Did Jesus Exist?

[doubtingmerle]

Around 70 AD the book of Mark was written, with an astounding claim: The Son of God had lived in recent history and walked among us! We have no record of anybody clearly claiming this before the book of Mark. Paul seems to be writing of a heavenly Jesus dying in a heavenly realm. He expresses no interest in the miracles or earthly teachings of Jesus, or in any of the earthly events. Similarly, other early Christian writings are eerilly silent about the earthly life and teaching of Jesus. And contemporary secular historians wrote nothing about Jesus.

After Mark, the concept of an earthly Jesus was echoed by many including Matthew, Luke, and John. The story of an earthly Jesus would later come to dominate all Christian writings.

But was Mark writing fact of fiction? Did the story really happen as recorded? Was he exagerating the story? Or was he simply writing a novel to bring hope to a troubled people?

 

[drich0150]

During 70AD there were still people around (on both sides of the faith) to attest to the validity of Christ. If there were no such person or if the events being represented were not true, the opposing side would have a very difficult time making martyrs of 1st century believers.

 

[CryptoLutheran]

Mark wasn't the earliest Christian text. Paul's letters are.

And while I know it's fashionable in some circles to say that Paul has no knowledge of an "earthly Jesus", if someone were to read through the Pauline corpus with intellectual honesty anything less than an earthly, human Jesus simply isn't possible.

In fact, it's been through my study of Paul's writings that my own belief in a very human Jesus has been intensified. It was very easy for me to view Jesus as "among the gods" (as it were) in my youth, seeing Jesus as lofty and "up there", an intangible, heavenly, celestial being. It was through the maturation of my faith, and especially Pauline theology, that I had to more seriously confront the powerful notion of a Jesus who walked, talked, bled, died and--yes--rose from the dead. I think practical Docetism is very widespread today.

A human, historical Jesus isn't an anachronism read back into the Christian narrative, it's the source of the Christian narrative.

We can still question the existence of an historical Jesus if we want, but not on the basis of the early Christian narratives and witness. We can also question the historical Socrates if we'd like. Though I doubt many serious historians do.

-CryptoLutheran

 

[leftrightleftrightleft]

Around 70 AD the book of Mark was written, with an astounding claim: The Son of God had lived in recent history and walked among us! We have no record of anybody clearly claiming this before the book of Mark. Paul seems to be writing of a heavenly Jesus dying in a heavenly realm. He expresses no interest in the miracles or earthly teachings of Jesus, or in any of the earthly events. Similarly, other early Christian writings are eerilly silent about the earthly life and teaching of Jesus. And contemporary secular historians wrote nothing about Jesus.

After Mark, the concept of an earthly Jesus was echoed by many including Matthew, Luke, and John. The story of an earthly Jesus would later come to dominate all Christian writings.

But was Mark writing fact of fiction? Did the story really happen as recorded? Was he exagerating the story? Or was he simply writing a novel to bring hope to a troubled people?

I would suggest reading Lee Strobel's "Case For Christ". There is more evidence of the historical Jesus (and writings of him closer to the time he lived) than the majority of historical figures. If you toss out Jesus as fiction you might as well toss out Alexander the Great, Socrates, Buddha, most Egyptian pharaohs and Joan of Arc, among others.

I don't think Mark, the other Gospel writers or Paul simply "made up" Jesus as a complete fiction. I believe they were being truthful to their experiences. I do however believe that their understanding of Jesus and corresponding writings were slightly "mythologized", "exaggerated" and "cultural influenced" as most oral traditions tend to do before being written down explicitly.

The theory that Jesus is a fictional character is unscientific based on the evidence.

 

[razeontherock]

Around 70 AD the book of Mark was written, with an astounding claim: The Son of God had lived in recent history and walked among us! We have no record of anybody clearly claiming this before the book of Mark. Paul seems to be writing of a heavenly Jesus dying in a heavenly realm. He expresses no interest in the miracles or earthly teachings of Jesus, or in any of the earthly events.

