CHAPTER 1: THE SOURCES

For all practical purposes the reconstruction of Jesus life and

teaching is based entirely on the documents of the New Testa-
ment. By some estimates over thirty gospels were produced in
the first two centuries following Jesus death, but most of those
gospels have disappeared and those outside the New Testament
that survive are fragmentary, distorted by time and fabulist ten-
dencies, and contain little to nothing of biographical interest.
Some 21 gospels in various states of preservation are known, as
well as the names of 13 others that have not survived.


Preservation of the oral tradition.

In daily conversation Jesus and his disciples spoke a dialect of
Palestinian Aramaic, a Semitic language closely related to He-
brew. In a few places the writer of the gospel of Mark records
Aramaic words or phrases and provides a Greek translation, par-
ticularly when the words in question are words of power that
accompany the performance of healings and exorcismsin the
technical literature, a word of power is often called a vox magi-
ca (plural, voces magicae).

Foreign words are a very familiar feature of magic spells
and the papyri are full of examplesIn the Coptic
magical papyri Greek appears as the strange and forbid-
dingly authentic sound, while in the Greek magical
world Jewish names and words had special pres-
tigeThe foreign expressions are sometimes translated
into Greek for the professional use of healers and exor-
cistsThe continued use of Ephphatha in the baptismal
ritual of the church (which was also exorcism) can hard-
ly be accounted for except by the supposition that the
Magic In Christianity 2
word was believed in itself to possess remarkable pow-
er.
40


Two clear examples are taliqa koum (talitha koum), get up,
little girl,
41
and effaqa (ephphatha), be opened.
42
Com-
menting on the words of power used in Mark 5:41, Smith not-
ed of the formula used by Peter to raise a dead womanTabiqa
anasthqi: Tabitha, rise!
43
Tabitha is a mispronunciation of
talitha, which the storyteller mistook for a proper name.
44
As
we will have occasion to note, such invocations tend to gain in
length and complexity with the passage of time. In some manu-
scripts, Peters Tabitha rise! expands to include in the name
of our Lord Jesus Christ.Aune addresses the motive for retain-
ing Aramaic words:

Why then are these Aramaic healing formulas preserved
in the tradition used by Mark? In view of the import-
ance attributed to preserving adjurations and incanta-
tions in their original languages, these formulas were
probably preserved for the purpose of guiding Christian
thaumaturges in exorcistic and healing activities. In early
Christianity, therefore, these Aramaic phrases may have
functioned as magic formulas.
45


There will be much to say in the following chapters about the
magical power ascribed to the Hebrew language and divine
names. It must suffice for now to mention that the importance
was such that a Coptic spell written long after Jesus died says,
The angels that call all the names (_!"!"#$%&$) that are written
in Hebrew (_##_!'()*+$&"%), in the language of heaven... The

40
Hull, Hellenistic Magic and the Synoptic Tradition, 85-86.
41
Mark 5:41.
42
Mark 7:34.
43
Acts 9:40.
44
Smith, Jesus the Magician, 95.
45
Aune, Aufstieg und Niedergang der Rmischen Welt, II.23.2:1535.
Magic In Christianity 3
Hebrew names ensure that the angels will listen to every man
who will perform this spell
46
because the magician is speaking
the language of the angels. The reader familiar with the New
Testament will be instantly reminded of Pauls tongues of men
and angels.
47
In any case, it was apparently widely believed in
antiquity that translation would empty the name of magical
power and that the sound of sacred names had to be preserved
exactly, transmitted literatim.
48


Of course the official language of Rome and the Italian peninsu-
la was Latin, but in most of the eastern Roman territories of Je-
sus time the language most commonly used from day to day
was not Latin, but Greek. Much elevated discourse, writing on
philosophy and theology in particular, was carried forward in
Greek. The New Testament is also written in Greek, but not in
the polished language of the rhetoricians of classical literature:

As we study the New Testamentthe first great im-
pression we receive is that the language to which we are
accustomed in the New Testament is on the whole just
the kind of Greek that simple, unlearned folk of the
Roman Imperial period were in the habit of using.
49


Whether Jesus spoke any language other than Aramaic or was
even able to read has been the subject of some debate. Modern
societies expend enormous resources to educate their popula-
tions, but pre-industrial societies had neither the resources nor
the motivation to teach many people to read and write. Reading

