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

by Bart D. Ehrman

  Jesus obviously could have associated with any religious leader of his day. He could have become a Pharisee or practiced the cult in the Temple or joined an Essene community or a band of revolutionaries. Of all the options, he chose John the Baptist. This must mean that he agreed with the particular message John was proclaiming. John’s message was one of impending apocalyptic judgment. Jesus started his public ministry subscribing to that view.

  We not only know how Jesus started, we also know, with even greater certainty, what happened among his followers after he died. They began to establish communities of believers around the Mediterranean. We have our first glimpse of these communities in the writings of our earliest Christian author, Paul. And it is clear what these communities (and Paul) were like. They were filled with expectations that they—the Christians at the time—would be alive when Jesus returned from heaven as judge of the earth (see, for example, 1 Thessalonians 4:13–5:12 and 1 Corinthians 15). In other words, Christianity started out as an apocalyptic movement after the death of Jesus.

  This too is highly significant for our present discussion. At the beginning of Jesus’s ministry he associated with an apocalyptic prophet, John; in the aftermath of his ministry there sprang up apocalyptic communities. What connects this beginning and this end? Or put otherwise, what is the link between John the Baptist and Paul? It is the historical Jesus. Jesus’s public ministry occurs between the beginning and the end. Now if the beginning is apocalyptic and the end is apocalyptic, what about the middle? It almost certainly had to be apocalyptic as well. To explain this beginning and this end, we have to think that Jesus himself was an apocalypticist.

  That is to say, if Jesus started out apocalyptically but then in the aftermath of his life the communities of his followers were not apocalyptically oriented, one could easily argue that Jesus moved away from being an apocalypticist after his association with John. But that is not the case: the later communities were in fact apocalyptic in nature and presumably took their cues from him. So too, if Jesus did not start out apocalyptically but the later communities were apocalyptic, one could argue that Jesus himself was not an apocalypticist but that later followers of his changed his message to make it apocalyptic. But that cannot be argued either because Jesus did indeed start out apocalyptically. The only plausible explanation for the connection between an apocalyptic beginning and an apocalyptic end is an apocalyptic middle. Jesus, during his public ministry, must have proclaimed an apocalyptic message.

  I think this is a powerful argument for Jesus being an apocalypticist. It is especially persuasive in combination with the fact, which we have already seen, that apocalyptic teachings of Jesus are found throughout our earliest sources, multiply attested by independent witnesses.

  Jesus, then, is best understood in general terms as an apocalypticist. What can we say specifically about what he taught and did?

  The Apocalyptic Proclamation of Jesus

  JESUS’S APOCALYPTIC MESSAGE FOCUSED on the coming kingdom of God. The first words he is recorded as saying set the tone for much of his public proclamation: “The time has been fulfilled and the kingdom of God is near. Repent and believe the good news” (Mark 1:15). This is an apocalyptic message. A certain amount of time has been allotted to the current age, and that time is up. Now the new age is soon to arrive, the kingdom of God. Jesus’s listeners are to repent in preparation for that coming kingdom.

  The Kingdom of God

  When people today hear the term kingdom of God, they typically think of heaven, as the place where souls go once they die. But that is not what apocalypticists meant, as we have already seen. For Jesus the kingdom was an actual place, here on earth, where God would rule supreme. And so, for example, Jesus speaks about his twelve disciples sitting on twelve thrones as rulers in the coming kingdom (Matthew 19:28; this comes from Q); he talks about eating and drinking in this kingdom; and he talks about people being cast out of the kingdom (more Q: see Luke 13:23–29). The kingdom was a real, tangible place, where love, peace, and justice would prevail.

  The Son of Man

  This future kingdom would be brought by a cosmic judge whom Jesus called the Son of Man. A number of sayings about the Son of Man are on the lips of Jesus in the early Gospels, and scholars have long puzzled over them. As this is a matter that is confusing to many readers, I need to say a few words about the situation.

  In some of the sayings Jesus is alleged to have said, it is clear that he is referring to himself as the Son of Man. On occasion, for example, he talks about his present life in these terms: “Foxes have lairs and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head” (Luke 9:58). On other occasions he uses the phrase when referring to his future fate: “The Son of Man will be handed over to the hands of others, and they will kill him, and after being killed he will arise after three days” (Mark 8:31).

  In yet other instances there is nothing to indicate that when speaking about the Son of Man Jesus is referring to himself. This is true, for example, in Mark 8:38, already quoted above: “Whoever is ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of that one will the Son of Man be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.” If you did not already think that Jesus was the Son of Man, you certainly would not think so from this kind of statement; on the contrary, Jesus seems to be referring to someone else.

  Given these different Son of Man sayings, how can we decide how the historical Jesus actually used the term (as opposed to the Gospels or the storytellers from whom they learned these accounts)? This is where the criterion of dissimilarity can come into play. The early Christians believed that Jesus himself was the Son of Man, the cosmic judge of the earth who would return in glory (see, for example, Revelation 1:13). The sayings in which Jesus talks about himself as the Son of Man cannot pass the criterion of dissimilarity. But the sayings in which Jesus seems to be talking about someone else do pass the criterion: surely Christians who thought Jesus was the Son of Man would not make up sayings that appear to differentiate between him and the Son of Man.

