288: Jesus Christ: The History (Part 2)

Summary

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The Rest Is History, Ep. 288: Jesus Christ – The History (Part 2)

Date: December 22, 2022
Hosts: Tom Holland & Dominic Sandbrook
Podcast: The Rest Is History

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Overview

In this episode, Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook continue their exploration into the life of Jesus Christ from a historian’s perspective, addressing what can be credibly established about Jesus, the narratives found in the Gospels, and the historical context of first-century Judea. They scrutinize the famous elements of the Nativity and move through Jesus’s adult ministry, the Passion, Resurrection, and the immediate aftermath of his life, emphasizing how and why Jesus became such a transformative figure.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Nativity and Historical Skepticism

[02:11–11:36]

• Dominic Sandbrook opens with a reading of the Nativity from Luke, highlighting its ubiquity in culture and schools.
• Tom Holland quickly addresses the historicity of these details:
  • "We definitely think Jesus existed." (03:49)
  • The Nativity accounts, especially the journey to Bethlehem, highlight major historical and logistical implausibilities—e.g., Joseph following a census due to Davidic descent, Roman tax practices, and the conflicting timelines of King Herod and Quirinius' census.
  • Quote (Tom, 06:43): "That doesn't make sense at all... The idea that the Romans would care about the line of descent from someone who'd lived, you know, centuries and centuries before is insane."
  • Conclusion: The traditional birth narratives are unlikely to be literally true, but Jesus is nevertheless a real historical figure whose memory justifies the stories’ persistence. Much of the Nativity is shaped to fit biblical prophecies and formulaic ancient motifs around miraculous births—parallels with Augustus and Alexander the Great are noted.

2. Jesus’s Early Life and Baptism

[12:09–18:37]

• Discussion moves to Jesus’s background:
  • There is little reason to doubt that his parents were known as Joseph and Mary, nor that he grew up in Nazareth, not Bethlehem.
  • John the Baptist emerges as a significant, historically attested figure; both Josephus and the Gospels note his execution by Herod Antipas.
  • Baptism by John is accepted by historians due to the "criterion of embarrassment"—it is unlikely to have been invented by early Christians, as it implies Jesus needed repentance.
  • Jesus’s sense of purpose and unique vocation is evident early on; he summons twelve disciples, symbolically echoing the tribes of Israel.

3. Teachings, Authority, and Distinctiveness

[18:54–32:59]

• Jesus’s ministry is striking for his parables and moral authority:
  • Claims to the Kingdom of God are central but non-political—"not one that is founded in military exploits... but a kingdom of virtue." (Tom, 24:45)
  • Jesus overturns conventional expectations—engaging with tax collectors, prostitutes, and the marginalized.
  • Not a revolutionary in the conventional sense—a theme misread by both ancient and modern skeptics.
  • Quote (Tom, 24:45): "What Jesus is doing is... announcing the presence, the imminence, the near arrival of a kingdom that has no political substance whatsoever."
• Render unto Caesar:
  • Jesus’s teaching, "Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's, and render unto God what is God’s," is examined as an example of literary brilliance and theological depth—a phrase unlikely to have been invented later purely for political expediency.

4. Jesus as a Subversive and Messianic Figure

[27:01–32:59]

• Jesus has been described as a proto-socialist or radical for appealing to the marginalized, but Tom insists his message is more metaphysical than political:
  Quote (Tom, 27:34): "The kingdom of God is not of this earth. So he's not a socialist in that sense. He's preaching something stranger."
• The claim to be Messiah is acknowledged as inherently political and explains the Roman decision to execute him.

5. The Passion and Death of Jesus

[36:14–46:12]

• The transition to Jerusalem is depicted as a deliberate step into danger, culminating in confrontations with both temple authorities and Roman power.
• He rides in on a donkey, fulfilling Zechariah’s prophecy intentionally—a symbolic, subversive gesture.
  • Quote (Tom, 38:53): "The thing that's weird about it is that a king would ride on a donkey rather than on a warhorse... the idea that the kingdom is not of this earth seems to be the bedrock of his take on things."
• The cleansing of the Temple demonstrates his zeal against the worldly corruption of divine worship and likely triggers the events leading to his arrest.
• Jesus’s silence before Pilate is seen as an assertion of otherworldly authority, refusing to validate either temple or Roman claims to divine power.
• The Last Supper and its traditions are rooted in the earliest Christian circles, as evidenced by Paul’s letters.

6. Resurrection, Its Impact & Alternative Explanations

[46:12–54:05]

• The Resurrection as historical mystery:
  • Tom and Dominic canvass alternate explanations—fraud, mistake, myth, psychedelic cults (notorious 1960s “magic mushroom” theory), and even extraterrestrial hypotheses.
  • Tom underscores that, whatever occurred, Jesus’s followers had a genuine, overwhelming experience that led to explosive evangelistic activity—this, not simply the content of the Resurrection, is most significant.
  • Quote (Tom, 48:48): "It does seem to me a basic historical fact that they must have experienced something, because again, it’s why otherwise would they have believed what they believed?"
• The claims made for Jesus escalate rapidly after his death, as seen in Paul’s letters (e.g., 1 Thessalonians—Jesus as Kyrios, "Lord").

7. Jesus’s Legacy and the Birth of Christianity

[54:05–61:21]

• Tom emphasizes that the radical nature of Jesus lies in his teachings, his death, and the perceived fulfillment of prophecy—together explaining Christianity's appeal and growth.
• The birth of Christianity is not well explained by social, economic, or purely contextual factors; rather, it is the result of Jesus’s unique personality and message.
  • Quote (Tom, 59:04): "I think you could, and indeed I have, explain 2,000 years of Western history as attempts to answer who Jesus was."
• The New Testament’s sources, while imperfect, are considered surprisingly robust when compared with other ancient figures.

8. Concluding Reflections

[62:00–63:11]

• The hosts agree that, despite the episode’s length, they’ve barely scratched the surface and that the story of Jesus is arguably the most significant and foundational in world history.
• Tom concludes with the last verse of the Gospel of St. John, underscoring the enduring magnitude of Jesus’s impact:
  • Quote (Tom, 62:50): “And there are also many other things which Jesus did... if they should be written every one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that should be written.”

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Tom (04:53): “[I]t seems to me that that is a much more improbable explanation that it was just made up than the fact that it does derive from someone extraordinary.”
• Tom (09:11): "No, he’s born in Nazareth. He’s clearly born in Nazareth. He’s Jesus of Nazareth."
• Dominic (27:09): "So there are people... who’ve seen him as... a sort of proto socialist, a kind of social radical, a prophet of social change. Is that at all reasonable?"
• Tom (27:56): "The strangeness of it, I think, is what leads him to be put to death."
• Tom (44:26): "Almost everything that Jesus says and almost everything more, perhaps more pertinently, that Jesus does has this kind of striking, memorable quality that seems almost designed to enable people to remember it."
• Dominic (54:36): "What is unusual [is that] his followers affirm very vigorously that he was resurrected, that he ascended into heaven, and that they spread across the Eastern Mediterranean with this story, and that it catches on. That is what elevates it, isn’t it? It’s the resurrection and what follows."
• Tom (62:16): "Had Jesus not existed, I think the world would be unfathomably different."

