What Got Jesus Started - A Speculation

If the ball-parked timeline in the Bible is to be believed, Jesus began his mission rather suddenly in his late 20s. The Gospel of Mark was the first one written, not long after the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans in the 60s CE (Common Era - formerly AD). Mark is the shortest of the Gospels. It has no reference to the birth or early life of Jesus. By comparison, Matthew and Luke are written at least 10 years later and perhaps due to a need for readers to fill in some of the gaps, add two different birth stories, both of which are full of factual and historical inaccuracies, and John, written right around the turn of the first century, some 70 years after the crucifixion, does not follow the others much at all, adding new passages to solve some theological issues that Christians were likely wrestling with at that time.

Mark begins with John the Baptist baptising many people at the river Jordan. In chapter 1 he predicts that someone more powerful than he will follow him, but he does not identify Jesus as that person. In the next chapter, Jesus arrives. "At that time Jesus came from Nazareth in Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan." No pomp and circumstance, as in the other Gospels. Jesus just arrives. John matter-of-factly baptizes Jesus and moves on to the next person. Jesus sees the heavens split and the spirit alight on him, but no one else sees this. He enters the desert with John the Baptist and his followers as was the custom of those following John. John is arrested. Jesus, a good disciple of John, heads home to Galilee to preach John's message and gather followers. The rest is history, sort of.

Jesus, according to the other Gospels, was a "tekton" which simply means laborer or artisan, not carpenter as it is widely interpreted. Nazareth was a very small town as it does not appear on any ancient map. Since there would have been almost no work in a tiny town like Nazareth at the time, Jesus would likely have been employed by contractors for the Romans and wealthy Greeks and Jews in the building of two major towns in Galilee that were expanding greatly at the time - Sepphoris, older and located not far from the contemplated location of Nazareth in the mountains, and Tiberius, built later on the banks of the Sea of Galilee, southwest of Caperhaum where Jesus started his ministry. While he likely started in Sepphoris, by the time he was in his 20s, Tiberius was the better source of work, so he likely went there. Plus he ends up on the river Jordan, directly south of Tiberius. Sepphoris is located significantly farther west in the mountains.

Based on the Bible, which is all we have to go on, what do we "know" about Jesus?

• He was in his late 20s.
• He was very bright
• He knew the Jewish laws and history despite the fact that Nazareth would not have had a synagogue and he likely had no formal education there as a child. Later, as he visits with them the priests are amazed, perhaps less about his great wisdom, but more that he knew any of the holy information that was their province. They were disappointed they could not pull the wool over his eyes. This guy knew what the books actually said. How annoying that must have been, and astonishing coming from a simple Galilean peasant.
• He was charismatic, a good speaker and people followed him.
• He was passionate and driven.
• He cared for the poor and downtrodden and disliked the wealthy, non-Jews, foreigners and the priests.
• During the time we know of his life, he is without wife or children, something that would have been very very odd for a man in his late-20s.

What could we logically speculate about him prior to his appearance at the River Jordan?

• Given his intelligence and leadership skills among the low class tektons, he would likely have risen by now to a management position, perhaps a supervisor of projects for the general contractor. Certainly, unlike the Roman, Greek or Jewish masters, he spoke Aramaic, the language of the workers. They would have required the services of a now veteran tekton with Jesus' obvious qualities to lead teams of workers to get projects done.
• Therefore, he was probably relatively well off financially for a person from Nazareth.
• He was tall and apparently handsome enough. He was almost certainly married and probably had children. He probably had a small  but nice place to live and was fairly comfortable. His children would likely have been teenagers, his sons probably at the lowest rungs of the work he was overseeing.
• He likely attended synagogue and learned the laws from the Jewish priests there. There is no evidence he could read or write, but it was more common for the stories of the Jewish law to be passed down orally, especially to the lowest classes. There was in fact at that time little practical use for reading and writing among those Jesus would have associated with.

So just applying some simple logic based on what we know about Jesus, Jesus probably has a nice little life. Good job, wife, kids probably following in his footsteps, a place to live, friends to hang out with, a church community and perhaps even a Rabbi to challenge his intellect with the stories of his heritage and faith. So that begs the HUGE question . . .

What would cause a grown man with so much going for him to suddenly leave it all and end up many many miles from home being baptized by a crazy man in the middle of the wilderness at the River Jordan?

Well what else do we know about Jesus?

