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

it is almost certain that whatever else one thinks about Paul’s view of Jesus—and however one explains why Paul himself does not say more—it is safe to say that he knew that Jesus existed and that he knew some fundamentally important things about Jesus’s life and death.

The Argument of G. A. Wells

In my judgment a much more interesting argument about Paul’s knowledge of the historical Jesus is one that is hammered time and again by G. A. Wells. If Paul knew about the historical Jesus, asks Wells, why was he silent about almost everything that we hear about Jesus in the surviving Gospels? We hear almost nothing about Jesus’s teachings (just three references to them in Paul). Were Jesus’s other teachings irrelevant to Paul? If they were relevant, why didn‘t he mention them? Furthermore, we hear almost nothing about the events of Jesus’s life: no descriptions of miracles or exorcisms or raisings of the dead. Were these things unimportant to Paul? We hear almost nothing about the details of Jesus’s death: the trip to Jerusalem, the betrayal, the trial before Pontius Pilate, and so on. Did none of this matter to Paul? In Wells’s view all of these traditions about Jesus should have been massively important to Paul, and he would have written about them had he known about them. That suggests that Paul in fact did not know about them.

For Wells it is particularly significant that Paul does not quote the sayings of Jesus extensively or refer to his miracles. Surely Jesus’s teachings should have mattered, especially when Paul talks about the same issues. For example, Wells points out, Paul indicates that “we do not even know how to pray as we ought” (Romans 8:26).17 But Jesus actually taught his disciples how to pray when he taught them the Lord’s Prayer. If Paul knew anything about Jesus, wouldn’t he at least know this? Paul also taught that followers of Jesus ought to be celibate (1 Corinthians 7). Surely if he knew about Jesus, he would know that Jesus too praised those who renounced marriage for the kingdom of heaven (Matthew 19:12). Paul taught that Christ’s followers should “bless those who persecute you” (Romans 12:14). Why would he not quote Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount to bolster his argument, to show that the injunction is not based simply on his own personal view? With respect to miracles—since, in Wells’s words, “The Jews certainly expected that miracles would characterize the Messianic age”—it is almost impossible to understand why Paul would not appeal to a single miracle of Jesus or even mention that he did any if he wanted to authorize his gospel message.

With respect to all the silences of Paul, Wells makes one particularly significant methodological point. It is not simply that Paul does not mention some things about Jesus’s life. It is that he does not mention things that would have bolstered precisely the points he was trying to make to his readers. In Wells’s words: “Of course silence does not always prove ignorance, and any writer knows a great many things he fails to mention. A writer’s silence is significant only if it extends to matters obviously relevant to what he has chosen to discuss.”18 In the end, Wells finds it puzzling that if Paul really thought Jesus lived just a few years earlier, “there is no mention of a Galilean ministry; no mention of Bethlehem, Nazareth, or Galilee; no suggestion that Jesus spoke parables or performed miracles; and no indication that he died in Jerusalem.” With respect to the crucifixion, “he might be expected at least to allude to when and where this important event occurred, if that was known to him.”19 The conclusion that Wells draws is that Paul did not know about a Jesus who had lived just a few years before, a Galilean Jewish teacher who was crucified by the Romans under Pontius Pilate.

The Counter to the Counterargument

Wells does seem to make a strong argument, when it is stated baldly. But when examined closely, it falls apart for some compelling reasons. For one thing, when Wells says that Paul would have cited the Lord’s Prayer or the command to bless one’s persecutors had he known them, he might be right or he might be wrong (as we’ll explore more fully below). But even if Paul knew about the historical Jesus, and even if he knew a lot about him, there is no reason to think that he therefore must have known these particular sayings of Jesus. Many authors, even those living after Paul, who knew full well that Jesus existed, say nothing about the Lord’s Prayer or the injunction to bless those who persecute you. It is striking, for example, that neither of these passages is found in the Gospel of Mark. Did Mark think Jesus existed? Of course he did. Why then did he not include these two important sayings? Either they did not serve his purposes or he had not heard of them, even though he too is interested in both prayer and persecution. (The sayings came to Matthew and Luke from Q.)

Some of the materials that Wells expects Paul to refer to were completely irrelevant to what Paul was writing about and to whom. Take, for example, the claim that Paul would have referred to Jesus’s miracles to demonstrate that Jesus was the messiah. It may well be that if Paul were arguing with a group of Jews over whether Jesus was the messiah, he would have mentioned Jesus’s miracles. But the seven of Paul’s letters that we have were not written to Jews to persuade them to believe in Jesus. Quite the contrary. They were written to congregations of Christians who already believed in Jesus and needed no convincing (and, by the way, the congregations were principally made up of Gentiles, not Jews). Why would Paul have needed to appeal to Jesus’s miracles to convince people who already were committed to the cause?

One of the real weaknesses of Wells’s