Jesus, His Brother, and Paul: Their Lives and Archaeological Evidence

By Dr. Diane Holloway Cheney

Using analysis of recent archaeological discoveries and her extensive education in psychology, theology, and biblical archaeology, Dr. Diane Holloway Cheney is bringing a fresh new take on the lives and ministries of some of the most well-known New Testament figures: Jesus, his brother James, and the apostle Paul.

Jesus, His Brother, and Paul: Their Lives and Archaeological Evidence provides a fascinating quest for truth about these famous men—these founders of Christianity—and their relationships with each other. It examines how Christianity transformed from its beginnings with Jesus and James into something that has lasted through the centuries. It even looks at how Jesus’s against-the-grain decisions invited worldwide acceptance, far beyond what he had ever envisioned.

Perhaps most importantly, this book poses the question: Is the current version of Christianity better or worse than Jesus’s original vision? Read these pages and judge for yourself.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Gatekeeper Press
• Release date: Jul 30, 2022
• ISBN: 9781662929892

Book preview

CHAPTER ONE

Who Wrote About Jesus?

Gospels

THE MOST INFORMATION about Jesus was found in the four gospels by men using the names Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John in the New Testament. The four gospels have been edited by various authors and scribes over decades after they were written, but much has been learned about Jesus. There is no doubt that a person named Jesus existed and two things are mentioned by all historians: Jesus’ baptism by John the Baptist and Jesus’ crucifixion.

A main historical source about Jesus is from Jewish historian Flavius Josephus who wrote his 25-volume work Antiquities of the Jews about 90 CE. He referred to Jesus twice and identified James as the brother of Jesus who is called the Messiah. This passage had words inserted later by Christians who translated Josephus’ book. Here is that passage:

At this time there appeared Jesus, a wise man [if indeed one should call him a man for] he was a doer of startling deeds, a teacher of people who receive the truth with pleasure. And he gained a following both among many Jews and among many of Greek origin. [He was the messiah.] And when Pilate, because of an accusation made by the leading men among us, condemned him to the cross, those who had loved him previously did not cease to do so. [For he appeared to them on the third day, living again, just as the divine prophets had spoken of these and countless other wondrous things about him.] And up until this very day the tribe of Christians, named after him, has not died out. (Antiquities 18.3.3)

Many other people down through history have written about Jesus but those who knew him, such as his family and his apostles, obviously had the most information about the man.

Before Jesus, there were predictions by prophets in scriptures of the Torah, in the Old Testament. The author of the Gospel of Matthew apparently hoped to fulfil several predictions that a Messiah would be a male born of a virgin rather than an ordinary birth. The gospel writer may have been persuaded by this prediction:

Therefore, the Lord himself will give you a sign: behold, a virgin (or maiden) is with child and beareth a son and shall call his name Immanuel [God is with us]. (Isaiah 7:14)

In addition, there was a prediction that a messiah might be born in Bethlehem:

But thou, Bethlehem Ephrathah, which art little to be among the thousands of Judah, out of thee shall one come forth unto me that is to be ruler in Israel, whose goings forth are from of old, from everlasting. Therefore, will he give them up, until the time that she who travaileth hath brought forth, then the residue of his brethren shall return unto the children of Israel. And he shall stand and shall feed his flock in the strength of Jehovah, in the majesty of the name of Jehovah his God, and they shall abide, for now shall he be great unto the ends of the earth. (Micah 5:2-4)

Thus, Matthew’s story of Jesus’ birth involved a virgin, and a birth in Bethlehem even though his parents lived in Nazareth. The author of this gospel pretended there was a need for people to go elsewhere for tax purposes, but that requirement came many years later under another ruler. Thus, he used a ruse to make the Biblical prediction come true.

Also, the Gospel of Matthew gave Jesus’ father (the real man instead of God) a lineage beginning with Abraham, down through David, the king of Israel, on through Babylonian captivity, and many more generations. This would make Jesus seem more important, and more able to fulfill the many predictions of a Messiah.

Most Biblical scholars believe that Mark was the first gospel written about 60-69 CE, some thirty years after Jesus’ death. That was followed a few years later by Luke and Matthew after the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 CE. Many believe John was written around 110 CE but lately more scholars disagree. Check out Obrey M. Hendricks 2007 in the New Oxford Annotated Bible about the Gospel of John where they believe it might have been written around 65 CE or earlier due to its precise information about Jesus’ death.

The author of Mark may have been John Mark who was one of Jesus’ seventy apostles. He was terse in his descriptions and had a blunt writing style, as would a man with little formal education. He used many sources to include conflicts, sayings, and speculations. Matthew and Luke appear to scholars to have used Mark to write of Jesus’ life and some of his sayings. Those three gospels are similar and called synoptic because they have about the same point of view.

