions were very popular up until the mid 1800s when they were carried out in public. So many people used to skip work to attend the eight major execution days in London that they were made into official holidays.

Jewish society in Jesus’ day had a contradictory attitude towards the death penalty. The leaders tried to avoid prescribing the death sentence, even when it was the punishment set down in the Old Testament. Most of their capital offences – from being “a glutton and drunkard” to breaking the Sabbath (Deuteronomy 21:20; Exodus 31:14) – were punished by no more than a sin offering in Jesus’ day. By the end of the first century some leaders of Judaism said that they never wanted to apply the death penalty. In modern Israel there is still the option of the death penalty, but in practice it remains virtually abolished – it has only been applied once, for the Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann.

Jewish crowds didn’t think in the same way as their leaders, and they could be enticed to stone someone. This was how Stephen died (Acts 8:58), how the adulteress would have died if Jesus hadn’t rescued her (John 8:3–9), and it almost happened to Jesus on more than one occasion (Luke 4:29; John 8:59; 10:31). When it came to Jesus’ crucifixion, it wasn’t difficult to make the crowds cry out for blood.

Crucifixion was such a despised form of death that Roman citizens were almost always excused this punishment; instead they were forced into exile or allowed to commit suicide. Even non-citizens were normally executed by more “pleasant” means such as garrotting, slitting the throat, or being killed by gladiators or animals in the Games; only the worst criminals were crucified. Crucifixion was the most painful, prolonged and disgraceful form of execution which has ever been carried out as a legal sanction. Even Roman law eventually banned it as being too barbaric.

... (more - buy from Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.com).

Embarrassing Resurrection

I love the old Jewish joke about a rabbi who sneaked off to a golf club one Sabbath. God said to the angels: “Watch how I punish him.” As they watched, the rabbi performed a perfect swing from his tee and was rewarded with a hole-in-one. The angels said: “How is that a punishment?” And God replied: “Who can he tell?”

The disciples must have felt like that on the first Sunday when they saw Jesus alive. This was wonderful – but who was it safe to tell? And who would believe it? If they tried to convince people, they’d get into dangerous trouble. The good news that we rejoice in, was a scandal to any first-century Greek or Roman. In their place, we might have concluded it was better to keep this knowledge to ourselves, but fortunately the disciples thought differently.

Romans and Greeks simply didn’t believe in any kind of resurrection. We might think that with the myths about gods and demigods they inherited from the old Greek religions, they’d have been prepared to accept stories of life after death, but by the first century they had a philosophical attitude to the concept. Although some believed in the stories that happened in the distant past, no one except religious fanatics and madmen was willing to accept the possibility of such things in the present. So when Paul tried telling the philosophers in Athens about “Jesus and the resurrection”, the concept of resurrection was so off their radar that they assumed he was talking about two gods: “Jesus and Anastasia” (Greek for “resurrection”). When Paul said he did mean Jesus’ literal resurrection, most of them simply laughed (Acts 17:18, 32).

The Jews had different problems when it came to Jesus’ resurrection. They believed that God could raise someone from the dead (it had happened a few times in the Old Testament), but they didn’t expect the Messiah to be raised. The prophecies about this are only obvious in retrospect – which is why his disciples were so astounded when Jesus pointed out these particular scriptures (Luke 24:25–27). Also, they thought that being crucified was a mark of God’s curse, so Jesus would be the last person for God to favour in this way. This, together with their expectations about the Messiah being victorious over his enemies, made the Jews especially reluctant to accept his resurrection.

... (more - buy from Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.com).

Mary Magdalene

Rather than locking up the mentally ill in “lunatic asylums”, nowadays we try to support them in the community. Society has changed, and few people fear those with mental illnesses as they did in past generations – though we still have severe prejudices. Those who have suffered from this type of illness are often advised not to disclose it in their CV, and most people would admit to being uneasy visiting a psychiatric ward, even though about 10 per cent of the population need medical help for mental illness during their lifetime. However, the discrimination experienced by sufferers today is nothing compared to the utter misunderstanding and ostracism of the mentally ill in ancient times.

Mary Magdalene came to Jesus in a mess. Luke says that she had seven demons which Jesus cast out (Luke 8:2). Some believe that these “demons” were an ancient description of mental illness, while others think they were evil spiritual entities, but either interpretation means that she was displaying some very severe symptoms of mental illness. She would have been a feared outcast who was despised by the rest of the community.

Mary Magdalene is an important individual in the four Gospels, and her significance grew with time. She is the only person in the Bible to have witnessed Jesus’ crucifixion, burial and resurrection (Matthew 27:65, 61; 28:1), and the resurrected Jesus sent her with a message for the apostles. As a result, in various early church literature, she became known as “the apostle to the apostles” and was described as one “whose heart is raised to the kingdom of heaven more than all”.

In the two centuries following the writing of the New Testament there was a creative outburst of early church literature which attempted to fill in the “gaps” left in the Gospel accounts – rather like fan fiction develops after a cult TV series ends with unanswered questions. Mary Magdalene figured highly in this literature because she was female, of apparent importance in the Gospels, and yet almost nothing was known about her. These writings also explored aspects of Jesus’ life that the New Testament Gospels had neglected, such as what happened during his childhood and his teaching on concepts of the soul and the afterlife.

... (more - buy from Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.com).

