Did Jesus Exist? - The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth

by Bart D. Ehrman

  But most significant of all, each of these numerous Gospel texts is based on oral traditions that had been in circulation for years among communities of Christians in different parts of the world, all of them attesting to the existence of Jesus. And some of these traditions must have originated in Aramaic-speaking communities of Palestine, probably in the 30s CE, within several years at least of the traditional date of the death of Jesus. The vast network of these traditions, numerically significant, widely dispersed, and largely independent of one another, makes it almost certain that whatever one wants to say about Jesus, at the very least one must say that he existed. Moreover, as we will now see, there is yet more evidence.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Evidence for Jesus from Outside the Gospels

  LIKE MOST AUTHORS, I receive tons of e-mail. Every now and again I receive a query, normally from a Christian believer, that I find completely puzzling. What is puzzling is my correspondent’s puzzlement. Many people simply can’t understand why I would teach the Bible in a university setting if I don’t believe in the Bible.

  I find this puzzling because I am so accustomed to the life of the university, where professors teach all kinds of things they don’t “believe in.” In most major universities, professors of classics teach the works of Plato, but the professors are not themselves necessarily Platonists, and professors in political science teach the writings of Karl Marx, but they do not have to be Marxists. So too English professors teach great literature even though they themselves are not practicing novelists or poets, and criminologists teach the history of crime, but they aren’t mass murderers.

  Why should it be different with the Bible? I teach the Bible not because I am personally a believer in the Bible but because, like all these other topics, it is important. In fact, it is unusually important. One could easily argue that the Bible is the most important book in the history of Western civilization. What other book comes even close in terms of its historical, social, and cultural significance? Who wouldn’t want to know more about a book that has transformed millions of lives and affected entire civilizations? It is important not only for believers. Far from it. It is important for all of us—at least for all of us interested in human history, society, and culture.

  One could argue as well that Jesus is the most important person in the history of the West, looked at from a historical, social, or cultural perspective, quite apart from his religious significance. And so of course the earliest sources of information we have about him, the New Testament Gospels, are supremely important. And not just the Gospels, but all the books of the New Testament.

  I have to admit that when I teach my Introduction to the New Testament course to undergraduates, I spend more time on Jesus and the Gospels than on the rest of the New Testament, including the writings of Paul. It is not that Paul is unimportant. Quite the contrary, he too is enormously significant in every way. But given the choice, I personally am more interested in and compelled by the Gospels and Jesus. That is not true of many of my friends who teach New Testament in the colleges, universities, seminaries, and divinity schools throughout North America. A lot of them are completely enamored with Paul and focus all of their research and a good deal of their teaching on Paul. Paul too had a tremendous impact on the West, and in many respects his writings are much more difficult to interpret than the Gospels. Some scholars devote their entire scholarly lives to trying to fathom the teachings of a single one of Paul’s letters.

  Paul, as we will see in this chapter, is highly relevant for establishing the historical existence of Jesus, as are many other sources outside the Gospels. This chapter will be devoted to this evidence. We will begin our considerations with later sources and then move to the testimony of our earliest surviving Christian author, Paul.

  Later Sources from Outside the New Testament

  AT THE OUTSET I should emphatically state the obvious. Every single source that mentions Jesus up until the eighteenth century assumed that he actually existed. That is true no matter what period you choose to examine: the Reformation, the Renaissance, the Middle Ages, Late Antiquity, and before. It is true of every source from our earliest periods, the fourth century, the third century, the second century, and the first century. It is true of every author of every kind, Christian, Jewish, or pagan. Most striking, it is true not just of those who came to believe in Jesus but also of nonbelievers in general and of the opponents of Christianity in particular. Many scholars have found this significant. Not even the Jewish and pagan antagonists who attacked Christianity and Jesus himself entertained the thought that he never existed. This is quite clear from reading the writings of the Christian apologists, starting with such authors as the anonymous writer of the Letter to Diognetus and the more famous writers Justin Martyr, Tertullian, and Origen (all from the second and early third centuries), all of whom defend Jesus against a number of charges, many of them scandalous. But they do not drop one hint that anyone claimed he did not exist. The same is clear from the fragments of writings that still survive from the opponents of the Christians, such as the Jew Trypho, discussed by Justin, or the pagan philosopher Celsus, cited extensively by Origen. The idea that Jesus did not exist is a modern notion. It has no ancient precedents. It was made up in the eighteenth century. One might well call it a modern myth, the myth of the mythical Jesus.

  We have already seen that at least seven Gospel accounts of Jesus, all of them entirely or partially independent of one another, survived from within a century of the traditional date of his death. These seven are based on numerous previously existent written sources and on an enormous number of oral traditions about him that can be dated back to Aramaic sources of Palestine, almost certainly from the 30s of the Common Era. If we stay within those same time restrictions, what can we say about sources attested from outside the Gospels?

