(21 votes, average: 4.71 out of 5)
Loading...How old was Jesus at his baptism, when he started his ministry, or when he died? You’ve probably seen the popular inspirational quote that goes something like this, “Jesus didn’t start his ministry until he was 30 years old, and yet he changed the world.”
I guess this is supposed to encourage people in their teens and twenties that haven’t accomplished much in their life. (As if comparing their potential future to the accomplishments of the supposed “son of God” is supposed to make them feel better! Ha!)
It also illustrates a common assumption (or perhaps misconception), that Jesus was 30 years old when he began his ministry.
Is that a fact? If so, where does the Bible say so?
How Old Was Jesus When He Died?
This is not a slam dunk answer.
In fact, I ask all my students at Chapel Hill this question (many of whom answer incorrectly) on their first-day quiz.
Almost everyone who thinks about the matter thinks that Jesus was 33 years old when he died. But the New Testament never says so and I bet most people don’t know how that age is calculated. Moreover, I bet even more people don’t know that there was an early Christian tradition (attested in the second century) that he was much older than that!
Yesterday I was reading one of the most important proto-orthodox authors of the second century, Irenaeus, whose five-volume work “Against the Heresies” is a sustained attack against various Gnostics (and other Christians that he considers to be “heretics”). In doing so I ran across a passage I had highlighted many years ago when I first read the text. It involves Jesus’ age. And it has a surprising view of the matter.
So let me start at the beginning. Why do people always say that Jesus was 33 when he died if the New Testament never says so?
It is by combining two pieces of evidence that come to us from two different Gospels.
ONE – How Old Was Jesus? Jesus’ Age at His Baptism and Start of Ministry
According to Luke 3:23, Jesus was “about thirty” years old when he was baptized by John. Now, let me say that, historically, there’s no way to know whether Luke had special information about this or if he was just guessing.
Mark gives no indication at all of Jesus’ age. Either does Matthew or John. How would Luke, writing so many decades after Jesus’ life, know? Either he (a) had a reliable source unavailable to the others; (b) had an unreliable source, or (c) came up with it himself. At what age was Jesus baptized? My guess is that it is the latter, but there’s no way to know for sure.
In any event, that is the starting point for the calculation.
TWO – How Old Was Jesus During His Ministry?
The second datum comes from the Gospel of John, where Jesus attends three separate Passover feasts during his public ministry. Since this is an annual festival, it means that John his ministry must have lasted somewhat over two years. But it is normally taken to be three years.
As to this second datum, I should point out that in the other Gospels there is only *one* Passover Feast mentioned, the one at the end, during which Jesus is executed. In fact, Mark’s Gospel – where Jesus’ age is never mentioned – seems to take place only over the course of months. It appears to start in the fall, when there is grain to be plucked in the fields (2:23; Or maybe it’s the spring harvest?) And after that, everything happens “right away.” Read Mark carefully.
One thing happens after the other. One of Mark’s favorite words is “immediately.” And then we come to the Spring Passover festival, and Jesus is arrested and executed. It seems that the ministry lasted only a few months.
Jesus was 33 years old…..or was he?
In any event, if you take the “about 30 years old” of Luke and the three Passovers of John, you come up with 33 years at the time of death.
But, as I indicated, there was a contrary tradition embraced rather emphatically by Irenaeus, who claims that it is the heretics who state Jesus ministered only for a year and died in his 30s. In book 5, ch. 22 Irenaeus claims that since Jesus saves all people – infants, children, youths, and oldsters – he necessarily himself lived through each age of those whom he saved, setting an example of piety for people of every age.
Irenaeus claims that in fact, he has learned this from reputable sources – the disciples of John the son of Zebedee have indicated that Jesus grew to be an old man. For Irenaeus (he says this explicitly) a person heads toward old age after 40, heading into 50. And that’s how old Jesus was when he was executed – near 50 – so that his ministry lasted many years, not just one (or less).
Most intriguingly, Irenaeus cites Scriptural support for his view. He looks specifically at John 8, where Jesus is having a controversy with his Jewish opponents in which he claims that the father of the Jews Abraham looked forward to his day. His opponents are highly skeptical and dubious, “You are not yet 50 years old, and have you seen Abraham?” (John 8:56-57).
How Old Is Jesus – Irenaeus Believes Just Short of 50
Irenaeus points out that Jesus’ opponents would not have said “you’re not yet 50” if, in fact, he was just 30. They would have said something like “you’re not yet 35” or, at best “you’re not yet 40.” The fact they explicitly say “not yet 50” indicates that they must have known (either from the “public register,” he suggests or based on Jesus’ appearance) that he was in his late 40s. Otherwise, it doesn’t make sense.
As he says: “He certainly was not one of only thirty years of age. For it is altogether unreasonable to suppose that they were mistaken by twenty years when they wished to prove Him younger than the times of Abraham…. He did not then want much of being fifty years old.”
Wow. That would certainly change things. Suppose Irenaeus is right. (I can’t imagine he is, but just suppose…). That would mean that if Luke is accurate that Jesus was baptized around the age of 30, and if he was executed around 48 or 49, he would have been engaged in his ministry – well you do the math. That’s very different from what everyone thinks indeed! An 18-year ministry?!?