What you're missing is what Paul taught in person. This is evidenced by how he lived, which we have enough records of. You need to consider why what was written, was written. Not just by Paul, but throughout Scripture. And they didn't write down what everybody knew. Also, you're ignoring the fact that anyone writing in support of Jesus was, by definition, a Christian.

Considering these things will change your perspective.

 

[doubtingmerle]

During 70AD there were still people around (on both sides of the faith) to attest to the validity of Christ. If there were no such person or if the events being represented were not true, the opposing side would have a very difficult time making martyrs of 1st century believers.

How do you know that anybody was a martyr in the 1st century for believing in an earthly Jesus? If Acts is a later, inaccurate work, then we have no record of this.

If Mark was fiction, why would those who disagreed care? As far as we can tell, the book was popular only in the area around Syria where several offshoots came from Mark. Beyond that region nobody seems to know about Mark for another 50 years.

 

[doubtingmerle]

Mark wasn't the earliest Christian text. Paul's letters are.

And while I know it's fashionable in some circles to say that Paul has no knowledge of an "earthly Jesus", if someone were to read through the Pauline corpus with intellectual honesty anything less than an earthly, human Jesus simply isn't possible.

I read through Galations, Phillipians, and I Thessalonians last night, and I simply could find nothing that indicated that Paul thought Jesus had recently been alive on earth. Can you give me some examples of Paul's writings that cannot be interpreted as referring to a spiritual, non-earthly Jesus with intellectual honesty?

It was through the maturation of my faith, and especially Pauline theology, that I had to more seriously confront the powerful notion of a Jesus who walked, talked, bled, died and--yes--rose from the dead.

If Jesus walked and talked on earth, why does Paul show so little interest in what he did and said on earth?

A human, historical Jesus isn't an anachronism read back into the Christian narrative, it's the source of the Christian narrative.

And yet as we read the writings before 70 AD, the historical Jesus is strangely absent. If the historical Jesus is the source, why don't such documents reflect it?

 

[doubtingmerle]

I would suggest reading Lee Strobel's "Case For Christ".

Yes I have. And I have also read Challenging the Verdict which is a direct challenge to Strobel's work. Have you read Challenging the Verdict? If not, would you be willing to read it? I would think if you like The Case for Christ, you would want to know what those who challenge it say about it.

 

[drich0150]

How do you know that anybody was a martyr in the 1st century for believing in an earthly Jesus?

Paul also records the afflictions and the hardships of the first century believer.

If Acts is a later, inaccurate work, then we have no record of this.

We also have the works of Josephus as an independent source.

If Mark was fiction, why would those who disagreed care?

Why do any non-believers care? Why are you so insistent on pushing your views? Self righteousness aside religion can be used as away to control the masses. Christianity was destroying just about all other forms of control the leaders of that day had.

As far as we can tell, the book was popular only in the area around Syria where several offshoots came from Mark. Beyond that region nobody seems to know about Mark for another 50 years.

Reference material? or have you forgotten I will require that you support your seemingly factual comments.

 

[razeontherock]

The real issue is in the thread title:

what you need to be asking is DOES Christ exist?

And if reading "Challenging the verdict" is how one winds up in Merle's position, I think it should be avoided at all costs.

 

[AlexBP]

I read through Galations, Phillipians, and I Thessalonians last night, and I simply could find nothing that indicated that Paul thought Jesus had recently been alive on earth. Can you give me some examples of Paul's writings that cannot be interpreted as referring to a spiritual, non-earthly Jesus with intellectual honesty?

