Did Jesus Exist?

Jesus: Man or Myth?

by

Robert Oerter

©2009

 

Did Jesus actually exist?

To question Jesus’s existence may strike the reader as bizarre, the answer obvious. Isn’t Jesus just as much a part of history as Herod, Pontius Pilate, John the Baptist, or Julius Caesar? That, as least, is the impression one gets from Christians and non-Christians alike: news media, popular entertainment, encyclopedias and dictionaries almost without exception treat Jesus as a historical person. Is there any real reason for skepticism about Jesus’s existence?

We do not, of course, have the kind of archaeological evidence for Jesus that we have for Herod and Pilate. Coins are struck and monuments inscribed for rulers, not for peasants. Evidence, if it exists, will have to come from written records. In the writings of Jesus’s non-Christian contemporaries, however, we find no mention of him. Philo, for example was a Jew from Alexandria who died around 45 AD. He writes of the cruelty of Pilate and his arbitrary executions, but he never mentions Jesus.[1] This silence is not really surprising: Jesus’s following during his lifetime was probably much smaller than that of John the Baptist, whom Philo also fails to mention. Among the Christian writings, the gospels have the most information about Jesus’s life, but apart from the gospels, early Christian writings have surprisingly little to say about Jesus’s life or his teachings. The New Testament letters and Revelation contain few such details, as do other early writings like Barnabas, the Didache, 1 Clement, and the Shepherd of Hermas. Perhaps the entire Christian story grew as a myth, like the myths of Zeus, Attis, Isis and other religious cults of the time and was only gradually transformed into “history.” That, at least, is the claim of a few radical skeptics. Often these claims are ill-informed, but a few authors take a more scholarly approach.

• Alvar Ellegard – In Jesus: One Hundred Years Before Christ Ellegard identifies Jesus with the Teacher of Righteousness of the Dead Sea Scrolls and proposes that Christianity grew out of a movement that called themselves the Church of God and that began around 100 BC.
• G.A. Wells – For many years Wells has been the foremost proponent of the view that all of elements of the Christian story were borrowed from Jewish or pagan traditions. In The Jesus Myth (1999), however, he seems to accept that the Jesus of the Q document was based on an actual person, while still maintaining that Paul believed in a Jesus who was entirely mythical.[2]
• Robert M. Price – In Deconstructing Jesus Price follows Wells’s line of argument, citing similarities between Christian writings and Greek Cynic philosophy, other messianic figures, and early Greek fiction. He concludes, “There may have been a real figure there [behind the stories of Jesus], but there is simply no longer any way of being sure.”[3]
• Earl Doherty – In The Jesus Puzzle Doherty points out many places in the New Testament letters where one would expect the author to mention a saying, miracle, or event from Jesus’s life, but no mention appears. Doherty extends this argument from silence into the second century, noting that the writings of the early Christian apologists are similarly lacking in references to Jesus’s deeds. In Doherty’s view Jesus began as a completely mythical character who had only a heavenly existence. The earthly Jesus came about as a later development and was not based on any historical person.

Notice that even among these skeptics two out of four accept that the figure of Jesus is based on a historical person, even if that person is far from the gospel Jesus. Certainly the great majority of New Testament scholars accept a historical Jesus. Most such scholars are Christian, though; perhaps their faith is a barrier to objective evaluation of the evidence.

In the essay Gospel Truth we considered one extreme position: that every bit of the New Testament is absolutely true. In this essay we look at the opposite extreme: that the Christian story has no historical basis at all. What is at the core of Christianity: a man or a myth?

 

The Non-Christian Testimony

By far the most important non-Christian source for New Testament history is Flavius Josephus. A Jew born around 37 AD in Jerusalem, Josephus became involved in the Jewish revolt that began in 66 AD and ended with the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD. Josephus was captured by the Romans and gained (some would say curried) favor with the Roman commander Vespasian by prophesying that Vespasian would become emperor. When this came to pass, Josephus was freed and rewarded with land near Jerusalem. He then went to Rome and began writing the history of Palestine. His first work, The Jewish War, covers the period 164 BC – 73 AD. A more extensive history, Jewish Antiquities, was written around 93 AD and covers all of Old Testament history, then proceeds to relate the events leading up to the Jewish revolt, ending the history in 62 AD.[4] Josephus thus covers the period of Jesus’s lifetime in both books.

As with any historical source, Josephus must be used with circumspection. He is not always consistent: for example, in The Jewish War he writes that the Jerusalem temple was rebuilt in the 15^th year of Herod’s reign, while in Jewish Antiquities he places the rebuilding in Herod’s 18^th year.[5] Nor is he unbiased. He exaggerates his own exploits and aggrandizes his imperial patrons. Josephus was not an eyewitness to the period of Jesus’s lifetime, having been born (as we shall see) shortly after Jesus’s death. Yet, on the whole, his information can be considered reliable, though it is important to compare other sources when they are available.

