Talk:Historicity of Jesus

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Frequently asked questions

Historical existence vs historical portraits
Q 1a: How is this article different from Historical Jesus?

A: This article discusses the very basic issue of "existence of Jesus as a historical figure", not what he did and taught. On the other hand, the Historical Jesus article discusses the various aspects of what can be gathered about the activities of Jesus. In basic terms this article answers the question: "Did Jesus walk the streets of Jerusalem?" without addressing any details about what he said, did or taught as he walked the streets. The other article addresses broader questions such as "Was Jesus seen as an apocalyptic prophet by the people of his time?" which are beyond the scope of this article.

Q 1b: Why are there two articles?

A: The two separate aspects of historicity vs historical portraits require different lines of reasoning. Historicity is largely a yes/no question: "Did he exist and walk?" while historical portraits are far more involved and are based on "historically probable events" with different scholars having different levels of confidence in various aspects of what can be known about Jesus. Moreover WP:Length has specific length limits (as in WP:SIZERULE) and there is enough distinct material in each article that combining them would create too large an article that would be too hard to read and follow. And in any case the articles have different academic focuses and while there is widespread agreement on existence (discussed in this article), that does not extend to the portraits constructed in the other article and these issues are logically distinct.

Q 2: Is "virtually all scholars" a term that can be used in Wikipedia?

A: Yes:

Based on this Wikipedia search the term is widely used in Wikipedia.

The definition of the term is shown by the Merriam-Webster dictionary in clear terms.

The term is directly used by the source in the article, and is used per the WP:RS/AC guideline to reflect the academic consensus.

Q 3: What about books that claim Jesus never existed?

A: The internet includes some such lists, and they have been discussed on the talk page, the list in the box below is copied from the talk page discussion:

List of books on non-historicity of Jesus

This is a list of books typically presented on the internet as an overview of the authors who argue against the existence of Jesus, historicity of accounts, etc. Based on the analysis below, we can see how many "academics and scholars" there are here:

Harold Leidner, 2000, The Fabrication of the Christ Myth. Leidner was a patent attorney (NY University Law school 1939) and amateur scholar. He was an attorney, not a scholar and wrote as an amateur outside the field of law.

Robert M. Price: Deconstructing Jesus. 2003. Price is a biblical scholar, has training in the field and denies the existence of Jesus. However, he acknowledges (The Historical Jesus: Five Views ISBN 028106329X page 61) that hardly any scholars agree with his perspective on this issue.

Hal Childs, 2000, The Myth of the Historical Jesus and the Evolution of Consciousness Childs is a psychotherapist (not a scholar in the field) but does not deny the existence of Jesus. His perspective is shared by a number of scholars who support the existence of Jesus, e.g. John Dominic Crossan who also said: "those who write biographies of Jesus often do autobiography, but think they are doing biography". Child's perspective is unrelated to the existence question.

Dennis MacDonald, 2000, The Homeric Epics and the Gospel of Mark. MacDonald is a scholar, but does not deny the existence of Jesus as a person, he just argues that the Gospel of Mark was influenced by Homeric elements. He also thinks the Book of Acts includes Homeric trends, but that is unrelated to the existence question.

Burton L. Mack The Christian Myth: Origins, Logic, and Legacy. Social formation of myth making. Mack is a scholar who specifically supports the theory that Jesus existed as a traveling sage. Mack was a member of the Jesus seminar, believes that Jesus existed, but holds that his death was accidental and not due to his challenge to Jewish authority.

Luigi Cascioli, 2001, The Fable of Christ. Indicting the Papacy for profiteering from a fraud! Cascioli was a "land surveyor" who worked for the Italian army. His book was self-published. His claim to fame was that in 2002 he sued the Church for inventing Jesus, but in 2005 his case was rejected. He was no scholar.

Israel Finkelstein, Neil Silberman, 2002, The Bible Unearthed Finkelstein and a Silberman are archaeologists, but they do not deny the existence of Jesus. Their work is centered on archaeological themes and mostly addresses the Old Testament. Hardly anyone lists these two people as Jesus myth theorists.

Frank Zindler, 2003, The Jesus the Jews Never Knew. Zindler (who seems to have been a biologist at some point) does not seem to have had any scholarly training or taught at any university on this topic. What he writes on the topic is all self-taught, not scholarly.

Daniel Unterbrink, 2004, Judas the Galilean. Unterbrink is an accountant, and his book is self-published by iUniverse.

Tom Harpur, 2005, The Pagan Christ: Recovering the Lost Light. Harpur (who is a follower of Gerald Massey) argues that Egyptian myths influenced Judaism and Christianity, but he does not deny the existence of Jesus. Harpur's theory is that Jesus of Nazareth existed but mythical stories from Egypt were later added to the gospel narratives about him.

Francesco Carotta 2005, Jesus Was Caesar. Carotta does not deny the existence of Jesus, on the other hand he thinks Jesus existed but was Julius Caesar: a very unusual theory, but it does not deny the existence of Jesus.

Joseph Atwill, 2005, Caesar's Messiah: The Roman Conspiracy to Invent Jesus It is not clear who Joseph Atwill is. He seems to have written one paper on the Dead Sea Scrolls with Eisenman, but he does not seem to have any scholarly background, apart from having studied Greek and Latin as a youth in Japan, according to a review website. No trace of his having been a scholar of any kind.

Michel Onfray Traité d'athéologie (2007 In Defence of Atheism): Onfray, has a PhD in philosophy and was a high school teacher. He is critical of all religions including Judaism and Islam and thinks Christian doctrine was invented by Paul. Rather than focusing on the existence of Jesus his work deals with how religious doctrines were created and how they impact western philosophy.

Kenneth Humphreys, 2005, Jesus Never Existed. I can find no evidence anywhere that Humphreys is a scholar of any type, and where he was educated. He just seems to run his own website, and his book is published by Historical Review Press, which is Anthony Hancock (publisher), whose specialty is Holocaust denial books. A really WP:Fringe item.

Jay Raskin, 2006, The Evolution of Christs and Christianities Raskin has a PhD in philosophy, and has taught some philosophy and film making courses at various colleges. His book is self-published by Xlibris - "nonselective" in accepting manuscripts according to their Wikipedia page. Raskin is better known as a film-maker than a historian or philosopher and his movies have titles such as I married a Vampire. He is no scholar.

Thomas L. Thompson, 2006, The Messiah Myth. Thompson is a scholar and a denier of the existence of Jesus. He is one of the very few scholars who still deny existence.

Jan Irvin, Andrew Rutajit, 2006, Astrotheology and Shamanism From what I can find neither of these people are scholars and they seem to have a theory that religions are based on the use of narcotics: a pure WP:Fringe idea that seems to have been advocated by John Allegro as well. This is not scholarship, and these are not scholars.

Roger Viklund, 2008. Den Jesus som aldrig funnits (The Jesus who never existed). Viklund is an amateur who self-published his book in Swedish and just has his own website. Not a scholar at all.

Richard Carrier Not the Impossible Faith and Sense and Goodness without God. He has a PhD in history, but has no academic position and his books are self published by LuLu and Authorhouse. He runs his own website and may seen as a scholar or not, depending on perspective. Not clear what he does for a living.

D. M. Murdock (Acharya S) The Gospel According to Acharya S is a self-published author and her web site says she has a B.A. degree. There is no claim or record of her ever having had an academic position and she is not a scholar by any measure.

Earl Doherty Jesus: Neither God Nor Man - The Case for a Mythical Jesus is a self-published author. He has a B.A. but no advanced degrees and is not a scholar.

Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy The Jesus Mysteries . Freke has a B.A. degree and Gandy an M.A. Neither has a PhD or had an academic position. Freke teaches experiential seminars. Neither is a scholar.

So really there is one solid academic scholar here namely Thompson and then Price who can be called a non-academic scholar - given that he only teaches online courses on the subject (around $50 per course) at an online website with no campus. Note that G. A. Wells has softened his position of non-existence and now accepts the likely existence of a preacher mentioned in the Q source, although holding that the gospel narratives of his life/miracles are fiction. But just Thompson and Price do not make a long list. There are probably 1 or 2 more people with PhDs who deny existence (say Carrier, but who has no academic post) yet it is quite clear from this list that most of those mentioned are either amateurs or are scholars such as Mack who actually support existence. Most of these people are attorney/accountant/etc./etc. types and not scholars. The funniest one however was suggesting Raskin as a scholar. But anyway, the results speak for themselves.

As a side note, just for your clarification, given that you seem to think the existence debate is still raging in academia I did another search. It again confirmed that the debate is really over within academia and only the non-scholarly types are still discussing it. The funniest part was this challenge a year ago. I did another search and it seems that based on this ABC news item in Australia as of now no one has found an opposing professor of ancient history or classics. And there are plenty of professors out there; many of them non-Christian. The exact challenge seems to be to find "a full professor of Classics, Ancient History or New Testament in any accredited university in the world who thinks Jesus never lived". And no one seems to have found such a professor. So it is intuitively pretty clear that the debate is over within academia, just as the references indicate. What I just wrote does not affect the article, but from an intuitive point of view should tell you that the debate is over within academia. Else we can all call John Dickson and get him to eat a page after all.

