Jesus : A Life

A.N. Wilson produced this attempt at an historical biography of Jesus of Nazareth in 1992. It remains a good read today. It is an 'attempt' because there is very little that can be reliably said about the historical Jesus as opposed to the mythos constructed in subsequent years.

His approach is interesting and intuitive rather than speculative. His starting point was then-recent research by Geza Vermes into the historical context of Jesus. This account gives a high probability that Jesus came from the Jewish elite as one of many Holy Men consistent with Judaic expectations.

From there Wilson teases out of the Four Gospels what looks to be viable as humanly real and then separates it out from the propagandistic games involved in subsequent show more struggles over what Christianity was to become, a process in which Paul was to be central.

The resulting account is, of course, speculative. Yet a fine understanding of the probable and known cultures of Galilee and Judaea in the period in which Jesus lived (a very short period of time) gives us something that is as likely to be credible as we are ever going to get.

What is clear and going to be uncomfortable for most 'Christians' is that, by this account, Jesus was no more a Christian than Marx was a Marxist. He was a Jew thinking along severely Judaic lines within Judaic culture but with a unique and 'pure' take on what that meant.

Two things are going on in this book - what Jesus was and what Jesus became in the hands of the winners of that initial ideological struggle for power. The two have to be kept separate because 'Christianity' is not an event but a process that relies on turning Christ's story into an event.

This is not going to be the last word on the matter. Wilson perhaps has his own axe to grind as someone who studied theology but who became troubled by the story he was given as truth yet he retains respect for the 'noble lie' that emerged out of those early struggles.

He also makes clear, certainly to this reader, evidentially that the Jews cannot be accused of Jesus' death in the way the later Church indicated (leading to the wide acceptance of anti-semitism). Only the Romans could decide on such a killing. Making the Jews responsible was propaganda.

What Wilson introduces are two ideas that the Gospels have no interest in promoting. The first is that Jesus' nexus of relationships looks to have been larger than those implied by the Gospels and that some of those connections were much more involved in Jewish politics than we thought.

The second is that Jesus was involved in a dramatic quasi-political operation (in a nation where religion was politics) and that his intervention was mistimed and misunderstood. He emerged in a calculated way but then got outplayed by his historical situation.

The Jewish establishment, trying to protect their own people, was trapped by being subject to the risk of brutal retaliation against Jews for radical acts by the Roman occupiers. They were forced into collaboration as apparently the lesser evil (not for the last time in Jewish history).

The Romans faced by what they thought might be an incipient revolt simply dealt with what they presumed to be a ringleader in a difficult situation without any interest whatsoever in what Jesus was actually trying to say or do.

In fact, although not overly explicit, we can tease out from Wilson's account that Jesus was interested in unifying the Jewish population around their cultural and spiritual identity in a deliberate move away from violent and useless (as it proved) confrontation with Rome.

Jesus' position was not 'gentle, meek and mild' but it was also not politically revolutionary. It was rather a dynamic message directed solely at Jews which emphasised that all Jews were of equal worth in belonging to the nation under God and that they should cohere as a nation.

We will never know the precise politics of this but it is plausible that such an ethno-nationalist message might still be regarded as problematic and confrontational by Rome, that the Jewish elite forced to collaborate were worried and that revolutionary involvement was engaged.

It also seems to be the case that a belief approach that was developed in relatively free non-Roman Galilee was entering into occupied Judaea, and especially Jerusalem, and that the Galileans understood what Jesus meant better than the new enthusiasts in the occupied heartland.

As to the belief system, this is the bridge to the later Church because the spiritual purification of Judaism to ensure the survival of the nation meant inclusive values and moral standards that could be transferred to the world at large after the failure of the first mission.

And this is what seems to have happened. The family core of the mission re-established control as an elite operation within Judaism but Paul's rethinking of that mission to include the Gentiles not merely challenged this but won out in the propaganda wars through the Gospels.

Jesus who died a disappointed Jew (if he died) saw the moral core of his message to the Jews radically transformed into a belief system that followed the increasingly hellenised diaspora, drew in gentiles and became the Church, the rock on which Christianity was to be built.