Judas Iscariot

I’ve heard criminologists described as people who find “excuses” for criminal behaviour. I’m sure that those who commit crimes can be influenced by things such as family background, poverty, and being crossed in love, but how much can these excuse a crime? What is the difference between a “cause” and an “excuse”? The law is built on the understanding that we all have free choice – whatever the provocation, ultimately we are responsible for our own actions. However, courts also take “mitigating circumstances” into account, so background factors such as a broken and unstable home environment can significantly reduce a sentence.

If Judas Iscariot was put on trial today would he be found guilty of cold-hearted betrayal for cash, or would the judge find there were mitigating circumstances? Have the Gospels scandalously heaped blame on Judas when he doesn’t deserve it?

Many scriptwriters, novelists and theologians have struggled with the character of Judas. Some think he wanted to provoke Jesus into action – to create a situation whereby Jesus would have to show his hand and lead Israel against the Romans. Perhaps he acted as a result of disappointment that Jesus hadn’t started a rebellion after his triumphal march into Jerusalem. Surely it had been the perfect time to act, with the crowds hailing him as a conquering ruler, shouting out “Hosanna” – just as they had greeted previous new rulers (see the chapter “Disruptive Worship”). When his plan failed and Jesus let himself be arrested and killed, it was a total surprise and shock to Judas.

Others think that Judas misunderstood what the priests wanted, that he believed they were just hiring him as a guide to take them to Jesus so they could talk privately with him. It’s difficult to accept this view since the amount they paid Judas – 30 shekels – would have been four months’ wages for a labourer, or about £5,000 or $7,500 in present-day money. This was much more than you’d pay to a guide.

We cannot be certain what Judas believed would happen as a result of his actions, but John’s Gospel is clear about his motive – it was greed. At the home of Lazarus, Mary poured expensive perfume over Jesus’ feet – worth about £15,000 or $22,500 today (enough to buy five bottles of the world’s most expensive perfume, Clive Christian’s “No.1”!). Judas objected to this, saying that the money could have fed the poor. John comments: “He did not say this because he cared about the poor but because he was a thief; as keeper of the money bag, he used to help himself to what was put into it” (John 12:6). Jesus replied to Judas: “This [perfume] was intended for my burial; you’ll always have the poor” (John 12:7–8). John doesn’t record Judas’ reaction, but Mark says straight after this incident: “Then Judas went to the chief priests to betray Jesus” (Mark 14:10). In Matthew we can see even more clearly that money was part of Judas’ motive, because he asked the priests: “What are you willing to give me if I hand him over to you?” (Matthew 26:15). Perhaps the incident with the perfume made Judas regard Jesus as too unworldly to ever achieve anything. Or maybe he realized the end was near and he had only one chance to cash in.

But were there “mitigating circumstances”? Did Judas jump or was he pushed?...

... (more - buy from Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.com).

Second-rate disciples

My family and I love the saga about rabbits, Watership Down. We even named our two rabbits Bigwig and Fiver. Bigwig was the strong fighter who defeated the terrifying leader of the rival warren, General Woundwort. I remember the thrill of the fight between the two opponents when Woundwort realizes how strong Bigwig is, and says that the warren was right to choose him as leader. But Bigwig responds: “I serve someone greater than me.” Woundwort assumes from this that Bigwig’s leader must be even bigger and stronger, so he becomes completely dispirited and soon loses the fight. But actually Bigwig’s leader wasn’t a great fighter – his greatness lay in an ability to lead those who were smarter and stronger than himself. Woundwort’s defeat showed that he didn’t understand this key aspect of leadership. Corporate strategists concentrate on hiring the brightest and best, and ancient rabbis did the same. Their reputation was enhanced by accepting only the very best disciples.

Jesus was different. He invited ridicule and scandal by picking a motley and disreputable bunch of disciples. They were nobodies, with apparently few talents. We don’t know much about most of them, which says a lot in itself, and what we do know doesn’t inspire confidence. They included a former Roman collaborator (the “tax man” Matthew or Levi); a former member of a terrorist group (Simon “the Zealot”); Thomas, who famously suffered from doubt (even doubting Jesus!); and the brothers John and James, who were nicknamed “Sons of Thunder” because they had considerable problems with anger management!

And Judas turned out to be a huge embarrassment to the early church, because the one whom Jesus trusted as treasurer ended up betraying him for money.

The other disciples did nothing worth noting in the Gospels or in the rest of the New Testament. Not many of the leaders of the early church were among the twelve, for instance: Stephen, Philip, James the brother of Jesus, Luke, Silas, Barnabas and (most significantly) Paul, all came along later. Apart from a few dubious mentions in later church stories, most of Jesus’ actual disciples disappeared into obscurity.

In contrast, famous rabbis in Jesus’ day were praised for the quality of their disciples....

... (more - buy from Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.com).

The Unchosen

William Carey, the founder of the modern missionary movement at the end of the 1700s, was a heretic according to many in his denomination. Most Particular Baptist ministers were hyper-Calvinists who didn’t believe in evangelism. They thought that God chooses certain people who will inevitably become Christians, and that Christ’s death saves only them and no one else. This meant that evangelistic preaching was not only unnecessary, but might even be dangerous, because someone who was not chosen by God might repent! To make it worse, Carey wanted to reach heathen foreigners, which they considered even more dangerous because surely God hadn’t chosen them! Fortunately, his pastor, Andrew Fuller, was a progressive thinker who wrote a book to combat the hyper-Calvinists’ attitude to evangelism: The Gospel Worthy of All Acceptation. This argued that God wants the Gospel presented to everyone. Together, Carey and Fuller saved the English Baptists from stagnation and started a mission that now encircles the globe.