Josephus provides details about several persons that appear in the gospels. These details not only confirm the historicity of these persons, they allow us to set the time frame of the gospel portrait quite narrowly. Herod the Great was declared king of Judea by the Roman senate in 40 BC and ruled until his death in 4 BC.[6] After his death his son, Herod Antipas, became tetrarch of Galilee, which he ruled until 39 AD.[7] Pontius Pilate was prefect of Judea from 26 – 36 AD.[8] Josephus is the only non-Christian of the first century to mention John the Baptist. Josephus confirms that John was executed by Herod Antipas, although the account differs considerably from that in the gospels.[9] These differences rule out any possibility that the Josephus passage about John was a later fabrication by Christians. In the gospel portrait, then, Jesus must have been born in 4 BC or earlier and crucified between 26 and 36 AD.

Josephus is also the only non-Christian of the first century to mention Jesus. There is nothing in The Jewish War and only two brief mentions in Jewish Antiquities. Here they are in their entirety:

Around this time there lived Jesus, a wise man, if indeed one ought to call him a man. For he was one who did surprising deeds, and a teacher of such people as accept the truth gladly. He won over many Jews and many of the Greeks. He was the Messiah.

When Pilate, upon hearing him accused by men of the highest standing among us, had condemned him to be crucified, those who in the first place came to love him did not give up their affection for him, for on the third day he appeared to them restored to life. The prophets of God had prophesied this and countless other marvelous things about him. And the tribe of Christians, so called after him, have still to this day not died out.[10]

And so he (Ananus, the high priest) convened the judges of the Sanhedrin and brought before them a man named James, the brother of Jesus who was called the Christ, and certain others. He accused them of having transgressed the law and delivered them up to be stoned.[11]

Now, the first passage is clearly problematic. How could Josephus, a Jew, write that Jesus was the Messiah, that he was restored to life on the third day in fulfillment of prophecy? Whoever wrote those things was a Christian, and we have no indication from anything else Josephus wrote that he was a Christian. Therefore, Josephus did not write them.

The scholarly consensus is that Josephus’s text has been tampered with by some later Christian copyist.[12] The question is, how much? Was the whole section fabricated and inserted into the text to provide authority for Jesus where none existed? Or were the creedal statements inserted into an originally neutral text? The second passage provides some help. There is no reason to suspect a Christian interpolation here: “brother of Jesus who was called the Christ” simply serves to identify which James. But this identification would be meaningless unless this Jesus had been mentioned earlier. It is likely, then, that Josephus had some more or less neutral reference to Jesus in Book 18, which was subsequently modified in some way by a Christian copyist who found it insufficiently respectful of Jesus.[13]

Several Roman writers are the next after Josephus to mention Christianity. These notices come from 110 – 120 AD.

After Rome’s great fire of 64 AD the emperor Nero laid the blame on the Christians, “a class of men loathed for their vices,” according to the historian Tacitus, who wrote his Annals around 110 AD.

Christus, the founder of the name, had undergone the death penalty in the reign of Tiberius, by sentence of the procurator Pontius Pilatus, and the pernicious superstition was checked for the moment, only to break out once more, not merely in Judea, the home of the disease, but in the capital itself, where all things horrible or shameful in the world collect and find a vogue.[14]

Nero began persecuting the Christians, a practice which, in spite of his low opinion of them, Tacitus condemns.

Hence, even for criminals who deserved extreme and exemplary punishment, there arose a feeling of compassion; for it was not, as it seemed, for the public good, but to glut one man’s cruelty, that they were being destroyed.[15]

Suetonius, another Roman writing about the same time, also mentions Nero’s persecution of the Christians, although he doesn’t connect it with the fire.[16] Neither author reveals where they got their information. Does Tacitus’s knowledge of the execution under Pontius Pilate come from a Roman source, or did he learn about Christ and Pilate from the Christians of his own day?

The question is unanswerable. Nevertheless, we learn something important from these reports. There were people known as Christians in Rome in 64 AD, and (by 110 AD at least) they were connected with a man known as Christus (Christ) who was executed under Pilate.

Pliny the Younger, writing at about the same time, has little to say about Christ but much about Christians. Pliny was in charge of Bithynia and Pontus in Asia Minor on the shores of the Black Sea. There he found Christianity so widespread that pagan temples and sacred festivals had been abandoned, and the priests of the pagan temples were having trouble finding purchasers for sacrificial meat. Pliny interrogated those who were denounced to him as Christians, and if they refused to recant, curse Christ, and offer sacrifices to the Roman gods, he executed them. He tortured two maidservants who were Christian ministers but found only “perverse and extravagant superstition,” no actual crimes. He learned further that

[the accused Christians] were in the habit of meeting on a certain fixed day before it was light, when they sang in alternate verses a hymn to Christ, as to a god, and bound themselves by a solemn oath, not to any wicked deeds, but never to commit any fraud, theft or adultery, never to falsify their word, nor deny a trust when they should be called upon to deliver it up; after which it was their custom to separate, and then reassemble to partake of food - but food of an ordinary and innocent kind.[17]

Pliny wrote all this in a letter to the emperor Trajan. Unable to uncover any wrongdoing other than impiety towards the official gods, he was in some consternation how to proceed. Should he prosecute only actual misdeeds, or was professing Christianity itself a crime?

