Saturday, 26 September 2026

What Did Jesus Actually Teach and Do?

Geza Vermes, a distinguished biblical scholar set out to examine the synoptic gospels (Matthew, Mark and Luke) line by line to try and discover the real Jesus whose short life has had such a collosal impact on human history. What was his character, what did he actually teach and what did he actually do? These 3 gospels were written between 35 and 60 years after Jesus' death so the authors relied on accounts of his life handed down over those years. Vermes aim was to sieve out the changes, additions and legends that the authors had added to their gospels to present their particular view of Jesus teaching and the significance of his life.

Vermes recorded his ideas in The Authentic Gospel of Jesus, published in 2003.

But how did Vermes know what is authentic?

Of course he did not know with any certainty what is authentic and what is not, but he used his years of studying that period of Middle East history to arrive at what he considers was most probably what Jesus taught and what he did. His sources included:
  • the gospels themselves
  • other Christian writings that were circulating at the time
  • the Judaism of Jesus day,
  • the Dead Sea Scrolls
  • The Apochrypha - a collection of ancient religious writings
  • other writings of those years including records of the history of the period

Why not the gospel of John? 

  1. John is the last gospel to be written and is very different from the other three gospels in many ways. John has his own agenda  - see Gospel of John compared to Synoptics
  2. The synoptic gospels are linked. Mark was written first and both Matthew and Luke used Mark as the backbone of their own accounts. They also shared another collection of Jesus' sayings that scholars refer to as Q (Quelle - German "source"). Then there are verses that are unique to Matthew or unique to Luke such as the birth narratives.

Why not take the gospels at face value?

Differences in the accounts

The biblical fundamentalists do take the gospels at face value. They claim that every verse in the bible is God inspired so the text is the actual "Word of God" This is clearly not the case as any careful, unbiased reading of the gospels will show. You don't have to be a scholar to spot differences in the three accounts. Even the verses Matthew and Luke take from Mark are sometimes altered in different ways to give different meanings. The two birth narratives in Matthew and Luke are very different and cannot easily be reconciled. The crucial accounts of Jesus arrest, trial, death and resurrection also do not bear close comparison.

Christianity v Judaism

The Gospels were written over 30 years after the death of Jesus. In that time the Christian faith was becoming well established but was not one thing. Different interpretations of Jesus life and death were circulating. Jesus was a Jew and taught from the basis of the Judaism of his day but Christianity had spread throughout the non-Jewish world and was shaking off Jewish beliefs. Matthew differs from Luke in the Jewish or non-Jewish emphasis.

Who was Jesus?

This was a big question never answered to the satisfaction of all groups. Jesus had become more than an iterant Jewish teacher who only lived about 30 years before being executed. He was being proclaimed as.... who exactly? God? Man? God in man? Man in God? The relationship between Jesus and God was a source of contention and led to differences in beliefs and teaching and these differences show up in the gospels.

The Main Conclusions from The Authentic Gospel of Jesus

(summary from ChatGPT)
  • The Religion of Jesus - Vermes reconstructs Jesus's religion from the sayings he regards as authentic. It is practical rather than speculative: Jesus teaches people how to live before God rather than developing a theological system.

  • The Kingdom of God - the imminent coming of God's Kingdom is central. Jesus's teaching is strongly eschatological: people are to change their behaviour because God's decisive intervention is approaching.

  • Torah and Jewish observance - Vermes sees Jesus as remaining fundamentally within Judaism. Jesus is not presented as founding a new religion or rejecting the Jewish Law wholesale.

  • Eschatological behaviour - repentance, moral seriousness, generosity, forgiveness, mercy, prayer and trust in God are ways of preparing for the coming Kingdom

  • God as Father - Vermes stresses Jesus's conception of God as benevolent, compassionate and caring. Jesus's God is not primarily an abstract theological principle but a personal God who knows and cares for his creatures.

  • Jesus himself - Vermes portrays him as a Jewish charismatic, healer, teacher and *hasid*, completely committed to what he understood as God's mission. A scholarly discussion of Vermes specifically notes his description of Jesus as a “latter-day prophet” and *Hasid*.

  • Jesus and Christianity - this is the particularly important final movement of the Epilogue. Vermes argues that the religion preached by Jesus and the Christianity that subsequently developed are significantly different. His Jesus expected God's Kingdom rather than founding the institutional Christianity that later emerged.

  • The followers after Jesus - the early followers continued the expectation of the imminent Kingdom and the charismatic activities associated with Jesus. As the expected consummation failed to arrive, Christianity increasingly developed structures and beliefs that substituted for the Kingdom.

  • Jesus versus teaching about Jesus - Vermes ends by urging readers to distinguish between Jesus’s own teaching and later Christian teaching about Jesus. His concluding point is essentially that the route back to Jesus lies through what Jesus taught, rather than through the doctrines subsequently developed about him.

Example from the Appendix of Vermes classification.


(*) means authentic or likely authentic


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