Here is the first sentence in the Bible written by Paul:


1Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, separated unto the gospel of God,
2(Which he had promised afore by his prophets in the holy scriptures,)
3Concerning his Son Jesus Christ our Lord, which was made of the seed of David according to the flesh; 4And declared to be the Son of God with power, according to the spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead: [Romans 1:1-4]

So Paul did say, quite clearly, that Jesus Christ was a flesh-and-blood human being, descended from David, and was resurrected in the body. Besides that quote, there is a great deal of material in Paul that confirms it; I'm sure that a professional-grade apologist could give more examples than I could, but one obvious example is that Paul often refers to James (Jesus' brother); how could Paul think that Jesus had a human brother if he thought that Jesus was purely a spiritual being?

 

[leftrightleftrightleft]

Yes I have. And I have also read Challenging the Verdict which is a direct challenge to Strobel's work. Have you read Challenging the Verdict? If not, would you be willing to read it? I would think if you like The Case for Christ, you would want to know what those who challenge it say about it.

Nope I haven't read it. I'll poke around my used book store next time I go and see if its there. Although I just found this well written critique of Doherty's book:

Appeal Denied: How <i>Challenging the Verdict</i> Fails to Overturn <i>The Case for Christ</i>

I think we could probably go back and forth finding links critiquing both sides all day. But I do find it odd that even ultra-liberal scholars such as the Jesus Seminar agree Jesus lived. Even most non-Christian Biblical scholars agree that Jesus existed.

Also, I'm glad to see you ignored the rest of my post and instead found the one thing you could nitpick. Did you have a response to the rest of my post or are you going to be like a YEC and disappear when a good point refuting your argument is made?

 

[AlexBP]

Around 70 AD the book of Mark was written, with an astounding claim: The Son of God had lived in recent history and walked among us! We have no record of anybody clearly claiming this before the book of Mark. Paul seems to be writing of a heavenly Jesus dying in a heavenly realm. He expresses no interest in the miracles or earthly teachings of Jesus, or in any of the earthly events. Similarly, other early Christian writings are eerilly silent about the earthly life and teaching of Jesus. And contemporary secular historians wrote nothing about Jesus.
...
But was Mark writing fact of fiction? Did the story really happen as recorded? Was he exagerating the story? Or was he simply writing a novel to bring hope to a troubled people?

Hi merle. The points you bring up are important and I hope we can have a positive discussion without being put off by the more heated responses.

First of all, while I like The Case for Christ, there's a much apologetic work on the historical Jesus: Lord or Legend: Wrestling with the Jesus Dilemma, by Gregory Boyd and Paul Eddy. Their book is more thorough than The Case for Christ anddirectly deals with the sketpicism about the existence of Jesus. For most of what I'm going to say here, you can find citations in that book.

First of all, concerning the dating of the Gospels, it is more or less true to say that a typical scholar these days would date Mark to around 70 A.D. and the others 10 to 20 years later. However, the community of scholars that writes and publishes in the USA these days represents only a small portion of the total population worldwide studying the Bible. There are other opinions on dating. Mark may have been written earlier or later than that date, and barring the discovery of a first-century manuscript, we'll never know for sure.

However, it may not matter much how long transpired before anything was written down about Jesus. Many people simply assume that if decades go by before stuff gets written down, the results are unreliable. However, anthropologist Alfred Lord of Harvard was the first academic to study the oral transmission of stories and history in primitive cultures. He found that, while it's normal for those cultures to make minor changes over time, the basic narratives remain remarkable stable, even over a period of centuries. Other scholars have verified his work. So even if the gospels were written 40 or more years after the events portrayed, that needn't be fatal to their reliability.

On the issue of whether Mark was writing fact or fiction, there are three strong arguments for fact. The first is simply that, in the Jewish culture at the time, there was strong pressure againt making up fiction on theological issues. Jewish identity was very tightly wrapped up in the scriptures and their correctness. A typical Jewish man raised at that time would simply consider it blasphemous and perilous to his own soul to make up claims like the ones Mark made.

Second, the Mark's gospel would be very strange fiction to write. If we suppose that Mark wanted to create a fictional narrative to support the church around the year 70, we'd conclude that he'd want to put the church in the most positive light. But, in fact, Mark's gospel does the exact opposite. It portrays the apostles negatively, and in fact makes it seem as if they never truly 'got it' concerning the divinity of Christ. It also leaves out the "great commision" in which Jesus forms the church and sends the apostles to spread the good news to the gentiles.

