With all this talk of interpreting the Bible as mythology and allegory, it’s worth touching on the question of whether or not there was a historical Jesus, whose teachings would have formed the basis of the Christian faith. Rather surprisingly for such a pivotal figure in world history there is actually next to no evidence for Jesus ever having lived.
Of around thirty major authors alive and writing in the first century, none mention Jesus. This list includes Petronius, Seneca, Pliny the Elder, Plutarch and Ptolemy. There’s also no record of the governor Pontius Pilate ever having executed Jesus.
The assumption that there must have been a historical Jesus comes from reading the gospels as eyewitness accounts of real events, rather than as mythology. We have claims in the gospels that somehow went unnoticed by everyone alive at the time – like darkness covering the world for three hours in the middle of the afternoon after Jesus’ crucifixion (Matthew 27.45).
Back in the first century, Jews and Christians considered mythical figures like Moses, Abraham, Joseph, Noah and even Adam to have been real historical people. Pagans believed demigod figures such as Hercules, Dionysus and Asclepius to have once lived. It really wouldn’t have been unusual for a fake history to have been created for an originally mythical Jesus. Euhemerus was a Greek who lived in the late fourth century BCE. He wrote a book called The Sacred History in which he even portrayed Zeus and Uranus as having originally been historical kings who later became deified.
Outside of the Bible, there are only two passages from the first century that refer to a historical Jesus. They were allegedly written by the Jewish historian Josephus (37 – 100 CE) towards the end of the century, over 60 years after the supposed death of Jesus. The main passage quoted by Christians is known as the Testimonium Flavianum, and is found in Antiquity of the Jews 18.63-4. It reads as follows,
‘At about this time lived Jesus, a wise man, if indeed one might call him a man. For he was one who accomplished surprising feats and was a teacher of such people who are eager for novelties. He won over many of the Jews and many of the Greeks. He was the Messiah. When Pilate, upon an indictment brought by the principal men among us, condemned him to the cross, those who had loved him from the very first did not cease to be attached to him. On the third day he appeared to them restored to life, for the holy prophets had foretold this and myriads of other marvels concerning him. And the tribe of the Christians, so called after him, has to this day not disappeared.’ (Antiquities of the Jews 18.63-4)
This piece of evidence of Jesus’ historical existence is far from watertight. It first appeared in the fourth century CE, some 300 years after Jesus’ lifetime. Furthermore it was first produced by Eusebius, a well known propagandist of the early Church. Eusebius wrote numerous works such as The History of the Church, The Life of Constantine, and The Martyrs of Palestine, in which he talked up the glories of past Christians, and impugned pagans and Jews. He also made up lots of martyrdoms, giving the impression that Christians were persecuted by Romans far more than they actually were. Jacob Burckhardt was a 19th century cultural historian, and he famously called Eusebius ‘the first thoroughly dishonest historian of antiquity’.
There are numerous problems with using the Testimonium Flavianum as evidence for a historical Jesus. Firstly, every copy of Josephus has come down to us through the hands of Christian scribes. Secondly, the passage states that Jesus ‘was the Christ [Messiah]’ and that ‘the holy prophets had predicted many wonderful things about him.’ These seem utterly bizarre things for a Jew like Josephus to say, given he wasn’t a Christian and didn’t believe that Jesus was a messiah predicted by prophecy.
Josephus also completely neglects to mention Jesus in his earlier work The Jewish War when talking about the same period of the governorship of Pontius Pilate. Some have suggested that Eusebius only elaborated on an original shorter passage, but there are a few problems with this. Firstly the whole passage still looks very pro-Christian and pro-Jesus, which seems very odd given Josephus was a practising Jew.
Secondly, even when we strip out the description of Jesus as the Messiah, the resulting image of this wise teacher crucified due to the demands of the Jews still looks more like later Christians viewed Jesus, not how a first century Jew would have. It also looks very different from the cosmic Christ of Paul’s letters, which were written around the same time as Josephus, one of those to a congregation in Rome where Josephus lived.
