jesus and history

what historians can tell us about Jesus

starfish

on this page

Christians believe in Jesus, sceptics discount him or even say he never existed. On this page we look at conclusions of the consensus of expert historians on whether Jesus existed, and what he did and said.

The following are the pages in the belief section.

This section is still being developed, and pages are still being edited.

It doesn't really matter who thought of some ideas first. Gravity is gravity, regardless of how much we know about Isaac Newton, and if he hadn't discovered how it works, someone else would have. And it doesn't really matter who first said we should treat others as we'd like them to treat us, it is still a good teaching. But the christian faith is not like that. The christian faith is more about Jesus himself than it is about what he taught, and if Jesus had never existed, christianity would never have existed either.

So questions about Jesus and history are very important. On this page we look at what the historians can tell us objectively about the life of Jesus and how the stories about him stand up as history. Christians will generally believe more than this, but this is a sort of historical common ground which believers and unbelievers alike can accept.

who to believe?

Scholars and others who write about Jesus and history can have many different viewpoints and biases. For example:

  • Some are believers who write to defend the christian faith. They are acknowledged experts in their fields, but they will generally believe or assume that the New Testament has been inspired by God and kept accurate by him, and are willing to accept the reality of supernatural events and causes. There are a large number of scholars in this category, including, in the reference list below, Blomberg, Habermas and those quoted in Strobel.
  • At the other end of the spectrum are non-believers who write to disprove or discredit the christian faith, or who are highly sceptical christians. They will generally believe or assume the New Testament to be unhistorical except where historical analysis can demonstrate otherwise. They will generally make naturalistic assumptions, e.g. that the miraculous cannot occur. There are a smaller number of scholars in this category, represented in the references below by Funk and the Jesus Seminar, those writing in the Secular Web, and perhaps Crossan.
  • The mainstream of New Testament scholarship uses objective methods and assumptions that remove as much as possible the effect of any pre-conceived viewpoint. They will exercise caution, but not scepticism, in drawing historical conclusions. They may not be willing to pass historical judgment, one way or the other, on miraculous matters, as they see these as beyond the domain of the historian. The majority of scholars are in this category. Some (in my opinion the most trustworthy ones) will apply similar methods of historical analysis to the New Testament as would be applied to other writings of a similar age, but others adopt even more stringent methods to "bend over backwards" so that they reach conservative conclusions.

In this summary, I have mostly used scholars in the latter category, in order to arrive at conclusions that can reasonably be accepted by people of any philosophical or religious viewpoint. In particular, I have used the late Michael Grant and Mark Powell as touchstones; Grant because his wide expertise (he wrote numerous books about many facets of the Roman Empire) gave him a broader persective as a historian than some purely New Testament scholars, and because he was a non-believer and therefore less likely to have a point to prove; Powell, because his book represents not his own views but a summary of a broad cross section of scholarship. I further note that respected Roman historian, the late A N Sherwin-White, concludes similarly to Grant.

is the new testament reliable as history?

We mostly know about Jesus from the four different accounts of his life that are included in the New Testament of the Bible (for a little more background about the Bible and how to read it, see a quick intro to the bible). These accounts, are the 'gospels' (an old word which means "good news") according to Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.

These accounts are regarded as valuable historical texts by historians. It is a misunderstanding to think that because the writers were believers, the texts are too biased to be useful. Most ancient documents have viewpoints, and historians have methods which make allowance for those viewpoints.

But how accurate and reliable are they? The following aspects would generally be considered by historians.

are the documents eye-witness accounts?

This is a surprisingly complex question to answer.

The four gospels have been ascribed to their traditional authors from a very early date, but these names are not included in the documents anywhere. On the traditional view, Matthew and John would have been eyewitnesses, and Mark and Luke based on eyewitnesses. However most scholars do not believe the actual writers or compilers were the traditional authors, though perhaps some of the material goes back to them.

