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A STRANGER IN JERUSALEM
Seeing Jesus as a Jew Trevan Hatch |
Ron Way: Hello everyone. This is your host Ron Way for Author Talk and the Rising Light Media Group. Today I have the great pleasure of introducing you to a new author. His name is Trevan Hatch and he has written a fascinating new book entitled A Stranger in Jerusalem. There's also a subtitle Seeing Jesus as a Jew, which we'll get into as we move along. Trevan is the Biblical Studies and Religious Studies Specialist in the Lee Library at Brigham Young University and is an adjunct instructor in the Department of Ancient Scriptures. His formal training and primary expertise is in Jewish studies, which is why I picked up his book because Jesus was above all things, during his lifetime, a Jew.
Because of his lifelong studies in ancient Judaism, I brought him to the microphone to talk to us about the stories of Jesus and take us back to the first century when the stories about Jesus and the gospels were being composed for the first time. When we read the stories about Jesus, we have to remember that this, that his first followers were Jews. He studied the Hebrew scriptures either orally or from text. He worshiped in the synagogue and he occasionally traveled to Jerusalem to observe the Israelite festivals. Unlike what later Christians seem to have thought, he does not reject Judaism, nor did he act as a radical outsider in relation to his Jewish peers, but rather he worked within the Jewish framework. To unravel all of this, let's talk to the man who knows as much as anyone in the world about this subject. Welcome Trevan, to Author Talk. It's a pleasure to have you as my guest.
Trevon Hatch: Thanks Ron. Happy to be on your show.
Ron Way: That's great. Trevan, with all of the above and my introduction said, and before we jump into the meat of the book, please tell me and our audience, what does the title of the book try to portray, A Stranger in Jerusalem?
Trevon Hatch: Yeah. So what I did with A Stranger in Jerusalem, is I wanted to borrow from a phrase from the New Testament, and this is in Luke 24 if you remember where the two people after Jesus's death, they're walking back to Emmaus, and they're distraught and they're, you know they're walking, and Jesus comes to them in disguise and He says, you know "What's wrong with you?" And they said, "What, what did you, have you've been living under a rock? Do you know what happened?" And so it's that whole story, that episode where Jesus comes to them and they don't recognize Him. But also as I explain in the introduction, it's not just that Jesus is a stranger to many of us, if we don't know His world and His context, but we are strangers to His world.
So He's a stranger to us, but we're a stranger to Him and His world. And so I kind of talk through that a little bit and, and tell my readers, and I tell this to my students in class that we are going to try to go back and be as unbiased as possible even though that's impossible, and go back into His world as much as we can. And the types of questions that we ask will help us get us into questions like what did He eat and what did He do and how did He work and what kind of sicknesses did people have? What was His relationship to the chief priests?
And so we talk about all that and try to help us imagine what would it have been like to witness certain miracles, hear certain teachings and see the lifestyle, so that we're not strangers anymore, so that He's not a stranger to us, in you know, in Sunday school and in our studies.
Ron Way: Sure. Well tell me then as a precursor to when I was going to start my questions at a different place, but you've tickled my imagination. It's absolutely right. We Christians at a later date, thousands of years later, don't have a clue basically what it was like living in that world. Maybe you could paint a picture of how Jesus grew up and what it was like for Him and how He ended up to be following in this path as a preacher, if you will, or as a rabbi. And how in the world did this all happen, from a young boy in a backwater town to get to where He was?
Trevon Hatch: Oh, what's interesting is that when, if we look at the Galilean world of, you know, this time period, there's lots of different, and I talk through this with my students, I introduce them to certain holy men or I would call it, that certain rabbis who were ministering in that area, in that era and in that area. And Jesus as He's growing up in lower Galilee or over in where Nazareth is in that region, and then later when he moves up into the North part of the sea of Galilee, He, as being raised, He's probably seeing these types of people, or different traditions. They're not just traditions. There's traditions of people like Jonah and Elijah and Elisha in the area.
Trevon Hatch: And so imagining as He's growing up, He knows about these traditions and the different, maybe even messianic fervor in the area. And, and I, that coupled with the fact that it was a very difficult lifestyle, so here's Jesus being raised in a time where the life expectancy was extremely low. He had a lot of people dying, a lot of children and adults dying. And then the percentages of people who die at certain ages is appalling. And the reason why we know this is because there are certain archeological discoveries of big tombs with lots of skeletons, lots of people that we can then test, what kinds of diseases they had, and how old were they? And they were, most people who died, maybe 70% of the people who are in these great big family tombs with hundreds of skeletons, most the people in there are five years or under.
So Jesus has seen a lot of the sickness, He's seen people, a lot of widows, a lot of orphans. And it seems like this is shaping His view of compassions, maybe shaping some of His views that come later about children and compassion. And so this is kind of how we see, imagine Jesus growing up in this time period of messianic fervor, lots of holy men, and also what people are going through.