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Timed Segment Table

| Timestamp | Segment | |-----------------|--------------------------------------------------------------------| | 02:11–06:43 | The Nativity: tradition vs. history, plausibility of the birth narrative | | 06:43–08:59 | Problems with census and connections to Roman historical references | | 09:11–12:28 | Jesus’s birth in Nazareth, Joseph and Mary as historical figures | | 12:28–18:37 | John the Baptist, Jesus’s baptism, and Jesus’s sense of vocation | | 18:54–25:15 | Jesus’s teachings, authority, and claims about the Kingdom of God | | 27:01–29:38 | Jesus as subversive, his appeal to the marginalized, Messianic claims | | 36:14–40:42 | Entry into Jerusalem, cleansing the Temple, direct challenges | | 44:26 | The memory and distinctiveness of Jesus’s teachings | | 46:12–54:05 | The Resurrection—interpretations, alternate explanations, unique impact | | 54:36–61:21 | Christianity’s singular growth and Jesus’s legacy | | 62:00–63:11 | Significance of Jesus in world history; Gospel reading to close |

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Final Thoughts

This episode offers a skeptical, yet deeply appreciative, historian’s view of the evidence for Jesus and the birth of Christianity, with both hosts emphasizing the enduring strangeness, originality, and influence of Jesus’s teachings and person. They underscore the limited but significant confidence historians can have about Jesus as a historical figure, while reflecting on how and why his message changed the world.

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Transcript

[Tom Holland]

If you want more from the show, join the rest is History Club. And with Christmas coming, you can also gift a whole year of access to the history lover in your life. Just head to therestishistory.com and click Gifts.

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[Dominic Sandbrook]

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[Tom Holland]

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[Dominic Sandbrook]

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[Tom Holland]

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[Dominic Sandbrook]

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[Dominic Sandbrook]

And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. And lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them and the glory of the Lord shone round about them and they were sore afraid. And and the angel said unto them, fear not for behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a savior, which is Christ the Lord. And this shall be a sign unto you. You shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger. And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying glory to God in the highest and on earth peace, goodwill towards men. Tom that must be one of the most famous scenes in all human culture. It is of course the Nativity, the the shepherds having their their vision and going in and gathering around the manger where the baby Jesus lies. I mean, it's the scene that you see every year and certainly in Britain in almost. I, I would guess almost every primary school certainly used to be in almost every primary school was. Children reenacted it and, and all over the world you see images of that. And we are now going, having set the scene in our previous podcast, we are going to. To try to reconstruct as best we can as historians, as skeptical historians, I suppose it's fair to say, the life of Jesus, aren't we? So we think he existed. We definitely think Jesus existed.

[Tom Holland]

Absolutely.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

You established that in the previous episode, all these references, all the Roman references.

[Tom Holland]

And so on, so on, that question, did he exist or not? I think when you read the Gospels, you have the definite sense of a remarkable teacher. So simply on the basis of the parables that he tells, the stories, they are the most memorable stories ever written. They are incredibly powerful and effective. His teachings are, you know, they stick in the mind.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yeah.

[Tom Holland]

And so the question is, well, where, where did these teachings come from? If there is no historical Jesus, if there is no person that they derive from, then we have to assume that basically they emerged from kind of assorted traditions that they were put together by the gospel writers. And if you think about, you know, you tell a writer, you've got to come up with a figure who in 2000 years time will be seen by millions and millions of people across the entire world as both human and divine, and he will have been seen as such for 2000 years. That would be a tough ask.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

It would. Especially if you get a committee to do it. Oh, my God. Yeah, exactly.

[Tom Holland]

You get four people doing it. I think that's. So it seems to me that that is a much more improbable explanation that it was just made up than the fact that it does derive from someone extraordinary. And also the fact that he is an extraordinary figure is what explains why he comes to be seen as. As what he was. Right. So to that extent, I'm not skeptical. However, there are obviously aspects of the story that I am skeptical about, and I think pretty much anyone familiar with, you know, the basic details would be skeptical about and very, very sadly. And I hate to play, you know, Scrooge and the Grinch rolled into one, but I think all the Christmas stuff is most unlikely to be true.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Okay, this is very poor. This is very poor, Tom, and very disappointing. So we began the last podcast with the decree from Caesar Augustus Joseph going from Nazareth to Bethlehem with his wife Mary, who is pregnant, and they can't get room at the inn, and they go to, presumably, a cattle shed or something like that, and Jesus is born and lies in the manger where he's later inspected by assorted shepherds, wise men and so on. And you don't believe this happened.

[Tom Holland]

So there are all kinds of problems with it, one of which anyone who listened to the previous episode will immediately have picked up on, which is that Jesus was not a Roman subject and so his father, living in Nazareth did not have to pay taxes. The other problem is, is that Joseph is having to travel to Bethlehem because that's where King David was born. He's descended from King David. The idea that the Romans would care about the line of descent from someone who'd lived, you know, centuries and centuries before is insane.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yeah. I mean, surely everybody would have to be on the move saying, where was my ancestor born? I must go to that place immediately.

[Tom Holland]

Absolutely. So that doesn't make sense at all. And so you have to say, well, where has this story come from? And the basic thing is that biblical prophecy says that Bethlehem is where the Messiah will be born, and so therefore Jesus has to be got to Bethlehem. And essentially, it seems as basic as that. There are further problems with the whole, you know, because our understanding of the Christmas narrative, it's a pooling of the two Gospel accounts of Luke and Matthew, but they don't correspond. So when is Jesus being born? We're told in one account that the wise men come to Herod's court. Herod is anxious that a king of the Jews has been born in Bethlehem and so launches the massacre of the innocents. But Herod dies in 4 BC. We're also told that this census is being organized by Quirinius, the governor of Syria, but Corinius is doing this in AD 8, so it's absolutely impossible. 12 years. Yeah. To square them. However.

What is interesting about Luke's treatment of this is that it echoes Josephus, because this isn't the only time that Luke mentions the census in Acts, which describes how the apostles, after Jesus's death, spread the gospel across the Mediterranean world. There is a Judean elder called Gamaliel who is advising people that other members of the council not to persecute the Christians. And he does this with reference to a rebel called Judas the Galilean, who, in Luke's account, Gamaliel says arose in the days of the census and inspired rebellion in the people who followed him. And this you also get in Josephus, that the census that is introduced when the Romans take over the Province of Judea prompts this rebellion by this guy called Judas the Galilean. So there is a kind of nexus there of, I guess, for Luke, even though Jesus isn't subject to Rome, the whole story is kind of illustrating what you also get in Josephus, the way in which this is an intrusive imposition by an imperial power. And of course, that then amplifies the contrast with the King of Heaven being born in a stable.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Right, so.

[Tom Holland]

So I think that's the dynamic that's going on there.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

This is a Christmassy podcast. Let's look at some of the Christmassy elements to that story. I know we've got lots to get through, so we don't want to get completely bogged down, but is Jesus born in Bethlehem? Yes or no, do you think?

[Tom Holland]

No, he's born in Nazareth. He's clearly born in Nazareth. He's Jesus of Nazareth.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Okay, so no manger, no stable. You don't think that's plausible? I mean, where are those details from?

[Tom Holland]

So the reference to the cattle, you know, gazing down at the baby in the manger, I think is 10th century. I think it's as late as that. But again, it derives from biblical prophecy. And so this is, again, is part of the challenge of deciding how historically accurate details within the Gospels are, because.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

They'Re retrofitting to match prophecies.

[Tom Holland]

Now, this doesn't necessarily, you know, if you. If you get Jesus doing something that's in accordance with biblical prophecy, this doesn't necessarily mean that it didn't happen, because Jesus has agency. So when he goes into Jerusalem before his arrest, he go. Famously goes in on a donkey. And this is a. Echoes a passage in Zechariah where it's foretold that the Messiah will do this. So it's perfectly possible to think that Jesus is aware of this and is kind of acting out a role which seems, you know, much likelier. And also, I think that just because, you know, events get kind of biblicized, if you want to put it that way, they are described by the Gospel writers with allusions to prophecy. Again, it doesn't mean that it didn't happen, because that is what the Gospel writers would do. But I think in this case, it's pretty clear that it didn't happen. And again, this does not disprove the existence of Jesus, the fact that there are miraculous stories that are told about his birth, because Augustus. Yeah, in Suetonius's biography of him, you get an almost identical description Suetonius describes. It's narrated by A freedman of Augustus called Julius Marathus, who some have thought might have come from. From the. The region of Palestine or Syria. That a prodigy alerted everyone in Rome to the fact that nature was in labor with a child who would come to reign as a king over the Roman people. The Senate, thrown into panic, duly voted that no one born that year should be allowed to live. So, you know, that's very like Herod. And so there's a definite element of.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

A formula there, isn't there?

