Jesus and his Cast of Characters: Constructions of Archetype

Christopher J. DeCicco NES 321 Heretics Prof. Haines-Eitzen Due May 6th, 2002

Heroes always emerge in a time of dying - of self, of social sanctions, of societys forms, of standard-brand religions, governments, economics, psychologies and relationships. In answering the call of the eternal, they discover the courage to perform the first great task of the hero or heroine - to undergo the gestations, growth, and trauma required for a new birth. This occurs so that they can then serve as midwife in the larger society for the continuum of births necessary to redeem both the time and the society in which they live and bring them to a higher level of functioning. -Jean Huston
1

Introduction: Categorization of Character

In his work The Historical Figure of Jesus, E.P. Sanders makes a short innocent statement which speaks volumes about the human race: People like neat categories2. In its context, this statement refers to New Testament scholars who have continuously attempted to classify the historical Jesus as a specific kind of person, with specific kinds of beliefs, activities, methods and philosophies. But since the information about Jesus is so diverse, and very often contradictory, the task is a daunting one, and even the best and most thorough scholars occasionally fall into the trappings of categorization, for the sake of simplicity and/or argument. But the above statement is relevant outside of New Testament studies as well; in a broader context it applies to the transmission of ideas through narratives, both ancient and modern, and the methods by which authors (storytellers, writers, filmmakers, et cetera) convey their ideas, and the ways audiences react. Narratives are always more easily digestible and repeatable when the characters are clearly defined and pigeonholed, and the goals and obstacles of both protagonists and antagonists are presented simply and concisely. Real life is never as neat or tidy as storytelling is, but it is human nature to prefer simpler narrative structure and categorization, and to dismiss or ignore irrelevant and extraneous data. It is this very nature of the human psyche, and of storytelling itself, which makes the work of New Testament scholars all the more difficult: the categorization of events and characters in the gospels has already been applied to historical events, and unfortunately by different people, who had different ideas, beliefs and goals when they constructed their
1 2

Houston, The Hero and the Goddess, (New York, 1992), 73. Sanders, The Historical Figure of Jesus, (London, 1993), 153.

2 narratives. Although there has been much progress made in the process of honing in on the characters and events in the life of the historical Jesus, the methods by which information is extracted is not infallible, because the reliability of data is inherently questionable. It is this aspect of New Testament studies the reliability of data which is my prime focus in this paper. To what extent can we trust certain information as provided in the Gospel narratives? Where do we draw the line between historical fact and fabricated narrative? This figurative line will be drawn in different places for different readers. Those who consider themselves Christians might consider none or almost none of the information to be fabricated, and all to be true. Those with a more scientific and critical approach will be more conservative with what they label as factual. Although this is not a comprehensive study of reliability of data, it is certainly an argument that, in certain aspects of their detective-work, some scholars are not being conservative enough regarding what they are willing to accept as historically accurate. Despite the high level of scrutiny that scholars apply in their studies, some of the most respected among them contradict themselves by admitting uncertainty in some places and then boldly claiming certainty elsewhere3. Regarding the dating of Jesus birth, Sanders makes a statement (in the course of his discussion) which I find unsettling: ...We should trust this information unless we have good reason not to do so4. This innocent until proven guilty method of logic might seem perfectly acceptable within the context of our modern democratic sense of justice, but is too liberal and forgiving of an approach when studying documents which already give us noticeable reason to distrust their reliability in other portions of text. While scholars might dismiss by default certain events in the gospels as being implausible because of scientific impossibility (e.g. healings, exorcisms, transfiguration, resurrection), they are reluctant to dismiss other events as implausible (e.g. meetings between famous characters, as will be discussed later) because they could be technically possible. But we are dealing with narrative fabricated reality, used to construct historical fiction a medium which thrives on possibilities in order to legitimize the stories inherent implausibilities in the real world. Therefore accepting possibility as plausibility is not enough. In George Lucass Young Indiana Jones Chronicles television series, the protagonist meets a different historical celebrity in each episode Sigmund Freud, Mata Hari, Theodore
3

Ibid. compare p. 183 We may be confident that... to xiii Confidence... has soared, and recent scholarly literature contains what I regard as rash and unfounded assertions... Ibid. 54.

3 Roosevelt, T.E. Lawrence, Prince Feisal, Charles DeGaul, to name a few. As the viewer, we are drawn to the stories because they are possible within the context of the story, even though we know how historically implausible it would be for a single person to have met all of those historical celebrities, and especially within a short amount of time. As one who has become more intimately familiar with storytelling and the thought processes associated with creating fiction, I am suggesting that it is safest to reverse the method of logic to guilty until proven innocent; that is, we should assume that the gospel writers are guilty of fabricating or tailoring their information solely for the sake of the narrative (and especially when it serves the narrative), until other historical information can corroborate. This method might leave us with fewer answers, but having no conclusions is better than having faulty ones. By making these statements, I am automatically playing on someone elses turf, namely those who are far more steeped in the literature than I, and I must abide by their rules. Sanders above statement asks for a good reason to distrust the reliability of gospels, and this paper is about providing that very thing. Below I will argue that the Jesus narratives in the Gospels each follow the same basic form and structure of heroic journey used by virtually all cultures throughout human history, and that the more a text exhibits conspicuous adherence to this structure, the more suspicious we should be that the information has been fabricated for the sake of the narrative. This not only refers to events in Jesus life, as will be discussed first, but also to characters that enter into the narrative, which will be discussed in the following two sections.