My guess is that no one – Luke, John, Irenaeus, or any other surviving source – had any idea how old Jesus was. And someone who *may* have had an idea (e.g., Paul, who personally knew Jesus’ brother James), doesn’t say anything about it. How I wish we knew!
In the 5th century text, ‘Concerning the Star; showing how and through what the Magi recognized the Star, and that Joseph did not take Mary as his wife’, it claims to reproduce a tradition (that was discovered in 119 AD) that Jesus was born 6 years before Herod the Great died, that is 10 BC, making Jesus 40 or 43 years old when he was crucified in 30 or 33 AD: http://www.tertullian.org/fathers/eusebius_star.htm
I think it’s noteworthy that both Moses and Mohammed were 40 years old when they began their public ministry. I also think it’s more likely that Jesus appears closer to 40 than 30 when his opponents complained he was “not 50 years old!”
Dr Bart do you think the zoroastrianism in any influenced Christianity considering the fact that they share some key concepts on eschatological issues?
Are there any books on these you could recommend? Thank you
I fluctuate on the matter. For one view, see the article on Zoroaastrianism by A. Hulgard in John Collins Encyclopeida of Jewish Apocalypticism; for the other, see Jan Bremmer’s book on the Afterlife.
Would you consider Matthew’s dating of Jesus’ birth, combined with the knowledge we had that Pilate reigned from 26-36, to be an independent attestation of his age being around 30?
Yup.
I assume there’s no consensus on the dates for Jesus’ birth/death?
The consensus seems to be birth sometime before 4 BCE and death around 29-33 CE
But is the birth dating based on anything but NT birth narratives that don’t agree and are almost surely non-historical? What reasons might the early Christians have had for wanting to think he was about 30 when he died?
That’s right — the date of birth is based on Matthew and Luke independently placing it in the days of Herod the Great. “About 30” comes straight from Luke.
Bart, how does this “50-year old Jesus” hypothesis align with (apparently, historical) attestation that he was crucified under Pilate? And, speaking of Paul, when did his conversion happen? If in the early 50’s AD he already writes his first epistles.
He would have had to be born before 4 BCE!
But that’s impossible, born “before Christ?!”
(JK)
Nope, Before the Common Era! 🙂
I was discussing the conflicting data earlier this year with another Jesus scholar. It’s all over the place. And this makes it somewhat exciting thinking through the implications: Jesus experienced the Caligula crisis? Paul wrote in the 60s-70s, after Mark? etc etc. To be clear, these conclusions are no more firm, but they do get opened up.
Also:
– Josephus’s Testimonium Flavianum is buried in a section of the Antiquities in which all the other events occur in 19 CE. While there are lots of possible explanations, there’s nothing quite like this anachronism(?) from Josephus elsewhere in books 18-20 of the Antiquities
– Similarly, based on Bk 18, does John the Baptist die in 35/36 CE? So Jesus dies after that?
– Lönnqvist argues that the lead was taken out of Judean coinage from 17/18 CE, which must have been to make the aqueduct – i.e. Pilate’s aqueduct (although he’s not meant to arrive there before 26 CE).
At the very least, do you think all this should give us some hesitation about the precise dating of Jesus’ life and ministry – not to mention much of the New Testament?
Yup! I think the certain datum is that Jesus was executed sometime during the reign of Pilate, 26-36 CE
Is there any reason historically to rule out the possibility that John was a disciple of Jesus who founded a sect apart from the Christians — or that Jesus and John never met? If memory serves, Acts records an encounter between Christians and disciples of John who were unaware of Jesus. Could the Baptist movement have been a competitor, rather than a precursor, which the Christians eliminated by absorbing it into their mythology?
Yes there is: Christians would have been far more comfortable to make John Jesus’ disciple than the other way around; so they almost certainly didn’t invent the independently attested tradition you find in our sources.
On the one hand, I’m sure you’re probably right. But on the other, I’ve always thought that with John himself being dead, not a living rival, early Christians *might* have lured some of his followers into their movement by falsely claiming that Jesus himself had looked up to John and been baptized by him.
Irenaeus used the Gospels to arrive at Jesus’ old age. But there is worse. Epiphanius tells us about a Christian sect called the Nazoreans (sounds familiar?), who thought Jesus lived and died about a hundred years before CE 30…. This is confirmed by the Babylonian Talmud. How can this be?
Obviously, nobody had a clue where, or when, Jesus was born. The reason, of course, is that the Gospel Jesus is a fabricated entity, sourced from the celestial Jesus, as described by Paul in his Letters.
Here is what Paul said on the nature of his Jesus (Caps mine):
Rom 8:3 “For what the law was powerless to do because it was weakened by the flesh, God did by sending his own Son in the LIKENESS of sinful flesh to be a sin offering. And so he condemned sin in the flesh”.
So, Jesus, God’s son, took on human form only to atone for human sin. Nothing here about an itinerant preacher killed in Jerusalem.
What was in it for the followers of Paul’s mystery religion? Nothing less than becoming equals with Christ!
Rom 12:16-17 “..but you have received a spirit of adoption. When we cry, “Abba! Father!” it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and JOINT HEIRS WITH CHRIST—if, in fact, we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him.“. And,
Rom 8:29-30 For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified.
That takes care (again) of the James the “brother of the Lord” issue. They were ALL Brothers of the Lord!