[Tom Holland]

Yeah, I think. I think. You know, again, I think this is what's interesting is that the whole Christmas tradition, the whole story is. It's absolutely coming from the inheritance of Judean scripture, but it's also part of the broader flux that you get across the Roman world, and which is exemplified by the figure of Augustus.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yeah, and also, of course, Tom, I mean, we were talking in the previous podcast about an enormous ancient world figure, Alexander the Great. Merely because there are elements of his story that we now think are very spurious, it doesn't mean that the whole story is invented. That must be true of Jesus as well, the wise men. That's obviously, I would assume, a formula as well.

[Tom Holland]

Yeah, I think so.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Tom, before we leave the Nativity, just one more quick question about Jesus's birth. Well, a couple of quick questions. Any idea of a year, roughly?

[Tom Holland]

Kind of maybe? Well, no. I mean, sometime between 4 and 4 BC in 88.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Okay. And Joseph and Mary. Any reason to doubt that they're the names of Jesus's parents?

[Tom Holland]

Don't think so.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

So don't think so. As in, we may as well just take them on trust. Yeah.

[Tom Holland]

Yeah.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Okay, so once Luke. So go back to Luke's Gospel. Once he's done the Nativity, the next chapter. So chapter three, he gets into the. Back into a little bit of history, which I like. The 15th year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, Pontius Pilate being governor of Judea and Herod being Tetrarch Galilee, blah, blah, blah, blah. Anas and Caiaphas being the high priests. The word of God came unto John the son of Zacharias in the wilderness. This is John the Baptist, and he came into all the country about the River Jordan, preaching the baptism of repentance for the remission of sins. So now we've moved on in the story to a different character, which is John the Baptist, who. Who is. Do you know what? I've actually. I'm actually quite hazy about John the Baptist. He is the foreigner of Jesus who's going around saying, you know, he's a sort of eschatological apocalyptic prophet. Is he. Is that what he's about?

[Tom Holland]

Yes. Which we should probably explain.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yeah, it's a lot of syllables there.

[Tom Holland]

Yeah. So basically he is. He's preaching repentance. He's saying that the day of judgment is coming. He compares the coming day of judgment to the cutting down of a fruitless tree. And this is an image that Jesus himself will then repeat. You know, it's a very unusual image. It's not something that you get elsewhere in Scripture. So that does suggest that it's. It's John's. And then Jesus picks it up. And this is why most scholars, I mean, even the most skeptical, would accept that Jesus was crucified and they would accept that. That Jesus was baptized by John because it's a source of some embarrassment. Because it implies if John is washing people clean so that they're ready for the day of judgment, then it implies that Jesus needs to be washed clean. And there's a bit of. Kind of, you know, there's a bit of.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yeah.

[Tom Holland]

Skirting around that issue in the Gospels or kind of reframing of it.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

So John is a kind of holy man, kind of wandering the wilderness.

[Tom Holland]

Yep, yep.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Preaching to people and washing them. And I would guess, I mean, I'm not an expert on the first century A.D. or the first century B.C. by any means, but I'm guessing there are lots of people like John in this world.

[Tom Holland]

There are quite a lot. But he is remembered as. As a significant figure. So he's mentioned by Josephus, talked about in that. In the last episode, and he comes to a kind of grisly end. He gets put to death by Herod Antipas as a troublemaker. And the story that gets told about him is that, you know, John the Baptist's head gets chopped up because Salome, Herod's daughter, does this erotic dance and all that kind of stuff. I mean, that is, I think, perhaps a slight novelization of what happened. But it's. I think there's no doubt, because both Josephus says it, and it seems to be taken for granted in the Gospels that John the Baptist is put to death by. By Herod Antipas and that this upsets Jesus, that Jesus is either a follower or in the Gospels, he's his cousin. That.

So far as we can tell from the Gospels, Jesus seems to have regarded Antipas with a peculiar contempt because of this. So he's very.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

There's no reason to doubt, I guess the carpentry is there. That they are from a carpentry family. His father's a carpenter. He's a carpenter, yeah. So he's a workman of some kind. But not the poorest of the poor by any means.

[Tom Holland]

No, but not the rich either.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

So a skilled artisan. Skilled artisan background and that he. Now I'm trying to approach this with, as a very much 20th century historian, that John the Baptist is a, to use modern terminology, the leader of a kind of cult, a baptism cult, that Jesus is his relative or his follower who has been attracted to this and then having been received into the cult is then very put out when the leader is executed as a troublemaker.

[Tom Holland]

No, I think Jesus is much more independent than that. I think that he gets inspiration perhaps from John. I mean, he comes to John, he learns from John. But the thing that is manifest in the Gospels and as far as we can tell, is something that is taken for granted by everybody who becomes a Christian. As early as back as we can trace the evidence is that Jesus has, to put it mildly, a very elevated sense of his role.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Right.

[Tom Holland]

So he is making incredible claims about.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Himself, but he's not claiming, am I right in thinking, Tom, that he is not explicitly claiming to be the son of God? That's not something he goes around saying.

[Tom Holland]

I think it's not clear. One of the telling things in the Gospels, I think, is that Jesus in his parables and so on, where he portrays king, seemed to be allying the role of the king with himself rather than with God the Father, if you want to put it like that.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Okay.

[Tom Holland]

And he's preaching the coming of the kingdom of God and we'll perhaps come on to what he means by the kingdom of God. But he is. I mean, I think that he is claiming quite high things for himself because I think otherwise it's impossible to explain why his followers come to assume these things about him. So. So I guess two really salient pieces of evidence for that would be that that he summons, according to the Gospels, 12 followers, 12 disciples. And these approximate to the 12 tribes of Israel. And the 12 tribes of Israel will be gathered at the end of days by God. So this seems to be what Jesus is doing. And the other thing is that Jesus is executed for claiming to be king of the Judeans. He is claiming a kingly role. Now, whether that is as God's deputy, whether in some way it's coterminous with God's rule, impossible to say. But the seeds of what will become the Christian understanding of Jesus role. I think from the evidence of the Gospels and from the Evidence of Paul's letters and the trace elements of pre Pauline teachings within his. Paul's letters seem to derive from Jesus himself.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Right.

[Tom Holland]

And I think that, that this is a kind of. This was very much not the consensus, say in the 70s, and I think now it is much more the consensus. Okay, so is it something probably that Bart Ehrman, who is very skeptical in general about what we can learn from the Gospels, I mean, he basically accepts that this very, very early understanding of Jesus's elevated role is there pretty much from the beginning.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

But to go back to Jesus the man, I mean, he lives till his early, till 30, early 30s, mid-30s I'm guessing, or late 20s maybe. For most of that time he's not doing anything, am I right? He's presumably just doing carpentry.

[Tom Holland]

Well, that's what the Gospels imply. And that passage from Luke that you read, you have the kind of, the more mythical elements and then suddenly it's being named, it's specific year, Tiberius, governors, all this prefects, all this kind of thing being absolutely nailed down. And suddenly we're into a record that doesn't really seem to be very long. Maybe a year, maybe in John's gospel, three years. And what is Jesus doing in this period? Well, he seems to be claiming the role of a prophet, you know, so that's the, the John the Baptist role. He's, he's preaching the fact that the day of judgment is coming and that the fruitless tree will be cut down, all that kind of stuff. Yeah, he's a healer. So that's a very important aspect of the stories.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

And that must be a very. Again, just think about the stuff that I did when I was at university about holy men in late antiquity, people going around claiming to have powers of various kinds, to be healers, to cast out demons, to exorcise spirits, all these kinds of things. Yeah. And they're kind of ten a penny, aren't they? In the Levant, in the ancient world, in the, in the late antique world.

