Here's just a quick summation of historical references to Jesus outside of the Bible.
First and foremost I wish to stress that the New Testament is a historically reliable collection of documents, and that it in itself testifies of the existance of Jesus, and is the most corroborated piece of ancient history that we have. In the NT we have contemporary history (which is vastly more than other historical figures at that time).
However, even if we ignore the (compelling) relevance of the NT we still have non-Christians writing about Christians as early as the beginning of the second century. Graeco-roman historians such as Pliny the Younger, Suetonius and Tacitus all reference Jesus. These historians lived mostly from around the year 50 AD to the early second century. The most interesting of these is Suitonius for his acerbic attack on Christians, which I find amusing enough to post in full:
"Nero fastened the guilt of starting the blaze and inflicted the most exquisite torture on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians [Chrestians] by the populace. Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus, and a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judea, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome, where all things hideous and shameful from every part of the world find their centre and become popular" (Tacitus, Annals 15.44)
Then there is Josephus who wrote an account of Jesus in his Histories. Of course, most of it is an obvious fabrication, but I am convinced that he had an original reference to Jesus in in the original document that was altered by over-zealous Christians. Also, a citation from Julius Africanus of a Greek historian called Thallus, who describes the darkness as it ocurred at the crucifixion that mesh well together chronologically with the same account in the NT. And then, after taking into account that Jesus and his followers were far-off and politically unimportant in the grand scheme of the Empire, and that many documents from that time have, in one way or another, been unavailable to us we realise that Jesus is well documented.
In the end, the idea that we don't have any viable historical records of Jesus is void, since the New Testament is historically reliable, and that there is plenty of references to Jesus and early Christians outside of the Bible.
CRUCIFORM THEOLOGY
Is your theory able to distinguish between evidence of Jesus and evidence of Christianity?
ReplyDeleteEverybody agrees there were Christians in the late first and early second century. People − Tacitus, Suetonius, Lucian, Josephus are some −− wrote about them and their myths. How exactly would you expect someone to describe an odd new cult to people who didn’t know anything about the cult, without mentioning the cult’s peculiar beliefs?
For example, in 1997 the New York Times, Time, Newsweek, etc. all wrote about the Heaven’s Gate cult, mentioning the space−gods cult members believed were coming to earth in the trail of the Hale−Bop comet. Do you think the New York Times, Time, Newsweek articles are evidence that the comet−Gods actually existed?
If not, why are Tacitus, and Josephus mentioning the Jesus cult’s legendary founder evidence that that God actually existed?
Moonsong
I don't understand why you think the very clear reference which Suitonius makes to Jesus does not count as a reference, but I'll humour you.
DeleteThe Heaven's Gate didn't spontaneously come into being as an organised cult. No, the Heaven's Gate cult is intrinsically connected from the lives of its founders Marshall Applewhite and Bonnie Nettles. In the same way, ableit far more benign, is the existance of the Christian church intrinsically connected to the life and death of Jesus. In truth, as I said in my post, the extra-biblical references do not really add anything except confirming what we already knew about Jesus in the Gospels. The historical Jesus is pretty much proved by the Gospels, as ancient near-eastern biographies goes, they are excellent sources for historical sources no matter how hard the scepticism. Only if your purpose for historical inquiry is to try to disprove the existance of Jesus, then of course you can fudge the analysis into discrediting these sources, but then you'd pretty much have to throw away the entirety of ancient history as unreliable, so it's not strange that the academic consensus is overwhelmingly in favour of the historical reliability of the Gospels.
However, I agree with you that the claim of a historical Jesus is not the same claim as the claim that Jesus was resurrected and was God the Son incarnate. I think there are few Christians who built their faith on historical inquiries. Faith is something deeply personal and is far too raw and human to be reduced into academic methods.
QUESTION: Are the New York Times, Time, Newsweek articles evidence that the comet−Gods actually existed?
ReplyDeleteQUESTION: If not, why are Tacitus, and Josephus mentioning the Jesus cult’s founder evidence that that God actually existed?
Moonsong
Moonsong,
DeleteI have not claimed that the historical Jesus proves that Christianity is true. As I said in my previous reply to you, the claim that Jesus was a historical figure and that he is God incarnate are two different claims and has to be dealt with on different grounds.