The matter seemed to me well worth referring to you, -especially considering the numbers endangered. Persons of all ranks and ages, and of both sexes are, and will be, involved in the prosecution. For this contagious superstition is not confined to the cities only, but has spread through the villages and rural districts; it seems possible, however, to check and cure it.[18]

Trajan responded with a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy. Christians were not to be searched out. If denounced they were to be given the opportunity to repent and worship the Roman gods. Only those who refused to do so were to be punished.[19]

From this we learn a good deal about these Christians: their mode of worship, their (female!) ministers, their dedication to Christ even (in some cases) to death. What is important for now is that Christians are by this time so widespread, at least in this region, as to have a major social and economic impact.

What picture of early Christianity do we get from these non-Christian writings? First of all, there is no hint of Christians or Jesus before about 50 AD. By 64 AD, though, Christians are drawing official notice in Rome. From 90 AD on, they are consistently associated with a man, Jesus (or Christ), who was executed under Pontius Pilate. By the early second century Christianity is so influential in some areas that the worship of the Roman gods is in serious jeopardy.

The picture is admittedly very incomplete, and what little there is may derive indirectly from Christian sources. Yet none of these authors expresses any doubt about the existence of Jesus; none of the information presented contradicts the gospel picture. For a more precise portrait we must turn to the Christian sources.[20]

 

Christian Testimony

The earliest New Testament sources for Jesus’s life are the letters of Paul, Q, and Mark. Not necessarily in that order: dating is always tricky. In the case of a reconstructed document like Q, it is even trickier that usual. How precisely can these dates be determined?

Justin is the earliest firm point of reference for the gospels. Around 160 AD (see the essay Questioning the Canon) Justin quoted extensively from Matthew and Luke. He never gives any titles for these gospels, but he calls them “the memoirs which…were drawn up by his apostles and those who followed them.”[21] These two gospels must have been written some time earlier, as Justin clearly considers them to be ancient tradition. Matthew and Luke therefore must have been written by about 120 AD at the latest. Mark and Q must have been written earlier than this, say by 110 AD.

The letters of Ignatius refer less clearly to the gospels. When he writes that Jesus was baptized “so that all righteousness might be fulfilled in him,” for example, is this a reference to Matthew 3:15, where Jesus says his baptism is to “do all that uprightness demands”?[22] Ignatius was executed during the reign of Trajan (98 – 117 AD), so, if his letters are dependent on the gospels, the gospel dates should probably be pushed back somewhat.[23] Ignatius certainly knew some of Paul’s letters, including 1 Corinthians and probably Romans, Ephesians, and Philippians.[24] All of our earliest sources were therefore in existence by 110 AD.

The best evidence that Paul was a real person comes from the letters themselves. Some of “Paul’s” letters in the New Testament may have been forged – we already saw that later Christians wrote letters in his name. Yet even if all the letters are forgeries they still testify to Paul’s existence, for who would forge a letter from someone completely unknown? In fact, the scholarly consensus is that at least seven of the New Testament epistles are authentic, namely, Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, 1 Thessalonians, and Philemon. These seven share a consistent style, vocabulary, and outlook that leaves little doubt that they were written by the same man. The authenticity of Ephesians, Colossians, and 2 Thessalonians is still debated, while most scholars consider the Pastoral epistles, 1 and 2 Timothy and Titus, to be pseudonymous, which is to say written by someone else in Paul’s name. Hebrews doesn’t claim to be a letter of Paul’s and only accidentally came to be associated with him.[25]

Acts tells much more about Paul. Unfortunately, not all of this information is reliable. For instance, Acts 9:19-30 relates that after Paul’s conversion on the Damascus road he immediately went to Jerusalem and met the apostles there. In Galatians 1:15-18, however, Paul insists that he did not go to Jerusalem until three years after his conversion. Either Paul is lying or the author of Acts is wrong about this episode.[26] Clearly, we need to treat the “history” of Acts cautiously.

The crucial episode for dating Paul’s life occurs in Acts 18:12-17, in which he is taken before the proconsul Gallio. An inscription discovered at Delphi in 1905 informs us that Gallio was in office from 51 – 52 AD. Proconsuls were in office for just one year, so if the episode is historical Paul’s visit to Corinth can be dated precisely.[27] From comments sprinkled through his letters the rest of Paul’s history can be dated: conversion to Christianity 35 AD, letters written 52 – 56 AD, arrested in 56 AD and sent to Rome in 58 AD. [28]

The opening of Acts connects the author with the author of the gospel known as Luke. Ancient Christian tradition and modern scholarship agree that the same person wrote both books.[29] While the author does not identify himself in either book, his use of “we” in several places implies he traveled with Paul at times.[30] If this is true, then Luke/Acts could have been written no more than 50 years or so after Paul’s travels.

Putting it all together, we have Paul’s letters around 52 – 56 AD, Luke/Acts anytime between 58 and 110 AD, and Mark and Q sometime earlier than Luke/Acts. This information, gleaned from Paul and Luke, is completely consistent with our earlier conclusion that the synoptic gospels must have appeared before 110 AD. That consistency doesn’t prove the truth of what Paul and Luke wrote, nonetheless it is important to establish. If we had found disagreement about the time frame – if, for instance, Paul could be shown to have lived before the time of Pontius Pilate – then the historicity of the gospel accounts would have become very questionable. When we find, on the contrary, agreement about details like this, details that are entirely incidental to the story and yet dovetail neatly with information from other sources, our confidence in the historical value of the information is greatly increased.