Rather, scholars generally believe that stories about Jesus and his sayings were told, re-told and perhaps memorised or written down, until they were written and compiled into the documents we now have. In the process, the material would have been edited, and interpretations added - with varying degrees of "certainty" about the status of different sections. Thus Luke's gospel begins with this statement: "Many have undertaken to draw up an account of the things that have been fulfilled among us, just as they were handed down to us by those who from the first were eyewitnesses and servants of the word. Therefore, since I myself have carefully investigated everything from the beginning, it seemed good also to me to write an orderly account ...." (Luke 1:1-3)

Much New Testament study over the past century has tried to "take apart" the gospels and separate out historical fact and interpretation in each small section. (It is important to historians to be able to separate "raw facts" from people's interprpetations, though this may be less important for those simply seeking "the truth".) Thus highly sceptical scholars believe less than 20% of the material can be considered "historical", with the rest containing significant interpretation by the early christians and also legendary material.

However this approach is considered by some scholars to be more sceptical and destructive than is applied to other historical documents. For example, this was the view of Michael Grant; it appears that theologians are generally more critical than secular historians. There seems to be some reconsideration of this "cut and paste" approach in recent years - N T Wright has argued for a more holistic approach, and a recent book by Richard Bauckham argues for a much stronger eyewitness content. 

More conservative christian scholars have always maintained that the traditional authorship is correct, that the New Testament is historically true and only small amounts are later interpretation. They argue that the interpretation of events by the early christians is a valid basis for belief.

So, are the gospels based on eyewitness accounts? The answer of the mainstream historians seems to be that they are, but while some parts are factually historical without significant later amendment, there is much that includes later reflection.

how soon after the events were they written down?

This question is important because the longer the gap between event and writing, the more likely it is that error, additions or legendary elements can creep into the stories.

It is generally agreed that the gospels were written between 30 and 70 years after Jesus died. Some other parts of the New Testament (namely some letters written by a converted Jew named Paul), in which only brief historical details about Jesus are given, were written perhaps 15-30 years after Jesus died.

These time periods may seem long by the standards of our modern information-rich age, but they are quite short for ancient documents. For example. biographies of Alexander the Great were not written until more than 400 years afterwards, yet they are considered to be trustworthy and generally free of legendary material.

The small gap between event and writing is emphasised when the New Testament is compared to the writings of some other religious founders.  The Zoroastrian scriptures were written down more than a millenium after Zoroaster lived, the scriptures and biography of the Buddha were wrtten more than 600 years after he lived, and while Muhammed's sayings were written by him, his biography was written more than a century after his death.

John A.T. Robinson: "The wealth of manuscripts, and above all the narrow interval of time between the writing and the earliest extant copies, make it by far the best attested text of any ancient writing in the world."

are the documents we have now accurate copies of the originals?

We don't possess the original gospels, but only full and partial copies of the originals. Ancient documents were copied by hand, so the gap between original and copies, the number of copies and how well they agree with each other, are all important in determining whether copying errors have occurred.

The New Testament stands up very well on these grounds. There are more than 5,000 Greek manuscripts (the New Testament was written in Greek), with the earliest dated within 30 years of the original, and complete New Testament manuscripts from within less than three centuries. This contrasts with:

  • historian Tacitus - there is only one early manuscript for each of the first few and last few books of the Annals, dated more than 700 years after the originals were written;
  • historian Josephus - 9 manuscripts dated 9 centuries after composition;
  • of all documents of comparable age, Homer's Iliad has the next greatest manuscript testimony after the New Testament - 650 manuscripts, but the earliest is dated about 1000 years after composition.

When all the different New Testament manuscripts are compared, the copying is shown to have a high degree of accuracy.

John Wenham: "The only satisfactory answer [to why, in spite of the "great diversity" in our copies, the texts are still relativity homogeneous] seems to be that its homogeneity stems from an exceedingly early text-virtually, that is, from the autographs."

Helmut Koester: "Classical authors are often represented by but one surviving manuscript; if there are half a dozen or more, one can speak of a rather advantageous situation for reconstructing the text. But there are nearly five thousand manuscripts of the NT in Greek... The only surviving manuscripts of classical authors often come from the Middle Ages, but the manuscript tradition of the NT begins as early as the end of II CE; it is therefore separated by only a century or so from the time at which the autographs were written. Thus it seems that NT textual criticism possesses a base which is far more advantageous than that for the textual criticism of classical authors."

is the New Testament consistent within itself and with other known history?

