Who were the First Recipients of Jesus’ “Good News”?

 

Who were the First Recipients of Jesus’ “Good News”?

Arfad A. Razak

30 January 2025

 

Who were the first recipients of the message Jesus preached to his community? Jesus of Nazareth was a man living in ancient Palestine, in the northern city of Nazareth, in Upper Galilee, where our historical records seem to suggest his mother, Mary, was from. Jesus also spends most of his childhood and early adult life there. It is well known, at least as it is reported by two of the New Testament Gospels that Jesus was born in Bethlehem (Matt. 2:1-2; Luke 2:11-12). However, the Gospel narrates Jesus as spending more time in upper Galilee compared to his birth city, in fact, according to Matthew’s Gospel, he settled in Capernaum (Matt. 4:12-14), which is “a town near the Sea of Galilee…It has been identified with Kefar Nahum (Tell Hum)” (Oxford Concise Dictionary of the Christian Church, 93). Galilee is a cosmopolitan city with multilingual atmosphere “whereby towns with Greco-Roman imprint lived in uneasy coexistence with rural villages that tended to be more observant of Jewish tenets” (Isbouts, Archaeology of the Bible, pg. 234). Galilee has been referred to as the Land of Zebulun, land of Napthali, the road to the sea, the land beyond Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles” (Matt. 4:15, REB). Recent archaeological works have unearth evidence which “boasted a fairly sophisticated urban population” (Isbouts, 234). Isbouts further wrote in page 236 of Archaeology of the Bible,

Side by side with these mixed enclaves were some 200 hamlets that clung tenaciously to their Jewish faith and customs… “these villages did not import foreign wine amphorae, used little or no glass, and befitting Jewish Law, avoided images of humans or animals.” Instead, they preferred limestone jars and cups, for the Law decreed that liquids such as water or oil remained ritually pure in stone vessels rather than clay pottery…

Archaeological evidence also seems to suggest that the villages in Galilee were small. This could be one of the reasons why the town of Nazareth were not mentioned in the historical records of non-Christian authors during this time period, for example, the writing of Josephus. Isbouts further commented that “Excavations in places like Qasrin in Upper Galilee have shown that a typical village was no larger than eight to ten dunams (each dunam representing ten families), living over an area of about two acres (page 236).”

Historical records also suggest that the Galileans were fisherman. The New Testament Gospels narrates an incident whereby the first Jesus’ disciples were recruited while fishing in the Sea of Galilee. Eager to hear the “good news”, James and John, the son of Zebedee left their father, Zebedee, in the boat alone to tend to it, while they left with Jesus (Matt. 4:20-22; Mark 1:19-21). This is the first instance or record in the New Testament Gospels that Jesus recruited men for his ministry (hence the later evangelical works of recruiting missionaries for the Church). These men were fishermen, yet of what value do they have to become missionaries for Jesus? The New Testament is consistent in that to carry on the message of the “good news” requires persistence and perseverance. Jesus probably saw these qualities in them as being fishermen was not an easy profession. These men used to be fishing for fish in the sea, now they shall be fishing men to the “good news.” The Gospels also narrates Jesus as lunching with sinners and tax collectors (Mark 2:15-17) instead of the Sadducees and the Pharisees upon which, in the words of the first Gospel, were “brood of vipers” (Matt. 3:7, narrating at the lips of John the Baptizer). Sadducees and Pharisees were high ranking men of the synagogues. They Sadducees traced their lineage from the brother of Moses, Aaron. Given that they have been assigned the works of the priest (Exodus 28:1), the Sadducees have been administers of the temple in Jerusalem for centuries. While they mostly conspire to kill Jesus from the comfort of their temple, the scribes of the Pharisees consistently followed Jesus in his ministry to find fault. To this, the Gospel narrates Jesus as saying,