Ron Way: And the life that He lived as a young person. Evidently He became a tekton, which is the word, I believe the Greek word we use in the gospels to describe His business. I would assume, and we know that Joseph was around when it started, the whole thing, but by the time He began ministering at 30 His father would be 50 maybe? So he probably has long passed. So tell us what is this tekton? We all say carpenter, but it really wasn't that, was it?
Trevon Hatch: No, not really. It was, I mean it could include that, but it was a builder or a craftsman. And so Jesus would have worked with many different materials. And in fact the rabbis used this term, they talk about how this term is also related to, I guess we use the Hebrew equivalent of the word charish. This also means plowing, you know, it's designing, creating, planting seed. You know, and even the rabbis use these to say this is in relation to, in to the divine, you know, God creates and designs. And so Jesus as a tekton and there's a practical meaning with, yeah, he's a builder and he's working with a lot of different materials.
But I also think, I wouldn't want to jump too far ahead into the text, but I also think the gospel writers are using this theologically, because it's a term that has, is pregnant with, you know, with meaning and they're, they're throwing out hints of you're trying to tie him to Elisha who was plowing, that same word charish when the mantle came upon him, you know, from Elijah. So they're using a lot of these, this rich term that is referring to Jesus as a trade, what he learned from Joseph, but also has a theological component to it.
Ron Way: I'm going to jump a shift just a little bit to talk to you about the gospels. Would you agree with me when I state that the Jesus of the gospels isn't the Jesus the original disciples knew, and to tell that story you probably have to split this up into individual gospels, which most people don't. They tend to merge it all into one story, picking some from Matthew, Mark, Luke, John and Acts and probably some Paul, who is the first writer about Jesus that we have. It wasn't the gospels. I'm going to ask this question because unlike what is taught in most churches, they don't all tell the same story about Jesus. Do they?
Trevon Hatch: That's right. They're different.
Ron Way: And how so? Maybe you can just explain why? When they came about, how we knew that. And there are differences, definite differences in their descriptions, some minor but some major.
Trevon Hatch: Yeah. So the how I, and this is a very good question because it's one of the early discussions I have in a semester for example with my students in a New Testament class is that it, and I tell them before we can even jump into your favorite topics of His birth and your different or the passion narratives, we have to, to ask what the gospels even are? And most of them haven't even raised that question. And so what we do is we walk through and we say, "Okay, there's four different gospels, which one was written first, most likely, and who wrote these?" And after we lay that out and they can see that wow, there are little bit later, these are a generation after Jesus, maybe as many as 40 or 50 years later. So there's that whole issue of who wrote them, when they were written.
But one of the things that I emphasize with them is we have to try to identify what the point is of the emphasis of each different author. So Mark seems to be trying to show his readers or his audience that yes, Jesus' death was a scandal. And Paul even called it a scandal on a scandal, but that he could still be the Messiah even if he was killed. And so when you, when we read that, when we know that, we read Mark, we can say, "Oh, okay, this is why he's saying it this way or that way, because he's trying to show people, yes, that is a problem. That is a problem for Jews. But in spite of that, He could be the Messiah."
And then Luke and some of the other gospel writers, Luke for example, he also seems to want to show that Jesus is innocent. And so at certain strategic places throughout the gospel, he's changing some of the stories away from what Mark and Matthew were saying. And he throws these words in like innocent. "He's innocent", the person on the cross says, "Okay Jesus, you are innocent." And Pilot says three times, announced that Jesus is innocent. And so when we, when we make a list of different emphases of the gospel writers, what they repeat over and over, we can say, "Okay, that must be what this author cares about. So let's be attuned to that."
And then of course, Matthew wants to tie Jesus to other figures, Moses and David, to emphasize his authority. And he does it beautifully. He does it all, all over the place. And he does it in a very, very systematic and complex way. And so these are some of the differences of the authors. And if we know the differences, we won't just, as you said, smash them together and assume that they're all talking about the same thing. One person's emphasizing something else, and another person's emphasizing a different thing. And we can see it all the way from the beginning, even in the birth narratives, where you have Matthew emphasizing kings and rulers, you know, or like maji coming. Where Luke, he doesn't care about rulers and the elite, he's talking about shepherds and a humble beginning. So that's their different emphases that we need to keep in mind.
Ron Way: Well, I think that most people probably don't even know the history of the putting the gospels together because the first gospel was probably Mark. And we know that because Matthew and Luke copy large portions of their gospel directly from him. So we know it was written, it wasn't oral. But before that maybe we have a, a missing gospel we call Q. But these came, the first talked about the Jewish world right around that time from Jesus died around the year 30, and then Paul came a few years later, still was, he was around to persecute the original disciples, supposedly. And that's when he starts riding around in the '50s but talk about when the gospels are written and what, what transpired? Were they all from the same place, they're all sitting around Jerusalem? Or are they different countries, different timeframes, et cetera?
