The thing that struck me in reading this article on why Jesus of Nazareth never existed is that, if you use the same standards of proof they’re attempting to apply, there’s little reason to believe that many historical figures including Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, or Julius Caesar ever existed. The farther you go back in time the fewer and fewer reliable independent sources you’ll find for just about anything. Most of what we think we know about history is made up.
I sincerely doubt that anyone will convince a believer that Jesus did not exist by the means they’re using and non-believers by definition don’t need to be convinced. It seems as though an enormous amount of effort is being expended to reassure people who already believe that Jesus is mythical.
You can’t doubt Caesar without doubting the whole edifice of Rome. You or I may be fakes, but faking in retrospect billions of diverse references about the world in which we are fakes is different.
Anyway, there are still pretty definite assertions from a variety of sources of the existence of Julius Caesar that coincide with an enormous number of definite assertions of the existence of a Roman world in which Julius Caesar is recognizable as Julius Caesar. This Julius Caesar also had attributed to him as author several volumes of history; there are statues of this Caesar dating from various times throughout the late Republic and Empire; there are endless state references to his feats and existence; and there are millions of cross-references to Caesar in the lives of others who have been recorded.
Jesus’s problem was that (if he did exist) he was the head of an obscure mystery cult that later became an Empire. Compare him to Mohammed, who was highly aware of what he was doing as a prophetic figure and so made sure he existed. Jesus did not do this, so if he did exist, it’s on him, basically, that his proof is lacking.
There are more references (both contemporaneous and later) to Jesus of Nazareth and more statues of him than there are of Julius Caesar by orders of magnitude. Your comment can be summarized: we need to accept the god-hero of Rome but shouldn’t accept the god-hero of Christianity.
And there’s less proof that Mohammed existed than that Jesus of Nazareth did.
Are there coins minted during Jesus’ lifetime with his name and a face on them? Because there are for Caesar, or at least, they would have you believe.
Are there any contemporary references to Jesus?
If Josephus and Tacitus are limited to contemporary events, their historical volumes will be rather slim. Actually, most ancient historians were documenting events several years, decades, or centuries after the actual events, but I think this is your point.
As archeologists, anthropologists, and the other historic disciplines begin studying myths, the myths turn out to be more fact than fiction. At one time Troy was a mythical city, and Atlantis will eventually be found.
There should have been a record of the crucifixion of criminals. The Romans were meticulous recordkeepers, but I suspect that the Jerusalem fire of 70 AD burned the records.
@Modulo
I agree with this:
Jesus’s problem was that (if he did exist) he was the head of an obscure mystery cult that later became an Empire. Compare him to Mohammed, who was highly aware of what he was doing as a prophetic figure and so made sure he existed. Jesus did not do this, so if he did exist, it’s on him, basically, that his proof is lacking.
There really isn’t reason to expect that there would be much of a historical reference because Jesus was not a political leader (to the contrary, he rebuked the people who followed him for their expectations of a political messiah.)
(Sorry, I incorrectly closed my tag and the last paragraph was my own statement.)
I do not believe any contemporaneous Roman histories exist between those of Livy (died 17AD) and Tacitus (born 56AD), so arguing that there are no contemporaneous, disinterested accounts is not unique. Not the Romans should necessarily be considered disinterested. Tacitus wrote about Christians in Rome to explain the reign of Nero and anti-Christian public policy. Rome only becomes interested in Jesus when the Christian movement becomes an issue to Rome.
That leaves Jewish writers like Josephus (94AD), whose interest in Jesus is also primarily that of explaining the Christian movement as it became a more significant challenge to Jewish traditions. The linked piece seems to throw-out Josephus because of the issues surrounding whether the “James” text had been tampered with. I don’t believe historians throw out entire texts because of insular issues, that’s a polemical strategy. Most historic text is going to have varying degrees of issues, and historians try to weigh various claims on their own basis.
I don’t believe historians throw out entire texts because of insular issues, that’s a polemical strategy. Most historic text is going to have varying degrees of issues, and historians try to weigh various claims on their own basis.
To do so would also create a huge bias against any evidence of historical facts that might support the Christian narrative, since so many ancient works survived only due to the efforts of monks.
FWIW my purpose in this post is not to convince you of the historicity of Jesus but to suggest more skepticism of “history”
Whether Jesus lived or not are both articles of faith.
I think the bare existence of Jesus is not something in reasonable historical dispute among historians for the reasons that Dave alludes to — if historians decided to stop relying upon surviving texts from the period, they would have very little to write about other than coins and architecture. The linked author appears to be a professor of religion.
And coins aren’t that reliable a guide for determining historicity. Civil authorities put whoever they wanted to on them. The best known coin of the period of Alexander the Great (I think it’s pretty likely that Alexander the Great did exist) has Herakles on one face and Zeus on the other. Are we to conclude from that that either Herakles or Zeus existed?
The earliest coin of which I am aware that has an image of Jesus on it was from the 3rd century. I’ve heard of a coin from the 1st century with an image of Jesus but I don’t believe it. What does that prove? Not much that I can tell.
BTW, one of those cited in the article I linked to was Dominic Crossan, an old acquaintance of mine. Very interesting guy.
Whether Jesus was whom his followers said is, of course, another matter entirely. I think most historians would give credence to evidence that he was a follower/baptized by John, and he was crucified. Both of which were stated by Josephus, who does not appear to be carrying water, and both of which fall within the criterion of embarrassment.