There is yet one more scholar, namely Thomas L. Brodie, who in a recent 2012 book ("Beyond the Quest for the Historical Jesus" ISBN 978-1907534584) has argued that the coherence of 1 Kings 16:29 - 2 Kings 13:25 indicates that the Elijah and Elisha stories are a model for the gospels, and a mythical Jesus. Brodie is a scholar in the field, so now there is Price, Thompson and Brodie. His arguments are very different from the others, but this does not dramatically change the balance of scholarship yet, unless several other scholars follow him in the next few years, so only time will tell. As for Dickson eating a page, he does not have to yet, for just as the book came out Brodie either resigned or was fired from his position at the Dominican Biblical Institute, depending on which story in the press you believe.

The list came from a non-WP:RS website and once it was analyzed it became clear that: Most of the authors on the list were not scholars in the field, and included an attorney, an accountant, a land surveyor, a film-maker, as well as a number of amateurs whose actual profession was less than clear, whose books were self-published and failed the WP:RS requirements. Some of the books on the list did not even deny the existence of Jesus, e.g. Burton Mack (who is a scholar) holds that Jesus existed but his death was not due to his challenge to Jewish authority, etc. Finkelstein and Silberman's work is about the Old Testament and not really related to Jesus. The analysis of the list thus shed light on the scarcity of scholars who deny the existence of Jesus.

Q 4: What about contemporary sources and archaeological remnants?

A: The article Christ myth theory discusses that issue in much more detail because it is more relevant to the denial existence issues. As stated there, and briefly in this article:

In a global cultural context the existence and general life stories of historical figures such as Plato or Socrates are established by the analysis of references to them in later documents rather than by specific relics and remnants attributed to them.

Although the followers of Jesus made an impact on their societies a few centuries after his death, the impact of Jesus on the society of his time was "practically nil" and hence no major relics can be expected given that there is no such evidence of nearly anyone who lived in the first century.

There was a very low level of interest in and awareness of Christians within the general population of the Roman Empire at the turn of the first century and there is the lack of any discernible mention of them by Roman authors such as Martial and Juvenal, although Christians had been present in Rome since the reign of Claudius (41–54 AD) and both authors referred to Judaism.

Specific issues regarding this topic are discussed at more length in that article.

Q 5: But aren't these scholars who study Jesus all Christians anyway?

A: This has been discussed on the talk page of this article, as well as a number of other talk article pages. There are 2 aspects to this:

To begin with not all scholars involved in the historical Jesus research are Christians, and the article lede quotes Ehrman who is an agnostic and Price who is an atheist. Moreover note that G. A. Wells who was widely accepted as the leader of the non-existence movement in the 20th century, abandoned that position and now accepts that the Q source refers to "a preacher" on whom parts of the gospels were based - although he believes that the supernatural claims were just stories that were then attributed to that preacher. That is reflected in his 2004 book "Can we Trust the New Testament", pages 49-50.

Some of the most respected late 20th century scholars involved in the study of the historical Jesus, e.g. Amy-Jill Levine, Geza Vermes, Paula Fredriksen, etc. are Jewish. This trend is discussed in the 2012 book "Soundings in the Religion of Jesus: Perspectives and Methods in Jewish and Christian Scholarship by Bruce Chilton Anthony Le Donne and Jacob Neusner (ISBN 0800698010 page 132). While much of the older research in the 1950-1970 time frame may have involved Christian scholars (mostly in Europe) the 1980s saw an international effect and since then Jewish scholars have brought their knowledge of the field and made significant contributions. And one should note that the book is coauthored by the likes of Chilton and Neusner with quite different backgrounds. Similarly one of the main books in the field "The Historical Jesus in Context by Amy-Jill Levine, Dale C. Allison Jr., John Dominic Crossan 2006 ISBN 0691009929" is jointly edited by scholars with quite different backgrounds. In the late 20th and the 21st century Jewish, Christian and secular agnostic scholars have widely cooperated in research. They continue to debate the historicity of specific gospel narratives, but the agreement on the existence of Jesus is global.

Moreover, Wikipedia policies do not prohibit Jewish scholars as sources on the history of Judaism, Buddhist scholars as sources on Buddhism, or Muslim scholars as sources on the history of Islam provided they are respected scholars whose works meet the general WP:RS requirements in terms of publisher reputation, etc.

Q 6: How can we say most scholars without doing a formal survey ourselves?

A: In fact the formal Wikipedia guidelines require us not to do our own survey. The Wikipedia guideline WP:RS/AC specifically states: "The statement that all or most scientists or scholars hold a certain view requires reliable sourcing that directly says that all or most scientists or scholars hold that view." Given that the guideline then states: "statement in Wikipedia that academic consensus exists on a topic must be sourced rather than being based on the opinion or assessment of editors." we should not rely on our own surveys but quote a scholar who states what the "academic consensus" may be. Moreover, in this case, after much discussion, no reliable source has yet been presented that presents a differing statement of the academic consensus, and opposing scholars such as Robert Price acknowledge that their views are not the mainstream.

Q 7: Why are other historical facts less certain than existence?

A: The difference is "historically certain" versus "historically probable" and "historically plausible". There are a number of subtle issues and this is a somewhat complicated topic, although it may seem simple at first:

Hardly any scholars dispute the existence of Jesus or his crucifixion.
A large majority of scholars agree that he debated the authorities and had "followers" - some scholars say there was a hierarchy among the followers, a few think it was a flat organization.
More scholars think he performed some healings (given that Rabbinic sources criticize him for that etc., among other reasons) than those who say he never did, but less agreement on than the debates with authorities, etc.

As the article states Amy-Jill Levine summarized the situation by stating: "Most scholars agree that Jesus was baptized by John, debated with fellow Jews on how best to live according to God's will, engaged in healings and exorcisms, taught in parables, gathered male and female followers in Galilee, went to Jerusalem, and was crucified by Roman soldiers during the governorship of Pontius Pilate." In that statement Levine chose her words very carefully. If she had said "disciples" instead of followers there would have been serious objections from other scholars, if she had said "called" instead of "gathered", there would have also been objections in that some scholars hold that Jesus preached equally to all, never imposed a hierarchy among his followers, etc. Scholars have very specific positions and the strength of the consensus among them can vary by changing just one word, e.g. follower to disciple or apostle, etc.

Quotes

Quotes on the historicity of Jesus

Christ myth theorists

[T]he view that there was no historical Jesus, that his earthly existence is a fiction of earliest Christianity—a fiction only later made concrete by setting his life in the first century—is today almost totally rejected.

G. A. Wells, The Historical Evidence for Jesus (Amherst, NY: Prometheus, 1988) p. 218

It is customary today to dismiss with amused contempt the suggestion that Jesus never existed.

G. A. Wells, "The Historicity of Jesus," in Jesus and History and Myth, ed. R. Joseph Hoffman (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 1986) p. 27

"New Testament criticism treated the Christ Myth Theory with universal disdain"

Robert M. Price, The Pre-Nicene New Testament: Fifty-Four Formative Texts (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 2006) p. 1179

"Van Voorst is quite right in saying that 'mainstream scholarship today finds it unimportant' [to engage the Christ myth theory seriously]. Most of their comment (such as those quoted by Michael Grant) are limited to expressions of contempt."

Earl Doherty, "Responses to Critiques of the Mythicist Case: Alleged Scholarly Refutations of Jesus Mythicism, Part Three", The Jesus Puzzle: Was There No Historical Jesus?

Jesus existed

Today, nearly all historians, whether Christians or not, accept that Jesus existed and that the gospels contain plenty of valuable evidence which has to be weighed and assessed critically. There is general agreement that, with the possible exception of Paul, we know far more about Jesus of Nazareth than about any first or second century Jewish or pagan religious teacher.

Graham Stanton, The Gospels and Jesus (2nd ed.), (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002) p. xxiii

It is certain, however, that Jesus was arrested while in Jerusalem for the Passover, probably in the year 30, and that he was executed...it cannot be doubted that Peter was a personal disciple of Jesus...

Helmut Koester, Introduction to the New Testament, 2 (2nd ed.) (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2000) pp. 80 & 166

Even the most critical historian can confidently assert that a Jew named Jesus worked as a teacher and wonder-worker in Palestine during the reign of Tiberius, was executed by crucifixion under the prefect Pontius Pilate, and continued to have followers after his death.

Luke Timothy Johnson, The Real Jesus (San Francisco: Harper, 1996) p. 121

[T]here is substantial evidence that a person by the name of Jesus once existed.

Robert Funk, Honest to Jesus: Jesus for a New Millenium (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1997) p. 33

There are no substantial doubts about the general course of Jesus’ life: when and where he lived, approximately when and where he died, and the sort of thing that he did during his public activity.

E. P. Sanders, The Historical Figure of Jesus (London: Allen Lane, 1993) p. 10

Frankly, I know of no ancient historian or biblical historian who would have a twinge of doubt about the existence of a Jesus Christ - the documentary evidence is simply overwhelming.