Trevon Hatch: Yeah, different places, different times. And there's still debate amongst people on, you know, where this gospel is written, or that gospel is written. Also the audience. So some have suggested Matthew written in Antioch to a more wealthy audience. Luke, maybe Gentiles, or even Jewish Gentiles or people who were poor. And so there's not only that issue, but there's also a political and theological component. I mean these, these gospels, these authors are writing and the politics of the day is shaping what they're writing. And so is the theology.
And so when we, when Paul comes along and I spend, I mean it took me what, two chapters in the book to try to lay all this out of, of the different, the different events that helped shape the world of the gospels. So you had the Jewish Roman war, you had Jewish Roman relations and so, and you also had the Jerusalem Council. I can give more details on these, but basically what's happening in the '70s and '80s, and I tell my students, imagine you want to write a gospel, about Jesus. And you have just seen your, over the last, you know, 40 years, the leader of your group or the one you look up to has been killed. A lot of your different, your second tier leaders have been killed. Jews have been persecuted by Rome and they have this tension between them. You also have Christians that have been starting to be killed and persecuted in Rome for different reasons.
If you're going to write a gospel, are you going to risk making Rome mad and blame everything on them and blame everything on Pilot or are you going to write this story with your current enemy in mind, which is Jews? Because you have started to separate yourself from Jews, you've start to define your community in relation to Judaism. You have you, you were once a Jewish exclusive group, but over the years you've now become a Gentile, what I'm calling a Gentile inclusive group, and these are major, major problems for the early Christians. And so all of that when they finally start to get our, write our three or four gospels, at least what we have today, all of that has to be taken into account.
The politics of the day, all the Jewish infighting, when the temple is destroyed, you now have leaders trying to redefine Judaism. If we don't have our temple, what does Judaism look like? And in that struggle to redefine a nation and a people, you have them sort of trying to push the Jewish Christians or the Christians away. And that's where we get a lot of the anti Pharisee rhetoric in there. And so I lay all this out for my students and say, these are the events that we have to keep in our minds because all of these gospels were written after all of those events and they, we simply can't separate them, we can't place them back into the '20s and '30s we have to account for the angst that these authors have and what they're trying to accomplish. That the stakes are too high for them to just ignore what's what's been happening.
Ron Way: Right. I think that what's kind of critically important is, and you say this, but I want to emphasize it, in '67 to '70 AD, there were, the Jews revolted against the Romans. The Romans came south and they completely destroyed every one thing and people in their path. So at the end, the Christians that were left in Jerusalem, talking about Jerusalem were probably hauled off into slavery or were killed. So we lost that whole basic part of the faith that was very, very Jewish and what was left was in the Diaspora, which he is the Greek Roman area and they were the Gentiles.
And that's, that's where we start getting this antithesis toward the Jews because they were hated. It was like the United States fighting in Iraq. We didn't like the Iraqis or at least Saddam Hussein's army. And so you have to take that into account. This is the real world. And they are writing the gospel after this transpired right?
Trevon Hatch: Yeah. Definitely. Yep. And if I'm not sure on the scholarship on this, of if, and how many of the authors of the gospels were Roman citizens or how many Christians were Roman citizens or what ties they have but certainly they're thinking in their mind, you know, when we read about Pilot who's ruthless according to Josephus of Phyllo, a first century philosopher, says that Pilot has a reputation of being vindictive and angry and irrational when he gets mad. And a guy like that who been made a fool, when Jesus rides his donkey and people are yelling about a Messiah, he's not happy. And so it's hard to imagine him being this nice gentle person who's just sort of trying to free Jesus. No, he's, the guy's ruthless.
And so when we see the gospels going out of their way to make Pilot look better than he probably was, we have to ask ourselves, "Why are they doing that? And what's the reason why they don't want to make the Romans angry?" Or they're trying to side with Rome. And I don't think it's just about, I don't think that it's just out of fear that not, they're trying to not want a Rome to be mad, but they're also, they have an increasing Gentile focus and they were traveling over the Roman empire. And you know, there's, it's a, it's PR, they're trying to be very diplomatic as they expand as a group.
Ron Way: Well, here's the question I want to ask you and I want to take you back to the time of Jesus in the '30s. How would the Jews, in that right afterwards, when the disciples are, have, and only two of them had supposedly met Paul, he didn't meet them all. How would the Jews of that first century have interpreted Jesus' tradition as they heard them or read them, when the gospel started coming up in 70 AD when Mark, well, you know, it's fascinating, Mark has no birth story. You wouldn't, if all we had was the gospel of Mark, we wouldn't know that there was any birth story, especially with kings or with angels or shepherds. It just wasn't any, and he ends before there's a resurrection. You wouldn't have resurrection.
