Chapter 2 A Most Unexpected Legend - Palestinian Jews

The story of Jesus exists, is it just a legend or could it be based on real events? If it is a legend, were the conditions in the culture it came from consistent with the type of legend they created. We have seen that although the Romans controlled most of the Jewish territory in the first century, they were not able to get the people to change their views to the degree needed to create a legend that contradicted basic tenants of their religion. This is even more clear when we look at the Palestinian Jews which is the area where the story of Jesus originated. Archeological studies in Palestine have shown people in this area to be strongly committed to their monotheistic Torah centered beliefs. Here is a brief list of some of their findings:

1. No pagan temples
2. Ceramic items are made of the soft limestone required by the Torah
3. Many home have the ritual bathing pools
4. Very few pork bones
5. Coins tend to be free of visual representations of people which the Jews felt would be graven images

In addition to what archeologists have found, the writings of Josephus which is the main historical account of that time shows the Jews as being very true to their traditional beliefs. The difficulties with the legend theory are even greater when you look at how the story of Jesus runs counter to the basic ideas of the Jewish religion  that we have seen was very strong at the time. We will look at that next time.