Many people in Jesus’ day thought like Carey’s critics. Thanks to the discoveries of the Qumran or Dead Sea Scrolls, we now know much more about the secretive community of Jews living at Qumran. They regarded themselves as the only ones who obeyed God’s law properly and thought they had discovered hidden truths about the correct dates for festivals and the right way to worship God. They believed themselves to be the “Sons of Light”, whom God would reward, whereas other people were “Sons of Darkness” whom God would punish. They had an abhorrent policy towards outsiders: they were commanded not to tell anyone about how to please God in case they, too, would be saved from destruction.1 The Qumran Jews also believed that God keeps total control over whom he saves and that he chooses just a few (i.e. those in their community) and rejects the “many” whom he actually causes to follow a life a sin.2

The Pharisees, by contrast, believed that each person has a free choice about whether or not to follow God. They believed that all Jews would be saved, though those who followed the law perfectly would get higher honour. Rabbi Johanan ben Zakkai told a parable to illustrate this: A king summoned his servants to a banquet without appointing a time. The wise ones adorned themselves and waited in readiness at the door of the palace, but the fools went about their work. Suddenly the king announced that the banquet had begun and called in his servants. The wise entered suitably adorned, while the fools entered with soiled clothes. The king rejoiced at the wise, but was angry with the fools. He ordered: “Those who adorned themselves for the banquet can sit, eat and drink. But those who did not adorn themselves for the banquet, must stand and watch.”3

As Johanan lived in Galilee at the same time as Jesus, Jesus probably heard him tell this parable and there are striking similarities with Jesus’ own parables...

... (more - buy from Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.com).

The Cursed

I had no idea my friend’s sister had AIDS until I casually asked one day how his family was. He told me the terrible news that his sister had died the day before. His family back in Zimbabwe had found it increasingly impossible to get the medication which had been keeping his vivacious and happy sister in good health. He told me that he had discovered that she’d contracted it from infected blood after a routine operation, but people had made the assumption that it was a “lifestyle” illness. Sadly, the judgmentalism of some had meant that, as well as being a cause of great sorrow for her and her family, the illness had also been a cause of shame.

Scandal was associated with most types of illness in the ancient world, because health and disease were attributed directly to God as a gift or punishment. For example, in Judaism it was thought that jaundice was due to hating someone without reason; respiratory illnesses such as asthma were caused by slandering someone or neglecting to pay your tithes; while oedema (usually caused by high blood pressure) was due to sin in general.1

The Jews also thought that the Old Testament punishment of being “cut off from the people”, which was prescribed for various sins, had been carried out by God if someone had a fatal illness before the age of fifty. So anyone who fell ill and died was assumed to have a scandalous sin in their past which God had punished, and the earlier they died, the more serious their sin had been.

They even thought that someone with disabilities was being punished. This was based on the Old Testament law that said that anyone with congenital defects or disabilities shouldn’t enter the Temple (Leviticus 21:17–21). In its original context, this law concerned the priests who served in the Temple and it can be seen as a way to excuse disabled priests from carrying out their duties there. But the Jews in New Testament times applied it to everyone and this resulted in disabled people being forbidden from worshipping in the Temple. “Unclean” people, such as lepers and menstruating women, were also kept away (this was probably due to the misguided widespread fear of contamination, which could have caused chaos in a crowded environment like the Temple). These regulations implied that God shunned such people, so they reinforced the idea that disability and illness were due to sin.

... (more - buy from Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.com).

Prostitutes

One night a flasher sneaked through the grounds of Tyndale House where I work. He waited until a pretty young lady was sitting on her own at a desk facing the window and then exposed himself. He ended up humiliated. After the initial shock of seeing a face at the window, she looked at him and burst out laughing. He ran away hurriedly and she began to feel a bit sorry for him. He didn’t know that she regularly did mission work among prostitutes and often had to confront their bosses; she was used to dealing with dangerous and seedy situations.

I imagine that Jesus was equally unshockable. Unlike the rest of his respectable generation, Jesus went out of his way to meet prostitutes; they were part of the humanity he came to save. The Pharisees were scandalized that he should accept invitations to eat with “tax collectors and sinners”, but Jesus said: “It is the sick who need a physician, so I don’t seek the righteous but the sinners” (Mark 2:17). This was a clever answer, but it didn’t deal with the Pharisees’ main problem: Jesus spending his time with sinners was bad enough, but they weren’t just sinners – they were prostitutes. Prostitutes at that time were called “sinners” in polite company, just as they were called “fallen women” by the Victorians. Interestingly, the Gospels never record Jesus using a euphemism, so when he condemned the Pharisees he said: “Tax collectors and prostitutes will get to the Kingdom of heaven before you” (Matthew 21:31).

Why is it that “tax collectors” are linked so often with these “sinners” (i.e. “prostitutes”)? And why are they usually mentioned

in the context of Jesus eating with them? (See Matthew 9:10–11; 11:19; 21:31–32.) The reason is that Roman-style banquets usually included prostitutes for the after-dinner entertainment – lap dancing without any restrictions. And as tax collectors were the nouveaux riches, trying to keep up with the Roman fashions, of course they provided all the customary dining “facilities”. Perhaps the woman who broke her alabaster perfume bottle over Jesus’ feet had met him at one of these meals (Matthew 26:6–7).