There are some well-known areas in which the gospels seem inconsistent with each other, for example:

  • The accounts of Jesus' birth in Matthew and Luke appear to differ in the dates and some details differ, though are not necessarily inconsistent.
  • The four gospel accounts of the resurrection differ in the sequence of events, and details such as the number of people/angels seen at Jesus' tomb.
  • John appears to give different days of the week for the Last Supper and the crucifixion than those given in the other gospels.
  • The picture of Jesus, the content of his teaching and the manner in which he spoke, and the outline of his ministry portrayed in Matthew, Mark and Luke are different in many ways to the picture in John.

The significance of these matters is a matter of debate, with explanations and doubts expressed by different scholars. Nevertheless, while these apparent discrepancies might be a difficulty for someone who believes the Bible contains no errors, they are well within the parameters of normal historical documents, and the major aspects of Jesus' life and teachings are not substantially affected by these doubts. (If you are interested in possible explanations of these apparent anomalies, see Blomberg or Strobel in the references.)

Generally scholars find a reasonably consistent picture when comparing the New Testament to other historical documents. For example:

  • References in Roman writings to Jesus and the early christians are limited in detail, but generally agree with the gospel accounts. Roman historians Tacitus, Pliny the younger and Suetonius all give brief references to Jesus and confirm the broad outline of his life and death.
  • The same is true of the Jewish historian Josephus, and the Jewish Talmud, if the viewpoints of the writers are taken into account (It is true that the main Josephus reference shows signs of having been amended by christians between the original writing and the copies we now have, but scholars have been able to generally agree on the sections that should be removed, still leaving a significant reference to Jesus.)

Archaeology provides some significant support for some of the historical accounts in the New Testament. Luke, who wrote the history of the early church in the book of Acts as well as a gospel, is considered by scholars to be a very reliable historian. Historians once considered Luke to have made errors in certain statements which archaeology has subsequently shown to be accurate, for example, in the names, titles and dates he gives for various government officials. John's gospel has similarly been vindicated several times by archaeology, which has now found a number of features mentioned by John, for example, the Pool of Bethesda, the Pool of Siloam and the Stone Pavement.

There have been some doubts cast on whether the town of Nazareth really existed in Jesus' time, and there are still conflicting views, but it seems that the majority of scholars do not find any problem.

conclusion

It seems that, using a similar basis as for other historical analysis, the historical basis for the New Testament is strong (though not without its difficulties). We can reasonably accept the documents as reliable history, although our individual opinions about the possibility of miracles and God's existence will determine how we interpret them.

what do scholars conclude about jesus?

From time to time books are written which throw significant doubts on the traditional picture of Jesus, and offer sometimes highly fanciful alternatives. However these rarely have much historical validity. Here I have assembled a selection of the views of mainstream scholars.

did Jesus really exist?

Very few scholars doubt that Jesus existed. The following is the general consensus

The late Michael Grant: "[That Jesus was a myth] has again and again been answered and annihilated by first-rank scholars .... no serious scholar has ventured to postulate the non-historicity of Jesus."

C Tucket, commenting on Tacitus and Josephus: "All this does at least render highly implausible any far-fetched theories that even Jesus' very existence was a Christian invention. The fact that Jesus existed, that he was crucified under Pontiius Pilate (for whatever reason) and that he had a band of followers who continued to support him seems to be part of the bedrock of historical tradition. If nothing more, the non-christian evidence can provide us with certainty on that score."

M Borg: "some judgments are so probable as to be certain; for example, Jesus really existed, and he really was crucified, just as Julius Caesar really existed and was assassinated." and "We can in fact know as much about Jesus as we can about any figure in the ancient world."

M A Powell: "Jesus did more than just exist.  He said and did a great many things that most historians are reasonably certain we can know about today." and "A hundred and fifty years ago a fairly well respected scholar named Bruno Bauer maintained that the historical Jesus never existed. Anyone who says that today - in the academic world at least - gets grouped with the skinheads who say there was no Holocaust and the scientific holdouts who want to believe the world is flat."

J Charlesworth: "Jesus did exist; and we know more about him than about almost any Palestinian Jew before 70 C.E."

Jeffery Jay Lowder: "I think that the New Testament does provide prima facie evidence for the historicity of Jesus. It is clear, then, that if we are going to apply to the New Testament the same sort of criteria as we should apply to other ancient writings containing historical material, we should not require independent confirmation of the New Testament's claim that Jesus existed."

what can we know historically about jesus?