Again we see a good fit with the Mythicist model, but a complete disconnect from the historical Jesus theory.
“Again we see a good fit with the Mythicist model, but a complete disconnect from the historical Jesus theory.”
You may see something, but all I see is a silly conspiracy theory.
What conspiracy theory? Nobody I know thinks this is a conspiracy. Except for the fact that you are out to get me of course….
Can we get an inkling from historical events with known dates?
Just Jesus’ death: sometime during Pilate’s reign, 26-36 CE.
Since Mark is so focused on immediatelies and imminence is part of apocalyptic thinking, do you think Mark may have portrayed a shorter ministry to fit the theme? Im sure there are many possible explanations for why Jesus’ ministry is portrayed as shorter in Mark. I just find it hard to believe it really was that short and wonder if this was something deliberate
Yes, possibly.
If Jesus was an apocalyptic preacher and if Rome thought he was subversive does it make sense that the authorities would have allowed an 18 year ministry?
Sure, as long as he wasn’t preaching rebellion.
Luke could have had a reliable source for Jesus’ age as could John. Specifically the words of Judas.
In Acts, Luke mentions that Peter replaces Judas with Matthias. Thus Judas is no longer in the twelve. In 1 Corinthians, Paul states that Jesus appeared to ‘Cephas’, then to the twelve. Also In Acts 9 Paul is said to have been praying at the ‘house of Judas’. In Galatians 1 Paul says he went to Jerusalem to visit Cephas and stayed with him 15 days. Which suggests that some of Luke’s information could be accurate.
Why would Paul visit Judas? the same reason why Judas out ran Peter to the empty tomb in the book of John. Because Judas would believe, more than anyone else, that Jesus had appeared to Paul and shown him undeserved mercy. And so if Judas is the disciple that influenced the book of John, then a ministry of three years could be more accurate than Luke’s one.
Plausible?
You’d have to explain the independent traditions that he was dead before Paul’s conversion.
Why would anyone get the idea that Judas Iscariot is the unnamed disciple in John? And wouldn’t Luke have offered some explanation of how Paul could stay with the same Judas that Peter had already said died in Acts 2?
Im not sure what you’re asking. Are you asking why anyone would think Judas Iscariot was the beloved disciple? No one does, to my knowledge.
It was my intention to suggest that Judas could be the beloved disciple.
Mainly because
-It explains how no one perceived what was happening in John 13:26.
-Judas had a reason for being familiar to the high priests in John 18:15.
-Judas was the one who outran Peter to the empty tomb because he had more invested.
I don’t think that can be, given a passage like John 13:21-30 where the beloved disciple is *distinguished* from Judas.
Is that Acts 1:18-19? I was under the impression that it is a parenthesis. And assumed that without it Peter was only addressing the replacement of Judas as an overseer.
If Jesus lived longer than 33 years–if he lived to be 50, for example–then either he was born much earlier than 1 CE or he lived much later than 33 CE. If the former, then the accounts of his birth during the reign of Herod the Great and/or Quirinius must be wildly wrong. If the latter, then the 50-year-old Jesus must have been crucified right before Paul started his ministry. Don’t both of these possibilities create big problems for the history of early Christianity?
You’d have to put his birth much further back in Herod’s reign. That would run amok of Luke’s chronology, but I suppose only that.
As near as I can tell, Irenaeus appears to have had absolute contempt for the Gnostics. If my math is correct, Irenaeus would have been around 50 years old when he wrote “Adversus Haereses.” It causes me to wonder if one of the the sects within Gnosticism were advocating that Jesus *saved* only those with whom he shared similar experiences with such as humility, faith, meekness, chastity, knowledge, (age?) which would have subsequently excluded Irenaeus had Jesus died at age 33.
Of course, it could have been his personal reflections or indeed, the teachings of John the son of Zebedee. To quote you in this article, ” In book 5, ch. 22 Irenaeus claims that since Jesus saves all people – infants, children, youths, and oldsters – he necessarily himself lived through each age of those whom he saved, setting an example of piety for people of every age.” Something or someone outside of proto-orthodox Christianity seems to have motivated him, in my opinion.
I am new to the blog and would like to ask a question I’ve never seen answered before. I even tried to search in old blog posts.
In the THE TEXT OF THE NEW TESTAMENT on page 22 it is written that “…scribes left no spaces between words or sentences” In MISQUOTING JESUS on page 48 it is written that “in all early Christian writings” (I assume this means all the original manuscripts that we no longer posess) “…no marks of punctuation were used, no distinction between lowercase and uppercase letters, and, even more bizarre to modern readers, no spaces used to separate words.”
I am more than interested in knowing who and when inserted exclamation marks in the text.
Thank you very much. I hope you find the time to answer me.
As soon as printers started publishing Bibles (15th century) they were more or less required to take guesses about punctuation marks. The earliest manuscripts don’t have them, though the majority of manuscripts come from the middle ages, when scribes did use them.
Ok, so is it safe to conclude that the authors almost certainly did not use any punctuation and that all the question marks and exclamation marks (which definitely modify the way a modern reader reads the text) were added by people who lived hundreds of years after the originals were written? By people who were just guessing?
That’s right. But these were not just wild guesses. There are grammatical indications, in many places, whether a question is being asked or an exclamation made.