¹ Then Jesus said to the crowds and to his disciples, ² “The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses’ seat; ³ therefore, do whatever they teach you and follow it, but do not do as they do, for they do not practice what they teach. ⁴ They tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on the shoulders of others, but they themselves are unwilling to lift a finger to move them. ⁵ They do all their deeds to be seen by others, for they make their phylacteries [a small leather box containing Hebrew texts vellum, worn by Jewish men at morning prayer as a reminder to keep the law] broad and their fringes long. ⁶ They love to have the place of honour at banquets and the best seats in the synagogues ⁷ and to be greeted with respect in the marketplaces and to have people call them rabbi. ⁸ But you are not to be called rabbi, for you have one teacher, and you are all brothers and sisters. ⁹ And call no one your father on earth, for you have one Father, the one in heaven. ¹⁰ Nor are you to be called instructors, for you have one instructor, the Messiah. (Matt. 23:1-10, NRSVue).

It is evidence from the above narration that Jesus informed his disciples and the crowd to be weary of the people of the synagogues. They wanted to have the best seats in the synagogues and to be greeted with respect in the marketplaces. Jesus, informing the crowd not to follow what the Pharisees does, ate with sinners and tax collectors instead. In fact, one of his disciple, Levi (also called Matthew) was a tax collector. Tax collectors were collecting taxes on behalf of the Roman emperor. To this, the high priest in Jerusalem, as well as the scribes and the Pharisees found this profession sinful, as they served the Roman emperor, who have been known to claim divinity. The Jews only serve their God, Yahweh, and no other demi-gods or gods. Jesus defended the profession of Levi indirectly when the Gospel authors narrated at the lips of Jesus “Pay Ceaser what belongs to Ceaser, and God what belongs to God” (Mark 12:17, REB).

Here, we come to a point of wondering. The scribes of the Pharisees, as well as the Sadducees, were all Jews, practicing the Jewish faith (in whatever degree it may be). What matters do they have with Jesus, if he was not a Jew, practicing the Jewish faith? Why did the scribes of the Pharisees followed Jesus all over Galilee to find fault at his teachings? And what was Jesus really teaching? What was this “good news”?

In the prologue of her famous book, When Christians Were Jews, Biblical scholar Paula Fredrikson wrote of the early followers of Jesus as Jews who became “Christians.”

Peter, James, and John. Paul and his missionary companion, Barnabas. All of these men were Jews, though we identify them with “the origins of Christianity.” This is because we know that their efforts would eventually lead to the formation of that later – and predominantly gentile – religious community. But they did not know this. Committed to their movement’s core prophecy – “The times are fulfilled, and the Kingdom of God is at hand! Repent, and trust in the good news!” – they foresaw no extended future. They passionately believed that God was about to fulfil his ancient promises to Israel: to redeem history, to defeat evil, to raise the dead, and to establish a universal reign of justice and peace.

Fredrikson was not the only one who proposed that the early Christians were Jews, or at least, Jesus was a Jew himself. Upon which the prominent historian Charles Freeman wrote in A New History of Early Christianity pages 8 -9,

Jesus was a Jew. For much of Christian history, this has been denied or avoided…Like every Jew, Jesus would have been at home with an inheritance that stretched back centuries to the patriarch Abraham, and which gave crucial roles to Moses, leader of the Exodus from Egypt to the ‘promised land,’ and the supreme law giver, and King David, the creator of the Jewish nation state…

Another prominent contemporary historian, Robert Louis Wilken, wrote in pages 7 to 10 of The First Thousand Years: A Global History of Christianity,

The story, however, begins in Palestine, for it was there in a hidden corner of the earth that Jesus was born among the Jewish people in the land they called their own…Jesus was almost thirty years old and baptized by John the Baptist…After his baptism he travelled around Judea urging his fellow Jews to repent…Jesus’ message was centred on the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jocob, the God who had created the world and delivered the Jewish people out of bondage in Egypt to lead them to a land flowing with milk and honey, who had sent prophets to censure their unfaithfulness and lift their hopes, and was now calling his people to repentance, to renewed devotion and a life of holiness…

The New Testament Gospel of Matthew also portray Jesus as a Jew, preaching only to the Jews of his community. After Jesus identifies the twelve apostles who will carry his message, he instructed them not to preach to the Gentiles (the non-Jews).

