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

Paul wrote his letters in the 50s of the Common Era, arguably from within a few years of the traditional date of his death. One reason this matters is that most mythicists want to argue that the since the epistles of the New Testament were written earlier than the Gospels, and since the epistles, especially those of Paul, say little or nothing (it is argued) about the historical Jesus but instead speak only of the mythical Christ who like the pagan gods (again, it is argued) died and rose from the dead, then the earliest records of Christianity do not support the idea that Jesus actually lived; he was only a mythical concept. I will argue that this perspective is wrong on all counts. One major question, as we will see, is whether there was a common mythology of dying and rising gods. Moreover, it stretches credulity to think that such a mythology, if it existed, played any role in the world of Jesus’s earliest Jewish followers in Palestine. In addition, there is good reason for thinking that Paul knew full well that there was a historical Jesus, whom he spoke of and actually quoted. Paul did think that this historical person was exalted to the level of divinity, but to Paul he was not a dying-rising god like those discussed among the pagans, if in fact there was such a pagan view at all.

Conclusion

THE EVIDENCE I OFFER in this chapter is not all there is. It is simply one part of the evidence. But it is easy to see why even on its own it has proved to be so convincing to almost every scholar who ever thought about the issue. We are not dealing with just one Gospel that reports what Jesus said and did from sometime near the end of the first century. We have a number of surviving Gospels—I named seven—that are either completely independent of one another or independent in a large number of their traditions. These all attest to the existence of Jesus. Moreover, these independent witnesses corroborate many of the same basic sets of data—for example, that Jesus not only lived but that he was a Jewish teacher who was crucified by the Romans at the instigation of Jewish authorities in Jerusalem. Even more important, these independent witnesses are based on a relatively large number of written predecessors, Gospels that no longer survive but that almost certainly once existed. Some of these earlier written texts have been shown beyond reasonable doubt to date back at least to the 50s of the Common Era. They derive from locations around the Mediterranean and again are independent of one another. If historians prefer lots of witnesses that corroborate one another’s claims without showing evidence of collaboration, we have that in relative abundance in the written sources that attest to the existence of the historical Jesus.

But most significant of all, each of these numerous Gospel texts is based on oral traditions that had been in circulation for years among communities of Christians in different parts of the world, all of them attesting to the existence of Jesus. And some of these traditions must have originated in Aramaic-speaking communities of Palestine, probably in the 30s CE, within several years at least of the traditional date of the death of Jesus. The vast network of these traditions, numerically significant, widely dispersed, and largely independent of one another, makes it almost certain that whatever one wants to say about Jesus, at the very least one must say that he existed. Moreover, as we will now see, there is yet more evidence.

CHAPTER FOUR

Evidence for Jesus from Outside the Gospels

LIKE MOST AUTHORS, I receive tons of e-mail. Every now and again I receive a query, normally from a Christian believer, that I find completely puzzling. What is puzzling is my correspondent’s puzzlement. Many people simply can’t understand why I would teach the Bible in a university setting if I don’t believe in the Bible.

I find this puzzling because I am so accustomed to the life of the university, where professors teach all kinds of things they don’t “believe in.” In most major universities, professors of classics teach the works of Plato, but the professors are not themselves necessarily Platonists, and professors in political science teach the writings of Karl Marx, but they do not have to be Marxists. So too English professors teach great literature even though they themselves are not practicing novelists or poets, and criminologists teach the history of crime, but they aren’t mass murderers.

Why should it be different with the Bible? I teach the Bible not because I am personally a believer in the Bible but because, like all these other topics, it is important. In fact, it is unusually important. One could easily argue that the Bible is the most important book in the history of Western civilization. What other book comes even close in terms of its historical, social, and cultural significance? Who wouldn’t want to know more about a book that has transformed millions of lives and affected entire civilizations? It is important not only for believers. Far from it. It is important for all of us—at least for all of us interested in human history, society, and culture.

One could argue as well that Jesus is the most important person in the history of the West, looked at from a historical, social, or cultural perspective, quite apart from his religious significance. And so of course the earliest sources of information we have about him, the New Testament Gospels, are supremely important. And not just the Gospels, but all the books of the New Testament.

I have to admit that when I teach my Introduction to the New Testament course to undergraduates, I spend more time on Jesus and the Gospels than on the rest of the New Testament, including the writings of Paul. It is not that Paul is unimportant. Quite the contrary, he too is enormously significant in every way. But given the