Most historians credit Abraham Lincoln’s belief that his mother was born out of wedlock because of that criterion, not because we know hardly anything about her.
Dave, I think coins prove existence of a person, and evidence a certain political power being used to mint them. I think some of the Saxon coins use the same image, with different names, so I would be skeptical that they reflect any actual image. Though symbolic meaning in the images may exist as well.
BTW, there are no contemporaneous copies of The Gallic Wars. The oldest manuscript is from 1,000 AD or thereabouts. IMO the evidence that Julius Caesar wrote it (assuming there ever was a Julius Caesar) is extremely weak.
Dave Schuler: IMO the evidence that Julius Caesar wrote it (assuming there ever was a Julius Caesar) is extremely weak.
Caesar’s Commentaries on the Gallic Wars was effective propaganda, and was certainly produced by Caesar.
While there is little doubt of the existence of an historical Jesus, the evidence is a far cry from the evidence for Caesar. Caesar left huge footsteps during his lifetime, such as the conquest of Gaul. Jesus is barely perceptible to history.
IMO the evidence that Julius Caesar wrote it (assuming there ever was a Julius Caesar) is extremely weak.
According to Cicero, they were written in 46 BC. Perhaps Cicero also did not exist. How many famous Latin writers are you willing to sacrifice? More importantly, if all of Latin literature is a forgery, who forged it? Were monks acting out the roles of Catullus, Seutonius, Lucretius, Virgil, Ovid, etc. and then writing as if they were these men? Or was it one monk? That’s amazing! Like Fernando de Pessoa, who invented various poets and then wrote under their heteronyms. We’re almost in the world of VALIS now, with all of Imperial Rome a textual hologram of some unknown syndicate.
Overall, I would say that if it could be proven that Jesus did not exist the outcome would be different than that of Caesar not existing or Socrates not existing.
If Socrates did not exist, the Gorgias would go on without him. If Caesar did not exist, it would mean that all of Latin history was probably forged, which is exciting but incomprehensible. But if Jesus did not exist, it means that Christianity was based on nothing, which would be totally comprehensible as an act of human ingenuity.
MM: Dave’s somewhat radical skepticism about what we know or can know about the ancients is longstanding, particularly regarding the Romans. I’m not sure there is much hope for him. I skew more dangerously to the other end of the pole. I think there are important facts about what the Romans or the Greeks or the Caesars say about themselves that are also important truth, even if factually dubious. If that makes any sense.
But as a practical matter, in dealing with current events we generally decide whether something is true on the basis of whether it is more probable than not. It’s the basis of our civil legal system. It’s how we mediate encounters through each of our days. Perhaps we should be more modest about what we can ever truly know, but I wouldn’t want to be immobilized by such uncertainty.
We have many ancient Greek, Roman and English coins and maybe a few Byzantines. If you learn how to read Roman coins you realize their importance as a source of propaganda. It is nearly inconceivable that coins would have been minted with the likeness of a fake person. What happened all of the time was that the claims on the coins were exaggerated.
The evidence for an historical Jesus has always been weak, but I think there is enough to suggest that either he or someone like him existed. The success of the faith despite that is a tribute to a number of things, not the least of which is the efforts of Paul.
Steve
As are religious texts. So, for example, I think that the evidence is overwhelming that much of the Hebrew Bible is in fact a justification of the Israelites’ occupation of the land of Canaan, a purpose for which it’s still being used today.
That is simply wrong on the facts. Unless you believe that the god Mercury was real.
Of course the New Chronology disputes that there ever was a Roman Empire.
Personally I believe there was a Caesar, a Jesus, and a Cicero. I do not, however, believe in Brian.
“That is simply wrong on the facts. Unless you believe that the god Mercury was real.”
I said fake person. The Romans knew the difference between the gods of Olympus and people being depicted upon coins.
PD Shaw:
Scepticsm about metaphysics and ontology does not translate easily into scepticism about historical events. Citing Quine’s ideas about what it is possible to know a priori on the relationship of Cicero to Tully or the morning stare to the evening star does not mean that anything goes when it comes to all a posteriori knowledge. I may think that LBJ had the CIA kill Kennedy and you may think that Oswald acted alone and someone else may think that it was all staged by the Kennedy clan: all of this would be classified as a posteriori knowledge. But does that mean that all knowledge known a posteriori about the assassination is equal? In a certain way, all three cases are equal, since they are based on what is purely contingent knowledge derived from a variety of sources, each also contingent. In reality though, the person who is pounding what we can not know are the third and second cases. (I say this as someone who would not be surprised if a weak case (minus LBJ) of the second became true.) Using Dave’s example, if we say that a person in ancient times faced with Mercury and Julius Caesar could in no way be relied up on to have different classes (one for mythical personas, the other for rulers contemporary to the person) in mind when they viewed coinage, then we might as well say that a person in the present time would no more be able to tell the difference between Barack Obama, President, and Harry Potter, fictional child wizard, so that a future might assert that there was no Barack Obama because there was also no Harry Potter. It leads to a somewhat undesirable conclusion, because we seem to know the difference between the two.
Sorry, the people doing the pounding are the LBJ killed Kennedy and the Kennedy’s assassination is faked groups.