Because many of the same phrases are repeated in these three gospels, there may have been some other source of Jesus’ sayings. Researchers in recent years have called their possible source Q from the German word Quelle which means source. Such a source will be seen in the chapter on 114 sayings by one of Jesus’ believers using the name of Didymus Judas Thomas.

Paul or Saul of Tarsus, a Jew with a Greek-influenced education, had an experience several years after Jesus’ death that caused him to take up the Jesus Movement and even spread it to Gentiles. As time passed, his travels to many countries led to new churches with a somewhat different orientation than Jesus. That shift in religion beginning within the first generation after Jesus’ death will be explained later.

Some gospels were influenced by men who traveled with Paul such as Mark and Luke. The Gospel of John seems less influenced by Paul and more influenced by someone very close to or in the same family as Jesus as will be seen.

How did the gospels come about? After the death of the charismatic preacher called Jesus, there would first have been oral traditions where people passed the sayings, stories of Jesus, and parables around to others nearby. There were few literate people to read writings in those days, but some of those sayings and stories were finally written down. For years, the Gospel of Matthew was the only circulating story of Jesus and it became quite popular.

Gradually, stories came to be written collections, in addition to oral transmissions about the man and his followers. The same process must have happened with The Odyssey and The Iliad by a Greek man dubbed Homer. They were passed by word of mouth through hundreds of years before being written.

Some scholars have theories about how such memories of writings were passed on for years. One explanation is that oral poetry is largely composed out of fixed verses. Especially will ideas which recur with any frequency be expressed by a fixed verse. Knowing this common feature in the oral form, we can understand the memories of ancient people. The fact that the Greek poems were heroic could happen only because those who told the stories wanted heroes.

All four gospels described Jesus’ ministry, his apostles, his teachings and healings, his death on the cross, and gave some information of happenings after his death. There are, however, major differences between each gospel.

Some examples are these: Mark and John omitted Jesus’ childhood and parentage. After Jesus’ death, Mark described a young man who appeared at his tomb after death but did not have Jesus appear as a resurrection. Luke left out most of Mark chapters 6 and 7. Mark 6 described how Jesus went to Nazareth and his own family rejected him. He sent his apostles to cities, and they were rejected. Mark 7 told of Jesus’ apostles being criticized for eating habits. Perhaps Luke didn’t want to say that anyone disliked Jesus or his apostles.

The Gospel of John began with Jesus watching John the Baptist warn people to repent of their sins because the world was coming to an end. The Greek word for sin was missing the path or a twisting out of the right way. John wanted people to return to the right way. The path or the right way was similar to the Jordan River, which is unique because it is a long fairly straight river which is the lowest river in the world. It runs into the Sea of Galilee and on to the Dead Sea which is the lowest point of land on earth. The Sea of Galilee is 14 miles long, 8 miles wide, and was some 700 feet below sea level in Jesus’ time. For an interesting article on this subject, see Mendel Nun’s article entitled Ports of Galilee in the Biblical Archaeology Society report of 2008.

The Gospel of John omitted Jesus’ birth, parentage, and temptations in the forty days amidst the wilderness. John included no parables nor casting out of demons, and no story of the transfiguration or change in bodily form and appearance of Jesus.

While other gospels wrote details of the last supper, John alone wrote that Jesus washed the feet of his apostles at their last meeting. John’s account of Jesus’ trial included accusations toward Jesus in a priest’s royal residence. Also, John used phrases such as I am and I am the light of the world. No such phrases were used in other gospels. John had Jesus claiming to have lived much earlier, saying:

Verily, verily, I say unto you, before Abraham was born, I am. (John 8:58)

John had long discourses of Jesus speaking in ways that could not have been recorded such as in John 3:16-28. This scripture described Jesus and John baptizing in Aenon which is south of Nazareth and north of Jerusalem in the Jordan River. We will cite only a portion as an example:

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on him should not perish, but have eternal life. For God sent not the Son into the world to judge the world; but that the world should be saved through him. He that believeth on him is not judged; he that believeth not hath been judged already, because he hath not believed on the name of the only begotten Son of God . . . After these things came Jesus and his disciples into the land of Judea, and there he tarried with them, and baptized. And John also was baptizing in Aenon [meaning fountain] near to Salim, because there was much water there and they came and were baptized. For John was not yet cast into prison. There arose therefore a questioning on the part of John’s disciples with a Jew about purifying. And they came unto John, and said to him, Rabbi, he that was with thee beyond the Jordan, to whom thou hast borne witness, behold, the same baptizeth and all men come to him. John answered and said, A man can receive nothing, except it have been given him from heaven. Ye yourselves bear me witness that I said, I am not the Christ, but, that I am sent before him. (John 3:16-18, 22-28)

John’s Gospel described Jesus’s ministry as nearly three years whereas the synoptic gospels mentioned only a year or so. John is the only gospel to call Jesus God.