I: The Journey of the Archetypal Hero During a time when some scholars were only studying foreign cultures in order to understand differences between peoples, enforcing an us versus them world view, anthropologist Joseph Campbell focused on the vast similarities between cultures, particularly in regard to storytelling, and the transmission of ideas through narrative. Now, decades after his most famous work, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, many people see his conclusions as being self-evident, forgetting the profundity of his legacy. In the above-mentioned work, Campbell studies in detail what he refers to as the cosmogonic cycle 5 or the monomyth6, upon which many (if not most) of the worlds hero
5

Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, (New York, 1949) 38-39, see especially 39: ...for now it appears that the perilous journey was a labor not of attainment but of reattainment, not discovery but rediscovery which reinforces the idea that this is a never-ending, repeating cycle for humanity. 6 Ibid. 30. He borrows this term from James Joyce, Finnegans Wake, (New York, 1939), 581.

4 narratives draw their structure. The cycle is a simple one, divided into three basic sections: separation, initiation, return7. Separation refers to the departure from the normal life, or from ones roots, into the call of adventure. Initiation is the dark period, sometimes taking place in the supernatural world or an unfamiliar setting, where the hero undergoes various tasks, or endures trials or temptations. Return is marked by the completion of the task(s), whereby the hero is brought back into normal life, but now as a transformed person, able to bestow gifts to his/her fellow humans, whether this be in the form of a boon (i.e. a material object) or abstract gifts such as wisdom or freedom8. This narrative form is utilized, in rather unique ways, in all four of the canonical gospels. Before I elaborate, it is important to provide a context for this form by way of comparison to other narratives. The scope of this work is too small to incorporate the myriad examples of this hero cycle in the worlds cultures, so for the sake of brevity, I will be emphasizing (both here and later) examples from three different categories. The first two categories, Pagan (Greek, Roman, and Egyptian) narratives, and Jewish (Old Testament) narratives, are essential because they were familiar to early Christian writers and audiences, and have a direct bearing upon how the gospels were formulated and experienced in their earliest form. The third category is modern narratives in film and literature, which I provide purely for the emphasis that these methods and devices of narrative structure are still readily employed, and not unique to antiquity. Modern fiction is self-conscious of the hero cycle (in part because of Joseph Campbell), to such an extent that many of the how to books in the market designed to help new and aspiring writers and filmmakers specifically call upon the cycle as the classic model to follow9. There are countless incarnations of this in modern culture, perhaps the most famous being Dorothy Gale from Frank Baums Wizard of Oz, Frodo Baggins from Tolkeins Lord of the Rings and Luke Skywalker from Lucass Star Wars saga. Interestingly, the latter two of these stories were consciously born out of research in ancient mythology. In Mediterranean antiquity, the story of Osiris is ancient Egypts most famous example of the hero cycle, as he is killed by his enemies, dismembered and scattered through the land, then reborn through a tree, and his divine energy is transformed into a new existence. But this version of the hero cycle is highly metaphorical, relates less to human frailties or goals, and one could
7 8

Ibid. 30. Ibid. See diagram on 245. 9 See especially Trottier, The Screenwriters Bible, (Los Angeles, 1998) 35, 79, index on 298.

5 argue is that the real adventure is carried out by his wife Isis, who attempts to find and save her husband, and restore his divine status. Certain Greek characters have their beginnings with divinity - Achilles and Herakles are both born of one divine parent and one human parent10 - in order to emphasize their uniqueness, but they still must endure challenges which are relevant to the human realm, and their weaknesses are often human ones. In one way or another, the stories of Jason, Aeneas and Theseus utilize the hero cycle, even if it is only as part of the heros adventure (Jason passes the clashing rocks, sneaks past the dragon to take the Golden Fleece; Aeneas enters the underworld, passes Cerberus to gain knowledge of the future; Theseus enters the labyrinth, slays the minotaur and takes Ariadne as his wife)11. All three of these narratives depict more human main characters, while the plot is still under the influence of divine characters. Homers Odyssey follows this pattern too, as Athena assists Odysseus through his journeys. What makes the Odyssey interesting regarding the hero cycle is that a disproportional bulk of the story takes place during the initiation phase, within which several miniature subcycles of the monomyth are completed (e.g. visits to various islands, other tangential adventures) before the final return is complete (even when Odysseus returns to Ithaka, he still faces the final daunting task of regaining his wife)12. Utilizing multiple miniature sub-cycles is not unique to Greek tradition; in the Jewish tradition, the Genesis story of Joseph employs this method to an even greater extreme, with each section of the story mirroring/imitating the other sections as well as the whole story13. The story of the prophet Jonah is perhaps the most famous of Biblical narratives to follow the cosmogonic cycle, so much so that when Campbell elaborates on the initiation phase, one of his chapter section titles is in the Belly of the Whale14. Daniels lions den and Noahs ark also both serve as the initiation phase in their respective narratives, and are a testament to the fact that a hero is often remembered most for what is encountered in this middle phase, the trials and tribulations that must be endured in order to rise to the status of hero. The Exodus narrative is essential to mention here because of how it uniquely employs the hero cycle twice: first Moses follows the journey (exile from Egypt, living among the Midianites, the burning bush, return as

10 11

For more, see Galinsky, The Herakles Theme, (Totowa, 1972) 14. For more, see Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, (New York, 1949) 23-24, 30. 12 For more about the structure of these sub-cycles, see Smith, The Heros Journey, (Lanham, 1997) 33. 13 Genesis 37-50
14

Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, (New York, 1949) 90.