Third, in texts from ancient Rome there are difference between fact and fiction. Those who are writing genuine history are much more likely to include specific places, dates, and time intervals; to mention by name prominent leaders, priests, and other well-known individuals; to give specific names for characters; to mention physical details about clothing, weapons, and such; and to quote exact dialogue rather than making summaries. All four of the gospels give a tremendous amount of this type of detail, which puts them in line with historical writing rather than mythology. So regardless of what you believe about Jesus, it is very safe to believe that the gospel authors themselves thought they were writing the truth.

 

[Johnnz]

N T Wright and W L Craig are two of the foremost NT scholars. Anyone contesting the historicity of the NT must take into account the work of these men.

John
NZ

 

[AlexBP]

And contemporary secular historians wrote nothing about Jesus.

At risk of nitpicking, I have to point out that there were no contemporary secular historians. That is to say, no one in the ancient world wrote history books solely for the purpose of recording facts as they happened. Even the best ancient historians, such as Herodotus, Thucidyes, Plutarch, and Pliny, wrote history books for the purpose of moral instruction, because they believed that certain events should be used to teach certain lessons. This does not mean that they weren't accurate, but rather that the books they wrote were chosen and shaped for certain purposes. There was no one whose job was to record everything that took place in the Roman Empire.

However, if you want to talk about historians not recording the life of Jesus, the first thing to ask is: how many historians wrote about events in Galileee and Jerusalem during the time of Jesus' ministry? I am only aware of one such historian, Josephus, and he did mention Jesus.

 

[CryptoLutheran]

I read through Galations, Phillipians, and I Thessalonians last night, and I simply could find nothing that indicated that Paul thought Jesus had recently been alive on earth. Can you give me some examples of Paul's writings that cannot be interpreted as referring to a spiritual, non-earthly Jesus with intellectual honesty?

Since there's some matter of debate over some traditional Pauline texts having authentic Pauline authorship, I'll try and stick to Galatians for now, though I may add Philippians and/or 1 Thessalonians as well, but the focus will be on Paul's letter to the Christians in Galatia which, if I recall correctly, is often regarded as one of the oldest of Paul's letters.

Let's consider:

"Paul, an apostle not from human beings nor through a human being but through Jesus Christ and God the Father who raised him from the dead," - Galatians 1:1

"But I did not see any other of the apostles, only James the brother of the Lord." - Galatians 1:19

"I do not nullify the grace of God; for if justification comes through the law, then Christ died for nothing." - Galatians 2:21

"Christ ransomed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, for it is written, 'Cursed be everyone who hangs on a tree,'" - Galatians 3:13

"Now the promises were made to Abraham and to his descendant. It does not say, "And to descendants," as referring to many, but as referring to one, "And to your descendant," who is Christ." - Galatians 3:16

"But when the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law," - Galatians 4:4

"It is those who want to make a good appearance in the flesh who are trying to compel you to have yourselves circumcised, only that they may not be persecuted for the cross of Christ." - Galatians 6:12

"But may I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world." - Galatians 6:14

Let's be perfectly honest, the only way to get around statements like being a descendant from Abraham, being born, dying on a cross and rising from the dead is to so utterly contort the rather simple meaning of words like "born" and "die". There is simply no intellectually honest way to exegete Galatians--just Galatians--without being confronted with a human Jesus who was born, lived, died and (according to faith) rose from the dead.

We can still say Paul was wrong. But we can't say Paul was talking about anything else other than a human person.

If Jesus walked and talked on earth, why does Paul show so little interest in what he did and said on earth?

