Historicity of Jesus - Misplaced Pages

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Part of a series on

Jesus in Christianity

Jesus in Islam

Background

Jesus in history

Perspectives on Jesus

Jesus in culture

Debates concerning the historicity of Jesus center on two issues: the role of God in natural and human history, and the veracity of the New Testament as a historical source.

Christian Perspectives

Most Christians believe that God plays an active role in history through miracles and divine revelation; and many accept as a basis for their faith the divine authority of the Bible, and the divinity of Jesus. Some Christians believe that Scripture must be interpreted in the light of tradition, while others believe that individuals can interpret it for themselves.

Some Christians believe that human understanding of the divine is imperfect, and can and must be supplemented by other forms of knowledge. Such people draw on works by secular scientists and historians to help interpret their own experiences and their reading of Scripture. Some believe in God but question the divinity of Jesus and the Bible, and rely more heavily on the work of scientists and historians. Others do not believe in God and rely entirely on the work of secular scholars.

The increased importance of the Christological argument for the existence of God in modern evangelical teachings has formed questions of the historicity of Jesus of Nazareth with an enhanced urgency. The usual historian's criteria of authenticity, documentation, and the like, tend to be removed from ordinary historical discourse, to take up newly important places in Christological theology.

Skepticism

Many historians make statements about historical events or persons based on more pragmatic standards of empirical evidence. They look at scripture not as divinely inspired but as the work of fallible humans, who wrote in the light of their culture and time. There is a paucity of accepted contemporaneous sources and of direct empirical evidence concerning Jesus, which makes it especially difficult for representatives of the different religious and secular traditions of knowledge and faith to reach agreement on a "biography" of Jesus.

Taking a starting point loosely connected with Higher criticism, a rigorous historical analysis of Biblical texts in the 19th century, also known as the "Tübingen School" and connected to the Eberhard Karls university in Tübingen, Baden-Württemberg, Germany, a number of critics have proposed that there was no historical Jesus. They argue from the internal features of, and inconsistencies between, the Gospels and other canonical and non-canonical Christian and Gnostic writings to argue that Jesus was a mythical (or mythologized) figure. The paucity of non-Christian historical sources that corroborate Christian writings is adduced as support for this position.

Jesus as a myth

Perhaps most prolific of those Biblical scholars denying the historical existence of Jesus is a professor of German, George Albert Wells, who argues that Jesus was originally a myth. Another example is Earl Doherty, who suggests that Paul's idea of Jesus was derived from his reading of the Torah.

In this extreme position within the skeptical view, Paul was not interested in —"nor heard of" is an extreme formulation— any actual person named Jesus from Nazareth (or Bethlehem), but rather believed in a metaphysical Jesus who died on some ethereal plane at the beginning of time, or some far-off time in history. The Jesus of Nazareth character was made up after Paul's time by a composite of Old Testament prophecies, with embellishments added by many people. In this view, the interpretation of the meaning of Jesus was also informed by messianic, apocalyptic and resurrectionist myths that were common during the late Hellenistic age. A persistent idea is that his existence is based on a whisper campaign to expel the Roman rulers.

The term "demythologize" is understood less strongly by other authors. When Rudolf Bultmann says he wants to demythologize Jesus' teachings he means he wants to make those teachings a modern day reality, not something that stays and belongs to an ancient primitive world. Bultmann remained convinced the life of Jesus was theology in story form. Essentially, the question of the historicity of Jesus was considered unimportant compared with the meaning of the teachings that arose (in whatever way) around him.

Moderate skepticism

Many other scholars, who do not doubt the historical Jesus, would agree that these Pauline interpretations of his sayings at secondhand and literary extrapolations from his actions and mythologized invented detail have been applied to an historical figure. They demonstrate that the Pauline Christians were unfamiliar with Jewish culture and that the term "Nazarene" was unfamiliar to those transcribing Aramaic oral tradition into Greek: a more appropriate translation, this school suggests, of the historical rabbi Jesus, who came to be so thoroughly mythologized, was "Jesus the Nazirite." (see also Nazareth link below)

Others contend that aspects of Jesus' life as related in the New Testament were entirely derived from popular mystery religions in the Roman Empire at that time period. These religions worshipped saviour figures such as Isis, Horus, Osiris, Dionysus and Mithras, and Christian Gnosticism which flourished in the 2nd and 3rd centuries openly combined Christian imagery and stories with the beliefs and practices of Mediterranean mystery religions. This is not supported by the earliest surviving Christian art from the late 3rd and 4th centuries. In the catacombs of Rome it would seem that only Orpheus was adapted. The Christian's "Good Shepherd" carries a lamb and a flute.