6 the new prophet), and then Moses draws the entire people of Israel into the cycle (escape from Egypt, wandering in the desert, entering and conquering Canaan). This double utilization of the hero cycle is critical in examining the Jesus narrative. In this case, the gospel of Mark serves as our prime example, since it is not only considered our earliest extant Jesus narrative (upon which two others are based), but is also the simplest and most straight forward in its application of the hero cycle. As Sanders and co-writer Margaret Davies point out, the bulk of the Mark text (1:21-14:50) is a three-fold discourse: evangelization, instruction (i.e. wisdom), and apology (offense/defense of Christian philosophy and cult)15. But the discourse is neatly and conveniently book-ended by the two hero cycles of Jesus: the human hero cycle (Baptism; wandering in the desert, temptation by the devil; return as an authority figure), and then the divine one (admission of messiah status; trial, suffering & execution, later embelished by the creeds he descended into hell; resurrection). Why is it so important to view the Jesus narrative in the context of the archetypal hero cycle? There are many reasons, but first and foremost is that it seems to be no accident that this classic formula appears in the narrative. The writers were clearly familiar both Pagan and Jewish stories, and recognized, either consciously or unconsciously, what made a good story - what qualities and characteristics made a narrative appealing and attractive to the largest possible audience. They also clearly knew how to allude to other stories - particularly Jewish narratives in order to support their agenda. Our most obvious example is that the author of Matthew conspicuously modeled and sculpted his Jesus as the new Moses16. What better way to emphasize this similarity in character and mission than to have Jesus narrative follow the same general path? The first hero cycle, one of personal and individual growth and a rise to special status, is placed at the beginning of the story. Then, the second cycle at the end of the story shows that the hero uses his special status to bring the entire group through the same set of changes (in Moses case, delivering the Israelites into the promised land; in Jesus case, delivering the Christians in to salvation and redemption - the promised land of paradise after death.)17

15 16

Sanders & Davies, Studying the Synoptic Gospels, (Philadelphia, 1989) 43. Matthew 2:16, also 5:1 ...up the mountain, and 8:1 ...came down from the mountain. See Ehrman, The New Testament, (New York, 1997) 83. See also notes in New Oxford Annotated Bible, (New York, 1994) NT2 name of Jesus loosely translated as Savior.

17

7 How should the archetypal hero cycle affect our pursuit of the historical Jesus? It can serve as a great divining rod, giving us a greater indication of which elements of the Jesus narratives could be based upon historical events and which might have been concocted in order to give greater weight to the thrust of the narrative. Yes, it seems that Jesus was indeed a historical figure, and through evidence from Josephus, Tacitus and Pliny18, we can gather that Jesus was a man who attracted attention, spoke in public, and was executed because he appeared to be in some way a threat to the status quo. But there are plenty of other details of Jesus life, drawn solely from the gospels, which many readers and scholars still tend to accept at face value. The problem with accepting this latter catergory as reliable evidence is that some of these details and events fit so perfectly - so conveniently - into the phases of the hero cycle. These details should then serve as a red flag, making us perk up and ask: are we really supposed to believe that life imitates art with such precision? Or, to be more exact in this case, are we supposed to believe that history precisely imitates classic narrative structure and form? In short, my answer is no. Certain phases of the archetypal cycle are more easily dismissed as being fabricated (or not entirely factual) because they coincide with scientific impossibility on some level. The resurrection is a prime example: we can see that the resurrection represents the final phase of Jesus second (divine) cycle, and is a nice way to round out the narrative, providing a sense of purpose for, and optimism after, the physical suffering of crucifixion which was the second phase. Even in the gospel of Mark, in which the resurrection is merely implied, or described in more enigmatic terms than the other texts19, this final phase is still essential, and serves as a message of hope and the speculation of future vindication, particularly for audiences contemporaneous to the siege of Jerusalem and destruction of the Temple (which is the approximate time this text is considered to have been written). But there are other phases of the hero cycle that might not present supernatural challenges to us, which still deserve just as much scrutiny as the above example. If we examine the use of the double hero cycle utilized in the gospel of Mark, we can see the authors mind at work when creating the first (human) cycle for Jesus. For instance, if one knows that one is about to construct a document with narrative elements, the bulk of which is discourse and apologetics, what better way to establish great credibility and authority in the main
18

Standard References: Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews, 18.3.3; Tacitus, Annales, 15.44; Pliny, Epistola, 10.69 The most ancient ending does not reveal the resurrected Christ; ends with Mk 16:8 and they were afraid.

19

8 character than to provide a short, compact, Readers Digest version of the hero cycle at the very beginning? This is precisely what the first chapter of Mark supplies; it is a formula which gives a reason for the audience to trust the story, listen and pay attention to the rambling discourse to follow. With this in mind, we need to question the historical legitimacy of anything which occurs in this short hero cycle that introduces the character. While, the conversations with the devil20 are dismissed as being merely folk tradition, due to the supernatural bent of this scene (similar to the resurrection phase discussed above), I am going out on a limb by stating that, because of the specific role that the first cycle plays in the narrative, we should similarly entertain the possibility that the baptism itself (the first phase of Jesus first cycle) should not necessarily be accepted as historical fact either. This statement opens up a rather large can of worms, as the expression goes, and requires far more discussion and investigation in order to refute the widely-accepted belief among scholars that the baptism was a historical event. Before I begin such an arduous task - perhaps an uphill battle? - it is necessary first to discuss the use of famous characters in narratives. This second section will have more obvious relevance to the above argument later in the paper.