For one, the scope of Paul's letters wasn't to educate the Christians already familiar with the Jesus story about the basics of the Jesus story; but to give pastoral counsel on matters actually happening in those communities. To expect Paul, for our sakes two thousand later, to supply a detailed account of the Jesus story is no different then if you wrote a letter to your family about events transpiring relative to you and your family and--because you don't offer all the information in the letter--the postman secretly reading your mail feeling entitled to all the information. These are not homilies or treatises, they are not tracts or dissertations. These are personal, heartfelt letters written from one person to other people.

So our expectations in that regard are moot, what we do have is what is written, and unless we perform a series of intense gymnastic maneuvers that would make Olympic gold medal winners to shame then it's rather straightforward.

-CryptoLutheran

[quoteAnd yet as we read the writings before 70 AD, the historical Jesus is strangely absent. If the historical Jesus is the source, why don't such documents reflect it?[/quote]

 

[Johnnz]

However, if you want to talk about historians not recording the life of Jesus, the first thing to ask is: how many historians wrote about events in Galileee and Jerusalem during the time of Jesus' ministry? I am only aware of one such historian, Josephus, and he did mention Jesus.

Jesus for first century Rome would have been an insignificant Jewish criminal, rightly put to death for his crime, just one of many thousands who met such an end. We must not judge Roman history from our perspective of two millennia of history having passed.

John
NZ

 

[doubtingmerle]

How do you know that anybody was a martyr in the 1st century for believing in an earthly Jesus?

Paul also records the afflictions and the hardships of the first century believer.

Yes I agree that the believers had afflictions and hardships in the first century, especially the Jews that had lost to the Romans.

I did not ask if they had hardships. I asked how you knew that anybody was a martyr in the 1st century for believing in an earthly Jesus.

We also have the works of Josephus as an independent source.

Josephus doesn't testify that anybody was killed because they believed in an earthly Jesus.

Why do any non-believers care? Why are you so insistent on pushing your views?

I am not hear to push my views.

When one's head is full of thoughts, those thoughts seek to come out. I am here to share and to learn from anybody with interest in the subjects that fascinate me.

Self righteousness aside religion can be used as away to control the masses. Christianity was destroying just about all other forms of control the leaders of that day had.

Well, yes, but Christianity also can and has been used by governments to control people.

Are you sure you want to turn to the history of Rome as your evidence for Christianity? You do know what happened to Rome after it adopted Christianity as its faith, don't you?

Reference material? or have you forgotten I will require that you support your seemingly factual comments.

I mentioned several facts there. Which assertion were you disputing?

 

[doubtingmerle]

The real issue is in the thread title:
what you need to be asking is DOES Christ exist?

Why would that have been a better title for this thread? It seems to me that "Christ" can be interpreted many ways, wheras it is clear to all what I mean when I use the name "Jesus".

And if reading "Challenging the verdict" is how one winds up in Merle's position, I think it should be avoided at all costs.

With all due respect razeontherock, I was once in your position, actively defending the Christian faith from my computer. I prefer the position I am in now, thank you.

Why would one first choose a position, and then read books that take one to the pre-chosen postion? Shouldn't one first read from many sources, and then decide based on that which is the best position?

 

[doubtingmerle]

Here is the first sentence in the Bible written by Paul:


1Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, separated unto the gospel of God,
2(Which he had promised afore by his prophets in the holy scriptures,)
3Concerning his Son Jesus Christ our Lord, which was made of the seed of David according to the flesh; 4And declared to be the Son of God with power, according to the spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead: [Romans 1:1-4]

So Paul did say, quite clearly, that Jesus Christ was a flesh-and-blood human being, descended from David, and was resurrected in the body.

It would seem to me that "made of the seed of David according to the flesh" could easily be figurative terminology for a spirit being after the kingly tradition of David. This is far different from a book like Matthew which lists the birthplace, the characters involved, and details of the story.

how could Paul think that Jesus had a human brother if he thought that Jesus was purely a spiritual being?

It is true that James is called the Lord's brother, but is that simple a title, like calling him "Brother James"?