Proponents of this view generally date the gospels much later than some mainstream scholars and assert textual corruption in the passages supporting the existence of Jesus in Paul and Josephus as interpolated. Flavius Josephus was trained as a Pharisee and the passages attributed to him do not read true to this; It fails a standard test for authenticity, in that it contains vocabulary not used by Josephus per the Complete Concordance to Flavius Josephus, ed. K. H. Rengstorf, 2002. Professor Shlomo Pines found a different version of Josephus testimony in an Arabic version of the tenth century. It has obviously not been interpolated in the same way as the Christian version circulating in the West. Cornelius Tacitus echoed popular opinion about Jesus and had no independent source of information. The passage in the Annals as written in 115 CE has no value as a historical evidence for Jesus.

Recourse is not necessary to later pseudepigraphical writings, such as the much later alleged letter from Herod Antipas purporting to be directed to the Roman Senate defending his (Herod's) actions concerning both John the Baptist and Jesus, and said to be found among the records of the Roman Senate. Whatever their internal details, the very existence of such pseudepigraphical writings and of interpolations into authentic documents, which accumulate from the 2nd century onwards, to judge from internal evidence, has genuine historical value, in that they document a perceived need to supplement the documentation on the part of Christians who apparently felt the need to support the historical existence of Jesus of Nazareth, by providing the kind of documents they felt ought to have existed. A simpler explanation could be: a street-wise forger knew how to sell his work (it still happens today).

Scholarly Defence of Jesus

Most scholars do not dispute that a person named Jesus, connected in some way to the events described in the Bible, once lived; they feel that evidence for Jesus' existence two thousand years ago is by historical standards fairly strong. The primary source of historical knowledge about Jesus is contained within the Christian Gospels, as many historians believe them to have originated from sources written within living memory of Jesus (but later lost, and remaining lost). Evidence for a historical Jesus is also provided by the Epistles, especially those by Paul. Other sources regarded as of less significance from the perspective of modern historians are other early Christian material, other religious traditions, and certain historians of the period. Many historians accept the New Testament as evidence for the historical existence of Jesus; but there is much less acceptance of the narrative of his life and death, and far less for any miraculous claims, among professional historians and liberal biblical scholars. (disputed — see talk page)

These scholars also draw on mention of Jesus in Josephus, and mention of early Christians in Suetonius and Tacitus. Most historians do not dispute the existence of a person who was named Jesus; Jesus is not only mentioned extensively within the New Testament, but is also considered a historical figure within the religions of Judaism, Islam, Mandeanism and Gnosticism. Both John the Baptist and James the Just are also documented in Josephus. The Roman historian Tacitus also makes a mention. (See Sources of Jesus)

Moreover, the same historians generally agree that at least some of the sources on which Gospels are based were written within living memory of Jesus's lifetime. These historians therefore accept that the accounts of the life of Jesus in the Gospels provide a reasonable basis of evidence, by the standards of ancient history, for the historical existence of Jesus and the basic account of his life and death. The Gospel of Mark is considered by historians to be the earliest of the four. These scholars date it between 55 and 65, although the most common dating of Mark is 65-80 CE, which makes it possible that it was circulating while some of the apostles and their immediate disciples, as well as numerous other eye witnesses, were still alive; so they can conclude that it was fairly close to the early oral preaching about Jesus' life.

Religious accounts are not the only offered evidence for Jesus' existence. Some early secular sources also mention Jesus or his followers. Will Durant the philosopher and historian wrote in his book Caesar and Christ (pp. 554-5):

The oldest known mention of Christ in pagan literature is in a letter of the younger Pliny (ca. 110), asking the advice of Trajan on the treatment of Christians. Five years later Tacitus described Nero's persecution of the Chrestiani in Rome, and pictured them as already (A.D. 64) numbering adherents throughout the empire.... Suetonius (ca. 125) mentions the same persecution, and reports Claudius' banishment of "Jews who, stirred up by Christ , were causing public disturbances," the passage accords well with the Acts of the Apostles, which mentions a decree of Claudius that "the Jews should leave Rome." These references prove the existence of Christians rather than Christ; but unless we assume the latter we are driven to the improbable hypothesis that Jesus was invented in one generation.