II: Celebrity Inclusion and its Implications As scarce as the evidence might be, there are occasional references to Jesus and other gospel characters within some Roman records, but these rare examples are our only information relevant to the historical Jesus which are independent from the Christian texts themselves. When the first New Testament scholars of the modern era began their quest for the historical Jesus, their initial reaction to these Roman records might have been one of relief: the existence of such records might indicate that within the gospels are layers of historical truth. Because the gospels include connections to, or interactions with, characters such as Herod the Great, John the Baptist, Joseph Caiaphas and Pontius Pilate, and because these characters appear in non-Christian records, this evidence might at first glance seem to support some of the gospels claims. But there are two factors which might cast doubt upon such a first glance reaction: 1) there are plenty of other instances in the gospels which scholars view as having been a fabrication, and 2) the

20

Matthew 4:1-11; Luke 4:1-13 both present much more elaborate temptation scenes than Mark.

9 gospels are considered to post-date Jesus by forty to sixty years at least, allowing greater possibility for traditions to stray from truth. Again, I feel it necessary to apply the guilty until proven innocent approach when examining the inclusion of these four characters in the gospels. Why? Because although the Jesus movement grew to unprecedented size, its beginnings were undoubtedly far humbler. A small fledgling movement trying to bring new people into the fold would have much to gain and little to lose by inventing stories that include characters with which the general public is already familiar. For an author deciding to include a famous celebrity figure in his or her work, the advantages are numerous. Firstly, it means that less character development is necessary for the celebrity; the audience is already acquainted with that characters background, personality, agenda, et cetera, and the author can devote less time in filling in such information that is normally necessary with other characters. More time can therefore be devoted to other elements in the story. Secondly, it relates the authors new story to a broader tapestry of other stories, giving the audience a greater sense that this story connects to others, the way that people relate to other people. And thirdly and most importantly, the use of a historical celebrity grounds the story in a specific historical setting, a familiar backdrop, providing an authenticity to the storys place and time, and sometimes implying a greater importance to the narrative if it is connected to figures already deemed important in other contexts. This occurs in modern literature and film wherever there is historical fiction. Robert Zemeckis Forrest Gump is modern films most excessive example of this. In period pieces, royalty is a common device: Richard the Lionhearted appears in the Robin Hood stories, Queen Elizabeth is featured in both Virginia Woolfs Orlando and in the more recent Shakespeare in Love. Celebrity figures are often sought out for the role of villains, such as Richelieu in Dumas Three Musketeers, or Al Capone in Brian DePalmas the Untouchables. Sometimes celebrity villains are used to show a main characters associations, such as a brief clip of Kane with Hitler in Welles Citizen Kane, or merely for comic effect as Hitler is used in a completely differenct context in Spielbergs Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Even in childrens films, whose audience might not be familiar with history, this device is employed: FDR appears in the film version of Annie, and Rasputin is the main villain in Anastasia.21
21

An important note about which examples I chose: I did not include historical fiction where the protagonist is the prime historical celebrity itself. The only exception is Shakespeare in Love, but Elizabeth is a reinforcing character,

10 The Greeks were well aware of this narrative device, although it was not used necessarily to ground the story historically, for most of the celebrity inclusions in Greek stories were gods, and therefore timeless. But it was nevertheless effective in conveying the importance of certain human heroes because of their connection to, or favor bestowed by, the gods. Even in Homers Odyssey, the hero at one point meets other famous Greek heroes and celebrities, such as King Minos, Orion, Theseus, and Herakles22. By having his protagonist interact with other heroes, Homer gained much advantage, connecting his own epic with other famous legends. Jewish storytelling is not immune to such plot device either. Nebuchadnezzars presence in the book of Daniel serves the same purpose; Jews and non-Jews alike would have known who Nebuchadnezzar was, and his infamous reputation fit so perfectly and conveniently into the Daniel narrative. The names of Cyrus, Darius and Artaxerxes appear in the books of Ezra and Nehemiah, marking the end of the exile, and although scholars bicker as to which Darius or which Artaxerxes these books might specifically be referring (pick a Roman numeral...), each of these leaders provide a celebrity presence in the narrative to both establish historical legitimacy and bolster the perceived importance of Nehemiah as he had interacted with the Persian kings23. The use of the term Pharaoh in Exodus takes on the same role. Although the text never specifically points out which pharaoh (and, again, scholars bicker about the historical specifics), the celebrity presence of the Egyptian leader provides the same authenticity to the story, and Jews in the earliest audience of the Exodus narrative would have had a very clear preconception of who a pharaoh was and what his personality and character might have been. As mentioned earlier, the author of the gospel of Matthew exerts tremendous effort to insure that his audience recognizes direct parallels between Jesus and Moses. His first and most effective means of doing this is in the beginning of the narrative, where Herod the Great decrees that infant males are to be slaughtered to prevent the rise of a new leader among the Jews24. Scholars and theologians alike have been aware of this having been a plot device borrowed quite blatantly from Exodus, where Pharaoh does the same after the birth of Moses. In the gospel of Matthew, Herod the Great is the perfect contemporary celebrity to take on the role of the new Pharaoh. This literary allusion works brilliantly, because it matches so consistently with
and thus fits the list of examples. I also purposefully avoided time travel fantasies such as Time Bandits and the Bill and Ted films, because these deal with contemporary characters moving into a historical scenario. 22 Homer, Book 11. See also Galinsky, The Herakles Theme, (Totowa, 1972) 12. 23 See especially Nehemiah 2:1-8, where he speaks face to face with Artaxerxes. 24 Matthew 2:16.

