Did Jesus Exist? - The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth by Bart Ehrman (ebook reader browser .TXT) 📗

1961 at Caesarea that as governor, Pilate had the title and rank, not of procurator (one who dealt principally with revenue collection), but of prefect (one who also had military forces at his command). This must show that Tacitus did not look up any official record of what happened to Jesus, written at the time of his execution (if in fact such a record ever existed, which is highly doubtful). He therefore had heard the information. Whether he heard it from Christians or someone else is anyone’s guess.

These three references are the only ones that survive from pagan sources within a hundred years of the traditional date of Jesus’s death (around the year 30 CE). At the end of the day, I think we can discount Suetonius as too ambiguous to be of much use. Pliny is slightly more useful in showing us that Christians by the early second century knew of Christ and worshipped him as divine. Tacitus is most useful of all, for his reference shows that high-ranking Roman officials of the early second century knew that Jesus had lived and had been executed by the governor of Judea. That, at least, is a start.

Jewish Sources

As I have already indicated, we do not have nearly as many Jewish sources from within a hundred years of Jesus’s life as we have pagan sources (Greek and Roman). The Dead Sea Scrolls, which do not mention or allude to Jesus, despite what you might read in sensationalist books, were probably written in the first century BCE. We do have the writings of the important Jewish philosopher Philo from the early to mid-first century. He never mentions Jesus, but we would not expect him to do so, as Christianity had probably not reached his native Alexandria by the time of his death in 50 CE, whatever one thinks of the mythicist view of Jesus. From within Palestine, the only surviving author of the time is Josephus, as we have seen. The matter is hotly disputed by mythicists, but it appears, at least from the remains that survive, that Josephus does refer to Jesus twice.

Josephus

Flavius Josephus is one of the truly important figures from ancient Judaism. His abundant historical writings are our primary source of information about the life and history of Palestine in the first century. He himself was personally involved with some of the most important events that he narrates, especially in his eight-volume work, The Jewish Wars.13

Josephus was born to an aristocratic family in Palestine some six or seven years after the traditional date of Jesus’s death. Before he was an author he became actively involved in the political and military affairs of Jews in Palestine. In 66 CE there was a major uprising in which the Judeans sought to throw off the yoke of their Roman overlords. Josephus was appointed to be the general of the Jewish troops in the northern part of Palestine, Galilee. The Romans responded to the uprising by sending in the legions from Syria. To get to the heart of the rebellion they had to pass through Galilee, and they did so with relative ease, as Josephus’s forces were no match for the Roman armies. As Josephus himself later tells us in his autobiography, he and his remaining troops were surrounded and chose to make a suicide pact rather than surrender to the enemy. The men each drew a numbered lot; the first man was to be killed by the second, who was to be killed by the third, and so on until only two remained, and these two were then to take their own lives. The troops did as they were told, and by luck or design, Josephus drew one of the final two lots. When all the other soldiers were dead, he then convinced his partner not to commit suicide but to turn themselves in to the Romans.

As an aristocrat and military leader, Josephus was brought before the Roman general in charge of the assault, a man named Vespasian. With his wits about him, Josephus did a very smart thing. He informed Vespasian that he had learned in a revelation from God that he, Vespasian, was destined to become the future emperor of Rome. As it turned out, Josephus’s prophecy came true. After the emperor Nero committed suicide in 68 CE, there was a series of very brief reigns by three other emperors, after which Vespasian’s troops declared him emperor. He returned to Rome to assume the position, leaving his son Titus in charge of the assault on Jerusalem.

Josephus himself was used as an interpreter during the three-year siege of the city. After it fell, the Jewish opposition was slaughtered and the holy Temple as well as much of the city was destroyed. Josephus was taken to Rome and given a prestigious place in the court of Vespasian, and with imperial support he then wrote his various historical works. The first was his account of all that had happened during the war in which he himself had played such an important part. About twenty years later (around 93 CE) he completed his magnum opus, a twenty-volume account of the history of the Jewish people from the time of Adam (the very beginning!) down to his own day, called The Antiquities of the Jews.

In his various writings Josephus mentions a large number of Jews, especially as they were important for the social, political, and historical situation in Palestine. As it turns out, he discusses several persons named Jesus, and he deals briefly also with John the Baptist. And on two occasions, at least in the writings as they have come down to us today, he mentions Jesus of Nazareth.

It is somewhat simpler to deal with these two references in reverse order. The second of them is very brief and occurs in Book 20 of the Antiquities. Here Josephus is referring to an incident that happened in 62 CE, before the Jewish uprising, when the local civic and religious leader in Jerusalem, the