I realize that it is entirely impossible to completely disprove the existence of an ancient individual, but I would like to know, out of curiosity, how strong is the argument that Jesus was never a real human being? Is their proof that he actually lived (even if he was not the son of God)? Is their strong evidence for it?
Also, are their many scholars who have questioned the existence of those close to Jesus? How strong are those arguments?
Joey
I’d say the existence of a person named Jesus who preached more or less what the Gospels say he preached is the default position mandated by Occam’s Razor. The thesis that Jesus was entirely fictional would depend on some kind of conspiracy theory, and we all know how difficult conspiracies are to maintain when they grow beyond a certain number of participants.
Assume for the sake of argument that Jesus did not exist as a historical person. In order to account for stories about his existence, you’d have to surmise that dozens of people all agreed to invent a fictional character within a few decades of his supposed life. Very unlikely but not impossible. But you’d also have to surmise that dozens of other people, who knew Jesus hadn’t existed and had incentive to denounce the lie, also chose to go along with the charade. It wasn’t just the followers of Jesus that accepted his historical existence; early opponents of Christianity did so as well. For this to have happened is far less likely than the simpler truth - somebody named Jesus was preaching in 1st century Judea.
Here’s a starting place.
Considering the time between the writing of Paul’s epistles (the earliest NT writings) and the events of Jesus’ life, no conspiracy is needed. All you need is separation in time and space and differing concepts. A number of folks have written arguing for a Jesus who was largely mythical. G.A. Wells has several books out on this. I have to say, though, that he’s a professor of languages, I believe, and not a theologian. He makes an interesting case, but I have to say that even he has to acknowledge that somebody wrote the sayings in the Book of Thomas. But Wells certainly doesn’t think there was a person whose life closely paralleled the one given in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.
That article actually talks about the arguments against the existence of Jesus – not his associates, which is what Contrapuntal was asking.
At any rate, I think the arguments cited in that article are exceedingly weak. For example, it says that none of the documents that mention Jesus date to the period 7 BCE to 33 CE. Well, duh! That should come as no surprise; after all, there would have been little reason to write about Jesus until after the Resurrection and the resultant growth of Christianity. In addition, this was a more primitive society that did not have the benefits of the printing press or mass media. What’s more, we simply do not have a wealth of historical documents from that period at all; for example, virtually everything that we know about the Gallic wars comes only from Julius Caesar’s own records. By the standards of ancient history, there is actually a pretty good amount of documentary evidence for the existence of Jesus.
The article also says that one G.A. Wells analyzed the New Testament and found no evidence that Jesus lived in the first century. Well first, this would only address the time period in which he lived, not his existence. Second, the gospels mentioned a Herod who ruled over Galilee. This would be Herod Antipas, who reigned from A.D. 20 to A.D. 40. And third, the gospel accounts mentioned Jesus prophesying that Jerusalem would be destroyed, which occured in A.D. 70. One could attempt to explain this away through other means — a revisionist account, for example – but such textual clues still amount to evidence that should be weighed as one arrives at a conclusion.
It should come as no surprise that the overwhelming majority of historians – Christian or non-Christian, theist or atheist – accept that Jesus Christ existed. If one claims otherwise, then one would have to explain away all of the documentary evidence, which amounts to a pile of conspiracy theories and ad hoc reasoning.
We’re only talking about a few years here (by conservative estimates) or a couple of decades (according to liberal views). I do not believe that this is enough time for a full-blown legend to arise and utterly obscure whatever other accounts existed. (Remember, we’re not talking about a deliberate hoax or a mere mistaken belief. Rather, we’re talking about the natural development of a legend, which takes a great deal more time.)
As Dr. William Lane Craig said,
No modern scholar thinks of the gospels as bald-faced lies, the result of a massive conspiracy. The only place you find such conspiracy theories of history is in sensationalist, popular literature or former propaganda from behind the Iron Curtain. When you read the pages of the New Testament, there’s no doubt that these people sincerely believed in the truth of what they proclaimed. Rather ever since the time of D. F. Strauss, sceptical scholars have explained away the gospels as legends. Like the child’s game of telephone, as the stories about Jesus were passed on over the decades, they got muddled and exaggerated and mythologized until the original facts were all but lost. The Jewish peasant sage was transformed into the divine Son of God.