46
Worrell, The American Journal of Semitic Languages and Literature
46: 243, 256.
47
1 Corinthians 13:1.
48
DeConick, Mystery and Secrecy in the Nag Hammadi Collection and
Other Ancient Literature, 14.
Compare Contra Celsum V, 45, where Origen claims that spells
translated into another language lose their effect due to the change in
pronunciation.
49
Deissmann, Light from the Ancient East, 62.
Magic In Christianity 4
was simply not necessary for the types of work that the majority
of people performed. It has been estimated that about 90% of
the population in the 1
st
century was completely illiterate
50
and
the New Testament specifically states of Peter and John that
they were agrammatoj (agrammatos), without letters, unable
to read or write
51
Peter betrays himself in the gospels by his
rustic Galilean accent.
52
Since Jesus closest disciples were pre-
dominantly men who worked with their hands, an inability to
read or write would have been completely in keeping with their
time and station in life, a point conceded by Origen who says
they had not received even the rudiments of learning (mhde ta
prwta grammata memaqhkotaj) even as the gospel records
about them.
53
Origen reports the charge that Christians were
known for their utter lack of education (apaideutotatouj) and
ignorance (amaqestatouj) and that they were sorcerers (goh-
taj) who gained converts by misdirection: they set traps for
complete yokels (paleuomen de touj agroikoterouj).
54


Early Christian converts were most frequently women, slaves
and laborers, i.e., members of groups with very low rates of lit-
eracy. Making a virtue of necessity, Paul openly acknowledged
Christianitys appeal to the humble and disenfranchised: not
many wise by human standards, not many powerful, nor many
well-born
55
Not many in this case evidently meant pre-
cious few. Pauls first letter to the Corinthians begins by mak-
ing the case for more or less pure fideism, dumbing down the
gospel historically, and early pagan critics such as Celsus clearly
considered gullibility and ignorance to be notable Christian at-
tributes, to believe without reason.
56
In his biography of the

50
The position of William.V. Harris, Ancient Literacy, pages 147-175.
51
Acts 4:13.
52
Watt, Diglossia and Other Topics in New Testament Linguistics, 107-
120. Compare Matthew 27:73.
53
Origen, Contra Celsum I, 62.
54
Ibid, VI, 14.
55
1 Corinthians 1:26.
56
Origen, Contra Celsum, I, 9.
Magic In Christianity 5
colorful religious huckster Peregrinus, the satirist Lucian de-
scribes the Christians as idiwtaij anqrwpoij, ill-informed
men,
57
gullible rubes eager to believe and easily misledHe
does not scrupleto call the Christians idi!tai, a word which
was then applied by the philosophers to those whom they re-
garded as incapable of elevated thought.
58


The low social status of the early Christians and of Jesus himself
reflects a bitter reality of the ancient world generally. Lane Fox:
The social pyramid tapered much more steeply than we might
now imagine when first surveying the monuments and extent of
the major surviving cities. By itself, a specialized ability in a craft
was not a source of upward mobility. Its adepts were often slaves
themselves, and even if they were not, they were competing
with slave labour, which kept the price of their own labour low.
The most upwardly mobile figures were the veteran soldier, the
athlete, the retired gladiator and perhaps (if we knew more) the
traders in slaves themselves.
59


All the gospels agree that Jesus taught in synagogues. On one
such occasion the gospel of Luke has Jesus being handed a scroll
from which he reads a passage from Isaiah,
60
but the accuracy of
this account, like the rest of Lukes history, is questionable. Re-
garding the reaction to Jesus teaching, John says, Consequent-
ly the Jews were amazed, saying, How does this man know
letters when he has not been taught?
61
The clear implication is
that Jesus himself was without letters, or at the very least ex-
hibited some evident deficiency. Joseph Hoffman: even the
members of the synagogue in Nazareth, not the most cultivated
of towns (see John 1:46), were offended at the sight of someone

57
Lucian, On the Death of Perigrinus, 13.
58
Edwards, Christians, Gnostics and Philosophers in Late Antiquity, 95.
59
Lane Fox, Pagans and Christians, 59.
60
Luke 4:16-20.
61
John 7:15. Letters, grammata (grammata), i.e., reading and
writing. The villagers of Nazareth raise the same question according to
Matthew 13:34-38.