Über die Autorinnen und Autoren

Geza Vermes’s pioneering work on the Dead Sea Scrolls and the historical Jesus led to his appointment as the first professor of Jewish studies at Oxford University, where he is now professor emeritus. He is the author of several books, including The Authentic Gospel of Jesus.

Geza Vermes’s pioneering work on the Dead Sea Scrolls and the historical Jesus led to his appointment as the first professor of Jewish studies at Oxford University, where he is now professor emeritus. He is the author of several books, including The Authentic Gospel of Jesus.

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The Changing Faces of Jesus

Compass Books

Chapter One

John

The Odd Man Out Among the Evangelists

* * *

Over the last quarter of a century, in addition to my academic lecturesI have had many opportunities to address nonspecialist groups of educatedmen and women, young and older, on my work on Jesus. My purposehas always been to portray "Jesus the Jew," that is, the historicalfigure that stands behind the doctrinal elaborations of two millennia ofChristian belief, worship, and speculation. My nontheological sketchusually received sympathetic hearing from liberally minded Christians,as wall as from those in the auditorium who did not belong to church orchapel, while Jews listened to it with amazement and curiosity. However,it provoked, simultaneously and regularly, puzzled incomprehensionamong the conventional, especially evangelical or fundamentalistChristian members of the audience who believed that they were familiarwith the Gospels. "Did I hear you saying," I was often asked, "thatthere is no evidence in Scripture stating that Jesus was the Messiah orthat he was God? But didn't he explicitly assert the opposite, namelythat he was the Messiah and the Son of God? Did he not proclaim tothe Jews in the Temple of Jerusalem that he and the Father were one?"And so on.

    Nine times out of ten, the traditionalists' bewildered question derivesfrom some passage in the Fourth Gospel. My customary reply,which echoes the conclusions of most critical scholars, leaves them asa rule somewhat confused, but ultimately unimpressed. They cannotswallow the view that the so-called Gospel of John is something specialand reflects not the authentic message of Jesus or even the thinkingabout him of his immediate followers but the highly evolvedtheology of a Christian writer who lived three generations after Jesusand completed his Gospel in the opening years of the second centuryA.D. For the average believer, the last Gospel is naturally the best andthe most reliable of the four. They hold it to be the work of the apostleand eyewitness of the life of Jesus whom he cherished so much thatshortly before dying on the cross he named him his heir and theguardian of his mother, Mary.

    It is obvious to anyone acquainted with the doctrinal tradition ofthe church that the theological understanding of Jesus?who he wasand what he did?by historic Christianity ultimately depends on theGospel of John and the letters of Paul. Paul, the apostle of the Gentiles,is primarily responsible for the church's teaching on Christ, the Redeemerof mankind; faith in the divinity of the Son of God and the divorcebetween Christianity and Judaism, on the other hand, derivefirst and foremost from the influence of the Fourth Gospel. John's pictureof the truly divine Jesus Christ constitutes, it may be said, the climaxin the evolution of Christian dogma in the New Testament, itsmost polished and ultimate expression. For this reason John is chosenas the best point of departure in our historical-spiritual journey. To bemore explicit, we shall begin with the doctrinally most evolved stage inour search for the historical reality which lies hidden behind and beneaththe earliest stages of the church's belief in the celestial Christ.

    Anyone well versed in history knows that the Fourth Gospel is aunique phenomenon. It is unlike the first three Gospels, and comparisonreveals that it stands out as truly sui generis, of its own peculiarkind. Mark, Matthew, and Luke, the Synoptic Gospels, follow the samestory line and generally can be set out in parallel columns in a so-calledGospel synopsis. They only differ at the beginning and the end ofthe life of Jesus. The story of his birth and the apparition accounts afterhis death are all missing from Mark, the earliest of the three,whereas both Matthew and Luke record them, though each in his ownway. By contrast, John has his own special vision, aim, and structure.The theological canvas painted by this evangelist, his chronology, andthe style of teaching and actual message he attributes to Jesus arelargely unparalleled in the Synoptics, and sometimes flatly contradicttheir testimony.

    This view of the Gospels is that of a scholar, of a detached historian,in search of information embedded in the surviving sources. Religiousauthorities do not like to be faced with contradictory evidence; theystrive for reconciliation and harmony. Modern Old Testament researchhas distinguished four layers or sources in the "Law of Moses," but ancientJewish tradition managed to amalgamate these into a single unifiedaccount, the books of the Pentateuch, the first five books of theHebrew Bible, as we have them. Perturbed by the differences and dissonancein the four records of the life of Jesus, the Christian churchalso made two kinds of attempt at ironing out discrepancies. The firstinstinctively imitated ancient Judaism, which had converted the fourpreexisting "sources" into the single Mosaic Law. Likewise the earlychurch sought to replace the four separate Gospels with one narrativeincorporating all the details of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, thuseliminating all the differences. This effort ultimately failed, but for awhile a brilliantly conceived Gospel harmony, known as the Diatessaron,or the Four-in-One, attributed to the mid-second-century Christianapologist Tatian, had considerable success in the churches of Syria,where it almost managed to eclipse the individual Gospels. However,from the fifth century onward it was consigned to near oblivion. Thesecond line of defense has succeeded and survives to this day. It representsJohn as the supreme biographer of Jesus, the author of the spiritualGospel. Familiar with the works of his predecessors, he is said tohave deliberately avoided repeating most of their story, apart from thePassion account, to have restricted himself to supplementing and enrichingtheir records with entire speeches attributed to Jesus, and ingeneral doctrinally developing and improving their narratives.

    No critical reading of the four Gospels justifies such an understandingof John. For it is obvious to any religiously unbiased reader that ifthe Fourth Evangelist is right, his forerunners must be mistaken orvice versa. The Synoptics and John cannot be simultaneously correctwhen the former assign to Jesus a public career lasting a year, whileJohn stretches it to two or three years by mentioning two or possiblythree consecutive Passover festivals during Jesus' ministry in Galileeand Judaea. Likewise, if John's dating of the crucifixion to the day beforethe Passover, i.e., 14 Nisan, is accurate, the Synoptics who depictthe last supper as a Passover dinner and place the events leading to theexecution of Jesus on 15 Nisan must be in error. Or to Hebraize andsuitably adapt the English proverb to the Passover situation, you can'thave your unleavened bread and eat it!

    When and by whom was the Fourth Gospel written? The oldestknown manuscript fragments of John belong to sometime betweenA.D. 125 and 150, and equally the oldest references to John's Gospel inearly Christian literature come from the mid-second century. So thework was completed before those dates. On the other hand, the highlyevolved doctrine of John points to a period posterior to the redaction ofthe Synoptic...