While it is possible that Q or Mark predate Paul, it is also possible that both are later. Paul’s letters are thus the earliest securely dated writings in the New Testament. The letters have surprisingly little information about Jesus’s life, though. Paul never mentions Jesus’s virgin birth, his parents, his miracles, or his healings. Paul rarely mentions any of Jesus’s teachings. The focus is almost entirely on Jesus’s death and resurrection and their meaning for believers.

In fact, Paul does mention instructions or commandments “of the Lord” (as he invariably refers to them), albeit only five times. Three of these sayings have parallels in the gospels, the other two do not.[31] Are these sayings evidence of a human Jesus who left instructions for his followers? Doherty and Wells argue that these sayings come not from Jesus’s lifetime but from Christian prophecy. That is, as Wells puts it, “Such words of the Lord may be called prophetic because they represent, not what a historical Jesus had once said, but what he now says in his resurrected state.”[32]

This interpretation of Paul’s “commandments of the Lord” might seem an unlikely one at first sight. However it is widely accepted among New Testament scholars that some of the sayings attributed to Jesus come from prophecy rather than from memory and oral tradition.[33] At several points Paul’s letters make this possibility clear. Paul speaks of the “words…taught by the Spirit” (1 Corinthians 2:13), he looks to prophecy for confirmation of his instructions (1 Corinthians 14:37), and he quotes the Lord’s answer to his prayer, “My grace is sufficient for you…” (2 Corinthians 12:9). Paul, in fact, explicitly denies that he learned the gospel from others.

It was not from any human being that I received it, and I was not taught it, but it came to me through a revelation of Jesus Christ.[34]

Elsewhere, though, Paul mentions “The tradition I handed on to you in the first place, a tradition which I myself had received…” He goes on to mention the people associated with this tradition: Cephas, the Twelve, and “all the apostles.”[35] Clearly, Paul had information from other Christians in addition to what he received through revelation. But how are we to distinguish between the two sources? Once it is accepted that any of Paul’s commandments of the Lord came from a follower rather than from Jesus himself (while he was still on earth) the possibility must be admitted that all of these commandments arose that way. Here the mythicists seem to have scored a point: the sayings of Jesus reported by Paul do not provide firm support for a historical Jesus.[36] Is there anything else in Paul’s letters that does?

Paul gives few details about Jesus’s life, but those few are telling.

• Jesus was an ordinary human being – “God sent his Son, born of a woman…” (Galatians 4:4). The phrase “born of a woman” is simply an idiomatic way of saying “human being.” For example, Matthew 1:11, states, “In truth I tell you, of all the children born to women, these has never been anyone greater than John the Baptist…” The clear statement of Jesus’s humanity in Galatians (and elsewhere, for example Romans 1:4) certainly rules out any possibility that Paul thought of Jesus as a purely spiritual being. Doherty strains mightily to get around this verse: he argues that the same term was applied to the Greek god Dionysos (but gives no reference to back this up), that Paul’s language reflects Old Testament scriptures (true, but irrelevant), and that Paul is making a parallel between the higher and lower realms with believers as denizens of the lower and Jesus of the higher (a circular argument, since it assumes what needs to be proved). None of this is at all convincing.[37]
• Jesus was a Jew – The Galatians passage continues, “…born under the law…: “The law” here refers to the Jewish law, the Torah. To be “born under the law” simply means to be born a Jew. Moreover, Jesus “was born a descendant of David…” (Romans 1:4). Doherty’s attempt to interpret Jewishness as a spiritual property of Jesus is a complete failure.[38] For Paul, Jesus’s Jewishness is simply a consequence of his birth. In this, Jesus is no different from any other Jew.
• Brother named James – “I stayed fifteen days with him [Cephas] but did not set eyes on any of the rest of the apostles, only James, the Lord’s brother.”[39] That James was Jesus’s brother is confirmed not only by the gospels but by Josephus, as we have already seen.[40] Doherty points out (correctly) that “brother” was used for believers in general, for example in Philippians 1:14. He argues that James’s leadership position “could have resulted in a special designation for him as the brother of the Lord.”[41] For this to work, though, Doherty must argue that the notice in Josephus was interpolated by a Christian scribe, an unlikely possibility.[42]
• Death by crucifixion – Christ’s death and resurrection are central to Paul’s belief and are frequently mentioned or alluded to in his letters. While it is true that he gives few details about the death – there is no mention of Pilate or Herod, no garden of Gethsemane, no betrayal by Judas, no empty tomb – there is no question about how Jesus died.

But he [Christ Jesus] emptied himself; taking the form of a slave, becoming as human beings are; and being in every way like a human being, he was humbler yet, even to accepting death, death on a cross.[43]

This passage from Philippians is the more significant in that many scholars consider it a hymn or confession that predates Paul.[44] For Doherty, Christ’s death and resurrection are “spiritual events,” and the crucifixion is derived from Old Testament passages and pagan myths.[45] Robert M. Price sees the crucifixion as a borrowing from Greek fiction, where near-deaths and disappearing bodies were a common theme.[46] Neither author addresses how that particular combination of myth and story came together at that particular time and place to create the Christian story. Nor do they give any plausible account of how the Christian story came to be viewed as history.

