He was born, probably in Nazareth, about four BCE. Poetic renditions of the birth of Jesus exist, but history escapes us.


The birth of Jesus to Joseph and Mary was unremarkable. They were both probably teenagers struggling to make a living. According to the gospel of Mark, they had a family of sons and two daughters. Tradition, which is all that we have, has Jesus crucified by the Roman army about 30 CE. Tarrus, with the Emperor and Pontius Pilate, was the governor of Judea. That is a pretty good history.


Jesus had begun in the small towns of Galilee. We do not know how long Jesus' active ministry lasted. Some say only a few months, others three years. I speculate a bit longer, maybe five years. No one knows.


In ways that we can only speculate, Jesus began a ministry that, soon after his death, evolved into the Jesus movement and, by the second and early third centuries, was the Christian church Christianity.


Between Jesus and Mark


The New Testament does not provide hard information about the beginning of the Jesus movement after Jesus' death. The Book of Acts has long been regarded as a history of the development of the church. However, for the last 50 years, and particularly the last 25 years, a host of scholars has described the Acts not as pure history but as the “Founding Myth” of the development of Christianity.


We have no biblical history of the story between the death of Jesus and 30 CE2, and there are letters of Paul to some churches in Asia Minor beginning in about 50 CE. The accounts in Acts are largely stories, not history. The church, in any significant form, did not start 50 days after the death of Jesus, as the story of Pentecost and Acts would have us believe. Something important was happening, but it was probably not like Acts telling the story.


In ways we can only speculate, Paul became a follower of Jesus. He gives a brief description of his conversion to Galatians. Paul never saw Jesus face-to-face. Apparently, the Jesus movement began to take hold in Jerusalem soon after Jesus's death. The movement sought to extend what Jesus had started in Galilee.


A great deal was happening that scholars who studied that era could speculate about. Their speculation is quite well formulated, but that's what it is: speculation.