⁵ These twelve Jesus sent out with the following instructions: “Do not go among the Gentiles or enter any town of the Samaritans. ⁶ Go rather to the lost sheep of Israel… (Matt. 10:5-6, NIV).

It is without a doubt, given the many other literary evidence that Jesus was a Jew, preaching a form of Judaism to the Jewish communities in and around his hometown of Nazareth, in upper Galilee of ancient Palestine. The Gospel of Luke, the third of the New Testament Gospels (in arrangement), informed readers that when Jesus entered the synagogue in his hometown, Nazareth, he preached from the scroll of Isaiah (the scroll containing the Old Testament book of Isaiah – and not the exact scroll of Isaiah).

¹⁶ And he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up; and he went to the synagogue, as his custom was, on the sabbath day. And he stood up to read; ¹⁷ and there was given to him the book of the prophet Isaiah. He opened the book and found the place where it was written… (Luke 4:16-18, RSV).

It made more plausible sense that only Jews would enter the synagogue and was given a book or scroll to read from the scripture. In better support of this, Luke’s Gospel also narrated

²⁰ And he closed the book, and gave it back to the attendant, and sat down; and the eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. ²¹ And he began to say to them, “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” ²² And all spoke well of him, and wondered at the gracious words which proceeded out of his mouth… (Luke 4:20-22a, RSV)

Before we proceed any further, we first have to define the term “Jews.” If one thought that the Jews of the first century CE is identical with the Jews of the present era, especially those living in the area that made up ancient Palestine, then one has fallen into anachronism. Judaism evolved after the destruction of the Jerusalem temple in 70 CE at the hands of the Roman general, and later emperor, Titus. The destruction of the Temple also brought the career of the Sadducees to an end – since there were no temple left, and the Sadducees are for the services of the Temple. While the Sadducees dropped out of our historical records during this time period, we know that the career of the Pharisees, especially the scribes amongst them, took on a different toll. Pharisees are able to administer local synagogues (or at least work in them), and amongst them are those that have risen to the ranks of rabbi (lord). They probably play a major role in the formation of Rabbinical Judaism, whereby the rabbis became the administer of the Law, at least what remains practicable (as most of the Law is closely tied to the Temple, for example, the sacrificing of animals at the Temple could no longer be practiced).

The above sketch informed readers that Rabbinical Judaism was not the Judaism of the time of Jesus. The Temple in Jerusalem was still standing, and every year during the festival of Rosh Hashanah/Rosh Chodesh (the head of the year/month) and Yom Kippur (Day of Atonement), Jews crowded Jerusalem bringing their sacrificial animals to be offered to their God, Yahweh at the Temple. And the ones attending to them were the priest from the Sadducees and the Pharisees. The New Testament Gospel also narrates Jesus making his way down to Jerusalem from Upper Galilee to take part in the festivals, known as the Passover (Pesach – Luke 2:41-52). The Passover is a festival which reflects God’s mercy toward the Israelites while they were in Egypt. The angle, who took away life, passes over every Israelites home with blood markings on their door. This final blow to the pharaoh in Egypt eventually led him to release the Israelites into the wilderness (see Exodus 12 for the narratives on the Passover).

The Judaism, and those who subscribed to it today, is very different from the Jews and Judaism of the past. It may also be argued that the Judaism of the time of Jesus, or at least before the Rabbinical age (200 - 500 CE), or at least ever since the Temple in Jerusalem was destroyed, cannot be considered as Judaism (in the modern understanding of the religion/faith). Today, the word “Jews” refers to an ethnicity, as well as those who subscribed to the religion of Judaism. For example, there are Arab, American, Armenian, Turkish Jews – who does not necessarily share the same ethnicity, and they all subscribe to the religion of Judaism. The part that makes this complicated is the “ethnic” part. In what sense are one considered an ethnic Jew? If we look at the inhabitants of the land which made up ancient Palestine today, majority of them came from Europe. Therefore, ethnically, they are “Europeans.” Therefore, the term “ethnically Jew” is complicated that it does not account to anything except mere labels from those who claim supremacy. In the Greco-Roman world of the first century, the distinctions were much narrower. There were no ethnic Jews (so to speak), instead, one was either Jew or Gentiles. And this refers to one’s religious views or faith instead of ethnicity.