[Tom Holland]

Not tenpenny, but certainly. I mean it's not absolutely unheard of. Yeah, there are a lot of people who are doing this. Yeah. So Jesus is, he's healing people, he's exorcising people, he's casting out demons. And this is all clearly part of his charismatic appeal. What we as skeptical people in the 21st century are to make of it. I think it's the wrong question. I mean, he's in a world where people accept that these things happen and whatever it is that he's doing or that People are imagining about him. His charisma is such is that clearly people think that he has these powers.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

But Tom, what surely is legitimate to say from the perspective of the 21st century is he's not alone in that, that there must have been people over the next hill or three villages away who are doing the same.

[Tom Holland]

Absolutely. And not just in Palestine. I mean, this is stuff that's going on across the Roman world. I mean, it wouldn't surprise me if the, you know, the Gaul that we mentioned in the beginning of the first episode was similarly kind of performing prodigies of healing or whatever. This is something that is happening. The idea that charismatic figures are touched by the supernatural and have power is current. Now the question is, of course, for Jesus's contemporaries in Galilee and Judea is is this a malevolent power? Is this a power that is bred, you know, is it demonic? Which is what the rabbis over the, you know, the course of late antiquity will. Will teach that Jesus was a disciple of the. Of demons. Or is it expressive of what Jesus claims, which is the imminence of the kingdom of God and eschatological, I. E. The idea that the end times are coming. And that's what Albert Schweitzer argued at the beginning of the 20th century. And I think he seems to me.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Clearly right, so eschatology, this is the idea that the world is going to end, that there'll be some sort of apocalypse, there'll be some kind of judgment is coming, rebirth or whatever. And why is this so common in this period, say, the age of the reign of Augustus? Or is it. I don't think it is particularly just standard.

[Tom Holland]

No, I don't think it is. And I think that that's what makes John the Baptist distinctive. That's what he's preaching, and I think that's what makes Jesus distinctive. And what makes Jesus even more distinctive is that he is laying claim to the role of the judge in this day of judgment, as far as we can tell. I mean, that is the implication of the parables.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

So normally when people tell you the end of the world is nigh, they don't then say, and I will be the person who, you know.

[Tom Holland]

No.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Divides people into sheep and goats. No, they give that role to somebody more potent than themselves. But are you saying Jesus is explicitly saying, and I'm going to be the one who chooses heaven and hell or whatever?

[Tom Holland]

Well, on the evidence of the gospels and of course, you know, they're not gospel, but on the evidence of the gospels, yeah, Jesus is constantly provoking confusion. He's provoking confusion among his critics because he's laying claim to all kinds of things and he's doing all kinds of things that Judeans shouldn't do. He's hanging out with tax collectors, he's hanging out with prostitutes, all this kind of stuff. He's hanging out with the lowest of the low. Yeah, but his disciples are also confused. And this is arising from the fact that he is claiming an absolutely unheard of authority. But the further strangeness is that this authority. So, you know, there is this long tradition going back to the Enlightenment that Jesus was actually a freedom fighter, that he was a rebel. And in fact, it goes back even beyond the Enlightenment. It goes back to. So in the time of Diocletian, just before Constantine, there are skeptical pagan philosophers who are saying that Jesus was a rebel, that he took to the hills, that he was a kind of bandit at the head of rebels. So that is a tradition. But based on the evidence of the Gospels, this is. This is not the case at all. And had Jesus been a rebel again, it's hard to see why he would have been enshrined as Christian tradition enshrines him. The Gospel writers, Paul, the people who exist before Paul. Because the one thing that you get again and again and again throughout the. The Gospels is that Jesus is proclaiming what he calls the kingdom of God. And this kingdom is not one that is founded in military exploits. It's not one that is founded in the kind of the appurtenances of power. So what Jesus is doing is he's announcing the presence, the imminence, the near arrival of a kingdom that has no political substance whatsoever. And its authority is something that can be felt in the heart. It can't be experienced as something that is upheld by soldiers or courts or laws or judges or anything like that. So basically what he's doing, he is preaching the idea of a kingdom of virtue. And this is such a momentous idea. We live with the effects of that in 2022, this idea that there is a kingdom of virtue that transcends the churn of politics. It's such a potent idea. And, you know, if it doesn't come from Jesus, then where does it come from? Are the Gospel writers just making it up? I mean, it seems improbable. And so the likeliest explanation, as far as I'm concerned, is that it does derive from Jesus. You know, on the principle of Occam's.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Razor, he isn't drawing on something, I don't know, all kinds of strands and traditions that are around in the first century A.D. he is absolutely.

[Tom Holland]

I mean, he's deeply steep in scripture. Of course he is, but he is. I don't know, he's. He's laying claim to a. That he's going to sit in judgment, that he, He. He is going to preside over the kingdom of God. And again, I think it goes back to this idea that we talked. I talked about at the very end of the previous episode, this idea that he is situated between the dimension of the temple and the temple authorities and all that kind of stuff and the kind of the Roman world of supernatural power. And he is. He is saying that he is emancipating himself and those who follow him from those dimensions because I think he sees the supernatural dimension of the temple, let alone the supernatural dimension of Roman power, as being too much a part of the world.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Right.

[Tom Holland]

And the kingdom of God is not in that sense. You know, when he comes before Pilate and he says, my kingdom is not of this world, that's what he's meaning. But it's something that in the context of, you know, the world that he is in is experienced as something strange and kind of unfathomable and yet also incredibly powerful. And that, I think, is the key of why he gets the followers that he does and why he's commemorated in the way that he is.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

So there are two elements I want to ask about, Tom, before we go to a break. Number one follows on from what you've been saying. So in the first podcast, you were talking about the context of galilee in the first century A.D. and about what I rather tritely called a kind of emerging culture war between people who liked Roman pots and metropolitan, metropolitan things like you and people like me who were earthy, authentic, salt of the earth kind of people.

And the way you're describing Jesus there, he's appealing to people at the bottom, he's saying there'll be a kingdom that is not one of power and wealth and all that sort.

[Tom Holland]

The last shall be first and the first will be love.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Precisely. So there are people who've written about him, kind of biographers and people exploring the historical Jesus who've seen him as a kind of, dare I say, a kind of proto socialist, a kind of social radical, a prophet of social change. Is that at all reasonable?

[Tom Holland]

The kingdom of God is not of this earth. So he's not a socialist in that sense.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Right.

[Tom Holland]

He's preaching something stranger. He's preaching the idea that in some way the just will be rewarded the hungry will be fed, the thirsty will get water. And the last shall be first, and the first shall be last.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Tom, you'd be a great vicar. You're such a loss to the vicaring profession.

[Tom Holland]

And the strangeness of it, I think, is what leads him to be put to death. Because he is seen as a menacing figure by both the Judean temple authorities and in the due course, by the Romans, because he's attacking the claims to divine authority of both the temple priesthood and of Pilate as Caesar's representative.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yeah, but he is still appealing to people who are not normally appealed to, isn't he? He is, you know, prostitutes, tax collectors, whatever.

[Tom Holland]

Whatever he is. I mean, so the kingdom of heaven manifests itself in all kinds of subversions, Right?

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Okay, so he is a subversive. He's a very subversive.

[Tom Holland]

He's a very subversive figure. Yeah, he's an incredibly subversive figure.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Now, my second question slightly cuts against that. Is he the Jewish Messiah? So there is this idea, isn't there, rooted within the sort of Jewish, or maybe you would say, Judean prophetic tradition that a king, a descendant of David, will arise and lead, you know, the children of Israel to who knows what some new golden age is. Is he consciously laying claim to that?