Furthermore, none of the early Christian apologists mention this passage, which might also suggest it probably didn’t exist. This list includes Justin Martyr (100 – 165 CE), Irenaeus (130 – 202 CE), Tertullian (160 – 220 CE), Clement of Alexandra (150 – 215 CE), Origen (185 – 253 CE), Cyprian (210 – 248 CE) and Arnobius (255 – 330 CE).
The second passage from Josephus reads as follows,
‘The brother of Jesus (who was called Christ), the name for whom was James, and some others were tried and stoned by the high priest Ananus for unspecified crimes and in defiance of proper criminal procedure.’ (Antiquities of the Jews 20.200)
The same objections to the Testimonium Flavianum also apply to this passage. Josephus as a Jew would not have called Jesus the Christ / Messiah, and this passage is again never mentioned by early Christian apologists. It’s also never mentioned in the book of Acts, which surely would have mentioned the death of Jesus’ brother if it had happened.
The Roman historian Tacitus (56 – 117 CE) also mentioned Jesus in his Annals (written in 116 CE), when writing about Christians in relation to the Great Fire of Rome,
‘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 Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus, 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, where all things hideous and shameful from every part of the world find their centre and become popular.’ (Annals 15.44)
This passage has again been used as evidence for a historical Jesus, but Tacitus was writing some 85 years after the supposed crucifixion of Jesus, and over 50 years after Nero and the Great Fire of Rome. Reading the passage we can see that Tacitus only mentions very basic information on Christianity, that he could have found out by second hand hearsay.
Worse than that, it too might be a later Christian insertion into the text. No other Roman source mentioning the Great Fire mentions any persecution of Christians, and no Christian works from the period (eg the gospels or book of Acts) mention it either. Cluvius Rufus and Petronius both wrote about Nero’s reign at the time, but neither mention any persecution of Christians. To top it off, the passage of Tacitus that mentions Christians is first quoted in the mid fourth century, some 300 years after the supposed event.
The only real evidence we have for Jesus’ historical existence is the gospels. All the earliest known Christian texts are written in Greek, not Hebrew or the Aramaic that a historical Jesus and his disciples would most probably have spoken if they had existed. The gospels are believed to have been written between around 70 – 110 CE, long enough after the events they describe that the vast majority of people alive then who could have been witnesses to Jesus’ existence would have been dead. Particularly given the Roman-Jewish war that had raged between 66 – 73 CE.
We don’t have anything written by Jesus, or by his disciples mentioned in the gospels. The earliest Christian texts we know of are the letters of Paul, who never met Jesus and only ‘knew’ him through dreams and visions. It has also often been noted that the letters of Paul are generally silent on the historical details of Jesus’ life.
In his letters, Paul doesn’t mention Bethlehem, Nazareth, Galilee, Jesus’ mother Mary, John the Baptist, the twelve disciples, the Sermon on the Mount or any of his other teachings, any of Jesus’ miracles, or the trial or Pontius Pilate. What’s more, Paul doesn’t ever quote Jesus to back up any of his arguments, instead citing passages from the Septuagint (the Greek version of the Jewish scriptures).
Given that Paul’s letters are often about doctrinal disputes and questions, one would think that Jesus’ teachings would have been the most important authority. It’s clear that Paul knew of no teachings to ascribe to his Jesus, the most likely reason for this is that the gospels containing them had yet to be created.
It’s a similar story when we look at the other early Christian letters like 1 Clement and 1 Peter. On top of this, when we read the gospels’ account of Jesus’ life, they are all based on the original we call Mark, and were clearly fabricated using passages of ‘prophecy’ from the Old Testament. They’re filled with supernatural ‘miracles’ and the authors constantly make the claim that Jesus did certain things to fulfil ‘prophecy’ from lines from the Old Testament / Jewish Bible.
We may never know whether or not there actually was a historical Jesus. If there was a historical Jesus, the story in the gospels isn’t about him.
The Bible and Mythology 