Graeme Clarke, quoted by John Dickson in "Facts and friction of Easter", The Sydney Morning Herald, March 21, 2008

In the academic mind, there can be no more doubt whatsoever that Jesus existed than did Augustus and Tiberius, the emperors of his lifetime. Even if we assume for a moment that the accounts of non-biblical authors who mention him - Flavius Josephus, Tacitus, Suetonius, Pliny the Younger and others - had not survived, the outstanding quality of the Gospels, Paul's letters and other New Testament writings is more than good enough for the historian.

Carsten Peter Thiede, Jesus, Man or Myth? (Oxford: Lion, 2005) p. 23

Rejection of CMT - early 20th century (first wave of CMT)

The defectiveness of [the Christ myth theory's] treatment of the traditional evidence is perhaps not so patent in the case of the gospels as it is in the case of the Pauline epistles. Yet fundamentally it is the same. There is the same easy dismissal of all external testimony, the same disdain for the saner conclusions of modern criticism, the same inclination to attach most value to extremes of criticism, the same neglect of all the personal and natural features of the narrative, the same disposition to put skepticism forward in the garb of valid demonstration, and the same ever present predisposition against recognizing any evidence for Jesus' actual existence... The New Testament data are perfectly clear in their testimony to the reality of Jesus' earthly career and they come from a time when the possibility that the early framers of tradition should have been deceived upon this point is out of the question.

Shirley Jackson Case, The Historicity Of Jesus (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1912) pp. 76-77 & 269

I feel that I ought almost to apologize to my readers for investigating at such length the hypothesis of a pre-Christian Jesus, son of a mythical Mary, and for exhibiting over so many pages its fantastic, baseless, and absurd character... We must [, according to Christ myth advocates,] perforce suppose that the Gospels were a covert tribute to the worth and value of Pagan mythology and religious dramas, to pagan art and statuary. If we adopt the mythico-symbolical method, they can have been nothing else. Its sponsors might surely condescend to explain the alchemy by which the ascertained rites and beliefs of early Christians were distilled from these antecedents. The effect and the cause are so entirely disparate, so devoid of any organic connection, that we would fain see the evolution worked out a little more clearly. At one end of it we have a hurly-burly of pagan myths, at the other an army of Christian apologists inveighing against everything pagan and martyred for doing so, all within a space of sixty or seventy years. I only hope the orthodox will be gratified to learn that their Scriptures are a thousandfold more wonderful and unique than they appeared to be when they were merely inspired by the Holy Spirit. For verbal inspiration is not, as regards its miraculous quality, in the same field with mythico-symbolism. Verily we have discovered a new literary genus, unexampled in the history of mankind, you rake together a thousand irrelevant thrums of mythology, picked up at random from every age, race, and clime; you get a "Christist" to throw them into a sack and shake them up; you open it, and out come the Gospels. In all the annals of the Bacon-Shakespeareans we have seen nothing like it.

Frederick Cornwallis Conybeare,The Historical Christ, or an Investigation of the Views of J. M. Robertson, A. Drews and W. B. Smith (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Library, 2009/1914) pp. 42 & 95

The historical reality both of Buddha and of Christ has sometimes been doubted or denied. It would be just as reasonable to question the historical existence of Alexander the Great and Charlemagne on account of the legends which have gathered round them... The attempt to explain history without the influence of great men may flatter the vanity of the vulgar, but it will find no favour with the philosophic historian.

James Frazer, The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion, 7 (3rd ed.) (London: Macmillan, 1919) p. 311

There is, lastly, a group of writers who endeavor to prove that Jesus never lived--that the story of his life is made up by mingling myths of heathen gods, Babylonian, Egyptian, Persian, Greek, etc. No real scholar regards the work of these men seriously. They lack the most elementary knowledge of historical research. Some of them are eminent scholars in other subjects, such as Assyriology and mathematics, but their writings about the life of Jesus have no more claim to be regarded as historical than Alice in Wonderland or the Adventures of Baron Munchausen.

George Aaron Barton, Jesus of Nazareth: A Biography (New York: Macmillan, 1922) p. x

In the last analysis, the whole Christ-myth theorizing is a glaring example of obscurantism, if the sin of obscurantism consists in the acceptance of bare possibilities in place of actual probabilities, and of pure surmise in defiance of existing evidence. Those who have not entered far into the laborious inquiry may pretend that the historicity of Jesus is an open question. For me to adopt such a pretence would be sheer intellectual dishonesty. I know I must, as an honest man, reckon with Jesus as a factor in history... This dialectic process whereby the Christ-myth theory discredits itself rests on the simple fact that you cannot attempt to prove the theory without mishandling the evidence.

Herbert George Wood, Christianity and the Nature of History (London: Cambridge University Press, 1934) pp. xxxiii & 54

I.e. if we leave out of account the Christ-myth theories, which are hardly to be reckoned as within the range of serious criticism.

Alexander Roper Vidler, The Modernist Movement in the Roman Church (London: Cambridge University Press, 1934) p. 253

Of course the doubt as to whether Jesus really existed is unfounded and not worth refutation. No sane person can doubt that Jesus stands as founder behind the historical movement whose first distinct stage is represented by the oldest Palestinian community.

Rudolf Bultmann, Jesus and the Word (New York: Scribner, 1958) p. introduction

Such Christ-myth theories are not now advanced by serious opponents of Christianity—they have long been exploded ...

Gilbert Cope, Symbolism in the Bible and the Church (London: SCM, 1959) p. 14

By no means are we at the mercy of those who doubt or deny that Jesus ever lived.

Rudolf Bultmann, "The Study of the Synoptic Gospels", Form Criticism: Two Essays on New Testament Research, Rudolf Bultmann & Karl Kundsin; translated by Frederick C. Grant (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1962) p. 62

In the 1910's a few scholars did argue that Jesus never existed and was simply the figment of speculative imagination. This denial of the historicity of Jesus does not commend itself to scholars, moderates or extremists, any more. ... The "Christ-myth" theories are not accepted or even discussed by scholars today.

Samuel Sandmel, A Jewish Understanding of the New Testament‎ (New York: Ktav, 1974) p. 196

In the early years of this century, various theses were propounded which all assert that Jesus never lived, and that the story of Jesus is a myth or legend. These claims have long since been exposed as historical nonsense. There can be no reasonable doubt that Jesus of Nazareth lived in Palestine in the first three decades of our era, probably from 6-7 BC to 30 AD. That is a fact.

Walter Kasper, Jesus the Christ (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1976) p. 65

Rejection of CMT - late 20th and early 21st century (revival of CMT)

If one were able to survey the members of the major learned societies dealing with antiquity, it would be difficult to find more than a handful who believe that Jesus of Nazareth did not walk the dusty roads of Palestine in the first three decades of the Common Era. Evidence for Jesus as a historical personage is incontrovertible.

W. Ward Gasque, "The Leading Religion Writer in Canada... Does He Know What He's Talking About?", George Mason University's History News Network, 2004

[The non-Christian references to Jesus from the first two centuries] render highly implausible any farfetched theories that even Jesus' very existence was a Christian invention. The fact that Jesus existed, that he was crucified under Pontius Pilate (for whatever reason) and that he had a band of followers who continued to support his cause, seems to be the part of the bedrock of historical tradition. If nothing else, the non-Christian evidence can provide us with certainty on that score.

Christopher M. Tuckett, "Sources and Methods" in The Cambridge Companion to Jesus (London: Cambridge University Press, 2001) p. 124

[A]n attempt to show that Jesus never existed has been made in recent years by G. A. Wells, a Professor of German who has ventured into New Testament study and presents a case that the origins of Christianity can be explained without assuming that Jesus really lived. Earlier presentations of similar views at the turn of the century failed to make any impression on scholarly opinion, and it is certain that this latest presentation of the case will not fare any better. For of course the evidence is not confined to Tacitus; there are the New Testament documents themselves, nearly all of which must be dated in the first century, and behind which there lies a period of transmission of the story of Jesus which can be traced backwards to a date not far from that when Jesus is supposed to have lived. To explain the rise of this tradition without the hypothesis of Jesus is impossible.

I. Howard Marshall, I Believe in the Historical Jesus (rev. ed.) (Vancouver: Regent College Publishing, 2004) pp. 15–16

A phone call from the BBC’s flagship Today programme: would I go on air on Good Friday morning to debate with the authors of a new book, The Jesus Mysteries? The book claims (or so they told me) that everything in the Gospels reflects, because it was in fact borrowed from, much older pagan myths; that Jesus never existed; that the early church knew it was propagating a new version of an old myth, and that the developed church covered this up in the interests of its own power and control. The producer was friendly, and took my point when I said that this was like asking a professional astronomer to debate with the authors of a book claiming the moon was made of green cheese.

N. T. Wright, "Jesus' Self Understanding", in Stephen T. Davis, Daniel Kendall, Gerald O’Collins, The Incarnation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004) p. 48

A school of thought popular with cranks on the Internet holds that Jesus didn’t actually exist.