Scholars feel sure that Jesus learned to read as witnessed by Luke’s comments about teaching at synagogues.

And he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, and he entered, as his custom was, into the synagogue on the sabbath day, and stood up to read. And there was delivered unto him the book of the prophet Isaiah. And he opened the book and found the place where it is written. And he opened the roll and found the place where it was written: The spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he anointed me to preach good tidings to the poor. He hath sent me to proclaim release to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord. And he closed the roll and gave it back to the attendant and sat down, and the eyes of all in the synagogue were fastened on him. And he began to say unto them, Today hath this scripture been fulfilled in your ears. (Luke 4:16-20)

We are not sure his apostles could read. Even though Jesus could read, we do not know of him writing anything. It is unlikely that his apostles wrote any of the gospels.

Also of interest are the words of Papias about some who wrote Gospels. This information is from fragments of Papias (60-130 CE) from The Exposition of the Oracles of the Lord.

Papias makes it manifest that he was not himself a hearer and eye-witness of the holy apostles; but he tells us that he received the truths of our religion from those who were acquainted with them [the apostles] in the following words: But I shall not be unwilling to put down, along with my interpretations, whatsoever instructions I received with care at any time from the elders, and stored up with care in my memory, assuring you at the same time of their truth. For I did not, like the multitude, take pleasure in those who spoke much, but in those who taught the truth; nor in those who related strange commandments, but in those who rehearsed the commandments given by the Lord to faith, and proceeding from truth itself. If then, anyone who had attended on the elders came, I asked minutely after their sayings, --what Andrew or Peter said, or what was said by Philip, or by Thomas, or by James, or by John, or by Matthew, or by any other of the Lord’s disciples.

Papias added that Mark, having become the interpreter of Peter, wrote down accurately whatsoever he remembered. It was not, however, in exact order that he related the sayings or deeds of Christ. For he neither heard the Lord nor accompanied Him. But afterwards, he accompanied Peter, who accommodated his instructions to the necessities [of his hearers], but with no intention of giving a regular narrative of the Lord’s sayings. Wherefore Mark made no mistake in thus writing some things as he remembered them. For of one thing he took especial care, not to omit anything he had heard, and not to put anything fictitious into the statements.

There is also much information about Christianity from the letters of apostle Paul of Tarsus. Before gospels were written, Paul was writing letters to churches he founded. From Wikipedia’s entry on Pauline Epistles there are seven letters considered genuine by most scholars:

Galatians (circa 48 CE)

First Thessalonians (circa 49-51 CE)

First Corinthians (circa 53-54 CE)

Second Corinthians (circa 55-56 CE)

Romans (circa 55-57 CE)

Philippians (circa 57-59 or 62 CE)

Philemon (circa 57-59 or 62 CE)

Ancient Historians

For nearly two thousand years, these gospels and various letters by apostles were the only information the world had about Jesus and events of the New Testament. That was suddenly jolted by the discovery of documents at Nag Hamadi in Egypt in 1945, and the Dead Sea Scroll discoveries of 1947 and 1956.

The Dead Sea scrolls were found in Qumran, some twenty miles from Jerusalem. Those scrolls described many things including the Essene community where an ascetic group of dedicated Jews lived with customs similar to Jesus, to his brother James, and to John the Baptist. This Qumran site had few dwelling places but many public buildings, dining rooms with serving vessels, numerous ritual bath areas, and an extensive plaza. It may have been an Essene pilgrimage site for people to worship at their annual feasts when they came together to reaffirm their covenant with God.

Historian Josephus cited earlier was born in 37 CE and died about 101 CE. He wrote:

There are three philosophical sects among the Jews. The followers of the first of which are the Pharisees; of the second, the Sadducees; and the third sect, which pretends to a severer discipline, are called Essenes. These last are Jews by birth and seem to have a greater affection for each other than other sects have.

The Essenes and possibly other groups had similar practices. Essenes required a three-year probation period to join their sect, a three-year acquaintance before marriage, and most of their priests were unmarried. They had a daily ritual bathing, ate little if any meat, did not sacrifice animals, owned no property, did not cut their hair, were forbidden from swearing oaths, controlled their tempers, owned no slaves, kept Moses’ laws and all Jewish observances, were led by a teacher of righteousness, and repentance was a prerequisite to baptism as John the Baptist had practiced. They believed in the immortal soul and thought they would receive their souls back after death.

