One of the few historical facts about Jesus that is agreed upon by scholars of all persuasions and beliefs is that he was crucified. E. P. Sanders regards it as one of the most certain facts in the life of Christ; even the Jesus Seminar overwhelmingly regards the crucifixion as a certified historical moment. What qualifications and arguments, then, does Robert Sheaffer, the author of The Making of the Messiah, have to overturn this consensus?
The credits of this book tell us that Sheaffer is the author of two other books -- one, a debunking of UFO phenomenon; the other, apparently some sort of psychological speculation piece on the historical role of envy and resentment (this will come into play as we explore further). We see no academic credits at all, nor any reason to think that Sheaffer is to be preferred over the likes of Sanders, Michael Grant, or Malina and Neyrey.
But what is truly telling is the use of sources: Despite the disclaimer on the jacket that Sheaffer "did not rely on dubious and fanciful sources or questionable documents about the life of Jesus," this is exactly what he has done. I'm not talking necessarily about modern sources: Although inordinate reliance is put on a book by Passover-Plot conspirator Hugh Schonfield that was written in 1937 (and apparently, contains numerous judgments that a rather wiser Schonfield later repudiated), and Nietzsche is quoted as authoritative, the core of Sheaffer's case is derived from a work we have looked at before: the infamous Toledeth Jeshu. What Sheaffer derives from this literature may be too incredible to believe.
So, to a rundown of the book in question. We may as well begin by noting that Sheaffer uncritically accepts most of the standard arguments about the dates of the Gospels; indeed he goes as far as saying that that "every educated person who is willing to be the least bit honest" [15] concedes that the Gospels were written very much later than the life of Jesus. It seems clear that Sheaffer has no concern for contrary evidence.
Also accepted uncritically are standard arguments about the compilation of the canon, the virgin birth, the Lukan census, the resurrection accounts, the alleged invention of Trinitarian doctrine by Athanasius; a very large section on the trial of Jesus which repeats almost all of the errors we have seen before; etc etc etc.
The book begins with a little of the standard objecting typical of Skeptical polemics, in which the audience is treated to a recounting of various historic crimes of the church, such as executing people for blasphemy. One supposes that listing the crimes of atheistic regimes in Cuba, the former Soviet Union, and China proves just as much about atheism. But finally we get to the point: The argument is made that the Toledeth Jeshu (TJ) is "very ancient" [18] in terms of what it reports. (Not that everything is accepted: Later Sheaffer will simply dismiss things like the aerial combat between Jesus and Judas Iscariot.)
And from this document Sheaffer derives his central thesis: Jesus was not crucified at all, but was executed by stoning and then hung upon a tree. Other claims are derived from this, and from other questionable sources: For example, the forged Secret Gospel of Mark (see also Carlson's book The Gospel Hoax) is used as proof that Jesus had a homosexual relationship with Lazarus. But the "tree thesis" is the central one to deal with, and the one to which we will pay most attention.
Now how is this incredible, counter-consensus claim defended? Through suggestion of conspiracy, "reading between the lines", and the arbitrary rejection and acceptance of course. Thus Titus 1:10-11 and 3:9 is no longer a warning against Jewish speculations; it is rather ("reading between the lines") a defensive word against charges of Jesus' birth as a bastard; this is but one of many NT passages stretched in their meaning to fit Sheaffer's theory.
Another: The teaching about birds not falling to the ground without God's knowing it is claimed to be a reminisce of the TJ's story of the child Jesus animating birds out of clay which eventually fall to the ground.
Less than a half-dozen verses in the NT which say that Jesus was hung on a "tree" (literally "wood") are taken as supporting the TJ account (cf. Acts 5:30, 10:39; Gal. 3:13), rather than being a case of "tree" and "cross" being used interchangeably as the evidence indicates. Sheaffer dismisses this as a "weak explanation"; and thus a late document, the Acts of John, that refers to the "tree of the cross", rather than being taken as proof of the correspondence, is dismissed as "confused".
The rest, and all contrary data, is explained away by varying means, mostly by suggestions of conspiracy and interpolation:
- What about the fact that Luke clearly indicates a crucifixion in his gospel? Sheaffer says, perhaps Luke and Acts were by two different authors (this is said to be held by "many scholars" [135]; the actual number is less than half a dozen over the centuries); or maybe Luke himself, after reading the Gospel of John, revised his earlier work (but somehow missed those few cites in Acts).
- What about that Paul does the same thing in his letters, even those Sheaffer accepts as genuine? "Perhaps later copyists altered the manuscript" [81] so that there were references to crucifixion. In this light also, 1 Cor. 2 on the "foolishness of the cross" is seen as a reference to Christians changing the story from stoning to crucifying; the Jewish "stumbling block" to belief is that the Jews know that the crucifixion never happened.
- What of the secular references indicating a crucifixion? No direct explanation is given, but there are hints that Josephus' report is interpolated. No mention at all is made of Tacitus and Lucian.