Tom Breen, The Messiah Formerly Known as Jesus: Dispatches from the Intersection of Christianity and Pop Culture (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2008) p. 138

Today only an eccentric would claim that Jesus never existed.

Leander Keck, Who Is Jesus?: History in Perfect Tense (Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 2000) p. 13

While The Christ Myth alarmed many who were innocent of learning, it evoked only Olympian scorn from the historical establishment, who were confident that Jesus had existed... The Christ-myth theory, then, won little support from the historical specialists. In their judgement, it sought to demonstrate a perverse thesis, and it preceded by drawing the most far-fetched, even bizarre connection between mythologies of very diverse origin. The importance of the theory lay, not in its persuasiveness to the historians (since it had none), but in the fact that it invited theologians to renewed reflection on the questions of faith and history.

Brian A. Gerrish, The Old Protestantism and the New: Essays on the Reformation Heritage (London: T. & T. Clark, 2004) pp. 231 & 233

We do not need to take seriously those writers who occasionally claim that Jesus never existed at all, for we have clear evidence to the contrary from a number of Jewish, Latin, and Islamic sources.

John Drane, "Introduction", in John Drane, The Great Sayings of Jesus: Proverbs, Parables and Prayers (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 1999) p. 23

It is the nature of historical work that we are always involved in probability judgments. Granted, some judgments are so probable as to be certain; for example, Jesus really existed and really was crucified, just as Julius Caesar really existed and was assassinated.

Marcus Borg, "A Vision of the Christian Life", The Meaning of Jesus: Two Visions, Marcus Borg & N. T. Wright (San Francisco: HarperCollins, 2007) p. 236

To sum up, modern critical methods fail to support the Christ-myth theory. It has 'again and again been answered and annihilated by first-rank scholars'. In recent years 'no serious scholar has ventured to postulate the non-historicity of Jesus'—or at any rate very few, and they have not succeeded in disposing of the much stronger, indeed very abundant, evidence to the contrary.

Michael Grant, Jesus: An Historian's Review of the Gospels (New York: Scribner, 1995) p. 200

I think that there are hardly any historians today, in fact I don't know of any historians today, who doubt the existence of Jesus... So I think that question can be put to rest.

N. T. Wright, "The Self-Revelation of God in Human History: A Dialogue on Jesus with N. T. Wright", in Antony Flew & Roy Abraham Vargese, There is a God (New York: HarperOne, 2007) p. 188

We can be certain that Jesus really existed (despite a few highly motivated skeptics who refuse to be convinced), that he was a Jewish teacher in Galilee, and that he was crucified by the Roman government around 30 CE.

Robert J. Miller, The Jesus Seminar and Its Critics (Santa Rosa: Polebridge, 1999) p. 38

Despite the prejudices and theological preconceptions of the evangelists, they record many incidents that mere inventors would have concealed—the competition of the apostles for high places in the Kingdom, their flight after Jesus' arrest, Peter's denial, the failure of Christ to work miracles in Galilee, the references of some auditors to his possible insanity, his early uncertainty as to his mission, his confessions of ignorance as to the future, his moments of bitterness, his despairing cry on the cross; no one reading these scenes can doubt the reality of the figure behind them. That a few simple men should in one generation have invented so powerful and appealing a personality, so lofty an ethic and so inspiring a vision of human brotherhood, would be a miracle far more incredible than any recorded in the Gospel.

Will Durant, Christ and Caesar, The Story of Civilization, 3 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1972) p. 557

There are those who argue that Jesus is a figment of the Church’s imagination, that there never was a Jesus at all. I have to say that I do not know any respectable critical scholar who says that any more.

Richard A. Burridge, Jesus Now and Then (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004) p. 34

Although Wells has been probably the most able advocate of the nonhistoricity theory, he has not been persuasive and is now almost a lone voice for it. The theory of Jesus' nonexistence is now effectively dead as a scholarly question... The nonhistoricity thesis has always been controversial, and it has consistently failed to convince scholars of many disciplines and religious creeds... Biblical scholars and classical historians now regard it as effectively refuted.

Robert E. Van Voorst, Jesus Outside the New Testament: An Introduction to the Ancient Evidence (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000) pp. 14 & 16

No reputable scholar today questions that a Jew named Jesus son of Joseph lived; most readily admit that we now know a considerable amount about his actions and his basic teachings.

James H. Charlesworth, "Preface", in James H. Charlesworth, Jesus and Archaeology (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2006) pp. xxi–xxv

[Robert] Price thinks the evidence is so weak for the historical Jesus that we cannot know anything certain or meaningful about him. He is even willing to entertain the possibility that there never was a historical Jesus. Is the evidence of Jesus really that thin? Virtually no scholar trained in history will agree with Price's negative conclusions... In my view Price's work in the gospels is overpowered by a philosophical mindset that is at odds with historical research—of any kind... What we see in Price is what we have seen before: a flight from fundamentalism.

Craig A. Evans, Fabricating Jesus: How Modern Scholars Distort the Gospels (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2008) p. 25

The scholarly mainstream, in contrast to Bauer and company, never doubted the existence of Jesus or his relevance for the founding of the Church.

Craig A. Evans, "Life-of-Jesus Research and the Eclipse of Mythology", Theological Studies 54, 1993, p. 8

There's no serious question for historians that Jesus actually lived. There’s real issues about whether he is really the way the Bible described him. There’s real issues about particular incidents in his life. But no serious ancient historian doubts that Jesus was a real person, really living in Galilee in the first century.

Chris Forbes, interview with John Dickson, "Zeitgeist: Time to Discard the Christian Story?", Center for Public Christianity, 2009

I don't think there's any serious historian who doubts the existence of Jesus. There are a lot of people who want to write sensational books and make a lot of money who say Jesus didn't exist. But I don't know any serious scholar who doubts the existence of Jesus.

Bart Ehrman, interview with Reginald V. Finley Sr., "Who Changed The New Testament and Why", The Infidel Guy Show, 2008

What about those writers like Acharya S (The Christ Conspiracy) and Timothy Freke & Peter Gandy (The Jesus Mysteries), who say that Jesus never existed, and that Christianity was an invented religion, the Jewish equivalent of the Greek mystery religions? This is an old argument, even though it shows up every 10 years or so. This current craze that Christianity was a mystery religion like these other mystery religions-the people who are saying this are almost always people who know nothing about the mystery religions; they've read a few popular books, but they're not scholars of mystery religions. The reality is, we know very little about mystery religions-the whole point of mystery religions is that they're secret! So I think it's crazy to build on ignorance in order to make a claim like this. I think the evidence is just so overwhelming that Jesus existed, that it's silly to talk about him not existing. I don't know anyone who is a responsible historian, who is actually trained in the historical method, or anybody who is a biblical scholar who does this for a living, who gives any credence at all to any of this.

Bart Ehrman, interview with David V. Barrett, "The Gospel According to Bart", Fortean Times (221), 2007

Richard [Carrier] takes the extremist position that Jesus of Nazareth never even existed, that there was no such person in history. This is a position that is so extreme that to call it marginal would be an understatement; it doesn’t even appear on the map of contemporary New Testament scholarship.

William Lane Craig, "Did Jesus Rise from the Dead?", debate with Richard Carrier, 2009

The alternative thesis... that within thirty years there had evolved such a coherent and consistent complex of traditions about a non-existent figure such as we have in the sources of the Gospels is just too implausible. It involves too many complex and speculative hypotheses, in contrast to the much simpler explanation that there was a Jesus who said and did more or less what the first three Gospels attribute to him.

James D. G. Dunn, The Evidence for Jesus (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1985) p. 29

This is always the fatal flaw of the 'Jesus myth' thesis: the improbability of the total invention of a figure who had purportedly lived within the generation of the inventors, or the imposition of such an elaborate myth on some minor figure from Galilee. [Robert] Price is content with the explanation that it all began 'with a more or less vague savior myth.' Sad, really.

James D. G. Dunn, "Response to Robert M. Price", in James K. Beilby & Paul Rhodes Eddy, The Historical Jesus: Five Views (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2009) p. 98

Since the Enlightenment, the Gospel stories about the life of Jesus have been in doubt. Intellectuals then as now asked: 'What makes the stories of the New Testament any more historically probable than Aesop's fables or Grimm's fairy tales?' The critics can be answered satisfactorily...For all the rigor of the standard it sets, the criterion [of embarrassment] demonstrates that Jesus existed.

Alan F. Segal, "Believe Only the Embarrassing", Slate, 2005

Some writers may toy with the fancy of a 'Christ-myth,' but they do not do so on the ground of historical evidence. The historicity of Christ is as axiomatic for an unbiased historian as the historicity of Julius Caesar. It is not historians who propagate the 'Christ-myth' theories.

F. F. Bruce, The New Testament Documents: Are They Reliable? (6th ed.) (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003) p. 123

Jesus is in no danger of suffering Catherine [of Alexandria]'s fate as an unhistorical myth...