Personally, though I know no more than anyone else as to the actual facts of the case, Wilson's method (though he does not say this himself) allows me the space to say that it is possible (no more) that Jesus survived and leaves the picture, exiling himself far away from the Roman world.

The book has to be read in order to capture exactly what I mean by 'Wilson's method' which I constantly take to be one of using what little evidence is to hand to suggest plausible probabilities (with few certainties) and some space for possibilities.

I found much of it persuasive though never to the point of saying that I accepted this or that to be definitively true but only that this or that claim seems to be the most probable explanation, certainly better than relying on faith or an uncritical view of often propagandistic early church writing.

So, where does this leave faith? Much where it was before. Faith is faith. It is never going to be unravelled, except for people with a mind to critical thinking, if it is already in place. Some two thousand years of history have constructed a civilisational framework hard to beat.

Faith is not about the truth of any matter objectively or scientifically speaking but rather a truth that is used for organisational, social or individual psychological cohesion. The costs of unravelling faith is disorder as much in the collapse of individual identity as in social cohesion.

For the flexible faith-based intellectual, the historical (probabilistic) truth and the truth of revelation can co-exist despite the absurdities and illogicalities because they have to co-exist. If one of these has to die, well, it has to be the historical claim rather than the claim of belief.

To be fair, Wilson's aim is not to undermine faith at all. He respects it. He simply seems to want it to be seen for what it is and respected for what it is. The facts of the matter are simply to stand alongside it. The truth of the matter will at least moderate some nastier absurdities like antisemitism.

Naturally, the Christian community did not like the book (well, they would not, would they?) but it really does not matter. They are on strong ground in worrying about Wilson's intuitive approach to what facts there are but his approach is still stronger than their simple faith ... except as faith.

My recommendation is to take a deep breath, read the book with an open mind and choose which balance of common sense and faith suits you. Certainly Wilson is rigorous in his reasoning with what material he has. Jesus as Jew first and foremost in and around 30AD just seems right. show less

Quite frankly, I don't understand the buzz around this book. It's a straightforward biography of Jesus, stripping him of his divinity to paint him as solely human instead (the man behind the myths, if you want). As an atheist myself, here's not a stance which particularly fazed me.

On the plus side, it's easy to read. It relies on historiography as much as upon the Gospels, but filtered to suit the views of the author.

All in all, then, if I surely found it satisfying to read I wouldn't go as far as to claim it to be profound or challenging (unless you are a Christian, that is...).

I have been motivated, over the past month, to read about Christianity. This volume is, in a sense, revisionist. It purports to discuss the latest scholarship as of the date of its publication, 1995, and presents a view of the historical Jesus. The gospels, it points out, were written in about 60-100 CE (for Common Era), and represent as much an attempt to present a Hellenized theology, and to keep the all-powerful Romans from becoming suspicious of revolution, as to record the doings of an actual person. Nonetheless, Wilson tries to identify, by internal textual criticism, elements that are likely memories of Jesus. John's gospel is very different from the other three, and may draw on a different tradition or witness; Matthew Mark and show more Luke may have a common source document known as Q. Paul's epistles are the earliest works, and he is the true organizer of the wider and hellenized chuch, whereas James, Jesus' brother, and a group in Jerusalem, remained true to Jewish teaching and insisted that converts follow Jewish law. Wilson suggests that Jesus was involved in a failed civil revolution when he was taken to the crucifixition. show less

The author attempts to relate Jesus as a human person to his abilities to perform miracles. He says he doesn't believe Jesus is Lord, and works for 250 pages to prove his point. There is a lot in the book from the Pseudepigraphia and the Apocrphal Gospels of Thomas and others. While he does cite Josephus and Eusebius, the Bible he uses is the Catholic Jerusalem Bible. Most Protestants would stop reading this book after the first few chapters. Most Catholics would be outraged. I only finished it because I am a church librarian and need to know both sides of arguments.

reviewed very critically by N.T. Wright in Who Was Jesus? 1992