  Non-Christian Sources

  We should first return to the writings of Josephus and Tacitus. Tacitus almost certainly had information at his disposal about Jesus, for example, that he was crucified in Judea during the governorship of Pontius Pilate. Josephus appears as well to have known about Jesus, both some major aspects of his life and his death under Pontius Pilate. What I did not stress earlier but need to point out now is that there is absolutely nothing to suggest that the pagan Tacitus or the Jewish Josephus acquired their information about Jesus by reading the Gospels. They heard information about him. That means the information they gave predated their writings. Their informants were no doubt Christians, or—even more likely—(non-Christian) people they knew who themselves had heard stories about Jesus from Christians. It is impossible to know whether these Christians had been influenced by the sources we have already discussed, but it is completely possible that they themselves had simply heard stories about Jesus. Indirectly, then, Tacitus and (possibly) Josephus provide independent attestation to Jesus’s existence from outside the Gospels although, as I stated earlier, in doing so they do not give us information that is unavailable in our other sources.

  Christian Sources

  There are also important independent sources among Christian writers from about the same time as Tacitus, writers who convey information about the historical Jesus and certainly attest to his existence. They do so without deriving all, or even most, of their information from the Gospel sources. Three of these are especially significant.

  Papias

  Papias was a church father of the early second century whose writings survive for us only in fragments, as they are quoted by later Christian authors.1 From these later sources we learn that Papias had written a five-volume work called Expositions of the Sayings of the Lord; this (very?) large book is normally thought to have been written around 120–130 CE. We do not know for certain why Christian scribes did not copy the book and so preserve it for posterity. But it appears that some of the views that Papias advanced were seen to be offensive or at least naive. The great church historian of the fourth century, Eusebius, dismissed Papias by saying that he was “a man
of very small intelligence” (Church History 3.39).

  Intelligent or not, Papias is an important source for establishing the historical existence of Jesus. He had read some Gospels although there is no reason to think that he knew the ones that made it into the New Testament, as I will show in a moment. But more important, he had other access to the sayings of Jesus. He was personally acquainted with people who had known either the apostles themselves or their companions. The following quotation of his work, from Eusebius, makes the point emphatically:

  I also will not hesitate to draw up for you, along with these expositions, an orderly account of all the things I carefully learned and have carefully recalled from the elders; for I have certified their truth…. Whenever someone arrived who had been a companion of one of the elders, I would carefully inquire after their words, what Andrew or Peter had said, or what Philip or what Thomas had said, or James or John or Matthew or any of the other disciples of the Lord, and what things Aristion and the elder John, disciples of the Lord, were saying. For I did not suppose that what came out of books would benefit me as much as that which came from a living and abiding voice.2

  Eusebius summarizes what Papias claimed about his sources of knowledge about Jesus, a passage worth citing at length:

  This Papias, whom we have just been discussing, acknowledges that he received the words of the apostles from those who had been their followers, and he indicates that he himself had listened to Aristion and the elder John. And so he often recalls them by name, and in his books he sets forth the traditions that they passed along. These remarks should also be of some use to us….

  And he sets forth other matters that came to him from the unwritten tradition, including some bizarre parables of the Savior, his teachings, and several other more legendary accounts….

  And in his own book he passes along other accounts of the sayings of the Lord from Aristion, whom we have already mentioned, as well as traditions from the elder John. We have referred knowledgeable readers to these and now feel constrained to add to these reports already quoted from him a tradition that he gives about Mark, who wrote the Gospel. These are his words:

  And this is what the elder used to say,

  “When Mark was the interpreter [or translator] of Peter, he wrote down accurately everything that he recalled of the Lord’s words and deeds—but not in order. For he neither heard the Lord nor accompanied him; but later, as I indicated, he accompanied Peter, who used to adapt his teachings for the needs at hand, not arranging, as it were, an orderly composition of the Lord’s sayings. And so Mark did nothing wrong by writing some of the matters as he remembered them. For he was intent on just one purpose: to leave out nothing that he heard or to include any falsehood among them.”

  So that is what Papias says about Mark. And this is what he says about Matthew:

  “And so Matthew composed the sayings in the Hebrew tongue, and each one interpreted [or translated] them to the best of his ability.”