John the Baptist may have been an Essene. He was described as wearing garments made of camel’s hair, girded by a leather belt, and ate no meat. The idea of being a vegetarian was to never eat an animal produced by sexual intercourse. Such a sexual practice was considered only acceptable to produce children.

He lived on locusts, insect proteins and honey or honey cakes made of these ingredients. He practiced baptism for those willing to repent. Jesus’ brother, James the Just, was also a vegetarian, never cut his hair, and used only ritual cleansing of his body. He taught Mosaic laws for those attending his synagogue, which included both Christian Jews and orthodox Jews after Jesus died. Jesus is not known to have been a vegetarian, nor one who did not cut his hair.

Jesus’ ministry resembled the Righteous Teachers of the Qumran community. That community, known as healers or therapists, did no miracles but learned ways to help others with illnesses. These ancient people thought illnesses were punishments by God for their sins. Early people had so little knowledge of human disease that they imagined only someone who could cast out their demons and could forgive their sins would thereby cure them.

Many believed they would die with sins and would therefore suffer in afterlife. Thus, they paid close attention to those preachers who told them to repent of their sins before death. Some told crowds of predictions of an imminent end of the world. Their solution was to be cleansed of sin.

CHAPTER TWO

Authors Of The Gospels

MANY PEOPLE BELIEVE that the gospels were listed in the New Testament from the first written to the last. That is not the case. Mark was written first. But even before it was available, Paul was writing letters to various religious churches he established beginning in 52 CE or so. There is no evidence that Jesus’ twelve apostles wrote the four gospels, but there will always be guesses.

The Gospel of Mark probably did not appear until around 60 CE. Thus, Mark had nothing of Jesus’ birth, family, or resurrection. Since Matthew and Luke came some years later, they copied some of Mark’s work and added their own details. Paul’s letters were so early that he never knew of the information in Matthew, Luke, and John and most of Mark except that he traveled with Mark and Luke. Scholars used to think that John was written many years later.

Many Bible verses will be used in this book. It will sound as if they actually took place and Jesus, or James or Paul spoke those very words. Nobody was around to record those words. They are mere guesses that were recorded by various people down through the ages. Thus, it is good to remember that we may not always have the correct picture of these people. Human prejudices play a large part in what people write down, and it is well known that at least two of these authors traveled with Paul, who knew very little about Jesus’ actual life, so their information is lacking.

They all sought to find comments that Jesus made from those who knew and heard him. But since there were not his disciples and did not travel with him, they may not portray him very accurately. Since they did not write gospels until old age, memory can often be less precise. We must forgive them their errors and try to take the best of these sayings and descriptions that might help us improve our lives.

Matthew

Matthew, the apostle, (1st century CE) was one of Jesus’ apostles and witnessed the presumed ascension of Jesus. He was said by church fathers Irenaeus and Clement of Alexandria to have preached the gospel to the Jewish community in Judea before going to other countries. He was said to be a tax collector in the seaport of Capernaum on the Sea of Galilee and collected pay for those who wanted to sail south on the Sea of Galilee. Another port was Magdala, the home of Jesus’ friend, Mary Magdalene.

Matthew was invited to follow Jesus. He was likely not a learned man. An account stated that he was later a martyr and executed by the judgment of the Sanhedrin, but this account is uncertain. He is not the author of the Gospel of Matthew, which is anonymous. The author of this gospel did not claim to have been an eyewitness to the events he reported. This gospel was written earlier and called the Gospel according to the Hebrews or the Gospel of the Apostles.

Mark

Mark (12-68 CE) was born in Cyrene, in what is now Libya. John Mark belonged to the seventy apostles (not the first twelve) who were sent out by Jesus to spread the gospel in Judea.

Now after these things the Lord appointed seventy others, and sent them two and two before his face in every city and place, whither he himself was about to come . . . And the seventy returned with joy, saying, Lord, even the demons are subject unto us in thy name. (Luke 10:1, 17)

Eusebius of Caesarea wrote of John Mark meeting apostle Peter and traveling with him as an interpreter. Mark said little about Jesus’ birth in his gospel—only that he came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan River. Mark likely wrote down the sermons of Peter. Many presume he composed his gospel before he left for Alexandria in 43 CE. He included less of Jesus’ teachings. In 49 CE, Mark founded the Church of Alexandria, where he became the first bishop. Thus, he became the founder of Christianity in Africa, since Alexandria is northwest of Cairo, Egypt. John Mark did not claim to be written by a direct witness to the reported events.

John Mark was the son of a widow named Mary. Acts recorded about Paul:

He came to the house of Mary the mother of John whose surname was Mark; where many were gathered together and were praying . . . And Barnabas and Saul returned from Jerusalem, when they had fulfilled their ministration, taking with them