Dean - Salt & Light; The Complete Jesus

Copyright 2022 by Jonathan Geoffrey Dean
First Edition July 2022

All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form, or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information browsing, storage, or retrieval system, without permission in writing from Jonathan Geoffrey Dean, except by reviewers, who may quote brief passages in a review.

ISBN
978-1-7782504-2-2 (Hardcover)
978-1-7782504-0-8 (Paperback)
978-1-7782504-1-5 (eBook)

Front cover image by Alexander Awerin. The image shows a portion of one of the doors of the unfinished Sagrada Familia basilica in Barcelona, Spain.

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Historical Jesus, Christianity, Biography

RELIGION / Biblical Criticism & Interpretation / New Testament

RELIGION / Biblical Commentary / New Testament / Jesus, the Gospels & Acts

RELIGION / Biblical Studies / New Testament / Jesus, the Gospels & Acts

RELIGION / Christian Theology / Christology

BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Religious

Keywords: Popular non-fiction, historical non-fiction, Jesus, historical Jesus, religion
& spirituality, New Testament studies, Christology, Christian books, ancient history.

#jesus #christ #christianity #christian #bible #atheism #jesuschrist #gospel

Distributed to the trade by The Ingram Book Company

Visit www.saltandlight.ca

THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED TO ALL THOSE WHO ARE SEARCHINGEVEN IF THEYRE NOT SURE WHAT THEYRE SEARCHING FORIN THE HOPE THAT THEY MAY FIND SOME MEASURE OF TRUTH, KNOWLEDGE, AND PEACE THROUGH THIS BOOK.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

PREFACE AND WELCOME

I have written Salt & Light for those, like myself, who want to learn about the authentic Jesus. This work is intended to be of interest to all people of any and no religious background. I welcome both the New Testament academic and the person on the street who has never had exposure to Jesus in any form. I assume no prior knowledge of the sources about Jesus and no special training, just an open mind and common sense.

This book, the first in a two-book series, has been built using widely disparate research from the academic world. However, I have unified this information into a straightforward and easy to grasp form. I provide all the references for further reading and appendices with side discussions if the gentle reader wishes to dig deeper into any topic.

Salt & Light is the product of more than ten years of reading and thinking on my part. Why did I write it? Because I am interested in Western Civilization. I am indeed a product of it, part of it, living in it. And I am thus, albeit in a modest way, contributing to its politics, history, arts, literature, and culture. Western culture is staggeringly rich, but the most influential work it produced is undeniably the Christian Bible.

I have read the entire Christian Bible numerous times, and, despite being completely overwhelmed by the scope of its contents, for me the most compelling part is the stories about Jesus, namely the four Gospels accounts in the New Testament section of the Bible. Jesus, incredibly, is the single most important influencer of Western civilization, and perhaps the world. He was a poor man who taught for a few years in a backwater of the Roman Empire and was then killed for sedition 2,000 years ago. However, Jesus started the worlds largest movement, and to billions of people now and in the past, somehow he has served in some form or other as a model for our humanity. He is compelling and allusive, so, indeed, time spent studying Jesus is time well spent. After putting the Bible down, I came away wanting to know everything about him, to get to the complete Jesus once and for alland this book is the result. I hope you come along with me on this fascinating journey to discover the Complete Jesus.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants.

Sir Isaac Newton, Letter to Robert Hooke

I gratefully acknowledge the unwavering patience of my wife, Lynn, who has always been in my corner and supportive throughout the creation of this book. I also gratefully acknowledge the tremendous work of editor-extraordinaire Ariane Magny, whose comments and suggestions I accepted without hesitation (almost) all the time. I thank those volunteers, including my mother, Shirley, who read the manuscript in various forms and provided me with vital feedback. I want to thank all the scholars and researchers in this field, as their diligent work is the bedrock upon which this book stands. We are lucky to live in a time of rational and free inquiry into matters of faith. Also, I acknowledge those people and institutions who gave their permissions freely so I could include certain images for the benefit of the reader.

I have made every effort to attribute works. Any factual errors, errors in attribution, or uncritical thinking are my fault. You are free to disagree, of course, in whole or in part with anything I say!

A FEW PRELIMINARIES

I will use CE (Common Era) and BCE (Before Common Era) for date eras, as they are more commonly used and therefore less religiously charged, instead of the older AD (Anno Domini = in the year of the Lord) and BC (= Before Christ).

I will try to use actual dates versus century designations. For instance, instead of saying mid-second century CE, I will write around 150 CE or c. 150 CE.

I place the death of Jesus on April 1, 33 CE.

I will use the traditional names for sources. For instance, I will use the title Gospel of Peter for that source, even though the disciple Peter did not write the work. I also will refer to John the Baptist as the Baptist to distinguish him from other Johns.

When it is clear, I will refer to gospels by their traditionally attributed name, for instance, Mark for the Gospel of Mark.

I often quote from the New Testament (NT) section of the Christian Bible. The New Testament was written initially in koine Greek, the ancient worlds English. Since then, there have been many translations of the Bible into most modern and ancient languages (over 2,000 languages!). And within any one language, there are various versions, because a translation is also an interpretation. This is especially true in modern English, as there are over 100 major versions of the Bible, all the way from the American Standard Version (ASV) to the Young Literal Translation (YLT). These include Wycliffes Bible (WYC), the first English version from 1388, the famous King James Version (KJV) of 1611, and The Message (MSG,) a modern paraphrase in contemporary English from 2002. I will be quoting from the best seller New International Version (NIV) unless otherwise noted. The NIV is a popular and scholarly version first published in 1978. I will follow its chapter and verse notations. There are also many online Bible resources available, including free downloadable copies of the NIV. As you read through this book, you will find it helpful to have a copy of the New Testament handy to look up the context and specifics of NT references.

I will avoid the term Jesus Christ, since it relies on assumptions yet to be examined, for instance, that Jesus is the Jewish Messiah

In a few cases, where noted, I use images made available under the Creative Commons Licence, via Wikimedia Commons. For example, CC BY-SA 3.0 means the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike Licence version 3.0. I thank the original images contributors for making the images available. Here is the link to the various licenses used, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ , and a link to Wikimedia Commons https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page .