“In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar—when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, Herod tetrarch of Galilee, his brother Philip tetrarch of Iturea and Traconitis, and Lysanias tetrarch of Abilene— during the high-priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John son of Zechariah in the wilderness” (Luke 3:1-2).Is Jesus a myth? That is, did a person named Jesus of Nazareth actually live? A few decades ago the question would be too ridiculous to address; today, thanks to the internet, which allows everyone to spread their ideas no matter how baseless or bizarre, we have to take it seriously. Though there are very few actual scholars who hold this position, there are countless websites that spread the idea that Jesus never existed.
The “mythicist” views vary quite a bit, but their basic position is that Christianity was based on a mythological Christ figure. The gospels were allegories or, perhaps, a later attempt to make their mythical Christ appear to have been a real person. One version has him being some kind of sun god. They may even claim that the gospels were written hundreds of years after the time period in which they are set.
Thankfully, there are actual scholars who can rebut their theories. Even Bart Ehrman, a self-described “agnostic with atheist leanings”, famous for promoting the idea that the New Testament is corrupted, that the gospels are hopelessly contradictory, and that Jesus never claimed to be God, wrote a book aiming to prove that Jesus existed. Why? “As a historian I think evidence matters.”1
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| Pilate stone |
Ehrman doesn’t believe any of the gospels are eyewitness accounts. And that’s not a problem for him. “The absence of eyewitness accounts would be relevant if, and only if, we had reason to suspect that we should have eyewitness reports if Jesus really lived.”1 But there is almost no evidence for government officials and other such people you expect to find accounts of from first century Palestine. There are no contemporary accounts of Pontius Pilate. In fact, outside of accounts that mention him in connection to Jesus, we have one inscription with the name of this Roman governor. This is not uncommon in history. We can’t demand contemporary accounts of someone who was an itinerant preacher in a small Roman backwater province. But what we have is not bad, as history is judged.
Mythicists don’t accept the New Testament as evidence (a topic we’ll return to), so we’ll look first at the extra-biblical evidence for Christ. Josh and Sean McDowell helpfully divide the historical sources into “sources of little or no value,” “sources of limited value,” and “sources of significant value”.2 Of limited value are the brief mentions by Suetonius, Pliny the Younger, and a few others. The more significant sources are Tacitus and Josephus. Tacitus wrote about the incident where Nero blamed Christians for setting Rome on fire. He said of the Christians, “Their name comes from Christ, who, during the reign of Tiberius, had been executed by the procurator Pontius Pilate. Suppressed for the moment, the deadly superstition broke out again, not only in Judea ... but also in the city of Rome.”
Josephus mentions Christ twice, once when he recounts the execution of James “the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ.” The other is a highly controversial passage known as the Testimonium Flavianum. It’s almost certain that some Christian copyist doctored the passage, but scholars today tend to believe they can extract something like what the original must have said:
“Jesus was a Jew who lived in Israel during the first third of the first century; was born out of wedlock; intersected with the life and ministry of John the Baptist; attracted great crowds, especially because of his wondrous deeds; had a group of particularly close followers called disciples (five of whom are named); ran afoul of the Jewish religious authorities because of his controversial teachings sometimes deemed heretical or blasphemous; was crucified during the time of Pontius Pilate’s governorship in Judea (AD 26-36), and yet was believed by many of his followers to have been the Messiah, the anticipated liberator of Israel. This belief did not disappear despite Jesus’ death because a number of his supporters claimed to have seen him resurrected from the dead. His followers, therefore, continued consistently to grow in numbers, gathering together regularly for worship and instruction and even singing hymns to him as if he were a god (or God).”3
The extra-biblical evidence paints a pretty accurate picture of Jesus. To discount all of this requires either a massive conspiracy whereby ancient Christians inserted Jesus into all of these texts or for the ancient Romans and Jews to completely miss the fact that Jesus, like the central figure of all the pagan mystery religions, was not a real man.