... (more - buy from Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.com).

Child Abuse

The Mafia terrorized New York during the Prohibition years by letting everyone know the punishment for informants – the so-called “concrete shoes”. Victims were stood in quick-drying cement, then dropped overboard in the Hudson River. They probably didn’t carry this out quite as often as the movies suggest, however – they didn’t need to!

Jesus issued an even worse threat when he said of a group of people: “It would have been better for them if they’d had a millstone hung round their neck and had been dropped into the sea” (Matthew 18:6; Mark 9:42). He tells this group that their actual punishment would be far worse – something that would make them wish they’d had this lesser punishment instead. The fury in the warning is unmistakable.

Who is this chilling anger directed at? Jesus issued this extraordinary threat just after he had taken a small child in his arms to teach his disciples about humility. When he finished the lesson, he looked at the child and described this terrible fate for anyone who “causes one of these little ones to stumble” (skandalizo in Greek).

What does Jesus mean by “stumble”? Skandalizo can be translated as anything from “causing offence” to “causing sin”, which in the Gospels and Jewish Greek literature usually refers to sexual sin. All kinds of sexual sins and temptations were referred to using the word “stumble”. In two popular Jewish works written a couple of centuries before Jesus, young men were warned not to “gaze at a virgin, lest her beauty makes you stumble” and to avoid “the wicked woman who will make you stumble”.1 In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus warns against “looking at a woman lustfully” and immediately afterwards warns that your “eye” or your “hand” might cause you to stumble (Matthew 5:28–30). This language is clearly euphemistic, though it was more obvious for ancient Jews because the Hebrew word for “hand” also meant “penis”.

Jesus follows his warning about sinning with children by a similar warning about an eye or hand which could lead people into sin (Matthew 18:6–8; Mark 9:42–43). His language might be euphemistic (there was a child present!), but the implication is obvious. Jesus is talking about child sex abuse, which he hated with more ferocity than he expressed for any other sin.

... (more - buy from Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.com).

Hypocrisy

A church I know is dying from hypocrisy. And although I’m watching it from a distance, it’s still painful. The congregation is small, though very faithful, and the minister is a natural evangelist. But whenever someone is converted through an Alpha course or pub ministry they don’t stay in the church for long. The members soon show them that they are inadequate for their new faith: these new believers know nothing about the depth and traditions of Christianity; they fumble their way round the Bible and Prayer Book; they don’t have the gravitas or decorum for respectful worship; and those who have children, can’t control them properly. The old faithful, who are becoming fewer in number, can’t understand why the new believers don’t make more effort to be like them and to support the church like they do. They can’t see that they are suffering from that peculiar form of hypocrisy identified by Jesus – doing all the “right” things for all the wrong reasons. And this results in repelling people from God.

I feel sorry for the Pharisees of Jesus’ day. I spend a lot of time reading their writings and many of them are like friends to me. They sincerely tried to obey all of God’s commandments and yet the Gospels portray them as enemies, and Jesus spends a lot of time accusing them of hypocrisy (e.g. see Matthew 23). The Greek word hupokrités was the technical word for an actor, so Jesus was criticizing them for “pretending” or “play-acting”. Perhaps this doesn’t seem a very serious charge, but Jesus pointed out that in behaving this way the Pharisees were making it difficult for others to follow God. Their aim was to follow God’s law to the letter, and to do this they created many other laws which defined ever so carefully what they thought God’s law said. There were so many new religious laws that ordinary people had no hope of keeping them all unless they had the leisure to spend their lives studying how to carry them out.

Many of the new laws didn’t affect the religious leaders who created them...

... (more - buy from Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.com).

Polygamy

I’m sure you’ve heard this question before – it’s a favourite of those who like to harry unsuspecting church leaders: When a polygamous African tribal chief converts to Christianity, what happens to all his wives? Should he divorce them and send them back to their parents’ homes in shame and penury, or should he live away from them in a separate house but continue to provide for them financially? This is a classic problem for missionaries in countries that practise polygamy and one to which there is no easy answer… just the fervent hope that the next generation will marry only one wife! It must seem very strange for those polygamous families, when their normal, socially acceptable lifestyle is suddenly regarded as scandalously immoral.

The Jews whom Jesus lived among had the same problem. Polygamy had been considered perfectly normal and proper until the Romans took over and said it was disgusting and immoral. By Jesus’ time, many Jews had come to agree with the Roman view and polygamy fell out of practice during subsequent generations, although the Jews did not actually outlaw polygamy until the eleventh century. (It was rather like slave ownership in the UK not being practised for years, but not actually being made officially illegal until 2009 simply because legislators hadn’t got round to it.)1

The Romans allowed Jews to continue practising polygamy in Palestine, but elsewhere in the Empire monogamy was strictly enforced. Many Jews living outside Palestine therefore got used to the principle of having one wife and it seemed natural to them. We don’t know how frequent polygamy was among the Jews in Palestine because we have the complete family records of only one family, dating from the early second century – the papyrus scrolls were preserved in a bag hidden in a desert cave. They include the marriage certificate of a widow called Babatha who married a man who already had a wife. Babatha owned her own land and business, so she didn’t marry for financial support – perhaps it was for companionship or even love.