So tell me, how would you break down in the '70s or later in that first century, how a Jewish person, that was a follower of Jesus maybe from the beginning, or a son or daughter of them, how would they look at, as these gospels become more and more Gentile?
Trevon Hatch: Oh yeah. The, you mean as they, when they're hearing some of these stories you're asking if, would they-
Ron Way: Sure.
Trevon Hatch: -be attuned to some of this being made up or they'd be confused.
Ron Way: Exactly. Because here we have in the, I mean Paul talks about all the original, or most of them, were still going to temple. They were worshiping in the temple, so they weren't outcasts yet. They were part of a Jewish sect that was a little different. They thought the Messiah had came, but, but there were a lot of messiahs in the first century.
Trevon Hatch: Yeah, definitely. There's definitely messianic figures. Josephus mentions, you know, 10 to 12 of them, messianic type figures, and so I think Jews at that time, maybe those who are witnessing Jesus or shortly after are maybe have a little bit more practical view of him. Okay, here's a holy man or a healer or even a messianic candidate, somebody who might have been the Messiah or might be the Messiah. And I think that's where we get, when you asked about Mark, that's where we get a very, a much more human Jesus. You know, where if these seem to be just very most basic teachings and deeds and even in that gospel with a very low Christology, Jesus even has some troubles healing. There's a couple of places where he doesn't quite get it right.
I think that maybe Jews, Jews are who are hearing some of these stories are thinking, "Yeah, I relate to this." But I'm trying to think if in 40 or 50 years when there's some hyperbole going on and there's anti Pharisee and even anti-Jewish teachings in there, it probably clouds their mind about who this Jesus is because He probably certainly isn't represented the way He would've been represented in the '40s.
Ron Way: Right. And maybe the original followers, because even when Paul, we have Paul in the '40s '50s, he has gone to Jerusalem, he has met at least Peter, and the brother of Jesus, James, and even he has, I don't want to say this, gone astray according to them because now he is teaching some things that are not Jewish, the eating laws and the circumcision laws and he's getting into hot water. He even wishes they'd be castrated, he gets so angry with them. So if that's the case, and, and there were no gospels when Paul was teaching. So pretty quickly these gospels begin to pick up some other cultures and you already see it in Paul.
Trevon Hatch: Yeah, definitely. And there's, and there's, yeah, they certainly do. Then they're not only pulling in some of the Jewish elements that later rabbis seem to be emphasizing, but there are certainly traditions, Greco Roman mythology, and that they're pulling a lot of that in. And especially Mark, you know, where he's talking about, you know, you get this sense of they see a ghost on the water in Jesus and you're thinking, "Well that's kind of a strange thing", but Mark is using, the author of Mark is using these stories, and the other authors do this too, they're using stories to speak to their audience.
And so I don't think they're so concerned with how we see history today and you know, let's document everything perfectly and we have to get it right. I think there have the overall purpose, but then they tell the story through the language, through the traditions of other people. It's more important for them to make a case rather than, you know, stick to, to the history. And so yes, absolutely, 50 years later you have all kinds of different traditions and parallels that they're trying to size Jesus up against with, you know, with different beliefs.
And so it really is, I guess the challenge is, the implication for readers today, you know your typical pew church going Christian is to find a way, find some scholarship, accessible resources that will help you sift through these, the individual episodes, pull out an episode and say, "Okay, who's writing this? Which gospel and who's likely their audience and why is a strange language in there?" And then you'll make much more sense of it.
Ron Way: And guess what? Trevan, our time is up. But here folks, we're going to have to end this session, but here's the good news. Trevan has agreed to stay with me, right, Trevan? For another session.
Trevon Hatch: Sounds good.
Ron Way: We'll tape it today, but we're going to postpone it by a week. So you get two weeks you can tune in and hear Trevan talk about this. And I've got a heck of a lot more questions coming.
So it's a fascinating book and a fascinating look into the life of Jesus. A man that was born a Jew, grew up as a Jew, in a Jewish homeland and eventually died as a Jew. So I want to thank you, Trevan, for being on the show today. I'm most grateful you took time out of your busy day to be with us.
Trevon Hatch: No problem. Thanks Ron.
