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Historicity of Jesus (Merry Christmas)
The atheist historian Will Durant writes -
“Did Christ exist? Is the story of the founder of Christianity the product of human sorrow, imagination, and hope – a myth comparable to the legends of Krishna, Osiris, Attis, Adonis, Dionysus and Mithras? Early in the eighteenth century the circle of Bolingbroke, shocking even Voltaire, privately discussed the possibility that Jesus had never lived. Volney propounded the same doubt in his Ruins of Empire in 1791. Napoleon, meeting the German scholar Wieland in 1808, asked him no petty question of politics or war, but did he believe in the historicity of Christ?{1}
One of the most far-reaching activities of the modern mind has been the “Higher Criticism” of the Bible – the mounting attack upon its authenticity and veracity, countered by the heroic attempt to save the historical foundations of Christian faith; the results may in time prove as revolutionary as Christianity itself. The first engagement in this two-hundred-year war was fought in silence by Hermann Reimarus, professor of Oriental languages at Hamburg; on his death in 1768 he left, cautiously unpublished, a 1400-page manuscript on the life of Christ. Six years later Gotthold Lessing, over the protests of his friends, published portions of it as the Wolfenbuttel Fragments. Reimarus argued that Jesus can only be regarded and understood not as the founder of Christianity, but as the final and dominant figure in the mystical eschatology of the Jews – i.e., Christ thought not of establishing a new religion, but of preparing men for the imminent destruction of the world, and God’s Last Judgement of all souls.” (page 553)
“In 1840 Bruno Bauer began a series of passionately controversial works aiming to show that Jesus was a myth, the personified form of a cult that evolved in the second century from a fusion of Jewish, Greek, and Roman theology.” (page 554)
“The results of two centuries of discussion seemed to be the annihilation of Christ.
What evidence is there for Christ’s existence? The earliest non-Christian reference occurs in Josephus’ Antiquities of the Jews (A.D.93?):
At the time Jesus, a holy man, if man he may be called, for he performed wonderful works, and taught men, and joyfully received the truth. And he was followed by many Jews and many Greeks. He was the Messiah.{2}
There may be a genuine core in these strange lines; but the high praise given to Christ by a Jew uniformly anxious to please either Romans or the Jews – both at that time in conflict with Christianity – renders the passage suspect, and Christian scholars reject it as almost certainly an interpolation.{3}There are references to “Yeshu’a of Nazareth” in the Talmud, but they are too late in date to be certainly more than counter echoes of Christian thought.{4} The oldest known mention of Christ in pagan literature is in a letter of the younger Pliny (ca.110),{5} asking the advice of Trajan on the treatment of Christians. Five years later Tacitus{6}* described Nero’s persecution of the Chrestiani in Rome, and pictured them as already (A.D. 64) numbering adherents throughout the Empire; the paragraph is so Tacitean in style, force, and prejudice that of all the Biblical critics only Drews questions its authenticity.{7} Suetonius (ca. 125) mentions the same persecution,{8} and reports Claudius’ banishment (ca. 52) of “Jews who, stirred up by Christ [impulsore Chresto], were causing public disturbances,”{9} the passage accords well with the Acts of the Apostles, which mentions a decree of Claudius that “the Jews should leave Rome.”{10} These references prove the existence of Christians rather than of Christ; but unless we assume the latter we are driven to the improbable hypothesis that Jesus was invented in one generation; moreover, we must suppose that the Christian community in Rome had been established some years before 52, to merit the attention of an imperial decree. About the middle of this first century a pagan named Thallus, in a fragment preserved by Julius Africanus,{11} argued that the abnormal darkness alleged to have accompanied the death of Christ was a purely natural phenomenon and coincidence; the argument took the existence of Christ for granted. The denial of that existence seems never to have occurred even to the bitterest gentile or Jewish opponents of nascent Christianity.” (pages 555-556)
“In the enthusiasm of its discoveries the Higher Criticism has applied to the New Testament tests of authenticity so severe that by them a hundred ancient worthies – e.g. Hammurabi, David, Socrates – would fade into legend. Despite the prejudices and theological preconceptions of the evangelists, they record many incidents that mere inventors would have concealed – the competition of the apostles for high places in the Kingdom, their flight after Jesus’ arrest, Peter’s denial, the failure of Christ to work miracles in Galilee, the references of some auditors to his possible insanity, his early uncertainty as to his mission, his confessions of ignorance as to the future, his moments of bitterness, his despairing cry on the cross; no one reading these scenes can doubt the reality of the figure behind them. That a few simple men should in one generation have invented so powerful and appealing a personality, so lofty an ethic and so inspiring a vision of human brotherhood, would be a miracle far more incredible than any recorded in the Gospels. “ (page 557)
{1} Reinach, S. Short History of Christianity, 22; Guignebert, Jesus, 63.
{2} Josephus, Antiquities, xviii, 3.
{3} Scott, E., First Age of Christianity, 46; Schurer, I, 143. This conculsion applies also to the Slavonic version of Josephus; cf. Guignebert, op. Cit., 148.
{4} Klausner, Jesus, 46; Goguel, 71.
{5} Pliny the Younger, v, 8.
{6} Tacitus, Annals, xv, 44.
{7} Goguel, 94; Klausner, 60.
{8} Suetonius, “Nero,” 16.
{9} Id., “Claudius,” 25.
{10} Acts of the Apostles, xviii, 2. Quatations from the New Testament are in most cases from the translation of E. J. Goodspeed.
{11} In Goguel, 9, 184.