  The sayings that make this differentiation are always ones that predict what will happen in the future, when the Son of Man comes in judgment on the earth. These sayings are also multiply attested in early sources, as we saw earlier. Conclusion: Jesus appears to have talked about a future Son of Man who would bring in God’s kingdom at the end of this age. Later Christians who thought that Jesus himself was that one took his sayings and manufactured traditions in which he spoke of himself in this way. This latter kind of saying, therefore, probably does not go back to Jesus. It is the future Son of Man sayings that do.

  The Future Judgment

  Jesus issues dire warnings about what will happen with the coming of the Son of Man in Mark, Q, M, and L (see, for example, Matthew 13:40–43; Mark 13:24–27; Luke 17:24; 21:34–36). Thus, for example, in the apocalyptic prediction of Matthew 13:47–50 we read the following (this has an independent parallel in the Gospel of Thomas):

  Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a net which was thrown into the sea and gathered fish of every kind. When it was full, they hauled it ashore, and sitting down chose the good fish and put them into containers, but the bad fish they threw away. That’s how it will be at the completion of the age. The angels will come and separate the evil from the midst of the righteous, and cast them into the fiery furnace. There people will weep and gnash their teeth.

  And so there will be a day of reckoning for all people when this age is “completed.” One of Jesus’s characteristic teachings is that there will be a massive reversal of fortunes when the end comes. Those who are rich and powerful now will be humbled then; those who are lowly and oppressed now will then be exalted. The apocalyptic logic of this view is clear: it is only by siding with the forces of evil that people in power have succeeded in this life; and by siding with God other people have been persecuted and rendered powerless. But when the Son of Man arrives, all that will be reversed so that anyone who h
as given up everything for the sake of that coming kingdom will be rewarded: the first will become last and the last first. And so we see from a saying in Mark and another in L:

  Truly I tell you, there is no one who has left a house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or lands for my sake and the sake of the good news, who will not receive them all back a hundred fold in this present time—houses, brothers, sisters, mothers, children, and lands, along with persecutions—and in the age that is coming, life that never ends. But many who are first will be last and the last will be first. (Mark 10:29–31)

  And people will come from east and west and from north and south and recline in the kingdom of God; and behold, those who are last will be first and the first will be last. (Luke 13:29–30; this may be Q—cf. Matthew 20:16)

  This coming judgment will not simply involve humans: it will have a cosmic dimension. This entire world has grown corrupt, and so it will be destroyed to make way for the coming of the kingdom.

  And in those days, after that affliction, the sun will grow dark and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will be falling from heaven, and the powers in the sky will be shaken; and then they will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds with great power and glory. And then he will send forth his angels and he will gather his elect from the four winds, from the end of earth to the end of heaven. (Mark 13:24–27)

  Preparation for the End: Keeping the Torah and Living Ethically

  How was one to prepare for this coming end? We saw in Jesus’s earliest recorded words that his followers were to “repent” in light of the coming kingdom. This meant that, in particular, they were to change their ways and begin doing what God wanted them to do. As a good Jewish teacher, Jesus was completely unambiguous about how one knows what God wants people to do. It is spelled out in the Torah. The Law was a central component of Jesus’s teaching, as can be seen from the fact that he focused on the Law, and the correct interpretation of the Law, in multiple independent sources, both early and late.

  From Mark: When a man runs up to Jesus and asks him what he must do to “inherit eternal life,” Jesus’s immediate response is to list some of the Ten Commandments. (In Matthew’s version of this story, he actually tells the man, “If you want to enter into life, keep the commandments” (Mark 10:17–22; Matthew 19:16–22; see also Luke 18:18–23).

  From Q: Jesus states that it is easier for heaven and earth to pass away than for a single dot of the Law to pass away (Luke 16:16; Matthew 5:18).

  From M: Jesus states that he came to fulfill the Law and that his followers must keep the Law even better than the scribes and Pharisees if they want to enter into the kingdom of heaven (Matthew 5:17, 19–20).

  From John: Jesus argues with his opponents about the Law and points out to them that “the scripture cannot be broken” (John 10:34–35).

  I should stress that some of these multiply attested sayings appear to pass the criterion of dissimilarity. For example, in the first passage mentioned (Mark 10:17–27), when a rich man asks Jesus how to have eternal life, he tells him to “keep the commandments.” Is this what early Christians thought, that it was by keeping the Law that a person would inherit eternal life? Quite the contrary, this is a view that the vast majority of Christians rejected. The early Christians maintained that a person had to believe in the death and resurrection of Jesus for eternal life. Some early Christians—an increasingly greater number with the passage of time—argued precisely against the idea that keeping the Law could bring eternal life. If it could, then what was the purpose of Christ and his death? No, it was not the Law but Jesus who could bring salvation. So why is Jesus portrayed in this passage as saying that salvation comes to those who keep the Law? Because that is something that he actually said.

