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

students in my class that semester were not sure what to make of the site. I told them that I thought it was perfectly legitimate, at least in theory. They should read what I had said in my New Testament textbook or in any of my other books, listen to what the talking heads on the website had to say, weigh the evidence for themselves, and then decide.

I believe that better arguments will win out, if people approach the question without a bias in favor of one view or another. Maybe I’m too trusting.

As I indicated earlier, once this book gets published I’m afraid I’ll be getting it from all sides. Mythicists who appreciate the fact that I have made public the scholarly skepticism toward the historical reliability of the Bible will be upset that I don’t side with them when it comes to the question of the historical Jesus, the one question they are most invested in. Conservative Christian readers will be glad that I have taken this particular stand but will still be incensed at the other things I say about Jesus in this book. Consensus scholarship is like that; it offends people on both ends of the spectrum. But scholarship needs to proceed on the basis of evidence and argument, not on the basis of what one would like to think. I am always highly suspicious—completely and powerfully suspicious—of “scholars,” from one side or another, whose “historical” findings just by chance happen to confirm what they already think. This occurs, again, on both sides of the spectrum, from those who breathlessly announce, “Jesus never existed!” to those who strenuously insist, “Jesus was physically raised from the dead—and I can prove it.”

What I think is that Jesus really existed but that the Jesus who really existed was not the person most Christians today believe in. I will get to that latter point toward the end of this book. For now I want to continue to mount the case that whatever else you may want to say about Jesus, you can say with a high degree of certainty that he was a historical figure. In this chapter I will wrap up my discussion of the historical evidence by stressing just two points in particular. These two points are not the whole case for the historical Jesus. A lot of other evidence that we have already considered leads in precisely the same direction. But these two points are especially key. I think each of them shows beyond a shadow of reasonable doubt that Jesus must have existed as a Palestinian Jew who was crucified by the Romans. The first point reverts to Paul, but now we look not at what Paul said about Jesus but at whom Paul knew. Paul was personally acquainted with Jesus’s closest disciple, Peter, and Jesus’s own brother, James.

Paul’s Associations

IT IS IMPORTANT TO begin by recalling a couple of important events in the chronology of Paul’s life. As I pointed out earlier, it appears that Paul converted to be a follower of Jesus sometime around 32 or 33 CE, assuming that Jesus died around the year 30. In one of his rare autobiographical passages, Paul indicates that just a few years after his conversion he went to Jerusalem and met face-to-face with two significant figures in the early Christian movement: “Then after three years I went up to Jerusalem to consult with Cephas. And I remained with him for fifteen days. I did not see any of the other apostles except James, the brother of the Lord. What I am writing to you, I tell you before God, I am not lying!” (Galatians 1:18–20)

Cephas was, of course, Simon Peter (see John 1:42), Jesus’s closest disciple.1 James, Paul tells us, was the Lord’s brother. These are two good people to know if you want to know anything about the historical Jesus. I wish I knew them.

The Disciple Peter

Peter was not simply a member of the twelve—the disciples who, according to all our Gospel traditions, Jesus chose to be his closest companions (in the final chapters I will show why this tradition is almost certainly historically accurate). He was a member of an even closer inner circle made up of Peter, James, and John. In the Gospels these three spend more time with Jesus than anyone else does during his entire ministry. And of these three, it is Peter, again according to all our traditions, who was the closest. In nearly all our sources Peter was Jesus’s most intimate companion and confidant for his entire public ministry after his baptism.

In about the year 36, Paul went to Jerusalem to confer with Peter (Galatians 1:18–20). Paul spent fifteen days there. He may not have gone only or even principally to get a rundown on what Jesus said and did during his public ministry. It is plausible, in fact, that Paul wanted to strategize with Peter, as the leader (or one of the leaders) among the Jerusalem Christians, about Paul’s own missionary activities, not among the Jews (Peter’s concern) but among the Gentiles (Paul’s). This was the reason stated for Paul’s second visit to see Peter and the others fourteen years later, according to Galatians 2:1–10. But it defies belief that Paul would have spent over two weeks with Jesus’s closest companion and not learned something about him—for example, that he lived.

Even more telling is the much-noted fact that Paul claims that he met with, and therefore personally knew, Jesus’s own brother James. It is true that Paul calls him the “brother of the Lord,” not “the brother of Jesus.” But that means very little since Paul typically calls Jesus the Lord and rarely uses the name Jesus (without adding “Christ” or other titles).2 And so in the letter to the Galatians Paul states as clearly as possible that he knew Jesus’s brother. Can we get any closer to an eyewitness report than this? The fact that Paul knew Jesus’s closest disciple and his own brother throws a