Thread by @firstladyship

REAL JESUS OF NAZARETH.

1. I understand Nigerians are deeply religious & religion is at the center of all you do. So this thread is not to dispute the Bible stories or to knock down two millennial old strong moral & messianic belief system.

2. This article is however, an attempt to give you a Historical perspective of what the life of “Jesus” who lived in the time of Roman Occupation of Jewish lands, looked like.

3. To begin, there were at least 3 historians who lived at the time of Jesus. Whom we reference when discussing the life of Jesus the man, or the Historical Jesus.

4. Historians: Tacitus, Pliny & Josephus wrote their Historical accounts in the 1st Century AD (time of Jesus), while Eusebius wrote in the 3rd Century AD.

First 3 men were eyewitnesses accounts.

5. To understand more about this topic, first, you must know we have “Jesus the Divine” & the “Historical Jesus.” Both in one man, the same Jesus Christ.

6. Jesus the Divine speaks of Jesus’s divinity as the messiah, while the Historical Jesus talks about Jesus the man who lived & died in First-century Judaea, who had friends & later the disciples as his inner circle.

7. Now some of the things I’ll say might be in the realm of “heresy” for adherents of Christian religion. But pls, keep an open mind as much as you can.

Now that I’ve got this out of the way, let’s begin, shall we?

8. First, the Joseph who was the father of the Historical Jesus was a Jew. It follows that Jesus must have been a Jew, at least by birth. So he was not a Christian.

Christianity is in fact a religion of those who follow in Jesus’s footsteps, so it wasn’t his faith.

9. Second, Joseph was a stonemason, not a carpenter. Yeah, you heard right!!

Archaeological digs throughout Nazareth, unearthed tools & Stone houses a stonemason would have used, in First Century AD. So it’s inconceivable that Joseph was a carpenter.

10. Why do I say so? In the Bible, Jesus spoke extensively in parables. Most of his teachings had lessons of a sower sowing seeds in his vineyard.

He occasionally spoke about vineyard, & about a builder or building things.

11. Jesus talked about destroying the temple & building it back.

“Destroy this Temple, & in three days I will raise it up.” John 2:19.

Here, Jesus was speaking about his own resurrection.

12. He would have drawn his inspiration from the occupation of people of his time, which was Peasant farming & stonemasonry

13. Let me digress a bit.

Jewish texts as far back as Fourth Century, says he was not even called Jesus Christ, the name popped up in Third century.

He was Yeshua of Nazareth, Son of Joseph, so his friends probably called him Issa for short, or Rabbi, or Master in public.

14. Jesus was born of Jews & practiced Judaism. He had only Jews as close friends, observed the Passover, sometimes spoke at Synagogues, & occasionally quoted from the Old Testament, or gave interpretations of the Torah.

15. Assuming the biblical Jesus was based on a real person, for which there is no extra-biblical evidence whatsoever, he would have lived & died a Jew.

16. Most biblical scholars agree that the biblical Jesus is entirely fictional, but stories attached to him carried a moral & spiritual message to the people of that time, who were under Roman brutal occupation. Jerusalem & the kingdom of Judaea was under the brutality of Rome.

17. Roman legionaries went into town stamping out rebellion were ever they found it. They were brutal, the atmosphere was chaotic & insane.

Jews of course didn’t welcome this idea of living as second class citizens under the Romans. So they occasionally revolted against Rome.

18. Jews had their militia wing called the Zealots. Pharisees were at odds with the Zealots.

The Pharisees (custodians of Jewish laws & religion) were more in sync with the Romans.

19. While Zealots pursued political ambitions, Pharisees concerned themselves with preserving the law, Jewish religion & the Torah.

Pharisees were willing to submit to Roman rule but on one condition; only if the Jews could maintain their religious independence.

20. Zealots were enthusiasts, they were men who believed the Jews had to take back their lands through violent rebellion. Judas Iscariot was a Zealot.