The biggest problem for the mythicists is the nature of death by crucifixion. It was an ignominious death, the death of criminals and brigands.[47] Paul writes, “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the Law by being cursed for our sake since scripture says: Anyone hanged is accursed…”[48] “Indeed, if someone wanted to scotch the rumor that Jesus was the Messiah, there was no better way to do so than to have him crucified,” writes Ben Witherington.[49]

A crucified savior is something unheard of in either Jewish or Greek tradition. It is hard to see how crucifixion could become part of the myth, or, once part of the myth, could be transferred to a human Jesus. Unless, that is, the crucifixion had an undeniable historical core: the actual execution of an actual man.[50]

According to Paul, Jesus was a descendant of David, had a brother named James whom Paul had met, was crucified, and left behind instructions about how his followers should behave. This information, sparse though it is, is difficult to fit into a picture of a purely mythical Jesus.[51]

One last consideration should put the question to rest: if Christianity began with a mythical Jesus, what happened to the followers of that myth? Reports of the heresiologists, beginning with Irenaeus and Hippolytus in the late second century, reveal many branches of “heretical” Christianity. There are some who hold that Jesus was a prophet but a mere man, others who say that the spiritual Christ entered into Jesus at his baptism and left again before his crucifixion, still others who posit complicated hierarchies of heavenly powers, yet Doherty identifies no texts that exhibit the theology he hypothesizes for the earliest Christians. How is it possible that amidst the proliferation of new mythical systems in second-century Christianity the “original” mythical Jesus cult has completely disappeared?

A Jesus Legend?

The testimony of Paul and the non-Christian writers establishes the existence of an earthly Jesus. Yet we have learned little about him apart from the bare fact of his death. Should we then, along with G.A. Wells, relegate the rest of gospel tradition to the realm of legend?

Fortunately, Paul is not our only source for early Christian tradition. Mark and Q, we have seen, were both written by 110 AD at the very latest. In fact, both were probably written much earlier than this: most scholars date Mark around 60 – 75 AD and Q as early as the 50s.[52] To this list should be added the Gospel of Thomas, which is similar to Q in form and content.[53]

Although not all scholars would agree with such an early date,[54] it is likely that at least some of the traditions in Thomas predate the canonical gospels, even if the book as we now have it was compiled in the second century.[55] Take a look at Thomas’s version of the mustard seed parable.

Gospel of Thomas 20	Q version: Luke 13:18-19	Mark 4:30-32
The disciples said to Jesus, “Tell us what the kingdom of heaven is like.” He said to them, “It is like a mustard seed. It is the smallest of all seeds. But when it falls on tilled soil, it produces a great plant and becomes a shelter for birds of the sky.”	He said therefore, “What is the kingdom of God like? And to what shall I compare it? It is like a grain of mustard seed which a man took and sowed in his garden; and it grew and became a tree, and the birds of the air made nests in its branches.	And he said, “With what can we compare the kingdom of God, or what parable shall we use for it? It is like a grain of mustard seed, which, when sown upon the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth; yet when it is sown it grows up and becomes the greatest of all shrubs, and puts forth large branches, so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade.”

 

Mustard is actually a low, bushy plant that spreads like a weed. This parable is similar to the parable of the yeast: The kingdom of God is likened to something that starts small and spreads everywhere. In Mark’s version, though, the mustard plant becomes the largest of all shrubs and puts out large branches, and in the Q version it becomes a tree! The version in Thomas, where it is merely a large plant, is likely closer to the original parable than the others.[56]

This one passage is naturally not sufficient to establish an early date for Thomas or its independence from the canonical gospels. That can only be done by rigorous study of all of the parallel passages, their order, and the context in which they appear. The studies that have been done reveal that[57]

• extensive verbatim agreement is not present
• the order of the passages is very different in Thomas than in the canonical gospels
• the sayings often appear in a more original form in Thomas
• the sayings in Thomas don’t have the interpretative explanations given them by the canonical gospels.

The last point needs some clarification. The parable of the sower in Mark 4:3-9 describes how the seed falls on different types of ground, with different results: some is eaten, some withers, some is choked by thorns, and some produces a good crop. The next few verses (Mark 4:13-20) provide the interpretation: the sower is sowing the Word, Satan comes and snatches it away, and so forth. In Thomas 9 a version of this same parable appears, but there is no explanation or interpretation given. This is generally true in Thomas: sayings and parables of Jesus are given without any accompanying explanation. (Much the same can be said for Q.)

All of this suggests that Thomas was written without any knowledge of the canonical gospels. Literary independence doesn’t by itself provide proof of an early date. However, the similarities in form (the sayings list) and content (28% of Thomas has parallels in Q[58]) between Thomas and Q strongly suggest that the two texts were produced at the same very early stage in the development of Christian literature. Literary independence implies the two texts were created out of a common oral tradition. That tradition moreover, can be dated confidently to the first century.[59]

Now we reach the crux of the matter: although the authors of Thomas, Q, and Mark knew some of the same sayings and parables, they interpret them radically differently. Even when no interpretive explanation is explicitly given, each author by his choice of wording can put a spin on the passage that reveals the author’s theological bent. Scholars call this spin redaction.