 

According to the New Testament Gospels, Jesus preached the “good news” to his community, and this he does in every town or city that he stepped foot on. The “good news,” contrary to what most Christians thought, is not the New Testament. The Greek word for “good news” is euangellion, and Mark’s Gospel begin with “The beginning of the euangellion of Jesus Christ.” Some translation – such as the Revised Standard Version (RSV) – translated the word euangellion as “the Gospel.” With this, the translator is trying to inform readers that they will now read the Gospel of Jesus as informed by the evangelist Mark. This somewhat portrays the idea that the “good news” that Jesus preached has been passed down to us by the evangelist Mark. This, however, is not historically accurate given the material evidence at hand. Mark’s Gospel, as well as the other three Gospels in the New Testament, narrates the story of Jesus’ ministry in and around ancient Palestine. Therefore, every story that we know about Jesus comes from a third person view, since the original “good news” of Jesus has not survived.

                Whatever the “good news” of Jesus might have been, historically, the recipients of this early message were the Jewish communities upon whom Jesus preached given the evidence outlined above. Again, it should be emphasized that these people were not to be considered as ethnically Jews, rather, they subscribed to a religion preached by Moses and the other prophets sent to them throughout the centuries. When Jesus preached to the Jews, those that accepted his message were Jews. Yet, there are Jews such as the Pharisees and the Sadducees who rejected his message and conspired to kill him. These early Jews that accepted the “good news” of Jesus regarded him as their Messiah (meaning, the anointed one, or appointed one, or the one chosen by God). This is evidenced clearly in the fourth Gospel. When the women from Samaria was chatting with Jesus at Jacob’s well, she said “I know that Messiah is coming…When he comes, he will proclaim all things to us.” To this, Jesus responded “I am he…” (John 4: 25-6). Therefore, Jesus saw himself as the Messiah that the Jews have been waiting for. The scribes of the Pharisees and Sadducees, as well as those who opposed him, refused to accept that their anointed prophet – that they have for so long seek out – is here amongst their midst. And they were supposed to be the learned men of their community – the ones who were most familiar with the Scriptures.

Historians such as Fredriksen, Freeman, and others were somewhat right in their assessment that the early Christians were Jews. The disciples of Jesus were Jews, and they were the first recipients of the “good news.” However, it is not quite accurate and sensible to portray the early recipients of Jesus’s message as Jews – as in one who subscribe to Judaism – according to the Law of Moses. Some other terms that have been invented by scholars are “Jewish-Christians,” which itself is very problematic. However, we should note that when scholars used the term “Jewish-Christians,” they usually refer to the early followers of Jesus who were religiously “Jewish” and they accepted a form of Judaism which has been “tweaked” by Jesus. However, this understanding is not quite right. Jesus did not “tweaked” the Law of Moses, rather, he commanded the return to the Law of Moses that has been abandoned by the leaders of the Synagogues. For example, Matthew’s Gospel narrates at the lips of Jesus that “…not one jot or tittle shall be demolished from the Law” (Matt. 5:18, my translation); “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets [the writings of the second portion of the Tanakh]. I have not come to abolish them, but to fulfil them” (Matt. 5:17, NIV). Furthermore, in Matthew, which is our second earliest Gospel, Jesus warns against those who break the Law of Moses “So then, whoever breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do likewise will be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever practices and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven” (Matt. 5:19).