I need to know very precisely for a project of mine what you mean by “grammatical indication for an exclamation.” What exactly does “exclamation” mean in this context. I mean can you grammatically indicate in Greek whether a person is speaking, screaming or shouting? Or do you simply mean that one can differentiate between a question and a statement?
The word order is usually the guide. Of course, in modern printed texts questions are marked by their punctuation.
The time of Jesus’ death (ca. 30 CE) is the only sound frame of reference, wouldn’t you say? All the other data points — Herod the Great, Caesar Augustus, Tiberius, etc. might have been introduced by the gospel writers to support their chronologies.
yes, that’s what I think: Jesus’ death must have occurred sometime during Pilate’s reign, 26-36 CE.
On the question as to where the dearly departed are heading – Paul’s mystery religion says nothing about a Kingdom on earth. Instead, the Christ believers, after acquiring imperishable bodies, will go to heaven – with Jesus.
1Cor 15:51-52 , “Listen, I will tell you a mystery! We will not all die, but we will all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. For this perishable body must put on imperishability, and this mortal body must put on immortality.”
1Thess 4:16-17, “For the Lord himself, with a cry of command, with the archangel’s call and with the sound of God’s trumpet, will descend from heaven, and the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up in the clouds together with them to meet the Lord in the air; and so we will be with the Lord forever “.
I continue to be amazed with NT scholars wondering around the Gospel dungeons trying to determine what Jesus was all about – while lamenting the paucity of Jesus information from Paul. Of course, Paul’s Jesus is a mismatch compared to the Gospel version. It appears that the scholarly strategy is to ignore Paul…
I don’t think anyone can look at the scholarship on the NT and think that it largely neglects Paul!!!
I wrote ignored, not neglect. But yes, there is much selective ignoring of Paul – our earliest commentator – when his writings create an inconvenient truth for historicity. Take the persistently ignored explanation of the “brother of the Lord” phrase as provided in Romans 8. Also, Paul mentions James four times: 1Cor 15:7, Gal 1:19, Gal 2:9 and Gal 2:12. Only in one of these do we find the “brother” controversy. That one selectively created “brother” James – while studiously ignoring the fact that 75% of Paul’s James references omit this critical designation.
OK, but I think you are wrong to say that NT scholars ignore the evidence of Paul. Off hand I can’t think of any NT scholar who does. (We all know perfectly well how Paul uses the term “brother”! This is our day job, after all!) Are you thinking of any New Testament scholar in particular?
My observation is that you, and the other NT scholars you can think of, appear to lack the motivation to re-analyze the basic premises of the (absolute) historicity position. I’m speculating that this reluctance is the result of vested interests (day jobs-ha) and cognitive dissonance.
For example, I’ve yet to see a well evidenced argument that discredits the “Brothers of the Lord” argument from Rom 8. I know NT scholarship is not an exact science, but imagine that four medical trials were conducted on a drug and only one showed a possible positive result. The other three trials were negative. No regulatory body would allow approval of that drug! Compare that to Paul mentioning James four times, but “Brother” James only once. Absolutely, Jesus had a brother – and “we” all know it!
I’d suggest strongly that you delve into some New Testament scholarship for a few years without bringing previously held conclusions to it, and come to see how it looks from the inside. You might be surprised at how much experts in the field actually know and how they go about coming to know it!
I’m not sure you will be very convincing by implying scholars don’t know what they’re talking about.
1 Corinthians 15: 3 For I handed on to you as of first importance what I in turn had received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, 4 and that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures, 5 and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve.
Paul’s description of Jesus’ death and resurrection followed by appearances are a quick succession of events. Jesus appeared to The Twelve. Okay, The Twelve what? They’re a preexisting group put together by who and for what purpose? Why does Jesus appear to this particular group in the first place?
If we’re to assume that there was no man named Jesus whom anyone knew, then that would mean a celestial being appeared to The Twelve and what is their automatic assumption? An *ordinary* angel? That would seem logical to a point, but no, they see a heavenly being–an archangel no less– and believe it’s a crucified messiah, named Jesus, who died for their sins, resurrected and now they’re probably not going to die but meet him in the air to live forever. I find that highly unlikely. It makes more sense that a man named Jesus put together a group of twelve, set them up with certain expectations, died unexpectedly which threw them into a chaotic state that spurred visions of him.
Paul comes across to me very caught up in his religious experiences so much so that he compares everything happening in the real world to the spiritual realm. There’s times where I think Paul actually sees himself in the scriptures. He doesn’t describe Jesus in human terms very often because he’s fixated on these cosmic events that are currently taking place as well as the very near future. There’s no reason to think that Paul’s theological assumptions reflected the earliest beliefs of Christians. Paul wasn’t much for listening and taking advice from others until he found himself hot water. I don’t find him to be the most honest person either. He said he met the esteemed leaders in response to a revelation. Really? It’s more likely his response was due to accusations made against him and he was feeling the pressure from it.
I think the gospels came later because the movement began with illiterate leaders, so it took a while longer for their message to reach us.
“Jesus’ death and resurrection followed by appearances are a quick succession of events.”
Paul places the appearances during his lifetime, but neither dates nor locates the death of Jesus.
“It makes more sense that a man named Jesus put together a group of twelve”
Ask yourself, would you come to that conclusions if you’d never heard of the Gospels?
