Did Jesus Exist? - The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth
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Interpolation Theories
One relatively easy way to get around the testimony of Paul to the historical Jesus is the one I mentioned already. It is to claim that everything Paul says about the man Jesus was not originally in Paul’s writings but was inserted instead by later Christian scribes who wanted Paul to say more about the earthly life of their Lord. As I suggested, this seems to be a “scholarship of convenience,” where evidence inconvenient to one’s views is discounted as not really existing (even though it does in fact exist). I should stress that the Pauline scholars who have devoted many years of their lives to studying Romans and Galatians and 1 Corinthians are not the ones who argue that Paul never mentioned the details of Jesus’s life—that he was born of a woman, as a Jew, and a descendant of David; that he ministered to Jews, had a last meal at night, and delivered several important teachings. It is only the mythicists, who have a vested interest in claiming that Paul did not know of a historical Jesus, who insist that these passages were not originally in Paul’s writings. One always needs to consider the source.
Apart from the mythicist desire not to find such passages in Paul, there is no textual evidence that these passages were not originally in Paul (they appear in every single manuscript of Paul that we have) and no solid literary grounds for thinking they were not in Paul. Paul almost certainly wrote them. Moreover, if scribes were so concerned to insert aspects of Jesus’s life into Paul’s writings, it is passing strange that they were not more thorough in doing so, for example, by inserting comments about Jesus’s virgin birth in Bethlehem, his parables, his miracles, his trial before Pilate, and so forth. In the end, it is almost certain that whatever else one thinks about Paul’s view of Jesus—and however one explains why Paul himself does not say more—it is safe to say that he knew that Jesus existed and that he knew some fundamentally important things about Jesus’s life and death.
The Argument of G. A. Wells
In my judgment a much more interesting argument about Paul’s knowledge of the historical Jesus is one that is hammered time and again by G. A. Wells. If Paul knew about the historical Jesus, asks Wells, why was he silent about almost everything that we hear about Jesus in the surviving Gospels? We hear almost nothing about Jesus’s teachings (just three references to them in Paul). Were Jesus’s other teachings irrelevant to Paul? If they were relevant, why didn‘t he mention them? Furthermore, we hear almost nothing about the events of Jesus’s life: no descriptions of miracles or exorcisms or raisings of the dead. Were these things unimportant to Paul? We hear almost nothing about the details of Jesus’s death: the trip to Jerusalem, the betrayal, the trial before Pontius Pilate, and so on. Did none of this matter to Paul? In Wells’s view all of these traditions about Jesus should have been massively important to Paul, and he would have written about them had he known about them. That suggests that Paul in fact did not know about them.
For Wells it is particularly significant that Paul does not quote the sayings of Jesus extensively or refer to his miracles. Surely Jesus’s teachings should have mattered, especially when Paul talks about the same issues. For example, Wells points out, Paul indicates that “we do not even know how to pray as we ought” (Romans 8:26).17 But Jesus actually taught his disciples how to pray when he taught them the Lord’s Prayer. If Paul knew anything about Jesus, wouldn’t he at least know this? Paul also taught that followers of Jesus ought to be celibate (1 Corinthians 7). Surely if he knew about Jesus, he would know that Jesus too praised those who renounced marriage for the kingdom of heaven (Matthew 19:12). Paul taught that Christ’s followers should “bless those who persecute you” (Romans 12:14). Why would he not quote Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount to bolster his argument, to show that the injunction is not based simply on his own personal view? With respect to miracles—since, in Wells’s words, “The Jews certainly expected that miracles would characterize the Messianic age”—it is almost impossible to understand why Paul would not appeal to a single miracle of Jesus or even mention that he did any if he wanted to authorize his gospel message.