Dale Allison, The Historical Christ and the Theological Jesus (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2009) p. 37

An examination of the claims for and against the historicity of Jesus thus reveals that the difficulties faced by those undertaking to prove that he is not historical, in the fields both of the history of religion and the history of doctrine, and not least in the interpretation of the earliest tradition are far more numerous and profound than those which face their opponents. Seen in their totality, they must be considered as having no possible solution. Added to this, all hypotheses which have so far been put forward to the effect that Jesus never lived are in the strangest opposition to each other, both in their method of working and their interpretation of the Gospel reports, and thus merely cancel each other out. Hence we must conclude that the supposition that Jesus did exist is exceedingly likely, whereas its converse is exceedingly unlikely. This does not mean that the latter will not be proposed again from time to time, just as the romantic view of the life of Jesus is also destined for immortality. It is even able to dress itself up with certain scholarly technique, and with a little skillful manipulation can have much influence on the mass of people. But as soon as it does more than engage in noisy polemics with 'theology' and hazards an attempt to produce real evidence, it immediately reveals itself to be an implausible hypothesis.

Albert Schweitzer, The Quest of the Historical Jesus, translated by John Bowden et al. (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2001) pp. 435–436

In fact, there is more evidence that Jesus of Nazareth certainly lived than for most famous figures of the ancient past. This evidence is of two kinds: internal and external, or, if you will, sacred and secular. In both cases, the total evidence is so overpowering, so absolute that only the shallowest of intellects would dare to deny Jesus' existence. And yet this pathetic denial is still parroted by 'the village atheist,' bloggers on the internet, or such organizations as the Freedom from Religion Foundation.

Paul L. Maier, "Did Jesus Really Exist?", 4Truth.net, 2007

If I understand what Earl Doherty is arguing, Neil, it is that Jesus of Nazareth never existed as an historical person, or, at least that historians, like myself, presume that he did and act on that fatally flawed presumption. I am not sure, as I said earlier, that one can persuade people that Jesus did exist as long as they are ready to explain the entire phenomenon of historical Jesus and earliest Christianity either as an evil trick or a holy parable. I had a friend in Ireland who did not believe that Americans had landed on the moon but that they had created the entire thing to bolster their cold-war image against the communists. I got nowhere with him. So I am not at all certain that I can prove that the historical Jesus existed against such an hypothesis and probably, to be honest, I am not even interested in trying.

John Dominic Crossan, "Historical Jesus: Materials and Methodology", XTalk, 2000

When they say that Christian beliefs about Jesus are derived from pagan mythology, I think you should laugh. Then look at them wide-eyed and with a big grin, and exclaim, 'Do you really believe that?' Act as though you've just met a flat earther or Roswell conspirator.

William Lane Craig, "Question 90: Jesus and Pagan Mythology", Reasonable Faith, 2009

An extreme instance of pseudo-history of this kind is the “explanation” of the whole story of Jesus as a myth.

Emil Brunner, The Mediator: A Study of the Central Doctrine of the Christian Faith (Cambridge: Lutterworth Press, 2002) p. 164

An extreme view along these lines is one which denies even the historical existence of Jesus Christ—a view which, one must admit, has not managed to establish itself among the educated, outside a little circle of amateurs and cranks, or to rise above the dignity of the Baconian theory of Shakespeare.

Edwyn Robert Bevan, Hellenism And Christianity (2nd ed.) (London: G. Allen and Unwin, 1930) p. 256

When all the evidence brought against Jesus' historicity is surveyed it is not found to contain any elements of strength.

Shirley Jackson Case, "The Historicity of Jesus: An Estimate of the Negative Argument", The American Journal of Theology, 1911, 15 (1)

It would be easy to show how much there enters of the conjectural, of superficial resemblances, of debatable interpretation into the systems of the Drews, the Robertsons, the W. B. Smiths, the Couchouds, or the Stahls... The historical reality of the personality of Jesus alone enables us to understand the birth and development of Christianity, which otherwise would remain an enigma, and in the proper sense of the word, a miracle.

Maurice Goguel, Jesus the Nazarene: Myth or History? (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1926) pp. 30 & 244

Anyone who talks about "reasonable faith" must say what he thinks about Jesus. And that would still be so even if, with one or two cranks, he believed that He never existed.

John W. C. Wand, The Old Faith and the New Age‎ (London: Skeffington & Son, 1933) p. 31

That both in the case of the Christians, and in the case of those who worshipped Zagreus or Osiris or Attis, the Divine Being was believed to have died and returned to life, would be a depreciation of Christianity only if it could be shown that the Christian belief was derived from the pagan one. But that can be supposed only by cranks for whom historical evidence is nothing.

Edwyn R. Bevan, in Thomas Samuel Kepler, Contemporary Thinking about Paul: An Anthology (New York: Abingdon-Cokesbury, 1950) p. 44

The pseudoscholarship of the early twentieth century calling in question the historical reality of Jesus was an ingenuous attempt to argue a preconceived position.

Gerard Stephen Sloyan, The Crucifixion of Jesus: History, Myth, Faith (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1995) p. 9

Whatever else Jesus may or may not have done, he unquestionably* started the process that became Christianity…

UNQUESTIONABLY: The proposition has been questioned, but the alternative explanations proposed—the theories of the “Christ myth school,” etc.—have been thoroughly discredited.

Morton Smith, Jesus the Magician (New York: Harper & Row, 1978) pp. 5 & 166

One category of mythicists, like young-earth creationists, have no hesitation about offering their own explanation of who made up Christianity... Other mythicists, perhaps because they are aware that such a scenario makes little historical sense and yet have nothing better to offer in its place, resemble proponents of Intelligent Design who will say "the evidence points to this organism having been designed by an intelligence" and then insist that it would be inappropriate to discuss further who the designer might be or anything else other than the mere "fact" of design itself. They claim that the story of Jesus was invented, but do not ask the obvious historical questions of "when, where, and by whom" even though the stories are set in the authors' recent past and not in time immemorial, in which cases such questions obviously become meaningless... Thus far, I've only encountered two sorts of mythicism.

James F. McGrath, "Intelligently-Designed Narratives: Mythicism as History-Stopper", Exploring Our Matrix, 2010

To describe Jesus' non-existence as "not widely supported" is an understatement. It would be akin to me saying, "It is possible to mount a serious, though not widely supported, scientific case that the 1969 lunar landing never happened." There are fringe conspiracy theorists who believe such things - but no expert does. Likewise with the Jesus question: his non-existence is not regarded even as a possibility in historical scholarship. Dismissing him from the ancient record would amount to a wholesale abandonment of the historical method.

John Dickson, Jesus: A Short Life (Oxford: Lion, 2008) 22-23.

When Professor Wells advances such an explanation of the gospel stories [i.e. the Christ myth theory] he presents us with a piece of private mythology that I find incredible beyond anything in the gospels.

Morton Smith, in R. Joseph Hoffman, Jesus in History and Myth (Amherst, NY: Prometheus, 1986) p. 48

Of course, there can be no toleration whatever of the idea that Jesus never existed and is only a concoction from these pagan stories about a god who was slain and rose again.

Joseph Klausner, From Jesus to Paul (New York: Menorah, 1943) p. 107

Virtually all biblical scholars acknowledge that there is enough information from ancient non-Christian sources to give the lie to the myth (still, however, widely believed in popular circles and by some scholars in other fields--see esp. G. A. Wells) which claims that Jesus never existed.

Craig L. Blomberg, "Gospels (Historical Reliability)", in Joel B. Green, Scot McKnight & I. Howard Marshall, Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1992) p. 292

Dr. Wells was there [I.e. a symposium at the University of Michigan] and he presened his radical thesis that maybe Jesus never existed. Virtually nobody holds this position today. It was reported that Dr. Morton Smith of Columbia University, even though he is a skeptic himself, responded that Dr. Wells's view was "absurd".

Gary Habermas, in Did Jesus Rise from the Dead?: The Resurrection Debate (San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1989) p. 45

The data we have are certainly adequate to confute the view that Jesus never lived, a view that no one holds in any case

Charles E. Carlston, in Bruce Chilton & Craig A. Evans (eds.) Studying the Historical Jesus: Evaluations of the State of Current Research (Leiden: Brill, 1998) p. 3

Although it is held by Marxist propaganda writers that Jesus never lived and that the Gospels are pure creations of the imagination, this is not the view of even the most radical Gospel critics.

Bernard L. Ramm, An Evangelical Christology: Ecumenic and Historic (Vancouver: Regent College Publishing, 1999) p. 159

Comparison with Holocaust-deniers

The very logic that tells us there was no Jesus is the same logic that pleads that there was no Holocaust. On such logic, history is no longer possible. It is no surprise then that there is no New Testament scholar drawing pay from a post who doubts the existence of Jesus. I know not one. His birth, life, and death in first-century Palestine have never been subject to serious question and, in all likelihood, never will be among those who are experts in the field. The existence of Jesus is a given.