“There’s no reason to think that Paul’s theological assumptions reflected the earliest beliefs of Christians”
Why not? Paul adopted their beliefs after persecuting them. Paul could see the Pagan mystical religion components clearly and probably, as a Pharisee, initially did not like that.
I think you might be right about Paul there. He might be seeing himself as the prophet that everyone is against, but always turns out to be right.
I haven’t believed in the “three-year ministry” for years, so I guess I’ve imagined him as being about 30. He must have been physically fit to do all that hiking back and forth between Galilee and Judea! There are plenty of 50-year-olds who could do it nowadays. But with the poorer nutrition in Jesus’s era, people probably did “age” more rapidly than we do now.
The idea of an older Jesus–on the verge of being an old man, by the standards of his day–has this much to say for it. Why is he so eager to provoke a confrontation with the Sanhedrin, and therefore with Rome itself? If he’d only been preaching for a few years, wouldn’t he have been more willing to wait a bit for the Kingdom to manifest itself?
I strongly believe he was trying to force the issue by what he did in Jerusalem. That itself is open to debate. But it makes more sense if he was older. Late 30’s, early 40’s might work as well. Nobody in that era of that class was considered a young man by then.
James the Just is supposed to have died in the 60’s AD. If he was Jesus’s younger brother, that would mean–hmm–what would it mean? Mary would have had her children fairly close together–maybe spaced a year or two apart, if she was nursing a while (not the most reliable form of contraception, but does slow things down a bit). James probably wouldn’t have been a lot younger than Jesus. He was still alive and active in the 60’s.
Pilate was prefect from 26-36, we think. So going by that, Jesus couldn’t have been crucified any later than 36, probably sooner. If he was born a few years before the traditional birth date, he could have been 40. If he was born much sooner than that, hard to see how James would still have been around in the 60’s.
Luke and John are poor sources. Irenaeus has a clear agenda in making this claim, and was far separated from Jesus in time.
My own opinion would be that Jesus would have needed more time to establish his ministry than two or three years, and more time than that to despair enough of the Kingdom’s coming to try something so drastic. 50 seems hard to justify though.
Just remembering… A while back, I wrote a piece of fan fiction in which I had a TV series hero travel back in time and play an important role in the origin of Christianity. Pure fiction, not an attempt at historical accuracy! But one idea I used was that Jesus had been seven years old at the time of the rebellion against Rome in Sepphoris (near Nazareth)…his father had been one of the thousands(?) of crucified rebels…and he’d been drawn to the apocalyptic movement because he wanted the “general resurrection” to come *quickly*. He wanted his father back!
I remember thinking he really *might* have wanted to be reunited with *some* deceased loved one. A crucified father was just the most dramatic possibility.
That dating would, of course, have made him about 40 when he was crucified. I do think the Sepphoris episode, with a shocking number of crucifixions (and many residents of the *city* being sold into slavery), would have had a major impact on people in Nazareth.
“Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence”!
Remind me what the date of that was?
Either 4 BCE – the year Herod the Great died – or very shortly afterward. But I don’t remember where I read the details about – as I made a note of somewhere – there having been two thousand crucifixions. (That, in addition to most of the city’s residents having been sold into slavery!)
Um–Quantum Leap? Dr. Who? Something Trekkish?
From a purely storytelling POV, I don’t find your motivation very convincing. My father died almost a year ago. I miss him very much. I knew him a lot longer than Jesus would have known his father. I’m not trying to alter the fabric of reality to get him back.
Jesus wasn’t really about family ties. It’s one of the most consistent things about him–he may love his mother, his brothers, but he’s preaching that everybody is your brother, your sister. And the only father he ever talks about is God. That doesn’t speak of a man who is obsessed with seeing his earthly father again. I understand you weren’t saying “This is what really happened,” but again, from a storytelling POV, it’s not plausible on an emotional level. If family was so important to him, he’d have stayed in Nazareth.
I won’t say what fandom… But to serve my plot, I had Jesus witness the crucifixion – at age seven – and stay there for two whole days while his father was still alive, in agony, on the cross. And he intended to stay with his father by following along until he actually saw the bodies being dumped into a mass grave. But he couldn’t do that, because he’d been without food or drink for so long that he passed out.
I think that if someone really did go through all that, the memory would…have a lasting impression!
Well yes. It would. And you’re not claiming that happened (and it didn’t). But for me, the lasting impression would have been “I’m not following in daddy’s footsteps nohow!”
Anyway, all indicators we have seem to show Jesus was much closer to his mother. And not really all that much about blood family ties, as I mentioned. He’s saying everyone is your family. Your brother, your sister, your mother, your father, your son, your daughter–everyone you meet should mean as much to you as your closest relations, and in the Kingdom, these things won’t matter at all anymore.
So it doesn’t track for me. Highlander, eh? There can be only one Son of God? 😉
We can’t really know, of course. But as I remember it, all the “mushy stuff” about Jesus’s mother is in the Gospel of John, the *least* reliable. I’m more inclined to believe Mark – in which his mother and, initially, all his siblings, are embarrassed by his preaching and think he’s crazy. I think he would have felt alienated from all of them.