Ron Way: Folks, until next time, then I will take this opportunity to thank all of you for tuning in and listening to another fascinating exploration into the mind of a man probing the very beginnings of the Christian faith. Don't hesitate to look through our extensive list of authors that I've been able to interview on our website and I hope that you enjoy them. For now, I want to tell you to run out. Run out, you're going to go to Amazon just like the rest of us, and buy A Stranger in Jerusalem, Trevan, T-R-E-V-A-N, Hatch, H-A-T-C-H, A Stranger in Jerusalem. I want you to pick that up. And then next week when we talk, you'll already have it with you. For now, this is Ron Way for Author Talk, Rising Light Media. Have a great day. We'll see you in a week.
Because of his lifelong studies in ancient Judaism, I brought him to the microphone to talk to us about the stories of Jesus and take us back to the first century when the stories about Jesus and the gospels were being composed for the first time. When we read the stories about Jesus, we have to remember that this, that his first followers were Jews. He studied the Hebrew scriptures either orally or from text. He worshiped in the synagogue and he occasionally traveled to Jerusalem to observe the Israelite festivals. Unlike what later Christians seem to have thought, he does not reject Judaism, nor did he act as a radical outsider in relation to his Jewish peers, but rather he worked within the Jewish framework. To unravel all of this, let's talk to the man who knows as much as anyone in the world about this subject. Welcome Trevan, to Author Talk. It's a pleasure to have you as my guest.
Trevon Hatch: Thanks Ron. Happy to be on your show.
Ron Way: That's great. Trevan, with all of the above and my introduction said, and before we jump into the meat of the book, please tell me and our audience, what does the title of the book try to portray, A Stranger in Jerusalem?
Trevon Hatch: Yeah. So what I did with A Stranger in Jerusalem, is I wanted to borrow from a phrase from the New Testament, and this is in Luke 24 if you remember where the two people after Jesus's death, they're walking back to Emmaus, and they're distraught and they're, you know they're walking, and Jesus comes to them in disguise and He says, you know "What's wrong with you?" And they said, "What, what did you, have you've been living under a rock? Do you know what happened?" And so it's that whole story, that episode where Jesus comes to them and they don't recognize Him. But also as I explain in the introduction, it's not just that Jesus is a stranger to many of us, if we don't know His world and His context, but we are strangers to His world.
So He's a stranger to us, but we're a stranger to Him and His world. And so I kind of talk through that a little bit and, and tell my readers, and I tell this to my students in class that we are going to try to go back and be as unbiased as possible even though that's impossible, and go back into His world as much as we can. And the types of questions that we ask will help us get us into questions like what did He eat and what did He do and how did He work and what kind of sicknesses did people have? What was His relationship to the chief priests?
And so we talk about all that and try to help us imagine what would it have been like to witness certain miracles, hear certain teachings and see the lifestyle, so that we're not strangers anymore, so that He's not a stranger to us, in you know, in Sunday school and in our studies.
Ron Way: Sure. Well tell me then as a precursor to when I was going to start my questions at a different place, but you've tickled my imagination. It's absolutely right. We Christians at a later date, thousands of years later, don't have a clue basically what it was like living in that world. Maybe you could paint a picture of how Jesus grew up and what it was like for Him and how He ended up to be following in this path as a preacher, if you will, or as a rabbi. And how in the world did this all happen, from a young boy in a backwater town to get to where He was?
Trevon Hatch: Oh, what's interesting is that when, if we look at the Galilean world of, you know, this time period, there's lots of different, and I talk through this with my students, I introduce them to certain holy men or I would call it, that certain rabbis who were ministering in that area, in that era and in that area. And Jesus as He's growing up in lower Galilee or over in where Nazareth is in that region, and then later when he moves up into the North part of the sea of Galilee, He, as being raised, He's probably seeing these types of people, or different traditions. They're not just traditions. There's traditions of people like Jonah and Elijah and Elisha in the area.
Trevon Hatch: And so imagining as He's growing up, He knows about these traditions and the different, maybe even messianic fervor in the area. And, and I, that coupled with the fact that it was a very difficult lifestyle, so here's Jesus being raised in a time where the life expectancy was extremely low. He had a lot of people dying, a lot of children and adults dying. And then the percentages of people who die at certain ages is appalling. And the reason why we know this is because there are certain archeological discoveries of big tombs with lots of skeletons, lots of people that we can then test, what kinds of diseases they had, and how old were they? And they were, most people who died, maybe 70% of the people who are in these great big family tombs with hundreds of skeletons, most the people in there are five years or under.
So Jesus has seen a lot of the sickness, He's seen people, a lot of widows, a lot of orphans. And it seems like this is shaping His view of compassions, maybe shaping some of His views that come later about children and compassion. And so this is kind of how we see, imagine Jesus growing up in this time period of messianic fervor, lots of holy men, and also what people are going through.
Ron Way: And the life that He lived as a young person. Evidently He became a tekton, which is the word, I believe the Greek word we use in the gospels to describe His business. I would assume, and we know that Joseph was around when it started, the whole thing, but by the time He began ministering at 30 His father would be 50 maybe? So he probably has long passed. So tell us what is this tekton? We all say carpenter, but it really wasn't that, was it?