Nicholas Perrin, Lost in Transmission?: What We Can Know About the Words of Jesus (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2007) p. 32

While we do not have the fullness of biographical detail and the wealth of firsthand accounts that are available for recent public figures, such as Winston Churchill or Mother Teresa, we nonetheless have much more data on Jesus than we do for such ancient figures as Alexander the Great... Along with the scholarly and popular works, there is a good deal of pseudoscholarship on Jesus that finds its way into print. During the last two centuries more than a hundred books and articles have denied the historical existence of Jesus. Today innumerable websites carry the same message... Most scholars regard the arguments for Jesus' non-existence as unworthy of any response—on a par with claims that the Jewish Holocaust never occurred or that the Apollo moon landing took place in a Hollywood studio.

Michael James McClymond, Familiar Stranger: An Introduction to Jesus of Nazareth (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004) pp. 8 & 23–24

You know that you can try to minimize your biases, but you can't eliminate them. That's why you have to put certain checks and balances in place… Under this approach, we only consider facts that meet two criteria. First, there must be very strong historical evidence supporting them. And secondly, the evidence must be so strong that the vast majority of today's scholars on the subject—including skeptical ones—accept these as historical facts. You're never going to get everyone to agree. There are always people who deny the Holocaust or question whether Jesus ever existed, but they're on the fringe.

Michael R. Licona, in Lee Strobel, The Case for the Real Jesus (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2007) p. 112

A hundred and fifty years ago a fairly well respected scholar named Bruno Bauer maintained that the historical person Jesus never existed. Anyone who says that today—in the academic world at least—gets grouped with the skinheads who say there was no Holocaust and the scientific holdouts who want to believe the world is flat.

Mark Allan Powell, Jesus as a Figure in History: How Modern Historians View the Man from Galilee (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1998) p. 168

Finley: There are some people in the chat room disagreeing, of course, but they’re saying that there really isn’t any hardcore evidence, though, that… I mean… but there isn’t any… any evidence, really, that Jesus did exist except what people were saying about him. But… Ehrman: I think… I disagree with that. Finley: Really? Ehrman: I mean, what hardcore evidence is there that Julius Caesar existed? Finley: Well, this is… this is the same kind of argument that apologists use, by the way, for the existence of Jesus, by the way. They like to say the same thing you said just then about, well, what kind of evidence do you have for Jul… Ehrman: Well, I mean, it’s… but it’s just a typical… it’s just… It’s a historical point; I mean, how do you establish the historical existence of an individual from the past? Finley: I guess… I guess it depends on the claims… Right, it depends on the claims that people have made during that particular time about a particular person and their influence on society... Ehrman: It’s not just the claims. There are… One has to look at historical evidence. And if you… If you say that historical evidence doesn’t count, then I think you get into huge trouble. Because then, how do… I mean… then why not just deny the Holocaust?

Bart Ehrman, interview with Reginald V. Finley Sr., "Who Changed The New Testament and Why", The Infidel Guy Show, 2008

The denial that Christ was crucified is like the denial of the Holocaust. For some it's simply too horrific to affirm. For others it's an elaborate conspiracy to coerce religious sympathy. But the deniers live in a historical dreamworld.

John Piper, Fifty Reasons Why Jesus Came to Die (Wheaton: Crossway, 2006) pp. 14-15

I just finished reading, The Historical Jesus: Five Views. The first view was given by Robert Price, a leading Jesus myth proponent… The title of Price’s chapter is 'Jesus at the Vanishing Point.' I am convinced that if Price's total skepticism were applied fairly and consistently to other figures in ancient history (Alexander the Great, Ptolemy, Cleopatra, Nero, etc.), they would all be reduced to 'the vanishing point.' Price's chapter is a perfect example of how someone can always, always find excuses to not believe something they don't want to believe, whether that be the existence of Jesus or the existence of the holocaust.

Dennis Ingolfsland, "Five views of the historical Jesus", The Recliner Commentaries, 2009

The Jesus mythers will continue to advance their thesis and complain of being kept outside of the arena of serious academic discussion. They carry their signs, 'Jesus Never Existed!' 'They won’t listen to me!' and label those inside the arena as 'Anti-Intellectuals,' 'Fundamentalists,' 'Misguided Liberals,' and 'Flat-Earthers.' Doherty & Associates are baffled that all but a few naïve onlookers pass them by quickly, wagging their heads and rolling their eyes. They never see that they have a fellow picketer less than a hundred yards away, a distinguished looking man from Iran. He too is frustrated and carries a sign that says 'The Holocaust Never Happened!'

Michael R. Licona, "Licona Replies to Doherty's Rebuttal", Answering Infidels, 2005

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Which Jesus?

The opening phrase is currently "The historicity of Jesus is the question of whether Jesus of Nazareth existed as a historical figure". This presents a logical problem - which of the *possible* Jesuses of Nazareth is that question referring to? Could it refer to someone whose life was very much as described in the Canonical Gospels, but was not from Nazareth? Could it refer to someone from Nazareth who was not called 'Jesus' in his time? Could it refer to a multitude of real people, each of whom inspired some of the Bible stories? To somone about whom the baptism and crucifixion were true, but nothing else is? Someone called Jesus, who was never crucified or baptised?

There is a basic problem with talking about "Whether X existed", where X is a multi-dimensional range of possibilities; You have to consider what your Minimum Viable Jesus would be for the answer to the question to be 'yes'.

The more practial way to consider the subject of the Historicity of Jesus is to look at events of stories considered to be about Jesus and to ask if they have basis in reality, which is what part of this article does. That way you don't have the logial problem of trying to both define and confirm the existence of something at the same time.

So, it would seem to make sense if we could avoid the false dichotomy of "did Jesus exist, yes or no?"- unless there's a consensus on a definition of Jesus.

The fact that the concept of Jesus has such a range also ties in with the problem with phrases like "Virtually all modern scholars of antiquity agree that Jesus existed" - Statements like that are often repeated (and hence highly referencable), but actually meaningless unless you first pin down which Jesus you are talking about.Happypoems (talk) 05:54, 24 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

That's a good and valid point. The academic consensus is that there existed a Jesus who came from Nazareth, was a Jewish apocalyptic prophet who thought judgement day was about to come, gathered a small local following in Galilee, but when he went to Jerusalem he was caught and executed almost immediately. That's what meant when the article later says almost all scholars agree. It's of course very different from the Jesus who was conceived by holy spirit, born in Bethlehem, did many miracles, preached that he was God and was resurrected from the dead. Almost all of those same scholars who agree on every detail about the first would also agree to reject every detail of the latter. Logically, this article should be about the first.Jeppiz (talk) 13:13, 24 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I'm personally not sure that the consensus extends to all those points, but rather that he was born (at some point), lived and preached in various places for a while, and then got crucified. The greater majority of academics agree with the apocalyptic preacher aspect as well, but there is I think good reason to believe that there could be at least six separate articles on Jesus as a mystical guru (or whatever), Jesus as an apocalyptic preacher, Jesus as a political activist, Jesus as a social reformer, Jesus as a magician, and any number of others. I am not myself sure that it would necessarily be the wisest thing to do to create separate articles on all those "versions" of Jesus, as I am not sure how much attention they would receive and by extension how liable they might be to POV pushing over the long term. Also, there are relating to them real questions regarding what sources are most relevant to which theories, and several of the proponents of these theories also seem to be promoting some combination of one or more of these separate theories. But it is still a not unreasonable question. John Carter (talk) 23:40, 26 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

It would seem unhelpful if there were to be a bunch of competing articles each with a different definition of Jesus. I think there's almost the opposite situation now though - This article (and others) don't quite give a clear starting point of 'This is what we mean when we talk about Jesus' (from a historical POV). Was it Voltaire who said “first define your terms”?

As it seems there is a small set of events on which there is a broad agreement that they are 1) likely to have happened, and 2) relate to the same individual, then maybe that would be a good baseline /starting point for the article? 212.44.62.180 (talk) 15:07, 27 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The question of which elements are believed by whom appears to be covered in quite a bit of detail in Historicity_of_Jesus#Events_widely_accepted_as_historical Gaijin42 (talk) 15:14, 27 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, there is a lot of good material in the article - I think it's devalued a little by the first sentence starting it down the road of 'did he exist or not?' 31.48.190.28 (talk) 19:58, 27 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I just want to say that "Did He exist or not?" is the sole purpose of this article. That is what "Historicity" means, by all standard definitions. Obviously, in order to address that we must have a minimalist sketch of who he was and list the aspects of his life are considered proven by historians, and why those are considered proven. That is all that should be here: more speculative portrayals of his life and theological consequences should be addressed under Historical Jesus, or Christianity. Mwenechanga (talk) 19:35, 28 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Agree with what you say about the scope of the article; I just feel that dichotomic phrases like "Did He exist or not?" and "Whether he existed" have the potential to mislead, for the reasons already stated. Obviously a single lead sentence can't be expected to express the whole article, but there is a special problem when considering the historicity of Jesus due to the breadth of what you might mean by 'Jesus'.