Here for example, are two versions of “blessed are the persecuted”:

Q (Luke 6:22-23)

Blessed are you when people hate you, drive you out, abuse you, denounce your name as a criminal, on account of the Son of Man. Rejoice when that day comes and dance for joy, look! – your reward will be great in heaven.

Thomas 69:1

Jesus said, “Blessed are they who have been persecuted within themselves. It is they who have truly come to know the father.”

 

Luke’s version clearly refers to external persecution and verbal abuse and looks for a reward in heaven. Thomas takes the same saying and turns it inward. Persecution for Thomas refers to an internal struggle in the mind of the believer, the goal of which is knowledge of the Father. This goal of knowledge (Greek gnosis) is a consistent theme of Thomas beginning with the very first saying, “Whoever finds the interpretation of these sayings will not taste death.” Thomas has redacted the original saying to reflect his major theological interest: the revelation of hidden knowledge. This interpretation is patently secondary; the original saying had nothing to do with hidden knowledge.[60]

The considerable overlap between Thomas and the canonical gospels provides a wide basis for comparison. According to John Dominic Crossan,

28% of Thomas has parallels in Q,

20% of Thomas has parallels in Mark,

12% of Thomas has parallels in Special Matthew,

7% of Thomas has parallels in Special Luke,

9% of Thomas has parallels in John.[61]

Sometimes the Thomas version of a saying is redacted, sometimes the canonical version; sometimes neither, sometimes both. Over and over, it is the sayings and parables that are primary and interpretations that are secondary.

The importance of Thomas for the existence of a historical Jesus is now revealed. If Jesus was invented by someone at some time during the first century, we would expect all other Jesus traditions to be based on that legend. All later traditions should show traces of that original story, and by comparing those traditions we should be able to deduce the outlines of that story. What scholarly comparison uncovers is not an original myth but an original collection of sayings. Thomas is a witness who is completely uninterested in Jesus as an apocalyptic prophet who died for the sins of the world. Yet the author uses many of the same sayings as the canonical authors and attributes them to the same Jesus, the one who had disciples named Simon Peter, Matthew, and Thomas.[62] This makes no sense under the assumption that the sayings of Jesus were invented to bolster a growing legend, for why would two different groups with divergent theological agendas invent the same sayings? It only makes sense if the sayings came first and were already attributed to Jesus before the theological developments occurred. It is reasonable to believe that some of those sayings were passed down from Jesus himself, preserved in the oral tradition of his followers. The unique perspective of the Gospel of Thomas, so far from the orthodox understanding of Christianity, provides the best evidence of a historical Jesus, someone who actually lived and spoke and whose sayings were remembered, passed down, and reinterpreted over the years.

Identifying the sayings of Jesus that are likely authentic is not an easy task. The occurrence of a saying in Thomas as well as a canonical gospel is not itself proof that that saying came from Jesus. Scholars have developed several criteria that they use for determining which sayings can reasonably be ascribed to Jesus. Multiple attestation (finding a saying in two or more independent sources, for instance in Q and Thomas) is only one criterion.[63] Applying the criteria is not straightforward, and the criteria themselves are subject to debate; as a result, there is no generally accepted list of the authentic sayings of Jesus.[64] We shall meddle no further in the thorns of historical Jesus research; the interested reader should consult the Further Reading at the end of this essay. Rather, we will be content with having established this much: that a man named Jesus was crucified under Pontius Pilate, that his followers passed on his sayings, some of which were eventually written down in lists before being incorporated into the canonical gospels.

Let’s recap what the sources indicate about Jesus. There is no mention of him before 50 AD. By the early second century, non-Christian writers confirm that Christians are widespread and that they consider themselves followers of one Jesus, known as the Christ, who was executed under Pontius Pilate, hence around 30 AD. From the seventy year period following Jesus’s death there are four completely independent Christian sources: Paul, Q, Thomas, and Mark. Paul confirms that Jesus was called Christ and died by crucifixion, and he knows some of the instructions Jesus left to his followers. Q, Thomas, and Mark record numerous sayings attributed to Jesus; the three collections are literarily independent and yet overlap extensively. Mark is the earliest writer to give a combined account of both Jesus’s life and his death – the earliest to connect the Jesus of the sayings traditions with the Jesus who was executed by Pilate. But Mark cannot have invented the story out of whole cloth[65] because the general outline of events, as well as the details of specific sayings, are confirmed by other sources that show no trace of Mark’s influence.

All of this fits with a Jesus who lived and died in the time and place the gospels describe and whose teachings – some of them at least – were passed on by his followers. In contrast, the mythicists must explain how the Jesus myth suddenly arose around 30 AD without a historical Jesus to initiate it, how this myth came to be historicized by inventing a human Jesus (Who did this, and why? What was their theological motivation? How did they convince the followers of the myth to accept the human Jesus?), and how the mythical view disappeared completely by the second century. Once again, Occam’s razor comes into play: a historical Jesus is the simplest hypothesis that explains the data. On this point, at least, historical scholarship agrees with Christian tradition.

 

Further Reading

Most bible scholars consider Jesus’s existence a settled matter and, as a result, expend little effort discussing it. Several recent investigations of the “historical Jesus,” including John P. Meier’s massive three-volume A Marginal Jew, manage to completely avoid any discussion of whether such a person ever existed. This can make it hard to find counterarguments for the mythicist view.