With respect to all the silences of Paul, Wells makes one particularly significant methodological point. It is not simply that Paul does not mention some things about Jesus’s life. It is that he does not mention things that would have bolstered precisely the points he was trying to make to his readers. In Wells’s words: “Of course silence does not always prove ignorance, and any writer knows a great many things he fails to mention. A writer’s silence is significant only if it extends to matters obviously relevant to what he has chosen to discuss.”18 In the end, Wells finds it puzzling that if Paul really thought Jesus lived just a few years earlier, “there is no mention of a Galilean ministry; no mention of Bethlehem, Nazareth, or Galilee; no suggestion that Jesus spoke parables or performed miracles; and no indication that he died in Jerusalem.” With respect to the crucifixion, “he might be expected at least to allude to when and where this important event occurred, if that was known to him.”19 The conclusion that Wells draws is that Paul did not know about a Jesus who had lived just a few years before, a Galilean Jewish teacher who was crucified by the Romans under Pontius Pilate.
The Counter to the Counterargument
Wells does seem to make a strong argument, when it is stated baldly. But when examined closely, it falls apart for some compelling reasons. For one thing, when Wells says that Paul would have cited the Lord’s Prayer or the command to bless one’s persecutors had he known them, he might be right or he might be wrong (as we’ll explore more fully below). But even if Paul knew about the historical Jesus, and even if he knew a lot about him, there is no reason to think that he therefore must have known these particular sayings of Jesus. Many authors, even those living after Paul, who knew full well that Jesus existed, say nothing about the Lord’s Prayer or the injunction to bless those who persecute you. It is striking, for example, that neither of these passages is found in the Gospel of Mark. Did Mark think Jesus existed? Of course he did. Why then did he not include these two important sayings? Either they did not serve his purposes or he had not heard of them, even though he too is interested in both prayer and persecution. (The sayings came to Matthew and Luke from Q.)
Some of the materials that Wells expects Paul to refer to were completely irrelevant to what Paul was writing about and to whom. Take, for example, the claim that Paul would have referred to Jesus’s miracles to demonstrate that Jesus was the messiah. It may well be that if Paul were arguing with a group of Jews over whether Jesus was the messiah, he would have mentioned Jesus’s miracles. But the seven of Paul’s letters that we have were not written to Jews to persuade them to believe in Jesus. Quite the contrary. They were written to congregations of Christians who already believed in Jesus and needed no convincing (and, by the way, the congregations were principally made up of Gentiles, not Jews). Why would Paul have needed to appeal to Jesus’s miracles to convince people who already were committed to the cause?
One of the real weaknesses of Wells’s argument is that he assumes that we know what Paul would have done. Second-guessing someone is always a dangerous historical enterprise, especially second-guessing someone from two thousand years ago whom we don’t really know and have limited access to. What real evidence do we have to suggest what Paul would have done?
It bears noting in this connection that Paul’s silences are not restricted to the life and teachings of Jesus. He is silent as well about many, many things that we desperately wish he would have talked about since we would like to know a good deal more about all sorts of matters. Think of all the silences of Paul with respect to Paul himself. Where was he from? Who were his parents? What was his education? Who were his teachers? Who were his friends? Who were his enemies? Why doesn’t he name any of them? What were his religious activities before converting? What was the “revelation” that made him convert? What did he do during his three years in Arabia or Damascus before meeting with Cephas in Jerusalem? Or in the following fourteen years? Where did he travel? What
was his occupation? Or his daily routine? How did he convert people? Where did he meet them? What did he tell them? What happened once they accepted the gospel? And on and on and on.
There are thousands of things about Paul we would like to know. Why doesn’t he tell us any of them? Mainly because he had no occasion to do so. He was writing letters to his churches to deal with their problems, and for the most part he spent his time in these letters addressing the situations at hand. It is important to bear in mind that his audiences were made up entirely of Christian believers. We don’t know how much these people already knew—about Paul or, more important, about Jesus. If they were already fully informed about Jesus, then there was no need for Paul to remind them that Jesus walked on water, raised Jairus’s daughter from the dead, and was executed in Jerusalem.
