Did Jesus exist?

    Last week, we looked at whether or not the idea of the resurrection was a priori irrational and we saw that it was not.  This week, we’ll take a brief look at the evidence for the existence of the man called Jesus.  There are two primary issues relating to the “historical Jesus.”  First, did a man named Jesus exist?  And second, can we know anything about this Jesus?  We will deal with the first question this week—did Jesus exist?  In this post, we will consider the Jesus Myth Theory (JMT) first and then the historical evidence for Jesus’ existence.

  The JMT postulates that certain elements from other pagan myths were incorporated into one central figure—that being the created figure of Jesus Christ.  Thus, according to this theory, the account of the Gospels would tell about the life of a basically fictional character named Jesus.  One would do well to remember that this theory is completely based on the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century view that the Gospels were completely unreliable and that modern scholarship had destroyed Christianity.  William Farmer, an expert on Christian origins, said, “The radical solution [of these scholars] was to deny the possibility of reliable knowledge of Jesus, and out of this developed the Christ myth theory, according to which Jesus never existed as a historical figure and the Christ of the Gospels was a social creation of a messianic community.” 

   Like many of the theories from the beginning of the previous century about the New Testament, Jesus and Christianity, the JMT has been abandoned.  Dr. Willi Marxsen said, “I am of the opinion (and it is an opinion shared by every serious historian) that the [Christ myth] theory is historically untenable” (The Resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth, Philadelphia: Fortress, 1970, p. 119).  Stephen Wylan concurs, “In the late nineteenth century some very skeptical historians proposed that Jesus of Nazareth never existed. He was a myth, based on the Egyptian sun god and other pagan myths. No one takes these arguments seriously anymore. There is virtually universal agreement that there was such a person as Jesus” (The Jews in the Time of Jesus: An Introduction, Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1995, p. 114).  Bernard McGinn further claims, “Of course, only a lunatic fringe has ever thought that Jesus did not exist at all” (Antichrist: Two Thousand Years of the Human Fascination with Evil, New York: Columbia University Press, 2000, p. 34).

  

Historical evidence for the existence of Jesus 

  There are three lines of evidence for the existence of Jesus.  First, there are many Christian documents that provide clear evidence that He truly did exist.  Second, there are secular sources that prove that He existed.  Third, the existence of Christianity serves as evidence that a man named Jesus existed. 

1) Historical Evidence—Christian

   The four Gospels of the New Testament present incontrovertible evidence that Jesus existed.  Regardless of whether all four of the Gospels are written as eyewitness accounts or whether they are based on other sources—the sources clearly show a healthy amount of evidence for the man named Jesus. 

  There are also other early Christian sources that speak of a historical Jesus.  Twenty-one of the twenty-seven Gospels explicitly name Jesus—and almost all of them presume His historical existence.  Further, innumerable church fathers confirm both His existence and His claims to divinity. 

2) Historical Evidence—Non-Christian

  

   Now, it should be noted that, unlike today, Jesus could not have become an overnight celebrity of the whole world.  There were no televisions, radios or other forms of mass media in the first century Roman Empire.  So, it is understandable that some Roman historians never mention Him.  Please keep this in mind, especially in regard to some objections that there isn’t enough confirmation for Jesus’ existence. 

   The first and most important source of non-Christian confirmation is Josephus—he mentions Jesus twice and John the Baptist once.  The first time he mentions Jesus is through his account of the martyrdom of James the Just, Jesus’ brother.  He says,

“…the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ, whose name was James, and some others…” 

Here is the second mention…

“Now there was about this time Jesus, a wise man, if it be lawful to call him a man; for he was a doer of wonderful works, a teacher of such men as receive the truth with pleasure. He drew over to him both many of the Jews and many of the Gentiles. He was [the] Christ.  And when Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men amongst us, had condemned him to the cross, those that loved him at the first did not forsake him; for he appeared to them alive again the third day; as the divine prophets had foretold these and ten thousand other wonderful things concerning him. And the tribe of Christians, so named from him, are not extinct at this day.”

The second passage has been tampered with since Josephus’ original writing—this should be obvious since he really didn’t believe that Jesus was the Christ.  This attempt by later Christians to “Christianize” the passage has led some scholars to reject the whole passage.  However, most scholars still accept a decent amount of Josephus’ second account of Jesus—especially as regards to the existence of Christ.  Regardless of this, the second account mentioned above does prove that a man named Jesus existed.

Roman historian Tacticus also confirms the existence of Christus, which can be translated as Christ.  He says,

“Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace.  Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberias at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilate, and a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judaea, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome...Accordingly, an arrest was first made of all who pleaded guilty: then, upon their information, an immense multitude was convicted, not so much of the crime of firing the city, as of hatred against mankind” (Tacitus, Annals 15.44).

These two very important first-century Roman historians clearly show us that Jesus did exist and they only represent a small part of all of the evidence for the existence of Christ.  Further, some argue that the Babylonian Talmud even mentions Jesus at least once--if this were true it would provide a highly reliable Jewish source of evidence. 

3)  Growth of Christianity

   It is said that Christianity gained its name as part of an insult—that people who wanted to insult early Christians called them “Christ-followers.”  Obviously, this was no insult, since Christians are called to be followers of Christ.  The name stuck.  Without Jesus Christ, there would be no Christianity.  There would be no Jewish sect turned heresy turned the official religion of the Roman Empire.

In light of all this, it doesn’t make sense how Christianity could have come out of a lie about the existence of Jesus.  Further, how could several unlearned men turn a whole empire on its back in such a short time without having an inspiration?  The answer is that they couldn’t. 

 I’ll leave you with a quote from skeptic Bart Ehrman, “I think the evidence is just so overwhelming that Jesus existed, that it’s silly to talk about him not existing.  I don’t know anyone who is a responsible historian, who is actually trained in the historical method, or anybody who is a biblical scholar who does this for a living, who gives any credence at all to any of this” (Bart Ehrman, interview with David V. Barrett, “The Gospel According to Bart,” Fortean Times (221), 2007).

Next:  What can we know about the Historical Jesus?