11 Herods actual reputation in the first century BCE. As Eric M. Meyers describes, he was the guy you love to hate.25 But despite the slaying of the infant males being somewhat consistent with other gruesome acts that we can safely attribute to Herod the Great26, there is no evidence that a decree of this specific nature was historical, nor does it seem logistically plausible for such a degree to be enforced. It is therefore safer to presume that Herod was included in Matthew because he was a historical celebrity figure and fit well into the literary allusion incorporated into the narrative. Although the character of Herod the Great was definitely not fictitious, his connection to the Jesus narrative certainly seems to be. How does this affect our data for the reconstruction of the historical Jesus? Despite how aware scholars are of the Matthew birth narrative being an appropriation of the Moses narrative, some of them still attempt to calculate the birth year of Jesus by using the death of Herod (4 BCE) as a benchmark figure27. I find this to be absurd. To be recognizing the fictional devices of a text and simultaneously trusting it for hard data is an incredibly unscientific approach. Are we to believe that the author of Matthew, writing a full nine decades after the death of Herod, would have even known or cared whether or not Jesus birth actually lined up with the last years of Herods reign? Furthermore, Brown wastes his time compiling an eight page appendix28 on dating the birth of Jesus by trying to reconcile the death of Herod with dates related to the reigns of Quirinius and Augustus, mentioned in Luke 1 and 2 (these two pieces of data seem to conflict with each other as well). But it is highly unlikely that the author of Luke would have had access to the hard data of Roman records as we do, nor would he have been able to cross-check his information the way current scholars can do. Again, the author of Luke was writing a full eight to nine decades after the events he was describing, basing the rest of his document on fragmentary oral and written traditions, passed down like a game of telephone. Are we then to accept unquestioningly Lukes data as reliable enough to utilize in the calculation of the birth of Jesus? It seems more logical to view the inclusion of historical celebrities such as Herod (in Matthews case) and Quirinius and Augustus (in Lukes case) as literary ornamentation and allusion in order to bolster the perceived authenticity of the narrative. Perceived authenticity for a late first century audience should not be translated into historical reliability in the twenty25 26

Mellowes, prod. From Jesus to Christ: the First Christians, (Boston, 1998) part one. Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews, 15.6-7. 27 Sanders, Historical Figure, (London, 1993) 52-53; Brown, The Birth of the Messiah, (New York, 1977) 166. 28 Brown, The Birth of the Messiah, (New York, 1977) 547-555.

12 first century. Dismissing this data from Matthew and Luke is a frustrating but necessary action; it leaves us without an ability to reliably date the birth of Jesus, but a lack of conclusion is better than conclusions based on faulty evidence. Dating the death of Jesus can be nearly as tricky a task, because the data used for this calculation also relies on reconciling gospel passages to the more reliable Roman data of the reigns of Pontius Pilate (as the Prefect of Judea) and Caiaphas (as the High Priest of the Temple). Yes, the death of Jesus was far closer to the period when the gospels were written, and yes, oral traditions from the twenties and thirties are perhaps more reliable than the birth narratives, but we must entertain the possibility that Pilate and Caiaphas were included in the traditions surrounding Jesus death because they - like Herod - had well-established reputations as being ruthless characters, and were easy celebrities to include into the narrative. They were already viewed as bad guys both during and after their periods of control29, and their inclusion in the passion narratives, particularly regarding their responsibility for Jesus death, seems particularly tidy and convenient - too convenient, in fact, to accept blindly. The reign of Caiaphas is particularly questionable here, since Luke mentions that the events of Jesus trial occur during the times of Caiaphas and Annas30. But as Sanders wisely points out, there was only one high Priest at a time; the two of them could not have shared the position simultaneously31. Because of this, it is safer to conclude that the author of Luke did not truly know who specifically was in power during the time of Jesus death, and provided this verse, again, to allude to a period of infamy in the Temples past, as ornamentation for perceived authenticity. Caiaphas becomes even less of an essential character for helping to calculate Jesus death when one considers also that in the eighties and nineties when the gospels of Luke and John were being composed, there was already pressure among Christian communities to draw responsibility of Jesus death away from the Romans and toward the Jews. In this context, Caiaphas becomes an easy villain to include in the narrative - he was well-known, had a conveniently bad reputation, and even the Romans eventually removed him from position. Therefore, his presence in the Jesus narrative seems to be contrived, for a specific response from the audience, and consequently, historically unreliable.

29 30

See especially Josephus, Antiquities, 18.3.1-2, 18.4.2; Wars of the Jews, 2.9.1-4) Luke 3:2 31 Sanders, Historical Figure, (London, 1993) 52.

13 Conversely, the general movement away from Roman responsibility of Jesus death makes Pilates involvement more of an embarrassment to the Christian movement, requiring the gospel writers to redraw Pilates character, depicting him as less of a villain than he was generally perceived during and after his reign. According to scholars, then, the embarrassment of Pilates involvement in Jesus death indicates that his involvement was based on historical fact. But the tradition of Pilates involvement could still have been based on earlier oral transmission, long before this political pressure to remove Roman responsibility was present within Christian communities. Pilate could have been blamed by earlier Christians in the thirties through the sixties, even if he was not directly involved with Jesus' execution. During this pre-Markan period, he would have made the perfect celebrity villain, and an easy target to insert into the narratives of oral tradition. Even if one were to dismiss this possibility and assume that Jesus execution did occur during Pilates reign (making Pilates dates valid for dating Jesus death), the extent to which Pilate is present in the Jesus narratives - even in Mark - should be questioned. The authors would have much to gain by including a Roman figure of such infamy into the narrative, even if his character were to be reversed, because he was a character familiar to the earliest audiences. In fact, to have a notoriously evil Roman trying to help Jesus out of his predicament could even serve to persuade the audience of Jesus overwhelming innocence, and the malevolence of the Jews. There is also the possibility that Jesus was executed on account of a decree from Pilate (i.e. enforced by Pilates underlings), but without requiring Pilate and Jesus to meet face to face for a trial or judgement, as is suggested by all four gospel narratives. Pilates role as a literary device, then, is still visible.