I’ll give you a link to the fanfic (though I warn you, it’s pretty long!). This is the version for non-fans, with a brief explanation of the fandom (who the protagonist is, and where he’s come from), and a lengthy Epilogue to identify “Fact, Fable, and Fiction.”
https://www.fictionpress.com/s/3273151/1/The-Sword-and-the-Cross
Do you think there is any historical value in the birth narratives of Luke and Matthew, placing the birth before the death of Herod the Great? The historians have safely fixed Herod’s death to around the Easter of 4 BCE, so this would imply that Jesus was at least 34/35 years old at the time of his death, provided 30-33 CE is a secured, independent date range for his death.
I”ve always assumed so — they independently date it to then, for some reason.
When Irenaeus refers to “the heretics who want to claim that Jesus ministered only for a year and died in his 30s” is he writing about some specific group we can identify or is this a generality?
thanks
He appears to have a specific group in mind, but he doesn’t identify it ad loc.
This is fascinating! It’s something almost everybody takes for granted. Imagine all the great works of art that may have it wrong!
May I ask please, but do you think that “all the great works of art have it” right?
Not only an 18 year ministry if Jesus lived on into his 50’s, but that would also mean that Mark’s gospel moves from about 35 years removed from the execution of Jesus to more like 15 to 17 years. Paul’s seeming disinterest in the life and teachings of Jesus if he ministered nearly 20 years would be all the more puzzling. You would think that an 18 year ministry would also have given Jesus plenty of time to establish the promised kingdom.
Only if you think he must have been born when Matthew and Luke say he was.
All of the discussion on this issue is much speculation about something that can never be definitively answered in this reality-dispensation, and is not meant to. An emphasis on strict historicity (speculating about the “authors” of the Gospels) must be transcended through an understanding of what the Author(s) of the Gospels have revealed through NON-historical implications. How old Jesus “really” was is not as important as the broadly accepted implications that He died at age 33.
Why? (This will be lengthy but very much worth the read.)
33 is a highly significant number in esotericism and numerology, and its significance can be seen in many ways in our present matrix-construct. This begins with the Bible itself! Of course, our “conventional” Bible has 66 books – 33 x 2. The Old Testament has 39 books. 3 times itself (3×3) is 9; therein we see 3-3 implicated in the 39. The New Testament has 27 books; so there we have 3 x 9 -39 – the number of books in the Old Testament! As for 27 – it is the product of 3 to the 3rd power. So again, we see 3-3 factored into the number of books of the New Testament, as well as the Old, and the Bible as a whole! None of this is an accident or coincidence. (The Bible is NOT what we have been conditioned to believe it is; it is far more esoteric than historical.)
33 is also the highest degree in freemasonry, an organization widely speculated to be directly involved with the orchestrations of world affairs. Yet another organization that is involved in the same, the United Nations, has 33 sections that make up its official (circle) logo. And again, none of this is through happenstance.
Also interesting – the number of vertebrae in the human spine is 33. (Our own bodies have not been directly designed by whom we have been taught; an entire subject in its own right.) In Kundalini, spiritual awakening is symbolized by the serpent uncoiling up the 33 vertebrae of the spine. Of course, .333… is regarded as “one-third.” In Revelation 12:4, the dragon – the old serpent – swipes one-third of the stars from the sky with its tail. Not coincidentally, medical science has divided our brains into three primary sections; one of those being the REPTILIAN section. One-third (.333…) of our brain is literally that of a reptile! (Refer again to Rev. 12:4.)
All of this is intertwined.
Furthermore, the 33rd parallel of North Latitude geographical coordinates is a highly enigmatic locale. In the West, history’s two most controversial “UFO sightings” both occurred within the 33rd parallel – the Roswell, NM incident in 1947, and the “Phoenix Lights” incident in 1997 (the latter of which was later admitted by government officials to be “covered up.)” And once again, “UFO’s” and “aliens” are NOT what we have been conditioned to believe; they are INTER-DIMENSIONAL entities as opposed to “nuts-and-bolts” and “flesh-and-blood” entities. This is an important fact as we move to the last point.
Scholars generally conclude that the Transfiguration event occurred on Mount Hermon, which also “happens to be” located within the 33rd parallel! This event was likewise “inter-dimensional,” as Moses and Elijah, long deceased, were the two entities to appear with Christ there.
So, with all of this established, it can be understood that the number 33 relates directly to the border between “this world” and the “next world.” Between what we can see and touch in this reality, and what lies just beyond. As such, Jesus’ passing from this world has esoteric implications with “33.” This is regardless of what age He “really” was when “really” died.
All of this relates to the Bible’s true construct – a divinely crafted transmission showing man that he is entombed in a matrix, and showing him how to escape it.
Since we have a good idea as to when he was crucified, and since James, his (full) brother, was a living contemporary of Paul, it seems we can put some kind of upper limit on his age, can’t we?
Yeah, I would think so.
For the mailbag
While it is true that most Christian churches turned a blind eye toward the evils of slavery until the nineteenth century, Peter Brown, in a review of a new translation of Augustine’s Confessions, cites a letter of St.Augustine where the latter describes his efforts to block the slave trade out of the port of Hippo which he calls :this “evil of Africa.” Augustine called upon a friend to search the libraries of the city of Rome for copies of imperial laws that might be used to put an end to slavery in Africa. The church at Hippo had already ransomed 130 of these African slaves. Are there other examples of early Christian scholars and leaders who spoke out and acted against the evils of the slave trade?:
None that I know of!