Now back to the New Testament. Is it fair to exclude the New Testament documents from the evidence? Ehrman says no:
“Whatever else you might think about the books of the Bible—whether you believe in them or not, whether you consider them inspired or not—they are still books. That is, they were written by people in historical circumstances and contexts and precisely in light of those circumstances and contexts. ... To dismiss the Gospels from the historical record is neither fair nor scholarly.”1
Whether we treat the New Testament documents as historical records or not, there is no basis for believing that Jesus did not exist. The “Jesus myth” theory is the myth.
For more detail on this topic, I recommend "The Historical Existence of Jesus" in Evidence That Demands a Verdict by Josh McDowell and Sean McDowell.
1 Bart Ehrman, Did Jesus Exist?, emphasis in original
2 Josh McDowell and Sean McDowell, Evidence That Demands a Verdict
3 Craig Blomberg, “Jesus of Nazareth” in Douglas Groothuis, Christian Apologetics
image credits: The Pilate stone, SA-2.0, creative commons
"The Eye of Providence", by de:Benutzer:Verwüstung, public domain
Mythicists don’t accept the New Testament as evidence (a topic we’ll return to), so we’ll look first at the extra-biblical evidence for Christ. Josh and Sean McDowell helpfully divide the historical sources into “sources of little or no value,” “sources of limited value,” and “sources of significant value”.2 Of limited value are the brief mentions by Suetonius, Pliny the Younger, and a few others. The more significant sources are Tacitus and Josephus. Tacitus wrote about the incident where Nero blamed Christians for setting Rome on fire. He said of the Christians, “Their name comes from Christ, who, during the reign of Tiberius, had been executed by the procurator Pontius Pilate. Suppressed for the moment, the deadly superstition broke out again, not only in Judea ... but also in the city of Rome.”
Josephus mentions Christ twice, once when he recounts the execution of James “the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ.” The other is a highly controversial passage known as the Testimonium Flavianum. It’s almost certain that some Christian copyist doctored the passage, but scholars today tend to believe they can extract something like what the original must have said:
At this time there appeared Jesus, a wise man. For he was a doer of startling deeds, a teacher of people who receive the truth with pleasure. And he gained a following both among many Jews and among many of Greek origin. And when Pilate, because of an accusation made by the leading men among us, condemned him to the cross, those who had loved him previously did not cease to do so. And up until this very day the tribe of Christians (named after him) has not died out.2Craig Blomberg sums up the description of Jesus that can be drawn from non-Christian sources.
“Jesus was a Jew who lived in Israel during the first third of the first century; was born out of wedlock; intersected with the life and ministry of John the Baptist; attracted great crowds, especially because of his wondrous deeds; had a group of particularly close followers called disciples (five of whom are named); ran afoul of the Jewish religious authorities because of his controversial teachings sometimes deemed heretical or blasphemous; was crucified during the time of Pontius Pilate’s governorship in Judea (AD 26-36), and yet was believed by many of his followers to have been the Messiah, the anticipated liberator of Israel. This belief did not disappear despite Jesus’ death because a number of his supporters claimed to have seen him resurrected from the dead. His followers, therefore, continued consistently to grow in numbers, gathering together regularly for worship and instruction and even singing hymns to him as if he were a god (or God).”3
Now back to the New Testament. Is it fair to exclude the New Testament documents from the evidence? Ehrman says no:
“Whatever else you might think about the books of the Bible—whether you believe in them or not, whether you consider them inspired or not—they are still books. That is, they were written by people in historical circumstances and contexts and precisely in light of those circumstances and contexts. ... To dismiss the Gospels from the historical record is neither fair nor scholarly.”1
Whether we treat the New Testament documents as historical records or not, there is no basis for believing that Jesus did not exist. The “Jesus myth” theory is the myth.
For more detail on this topic, I recommend "The Historical Existence of Jesus" in Evidence That Demands a Verdict by Josh McDowell and Sean McDowell.
1 Bart Ehrman, Did Jesus Exist?, emphasis in original
2 Josh McDowell and Sean McDowell, Evidence That Demands a Verdict
3 Craig Blomberg, “Jesus of Nazareth” in Douglas Groothuis, Christian Apologetics
image credits: The Pilate stone, SA-2.0, creative commons
"The Eye of Providence", by de:Benutzer:Verwüstung, public domain
Part of Christianity 101
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