Historical scholars are placed in a quandary when dealing with the New Testament. Normally, when investigating the lives of historical figures such as Alexander the Great or Julius Caesar, historians will eliminate minor miraculous and legendary elements which they believe have been added, to arrive at what they believe is the historical truth. But the gospels are full of miraculous and supernatural events which are not easily discarded as "additions", but rather are the substance of the stories.

The approach adopted by most historians is to put to one side the question of the truth of miracles, prophecies, etc (on the grounds that one's response to such claims and stories is a matter of one's metaphysical beliefs, and not a matter for a historian) and simply determine what people of the day believed and wrote. This has the virtue of allowing atheist and theist historians to approach the historical analysis on a common basis, but it has the drawback of being based on sceptical assumptions that are not proven. Prof F Watson: "Modern historical study tends to understand ancient historiographical texts as 'sources', disregarding their ideological biases and other 'unhistorical' elements and using the residue as raw material for independent historical reconstruction (which will naturally display ideological biases of its own)."

Other criteria are also used to define what is considered to be historical, for example (Grant, Powell, Habermas, and most authors outline these criteria in more detail):

  • texts written close to the events, or which preserve portions of the Aramaic language which Jesus spoke, are preferable;
  • events which are recorded in more than one source are more believable;
  • teachings which it suited people's purposes to preserve are more questionable, while those which might be embrrassing are more likely to be true;
  • texts accepted by a range of historians are more trustworthy.

On these bases, most historians will identify parts of the gospels which they believe fit into the following categories:

  • material which is believed to be genuine eyewitness history;
  • material considered unlikely to be historical;
  • material containing the miraculous or supernatural, which historians will generally neither confirm or reject;
  • material which appears to have been the reflection or interpretation of the early christians rather than raw eyewitness accounts.

Note that the latter two categories are not necessarily unhistorical, rather their authenticity cannot be established one way or the other by historical analysis. But even by these stringent standards, and without making any assumptions that the New Testament is more than any other historical text, scholars have concluded that the broad outline of Jesus' life and teachings are historical.

E P Sanders: "Historical reconstruction is never absolutely certain, and in the case of Jesus it is sometimes highly uncertain. Despite this, we have a good idea of the main lines of his ministry and his message. We know who he was, what he did, what he taught, and why he died." and "the dominant view [among scholars] today seems to be that we can know pretty well what Jesus was out to accomplish, that we can know a lot about what he said, and that those two things make sense within the world of first-century Judaism."

Some historians believe this method is too piecemeal. For example, C S Lewis argued that we can trust the early writers in their interpretation much more than we can trust modern historians, who are far removed in space, time and culture from the original events.

N T Wright makes a similar point: "But as any author who has watched her or his books being reviewed will know, such reconstructions again and again miss the point, often wildly. If we cannot get it right when we share a culture, a period and a language, it is highly likely that many of our subtle reconstructions of ancient texts and histories are our own unhistorical fantasies, unrecognised only because the writers are long since dead and cannot answer back." He therefore argues for a more holistic approach which considers all the evidence, forming a hypothesis and testing it for overall consistency.

Grant and Sherwin-White argue that the methods used by theologians are far more sceptical than those used by secular historians. If we follow these views, we will view the New Testament as generally historically reliable, as we do other documents of the time.

reasonable viewpoints

1. The minimum that one can reasonably believe is summed up by the Jesus Seminar (at the very sceptical end of the spectrum) as follows (my words):

  • About 15-20% of what is recorded in the gospels can be viewed as probably historical, with the remainder split between text that is considered unhistoric, and text which we cannot tell whether it is historic or not. Robert Crotty (not a member of the Jesus Seminar) distinguishes the clear historical material from the rest, which he calls myth, but then adds: "like all myths, it may or may not be historically true."
  • Jesus was an itinerant preacher who proclaimed the kingdom of God and taught in parables. Significant parts of his teaching about God (about 20%) is probably historical.
  • He was a healer and an exorcist (though they don't believe these things physically occurred).
  • He associated with outcasts, attracted a large following and had a close group of disciples.
  • He was executed by the Roman authorities because of an incident in the Jewish temple.
  • Paul of Tarsus and Peter saw "appearances" of Jesus after his death, and Mary of Magdala was an early witness to the resurrection. (Sceptical scholars don't believe in a physical resurrection, nevertheless they believe there were appearances of some kind.)