The Historical Jesus: A Comprehensive Guide by Gerd Theissen and Annette Merz is a happy exception. The authors present thirteen arguments of the radical skeptics. The counterarguments given are not as thorough as one might wish, but are better than nothing. There is an excellent, short, but balanced discussion of the authenticity of the Josephus passages. The authors also summarize the various scholarly positions on non-canonical writings as sources for the historical Jesus, including the Gospel of Thomas.

In addition to the books just mentioned, the works of John Dominic Crossan, especially The Historical Jesus and The Birth of Christianity, are highly recommended for anyone who wants to delve further into historical Jesus research. Crossan is a careful and methodical scholar and an excellent writer as well. Some of Crossan’s conclusions are controversial (he argues that Jesus did not preach an apocalyptic end of the world, for example) but he builds an impressive case.

 

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[1] [Theissen 1996, 93]. See the Bibliography for details on the references in these endnotes.

[2] [Wells 1999, 102-103].

[3] [Price 2000, 261].

[4] Josephus does not, of course, give dates in years BC or AD. As with other historians of his day, he dates events relative to the reigns of rulers, major battles or other prominent events. These are converted to numerical dates using well-established reference points.

[5] Jewish War 1.401, Jewish Antiquities 15.380 [See Meier 1991, 1.380]

[6] Jewish Antiquities 14.377-389, 17.191

[7] Jewish Antiquities 17.240-252

[8] Jewish Antiquities 18.35, 39 supported by Philo, Tacitus, Suetonius, Cassis Dio, and Eusebius; [See Meier 1991 1.373]

[9] Jewish Antiquities 18.116-119, Mark 6: 17-29, Matthew 14: 3-12

[10] Jewish Antiquities 18. 63-64

[11] Jewish Antiquities 20.200

[12] [Theissen 1998, 64-74]

[13] Support for this conclusion comes from an Arabic quotation of Josephus by the tenth-century Agapius of Hierapolis: “Josephus…says that at that time there was a wise man who was called Jesus, who led a good life and was known to be virtuous (or learned) and had many people of the Jews and other peoples as disciples. Pilate had condemned him to crucifixion and death, but those who had become his disciples did not give up his discipleship (or teaching) and related that he appeared to them three days after the crucifixion and was alive, and therefore perhaps was the Messiah in connection with whom the prophets said marvelous things.” [Theissen 1998, 72-73]

 

[14] Tacitus, Annals 15.44.3-4, quoted in [Crossan 1998, 9].

[15] Tacitus, Annals 15.44.5, quoted in [Theissen 1996, 82]

[16] Theissen 1996, 82

[17] Pliny, Letters 10.96, quoted in [Crossan 1998, 7].

[18] Pliny, Letters 10.96, quoted in [Crossan 1998, 6].

[19] [Crossan 1998, 6]

[20] A few more scraps of information should be mentioned. A letter written by one Mara bar Sarapion, a Syrian pagan, mentions the “wise king” of the Jews, who introduced a “new law” and whom they killed. The letter, written possibly around 74 AD, does not mention the name Jesus. If it is indeed he who is meant, the letter tells us little about him. See [Theissen 1996, 76-79].

Suetonius, in his Life of Claudius, writes

 

He drove from Rome the Jews who, stirred up by Chrestus, continually caused unrest. (Quoted in [Theissen 1996, 84])

 

“Chrestus” is possibly a mistake for “Christus,” that is, “Christ.” The expulsion dates to around 49 AD and is mentioned in Acts 18:2, where it has nothing to do with Christians or Christ, however. If Suetonius is saying that Christ was stirring up trouble in Rome in 49 AD, this of course conflicts with the gospel picture. But there is too little here to justify any radical conclusions.

Finally, in reference to the darkness at Jesus’s death (Mark 15:33), the third-century writer Julius Africanus states “In the third book of the histories Thallus calls this darkness an eclipse.” [Theissen 1996, 85] Thallus’s history, written around 50-100 AD, has been lost. It isn’t clear whether it is Thallus or Africanus who makes the connection between the eclipse and Jeusus’s death. Not much can be made of this reference, given the uncertainties.

 

[21] Justin, Trypho 103.8

[22] Ignatius, Smyrneans 1.1, see [Metgzer 1987, 45].

[23] Eusebius, Church History 3.36

[24] [Metzger 1987, 44].

[25] [Ehrman 2000, 261-262, 378].

[26] [Ehrman 2000, 263].

[27] [Koester 2000, 2.110].

[28] [Koester 2000, 2.111] The last two dates rely on Acts 20-21, as there are no letters from Paul during this period.

[29] [Dunn 1996, x-xv]

[30] Two other explanations for the “we” passages in Acts have been suggested: that Luke was using a first person source, or that “we” is purely stylistic and not intended to imply that the author was actually there. These are, however, no major differences of vocabulary or style that would support the first option. The second option has become popular in recent years, but there is really no evidence to support the idea that a shift from third to first person could be made for purely stylistic reasons. See [Brown 1984, 27-29] and Peter Kirby’s online article at www.christianorigins.com/wesea.html.