III: Literary Convenience of the Voice in the Desert Of the four main historical celebrities discussed in this paper, the first three were easily incorporated into the same category because they were all viewed during the first century as villains of one kind or another. However, the fourth figure, John the Baptist, takes on a very different role in the gospel narratives - a role that perhaps fits even more snuggly into the hero cycle, but presents us with different - and thornier - issues than those discussed with Herod, Pilate or Caiaphas. The implications of these issues will also require us to re-examine several conclusions shared among New Testament scholars.

14 In the cosmogonic cycle, there is always a catalyst provided in the narrative which places the hero onto his/her path - an impetus to begin the cycle. Occasionally this impetus is an object (Jacks magic beans) or an event (the end of the Trojan war, a chance for Odysseus to return home), but more often it is another character who initiates the journey. This initiator character, referred to by Campbell as the helper, protective figure, or Supernatural Aid,32 comes in many different forms, and shows up for sometimes different reasons, but this role is nevertheless extremely significant in many narratives. In many cases, the initiator is already established as being unique, or having unique abilities. Whether human or divine, the initiator has previously gone through his/her own hero journey, is often depicted as old, has had his/her own adventures, and is now passing the torch to the next chosen figure. This transfer of energy can come in the form of a supernatural warning (the ghost of Hamlets Father in Hamlet, the ghost of Jacob Marley in A Christmas Carol), a tool or special object (Bilbo passes the ring to his nephew Frodo in Lord of the Rings, the Lady of the Lake gives Excalibur to Arthur), a special ability (sentience bestowed upon Pinocchio, knowledge of good and evil given to Adam and Eve by the serpent), or teaching and wisdom from a specific tradition (Obi-Wan Kenobi trains young Luke in the ways of the Force in Star Wars, Morpheus trains Neo in the Matrix). Whether or not the initiator is somehow able or allowed to help the hero after the point where the initiation phase has been entered, it is always clear that it is not the initiators journey, and that this characters time for personal glory has passed; it is time for a new hero (Odysseus meeting in the underworld with Minos, Orion and especially Herakles, as mentioned before, also fits this model). The Jewish scriptures are loaded with initiators passing their former glory to the next generation of hero. Although, the story of Joseph receiving the coat of many colors from Israel (Jacob) is our clearest, most structured example, this general pattern is used for the previous three generations as well (the patriarchs: Abraham, to Isaac, to Jacob). It is used again to pass on political rule after the departure from Egypt (Moses to Joshua), during the United Kingdom (Samuel anointing David, then David to Solomon), and to a lesser extent (but with numerous examples) during the Divided Kingdom. But in addition to patriarchy and politics, the Jewish prophets had their own stories and their own methods of initiation as well. Perhaps the most

32

Campbell, ...Thousand Faces, (New York, 1949) helper, 245; protective figure, 69; Supernatural Aid, 36.

15 famous of these is the transfer of spirit from Elijah to Elisha, when Elijah is taken up in a fiery chariot33. This example is of utmost importance here, because not only does John the Baptist completely fit the profile of the initiator in Jesus first cycle, but the gospel authors purposefully depict John as a prophet from the old tradition, and compare him directly to Elijah34. Although John receives a decapitation rather than a flaming chariot for his ending, there is still an implied transfer of divine power being implied by the gospel authors when they flesh out their respective baptism scenes. John the Baptist also fits our profile of a famous historical figure whose popularity and reputation would have brought more familiarity and legitimacy to the earliest Jesus stories. Some scholars feel that the inclusion of John the Baptist in the gospels appears as an embarrassment to the early Christian movement (the fact that the Messiah is being anointed by someone lower in status than himself), that this event is dissimilar enough to the thrust of the gospel ideologies that it is probably based on an actual historical event35. I, on the other hand, suggest a very different model for interpreting this data. The Christian movement had already grown to large size by the time the gospel texts were written. In conjunction with this, the Christology of Jesus (i.e. the perceived status as unique or divine) was also growing at an alarming rate, even within the period that these texts were written (from the human Jesus in Mark, to the divine, pre-existent Jesus of John). But, as mentioned before, the beginnings of the early Jesus movement were far humbler than the gospel writers would want to admit. Thus, a small fledgling movement made up of enthusiastic and zealous proselytizers would have had much to gain by receiving - or perhaps creating - what would be the modern equivalent of a political endorsement from an already-established, prominent public figure such as John the Baptist. (It is all the more convenient that this de facto political endorsement is coming from another martyr, one who is not around to disprove the fabrication). Having Jesus be initiated into special status by someone as famous as John would have helped to legitimize the earliest stories which circulated about Jesus. It would only be later, after the Christology of Jesus grew to such extreme proportions, and after the movement
33 34

2 Kings 2:9-12 compare Matthew 3:4 to 2 Kng 1:8.

35

Sanders, Historical Figure, (London, 1993) 94, 119; see also the Criterion of Dissimilarity Ehrman, The New Testament, (New York, 1997) 193-95.