• He was a Jew, fairly far from the holy city of Jerusalem but still in the holy land, in a growing town of Romans, Greeks, wealthy Jews and other foreigners. If he got anything from the Old Testament lessons, this was not the way the Jewish God would have wanted true Jews to populate the Promised Land. Wealthy foreigners ruling over poor Jews. No way. Those he associated with probably complained about this often. There were frequent uprisings of the poor at the time.
• He is a man of passion, with a strong belief in doing what is right. While his theology may not have fully developed until the days with John in the wilderness, his basic understanding of life seen later was likely part of who he was in his earlier pre-mission life.
• He was a tekton. Even if he was now a man with some power, he came from the lowest ranks of the population. He was likely as high up as he could ever go. He was high enough up, however, to see how the other half lived, how they acted and how downtrodden and mistreated his people were. 
• If he had them, his sons were now working age or very close. Perhaps one of them was mistreated in a way Jesus could not ignore.

He knew the story of Moses, who, as a privileged Israelite in Egypt, killed an Egyptian overseer who was punishing a fellow Hebrew worker. It would not be a stretch to think that Jesus began to make trouble on behalf of the downtrodden Jewish tektons he supervised, including his own sons. They should be paid better. They should be treated better. Days should be shorter. Working conditions better. They should not be beaten. Jesus may have been the first union organizer. It certainly fit his demeanor. Perhaps his young, impetuous sons spoke out at well.

What would the Romans and the wealthy class in these towns have done about this. They would have crushed any dissent, as they had many times before. They would have done so harshly, to make sure the lowly tektons knew their place in the order of things, and to make sure the troublesome Jews, and the even more troublesome Galileans, feared them and remained cowed. They killed more than the perpetrator, they killed their families and even punished those guiltless people unlucky enough to be associated with them.

What makes the most sense to me, as I see a bright and evidently passionate man with absolutely no possessions whatsoever, show up at the banks of a river located many many miles to the south, is that something terrible happened to Jesus in Tiberius. Something so terrible, in fact, that he barely got out of there with the clothes on his back. Perhaps as a result of his actions, his family was murdered, house ransacked and possessions taken. Perhaps Jesus barely escaped with his life, running from his pursuers around the Sea of Galilee until he reached the River Jordan, and then following it south, he ran into John, baptizing people.

Crushed at the loss of his family, betrayed by his Jewish God, hungry, tired and strung out, Jesus follows the line of people to the water. He may not have known why. He is baptized with them, and upon coming out of the water, Jesus has a vision. Perhaps as the result of the delirium driven by the tragedies he had faced, or perhaps it was real, but at that moment he finds God. Unlike most who are baptized that day, who simply head home, Jesus has no home to go back to. He has no where to go. So he follows John and his disciples back into the wilderness. Like John, he probably eats what he can find, locusts and honey. Certainly from time to time he is tempted to leave and find another way, but he stays. He learns the ways of this Ascetic/Nazarene holy man. They begin to resonate with him. No possessions. Freedom and equality for all. God as love. Jesus spends many (40) days in the wilderness with him. John is the teacher. Jesus the student (until later Gospels change this).

When he emerges, he is a changed man. He has found a calling. He has found someone that he can follow, and he does, until John is arrested. Now, with his leader gone, what is he to do. Jesus is reborn. He is getting his confidence, his swagger, his charisma back. So he heads home to Galilee. Not to Tiberius or Nazareth even, as those places may be too dangerous for him. He heads to the northern edge of the Sea of Galilee to a lawless fishing town called Capernaum and starts preaching John's teachings to the residents there. Followers join him and his confidence grows. It is quite a while before he is bold enough, recovered enough, confident enough again to take his message elsewhere.

As he builds support and begins to travel and teach, he avoids Sepphoris and Tiberius. When he returns very briefly to Nazareth, he is basically chased out of town. There is some reason he chooses not to preach his message to the many in these towns. Perhaps he is known there, and not in a good way. Perhaps going there would be too painful, if his family died there. Perhaps the poor reception in Nazareth is because the workers there were also punished for his actions.

When he leaves, Jesus' entire family leaves Nazareth and follows him on the rest of his journey, turning up many times thereafter. James, his brother, even becomes the leader of the church after the crucifixion. Why would they all up and leave unless home was no longer a safe place to be, or as outcasts, they could no longer make a living there. Jesus certainly was not afraid of big cities. He went to a few on his way to the biggest one, Jerusalem for his final days.

Why did he never marry again? There of course is speculation that he was married or at least very close to Mary Magdalen, and perhaps even had a son by her. If that is not true and my speculation is, it would not be odd for him to avoid marriage. Many widows and widowers can never bring themselves to remarry for the love of their deceased spouse. If he felt as though he caused their death, the pain of re-marriage may have been even greater. His new mission also made marriage and certainly children impractical, but again "replacing" children that you feel you may have indirectly killed, would have been difficult at best. John was likely a Nazarene, a devout monk-like sect of Judaism that did not believe in marriage, among other things. If Jesus was a disciple, he likely took on the same beliefs. Finally, if he knew the end-game was crucifixion, and we know he mentioned it many times, perhaps he felt that would be unfair to yet another family.

Who knows what really happened? But I was just thinking . . . what if?