Happy birthday to Jesus
“Did Christ exist? Is the story of the founder of Christianity the product of human sorrow, imagination, and hope – a myth comparable to the legends of Krishna, Osiris, Attis, Adonis, Dionysus and Mithras? Early in the eighteenth century the circle of Bolingbroke, shocking even Voltaire, privately discussed the possibility that Jesus had never lived. Volney propounded the same doubt in his Ruins of Empire in 1791. Napoleon, meeting the German scholar Wieland in 1808, asked him no petty question of politics or war, but did he believe in the historicity of Christ?{1}
One of the most far-reaching activities of the modern mind has been the “Higher Criticism” of the Bible – the mounting attack upon its authenticity and veracity, countered by the heroic attempt to save the historical foundations of Christian faith; the results may in time prove as revolutionary as Christianity itself. The first engagement in this two-hundred-year war was fought in silence by Hermann Reimarus, professor of Oriental languages at Hamburg; on his death in 1768 he left, cautiously unpublished, a 1400-page manuscript on the life of Christ. Six years later Gotthold Lessing, over the protests of his friends, published portions of it as the Wolfenbuttel Fragments. Reimarus argued that Jesus can only be regarded and understood not as the founder of Christianity, but as the final and dominant figure in the mystical eschatology of the Jews – i.e., Christ thought not of establishing a new religion, but of preparing men for the imminent destruction of the world, and God’s Last Judgement of all souls.” (page 553)
“In 1840 Bruno Bauer began a series of passionately controversial works aiming to show that Jesus was a myth, the personified form of a cult that evolved in the second century from a fusion of Jewish, Greek, and Roman theology.” (page 554)
“The results of two centuries of discussion seemed to be the annihilation of Christ.
What evidence is there for Christ’s existence? The earliest non-Christian reference occurs in Josephus’ Antiquities of the Jews (A.D.93?):
At the time Jesus, a holy man, if man he may be called, for he performed wonderful works, and taught men, and joyfully received the truth. And he was followed by many Jews and many Greeks. He was the Messiah.{2}
There may be a genuine core in these strange lines; but the high praise given to Christ by a Jew uniformly anxious to please either Romans or the Jews – both at that time in conflict with Christianity – renders the passage suspect, and Christian scholars reject it as almost certainly an interpolation.{3}There are references to “Yeshu’a of Nazareth” in the Talmud, but they are too late in date to be certainly more than counter echoes of Christian thought.{4} The oldest known mention of Christ in pagan literature is in a letter of the younger Pliny (ca.110),{5} asking the advice of Trajan on the treatment of Christians. Five years later Tacitus{6}* described Nero’s persecution of the Chrestiani in Rome, and pictured them as already (A.D. 64) numbering adherents throughout the Empire; the paragraph is so Tacitean in style, force, and prejudice that of all the Biblical critics only Drews questions its authenticity.{7} Suetonius (ca. 125) mentions the same persecution,{8} and reports Claudius’ banishment (ca. 52) of “Jews who, stirred up by Christ [impulsore Chresto], were causing public disturbances,”{9} the passage accords well with the Acts of the Apostles, which mentions a decree of Claudius that “the Jews should leave Rome.”{10} These references prove the existence of Christians rather than of Christ; but unless we assume the latter we are driven to the improbable hypothesis that Jesus was invented in one generation; moreover, we must suppose that the Christian community in Rome had been established some years before 52, to merit the attention of an imperial decree. About the middle of this first century a pagan named Thallus, in a fragment preserved by Julius Africanus,{11} argued that the abnormal darkness alleged to have accompanied the death of Christ was a purely natural phenomenon and coincidence; the argument took the existence of Christ for granted. The denial of that existence seems never to have occurred even to the bitterest gentile or Jewish opponents of nascent Christianity.” (pages 555-556)
“In the enthusiasm of its discoveries the Higher Criticism has applied to the New Testament tests of authenticity so severe that by them a hundred ancient worthies – e.g. Hammurabi, David, Socrates – would fade into legend. Despite the prejudices and theological preconceptions of the evangelists, they record many incidents that mere inventors would have concealed – the competition of the apostles for high places in the Kingdom, their flight after Jesus’ arrest, Peter’s denial, the failure of Christ to work miracles in Galilee, the references of some auditors to his possible insanity, his early uncertainty as to his mission, his confessions of ignorance as to the future, his moments of bitterness, his despairing cry on the cross; no one reading these scenes can doubt the reality of the figure behind them. That a few simple men should in one generation have invented so powerful and appealing a personality, so lofty an ethic and so inspiring a vision of human brotherhood, would be a miracle far more incredible than any recorded in the Gospels. “ (page 557)
{1} Reinach, S. Short History of Christianity, 22; Guignebert, Jesus, 63.
{2} Josephus, Antiquities, xviii, 3.
{3} Scott, E., First Age of Christianity, 46; Schurer, I, 143. This conculsion applies also to the Slavonic version of Josephus; cf. Guignebert, op. Cit., 148.
{4} Klausner, Jesus, 46; Goguel, 71.
{5} Pliny the Younger, v, 8.
{6} Tacitus, Annals, xv, 44.
{7} Goguel, 94; Klausner, 60.
{8} Suetonius, “Nero,” 16.
{9} Id., “Claudius,” 25.
{10} Acts of the Apostles, xviii, 2. Quatations from the New Testament are in most cases from the translation of E. J. Goodspeed.
{11} In Goguel, 9, 184.
Happy birthday to Jesus
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