16 expanded, that the presence of John the Baptist would have been an embarrassment to the Christian movement(s) during the times that the four gospels were committed to writing. Evidence that further supports this interpretation can be found in the Antiquities of the Jews by Flavius Josephus. Although the extant version of Josephus which describes Jesus is substantial, (approximately 125-130 words in English)36, most scholars feel that this version is highly Christianized - more biased towards Christian ideology than Josephus ever exhibits in the rest of his works. The passages which are believed to be genuine (i.e. not tampered with by Christian monks) add up to a far shorter length (approximately 90 words in English37 , or if one considered the Josephan passage as transmitted by 10th Century Agapius, approximately 100 words in English38). But the amount of text that Josephus dedicates to John the Baptist (his teachings and the plot surrounding his death), is far more extensive than the Jesus passage (about 225 words in English39). This is a significant discrepancy, and cannot be overlooked. Although it might seem petty to equate word count with popularity, at the very least this could imply that John the Baptist was a more significant and prominent public figure during the early first century than Jesus was, and possibly had a greater impact on the psyche of the general public than Jesus did - even as viewed from the nineties (when Josephus was writing), after the Christian movement was already on firmer ground. Furthermore, Sanders shrewdly points out that if, as Josephus describes, the people viewed Antipass military defeat as punishment for executing John, the public indeed must have held John in great esteem.40. Neither Jesus nor his execution garnered the kind of immediate public outcry that was associated with John. This further supports the argument that John the Baptist achieved far greater celebrity during his time than Jesus did, despite the fact that the latter had inspired more written text and general popularity decades and centuries later. Thus, at the beginning of the Jesus movement, a fabricated connection to a Jewish celebrity such as John the Baptist would have been a great benefit to the earliest transmitters of the Jesus narrative. What are the implications of suggesting that Jesus connection to John the Baptist was fabricated for the narrative? This alleged connection has been used by some New Testament
36

Josephus, Antiquities, 18.3.3. Whiston translation (Philadelphia, 1957) 535.

37 38

Meier, A Marginal Jew, (New York, 1991) 61. Maier, Josephus: the Essential Writings, (Grand Rapids, 1988) 264-5, see note on 265. 39 Josephus, Antiquities, 18.5.2; Whiston translation (Philadelphia, 1957) 540.
40

Sanders, Historical Figure, (New York, 1993) 92.

17 scholars to establish that the historical Jesus presented an apocalyptic message to the public. In short, the line of logic follows that since John the Baptist spoke apocalyptically (the beginnings of Jesus ministry), Paul wrote apocalyptically (our first writings after Jesus, approximately 5060 CE), and the author of Mark wrote apocalyptically (our first extant narrative, ca. 70 CE), we should conclude that Jesus - in the middle of all this - did the same41. I find this argument unconvincing for several reasons. First, if we are to understand the gospel of Mark as having been written some time during or after the Roman siege of Jerusalem in 70 CE, then that is clearly a time when apocalyptic ideas and philosophies were raging high among the Jewish people, and the specifically apocalyptic language within Mark could very well be anachronistic, and inserted into the text for the sake of contemporaneous relevance. (Also, the apocalyptic language in Mark is inconsistently placed through the text, indicating that those specifically apocalyptic passages, especially chapter 13, were based on previous written text, similar to the literary seams within the gospel of John.) Second, Paul was clearly proselytizing his own agenda throughout his ministries, inserting his own world views (and placing Jesus within them). He seems to have had little knowledge of the actual life of Jesus, and did not explicitly allude to certain Jesus events familiar to us42 even when they could have supported his argument. In addition, the book of Galatians describes his ministry as separate from the earliest Christian movement and then later in opposition to Peter and his movement43, making Pauls connection to the early Jesus movement a tenuous one. And thirdly, we do not have any clear evidence outside of the gospels themselves that John the Baptist spoke in an explicitly apocalyptic manner. Josephus claims only that John spoke of virtue, righteousness, piety and purification44. His text does not mention John speaking of divine intervention or the coming of a new age, as would be expected from apocalyptic discourse. When discussing the historical Jesus, Sanders accuses modern scholarship of seiz[ing] on one point to say that it is determinative, and then beat[ing] the other pieces of evidence into necessary shape45. But when arguing that Jesus had an eschatological message, Sanders does the same thing: he implies that we should trust Marks eschatological depiction of Jesus because it is consistent with John the Baptists message as attested by Josephus, and then claims that
41 42

Ehrman, The New Testament, (New York, 1997) 218-19. Ibid. 312. Ehrman points out the similarities between Rom 13:7 & Mk 12:17, and Gal 5:14 &Mt 22:39-40. 43 Gal 1:16-17, 2:11-14. 44 Josephus, Antiquities, 18.5.2 45 Sanders, Historical Figure, (London, 1993) 55.

18 Josephus depiction of John is insufficient, and we should look to Mark for the details of Johns ideologies (But for the contents of the Baptists message we must rely on the gospels, since Josephus summary tells us nothing...46). This is circular reasoning! It is neither effective in persuading that Jesus message was eschatological, nor that Johns was. This is not to say that their messages were not eschatological, but that the evidence is insufficient to conclude one way or the other, because our primary sources are too biased to be reliable. The only conclusion that I feel this data truly indicates is that the writer of what we now know as the gospel of Mark had apocalypticism on his/her mind; any eschatological message ascribed to Jesus and John is very likely to be the writer displacing his/her own opinions, problems, and world views into a constructed past, to create a text that was more relevant to his/her present. Even so, the above arguments presented by Sanders (and Ehrman) still hinge on the presumption that Jesus connection to John the Baptist was historically accurate. Because Johns presence in the text (and presumably in the earlier oral traditions) comes in the form of a standard plot device (the initiator) in a standard archetypal hero cycle, how can we legitimately trust these sources for historical truth? In my opinion, we cannot rely on these texts for anything more than what they are: narrative constructions. Paula Fredriksen warns that modern scholarship might lead us to project what is meaningful to us back onto and into our subject of inquiry.47 But the New Testament writers received no such warning, nor would they have heeded it. Their very purpose was to thrust their own ideologies into a construction of the past. Jesus was the ultimate blank slate upon which this ideological appropriation of the past could occur.