Trevon Hatch: No, not really. It was, I mean it could include that, but it was a builder or a craftsman. And so Jesus would have worked with many different materials. And in fact the rabbis used this term, they talk about how this term is also related to, I guess we use the Hebrew equivalent of the word charish. This also means plowing, you know, it's designing, creating, planting seed. You know, and even the rabbis use these to say this is in relation to, in to the divine, you know, God creates and designs. And so Jesus as a tekton and there's a practical meaning with, yeah, he's a builder and he's working with a lot of different materials.
But I also think, I wouldn't want to jump too far ahead into the text, but I also think the gospel writers are using this theologically, because it's a term that has, is pregnant with, you know, with meaning and they're, they're throwing out hints of you're trying to tie him to Elisha who was plowing, that same word charish when the mantle came upon him, you know, from Elijah. So they're using a lot of these, this rich term that is referring to Jesus as a trade, what he learned from Joseph, but also has a theological component to it.
Ron Way: I'm going to jump a shift just a little bit to talk to you about the gospels. Would you agree with me when I state that the Jesus of the gospels isn't the Jesus the original disciples knew, and to tell that story you probably have to split this up into individual gospels, which most people don't. They tend to merge it all into one story, picking some from Matthew, Mark, Luke, John and Acts and probably some Paul, who is the first writer about Jesus that we have. It wasn't the gospels. I'm going to ask this question because unlike what is taught in most churches, they don't all tell the same story about Jesus. Do they?
Trevon Hatch: That's right. They're different.
Ron Way: And how so? Maybe you can just explain why? When they came about, how we knew that. And there are differences, definite differences in their descriptions, some minor but some major.
Trevon Hatch: Yeah. So the how I, and this is a very good question because it's one of the early discussions I have in a semester for example with my students in a New Testament class is that it, and I tell them before we can even jump into your favorite topics of His birth and your different or the passion narratives, we have to, to ask what the gospels even are? And most of them haven't even raised that question. And so what we do is we walk through and we say, "Okay, there's four different gospels, which one was written first, most likely, and who wrote these?" And after we lay that out and they can see that wow, there are little bit later, these are a generation after Jesus, maybe as many as 40 or 50 years later. So there's that whole issue of who wrote them, when they were written.
But one of the things that I emphasize with them is we have to try to identify what the point is of the emphasis of each different author. So Mark seems to be trying to show his readers or his audience that yes, Jesus' death was a scandal. And Paul even called it a scandal on a scandal, but that he could still be the Messiah even if he was killed. And so when you, when we read that, when we know that, we read Mark, we can say, "Oh, okay, this is why he's saying it this way or that way, because he's trying to show people, yes, that is a problem. That is a problem for Jews. But in spite of that, He could be the Messiah."
And then Luke and some of the other gospel writers, Luke for example, he also seems to want to show that Jesus is innocent. And so at certain strategic places throughout the gospel, he's changing some of the stories away from what Mark and Matthew were saying. And he throws these words in like innocent. "He's innocent", the person on the cross says, "Okay Jesus, you are innocent." And Pilot says three times, announced that Jesus is innocent. And so when we, when we make a list of different emphases of the gospel writers, what they repeat over and over, we can say, "Okay, that must be what this author cares about. So let's be attuned to that."
And then of course, Matthew wants to tie Jesus to other figures, Moses and David, to emphasize his authority. And he does it beautifully. He does it all, all over the place. And he does it in a very, very systematic and complex way. And so these are some of the differences of the authors. And if we know the differences, we won't just, as you said, smash them together and assume that they're all talking about the same thing. One person's emphasizing something else, and another person's emphasizing a different thing. And we can see it all the way from the beginning, even in the birth narratives, where you have Matthew emphasizing kings and rulers, you know, or like maji coming. Where Luke, he doesn't care about rulers and the elite, he's talking about shepherds and a humble beginning. So that's their different emphases that we need to keep in mind.
Ron Way: Well, I think that most people probably don't even know the history of the putting the gospels together because the first gospel was probably Mark. And we know that because Matthew and Luke copy large portions of their gospel directly from him. So we know it was written, it wasn't oral. But before that maybe we have a, a missing gospel we call Q. But these came, the first talked about the Jewish world right around that time from Jesus died around the year 30, and then Paul came a few years later, still was, he was around to persecute the original disciples, supposedly. And that's when he starts riding around in the '50s but talk about when the gospels are written and what, what transpired? Were they all from the same place, they're all sitting around Jerusalem? Or are they different countries, different timeframes, et cetera?
