The Five Most Common Fallacies about the Life of Jesus—Le Donne

1) Jesus was born in the year “Zero” or “1 AD”. 

This fallacy comes to us from Dionysius Exiguus in (what we now call the year 525 of the current era). In adding the number of years of successive Roman officials from the founding of Rome to his own time, Dionysius miscalculated the beginning of the “Anno Domini” dating system. He calculated that Jesus was born 525 years before the date of his study.

It seems that most scholars prefer to follow Matthew and Luke concerning the role of Herod the Great in this episode of history. If Herod was involved in some way, he would have had to have been alive (or so I am told). Herod, by almost everyone’s watch, died in what we would now call 4 BCE. So the short answer is that we don’t know when Jesus was born, but it was probably not when Dionysius said it was. Most scholars give a date circa 4 BCE. There never was a year zero—Dionysius conceived of the calendar with 1 BC followed immediately by 1 AD. I should point out something that is seldom acknowledged: Dionysius’ magnificent legacy should not be overshadowed by an error of arithmetic. Math is for suckers anyway—ask my daughter.

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2) Jesus had a three year teaching ministry.

Again, we just don’t know exact dates. The notion of a three year career for Jesus comes from taking the festivals in the Fourth Gospel (John) to be representative of a literal chronology. Every John scholar will tell you that a literal chronology cannot be assumed here.** Now, as Chris has recently reminded me, there is really no reason to privilege a Synoptic (Matt, Mark, and Luke) chronology over and against John. Even so, the best answer is that we do not have an answer.

**NB: the phrase cannot be assumed means what it says. The first rule of tautology club is the first rule of tautology club.

3) Jesus wanted to change Judaism into Christianity.

Jesus never heard the word “Christianity”. He probably never heard the word “Christ”—much less in its titular form (yes, I said “titular form” – stop giggling). Jesus was not a Christian and he never hoped that his disciples would become Christians. This concept just wasn’t on his radar. Now, there is some debate (and it is a very interesting debate) as to whether Jesus sought to “reform” Judaism. Please keep in mind that “reform” does not mean what we Protestants think it means; it doesn’t mean “divide and conquer”. The suggestion that something should be reformed presupposes that the thing is worth keeping. The theological question remains: if first-century gentiles (non-Jews) were to take the significance of Jesus’ teachings seriously, would they find nascent Christianity a close approximation to what Jesus taught? I’ll happily admit that my answer to this question will be slanted toward my sympathy for Christianity. But I see no evidence to suggest that Jesus wanted Jews to become something other than Jewish.

It was recently suggested to me by a friend that if one were to take all the sayings of Jesus and classify them as “ahistorical” – as long as we could keep the story of the prodigal son, Christians would still have enough material upon which to base the gospel. While I see no reason to classify anything as strictly “ahistorical” (that word has almost no meaning in my historiography), this point about the prodigal son parable is interesting. Let’s say that we (as most evangelicals do) construct a salvation paradigm on that story. In Luke’s telling, God is the father (so we assume), the elder son represents Judaism (so most commentaries tell us), and the prodigal represents the newly repentant. …what does the father tell the elder son in this parable?

4) Jesus primarily taught about love and grace.

Jesus’ primary message was that the “rule of God” was being established in Judea. It’s not that loving one’s neighbor and loving God wasn’t part of this message. It was. But to reduce Jesus’ preaching career to “love and grace” is to misunderstand him. See my previous post for a more nuanced introduction to this topic.

5) Jesus was a good teacher.

Okay, he taught and he was good at it. But the claim that he “was a good teacher” says so little that it is deceptive. Bill Clinton is a teacher and he’s pretty good at it. But his career was a bit more complicated than this. If your ten-year-old child asked you, “Who is Bill Clinton” and you answered, “He’s a good teacher,” you’d be a very bad teacher (in which case, who are you to judge what a good teacher looks like?). At the very least Jesus was a preacher and a healer and leader of a grassroots movement that became the most culturally diverse religion on the planet. The term “teacher” connotes a level of secular neutrality that makes it a misnomer for Jesus.'

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Historical Jesus: What Can We Know and How Can We Know It?

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