Professor, how does Irenaeus’ reasoning hold up against the work and writings of Paul (either in the epistles or in Acts)? If the chronology generally accepted by scholars for Paul’s ministry and his writings is valid, then Paul and Jesus very well could have crossed paths. Yet nothing I ever have read even suggests such a possibility.
I think the idea is that he was born much earlier than is normally thought, not that he died much later than thought.
John 2:20-21 is an obvious allusion to Jesus being 46 near the beginning of his public activities. There is no reason for anyone at that time to have imagined the temple was precisely 46 years in the making, so the number 46 appears for some other reason. The author writes as if his audience takes it for granted that Jesus was 46 at the time of this encounter. This combined with 8:56-57 that you cite makes it fairly apparent that the author of John viewed Jesus as being in his late forties. Luke’s account has no credibility at all and should be ignored.
Would Jesus have to be born before the death of Herod, in or before 4 BC? If that was that case, his death was around or before 29 AD. I know the infancy narratives of Luke and Matthew don’t jive. The only thing they had in common was Jesus being born in Bethlehem.
Yes, if he was born much earlier, both Luke and Matthew would be in error.
I would think that Jesus couldn’t have been that old (40+) when he was crucified, since, according to all the gospels, his mother (who was maybe around 15 years older) was supposedly still alive, and his (younger?) brother James was, according to Josephus, still around in the early 60s.
We’re told Mary was around for Jesus’s crucifixion by some sources, and I don’t believe it. I believe Mark when he mentions her as being alive at the start of her son’s ministry. That doesn’t prove she was around for the end of it. James is a fairly solid historical fact, attested by multiple sources. We don’t know how much younger he was than Jesus–he could have been the baby in the family.
Although average life expectancy was fairly poor, some people lived longer, just as happens today. Mother of a friend of mine just turned 100. She’s not in the best of shape, but she’s still here. (And Jewish, albeit of eastern European extraction).
I don’t believe Jesus was in his 50’s when he died, but I can believe he might have FELT like he was in his 50’s. Midlife crises would have happened sooner back then.
Could Jesus and James have had the same father but different mothers? If Jesus was older than James, the mother mentioned in the gospels may have been James’s birth mother, Jesus’ stepmother.
Anything’s possible, but there is no evidence at all of this. Mary seems to have been alive during Jesus’s ministry. People refer to Jesus as being the son of Joseph and Mary. That is how he was perceived by the people in his home village, which is why they had a hard time seeing him as some great teacher and prophet. He couldn’t change their old image of him, so he made few if any converts there.
There is so much to indicate that Mary was Jesus’s birth mother, there really is no basis for doubting it. I would assume James was also the son of Joseph and Mary. Whether there were rumors of something unsavory about the circumstances of Jesus’s birth, that Mary had gotten pregnant before the marriage was officiated, we don’t know. Joseph seems to have died before Jesus started his ministry, which wouldn’t be anything out of the ordinary, regardless of how old he was at the time Jesus was born.
Until there’s strong evidence to the contrary, my assumption is that Jesus and all his siblings were the natural children of Joseph and Mary. I have a personal theory that Joseph and Mary were intimate while they were only betrothed to be married, she got pregnant out of wedlock, and this led to some minor scandal that could have been misinterpreted later on. I have never put any credibility in the whole Panthera thing. I mean, that sounds like something somebody made up. Panthera. Seriously.
Wow! Very intriguing!
I know that what I write is not historical, other than historically the Torah has influenced us subconsciously (ex the 7 day week) but since the Cohen’s (Israël’s priests) started their ministry at the age of 30 and that the number 3 is largly known as meaning “all or for ever” the 33 years of Jesus seam to be coming out of the collective consciousness as a Priesthood(30) for all or ever (3). Has this ever been talked about?
Not really — mainly because there aren’t any biblical accounts that state that he was 33 at the time.
Come to think of it, I remember having thought at one time that there was supposed to be some mystical significance in the number 3! Three persons in the Trinity…Jesus’s having a three-year ministry…his having been alive (as I wrongly thought) for exactly three hours on the cross…and his rising from the dead on the third day.
Thank you for your answer, but I am not sure I understand the reasoning.
This mainly would not have been talked about because there are no biblical accounts of Jesus’s 33 years old death… but yet, we are talking about it, since «Almost everyone who thinks about the matter thinks that Jesus was 33 years old when he died” … So people are thinking and or talking about it even though it is not a biblical account, even 2000 years later!
I think the reason for the “30 (priesthood) + 3” has not been talked about is because most NT scholar (and I am not talking just about this era) do not study, I mean really study, the Torah, so many did not or would not know about the Cohen’s starting their ministry at 30… Maybe the Torah will become your other expertise… isent’ “Ehrman” a jewish name? (Well I sure hope so as I’d look forward to it).
I thought you were asking if there was some *reason* (mystical or otherwise) for the earliest Christians to think Jesus died when he was 33, not some reason that people in the 21st century do. I probably misunderstood!