The Old Testament allowed polygamy but didn’t encourage it. Great men like Abraham, Israel, Judah, Gideon, Samson, David and Solomon had multiple wives, though the Old Testament records many problems which resulted. However, the law actually made it mandatory in one circumstance: if a married man died without leaving a male heir, his brother was required to marry the widow, whether or not he already had a wife. This was so that she would have support during her old age (either from her new husband or from her son) and so that the family name and land would be passed on. Polygamy was also allowed in other circumstances, presumably for similarly practical reasons such as the reduced number of men available for marriage after a war. This not only helped women who would otherwise be on their own, but also helped to replace the population more quickly. In peacetime, however, this practice meant that rich men had more than one wife and poor men remained single.

Jesus took the side of the Romans against the Jewish establishment on this occasion.

... (more - buy from Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.com).

No-fault Divorce

I come from Brighton, which, in my childhood, was a popular destination for illicit lovers going away for a “dirty weekend”. In those days it gave Brighton a rather risqué reputation. It also meant that a large number of private investigators operated in the town, hired to catch adulterers. As a child I had a perverse pride when I read yet another newspaper story about a divorce case citing a liaison in Brighton.

Paradoxically, the private investigator was often hired by the man he was supposedly investigating. He’d be given the name of a hotel, a room number and be instructed to turn up “unexpectedly” at a certain time. The man would hire a prostitute to sit in bed with him and call for room service at the pre-arranged time. When the maid brought the food she would see them both in bed and the investigator would slip in behind her armed with a camera. This provided two witnesses and photographic proof that could be used in the divorce case.

Fabricating evidence of your own infidelity was one of the easiest ways you could get a divorce, as it was very difficult to obtain one for any reason except adultery. But in 1969 divorce legislation was revolutionized on both sides of the Atlantic. In the UK, the Divorce Reform Act allowed divorce for anything considered to be “unreasonable behaviour” which led to the “irretrievable breakdown” of the marriage. In the USA, Governor Reagan signed a divorce bill that made California the first state to introduce no-fault divorce; this eventually spread to every other state in the nation. Previously, in both countries, only the wronged partner could file for a divorce and it was only allowed for a specific set of grounds; now, even an innocent partner could be divorced against their will.

This significant change in divorce legislation was very similar to the scandal that was happening when Jesus was going about his ministry. The Old Testament allowed divorce for adultery and for neglect (see the chapter “Marital Abuse”), but just before Jesus’ day the rabbis introduced a new type of divorce called the “Any Cause” divorce. This allowed a man to divorce a woman for any cause whatsoever. Scandalous examples include a single burnt meal in one case and, in another, a wrinkle on his wife’s face that she didn’t have when he married her!1. Divorces like these – for “Any Cause” – were, in effect, what we call today no-fault divorces. The reasons given for this type of divorce could be extremely minor and were therefore completely different to the Old Testament laws for divorce which the Jews still cited in their marriage contracts.

Every married Jew in Jesus’ day had a marriage contract – some of these have been found in caves around the Dead Sea...

... (more - buy from Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.com).

Marital Abuse

I couldn’t figure out why Nick (not his real name) had given up his well-paid day job and flown across several time zones to help me publicize a rather scholarly book on biblical divorce. Over coffee one day he told me about an old school friend who joined the same church as him after she’d got married. Occasional bruises and unexpected absences soon indicated that her marriage was going badly wrong. Nick wasn’t surprised when she left her husband, but the minister and elders of the church were shocked. They sympathized, yet said that as a Christian she had to trust God and return to her husband. She protested that they had no idea how bad his temper was, but in the end she did return to him. One day, no one knows why, her husband went after her with a gun. As she ran from the house, he shot her dead. Nick decided from that day to do all he could to look for biblical solutions to such problems.

Scandals of abuse existed in New Testament times, but Old Testament law allowed women to divorce their husbands long before the abuse got too bad. Examples that we have recorded in Jewish law codes of the first two centuries include the case of a woman who was ordered by her husband never to visit her parents and another where the wife was forced to pour all the household waste water onto the manure heap instead of using the normal drain (think of the smelly splatter!).1 The courts agreed that these were cases of abuse, and the women had the right to a divorce. Of course they heard many thousands of other cases, but these two were recorded as a benchmark so that in cases of the same or worse abuse, other judges would know that the victims had the right to a divorce.

The Jewish leaders learned this approach from the Bible, which establishes a general law by specifying the minimum requirements. Exodus 21 details the law of marital neglect by listing the minimum support that must be given to a wife: food, clothing and love (Exodus 21:10–11). The law said that these were the minimum requirements even to wives who had been slaves, so it is clear that they were also due to free-born wives and to husbands. These three were the basis of Jewish marriage vows: the husband had to provide food and cloth, while the wife had to make meals and clothing, and both had to give themselves in love to each other.

Lawyers can sometimes seem to ruin everything, especially romance. The rabbinic lawyers shortly before Jesus’ day decided to define exactly how little should be regarded as neglect: they stated how much food and clothing the husband had to provide, how many meals his wife had to make, and even how often they had to make love. A man who worked normal hours had to do his “duty” once a week, but a travelling salesman was allowed a month off and a sailor was allowed six months off. An unemployed man, however, was expected to perform every night!2

If either partner neglected to provide food, clothing or love, the other could take them to court and get a divorce...

... (more - buy from Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.com).