If we were considering the historicity of Atlantis, we could first state we were talking about Atlantis as first mentioned in a work by Plato (As opposed to, say the resort in Dubai of the same name), then establish that that was a fictional work, and take that as evidence that Atlantis was not a historic place. For Jesus, what could we first state as a definition or indicator of what we are talking about? If it's not easy to state it upfront, could we at least zero in on one? Or is there more than one such definition? 212.44.62.180 (talk) 16:06, 29 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

@Mwenechanga And stating that, you've shown that you haven't understood the objection here. If that's the sole purpose of this article, and yet the entire question is left so ill-defined, then the entire article is meaningless. What does "JESUS EXISTED!!" mean if we haven't even defined what "Jesus" means, let alone "existed"? Were there people in Palestine around the time called Jesus? Yes, obviously. Were there Jesuses in Palestine at the time who spoke against the Romans and preached an apocalyptic religion? Most likely. Were there Jesuses who spoke *against* fighting the Romans, on the grounds that the Apocalypse would soon come anyway? Yes, most likely. And so forth. Which of these are your "Jesus"? What means that your Jesus "existed"? What makes your definition of "Jesus", and your definition of his existence, mean more than someone elses? You always have to define your parameters, or else you're merely propagating limpid mythology with a brittle veneer of historicity.86.178.5.85 (talk) 23:19, 13 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I think what would need to be established is the aforementioned "Minimum Viable Jesus" (MVJ). Doesn't the article establish the barebones points on what (most scholars agree) are MVJ's actions?--Tataryn (talk) 23:31, 13 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I didn't get that impression from the article as it stands. Which parts were you thinking of? The point about MVJ is that it's a definition of Jesus - a set of things that must be true of a real person for them to be considered to have been Jesus. What the article seems to do is follow the pattern of stating that there's a general agreement that Jesus existed, and then looking at the level of agreement on different parts of His life. That would be fine except that the number of things actually agreed on seems to be very few - in one place the article states the Baptism and the Crucifixion - compared to the number of other things that would commonly be seen as part of the essence of a Jesus figure, so a sensible definition doesn't even 'come out in the wash'.

The way the text in the article is ordered at the moment, its logic is begging the question (in the sense of petitio principia) in a way that limits the article. One thought that would occur to anyone concerned about the existence of Jesus might be, for example, how we know that the person involved in the reported Baptism and the reported Crucifixion were one and the same *real* person. But there's nowhere for that to go in this article, because we've already stated many times that it's basically agreed that Jesus existed, and created a presumption in the reader's mind of a single real person.Happypoems (talk) 14:28, 16 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Part of the problem with this thread, I'm afraid, is that it is really not easy to figure out exactly what is being asked. Having checked most of the recent scholarly sources available to me on this topic recently (not including the several-thousand page Handbook I mentioned above) the broad consensus of historians is that the Jesus who died on the cross is the Jesus the gospels describe as being baptized by John the Baptist. Beyond that, about the only things the academic works seem to agree on is that he did something to get crucified, probably preaching of some sort, was at some point born, because people kinda need to be born to live and be crucified, and somehow or other managed to stay alive in the intervening period between birth and crucifixion. I am unaware of many if any scholarly sources which indicate that the Jesus baptized by John wasn't the Jesus crucified, if you have any please produce them. Like I said before WorldCat has here links to the table of contents of each of the four volumes of that work, and we possibly could, if anyone wanted to create them, probably have virtually a separate article here for every work there. This is, ultimately, one of the leading subarticles of the article Jesus, and it pretty much by nature is going to be basically a collection of summary sections as per WP:SS of its various spinout articles. And some of those spinout articles will themselves have any number of further spinout articles. All that taken into account, unfortunately, WP:WEIGHT and other considerations really limit the amount that can be said about any particular aspect of this topic in this one article. John Carter (talk) 17:45, 16 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

This thread itself seems to have been followed fine by its contributors so far..? But if you are asking "what's your point" - i.e. how I'd hope the article would change - what I'd like to see is an extra level of detail on the core topic of the article. One reason I started a thread named "Which Jesus?" because *if* the topic is, as currently stated, addressing the binary question of "Did He exist or not?", then a definition of "He" would be a good place to introduce some of the required detail. Whether or not the article is seen as a collection of summary sections, it should deal directly with its stated topic.

Following our aside, could you explain how the scholarly sources do tie the Baptism to the Crucifixion, or indeed establish historicity of the Baptism ? I'm not blessed with such access to sources, but there's nothing I can see in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baptism_of_Jesus that suggests any mention of the Baptism in a source known to be contemporary to Jesus' life?Happypoems (talk) 00:05, 17 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

It is not up to Wikipedia editors to make the call. Reliable sources make the call and we simply record what they say. Tgeorgescu (talk) 01:27, 17 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, as most here will know, original research is not permitted, and I'm not sure where anyone gave the impression they wanted any original research..? 31.51.137.221 (talk) 09:06, 17 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The "starting point" for who Jesus is the Jesus article, which fairly clearly covers the broadly consensus academic opinions regarding the matters of the life of the individual in question. The matter of the baptism by John is connected because (1) it is included in the gospels as relating to the same Jesus and (2) it is not entirely in keeping with the alleged motivations of the authors of the gospels, which is to describe the preeminent position of Jesus in the world. It shows Jesus acknowledging that John was in a position to give grace in some way to Jesus, through baptism, and in general such details which do not serve the apparent purpose of the writer of that work are thought to be considered accurate. John Carter (talk) 16:46, 17 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The Jesus article does contain reference to a range of different views on the subject; I still don't think it manages a single and clear definition, which is what is needed if you are going to consider historicity as a stark, "yes or no" question, which is what this article consistently (and somewhat insistently) does.

Thanks for the expansion on the Baptism. I'm still personally finding a big gap between the historical significance of being part of three of the Gospels' content (The Gospels having the time gap issue that they do) and, for example, the statement of James Dunn (..." 'almost impossible to doubt or deny"...). The 'motivations'/'embarrassment' thing doesn't on the face of it seem to count for much, as Jesus' humility is portrayed in a number of ways in the Gospels. Things like that are why, as someone coming to the article to learn, I want to know of the scholarship behind a statement like Dunn's. Stuck on its own, just as a conclusion, it sounds like rhetoric rather than scholarship.Happypoems (talk) 21:49, 17 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Embarrassment is a criterion for historicity not just in Jesus studies, but in historiography in general. Material in Thucydides, for example, which would be an embarrassment to Athens, is treated as likely true. People who write about a figure have a reason for doing so, and will not fabricate information that clashes with their purposes.--TMD Talk Page. 23:55, 17 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry, my '..' quotes around 'embarrassment' were out of place. I do understand the concept.Happypoems (talk) 18:19, 18 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I can understand the wish to see the matters of historic methodology and specific details discussed. Unfortunately, and I think this is unfortunately, we do have only one rather shortish article to cram all the basic information into. And, again unfortunately, I think the idea of a straight "Did Jesus exist - yes or no" question might be a bit wishful thinking. The academic answer seems to be that Jesus existed as somebody who got crucified for doing things some people didn't like. Saying much beyond that gets into areas of dispute. It would certainly be possible to create a whole series of spinout articles on the various books which have been written about the topic and I suppose the question of historicity of various aspects of the story of Jesus. I acknowledge that the existing article is more than a little inadequate compared to just about any reference book dealing with the topic. But it is a bit of a problem finding out what various subtopics are and aren't yet covered at due length here yet. The only way I can think of to see to it that our coverage is really comprehensive is to examine the various reference sources and what they cover at what length. But there is a rather scary number of such reference sources related to religion, and it will take a while to do so. John Carter (talk) 22:20, 18 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Historicity - Wikidefined.

Reading through this article. I'm appalled at the bad information and inaccurate sources cited. I see that "Josephus on Jesus" is cited as being evidence of Jesus existence. I have happen to read the Antiquities of the Jews by Josephus Flavous. I can say that there is no mention of Jesus by Josephus. Except for one paragraph which to this present day thinking is a forgery. The paragraph in question on (18.3.3 63) In that book. This wiki article is citing a controversial source, but passing it off as proof using weasel words and ambiguous statements. Out of the hundreds of pages of Josephus documenting and describing events in the Antiquities of Jews. There is no mention of Jesus then out of the blue, His writing style changes and he write that Jesus was the Messiah... It is highly suspect and therefore controversial and should not be passed off as evidence and should not be included in this wiki article. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.58.13.250 (talk) 06:36, 9 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Almost no scholars think the entire paragraph is a complete forgery. They believe that Christian scholars have added to the passage, not that they fabricated it. Regardless, the original version was recovered from an Arabic version of the text which reads "At this time there was a wise man who was called Jesus. And his conduct was good, and he was known to be virtuous. And many people from among the Jews and the other nations became his disciples. Pilate condemned him to be crucified and to die. And those who had become his disciples did not abandon his discipleship. They reported that he had appeared to themafter his crucifixion and that he was alive; accordingly, he was perhaps the Messiah concerning whom the prophets have recounted wonders."--TMD Talk Page. 16:28, 9 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

"Almost no scholars think the entire paragraph is a complete forgery." - source, please.

"Regardless, the original version was recovered from an Arabic version of the text". Nope, there's no reason to suspect that this isn't a "Muslim retcon" of the earlier "Christian retcon" (or outright invention).