One of the major problems with the legend hypothesis, however, which is almost never addressed by sceptical critics, is that the time between Jesus’s death and the writing of the gospels is just too short for this to happen. This point has been well-explained by A. N. Sherwin-White in his book Roman Society and Roman Law in the New Testament.{2} Professor Sherwin-White is not a theologian; he is a professional historian of times prior to and contemporaneous with Jesus. According to Sherwin-White, the sources for Roman and Greek history are usually biased and removed one or two generations or even centuries from the events they record. Yet, he says, historians reconstruct with confidence the course of Roman and Greek history. For example, the two earliest biographies of Alexander the Great were written by Arrian and Plutarch more than 400 years after Alexander’s death, and yet classical historians still consider them to be trustworthy. The fabulous legends about Alexander the Great did not develop until during the centuries after these two writers. According to Sherwin-White, the writings of Herodotus enable us to determine the rate at which legend accumulates, and the tests show that even two generations is too short a time span to allow legendary tendencies to wipe out the hard core of historical facts. When Professor Sherwin-White turns to the gospels, he states that for the gospels to be legends, the rate of legendary accumulation would have to be “unbelievable.” More generations would be needed.
In fact, adding a time gap of two generations to Jesus’s death lands you in the second century, just when the apocryphal gospels begin to appear. These do contain all sorts of fabulous stories about Jesus, trying to fill in the years between his boyhood and his starting his ministry, for example. These are the obvious legends sought by the critics, not the biblical gospels.
(Oh, and before anyone jumps on Dr. Craig’s misspelling of “skeptical,” I’m pretty sure that this text was transcribed from one of his speeches. In other words, I’d blame the transcriber rather than the author. In his other writings, he spells the word correctly.)
I have heard people argure for Jesus as a chymerical mix of different historical figures, none of whom are dominant or identifiable as the central figure. Not sure if I believe it, though.
Clearly, Wells believes otherwise. I think he makes a pretty good case.
BTW, the “scholars” who argue against the existence of Jesus are – by and large – not historians. As James Patrick Holding says,
Does the “Jesus-myth” have any scholarly support? In this case, to simply say “no” would be an exaggeration! Support for the “Jesus-myth” comes not from historians, but usually from writers operating far out of their field. G. A. Wells, for example, is a professor of German; Drews was a professor of mathematics; Acharya only has a lower degree in classics; Doherty has some qualifications, but clearly lacks the discipline of a true scholar. The greatest support for the “Jesus-myth” comes not from people who know the subject, but from popularizers and those who accept their work uncritically. It is this latter group that we are most likely to encounter - and sadly, arguments and evidence seldom faze them. In spite of the fact that relevant scholarly consenus is unanimous that the “Jesus-myth” is incorrect, it continues to be promulgated on a popular level as though it were absolutely proven.
I agree that he believes otherwise. Wells is not an historian though, and the overwhelming majority of true historians disagree with him. Moreover, as I’ve already pointed out, some of the arguments that he cites (such as the lack of documentary evidence prior to A.D. 33) are pretty darned lame.
I wasn’t asking for anything. The OP asked “I realize that it is entirely impossible to completely disprove the existence of an ancient individual, but I would like to know, out of curiosity, how strong is the argument that Jesus was never a real human being?”, and I pointed him to what I thought was a good starting point, complete with bibliography.
I’m not sure I have ever encountered anyone who said he was able to prove that Jesus (or any other specific historical figure) never existed. I have, however, heard many folks (including myself) state that the evidence of Jesus’ existence is EXTREMELY miniscule and ambiguous - to the point at which it closely approaches no evidence at all.
Of course, the evidence of the man Jesus is overwhelming compared to the nonexistent evidence of the Christ. Which make curious/laughable/sad the extent to which folks will go to believe in a specific mythology.
I would suspect that a review of human history both modern and ancient would identify numerous instances in which a charismatic individual or a small group of fanatics managed to amass a sizeable group of followers in a span of decades.
The argument is slightly stronger than Holocaust-denial (only because the Holocaust occurred within living memory), and should be treated with the same respect. I’ve yet to see Jesus-Mythism advanced by a body of respected historians. (I wouldn’t be surprised if there are a couple of otherwise reputable historians who are into Jesus-Mythism).
As for the lack of Jesus-references by writers of his era, where are the myriads of references to the existence of Paul? Josephus, Tacitus, Suetonius, Roman officials concerned with C’nity, & the Talmud all omit any mention of Paul, yet with his reputed travels & influence in spreading the Jesus-Message/Myth throughout
the Mediterranean, he should get far more frequent mention than Jesus. However, no one doubts Paul’s existence, especially not the Jesus-Mythers who cite Paul as a main source for the Myth.
And as I’ve pointed out, as well. See my post.
In fact, that’s really the only point. But saying that the entitre argument is “Well, there isn’t any historical evidence that he existed, and therefore he didn’t” doesn’t do justice to his arguments. If, as he clearly believes, Jesus didn’t exdist, and acknowledging that you can’t prove a negative, how do you make the best possible case for nonexistence? wells does a good job of arguing in favor of his view, far beyond that caricature of an argument I have in quotation marks above. after all, whether Jesus existed or not, no one really would expect him to have made a significant mark in the world. The silence proves nothing, either way. So both pro-myth and anti-myth make their cases basded upon other arguments.