Unfair Loans

King Croesus of Lydia became the richest man in the world by being honest. He is often credited with inventing coins, but his father and predecessor, King Alyattes, first made gold coins in about 600 BC. King Alyattes claimed his coins were made of electrum (a natural form of gold that contains some silver), but he devalued them by adding extra silver so they were only 60 per cent gold, and disguised this by adding gold-coloured copper. The merchants soon caught on and rejected them. Croesus, however, produced the world’s first pure gold coins by melting all the silver out of electrum – a technically difficult process. They made him extremely rich because everyone trusted them and bought them from him to trade with.

Coinage and paper currency is so normal for us that we can’t imagine what it was like when every sale involved time-consuming barter, especially because the goods being exchanged could be of uncertain value. Coins have a fixed weight and value and are authenticated so that both seller and buyer can trust them. They are also much easier to carry than barter goods such as sheep or pots of grain. The Chinese also introduced money at about the same time, though their coins were in the shapes of small spades and daggers – perhaps indicating the two main sources of wealth: farming and fighting.

The invention of money created a new way of getting rich – making money from money itself. You could exchange currency, buy and sell commodities without ever handing over any goods, or simply lend money. Each of these involved a percentage for the dealer which could range from fair to crippling.

At the time of Jesus, coinage was still considered “new technology” and people were naturally suspicious of it. The Jews invented a new word for coin-based wealth – mammon – a word which encapsulated everything bad about money. Jesus summed up popular feeling when he said: “You cannot serve God and Mammon” (Matthew 6:24; Luke 16:13) – that is, beware lest coins become your god. But although coins might have been mistrusted, they had become a necessary part of Jewish life. In villages goods could still be exchanged via barter and promises, but coins were needed for wages, buying food in the market, giving a dowry for your bride and paying taxes.

Many of Jesus’ parables were about the modern realities of money...

... (more - buy from Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.com).

Oaths and Curses

More ancient Roman curses have been found in Britain than in the rest of the Roman Empire added together. They have survived the damp climate as they were scratched on small sheets of lead (about 6 cm across) which were rolled up and stuffed into the crevices of walls or dropped into drains or graves. Most of them were found in the beautiful city of Bath, especially in and around the ancient Roman baths themselves. The vast majority of these curses are directed at thieves, probably because bath-houses were ideal places to steal clothes and bags that were stored while their owners bathed. These curses called upon the gods to attack the body and mind of the thief in extraordinarily vicious ways. Usually the curser didn’t bother to ask for the stolen goods to be returned – what they wanted most was revenge.

The curses found outside Britain are fewer but more varied. They include curses on love rivals and rival charioteers – for example: “Bind the legs and hands and head and heart of Victoricus the charioteer of the Blue team…” and “May they be broken, may they be dragged (on the ground), may they be destroyed.” Often the curse was seen by no one except the person writing it, who then rolled it up and hid it, so the Romans didn’t expect them to work by auto-suggestion – they depended on the gods to enact the curse.

The New Testament frequently criticizes cursing (Luke 6:28; Romans 3:14; 12:14; James 3:9–10; 1 Peter 3:9), although Jewish curses were actually very mild compared with Roman ones. And because the Jews probably realized that God was likely to ignore requests that cursed people, they devised a subtler method of invoking misfortune upon someone. They created the Korban oath, which was a kind of self-cursing – it asked God to punish them if they ever helped the particular person they hated. This meant that they could piously deny their enemy any help when they needed it, even if they were a close neighbour or, scandalously, even a close relative. Jesus utterly condemned this practice (Mark 7:9–13).

... (more - buy from Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.com).

Bitterness and Hatred

A rotten potato smells far worse than a rotten apple. As a teenager I used to deliver potatoes to hotels and restaurants for a Saturday job. I’d haul the sacks on to my shoulder and tread carefully down steep stairs and narrow corridors where there was no room for any lifting machinery. Now and then I’d heave up a sack and it would burst in a shower of foul-smelling black slush. A rotten potato at the bottom had turned all its neighbours into a stinking mush that weakened the thick paper sack. The smell would stay on me all day until I could go home for a bath.

In its ability to harbour bad things, unforgiveness is even worse. A small offence by someone can settle in your mind, infecting your thoughts and memories until everything connected with that person makes you unreasonably angry. The next time they do the slightest thing wrong, you explode like an unopened can of beans on a bonfire.

The Jews at Qumran near the Dead Sea had to learn how to resolve conflicts because they lived together, like a huge family. Long-lasting grudges could turn the peace of their isolated community into a silence filled with stifled anger that would lead to frustrated outbursts of temper. To try to prevent this, the community adapted a rule from the Old Testament law of love (Leviticus 19:17–18). They said that if someone wronged you, you should rebuke them before the sun went down, so that they could make recompense or apologize. You should speak the truth in order to help that person avoid further sin. If they didn’t accept their fault, then you should invite friends to help both of you sort things out. And if you still couldn’t resolve your differences, you should take the matter to the whole community that same day. They certainly took conflict seriously!

