Historicity of Jesus Christ
Several generations of Biblical scholars have investigated the historicity of Jesus Christ.
Taking a starting point loosely connected with Higher criticism, a rigorous historical analysis of Biblical texts in the 19th century, also known as the "Tübingen School" and connected to the Eberhard Karls university in TÃÂübingen, Baden-WÃÂürttemberg, Germany, a number of critics have proposed that there was no historical Jesus. This position however, is a minority view among Biblical scholars.
On the Christian side, the increased importance of the Christological argument for the existence of God in modern evangelical teachings have informed questions of the historicity of Jesus of Nazareth with an enhanced urgency. The usual historian's criteria of authenticity, documentation, and the like, tend to be removed from ordinary historical discourse, to take up newly important places in Christological theology.
On the opposing side of the question, perhaps most prolific of those Biblical scholars denying the historical existence of Jesus is a professor of German, George Albert Wells, who argues that Jesus was originally a myth. Another example is Earl Doherty, who suggests that Paul's idea of Jesus was derived from his reading of the Torah.
In this extreme position within the skeptical view, Paul never met— "nor heard of" is an extreme formulation— any actual person named Jesus from Nazareth (or Bethlehem), but rather believed in a metaphysical Jesus who died on some ethereal plane at the beginning of time, or some far-off time in history. The Jesus of Nazareth character was made up after Paul's time by a composite of Old Testament prophecies, with embellishments added by many people. In this view, the interpretation of the meaning of Jesus was also informed by messianic, apocalyptic and resurrectionist myths that were common during the late Hellenistic age. A persistant idea is that his existance is based on a whisper campaign to expel the Roman rulers.
Many other scholars, who do not doubt the historical Jesus, would agree that these Pauline interpretations of his sayings at secondhand and literary extrapolations from his actions and mythologized invented detail have been applied to an historical figure. Among these scholars, some doubt that the expression "Jesus Nazareus" referes to the uninhabitable site of Nazareth, which was a burial site at the time of Jesus' childhood. They demonstrate that the Pauline Christians were unfamiliar with Jewish culture and that the term "Nazarene" was unfamiliar to those transcribing Aramaic oral tradition into Greek: a more appropriate translation, this school suggests, of the historical rabbi Jesus, who came to be so thoroughly mythologized, was "Jesus the Nazirite." (see also Nazareth link below)
Others contend that aspects of Jesus' life as related in the New Testament were entirely derived from popular mystery religions in the Roman Empire at that time period. These religions worshipped saviour figures such as Isis, Horus, Osiris, Dionysus and Mithras, and Christian Gnosticism which flourished in the 2nd and 3rd centuries openly combined Christian imagery and stories with the beliefs and practices of Mediterranean mystery religions.
Proponents of this view generally date the gospels much later than mainstream scholars and assert textual corruption in the passages supporting the existence of Jesus in Paul and Josephus as interpolated.
Most historians, however, do not dispute the existence of a person named Jesus; evidence for Jesus' existence 2000 years ago are by historical standards rather persuasive. Jesus is not only mentioned extensively within the New Testament, but is also considered a historical figure within the traditions of Judaism, Islam, Mandeanism and other Christian traditions like Gnosticism. Apologists often contend that he gets a passing mention within historical accounts of the period, but sometimes without citing a source. Both John the Baptist and James the Just are documented in Josephus, where Jesus Christ also receives a brief mention. See Josephus on Jesus and Tacitus on Jesus.
Moreover, the same historians generally agree that at least some of the source documents on which the Gospels are based were written within living memory of Jesus's lifetime. Historians therefore accept that the accounts of the life of Jesus in the Gospels provide a reasonable basis of evidence, by the standards of ancient history, for the historical existence of Jesus and the basic narrative of his life and death. The Gospel of Mark is considered by historians to be the most reliable of the four. It is dated between 65 and 70, which means it must have been circulating while some of the apostles, or their immediate disciples, were still alive; so we can conclude that it must have been fairly close to their recollection and interpretation of Jesus' life.
However, religious accounts are not the only evidence for Jesus' existence. Some early secular sources also mention Jesus or his followers. Will Durant wrote in his book Caesar and Christ (pp. 554-5):
- The oldest known mention of Christ in pagan literature is in a letter of the younger Pliny (ca. 110), asking the advice of Trajan on the treatment of Christians. Five years later Tacitus described Nero's persecution of the Chrestiani in Rome, and pictured them as already (A.D. 64) numbering adherents throughout the empire.... Suetonius (ca. 125) mentions the same persecution, and reports Claudius' banishment of "Jews who, stirred up by Christ [impulsore Chresto], were causing public disturbances," the passage accords well with the Acts of the Apostles, which mentions a decree of Claudius that "the Jews should leave Rome." These references prove the existence of Christians rather than Christ; but unless we assume the latter we are driven to the improbable hypothesis that Jesus was invented in one generation; moreover, we must suppose that the Christian community had been established some years before 52, to merit the attention of an imperial decree.
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