This isn’t ina class with Holocaust deniers. In those cases you’re arguing about historical events that are recent, well-documented, had horrifying consequences for a group of people, and the opposers are attempting to weasel out of responsibility.
As no contemporaneous individual without a strong vested interest in Christian theology tells us anything whatsoever about Jesus of Nazareth, that we thus far been able to find, from a purely evidential standpoint, nearly all arguments about the historicity of Jesus are on equal footing: Educated guesses of varying persuasiveness, depending largely on who is hearing the argument. The dismissals of certain arguments aimed at the credentials of the scholars posing them should probably be given the consideration of any other ad hominem, especially since historians have no priviledged access to the scant information available.
There really is no solid proof either way. There is still a large consensus among NT scholars and historians that Jesus existed, and that’s what they still teach in universities. However, that doesn’t mean that many scholars believe that the gospels tell us anything much about him which is authentic.
The Mythicists’ arguments cannot be dismissed out of hand and is no longer regarded to be as patently outside the fringes as it once was (the linked quotations in this thread to uncredentialed internet apologists like JP Holding notwithstanding). The lack of contemporary corroboration is a problem but it’s not really the basis for Mythicist theories (an d comparisons to other Roman and Greek histories are kind of a strawman. Historians do not believe supernatural or fantastic claims made by Josephus or Herodotus any more than they do for the the Bible). Mythicists tend to focus more on the seeming silence of Paul on any description or perception of Jesus as a historical figure as opposed to a cosmic one.
Rebuttals to “conspiracy theories” are likewise responses to a strawman argument not made by scholars or any but the most crackpot mythicists. The argument is not that anyone was intentionally lying or making things up but that an event which was originally understood as having taking place on a cosmic plane (Doherty argues for a crucifixion/resurrection event in the “sub-lunar sphere.” A sphere between Heaven and Earth) was then “historicized” by Mark and his successors, largely by searching the Hebrew Bible for what they (probably sincerely) believed would offer some clues about their savior’s earthly life.
While I am not convinced of the mythicist position, I would tend to agree with the norm of schoalrship that aside from a few bare facts like the crucifixion and a common sayings tradition, whatever Historical Jesus originally existed was pretty well lost before the Gospels were written. I think THAT is why the evangelists used the Hebrew Bible to create their narratives, not because Jesus didn’t exist at all but because they didn’t know anything about him. What little Christian literature we have that pre-dates Mark (Paul, Q, maybe Thomas) would suggest that the earliest Christians had no tradition for much of what’s in the Gospels either. There is no evidence that anyone believed, for instance, that Jesus was born of a virgin, performed miracles, or was physically resurrected before the writing of the synoptic Gospels 40-60 years after the alleged crucifixion.
I don’t think that’s a reasonable basis from which to start. answer. For one thing, it assumes that only unbiased accounts are of any historical value, which is simply untrue. Earlier, I mentioned Julius Caesar’s accounts of the Gallic Wars. Caesar was an undeniably biased source, yet no self-respecting historian would discount his accounts on that basis alone.
If anything, history – especially ancient history – tends to be written by people who DO have a vested interest in recording these events. That is why we honor the accounts of Jewish historians who wrote about the Holocaust, for example. To dismiss such accounts on the grounds of “vested interest” is both unreasonable and invalid.
Second, you have biased accounts on both sides of the spectrum. There are sympathetic accounts from Paul and company, as well as accounts from hostile or unsympathetic sources such as Josephus. (Some would be quick to assert that the reference to Jesus as the Messiah in Testimonium Flavianum was a later insertion. Even if we grant that though, this insertion would only pertain to his Messiahship, not his existence. Moreoer, his reference to James, the brother of Jesus, in Antiquities is unlikely to be an interpolation, and so we still have a reference to Jesus from a hostile source.)
The Gospel accounts go beyond bias, though and are much further compromised by lack of external corroboration (which we have for say, Caesar’s Gallic Wars), lack of eyewitness testimony, lack of sourcing, numerous contradictions and factual errors, demonstrable ahistoricity and literary composition (i.e. fiction) and, of course, claims of supernatural events which would not be credited as plausible for any ancient author.
Not surprisingly, you do indeed have people doubting this – and not just Wells. One suggestion is that the reference to James is itself an interpolation, others that “the brother of Jesus” is an interpolation from a gloss.
You’re quite right that history is often written by parties with a vested interest (who else would go to all the trouble of writing and publishing?), but that this doesn’t automatically invalidate everything. But the problem of disentangling reliable from unreliable information is part of the constant puzzle and fascination of history. And you probably aren’t going to get everyone to agree, especially where hot-button issues like religion are involved.