[Tom Holland]

I think he is, because I think that it's very difficult to. To understand otherwise why the Romans would have crucified him. And it's also very difficult to understand why after his death, his followers would have enshrined him as the Messiah, would have thought of him as the Messiah. Because, you know, I mean, okay, so they think he's risen from the dead. That in itself would not be sufficient to make it obvious that he's the Messiah. So I think that. That all the evidence suggests that Jesus must have laid claim to that. And the whole thing about him entering Jerusalem, say, on the. On the donkey, all that stuff suggests that this is, I think, part of what he's teaching.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

So we are going to come to a break in a second, but just before you were talking a little bit earlier about this thing about whether or not he's a freedom fighter bandit who takes the hills or whatever. But if he is proclaiming himself the Jewish Messiah, that is an explicitly political claim, isn't it? It's not just a kind of theological, supernatural claim.

[Tom Holland]

We go back to the strangeness of this idea of the kingdom of God, that he is situating the kingdom of God beyond the dimensions of, as he sees it, earthly kingdom. So, you know, he goes to the temple. And in the synoptic accounts, it's after that that he's brought this question by the Pharisees who are trying to trip him up. Should we pay taxes to Caesar? Yeah. And he asks for a coin. And he can do this because in Galilee there are no Roman coins, but in Judea there are. And he's shown the coin and he says, whose head is that? And the Pharisee replies, caesar. And so he famously replies, render unto Caesar what is Caesar's, and render unto God what is God? And this is. It's a brilliant repost, but it's also an acorn from which a mighty oak will grow. It's. It. And that oak is, you know, is the secular tradition that we inhabit.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

I'd say that oak is your book Dominion, Tom.

[Tom Holland]

Pretty much. Pretty much. And. And this is a kind of, you know, this is an incredibly radical, subversive, and yet poetic teaching. It's not the teaching of. Of a revolutionary. It's not the teacher of someone who is raising the sword against the Romans or anything like that, but the teaching of someone whose concept of a kingdom that transcends earthly power will have this stupefying. I mean, kind of an impact so profound that it's almost impossible to measure. Its impact has been so overwhelming that we don't even recognize it for what it is. And this is where it begins to.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Play the skeptic again, though, Tom. Is it not possible that that is a detail inserted later on? Precisely because the early Christians want this creed to thrive in the Roman world, so they put in this detail which is unthreatening, ostentatiously unthreatening to Roman political order.

[Tom Holland]

I mean, that is one perspective that you could bring. But I think that that is reflective of someone who's been steeped in the study of 20th century political propaganda or the way that things are marketed.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Right.

[Tom Holland]

Because why would Christians be risking their lives to preach something that they were simultaneously faking? And the other thing is that that formulation, render unto Caesar, I mean, it's brilliant and it's subversive.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yeah.

[Tom Holland]

Who would make it up? I mean, who would come up with that if not someone who was a brilliant preacher and had a very, very weird understanding in the context of the age. Yeah. Of what power was. And it seems likely to me that that person was Jesus, because that's what the Gospels are claiming. And that's what the evidence of. Of how he comes to be reverenced by his followers after his death is pointing to, rather than that it's some you know, slimy PR guy trying to, trying to market his new, you know, this new cult to gullible Romans.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

The Peter Mandelson of the Peter man.

[Tom Holland]

Yeah, I mean, that seems a very, very 21st century perspective. That does not, I think, correspond to the evidence.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Oh, I've shamed. I've let myself down. I've let you down. I've let the podcast down.

[Tom Holland]

You've let God down.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

I have done right. And on that note, I think we should take a break while I try to recover my composure and some degree of self respect. And we will return with the rest of the life of Jesus and the death and the resurrections. What on earth is going on there? Tom is going to solve the mystery, which is so exciting. So we'll be back after the break.

[Tom Holland]

Yeah.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

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[Tom Holland]

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[Dominic Sandbrook]

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[Dominic Sandbrook]

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[Dominic Sandbrook]

Welcome back to the Rest is History. So there's been some strange goings on in this podcast, Tom. You pouring cold water on the nativity, a very dark moment in the history of the Rest is History. But we've got some really strange stuff to come because we've got the. Of course, Jesus's the Passion, the crucifixion, the Resurrection, and then the growth of his. Of his reputation. I was about to say his cult was.

[Tom Holland]

That's one way of putting it.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yes.

[Tom Holland]

The growth of his reputation.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

The growth of his reputation after his. Well, he had, I mean, a tremendous fan club, Tom.

[Tom Holland]

Indeed.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Okay, so where. Where did we get to? So Jesus has been wandering around. He's been healing people or appealing, appearing to heal people. He's been appearing to. Or indeed carrying out miracles. He has been preaching the arrival of the kingdom of heaven.

[Tom Holland]

Yeah.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

And he has gone into Jerusalem.

[Tom Holland]

Well, so according to the. The synoptic gospel, say Mark, Matthew, and Luke, this is the one time he, you know, he's been in Galilee, and then he says he's going to Jerusalem for the Passover. And there's a sense in which going to Jerusalem, he's putting his head in the noose because he's coming up against both the temple authorities and the Romans.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yeah.

[Tom Holland]

You know, he's not really in favor of either of them. And this is what. This is what will culminate in his death. And again, there's the question of what is he doing? So there are two things that he does that kind of attracts the eye. There's the thing, you know, he rides in on the donkey. And then there's the thing that he overturns the tables of the money changers in the temple. Yeah. He genuinely. He causes a ruckus. I mean, he seems to kind of, you know, get kind of really annoyed. I mean, it's the presence of currency in the temple seems to infuriate him, you know, in a way that he's not shown as getting infuriated in any other way. And Again, I think it's hard to know otherwise why he would have provoked the fury of the. The temple authorities unless this was something that actually happened. So, again, I'm happy to. To think that this is something that happened and that it's reflective of everything that he most hates about the Temple. The way in which the worship of God, the kingdom of God, has been corrupted and polluted by people making money.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

The riding in on the donkey. So this is either a conscious attempt to.

[Tom Holland]

I think it's a conscious attempt to.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Live up to the prophecies of.

[Tom Holland]

I don't know, to brand himself as the Messiah.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

So it has been prophesied that the Messiah will arrive in Jerusalem on a donkey. Why? Why a donkey?

[Tom Holland]

Well, it's. You know, the prophecy is. Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion. Shout aloud, O daughter of Jerusalem. Lo, your king comes to you triumphant and victorious. Is he humble and riding on a donkey? On a colt, the foal of a donkey.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

That's a weird detail, isn't it? I mean, why would you say that?

[Tom Holland]

It is a weird detail, and yet I think that the thing that's weird about it is that a king would ride on a donkey.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yeah, exactly.

[Tom Holland]

Rather than on a warhorse. On Bucephalus. I suspect that Jesus has meditated on the implications of this because the idea that the kingdom is not of this earth seems to be the bedrock of his take on things.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yeah.

[Tom Holland]

And so you can see why that's a prophecy that perhaps would particularly appeal to him.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

And the subversive element of it, that a king on a donkey, he must have enjoyed that.

[Tom Holland]

Well, it's. It's there. Yes, exactly. Yes. And something perhaps that he's picked up on that others haven't, and then the.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

The tables of the money changes always amused me. So anyone who's ever changed money at an airport will have strong views, as I do, about traveling.

[Tom Holland]

Yeah. You want to smash them up about.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yes. Yeah. Why are people changing money in the temple? What's going on there? What are they changing? They're changing currency. What are they doing?

[Tom Holland]

Because if you're making a temple offering, you can't present it with the heads of, say, of Caesar on it or anything that would be offensive to God. So they have to be changed.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Okay. And so why does he object to this?

[Tom Holland]

Because he sees it as the intrusion of everything that is most earthly and corrupting into the place that properly should. Should be holiest.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Right.