- What about the fact that the Jews were not allowed to execute anyone? The flawed work of Haim Cohn on the trial of Jesus is accepted without question or investigation, and it is he who convinces Sheaffer that the Jews did have capital punishment rights in the time of Jesus.
- How did Christians manage this great deception? According to
Sheaffer, this was no problem: Very few people would remember that
the Jews were able to execute people; likewise, in these backwards,
savage, and primitive times, it was easy to get away with changing
the story.
What about those tens of thousands of Passover pilgrims who would know better? Did anyone bother to check the story? Apparently not: "Remember that there were no written records readily available, to which any interested person could refer. All information about the new religion, both pro and con, traded by word of mouth." [85]
Sheaffer would do well to investigate letter-carrying and written and oral communication processes of the time: He might be shocked to find them no less reliable and useful than today's systems; to say nothing of learning a bit more about behavior control among the ancients, which encouraged investigation of radical groups like Christianity would have been considered.
- And finally, why was the story changed? Paul is identified as the likeliest culprit, but it is supposed that it was invented to make Christianity more appealing to Gentiles. Those who have seen my material derived from Hengel on crucifixion in the ancient world may be asking how Sheaffer gets this conclusion; we'll save that for the next section.
As for the rest of the book, it may be addressed in summary fashion.
Chapter Two draws upon Sheaffer's earlier work on envy and resentment to hypothesize that the Christian faith had its roots in the envy of the lower classes for Roman power. Supposedly this is proven by the fact that in social terms, Christians were "at the bottom of society". [54] Of course since this describes the primary composition of just about every social, religious, and political group in history, I suppose envy must explain their growth as well -- my point being, that whatever the motives, the "bottom of society" is bound by odds to comprise the majority of any given group, so that Sheaffer's own use of this idea is meaningless.
Even so Sheaffer's thesis stumbles on the work of Meeks and Stark, who have shown that Christianity attracted a rather larger than normal number of people from the upper echelons, and the work of Malina and Neyrey, and Pilch and Malina, and Malina alone (The New Testament World, 108ff) who show rather decisively that envy of the lower classes as Sheaffer understands it was unknown in the first century. Envy existed, to be sure: but since resources were considered to be limited, the end result of such envy was not to do something to put yourself above others, but to pull others down to your level when they get too high up.
Envy was also considered the most grievous of evils, the one which brought Satan down in the garden (Wis. Sol. 2:24); but it was also the case that people of higher social standing were "beyond envy". Envy occurred only among persons of equitable social status; those of higher status, or lower status, were not subject to the envy of anyone but their peers.
Sheaffer is quite simply anachronizing in applying modern thought-forms to the ancients. It is this idea, incidentally, that prompts Sheaffer into thinking that the crucifixion was invented to attract Gentiles. Supposedly the lower classes of Rome were so disloyal to and resentful of Roman power that they viewed anyone who was crucified as a hero, and that is why Jesus' death was changed from a stoning to a crucifixion, so that here Sheaffer actually envisions Gentiles hearing the missionary preaching and inquiring whether the death was by crucifixion, and then being disappointed when hearing it was not. [85]
The fact that such a death was universally held in abhorrence; that Sheaffer offers no proof of such resentment among Rome's lower classes, much less those who became Christians; that the Christian congregations were quite often mixes of Jews and Gentiles, does not enter into the equation at all.
Chapter 3 is where Sheaffer reports his alternate theory of Jesus' death. Chapter 4 posits similar fabrication for the story of the virgin birth, utilizing objections we have dealt with elsewhere; among the other odd ideas offered is the suggestion that Matthew got his genealogy full of disreputable characters like Rahab from a rabbi whose help he requested; the rabbi was actually pulling a joke on Matthew that no one has gotten the point of until now.
Chapter 5 on the post-resurrection appearances offers the view of seeing Paul's experience as merely a subjective vision, and assuming that because he lists them with the other appearances, they must be of exactly the same nature. In this chapter also the theories of Randel Helms are given promotion.
The last three chapters are very short discourses. Chapter 6 extends the "resentment theory" to the origination of the God-idea "..in the vindictiveness of a primitive tribe finding itself surrounded by magnificent, advanced civilizations" like Egypt and Babylon. God was not revelation, but revenge: Unfortunately this is some distance outside of known ancient psychological profiles.
Chapter 7 interprets Jesus' rejection of ritual handwashing as a rejection of all sanitation and personal hygeine; this leads into a rather pedantic review of monastics who found no need for soap.
Finally, Chapter 8 mixes straw men with psychology by offering a list of social virtues (like charity) that no one with claims originated with Christianity. and then proving that they originated elsewhere. Whether Christianity has been influential in the growth of these virtues is a matter that is not addressed.
We conclude with this note: The book jacket tells us that Sheaffer's work has been compared to that of H. L. Mencken.
The comparison is apt. Both writers sneer at those whom they perceive to be socially "lower" than they are and neither is qualified to make the assessments that they do.
-JPH