They had an additional rule which they adhered to very strictly: if you chose not to rebuke someone on the day that an offence occurred, you must then never mention that incident in the future. You’ll know as well as I do that when we have an argument with someone and lose our temper, we’re tempted to drag up all the unresolved conflicts we’ve had with them in the past and get angry about them all over again. The Qumran community prevented this by punishing anyone who brought up previous conflicts in anger – they excluded that person from their community meals for a period.1

This method of conflict resolution was taken up by Christians. Jesus commended the three-stage process of confrontation: one-to-one; then before witnesses; and finally before the whole congregation (Matthew 18:15–17). He also told a parable to emphasize the need for speedy reconciliation (Matthew 5:25–26). And Paul encouraged believers to “Speak the truth in love” and told them to do it without delay: “The sun must not set on your anger” (Ephesians 4:15, 26).

This teaching at Qumran may help us understand Jesus’ difficult saying about anger being similar to murder (Matthew 5:21–22)...

... (more - buy from Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.com).

Good and Bad Luck

Florence Nightingale’s superiors were aghast when she ordered medical supplies for the Crimean War in advance by predicting the number of men who would become injured or diseased. They held the belief that because humans act with free will and, on top of that, God does what he wants, it was simply not possible for the future to be predicted. How could anyone forecast the percentage of men who would be injured in a cavalry charge, or the proportion that would get malaria? Nevertheless, Florence’s predictions were proved correct and, because of them, fewer men died. The importance of the study of medical statistics was recognized from that point on.

Throughout history people have always believed that things did not depend on mere chance. Ancient Greeks believed in the Fates, who had control of each person’s destiny, spinning the threads of their life and deciding its length. Ancient Romans worshipped the goddess Fortuna, though she wasn’t always helpful – she spun a wheel at random to determine good or bad circumstances for you. This “Lady Luck” remained popular even among Christians who transformed the blessing “Good luck” into “God speed” (“spede” was Middle English for “luck”). From the time of Augustine in the fifth century, the church tried to suppress such phrases as scandalous superstition, but failed. In the evangelist John Wesley’s journal for 1763 he records a group of ministers wishing him “Good luck in the name of the Lord”, and few Christians today regard saying “Good luck” as scandalously pagan.

The Old Testament writers believed that God was in charge of everything. Even throwing a lot (which was like flipping a coin) did not give a random result because God was in overall control (Proverbs 16:33). However, contradictorily, they also recognized that things did appear to happen by chance at times. When an arrow killed King Jehoshaphat, it looked like random bad luck. He was disguised as a normal soldier, so no one aimed at him in particular, and the arrow just happened to hit a vulnerable slit in his armour at the right angle to penetrate it. The original text says of the archer who killed him: “he drew his bow innocently” – which is as near as Hebrew can get to expressing the idea of an unplanned random event (1 Kings 22:34). And yet, the reason Jehoshaphat was disguised was because a prophet had predicted that he would be killed in the battle – so even this apparently random event was controlled by God.

Does this mean that God decides where every raindrop falls and where every germ infects?...

... (more - buy from Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.com).

God-sent Disasters

When Benjamin Franklin invented the lightning rod in 1752, the Pope recommended it, but many churches refused to fit one. They believed that it interfered with God’s sovereign right to strike down sinners. Instead, they continued with the practice of ringing the church bells during lightning storms to call people to pray and to ward off the lightning. Unfortunately this resulted in many bell-ringers being killed by lightning – an average of three a year in Germany (where, for some reason, they kept a count). However, in 1769 the church of Saint Nazaire in Brescia, Italy, was struck by lightning which ignited the gunpowder stored in its large dry underground vaults – about 100 tons! The explosion killed 3,000 people and destroyed a sixth of the town. After this, most churches quickly fitted lighting rods to their spires.

The concept of an “act of God” started with the Laws of Hammurabi, a Babylonian law code of about 4,000 years ago. Law 249 stated that if a man hired an ox and a god struck it with lightning, he did not have to pay compensation. Today, only insurance brokers refer to lightning as an “act of God”, although when lightning caused a serious fire at York Minster in 1984, many people related it to the installation of the controversial new Bishop of Durham held there three days earlier. Some newspapers had reported that the Bishop didn’t believe in the resurrection. Was God agreeing with them and making his feelings known in this way?

In the meantime, the Haitian earthquake of 2010 left 316,000 people dead and 1.6 million homeless, and the Indian Ocean tsunami of 2004 resulted in 230,000 deaths and 1.7 million homeless. Every year brings more disasters to our TV screens and, as we watch the suffering of so many, the question stays the same: “Why?”

Today, as in New Testament times, the scandal is that God gets blamed for killing apparently innocent people using natural disasters. Jesus was asked about the collapse of a tower in Siloam – a recent disaster that had killed eighteen people. And, although not a “natural” disaster, the killing of innocent bystanders by Roman soldiers in the Temple (Luke 13:1) was another event that prompted many questions as to why. The victims of both incidents didn’t appear to have done anything wrong, so why did God kill them? Does God use such disasters to punish those who have secret sins?

Old Testament stories such as the destruction of Sodom or the earthquake in King Uzziah’s day suggest that God does use earthy disasters as punishment. But were these disasters initiated by God in order to do his will or were they going to happen anyway and God used them to carry out his will? ...

... (more - buy from Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.com).

Unforgivable Blasphemy

Europeans have almost forgotten what blasphemy means. No one, for instance, predicted the offence and riots that were caused by cartoons featuring the prophet Mohammed in a Danish newspaper in 2005. Muslims are zealously concerned with God’s honour; they would never place a Quran or a Bible on the floor, let alone use God’s name inappropriately. And yet most non-Muslims rarely get through one conversation without misusing a sacred name. The UK laws against blasphemy were repealed as recently as 2008, by which time they already appeared hopelessly archaic. It seems amazing that as recently as 1977, the publisher of Gay News was imprisoned for describing Jesus as “well hung”. The fact that I can quote these same words shows how much society has changed.