This made sense because that could have been the thinking of Judas Iscariot, could have been the reason he betrayed Jesus.

21. He would have thought Jesus as the messiah had the powers to set himself free from the Romans after he sold him off.

So Judas like every other Jew living under Roman Rule, saw Jesus not as a messiah but a leader who would lead a violent rebellion against the Romans.

22. This made sense in First-Century AD. The everyday life of Jews was challenging & extremely difficult.

Public Executions in Judaea was rife, it was quite the spectacle. The Romans made sure they sent a powerful message to rebels, that rebellion or uprising won’t be tolerated.

23. They broke the Jews & they didn’t tolerate dissents. John The Baptist later come face to face with one of Rome’s pawn called Herod Antipas (son of Herod the Great & Cleopatra of Jerusalem).

Antipas ruled as the Governor of Galilee during the time of Jesus.

24. Antipas was himself a Jew but a pawn of the Romans, just like his father. But that’s a story for another day. So here you find Jews living under Roman Rule, looking up to Jesus to deliver them.

25. So Historical Jesus was the man John the Baptist was heralding, whom Jews in First Century hoped wud deliver them.

Stories attributed to him conveyed a moral & spiritual message the people living under bondage would have needed to keep their hopes alive.

Keep reading……👇

26. Life in Judaea in First-century was short, it was brutish. People worked as slaves for masters, they broke their backs in the farms.

If you had bad harvest, then you will have to pay your debt by becoming a slave. So the fears were real, the whole atmosphere, palpable.

27. So any message of a messiah who has come to deliver the people, was well received. Jesus had many followers. People came to him to renew their Hope in the kingdom he preached about.

28. The kingdom of Heaven, where there will be no slaves, people will have enough food to eat, enough wine to drink. A place where there will be no sorrows, where everyone will enjoy the promise of a good life.

29. An escape from the Romans & all their oppression & brutality.

So the Historical Jesus preached at along the banks of the sea of Galilee, he fed the hungry, cured the sick & drove out demons.

30. These were the basic needs of the people living in the kingdom of Judaea at that time, it would have been their sustenance & respite from the chaos & brutality that was Rome.

31. Ultimately, it was Jesus’s meddling in the matters of faith that got him crucified.

Pharisees were jealous, you don’t come into their territory & speak like that, with such authority. Jesus was eventually going to be nailed on the cross, he had it coming.

32. These historical accounts was corroborated extensively by Flavius Josephus. He was the Jewish priest, scholar & early Jewish historian. He was a Pharisee who consulted for the Roman Emperor during the time of the Historical Jesus.

33. He became a traitor to the Jews on account of working for the Romans. Now, in order to support his tenuous position as a Jewish renegade in bed with Rome, Josephus began to write histories under the benevolence of whoever was Emperor at that time.

34. However, I must stress that in all his work of histories, Josephus paid very close attention to “accuracy” while documenting accounts which happened during his own time.

Being a Pharisee meant Josephus was at odds with Zealots who believed in Jewish Nationalism.

35. There was a third group called the Sadducees. Pharisees & Sadducees were arch rivals, but both were willing to submit to Roman Rule.

36. While the Sadducees were the more conservative sect who dominated the Temple & its priesthood, & claimed superiority by birth, social & economic position, Pharisees, claimed the authority of piety & of learning.

37. Sadducees were aristocratic families & merchants, the super wealthy of the Jewish population.

Born in AD 37/38 in Jerusalem, Flavius Josephus died in AD 100, in Rome.

38. He wrote:

1. History of the Jewish War in 75–79 AD.

2. The Antiquities of the Jews in 93 AD, and

3. Against Apion.

39. Josephus wrote extensively on Jewish Revolt against Romans in 66- 70 AD, & on Early Jewish History as well. This was in the 1st Century AD, in the time period Jesus lived & died.

I’ll end here. Thanks for reading.