[Tom Holland]

If the kingdom of God is not of this earth, that sense of the tension between the kingdom of God and the earthliness of the way that humans live is most manifest in the temple. Yeah, I think, I think that that's what's getting his goat. And that of course is then what makes him, you know, he's kind of thrown a gauntlet down.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yeah. Because I've secretly been doing my own reading on this, Tom. Would you believe, I read an essay by E. P. Sanders of Duke University and he said that it was this.

[Tom Holland]

Who died a couple of weeks ago. Very sad, right?

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Exactly. This sort of alleged misconduct in the temple, this ruckus, was actually what did for Jesus because the temple authorities were absolutely aghast at this and said he's got to go. Yeah.

[Tom Holland]

And I think that the reason they're aghast isn't just that they feel that Jesus is kind of striking at their authority. I think more importantly, they're anxious about the trigger happy nature of the Romans because this is Passover. The city is heaving. The whole basis of priestly power depends on their ability to serve up to the Romans, you know, a stable, riot free scenario over the Passover. And so Jesus is, is clearly a threat. And that I think is why he gets arrested. And I think that looking at the evidence from Josephus, there's nothing about this narrative that seems particularly implausible. I mean, to repeat, some of the details of the, of the Passion narrative, I think are garnished, are probably implausible, but the overall sweep of it does seem to be true. And it revolves around this issue that we still don't really know is does the high priest have the power to put people to death or does he have to get the Romans to do it?

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yeah.

[Tom Holland]

And the only way that they can get the Romans to do it is to persuade the Romans that, that Jesus is actually a rebel. And so that, that again, is, is kind of the bedrock of, of the Passion narrative. Jesus being handed over to Pilate, who then interrogates him, and Jesus refusing to answer. So I think that again, I suspect that this is something that is historical, that Jesus accepts his fate, that he willingly accepts his fate. This is something that is emphasized within the Gospels and that he maintains his silence because he's not there to engage in political debate or religious debate with the Romans or with the high priests. Because the thing is that it's not as though the priests, by sending Jesus to Pilate, is sending him to a secular authority. He isn't. Pilate is based in Caesarea, which is the city named after the divine Augustus, the deified Augustus. Pilate is the representative, again of a kind of distinctively supernatural understanding of the world that, to Jesus is profoundly offensive. And so that's why I think he's not engaging with it.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

I bet Jesus has already had the Last Supper, at which he has basically implied that he's going, that he's going. And there's the stuff with the body and the blood.

[Tom Holland]

And again, the detail that the record of this is incredibly early because it's attested to in Paul's letters as something that is already a formula. So presumably this is being repeated maybe, you know, years after, very, very soon after Jesus's death.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

And do we know, Tom, where this comes from? Where does it. Where does all this come from?

[Tom Holland]

Well, I think it probably comes from. From memories of Jesus. Now, that doesn't mean that it's exact. You know, they're thinking, you know, they're not filming it on iPhones or anything. You. It's not an exact transcription. But almost everything that Jesus says and almost everything more, perhaps more pertinently that Jesus does has this kind of striking, memorable quality that seems almost designed to enable people to remember it. I don't think that the early Christians seem to have particularly fetishized accuracy in the way that, say, a journalist today might, or a. A historian today might. You know, the disciples have been going around with Jesus. He's got his stump speech, he's got these formulations, he's got these kind of memorable phrases, he's got these memorable stories, and they remember them. And they may not be exactly word for word, they may not be verbatim, but I think the likelihood is that they do reflect the authentic speeches of this man because they have a kind of inherent integrity, they have an inherent coherence, and they are so striking and they're so memorable that if they didn't come from Jesus, then where did they come from? Yeah, who's making them up?

[Dominic Sandbrook]

So the body and the blood, are they rooted in Jewish thought?

[Tom Holland]

Tom, this seems to revolve around the idea that Jesus is the lamb that gets sacrificed at the Passover.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Right.

[Tom Holland]

And again, it's such a kind of odd idea. I mean, it's kind of simultaneously rooted in Judean tradition and yet kind of so offensive to it that it seems very Jesusish. I mean, if it's such a word. And again, you know, it's very, very early. So the likelihood is, it seems to me, that corresponds to something that actually happened and that the lamb goes willingly to its death. And this seems to be what strikes Jesus followers as what's most moving and powerful there's this guy Celsus, who we only know about because Origen, the third century Christian, argues with him. But Celsus says Jesus on the cross, he ends up kind of complaining against God. And this is very undignified behavior. This is not the kind of thing. But actually the thing that's really striking about the parish narratives is that Jesus has almost nothing. It's only at the very end that he has this.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yeah.

[Tom Holland]

You know, he cries out in, in.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

His agony and he's crucified as a slave. That's standard Roman.

[Tom Holland]

He's crucified as a, he's crucified as a rebel.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Right, but it's a punishment for slaves, isn't it? For outcasts, for people on the fringe.

[Tom Holland]

Yes, it's, it's, it's the most humiliating death that you can devise. And for the King of the Jews to suffer the death of a slave is obviously a way for the Romans to affirm the triumph of the Roman order. And Paul, you know, he writing maybe 20 years later, is very specific that Jesus is put to death by the rulers of this age. So again, this is kind of counterpointing the eternity, that it's the kingdom of heaven against the specific earthly claim to status of Caesar and his servants.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

But then, Tom, the twist that elevates this above all other stories, the resurrection, and this is something. So going back to what I was reading from EP Sanders, he says he pretty much what you were saying, if you were going to create a fraud, if you were going to make this up, you would at least make sure that the stories matched and that they weren't full of inconsistencies and they weren't so strange. And, and he sort of. And E.P. sanders says, you know, Jesus, it's very clear, he's not a ghost, nor is he somebody who has survived crucifixion and is kind of covered in blood.

[Tom Holland]

And so in the Gospels, the resurrected Jesus is kind of defined almost in terms of what he's not. The sense you get is that they are struggling to explain what it is that they've experienced. And again, I have no doubt that they did experience something. Now, what that experience was is a totally different question that's beyond the remit of history podcasts, a history podcast to discuss. But it does seem to me a basic historical fact that they must have experienced something, because again, it's why otherwise would they have believed what they believed? Yeah, and the thing is that the resurrection in itself is not what proves to them that Jesus is the Messiah. And in due course, the Son of God, that seems to be rooted in what Jesus himself had taught. But the fact that he rises from the dead seems to them to have suddenly things that Jesus had told them made sense. And it kind of clicks. Now of course, there are all kinds of other theories as to what might have happened. And one of them is mentioned in the Gospels itself. So it's mentioned by Matthew. So he describes how some of the guard went into the city and told the chief priests everything that happened. So this is, you know, the discovery of the empty tomb. And after the priests had dissembled the elders, they devised a plan to give a large sum of money to the soldiers, telling them, you must say, his disciples came by night and stole him away while we were asleep. So the fact that that's in Matthew's Gospel implies that that is a theory that is kind of current.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

So they cut him down before he was dead, maybe.

[Tom Holland]

That's another theory. That's another theory. But the theory that is mentioned in Matthew's gospels is that the disciples came and stole the body from the tomb.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Right.

[Tom Holland]

So in other words, it's a fraud perpetrated by the disciples.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

But that wouldn't explain the walking around and hobnobbing with people on, you know, roads to whatever.

[Tom Holland]

Okay, so again, the priests would probably say this is all just made up, that this is, this is a fantasy.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yeah.

[Tom Holland]

There is another theory that Jesus was never crucified. So that's the theory that you get in the Gospel of Basilides where this other guy, Simon of Sereni, who carries the cross is supposed to have been crucified. It's also the story that you get in the Quran in due course, right. Celsus, the guy who has his run in with Origen. So this is in the early third century. He says that these are hallucinations, that these are kind of ignorant peasants who are prone to mad fantasies.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Put on your 21st century skeptic hat, your humanist hat, if you will. You would say these are uneducated members of cult who have, who are just saying what they want to believe.

