Did Jesus Exist?

I came across an arti­cle writ­ten by a man named Mark Thomas on the exis­tence of Jesus, you can find it here. This is some­thing of a reply to a few of his claims as I under­stood them.

The arti­cle claims the fol­low­ing contentions:

1. Jesus had no earthly existence

• i. No reli­able extra-Biblical references
• ii. The Gospels are unre­li­able his­tor­i­cal accounts
• iii. Jesus’ bio­graph­i­cal details were not known by Paul
• iv. Jesus was seen as a spir­i­tual sky-god by Paul and others

2. Scrip­tures were not taken as sacred
3. Chris­tian­ity was heav­ily influ­enced by sur­round­ing reli­gions
4. Prophe­cies were not fulfilled

This post will most likely deal with only the first con­tention; that Jesus had no earthly exis­tence. At some point in the future I’ll address the others.

#1 Jesus had no earthly existence

The major­ity of schol­ars, both lib­eral and con­ser­v­a­tive, do not doubt that a per­son named Jesus existed (even the rad­i­cal Jesus Sem­i­nar does not deny this fact). The belief that Jesus did not exist is viewed as quite extreme and is more or less dis­dained and con­sid­ered to have been dis­cred­ited . The (lib­eral) Ger­man the­olo­gian Rudolf Bult­mann quite firmly stated that ‘by no means are we at the mercy of those who doubt or deny that Jesus ever lived’¹. Like­wise accord­ing to New Tes­ta­ment scholar Luke John­son, author of  The Real Jesus, “Even the most crit­i­cal his­to­rian can con­fi­dently assert that a Jew named Jesus worked as a teacher and wonder-worker in Pales­tine dur­ing the reign of Tiberius, was exe­cuted by cru­ci­fix­ion under the pre­fect Pon­tius Pilate and con­tin­ued to have fol­low­ers after his death“².

In any case, let’s deal with Mark’s spe­cific claims.

i. No reli­able extra-Biblical references

While it is a very nice thing to have extra-biblical men­tion of Jesus, the apos­tles or their ‘plight,’ the real­ity is that the New Tes­ta­ment is con­sid­ered by all sides to be valid his­tor­i­cal tes­ti­mony which has held its place in the face of intense scrutiny. I sim­ply reject the notion that we can’t know if Jesus existed or not if we don’t have men­tion of him out­side of Scrip­ture. The plain fact is that the Gospels are the largest attes­ta­tion we have of the life of Jesus of Nazareth.

Mark’s con­tention is that, “If Jesus existed and if the spec­tac­u­lar events in the gospels really hap­pened, they would have been noted by many writ­ers — includ­ing Philo of Alexan­dria, Seneca the Elder, Pliny the Elder, Jus­tus of Tiberius, and over thirty oth­ers. None of these men referred to Jesus or the fan­tas­ti­cal bib­li­cal events.” New Tes­ta­ment scholar Craig. L. Blomberg gives four rea­sons why the above may be the case, “the hum­ble begin­nings of Chris­tian­ity, the remote loca­tion in Pales­tine on the east­ern fron­tiers of the Roman empire, the small per­cent­age of the works of ancient Greco-Roman his­to­ri­ans which have sur­vived, and the lack of atten­tion paid by those which are extant to Jew­ish fig­ures in gen­eral”³.

How­ever, that is not to say that there are no extra-biblical ref­er­ences to the life of Jesus. There are nine extra-biblical ref­er­ences to Jesus within 150 years of his death: “Jose­phus, the Jew­ish his­to­rian; Tac­i­tus, the Roman his­to­rian; Pliny the Younger, a politi­cian of Rome; Phle­gon, a freed slave who wrote his­to­ries; Lucian, the Greek satirist; Cel­sus, a Roman philoso­pher; and prob­a­bly the his­to­ri­ans Sue­to­nius and Thal­lus, as well as the pris­oner Mara Bar-Serapion.” If we ignore the ref­er­ences by both Jose­phus and Tac­i­tus — as Mark does not view them as legit­i­mate — then we would still have forty authors, seven of them sec­u­lar, that make men­tion of Jesus within 150 years of his death⁴. In fact, if you were to exam­ine the men­tions of Tiberius Cae­sar within 150 years of his death, we would come to a total of 10 men­tions: “Tac­i­tus, Sue­to­nius, Velleius Pater­cu­lus, Plutarch, Pliny the Elder, Strabo, Seneca, Valerius Max­imus, Jose­phus, and Luke“[5.Ibid., 128.]. The his­tor­i­cal evi­dence for Jesus of Nazareth is greater than that of the his­tor­i­cal evi­dence for oth­ers such as Cae­sar, Con­fu­cius or Buddha.

ii. The Gospels are Unre­li­able His­tor­i­cal accounts

Mark’s con­tention is that the ear­li­est Gospel — Mark’s Gospel — was writ­ten after 70CE (“and quite pos­si­bly decades later”) and that we don’ t know who wrote Mark’s Gospel. Fur­ther­more, that this unknown author was not local to Pales­tine. Mark’s two main con­tentions are that in Mark 5, “Jesus went to Gerasenes, trans­fered demons from a man into 2000 pigs, and drowned them in the sea. How­ever, Gerasenes was about 31 miles from the near­est sea — Galilee” and that in Mark 10, “In Mark 10, Jesus said that a woman could divorce her hus­band, which was impos­si­ble in Pales­tine at that time”.