In Jesus’ day, blasphemy was perhaps the most scandalous offence anyone could be accused of. Even Romans regarded impiety against the gods as an offence against the whole of society. The ancient unwritten “common law” of Rome (the mos maiorum) established the honour of the gods at the heart of Roman law.

Jews were so horrified by this offence that Paul and his fellow Jews were able to provoke a crowd into stoning Stephen for it. They were merely angry when Stephen accused all Jews of disobeying the law of Moses, but when he claimed that he could see “the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God”, they boiled over into murderous rage (Acts 7:53–58). Many in that crowd must have remembered that Jesus had regularly referred to himself as the “Son of Man” and so the blasphemy was clear.

Jesus himself was almost stoned on a couple of occasions when he claimed that “My father and I are one” and when he said, “Before Abraham was born, I am!” (John 10:30–39; 8:58–59). The rather stilted phrase “I am” was a deliberate reference to God’s interpretation of his own name, Yahweh or Jehovah – no one knows how it was really pronounced (Exodus 3:14). John’s Gospel mentioned many occasions when Jesus provocatively used the phrase “I am”.

John isn’t alone in recording Jesus’ scandalous claim to godhead because Jesus accepts similar charges of blasphemy elsewhere (Mark 2:7; 14:62–64). His most audacious claim to divinity goes almost unnoticed by modern readers, when he said: “Where two or three are gathered in my name, I am in their midst” (Matthew 18:20). Any first-century Jew would immediately recognize that Jesus was referring to a famous rabbinic saying....

... (more - buy from Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.com).

Eternal Torment

“It’s not fair” is an all-too-familiar little phrase that children use before they learn that life simply isn’t fair. What begins as a cry for justice turns into a resigned silence – or sometimes even a quest for personal revenge. Of course, we try to explain to them that God will bring real justice… but then they learn the church’s teaching on hell and discover that all sin results in the same punishment. A shoplifter who doesn’t repent will be punished in exactly the same way as a multiple rapist or murderer who doesn’t repent. Like Abraham, we’d love to say to God: “Far be this from you! Surely the Judge of all the earth will act justly?” (Genesis 18:25). We want to shout out to him: “It’s not fair!”

Common Jewish teaching about hell in the time of Jesus is illustrated in a parable told by a rabbi called Johanan ben Zakkai. He is significant because his forty-year ministry in Galilee overlapped with the time when Jesus was preaching and teaching, and Jesus is likely to have heard Johanan himself tell the parable. Johanan was probably passing on a familiar story, one that Jesus’ listeners would all know:

A king invited all his people to a banquet but did not say when it would start. The wise people put on their fine clothes and waited at the door of the palace saying, “Surely a royal palace already has everything ready.” The foolish people carried on with their work saying, “Surely a banquet takes time to prepare.” Suddenly the king called in the people; the wise entered in fine clothes but the foolish entered in dirty

clothes. The king rejoiced at the wise but was angry with the fools. He ordered: “Let those who dressed for the banquet sit and feast, but those who did not dress for the banquet will stand and watch them.”1

This parable reflected the common Jewish theology that all Jews would go to heaven, but they would not all receive equal honour – the fools didn’t share the honour (i.e. the food) that the wise enjoyed.

Hell was an important part of Jesus’ teaching. In fact, he taught more about it than any other Jew of his time – the Gospels record forty-five verses on hell, which is a large number when compared with the sixty-five verses on love. Jesus replied to Johanan’s teaching by telling similar parables of his own – people being invited to a king’s banquet, the wise and foolish girls waiting to join a wedding party, and the man thrown out of a banquet for not being dressed properly (Matthew 22:2–14; 25:1–13 and parallels in the other Gospels). In each of these, he contradicted Johanan’s well-known parable in one important way: many people are excluded from the banquet – they aren’t ready and arrive too late, after the doors are closed; they decide themselves not to go; or they are thrown out.

Jesus had to speak about hell so much because he disagreed fundamentally about it with almost all other Jews. Jesus told them that unless they personally repented, they were all going to hell (Luke 13:28). This was utterly scandalous to most Jews.

Many people today are equally scandalized by Jesus’ teaching but for a different reason: the eternal punishment of hell seems disproportionate for all but a few utterly evil people. It is a subject that we do not often hear preached on today – perhaps because it is so offensive to most people.

30 scandals uncovered in historical sources

Contents

Scandals in Jesus' Life

Scandals among Jesus' friends

Scandals in Jesus' teaching

Introduction

Why Look for Scandals?

Illegitimate Birth

Ineligible Bachelor

Fraudulent Miracles

Bad Table Manners

Alcohol Abuse

Disruptive Worship

Exposing Temple Scams

Supplanting Passover

Contemplating Suicide

Censored Arrest Warrant

Shameful Execution

Embarrassing Resurrection

Mary Magdalene

Judas Iscariot

Second-rate disciples

The Unchosen

The Cursed

Prostitutes

Child Abuse

Polygamy

No-fault Divorce

Marital Abuse

Unfair Loans

Oaths and Curses

Bitterness and Hatred

Good and Bad Luck

God-sent Disasters

Unforgivable Blasphemy

Eternal Torment

Recommendations