  And he set forth another account about a woman who was falsely accused of many sins before the Lord,3 which is also found in the Gospel according to the Hebrews…. [Eusebius, Church History 3.39]

  This is such a valuable report because Eusebius is quoting, and then commenting on, the actual words of Papias. Papias explicitly states that he had access to people who knew the apostles of Jesus or at least the companions of the apostles (the “elders”: it is hard to know from his statement if he is calling the companions of the apostles the elders or if the elders were those who knew the companions. Eusebius thinks it is the first option). When these people would come to his city of Hierapolis in Asia Minor, Papias, as leader of the church, would interview them about what they knew about Jesus and his apostles. Many conservative Christian scholars use this statement to prove that what Papias says is historically accurate (especially about Mark and Matthew), but that is going beyond what the evidence gives us.4 Still, on one point there can be no doubt. Papias may pass on some legendary traditions about Jesus, but he is quite specific—and there is no reason to think he is telling a bald-faced lie—that he knows people who knew the apostles (or the apostles’ companions). This is not eyewitness testimony to the life of Jesus, but it is getting very close to that.

  Where conservative scholars go astray is in thinking that Papias gives us reliable information about the origins of our Gospels of Matthew and Mark. The problem is that even though he “knows” that there was an account of Jesus’s life written by Mark and a collection of Jesus’s sayings made by Matthew, there is no reason to think that he is referring to the books that we call Mark and Matthew. In fact, what he says about these books does not coincide with what we ourselves know about the canonical Gospels. He appears to be referring to other writings, and only later did Christians (wrongly) assume that he was referring to the two books that eventually came to be included in scripture.5

  This then is testimony that is independent of the Gospels themselves. It is yet one more independent line of testimony among the many we have seen so far. And this time it is a testimony that explicitly and credibly traces its own lineage directly back to the disciples of Jesus themselves.

  Ignatius of Antioch

  Ignatius was one of the most significant authors of early Christianity from outside the New Testament. He was bishop of the large and important church of Antioch in Syria and was caught up in a persecution of Christians that happened there, probably in 110 CE. The persecution had some kind of official Roman sanction. Ignatius himself was arrested for Christian activities. We do not know the specific charges that were leveled against him, but he was sentenced to be sent to Rome and to be executed in the arena by being thrown to the wild beasts. While he was en route to his martyrdom, he wrote seven letters, which we still have today. Six of these letters are written to churches of Asia Minor that had sent representatives to meet him on his way and provide moral support. One other was written to the Christians of Rome urging them, surprisingly enough, not to interfere in the proceedings against him. Ignatius desperately wanted to die a gory, martyr’s death, thinking that then he would be a true imitator of Jesus, who also had been convicted and condemned to a bloody death.

  The letters of Ignatius are nothing if not interesting.6 The ones he wrote to the various churches are filled with exhortations to strive for unity and to follow the leadership of the bishop. Moreover, they attack the views of Christians who in the opinion of Ignatius represent “false opinions,” that is, heresies. Some of the letters oppose forms of Christianity that continued to insist on keeping Jewish laws and customs. The ones I am most interested in here, however, are those that oppose Christians who insisted that Jesus was not a real flesh-and-blood human. These opponents of Ignatius were not ancient equivalents of our modern-day mythicists. They certainly did not believe that Jesus had been made up or invented based on the dying and rising gods supposedly worshipped by pagans. For them, Jesus had a real, historical existence. He lived in this world and delivered inspired teachings. But he was God on earth, not made of the same flesh as the rest of us.

  Ignatius finds this view repugnant and completely at odds with who Jesus really was, as he states in the most emphatic terms possible in the following passages, once again worth quoting in full. First, from a letter that Ignatius wrote to the Christians in the city of Smyrna:7

  For you are fully convinced about our Lord, that he was truly from the family of David according to the flesh, Son of God according to the will and power of God, truly born from a virgin, and baptized by John that all righteousness might be fulfilled by him. In the time of Pontius Pilate and the tetrarch Herod, he was truly nailed for us in the flesh—we ourselves come from the fruit of his divinely blessed suffering—so that through his resurrection he might eternally lift up the standard for his holy and faithful ones, whether among Jews or Gentiles, in the one body of his church.

  For he suffered all these things for our sake, that we might be saved; and he truly suffered, just as he also truly raised himself—
not as some unbelievers say, that he suffered only in appearance. They are the ones who are only an appearance; and it will happen to them just as they think, since they are without bodies, like the daimons. For I know and believe that he was in the flesh even after the resurrection. (Ignatius to the Smyrneans 1–2)

  From these quotations it is crystal clear what Ignatius thought of the real existence of Jesus. He was fully human; he was really born; he was really baptized; he was really crucified. Even though there are allusions to traditions that made it into the Gospels, there is no conclusive evidence to suggest that Ignatius is basing his views on the books that later became part of the New Testament. The same can be said of his plea to the Christians of the town of Tralles:

  And so, be deaf when someone speaks to you apart from Jesus Christ, who was from the race of David and from Mary, who was truly born, both ate and drank, was truly persecuted at the time of Pontius Pilate, was truly crucified and died, while those in heaven and on earth and under the earth looked on. (Ignatius to the Trallians, 9)