[Tom Holland]

Yeah, well, but you don't have to be 20th century to say that because that's what the priest is saying. That's what Celsus is saying. And into the 20th century you do have all kind, you know, people as the kind of tide of skepticism rises. So you have ever more theory. So you have D.H. lawrence wrote a story about, in which Jesus isn't dead and he kind of wakes up and he kind of totters off, right? And again, this is. This is a theory that is daily held by the Ahmadis, who are a strain of it, strain of Muslims, in particularly in Kashmir, who say that Jesus went to Kashmir and is buried there. You can see his tomb. The Japanese claim that. That Jesus traveled all the way to Japan. So that's another theory.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Unlikely.

[Tom Holland]

Another very popular theory that developed in the 60s. Well, actually, no, before the 60s. It's kind of the Golden Bough and, you know, all that kind of stuff in the Victorian period. But it takes on a particularly distinctive form in the 60s and 70s. Is that the whole resurrection story, the whole existence of Jesus? It's a myth that it's like Osiris rising from the dead, the Egyptian God or Adonis, who we talked about in our World cup of Gods with his unfortunate wedding.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yeah.

[Tom Holland]

And. And the brilliant formulation of this theory in the 60s and 70s is by a guy who was a very distinguished scholar of the Dead Sea Scrolls called John Marco Allegro, who claimed that it was prompted by the ingestion of magic mushrooms and that Jesus. That this was a cult that took magic mushrooms and that Jesus was actually a magic mushroom.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

A mushroom.

[Tom Holland]

That's what they saw.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yeah. That's a very 60s idea.

[Tom Holland]

It's very, very 60s. So. So with those theories, you know, the idea that it's mythic, that's a very kind of late Victorian idea. It's there in the Golden Bough, people obsessed by all this kind of stuff. And the idea that it's magic mushrooms is obviously bred in the 60s. So these theories, you know, these kind of modern theories, the idea that they're mythic, you can see that they are very much. They bear the stamp of the age. And the other. Another theory that also emerged in the 70s that also is very much bred of the age, is that Jesus was an extraterrestrial. So this is bread of Erich Von Daniken.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Right.

[Tom Holland]

The angels who are seen by Mary Magdalene when Jesus has risen, you know, they. They wear what. They're clothed in white, they shine. This is clearly reflective of a kind of radioactivity. And in due course, Jesus will ascend to heaven. He's being teleported up to a flying saucer. So we don't know. But I would say. I would say for whatever reason, probably to do with what Jesus himself had taught before his death. And some strangeness, something weird that happens after it, whether the body gets stolen, whatever. I mean, we don't know. People very, very early on think that Jesus has risen, that he is the Messiah, and pretty quickly they're coming to the conclusion they're making very, very exalted claims for Jesus that he's included with God as a kind of recipient of the cultic devotion of early Christians because.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

People are not worshipping him during his lifetime, is that right? They're following him but they're not. They don't think he's God.

[Tom Holland]

If the Gospels can be relied upon, they seem unsure as to who or what he is. They just know that he's something very well, the special one.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

But at some basic level they must know he's the carpenter guy from Nazareth.

[Tom Holland]

So you know, no prophet is, has honour in his own land. This is. Jesus quotes this. So yes, I mean maybe people who he's grown up among are less inclined to.

Pay service to all this kind of mad stuff he's coming out with.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

If you were playing football with him in the reign of Augustus, you're less likely to.

[Tom Holland]

Yeah, exactly. So look at the earliest Christian text we have which is probably the first letter that Paul writes to the Thessalonians in that Jesus is hailed by Paul as Kyrios, as Lord. And that's a word that is also applied to God by Greek speaking Judeans. He is described as the Son of God. Paul is saying that Jesus will come and he will rescue the elect, he will rescue the saved. And this is a tradition that you also get in Mark who is the earliest Gospel probably where he says that people will sit, the Son of Man will come in clouds with power and glory and he will send the angels out and he will gather up the electoral and, and you know, it's all going to be tremendous and hurrah. So Mark doesn't, I, I can't actually remember what the thinking is on whether Mark is familiar with Paul. I think it probably isn't but if he's not then that, that's, you know, those are clearly traditions. You know, both of both texts are drawing on the kind of. Yeah, the same traditions. So I think it's all very odd to go back. It's odd in the way that the Quran is odd and that oddness seems to me the kind of the radioactive source of power at the heart of the, you know, of the power station.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Because if you go right up to the point where he's crucified, nothing about that story is actually that strange or implausible, is it? Because as we've said there are other holy men, there are other preachers, miracle workers, healers and so on. And it's as you described in the very first episode. There was that fellow in Gaul who Vitellius executed. So right up to that point, nothing about the story of Jesus of Nazareth is necessarily implausible, unusual. You know, he's just. He's a remarkable character with remarkable teachings.

[Tom Holland]

Well, it's all the kind of chucking demons into pigs.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yeah. But presumably if stories had been written about other miracle workers, they would have also had dealings with pigs and whatever. But what is unusual, his followers affirm very vigorously that he was resurrected, that he ascended into heaven, and that they spread across the Eastern Mediterranean with this story, and that it catches on. That is what elevates it, isn't it? It's the resurrection and what follows.

[Tom Holland]

Yeah, but, but, but the resurrection in itself, I think, is insufficient to explain it. Even if you're seeing a risen. You know, there is no other story is. Is told of a Judean rising from the dead. So. So that in itself is kind of weird and distinctive, but even so, it would be insufficient, I think, because there are quite a lot of stories of people rising from the dead.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Okay.

[Tom Holland]

So in and of itself, I mean, you know, it's obviously, it's a very weird, exceptional thing to happen, but it's not wholly unheard of. I mean, Jesus raises Lazarus from the dead according to the Gospels. So I think it's three things. I think, undoubtedly the resurrection, or people believing in the resurrection, is a crucial part of it. I think the drama of his death, which in some way Jesus seems to have embraced. He seems to have knowingly gone to his death. And the way in which it is possible for the disciples and the apostles and his followers to frame it.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yeah.

[Tom Holland]

And to see it as the expression of prophecies that are in Judean scripture that had never been previously been understood in that light, that actually God will manifest himself through humiliation and death. I mean, that's the kind of the blinding insight that Paul, for instance, clearly has. It's something that is. He sees, he recognizes having always been there in Judean scripture. And Jesus's death has kind of made it manifest. But neither of those things, I think, would happen had Jesus himself not been the most remarkable teacher, because I think it's the stickability of his sayings, of his teachings. So Nietzsche brilliantly described Jesus as having had a flair for language that today would see him sent to Siberia.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Right.

[Tom Holland]

It's the fact that. That Jesus is preaching something very odd, unsettling, disturbing, and yet attractive to his listeners, and that he preaches it in a way that sticks in the mind. You don't have to be that everything in the Gospels is literally the words of Jesus is literally Gospel. I think to accept that this kind of body of sayings is so consistent, it's so coherent, it's so distinctive, that it's very hard to explain where they would have come from if not from a remarkable figure. And Christians see Jesus obviously as having been a remarkable figure. And so the fact that Jesus was a remarkable figure and that this is what prompted Christians to write about him seems to me the likeliest explanation for it. That's a hunch derived from my reading of the material. There are of course a whole range of other explanations that would be possible. And so to an extent, that is my formulation of a position that ultimately I'm agnostic about.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

So just on other explanations, your explanation focuses very much on the personality of Jesus. Is there another explanation which would be focused more on the context which would be there, is it not on supply, as it were, but on demand, that there is a particular Context in the first century A.D. in which people are crave for whatever reason, I don't know, economic, political, people are craving this and so they almost create it. Is that plausible?