Conclusion: the Man and the Metaphor In the introduction to Joseph Campbells posthumously-released The Heros Journey, Phil Cousineau described the well-known anthropologist as ...the ecstatic scholar, a breed of thinker thought long extinct since the age of scientific rationalism.48 In an academic world where other scholars were dismissing the myths and narratives of other cultures as childs play, Campbell turned his own personal and spiritual pursuits towards revealing to the world the vast similarities that all story-telling exhibits throughout human existence. Now that these similarities
46 47

Ibid. 93, 183. Fredriksen, Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews, (New York, 1999) 39. 48 Campbell, The Heros Journey, (New York, 1990) xiii.

19 are apparent, and indeed transparent to us, they can no longer be ignored when we examine either the past or the present. Campbell was known to occasionally be critical of modern Christianity for not recognizing the metaphors within its own storytelling: Every religion is true in one way or another. It is true when understood metaphorically. But when it gets stuck to its own metaphors, interpreting them as facts, then you are in trouble.49 Although he spoke in terms of Christian theology, this statement applies to a certain extent to modern New Testament academics as well. Modern scholarship may recognize the metaphors in the texts, the literary allusions, the parallels, the origins, perhaps with a more critical eye than those with a theological approach. But to recognize such features, and then simultaneously trust the metaphor for reliable historical data seems nothing less than sheer folly. In many ways this guilty until proven innocent approach that I have implemented here can be a very unsettling one, because it leaves us with fewer answers, and fewer solid conclusions. As Sanders wrote, People like neat categories, and none of us are exceptions to this. The lack of nice, neat, perfect answers is always an uncomfortable experience, for historians or anyone else. But coming up with answers for the sake of having answers (and basing such answers on shaky evidence) only leaves me unconvinced of some of the most widely-accepted conclusions among New Testament scholars. I realize that I have attempted here to challenge the works and ideas of men and women who are far more learned in the subject matter than myself. It is worth noting that I simultaneously hold great admiration for this group of men and women; their works and ideas are a continual source of inspiration and invigoration. This has also not been an attempt to systematically negate their conclusions; some of the most popular arguments in the field I find to be incredibly persuasive. But as a person who has also become steeped in the processes of creating fiction, I cannot help but to recognize familiar and conspicuous storytelling devices in the gospels. In refusing, or ignoring the opportunity, to examine these texts through a storytellers eyes, one might proverbially miss the forest for the trees. I also realize that a paper as short as this cannot possibly include all the details and intricacies which would be necessary for a full study of the reliability of texts utilizing this method of criticism. I am acutely aware that I have glossed over some issues with a mere
49

Campbell, The Power of Myth, (New York, 1988) 56.

20 sentence or two for the sake of simplicity. This does not diminish, however, the conviction of my arguments. The more I become engrossed in this world of New Testament studies, the more I am convinced that some scholars pursue certain avenues of exploration purely for the sake of having something to do, ignoring sometimes that their sources are merely stories, and were not meant to withhold the level of scrutiny, either theological or scientific, to which they have been subjected. No matter how much work might be done in interpreting texts as old and elusive as the gospels, these texts will perhaps remain forever like the illusion of an image on a television screen: the closer one examines it, the more it loses its illusory form and becomes incomprehensible.

21 Works Cited Brown, Raymond E. The Birth of the Messiah. Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1977. Campbell, Joseph. The Heros Journey: Joseph Campbell on his Life and Work. Boston: Element Books, 1999. Original Publication New York: Harper & Row, 1990. Campbell, Joseph. The Hero with a Thousand Faces. New York: Bollingen Foundation Inc., 1949. Campbell, Joseph, with Bill Moyers. The Power of Myth. New York: Doubleday, 1988. Ehrman, Bart D. The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997. Fredriksen, Paula. Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1999. Galinsky, G. Karl. The Herakles Theme. Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Littlefield, 1972. Houston, Jean. The Hero and the Goddess. New York: Ballantine Books, 1992. Josephus, Flavius. The Life and Works of Flavius Josephus. Trans, William Whiston. Philadelphia: The John C. Winston Company, 1957. Maier, Paul L. Josephus: The Essential Writings. Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel, Inc., 1988. Meier, John. A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus. New York: Doubleday, 1991. Mellowes, Marylin, Producer. From Jesus to Christ: the First Christians. Boston: WGBH Educational Foundation, 1998. Metzger, Bruce M. and Roland E. Murphy, Eds. The New Oxford Annotated Bible: New Revised Standard Version. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994. Sanders, E.P. The Historical Figure of Jesus. London: Penguine Press, 1993. Sanders, E.P. and Margaret Davies. Studying the Synoptic Gospels. Philadelphia: Trinity Press International, 1989. Smith, Evans Lansing. The Hero Journey in Literature. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1997. Thundy, Zacharias P. Buddha and Christ: Nativity Stories and Indian Traditions. New York: E.J. Brill, 1993. Trottier, David. The Screenwriters Bible. Los Angeles: Silman-James Press, 1998. Vardaman, Jerry and Edwin M. Yamauchi, Eds. Chronos, Kairos, Christos. Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 1989.