Trevon Hatch: Yeah, different places, different times. And there's still debate amongst people on, you know, where this gospel is written, or that gospel is written. Also the audience. So some have suggested Matthew written in Antioch to a more wealthy audience. Luke, maybe Gentiles, or even Jewish Gentiles or people who were poor. And so there's not only that issue, but there's also a political and theological component. I mean these, these gospels, these authors are writing and the politics of the day is shaping what they're writing. And so is the theology.
And so when we, when Paul comes along and I spend, I mean it took me what, two chapters in the book to try to lay all this out of, of the different, the different events that helped shape the world of the gospels. So you had the Jewish Roman war, you had Jewish Roman relations and so, and you also had the Jerusalem Council. I can give more details on these, but basically what's happening in the '70s and '80s, and I tell my students, imagine you want to write a gospel, about Jesus. And you have just seen your, over the last, you know, 40 years, the leader of your group or the one you look up to has been killed. A lot of your different, your second tier leaders have been killed. Jews have been persecuted by Rome and they have this tension between them. You also have Christians that have been starting to be killed and persecuted in Rome for different reasons.
If you're going to write a gospel, are you going to risk making Rome mad and blame everything on them and blame everything on Pilot or are you going to write this story with your current enemy in mind, which is Jews? Because you have started to separate yourself from Jews, you've start to define your community in relation to Judaism. You have you, you were once a Jewish exclusive group, but over the years you've now become a Gentile, what I'm calling a Gentile inclusive group, and these are major, major problems for the early Christians. And so all of that when they finally start to get our, write our three or four gospels, at least what we have today, all of that has to be taken into account.
The politics of the day, all the Jewish infighting, when the temple is destroyed, you now have leaders trying to redefine Judaism. If we don't have our temple, what does Judaism look like? And in that struggle to redefine a nation and a people, you have them sort of trying to push the Jewish Christians or the Christians away. And that's where we get a lot of the anti Pharisee rhetoric in there. And so I lay all this out for my students and say, these are the events that we have to keep in our minds because all of these gospels were written after all of those events and they, we simply can't separate them, we can't place them back into the '20s and '30s we have to account for the angst that these authors have and what they're trying to accomplish. That the stakes are too high for them to just ignore what's what's been happening.
Ron Way: Right. I think that what's kind of critically important is, and you say this, but I want to emphasize it, in '67 to '70 AD, there were, the Jews revolted against the Romans. The Romans came south and they completely destroyed every one thing and people in their path. So at the end, the Christians that were left in Jerusalem, talking about Jerusalem were probably hauled off into slavery or were killed. So we lost that whole basic part of the faith that was very, very Jewish and what was left was in the Diaspora, which he is the Greek Roman area and they were the Gentiles.
And that's, that's where we start getting this antithesis toward the Jews because they were hated. It was like the United States fighting in Iraq. We didn't like the Iraqis or at least Saddam Hussein's army. And so you have to take that into account. This is the real world. And they are writing the gospel after this transpired right?
Trevon Hatch: Yeah. Definitely. Yep. And if I'm not sure on the scholarship on this, of if, and how many of the authors of the gospels were Roman citizens or how many Christians were Roman citizens or what ties they have but certainly they're thinking in their mind, you know, when we read about Pilot who's ruthless according to Josephus of Phyllo, a first century philosopher, says that Pilot has a reputation of being vindictive and angry and irrational when he gets mad. And a guy like that who been made a fool, when Jesus rides his donkey and people are yelling about a Messiah, he's not happy. And so it's hard to imagine him being this nice gentle person who's just sort of trying to free Jesus. No, he's, the guy's ruthless.
And so when we see the gospels going out of their way to make Pilot look better than he probably was, we have to ask ourselves, "Why are they doing that? And what's the reason why they don't want to make the Romans angry?" Or they're trying to side with Rome. And I don't think it's just about, I don't think that it's just out of fear that not, they're trying to not want a Rome to be mad, but they're also, they have an increasing Gentile focus and they were traveling over the Roman empire. And you know, there's, it's a, it's PR, they're trying to be very diplomatic as they expand as a group.
Ron Way: Well, here's the question I want to ask you and I want to take you back to the time of Jesus in the '30s. How would the Jews, in that right afterwards, when the disciples are, have, and only two of them had supposedly met Paul, he didn't meet them all. How would the Jews of that first century have interpreted Jesus' tradition as they heard them or read them, when the gospel started coming up in 70 AD when Mark, well, you know, it's fascinating, Mark has no birth story. You wouldn't, if all we had was the gospel of Mark, we wouldn't know that there was any birth story, especially with kings or with angels or shepherds. It just wasn't any, and he ends before there's a resurrection. You wouldn't have resurrection.
So tell me, how would you break down in the '70s or later in that first century, how a Jewish person, that was a follower of Jesus maybe from the beginning, or a son or daughter of them, how would they look at, as these gospels become more and more Gentile?