[Tom Holland]

I don't think so.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Because this isn't a particularly troubled or difficult period for people in the eastern Mediterranean.

[Tom Holland]

Not particularly, no. The idea that Palestine was heaving with kind of revolutionary instincts is one that's been very popular, but I think is not true. Right. We did two episodes on the Judean revolt. I think it was basically, it was a kind of accident, it was contingency that prompted it. And so then we read back to it. But you know, as I say right at the beginning, there are people who are making, you know, Roman rule is pretty brutal, like conditions are pretty tough. There are people who are claiming divine sanction for claims for a kingship, but I think, you know, none of the others inspired what Jesus inspired.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

So there's something about Jesus that's what you're basically, there is something special.

[Tom Holland]

I mean, I think that you could, and indeed I have, explain, explain the 2000 years of Western, you know, of history as attempts to answer who Jesus was. Christians have done it and post Christians have done it. You know, it's the question of who he was. And by that I mean more than, you know, was he a real person? But was he, you know, what exactly was he? I think this is not a back projected strangeness. I think the strangeness was hardwired into him. And you don't have to be a Christian to accept that because Nietzsche said that, you know, Nietzsche said Jesus is the strangest person who ever lived.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

You mentioned Occam's razor before. I mean, if you're using Occam's razor, the simplest explanation is that Jesus was the son of God. I mean, historians wouldn't make. Well, do historians make that claim? Do other historians who would end their book by saying, no, they don't, because.

[Tom Holland]

You know, Stephen Jay Gould said that there are rival magisteria, the magisteria of science and of religion. And I guess historians would couch it in similar terms that, you know, that history and religion are rival magisteria, basically. You know, so. So Gibbon in the back in the 18th century, you know, he. He articulated this very well. He said, the theologian may indulge the pleasing task of describing religion as she descended from heaven, arrayed in her native purity. A more melancholy duty is imposed on the historian. I mean, I think that historians do not accept supernatural explanations. They may be Christian. I mean, there's nothing to stop a. A historian being a Christian or believing in the supernatural. But I think when they come to write history, by and large, they don't adduce supernatural explanations. Yeah, and I don't think that you need supernatural explanations to explain Jesus and the emergence of Christianity. But having said that, I think there are lots of reasons why one might choose not to believe in God and specifically perhaps not believe in the Christian understanding of God. But I would say that the inadequacy of the New Testament as source would not be one of them that I would adduce. So I come to this from studying both the origins of Islam and from studying classical sources. And the closer up I get to them, the more, you know, I'm pretty impressed by actually how much evidence there is for Jesus.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Okay, well, Tom, we've been talking for a long time now about this, and actually, I kind of feel like we've only scratched the surface, don't you? I mean, as you said, there are people who've given up, you know, their entire working life to studying a single passage or a single line from the Bible. So I really do feel like there's so much more to be said by people who are much more. Well, certainly much better versed in this than I am and perhaps even better verse than you, dare I say.

[Tom Holland]

Oh, definitely. I mean, you know, people study it for. For their entire career. Great professors, great. I mean, of course. I mean, this is. We are literally only scratching the surface.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Is it the biggest story in history, do you think? Because it's so foundational for our entire understanding of ourselves and the world, our culture, our literature.

Our assumptions, our moral landscape, all these kinds of things.

[Tom Holland]

So I remember years when I was at school, we were doing Roman history and a teacher saying, what was the most significant event in the lifetime of Augustus? And so, you know, battle of Actium or whatever. And he said, of course it's the birth of Jesus. And he was saying that not as Christian, but because that is the most significant event, what happens with the lifetime of Jesus. Had Jesus not existed, I think the world would be unfathomably different.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yeah. Right.

[Tom Holland]

Shall I end with. With a Bible reading?

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Oh, Tom, I'd love that. I really would.

[Tom Holland]

I'm going to end with the very last verse of the Gospel of St. John. And there are also many other things which Jesus did the. Which if they should be written, every one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that should be written. And that would be a problem for us, wouldn't it? We finished the podcast.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yeah.

[Tom Holland]

And that's it. Amen.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Jolly good. Bye bye, everybody.

[Tom Holland]

Bye bye. Happy Christmas.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Happy Christmas.

[Tom Holland]

Thanks for listening to the Rest is History. For bonus episodes, early access, ad free listening and access to our chat community, please sign [e-mail] that's restishorypod.com.

Throughout time, celebration has meant giving. So the Romans at Saturnalia handed out all kinds of gifts. The three magi handed out gold, frankincense and myrrh. And. And the Victorians absolutely loved wrapping things up in paper and then tying it up in string.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Tom, those are lovely gestures, but I wonder if they're a little bit too extravagant for the typical Christmas morning. So this year, here's my suggestion to our listeners and our viewers. Why not give something a little bit more enlightened? Why not give the gift of the Rest is History Club membership? It's the discerning choice for anybody who prefers a Hannibal to a hamper.

[Tom Holland]

It's ad free listening. You get a weekly bonus episode, you get early access to live shows, and you get exclusive deep Dive series Also.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

On top of that, this year's special gift edition of Rest is History Club membership comes with a sensational exclusive T shirt. It will make you the envy of all your neighbors and all the cool people in your neighborhood, if such people exist, will admire you and want to spend more time with you. You. So just head to thereestishory.com and click on Gifts. That is therestishistory.com and please click on gifts.

[James Holland]

Hello there, it's James Holland and Al Murray, hosts of WW2 Pod. We have ways of Making you talk.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yes.

[Al Murray]

So Al and I have been on the wrestler's history a few times now, haven't we? Out we've been talking about all things World War II with Tom and Dominic. And if you've been enjoying their recent series on the invasion of Norway, the fall of France and the Battle of Britain, then we have good news for you.

[James Holland]

That's right, Jim. We have our own show all about the fascinating history of the Second World War. We've been going for longer than the Second World War itself, haven't we James?

[Al Murray]

And longer than the rest is history.

[James Holland]

Twice a week ww2 pod we have ways to make you talk. Discusses the fascinating people, the incredible innovations and the terrible truth tragedies of this, I think the most important period of history of all time.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Absolutely.

[Al Murray]

The Battle of Hastings. I've got nothing on this. It's 1940 where it's all at this past year alone now we've done series, haven't we, on Dunkirk, the Battle of Britain, Hitler's last days in Berlin, the dropping of the atomic bombs. And we've also explored the women of Soe, Auschwitz and the nerve wracking siege of Malta.

[James Holland]

And in amidst all this, we take our listeners family stories stories and give them an airing so that people can tell the story of what happened to their Uncle Albert when maybe they were involved with the siege of Malta. And we're doing loads of naval chat at the moment on the main show, such as the fight against the U boat wolf packs in the Atlantic War. So now is a really fantastic time to subscribe and get yourself a bit more nautical. So search we have ways wherever you get your podcasts and we look forward to you joining us. Prepare to board. We have ways of making you talk with me, Al Murray and James Holland.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Thank you.

[William Durimple]

Hello there. I'm William Durimple. I am one of the hosts of Empire, the global history podcast from Goal Hanger. You may remember my appearances on the Rest is History when we talked about Afghanistan and the East India Company. As the Ashes return down Under, Anita Anand and I have launched a bright brand new Empire series on the history, politics and extraordinary cultural power of cricket. In the first episode, we dig into the origin of the Ashes, England versus Australia, a rivalry born in the age of empires and still shaping identity on both sides of the world. Then we travel to India, where cricket began with an impromptu beach match and evolved into a sport that mirrored and sometimes magnified the country's communal divides. We all also talk about the great Tiger Batardi who revolutionized Indian cricket in the 1960s. And for members of the Empire Club, we go still further from the great West Indian players who stood up to racism to the South African cricketers who challenged apartheid at real personal risk. If you want the full sweep of how cricket changed empires and how empires change cricket, just search for empire wherever you get your podcasts.