[31] This count includes the disputed letters and the Pastoral Epistles (1 and 2 Timothy and Titus), none of which contain any sayings attributed to Jesus [Koester 1990, 63]. The prohibition of divorce (1 Corinthians 7:10-11) is paralleled in Mark 10:11-12, support for the apostles (1 Corinthians 9:14) is paralleled in Q (Luke 10:7), and the Lord’s Supper sequence (1 Corinthians 11:23-26) is paralleled in Mark 14:22-25. The two sayings with no gospel parallels are the instructions concerning prophecy (1 Corinthians 14:37) and a prophecy of the coming resurrection (1 Thessalonians 4:15-17). See [Koester 1990, 53].

[32] [Wells 1999, 61-62]; cf. [Doherty 2005, 29-30].

[33] See for example, [Sanders 1989, 139-140], [Wells 1999, 62] cites R. Bultmann, E. Käsemam, and M.E. Boring as accepting this view, [Doherty 2005, 331] adds B. Mack and W. Kelber.

[34] Galatians 1:12

[35] 1 Corinthians 15:3-7

[36] The handful of gospel parallels in Paul’s letters that are not attributed to Jesus don’t change this conclusion. Neither the gospels nor the Q document can be confidently dated before Paul’s letters, so there is a real possibility that it is Paul’s words that have gotten attributed to Jesus in the process of oral transmission, rather than Paul who is quoting Jesus. Attribution of a popular saying to a well-known person is a common occurrence even today. Attributing a quote to, say, Albert Einstein lends authority. See the list of parallels in [Koester 1990, 53] and the discussions in [Theissen 1996, 54-55] and [Sanders 1989, 140]. “The first Christians, or rather some of them, could ‘create’ sayings by Jesus in numerous ways, including hearing them in prayer, receiving them as revelations, and attributing to him excellent and appropriate sayings which may have originated with someone else.” [Sanders 1989, 144].

[37] [Doherty 2005, 123-125], compare [Dunn 1989, 38-44].

[38] [Doherty 2005, 83-84, 98-99].

[39] Galatians 1:19.

[40] Matthew 13:55 Mark 6:3, Josephus Jewish Antiquities 20. 200.

[41] [Doherty 2005, 57].

[42] [Doherty 2005, 216-219]. He also cites 1 Corinthians 9:5, “Have we not the right to take along a sister, a wife, as do the rest of the apostles and the brothers of the Lord and Cephas?” This passage actually weakens Doherty’s argument, as it clearly distinguishes “the brothers of the Lord” from Cephas and “the apostles.” Thus “brothers of the Lord” does not simply mean “believers.” See [Theissen 1996, 123, 581-583] and [Dunn 1998, 183].

[43] Philippians 2:7-8

[44] See Colin Brown’s article in [Martin 1998, 7-23]. The phrase “death on a cross” is thought to have been inserted into the hymn by Paul.

[45] [Doherty 2005, 81, 255].

[46] [Price 2000, 213-226]. Several of the ancient novels Price draws on for parallels to the Passion accounts were written later than the gospels, a point Price fails to mention.

[47] “M. Hengel has shown that there is no evident for a positive evaluation of crucifixion in the ancient world.” [Witherington 2001, 155], citing M. Hengel Crucifixion in the Ancient World and the Folly of the Message of the Cross, London: SCM, 1977.

[48] Galatians 3:13, with reference to Deuteronomy 21:23.

[49] [Witherington 2001, 155-156].

[50] Scholars attempting to separate history from legend in the gospel stories often appeal to the criterion of embarrassment: any event which gets recorded in spite of its embarrassing implications is likely to be true. Jesus’s crucifixion is a good example of just such an event. [Meier 1991, 168-170].

[51] [Theissen 1996, 581-583].

[52] [Theissen 1996, 26-29].

[53] See the essay Gospel Truth, Second Hypothesis, the Q Document.

[54] [Meier 1991, 1.125-1.137].

[55] We know that Thomas existed in several versions, because the Greek fragment of the book found on Oxyrhynchus Papyrus 1 has the sayings in a different order, and with slightly different wording, than the Coptic version from Nag Hammadi. [Robinson 1988, 124]. “The Oxyrhynchus papyri guarantee that c. 140 [AD] is the latest possible date of composition.” [Theissen 1996, 38].

[56]See [Crossan 1991, 276-279], who argues that the references to the tree, the branches, and the bird’s nests are borrowed from Ezekiel 17:22-24.

[57] [Patterson 1993, chs. 2 & 3], [Theissen 1996, 37-41], [Crossan 1998, 116-118, 252-256].

[58] [Crossan 1998, 254].

[59] [Patterson 1993, 120.]

[60] [Funk 1993, 512].

[61] [Crossan 1998, 248-249]. Special Matthew and Special Luke refer to the parts of those gospels that don’t come from Mark or Q; see the essay Gospel Truth.

[62] See Gospel of Thomas 13.

[63] See the brief discussion in [Theissen 1996, 115-116] and the much longer one in [Meier 1991, 168-193].

[64] A group of scholars known as the Jesus Seminar has produced a book, The Five Gospels [Funk 1993], that ranks the authenticity of the sayings in four levels, the rankings determined by vote among the seminar members.

[65] Or by fusing the Jesus of Paul and the Jesus of Q, as suggested by [Wells 1999, 104].