Is it then unreasonable that Paul tells us relatively little about Jesus? Why not double-check with other authors? For we have writings produced years after Paul by Christians who certainly believed Jesus existed, and we can see whether in those writings we find references to the words and deeds of Jesus missing from Paul.
An obvious place to turn is to the other books of the New Testament. How many times do 1 Timothy, Hebrews, 1 Peter, and Revelation—all written by authors, as we have seen, who clearly indicate that Jesus existed—talk about Jesus’s parables, his miracles, his exorcisms, and so on? Never. Does that mean they don’t know about Jesus? No, it probably means that these traditions about Jesus’s life were not important to their purposes.
Or consider two even clearer cases, authors who certainly knew of actual Gospels of Jesus that we still have today. As I earlier mentioned, the author of 1, 2, and 3 John was living in the same community out of which the Gospel of John was produced, and he shows clear evidence of actually knowing John’s Gospel. And how many times does he quote it in his three letters? None at all. How often does he talk about Jesus’s parables, his miracles, his exorcisms, his trip to Jerusalem, his trial before Pilate? Never. Does that mean he doesn’t think Jesus lived?
So too with the book of Acts. In this case we are dealing with an author who actually wrote a Gospel, the first volume of his work, the Gospel of Luke. As I earlier indicated, about one-fourth of the book of Acts is dedicated to speeches allegedly delivered by the apostles. And in how many of those speeches do the apostles quote the words of the historical Jesus or at least the words of Jesus found in the Gospel of Luke? Almost never. The clearest quotation of Jesus is the one we considered before, “It is more blessed to give than to receive,” a saying that in fact is not even found in the Gospel of Luke. I should stress that these speeches deal with matters that Jesus himself often talked about—persecution, for example, and false teachers—but Jesus’s words on the subject are not quoted.
Or take later authors from outside the New Testament. The authors of both 1 Clement (from around 95 CE) and the Epistle of Barnabas (around 135 CE) show clear and compelling evidence that they know about Jesus and understand that he was a real historical figure. They say a number of things about him. But their silences are nearly as large as those of Paul. Just to consider some of the matters mentioned by Wells as “surprisingly” absent from Paul’s writings, neither 1 Clement nor Barnabas indicates that Jesus was born in Bethlehem to a virgin, that he came from Nazareth, that he experienced his temptations in the wilderness, that he ever told a parable, that he healed the sick, that he cast out demons, that he underwent a transfiguration, that he got into controversies with Pharisees, that he made a final journey to Jerusalem during the Passover, that he entered into the city riding a donkey, that he cleansed the Temple, that he had the Last Supper, that he went to Gethsemane, that he was betrayed by Judas Iscariot, that he was put on trial first before the high priest Caiaphas and then by the Roman governor Pontius Pilate, that the Jewish crowds convinced Pilate to release Barabbas instead of Jesus, and so on.
What do these silences show? They do not show that these authors did not know about the historical Jesus, because they clearly did. If anything, the silences simply show that these traditions about Jesus were not relevant to their purposes.
Why then does Paul not say more about the historical Jesus, if he knew more? One point I want to reemphasize. From what Paul does tell us, it is clear that he did indeed know about the historical Jesus. He gives us important information about Jesus’s life and quotes his teachings on several occasions. Why then doesn’t he quote him more often, and why doesn’t he give us more information? This is indeed a perennial question asked by scholars of the New Testament, and several possibilities can be considered.
One, obviously, is that Paul didn’t say more about the historical Jesus because he didn’t know much more. This strikes many readers of Paul as implausible: if he worshipped Jesus as his Lord, surely he wanted to know more about him. Wouldn’t he want to know absolutely everything about him? It may seem so. But it is important to remember that when Christians today think about their faith, they often think about the ultimate source of their faith in the New Testament, which begins with Gospels that describe the things Jesus said and did. And so for Christians today, it only makes sense that a Christian is informed about Jesus’s life. But when Paul was writing there were no Gospels. They were written later. It is not clear how important the details of Jesus’s life were to Paul.