In and of them­selves there is noth­ing sig­nif­i­cant or sub­stan­tial about these objec­tions. I’ll deal with Mark 5 first, then Mark 10. Then the dat­ing of Mark’s gospel and whether or not we know who wrote Mark’s Gospel.

Part of the prob­lem with Mark 5 is trans­la­tion. Accord­ing to F.F. Bruce, “Matthew calls it “the coun­try of the Gadarenes” (viii. 28); Mark “the coun­try of the Gerasenes” (v. 1), and Luke, prob­a­bly, “the coun­try of the Gerge­senes” (viii. 26). T. H. Hux­ley, in his Essays upon some Con­tro­verted Ques­tions (1892), made merry over the escapade of the Gadarene swine, run­ning the seven miles between Gadar and the lake of Galilee, cross­ing the deep river Yarmuk en route. The best known Gerasa was a Greek city nearly forty miles south­east of the lake (mod­ern vil­lage of Khersa, on the east shore of the lake. Luke’s read­ing “Gerge­senes” may rep­re­sent even more accu­rately the ancient name of this place, as Ori­gen knew of a Gergesa on the lake of Galilee. But the city of Gadara owned some ter­ri­tory round about Khersa, so that the dis­trict and the pigs could prop­erly also be called Gadarene”⁵. Ralph Earle him­self sup­ports Bruce’s posi­tion, ” The ref­er­ence could hardly be to the bet­ter known Gerasa (Jerash) between thirty and forty miles south­east from the lake. On the other hand, Gadara is only six miles from the south­ern tip of the lake and could eas­ily have given its name to the dis­trict. Gergesa may have been a vari­ant spelling of Gerasa”[7.Ralph Earle, The Gospel Accord­ing to Mark (Grand Rapids: Eerd­mans, 1957), 70.].

Thus, while there is cer­tainly a week objec­tion present, it is not with­out answer and is fraught with inter­pre­ta­tive, his­tor­i­cal and archae­o­log­i­cal issues.

With respect to Mark 10 the answer is much more sim­ple. Jesus was “cor­nered” and ques­tioned by the Phar­isees regard­ing ques­tions of Mosaic law; this is the con­text of Jesus’ answer (as opposed to the legal sys­tem in Pales­tine that was present).

The issue of Mark’s author­ship is also of lit­tle sig­nif­i­cance. There’s no rea­son to think that Mark did not write the Gospel of Mark (at least Mark hasn’t pro­vided any sat­is­fac­tory objec­tions). Fur­ther­more, even if Mark did not write the Gospel of Mark, what dif­fer­ence does it make? With respect of the dat­ing of Mark. Conservative’s usu­ally date Mark as early as 68CE with lib­er­als dat­ing Mark usu­ally no later than 75CE (these dates depend­ing on the destruc­tion of the tem­ple in Jerusalem in 70CE). No  New Tes­ta­ment scholar will date Mark much later than 75CE assum­ing they want to be taken seriously.

There are in fact five strong rea­sons for accept­ing the his­tor­i­cal reli­a­bil­ity of the Gospels: “there was not enough time for leg­endary influ­ences to take prece­dence over the his­tor­i­cal facts. “The Gospels are not anal­o­gous to folk talks or con­tem­po­rary “urban leg­ends”. The Jew­ish trans­mis­sion of Sacred tra­di­tions was highly devel­oped and reli­able. There were sig­nif­i­cant restraints on the embell­ish­ment of tra­di­tions about Jesus, such as the pres­ence of eye­wit­nesses and the apos­tles’ super­vi­sion. Finally, the Gospel writ­ers have a proven track record of his­tor­i­cal reli­a­bil­ity“⁶. How­ever this is some­thing I won’t get into at this time, you can read the foot­note for fur­ther information.

iii. Jesus’ bio­graph­i­cal details were not known by Paul

This objec­tion is rather silly and shows a poor under­stand­ing of the per­son of Paul. There are a cou­ple rea­sons why Paul men­tions very lit­tle of Jesus’ bio­graph­i­cal infor­ma­tion. The first rea­son is that Paul most likely knew very lit­tle of Jesus out­side of his major claims. As far as we know Jesus and Paul sim­ply did not encounter each other dur­ing Jesus’ life time. Paul was a phar­isee, a stu­dent of Gamaliel, etc. The sec­ond rea­son is that Paul’s ear­li­est writ­ings are dated in the 50’s CE⁷, ear­lier than the Gospel accounts (just in case any­one wants to argue Paul had the Gospels from which to ref­er­ence). The third rea­son is that for the major­ity of Paul’s writ­ings, Jesus’ cru­ci­fix­ion and res­ur­rec­tion are para­mount with no need for the lesser details. The fourth rea­son is that even the Gospels them­selves don’t men­tion many bio­graph­i­cal details of Jesus out­side of his major mir­a­cles, death and resurrection.

iv. Jesus was seen as a spir­i­tual sky-god by Paul and others

This view is plainly silly and has been dealt with by William Lane Craig⁸, N.T Wright⁹ and oth­ers. Paul viewed Jesus as very phys­i­cal, there would have been no such ‘sky-god’ notion in first cen­tury Palestine.

I’ll have to leave it there for now.

Related posts:

1. Was Jesus who he said he was?
2. Jesus, the path to right living?
3. “Take me away, Jesus!”