This minimum more or less coincides with what can be gleaned from the non-christian Roman and Jewish sources (summarised in Dickson).

2. The mainstream of historians believe the gospels present a broad picture of what happened, or what people believed. Michael Grant concluded about the gospels: "the picture they present is largely authentic .... information about Jesus can be derived from the gospels." Archaeologist and classics scholar L Michael White seems to have a similar view. The following summary of what we can be confident of historically is drawn from E P Sanders, N T Wright and Michael Grant (note that Grant's list contains some items not in Sanders' list):

  • time of birth, location of childhood, baptism;
  • he called disciples (probably 12 of them) and associated with outcasts (uncommon for a Rabbi in his day);
  • he effected cures and exorcisms (G Stanton: "Few doubt that Jesus possessed unusual gifts as a healer, though of course varied explanations are offered."; E P Sanders: "I think we can be fairly certain that initially Jesus' fame came as a result of healing, especially exorcism.");
  • he preached "the kingdom of God" in Galilee and called people to repent - he believed he was the "Messiah, inaugurating the Kingdom of God and that repentent sinners were eligible for the kingdom (P J Tomson: "Although he apparently considered himself the heavenly 'Son of Man' and 'the beloved son' of God and cherished far-reaching Messianic ambitions, Jesus was equally reticent about these convictions. Even so, the fact that, after his death and resurrection, his disciples proclaimed him as the Messiah can be understood as a direct development from his own teachings.");
  • welcoming "sinners" was part of his teaching and he claimed to be able to forgive people's sins (M Grant: "Jesus introduced a very singular innovation. For he also claimed that he himself could forgive sins.");
  • he believed his death would be redemptive (M Grant: "Jesus lived his last days, and died, in the belief that his death was destined to save the human race.");
  • he created a disturbance in the temple in Jerusalem, had a final meal with his friends, was arrested and interrogated by Jewish authorities and was executed by the Roman Governor, Pilate
  • his tomb was really empty and his disciples "saw" him (in what sense is uncertain) after his death (E P Sanders: "That Jesus' followers (and later Paul) had resurrection experiences is, in my judgment, a fact. What the reality was that gave rise to the experiences I do not know..... Without the resurrection, would [Jesus'] disciples have endured longer than did John the Baptist's? We can only guess, but I would guess not.").

3. The "believing" viewpoint is presented by scholars who are also christian apologists. They quote opinions like those of Sherwin-White that: "The agnostic type of form-criticism would be much more credible if the compilation of the Gospels were much later in time.... Herodotus enables us to test the tempo of myth-making, [showing that] even two generations are too short a span to allow the mythical tendency to prevail over the hard historic core."

Thus they argue that the historical evidence allows them to believe that the New Testament is almost entirely accurate history, with only a few small historical matters in significant doubt. E Judge: "An ancient historian has no problem seeing the phenomonon of Jesus as an historical one. His many surprising aspects only help anchor him in history. Myth and legend would have created a more predictable figure. The writings that sprang up about Jesus also reveal to us a movement of thought and an experience of life so unusual that something much more substantial than the imagination is needed to explain it."

interpretations

Where mainstream scholars disagree most is in their interpretations of Jesus - almost every major scholar has come up with a simple phrase to sum up who Jesus was. For example, Jesus has been seen as a peasant sage (the Jesus Seminar), a social revolutionary (Crossan), a religious mystic (Borg), an end-time prophet (Sanders), a marginal Jew (Meier), and the true Messiah (Wright). At the extremes, sceptical scholars will argue that we can know little about who Jesus really was, while apologist scholars will argue that he was the Messiah, Son of God and saviour of the world.