  What, more specifically, did Jesus teach about the Law? Perhaps it is easiest to explain his views by setting them in contrast with other perspectives that we know something about. Unlike certain Pharisees, Jesus did not think that what really mattered before God was the scrupulous observance of the laws in all their details. Going out of one’s way to avoid doing anything questionable on the Sabbath was of very little importance to him. That is why he constantly had confrontations with Pharisees on the issue. Unlike some Sadducees, Jesus did not think that it was of the utmost importance to adhere strictly to the rules for worship in the Temple through the divinely ordained sacrifices. In fact, as we will see, his opposition to the Temple and its cult eventually led to his death. Unlike some Essenes, he did not think that people should seek to maintain their own ritual purity in isolation from others in order to find God’s ultimate approval. As we will see in a moment, his reputation was tarnished among people like this, as he associated precisely with the impure.

  What did matter for Jesus—as for some other Jews from his time about whom we are less well informed (see, for example, Mark 12:32–34)—were the commandments of God that formed, in his opinion, the very heart of the Law. These were the commandments to love God above all else (as in Deuteronomy 4:4–6) and to love one’s neighbor as oneself (as in Leviticus 19:18).

  This emphasis on the dual commandments to love is found in our earliest surviving Gospel, in a passage that deserves to be quoted at length:

  And one of the scribes who came up heard them arguing, and noticing that [ Jesus] was giving good answers, he asked him, “What is first among all the commandments?” Jesus answered, “The first of all is this: ‘Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord, and you shall love the Lord your God with your whole heart and your whole soul and your whole understanding and your whole strength’ [Deuteronomy 6:4–5]. This is the second: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself’ [Leviticus 19:18]. There is no other commandment greater than these.” And the scribe said to him, “You are right, teacher; you speak the truth, because ‘He is one and there is none other than him,’ and ‘to love him with all one’s heart and understanding and strength’ and ‘to love one’s neighbor as oneself’ is much more than all of the burnt offerings and sacrifices.” And when Jesus saw that he replied intelligently, he said, “You are not far from the kingdom of God.” (Mark 12:23–34)

  Notice: the kingdom of God again. The way to attain the kingdom, for Jesus, was by following the heart of the Law, which was the requirement to love God above all else and to love other people as much as (or in the same way as) one loved oneself.

  The real, social, and practical implications of this teaching can be seen in a passage now found in the Gospel of Matthew, which passes our criterion of dissimilarity. At the end of Matthew 25 we find Jesus’s famous description of the final judgment, in which the “Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, and he sits on his glorious throne” (Matthew 25:31). All the nations appear before the Son of Man, and he separates them into two groups, as a shepherd would separate the sheep from the goats. He welcomes those on his right hand, the “sheep,” and invites them to come and “inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the earth.” Why are they entitled to the kingdom? Because, says the king, “I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.” These righteous ones, though, don’t understand since they had never laid eyes on this glorious divine figure, let alone done anything for him. And so they ask, “When did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink? And when did we see you a stranger and welcome you…?” And the king replies to them, “As you did it to one of the least of these, my brothers, you did it to me” (Matthew 25:34–40).

  He then turns to the group on his left, the “goats,” and curses them, telling them to “depart into the eternal fire prepared for the Devil and his angels.” Why? Because “I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me no drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not clothe me, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.” The
y, though, are equally surprised for they too have never seen this king of kings. But he then informs them, “Truly I say to you, insofar as you did not do it to the least of these, my brothers, neither did you do it to me.” And he then sends them “away into eternal punishment,” whereas the righteous enter “into eternal life” (Matthew 25:41–46).

  What is striking about this story, when considered in light of the criterion of dissimilarity, is that there is nothing distinctively Christian about it. That is, the future judgment is based, not on belief in Jesus’s death and resurrection, but on doing good things for those in need. Later Christians—including most notably Paul (see, for example, 1 Thessalonians 4:14–18) but also the writers of the Gospels—maintained that it was belief in Jesus that would bring a person into the coming kingdom. But nothing in this passage even hints at the need to believe in Jesus per se: these people didn’t even know him. What matters is helping the poor, oppressed, and needy. It does not seem likely that a Christian would formulate a passage in just this way.

  The conclusion? The sayings of the passage probably go back to Jesus. And their message is clear. Anyone who wants to enter into the future kingdom of God must follow the heart of the Torah and do what God commands, when he tells his people to love others as themselves.

  Jesus is often thought of as a great moral teacher, and I think that is right. But it is also important to understand why he insisted on a moral lifestyle guided by the dictates of love. It is not for the reasons that people offer today for being moral. Today many people think that we should behave ethically for the good of society so that we can all get along in the long haul. For Jesus, however, there was not going to be a long haul. The end was coming soon, and people needed to prepare for it. The ethics of Jesus’s teaching were not designed simply to make society better. They were designed to convince people to behave in appropriate ways so that when the Son of Man came, they would be among the elect and brought into the kingdom instead of being destined for either eternal torment or annihilation. Jesus’s ethics were driven by an apocalyptic agenda, and anyone who transplants them into a different, nonapocalyptic setting has ripped them out of their own context and pretended that their original context is of no significance to their meaning.