He also writes (p. 557):

In summary, it is clear that there are many contradictions between one gospel and another, many dubious statements of history, many suspicious resemblances to the legends told of pagan gods, many incidents apparently designed to prove the fulfillment of Old Testament prophecies, many passages possibly aiming to establish a basis for some later doctrine or ritual of the Church....

All this granted, much remains. The contradictions are of minutae, not substance; in essentials the synoptic gospels agree remarkably well, and form a consistent portrait of Christ.... That a few simple men should in one generation have invented so powerful and appealing a personality, so lofty an ethic and so inspiring a vision of human brotherhood, would be a miracle far more incredible than any recorded in the Gospels.

Durant's unfounded opinion here is, however, not a considerable defence for one's historicity. The time between the first Gospel and Jesus's influence was closer to two generations, the number of men and their background are uncertain, and the time it took to devise the story of Jesus was definitely not limited by the date it was thought to take place; therefore, any number of men, being familiar with the stories and characterisation of the Old Testament and alternate and secular texts in any amount of time, from less than a year to over a lifetime, could invent them. The figures that Jesus repeatedly attacked were leaders of two Jewish sects for their inlenient enforcement of Scripture; such people who had a good knowledge of the text were able to supplement it, and take advantage of the fact that there was a spiritual or mythical void in that part of the world when competing, older religions were being spread and discussed thereto from other parts. (disputed — see talk page)

Academic historians and religious texts

Unlike religious fundamentalists, who assume that such texts as the Gospels are entirely and literally true, and unlike some critics of Christianity, who assume that such texts are entirely false, most academic historians believe that such texts are historical sources, but that their meaning depends on a variety of factors. Historians generally assume that the Gospels, like other historical sources (for example, the works of Josephus), were written by human beings. Some argue that a text with a clearly identified author (for example, the Gospel of Luke) was written by someone else, or by several authors, or by an author drawing on several sources. Historians assume that a text that is based on real events may nevertheless reflect the biased view of the author or authors, or a bias that is meant to appeal to an intended audience. They also generally don't believe in supernatural phenomena, and tend to look for naturalistic explanations of any supernatural phenomena that were recorded. Consequently, they believe such texts contain information not only about a described event, they also reveal information of historical value about the authors and audience. Historians then use information about the cultural, political, and economic context (from sources outside the text in question) as a basis for reconstructing the intended or understood meaning of the text. Although historians use established methods, there are often vigorous debates over the validity or strength of a given interpretation. Moreover, historians strive to revise their interpretations when new linguistic, literary, or archaeological evidence becomes available. (disputed — see talk page)

External links

Reference

Michael Grant, Jesus: An Historian's Review of the Gospels
Edgar J. Goodspeed, Biblical Forgeries
Raymond E. Brown, Joseph Fitzmyer, Roland Murphy, Jerome Biblical Commentary, Prentice Hall, 1968
Rudolf Bultmann, History of the Synoptic Tradition,Harper & Row, 1963
Edgar V. McKnight,What is Form Criticism?, 1997
Norman Perrin,What is Redaction Criticism?
Robin Jensen,Understanding Early Christian Art, Rutledge, 2000
Stephen Patterson, Marcus Borg, John Dominic Crossman, Edited by Hershel Shanks,The Search for Jesus: Modern Scholarship Looks at the Gospels,Biblical Archaeology Society, 1994 Symposium at the Smithsonian Institution, 11 Sept 1993
The Jesus Puzzle. Did Christianity Begin with a Mythical Christ?: Challenging the Existence of an Historical Jesus, Earl Doherty, Publisher: Canadian Humanist Pubns; 1st edition (October 19, 1999)
The Jesus Hoax, Phyllis Graham, Publisher: Frewin; (1974)
Jesus, Charles Guignebert, Publisher: Albin Michel; (December 31, 1969)
An Anthology of Atheism and Rationalism, Gordon Stein, Publisher: Prometheus Books; (December 1, 1989)
The Historical Evidence for Jesus, George A.Wells, Publisher: Prometheus Books; (January 1, 1988)
Jesus: The Evidence, Ian Wilson, Publisher: Regnery Publishing; 1 edition (October 1, 2000)

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