It seems to me that it is foolish to try to sum up a person like Jesus in a single phrase (could anyone sum you up in one phrase?). I can't help feeling each description simply expresses a different aspect of who Jesus was.

responding to this historical information

What should we do with this historical information? Denying that Jesus lived goes against almost all scholarship, and means one's conclusion is determined by one's preconceived views. At least some facts about him seem to be true. Therefore it seems to me that we can respond in several ways:

  1. If you have a sceptical view on the existence of God, you may choose to follow the opinions of the more sceptical scholars, even though they are not endorsed by the majority of historians. You will accept that Jesus existed, but will presumably believe that he was not who christians claim, and that much of the truth about him has been lost.
  2. If you accept the views of the majority of scholars, you will hold that Jesus did, believed and taught many of the things written in the New Testament. You may choose to follow Michael Grant and believe that Jesus was a good man but mistaken in some of his claims, so you will hold him in respect but not believe in him as christians do. Alternatively ......
  3. If you have an open mind on the existence of God and are impressed by Jesus' life and teachings, you may feel that the best explanation of the facts is that he spoke the truth (for more on this, see who was jesus?). You will likely follow christian scholars, and be willing to accept as true those miraculous events on which historians are unable to pass judgment (on the basis that if God went to this trouble to appear on earth, he would presumably also have ensured that the New Testament is a reasonably accurate record of the fact).

references

The following are references to all views quoted in the summary, plus other sources I have used. I have included brief notes on the sources I have found most useful.

  • Richard Bauckham: Jesus and the Eyewitnesses: The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony
  • Craig Blomberg: The historical reliability of the gospels.
  • M Bockmuehl, Cambridge University: The Cambridge Companion to Jesus. A useful reference because it contains essays by a number of scholars on a variety of important topics.
  • Prof M Borg, Oregon State University, is quoted in M A Powell.
  • M Borg: Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time.
  • M Borg & J D Crossan: Last Week.
  • M Borg & T Wright: The meaning of Jesus: Two visions.
  • Dr J Charlesworth, Princeton Theological Seminary: Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls
  • J D Crossan: Jesus: a Revolutionary Biography.
  • Robert Crotty: The Jesus Question.
  • John Dickson: The Christ Files. A good simple and even-handed reference by a historian and fair-minded christian on the evidence historians use to undertsand the life of Jesus.
  • (Emeritus) Prof J Dunn, Durham University, is quoted in J Polkinghorne Science and Christian Belief.
  • Prof P Fredriksen, Boston University: Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews
  • Robert Funk and the Jesus Seminar: The Acts of Jesus
  • M Grant: Jesus: an historian's review of the Gospels. I found Grant's book readable, authoritative (he was, before he died, a respected historian of the Roman Empire, wrote more than 50 books on this period, and used the same historical methods in studying Jesus as he used in his other works) and un-biased (he was an open-minded agnostic). Overall I found it to be the most useful reference for maintaining a balanced view.
  • Prof L T Johnson, Emory University: The Real Jesus.
  • Emeritus Professor E A Judge, Macquarie University, foreword to The truth about Jesus by P Barnett.
  • H Koester is quoted in G Habermas.
  • Prof J Meier, Notre Dame University, is quoted in M A Powell.
  • J Polkinghorne: Science and Christian Belief. and Exploring Reality. Two interesting and challenging books by a world renowned particle physicist turned theologian. Well worth reading for his well-informed views on a range of subjects.
  • M A Powell: The Jesus Debate. Powell is recognised as a fair-minded reviewer of current trends, and this book summarises the views of some of the most influential scholars in the field (the Jesus Seminar, J D Crossan, M Borg, E P Sanders, J Meier N T Wright).
  • J A T Robinson is quoted in G Habermas.
  • Professor E P Sanders, Duke University is quoted in M A Powell.
  • Prof G Stanton, Cambridge University: Message and Miracles. In M Bockmuehl.
  • A. N. Sherwin-White is quoted in Wikipedia.
  • Lee Strobel: The Case for Christ. Maligned by unbelievers, and pursuing a specifically christian agenda, this comprehensive book nevertheless provides a good source of scholarly information.
  • Prof P J Tomson, Protestant Theological Faculty, Brussels: Jesus and his Judaism. In M Bockmuehl.
  • Prof Geza Vermes, formerly of Oxford University: The Changing Face of Jesus. and The Nativity.
  • Prof F Watson, University of Aberdeen: The Quest for the Real Jesus. In M Bockmuehl.
  • J Wenham is quoted in G Habermas.
  • L Michael White: From Jesus to Christianity
  • N T Wright is quoted in M A Powell.

Websites:

links

  • Go to christianity for a summary of what Christians believe, and why.
  • Go to who was jesus? for a historical understanding of who Jesus was.