Our evidence seems to suggest that the early followers of Jesus were Jews who had returned to the strict teachings of the religion of Moses. To this, they cannot be considered “Jewish” in their religion – or considered as Jews. The Jews remain the scribes of the Pharisees, the Sadducees, as well as those who opposed Jesus – in turn rejected the “good news” of Jesus. With that being said, it is also inaccurate to state that Jesus was a Jew – if being a Jew at the time means practicing the Judaism of the Pharisees and the Sadducees. To this, we may find support in the theory offered by Christopher Stroup in The Christians Who Became Jews whereby the early followers of Jesus as depicted by the book of Acts, were portrayed as Jews. But we must reject that they were “Christians” in the sense of the modern understanding of this word.

In conclusion, we turn to the Qur’an, in which Jesus and his disciples are portrayed as “Muslims.”

When Jesus sensed disbelief from his people, he asked, “Who will stand up with me for Allah?” The disciples replied, “We will stand up for Allah. We believe in Allah, so bear witness that we have submitted” (Qur’an 3:52).

The Qur’an offers a much more convincing historical argument given the literary evidence at hand that Jesus and his disciples were not Jews nor Christians. Instead, they were those who submitted their will to God. The orientalists, as well as modern non-Muslim apologist have misunderstood the term “Muslim.” They thought that the prophet Muhammad was the first Muslim, and from him Islam rose/was invented. The Arabic term “Muslim” denotes “someone who has submitted themselves to Allah/God.” Therefore, anyone who submitted themselves to God, by following his Law and Commandments, were considered Muslims. With this understanding, the New Testament Jesus submitted himself to God by emphasizing the need to return to the Law of Moses, and to dismiss the Judaism of the learned men of the synagogues. In this sense, Jesus and his disciples were Muslims. In addition, the New Testament also narrates Jesus as praying to God in a quiet place early in the morning or at the mountainside all night.

Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house and went off to a solitary/deserted place, where he prayed (Mark 1:35).

Now during those days, he [Jesus] went out to the mountain to pray; and he spent the night in prayer to God… (Luke 6:12, RSV, emphasis added).

This is not to say that the scribes of the Pharisees and the Sadducees were not praying to God. The late English professor of Judaism and Christianity wrote that Jews “prayed twice a day” (Judaism: Practice and Belief 63BCE-66CE, 197), as are also mentioned in the New Testament that Jesus prays in the morning and at night. In any case, Jesus went to a quiet place to pray so that he may not be seen by others including his disciples. This is because, as narrated by the Gospels, Jesus had lambasted the hypocrites for praying out loud in public in order to be seen by many (Matt. 6:5-8). All these demonstrates that Jesus is more observing and conscious of the Law of God compared to the contemporary learned men of the synagogues. But this is not to be used as an evidence that Jesus was a Muslim. The evidence remains that Jesus was not a Jew nor a Christian, as this is against the literary evidence at hand. And it is also incorrect to think of Jesus as the Muslims of today – praying five times a day, etc., The term “Muslim,” again, means those who submitted themselves to God. The practices of Muslims today must not be equated to the Muslims during the time of Jesus and his disciples. The theology is the same – the believe in one God, and that Jesus is the one sent from God (John 17:3), however, the rituals and practices were different.

It is also important, as a closing remark, that we turn to some of the verses in the Qur’an that describes the disciples of Jesus. As quoted above, the disciples of Jesus stood up with him for God. The Qur’an describes these followers of Jesus as “Al Hawariyyun.” The term comes from the word “Hawar” which lexically means whiteness. Ibn Kathir, the great Muslim exegetes note “In the religious terminology, the title of ‘hawariyy’ has been given to the sincere disciples or companions of [Jesus] either because of their sincerity or purity of their hearts, or because of their white dress” (Abridged tafsir of 3:52-3). The Qur’an also describes these companions of Jesus as asking food from heaven in order to affirm their faith in God through Jesus. Muslims have often referred to verse 114 of chapter 5 of the Qur’an to the ‘last supper’ accounts described in the Gospels. Historically, the Qur’an may have been referencing this, however, nothing else is describe in the Qur’an that can allow one to draw certainty from this.