In this connection it is important to remember what Paul told the Corinthians about what he taught them when he was with them: “For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and him crucified” (1 Corinthians 2:2). It was the death of Jesus and his subsequent resurrection that really mattered to Paul. That is why when Paul summarized the matters of “primary importance” in his preaching (1 Corinthians 15:3–5), it consisted of a very short list: Christ died in accordance with the scriptures; he was buried; he was raised from the dead in accordance with the scriptures; and he appeared to his followers (then to Paul). Those are the things—not the Sermon on the Mount—that mattered most to Paul.
The deeper question of why Paul would want to focus more on the death and resurrection of Jesus than on his life is intriguing—it has gripped scholars for many years—but it is not germane to the point I am trying to make here. Paul may have known about the teachings of Jesus found in the Sermon on the Mount, or he may not have. We can’t know. What we can know is that on occasion he found the teachings of Jesus that he did know about useful to his purposes, and so he cited them. Why he didn’t cite them more frequently is a matter of guesswork. Maybe he didn’t know many of them. Maybe he didn’t think they were all that important. Maybe he assumed his readers knew them already. Maybe in his other letters (the many that have been lost) he quoted them all over the map. We will never know.
What we can know is that Paul certainly thought that Jesus existed. He had clear knowledge of important aspects of Jesus’s life—a completely human life, in which he was born as a Jew to a Jewish woman and became a minister to the Jews before they rejected him, leading to his death. He knew some of Jesus’s teachings. And he knew how Jesus died, by crucifixion. For whatever reason, that was the most important aspect of Jesus’s life: his death. And Paul could scarcely have thought that Jesus died if he hadn’t lived.
Conclusion
AS A RESULT OF our investigations so far, it should be clear that historians do not need to rely on only one source (say, the Gospel of Mark) for knowing whether or not the historical Jesus existed. He is attested clearly by Paul, independently of the Gospels, and in many other sources as well: in the speeches in Acts, which contain material that predate Paul’s letters, and later in Hebrews, 1 and 2 Peter, Jude, Revelation, Papias, Ignatius, and 1 Clement. These are ten witnesses that can be added to our seven independent Gospels (either entirely or partially independent), giving us a great variety of sources that broadly corroborate many of the reports about Jesus without evidence of collaboration. And this is not counting all of the oral traditions that were in circulation even before these surviving written accounts. Moreover, the
information about Jesus known to Paul appears to go back to the early 30s of the Common Era, as arguably does some of the material in the book of Acts. The information about Jesus in these sources corroborates as well aspects of the Gospel traditions, some of which can also be dated back to the 30s, to Aramaic-speaking Palestine. Together all of these sources combine to make a powerful argument that Jesus was not simply invented but that he existed as a historical person in Palestine. But there is yet more evidence, which we will examine in the following chapter.
CHAPTER FIVE
Two Key Data for the Historicity of Jesus
I SOMETIMES GET ASKED, USUALLY by supporters, why I do not make a practice of responding to scholars and bloggers who criticize my work and attack me personally. It’s a good question, and I have several answers. For one thing, there are only so many hours in the day. If I responded to all the crazy things people say, I would have no time for my other work, let alone my life. For another thing, I suppose at the end of the day I simply trust human intelligence. Anyone should be able to see whether a point of view is plausible or absurd, whether a historical claim has merit or is pure fantasy driven by an ideological or theological desire for a certain set of answers to be right.
This past year a group of well-funded conservative Christians (at least one of whom was a former student who did not much like what I taught) launched an impressive website, The Ehrman Project. On it one can find short film clips of (very) conservative evangelical scholars responding to just about everything I have written about, thought about writing about, or, well, thought. The students in my class that semester were not sure what to make of the site. I told them that I thought it was perfectly legitimate, at least in theory. They should read what I had said in my New Testament textbook or in any of my other books, listen to what the talking heads on the website had to say, weigh the evidence for themselves, and then decide.