Stop it!!! Now I have this picture of the apocalyptic preachers from “The Life of Brian” flashing through my head…Not very pretty…Funny…But not pretty…Seriously, an eighteen year ministry? Although Jesus may not have preached open rebellion against Rome, he was being recognized as a messianic figure by his followers no matter how small their numbers…Couple this with the growing unpopularity of Pilate with his superiors in Rome it seems that it would be in Pilate’s best interest to be rid of Jesus sooner not later to show that he was a staunch defender of Rome and its interests…Just saying.
It’s a great scene in the movie — and the one I found THE most upsetting when I first saw it when it had come out in the theaters.
Professor,
Is there anything “wrong” with a short ministry for a 30ish year old apocalyptic? If we can safely surmise his ministry was popular (at least in rural Galilee), perhaps charismatic, it seems consistent with it being short – if for no other reason than part of the apocalyptic appeal being imminence. “Imminence” that that would seem to go stale the longer it was preached – and I know of nothing that indicated Jesus appeal diminished while he was alive.
No, nothing wrong at all I’d say.
I don’t see how any of the NT authors could have known anything about Jesus birth. He could have just as easily died at 20. Do we have any clues about the ages of anyone else? Peter? Paul? Mary Magdalene? Judas? John Baptist?
Not really — except that they must have been adults whenever Jesus was, and Jesus was killed sometime between 26 and 36 CE.
“I’m not sure you will be very convincing by implying scholars don’t know what they’re talking about.”
Only those unwilling or unable to admit the possibility/probability of a mythical Jesus!
Are there other things about the NT or early Christianity you’re interested in as well? We’re kind-a beating a dead horse with this one!
I’m fascinated by all things NT and early Christianity. Particularly Paul and the (non-religious) nature of Jesus!
Unfortunately, pretty well everything about the NT and early Xtians leads me to the same conclusion…
But that suggests that “the … conclusion” is the one thing everything is about. There is a lot going on in early Christianity that is highly interesting, whatever one makes of the historicity of Jesus.
Hi Bart, odd questions but are the chapter titles in against heresies original to irenaeus or were they added by later scribes or translators?
I’ve noticed something else super interesting too. In “Demonstration of the Apostolic Teaching” Irenaeus says “For Herod the king of the Jews and Pontius Pilate, the governor of Claudius Caesar…”. Claudius Caesar didn’t become emperor until AD42 so Irenaeus must have thought Jesus died much later than the gospels indicate
Added later by translators/editors.
I am not sure of the politic of commenting anew on older threads, friends. Please, forgive me if I come late to a matter that is settled among the longer-term participants – that of the lifespan of the historical Jesus.
For me, I find it helpful to focus my thought on the writers of the Gospels, and not on its central characters. Given that the synoptics were authored generations after the purported events they describe and that the Pauline letters were somewhat established in circulation, it is tempting to muse that the stories of Jesus’s life and death were laminated by the writers onto historical ‘signposts’ of first century Palestine, and so might not qualify as reliable indications of the temporal ‘truths’ we have long come to accept.
We strive with mists and rumors of mists on this subject, I know. We cling to the flotsam remains of what may have once been truly solid evidence one way or the other. I am a youTube scholar (which means I am no scholar at all) but I am becoming increasingly interested in the information available to me.
Thanks for all you do, all of you. It is making a difference down here in the land of the unlearned.
Hi professor Ehrman, I have just tracked down the reference in this post – it’s actually in book 2 of Against Heresies not book 5! Where Irenaeus is talking about Jesus being 50 he says “…even as the Gospel and all the elders testify; those who were conversant in Asia with John, the disciple of the Lord, [affirming] that John conveyed to them that information. And he remained among them up to the times of Trajan. Some of them, moreover, saw not only John, but the other apostles also, and heard the very same account from them, and bear testimony as to the [validity of] the statement.” Do you think Irenaeus really met people who met apostles? The dates don’t seem to work if he’s writing in 180 and born around 140? It seems likely they would all be dead? Did he really expect people to believe that!?
Yeah, the dates don’t work. No way John could be alive in the time of Trajan.
What about the “other apostles” Irenaeus mentions in the quote?
Are you asking if any of Jesus’ disciples could have been alive around the year 100? They would have been adults in the 20s CE, so I’d say almost certainly not.
Do you back the idea that Jesus’ ministry only lasted a few months? Like a high intensity light bulb a brilliant apocalyptist tapped into the common zeitgeist, earned the love of many but quickly enraged the powerful, and almost as soon as he appeared he was quickly snuffed out?
Also how long do you think Jesus was a follower of John the baptist? Since some followers of John publicly challenge Jesus and Jesus still praises John is it safe to speculate Jesus followed him for a long time? Perhaps Jesus hurt John by leaving his ministry and while John was demonstrating his hurt Jesus was trying to downplay the rift between the two.
1. I don’t think there’s any way to know. 2. Yes, I definitely do.
Dr. Ehrman,
I recently read on article claiming Irenaeus didn’t actually believe Jesus was 50 or older when he died, but that this is a bad interpretation – https://appleeye.org/2013/05/16/irenaeus-did-not-teach-that-jesus-lived-into-his-fifties/
Is this a view held by any actual scholars of the Early Church Writings or Irenaeus, or is the majority view that Irenaeus did believe Jesus was 50 or more when he died?
I haven’t read the article but Ireneaus pretty clearly seems to say Jesus was 40-50 years old when he died. Read Against Heresies book 2 ch. 22 yourself to see. I believe it’s a standard view among scholars.