Basically, since we have no version of Josephus prior to the "tampering", we can't know whether the Testimonium Flavianum was "improved" of wholly invented. Indirect evidence of the latter can be garnered from the fact that Origen, despite quoting this very work of Josephus, markedly failed to note that it contained the TF and its "sure-fire" argument for Jesus. It is only with Eusebius that references to a TF with something on the line of its current content appears. (see for instance: http://infidels.org/library/modern/scott_oser/hojfaq.html and for an explanation which accepts the "improvement" scenario: http://infidels.org/library/modern/jeff_lowder/mckinsey.html)

Mojowiha (talk) 08:08, 10 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

If you want a survey of sources, Josephus and Modern Scholarship by Louis H. Feldman shows that scholarship is on a bell curve, with few scholars believing that the passage is entirely authentic and few believing that this is entirely an interpretation. The atheist Peter Kirby, while not believing the testimonium to be authentic himself, admitted that scholarship is trending away from his own position and toward at least partial authenticity. So the scholarly consensus is strongly against the notion that this was a complete forgery.--TMD Talk Page. 16:43, 10 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

And the statement "there is no reason to suspect this isn't a Muslim retcon" is weasely as hell. Do the majority of scholars who study the Arabic version think that this is a Muslim retcon? I know that Shlomo Pines, probably the leading scholar on this (and not a Christian), sure thinks it is authentic. Islamic scholars in the Middle Ages believed that Jesus was Messiah, but did not believe that Jesus was crucified. Yet the Arabic passage states that Jesus was condemned to be crucified, and that his followers believed that Jesus appeared to them after his crucifixion. There is no reason a medieval Muslim writer would leave that passage in while removing the sentence "he was the Christ." --TMD Talk Page. 16:46, 10 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

If you want sources, please see the Josephus on Jesus article. Also since this is a spin-off article, it would probably best to take the discussion there. My $0.02. Bill the Cat 7 (talk) 12:45, 10 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

And Infidels.org is not a scholarly source.--TMD Talk Page. 16:28, 10 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

And New Testament scholars are not historians, yet are frequently cited in favour of the historicity of Jesus, despite the fact that NT scholarship has a decidedly pro-Christian, and in several cases biblical literalist, bias (Gary Habermas springs to mind as an example of the latter). So, what? Mojowiha (talk) 20:25, 10 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

And where is Gary Habermas cited, may I ask? Nowhere. Your comment is nonsensical. Where commentators are not legitimate historians or established in other relevant fields (archaeology, ancient languages etc) they should not be cited, whether they are pro or anti Christian. Defending quoting from an unreliable source for one view is not achieved by pointing out that there are also unreliable sources for the opposite view. Paul B (talk) 20:42, 10 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Well, I assume you'll be hastening to remove all the references to, say Craig A. Evans for the reliability of Josephus' Testimonium Flavianum as not being a wholly later invention, since Evans is not only an Evangelical Christian who believes in inerrancy, but also not a historian, but a theologian, right? I was simply pointing out that dismissing infidels.org as "not a scholarly source", while gladly citing Evangelical New Testament scholars' opinions to back up the veracity of the TF seems to me to be a double standard. To cite Evangelical scholars who believe in biblical inerrancy and/or literalism in favour of the historicity of Jesus (as depicted in the NT) is about as impressive as citing Muslim scholars who believe in Koranic inerrancy and/or literalism in favour of the historicity of Muhammed (as depicted in the Koran). Oh, and Habermas is cited in Josephus on Jesus, btw. Mojowiha (talk) 21:34, 10 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Mojowiha, your arguments seem to rely quite heavily on WP:TRUTH. At Wikipedia we use reliable sources and infidels.org is not a reliable source. Any academic speaking about their own field is a reliable source as per Wikipedia's policies. That does not mean they are right, it does not mean we have to use them, but they are at least possible to use. I would not use Craig A. Evans in almost any article, because his positions are usually WP:FRINGE and contradicted by most other experts in relevant fields, though that is a different discussion. What matters here is that you need to stop making arguments based on what you happen to believe and start using sources. At Wikipedia, we will always pick a well-sourced error over an unsourced truth. Like it or not, but that's how it is and it has nothing to do with this article.Jeppiz (talk) 22:05, 10 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Was that long post really necessary? After all, you could've just paired it down to "At Wikipedia, we will always pick a well-sourced error"... - sorry, I couldn't help yanking your chain for that one ;-) Mojowiha (talk) 22:14, 10 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Lol, guilty as charged :-) Yes, I do tend to write too long, always. Jeppiz (talk) 22:45, 10 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

" Any academic speaking about their own field is a reliable source as per Wikipedia's policies" is not true, Jeppiz. You would be hard put to find policy that supported the concept of blindly following individual academics.—Kww(talk) 12:06, 20 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

"...new Testament scholars are not historians" says Mojowiha - but they are, actually.180.200.189.80 (talk) 09:14, 7 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Only rarely. We know of only a handful of cases. Martijn Meijering (talk) 09:48, 7 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Granted, the two disciplines are not strictly the same thing. Yet New Testament scholars often train as historians, and when they pursue topics that relate to history, they put those skills to use. It is not correct to try to maintain an absolute separation when there is continual overlap. Besides, it is increasingly common in many fields of endeavor for there to be such overlap of skills and knowledge between disciplines. Why should it be different here? If those Bible scholars pursue questions of historicity, they are entering the field of history as well as Bible, and are speaking as trained scholarly experts and may be used as WP sources. Evensteven (talk) 02:19, 8 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

From what I know, I'll agree that New Testament scholars may "often train as historians", but the problem is that some of the stuff you can get published as an NT scholar (in theological journals) would basically be laughed or booed off the stage if presented to a roomful of historians. That you even have such a thing as inerrantism in NT scholarship is indicative of the difference (because inerrantism is a downright anti-historical concept). I agree that not all of NT scholarship necessarily suffers from this problem, but it needs to be factored in when questions of "scholarly consensus" among NT scholars is cited. It simply has to be remembered that a consensus among NT scholars has at least some aspects of a consensus among theologians and is thus not directly equivalent to a consensus among historians, archaeologists or other academic fields. The problem is that such an adjustment would probably run counter to both Wikipedia policy on neutrality and fringe views, because the overwhelming majority of NT scholars are theologians and professing Christians (as the minority who aren't will be quick to point out). This is again a rather unsurprising consequence of both the nature of the field of study (believers are basically more likely to take up the study of their faith) and its tight connection to theology (I can't think of that many NT studies institutions which aren't run by Theology departments). Being that closely connected to theology also means that issues of controversy quickly becomes issues of faith and orthodoxy to a degree rarely found in other academic disciplines. Mojowiha (talk) 20:59, 8 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

E.P. Sanders

If no one can provide a page number in E.P. Sanders's work The Historical Figure of Jesus supporting the following tagged passage, I will remove it: "Although some claim that all four canonical gospels meet the five criteria for historical reliability...".

I could not find support for this statement in Sanders's book. It is also not clear if Sanders himself is being paraphrased (in which case "some" should read "one") or if Sanders stated that "some" scholars agree to the idea in the phrase.

I could have missed the relevant passage in his book. If so, I welcome its addition. But without a page number to point to it, I will strike it after a few more days. Airborne84 (talk) 21:54, 10 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

@Airborne84: You could be right on this one. None of those phrases are actually in the book, but I assume someone is inferring that point from reading the text closely. I wouldn't be surprised if you could infer that though (that he thinks there is some reliability to the gospels), but I didn't see anything about specifically speaking to the five criteria etc etc. Prasangika37 (talk) 21:06, 13 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

OK, thanks @Prasangika37:. I'll pull it for now since it does not appear to accurately reflect Sanders's work. Thanks! Airborne84 (talk) 10:39, 15 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The demand for an Ehrman quote

I should point out that The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings is on at least its fifth edition now, and there are substantial differences between editions. The text cites the 1999 edition; I have been able to look at the 1997 edition and can tell you that Tacitus isn't mentioned on the cited page. Surely we should be citing the current edition, but on the other hand we do not need to include a quotation in the text to verify this. Mangoe (talk) 18:16, 19 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed. Unless whomever added that tag comes back with a valid reason, please feel free to remove it. Airborne84 (talk) 07:00, 20 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry, I saw you did that and were reverted. Since the tag has been there only since September, I recommend contacting who placed it there and asking what the concern is. Or simply obtain the quote and note it on the talk page if too long for the article. I also agree with the reverter in that you will get best results here using civility with the other editors. Thanks. Airborne84 (talk) 07:04, 20 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

We probably don't need an inline quote, we often put them in the reference itself, a bit like a footnote. So even if the quotation is a couple of lines long, it wouldn't interrupt the flow of the article. The reader would only see the text if he clicked on the numbered link. I'm not sure what you mean by a valid reason. I thought the tag merely meant "I'd like an exact citation", not "I'll remove the text if I don't get one". Seems like a reasonable enough request, and it strikes me as discourteous to remove it, especially without a good reason.Martijn Meijering (talk) 11:38, 20 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]