Trevon Hatch: Oh yeah. The, you mean as they, when they're hearing some of these stories you're asking if, would they-
Ron Way: Sure.
Trevon Hatch: -be attuned to some of this being made up or they'd be confused.
Ron Way: Exactly. Because here we have in the, I mean Paul talks about all the original, or most of them, were still going to temple. They were worshiping in the temple, so they weren't outcasts yet. They were part of a Jewish sect that was a little different. They thought the Messiah had came, but, but there were a lot of messiahs in the first century.
Trevon Hatch: Yeah, definitely. There's definitely messianic figures. Josephus mentions, you know, 10 to 12 of them, messianic type figures, and so I think Jews at that time, maybe those who are witnessing Jesus or shortly after are maybe have a little bit more practical view of him. Okay, here's a holy man or a healer or even a messianic candidate, somebody who might have been the Messiah or might be the Messiah. And I think that's where we get, when you asked about Mark, that's where we get a very, a much more human Jesus. You know, where if these seem to be just very most basic teachings and deeds and even in that gospel with a very low Christology, Jesus even has some troubles healing. There's a couple of places where he doesn't quite get it right.
I think that maybe Jews, Jews are who are hearing some of these stories are thinking, "Yeah, I relate to this." But I'm trying to think if in 40 or 50 years when there's some hyperbole going on and there's anti Pharisee and even anti-Jewish teachings in there, it probably clouds their mind about who this Jesus is because He probably certainly isn't represented the way He would've been represented in the '40s.
Ron Way: Right. And maybe the original followers, because even when Paul, we have Paul in the '40s '50s, he has gone to Jerusalem, he has met at least Peter, and the brother of Jesus, James, and even he has, I don't want to say this, gone astray according to them because now he is teaching some things that are not Jewish, the eating laws and the circumcision laws and he's getting into hot water. He even wishes they'd be castrated, he gets so angry with them. So if that's the case, and, and there were no gospels when Paul was teaching. So pretty quickly these gospels begin to pick up some other cultures and you already see it in Paul.
Trevon Hatch: Yeah, definitely. And there's, and there's, yeah, they certainly do. Then they're not only pulling in some of the Jewish elements that later rabbis seem to be emphasizing, but there are certainly traditions, Greco Roman mythology, and that they're pulling a lot of that in. And especially Mark, you know, where he's talking about, you know, you get this sense of they see a ghost on the water in Jesus and you're thinking, "Well that's kind of a strange thing", but Mark is using, the author of Mark is using these stories, and the other authors do this too, they're using stories to speak to their audience.
And so I don't think they're so concerned with how we see history today and you know, let's document everything perfectly and we have to get it right. I think there have the overall purpose, but then they tell the story through the language, through the traditions of other people. It's more important for them to make a case rather than, you know, stick to, to the history. And so yes, absolutely, 50 years later you have all kinds of different traditions and parallels that they're trying to size Jesus up against with, you know, with different beliefs.
And so it really is, I guess the challenge is, the implication for readers today, you know your typical pew church going Christian is to find a way, find some scholarship, accessible resources that will help you sift through these, the individual episodes, pull out an episode and say, "Okay, who's writing this? Which gospel and who's likely their audience and why is a strange language in there?" And then you'll make much more sense of it.
Ron Way: And guess what? Trevan, our time is up. But here folks, we're going to have to end this session, but here's the good news. Trevan has agreed to stay with me, right, Trevan? For another session.
Trevon Hatch: Sounds good.
Ron Way: We'll tape it today, but we're going to postpone it by a week. So you get two weeks you can tune in and hear Trevan talk about this. And I've got a heck of a lot more questions coming.
So it's a fascinating book and a fascinating look into the life of Jesus. A man that was born a Jew, grew up as a Jew, in a Jewish homeland and eventually died as a Jew. So I want to thank you, Trevan, for being on the show today. I'm most grateful you took time out of your busy day to be with us.
Trevon Hatch: No problem. Thanks Ron.
Ron Way: Folks, until next time, then I will take this opportunity to thank all of you for tuning in and listening to another fascinating exploration into the mind of a man probing the very beginnings of the Christian faith. Don't hesitate to look through our extensive list of authors that I've been able to interview on our website and I hope that you enjoy them. For now, I want to tell you to run out. Run out, you're going to go to Amazon just like the rest of us, and buy A Stranger in Jerusalem, Trevan, T-R-E-V-A-N, Hatch, H-A-T-C-H, A Stranger in Jerusalem. I want you to pick that up. And then next week when we talk, you'll already have it with you. For now, this is Ron Way for Author Talk, Rising Light Media. Have a great day. We'll see you in a week.
