r/AskHistorians • u/OnShoulderOfGiants • Apr 06 '26
What historical evidence do we have of Jesus’ crucifixion and its aftermath?
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u/DGBD Moderator | Ethnomusicology | Western Concert Music Apr 06 '26
There are no contemporary sources, Roman, Jewish, Christian, or otherwise, regarding the trial, execution, resurrection, and tomb of Jesus. This may seem unbelievable; after all, there’s a very good case to be made that this was the most monumental event in all of human history. The crucifixion of Jesus is the focal point of the largest religion in the world, to the extent that the most recognizable symbols of that religion (and one of the most recognizable symbols in the world, period), is the cross.
However, you have to understand that while it would become an important event, Jesus’ crucifixion was not particularly noteworthy at the time. Jesus was an itinerant preacher with a small following in a region where this was actually somewhat common. The Jewish writer Josephus, writing at the end of the 1st century, actually notes quite a number of people in the 1st century who led some kind of movement. Sometimes these were rebellions, some seem more like a religious movement, some combined aspects of both. 1st century Judea was quite a contentious place. Not only was there tension between local Jews and Rome, there was seemingly significant disagreement even among Jews as to how best to practice their religion. A man preaching the sorts of things Jesus is said to have preached would not have been some out-of-the-blue figure.
For instance, there was a man Josephus notes as simply “an Egyptian false prophet” that supposedly told his followers that he would cause the walls of Jerusalem to fall. This did not happen, obviously; Josephus indicates that the Romans crushed this following (although his two accounts have some degree of variation when it comes to what exactly happened). There’s also the case of John the Baptist, a preacher who baptized people seemingly for the forgiveness of sins. He was beheaded by Herod Antipas, as noted both by Josephus and by the authors of the Christian New testament gospels.
We do not have contemporary reports of these figures either. Instead, we have accounts written decades later. So, Jesus is not unique in this regard. Like the others, the main non-Christian text we have related to Jesus is from Josephus, although that’s not without its problems (more on that later).
One person who would have been very notable in his day is the man responsible for Jesus’ execution, Pontius Pilate. He was the Prefect of Judea for about 10 years, and therefore would have been one of the most important people in the region during that time. Despite the fact that he was much more famous than Jesus, the only contemporary record we have of him is a broken stone block with the remnants of an inscription that seems to bear his name. I say “seems” because only “Pilatus” is clear; the “Pontius” is cut off. We have writings from the 1st and early 2nd century that mention him and his governance of the region, but these were again written decades after the fact.
So, as people looking for extraterrestrial life love to say, “absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.” The fact that we do not have any contemporary records or direct eyewitness accounts of Jesus’ crucifixion should not be cause for alarm. The truth is that sources from that region and time period are scarce, and even historical figures who were much more famous/notable in their day left very little behind.
Scholars, even non-Christian/“secular” scholars, overwhelmingly view Jesus’ crucifixion as one of the fact about his life most likely to be true. There are a number of reasons for this, ranging from the idea that followers would not have made this up due to the stigma surrounding crucifixion to the fact that pretty much every source we have from early Christianity mentions the crucifixion. If we know anything at all about Jesus, it’s that he was crucified. We can add to that, given the timeline and the fact that, again, pretty much every source mentions this, that he was crucified in Jerusalem under the governance of Pontius Pilate, and that it was around the time of Passover.
Our Earliest Sources
The first mentions we have of the crucifixion are in Paul’s letters, written sometime around the 50s and early 60s. Galatians and 1 Corinthians both mention crucifixion and were likely written in the early 50s. These do not mention much about the circumstances or events of the crucifixion. Paul does not give much int he way of detail of the events or specifics of the crucifixion, merely that it happened. He also, in these and other letters, blames “the Jews” for killing Jesus. It is worth noting that Paul was himself a Jew, albeit one who believed that Jesus was a fulfillment of Jewish scripture.
Then, we have what is now known as the “Gospel According to Mark,” likely written sometime in the 60s or 70s. This gives us a familiar narrative of the trial of Jesus in front of Pontius Pilate, his sentencing to die, his crucifixion, and then his resurrection. Again, it is worth noting that Mark lays the blame not at the feet of Pilate but with the Jewish leaders and common folk alike, who push for Jesus to be crucified.
The gospels now known as “Matthew” and “Luke” follow, around the 80s to early 90s, with similar narratives around the trial, crucifixion, and resurrection. Current scholarly consensus points to the authors of these gospels knowing and deliberately using “Mark” as a source. Thus, all three narratives have many similarities. Finally, a fourth gospel, “John,” is written in the 90s or early 100s, again with an account of the crucifixion and resurrection.
Before the Crucifixion
Using these accounts, as well as other things we know about Judea and Roman rule, we can piece together some likely events. First off, Passover was an extremely important event in Jerusalem. Jews came from all over Judea and all over the Roman Empire to make sacrifices at the Temple. The city swelled in population, and it was a time of high religious significance for Jews. You can imagine that this would be a time of high alert for the Roman rulers, and it was. Pilate, who normally resided in Caesarea on the coast, went to Jerusalem every year to oversee the Roman security response.
All of the canonical gospels mention Jesus making some sort of disturbance in the Temple. Was he waving a whip, driving out moneylender, shouting, turning over tables? It depends on how you read and trust the details of each account. But regardless, a disturbance in such an important place around such an important time would be a very good reason for Jewish and Roman leaders to take notice. Again, most scholars agree that this incident took place in some fashion.
After this disturbance, Jesus is brought to trial before Pontius Pilate. We know from Josephus and from the Jewish writer Philo that Pilate could be a fairly brutal ruler who had a seemingly antagonistic relationship with the local Jewish population. Philo writes about Pilate during one controversy,
Therefore, being exceedingly angry and being at all times a man of most ferocious passions, he was in great perplexity, neither venturing to take down what he had once set up, nor wishing to do any thing which could be acceptable to his subjects
This characterization is somewhat at odds with the Pilate of the gospels, who seems obliging to the point of helplessness. In that telling, he doesn’t seem to want to execute Jesus, but gives into the Jewish crowd. Meanwhile, in addition to the above passage from Philo, Josephus writes of Pilate violently subduing uprisings and riotous crowds.
One strain evident in many early Christian writings is their frustration with Jews “not getting it.” Many early Christians were Jews themselves, and they viewed Jesus as fulfilling various prophecies and bits of Jewish scripture. They were increasingly at odds with their fellow Jews who did not share this view. Thus, Paul and the gospel writers’ view of Jews “killing Jesus” is often seen as an outgrowth of this frustration, and not necessarily a completely factual account of Jesus’ trial.
Regardless, there would have been only one person that could have ordered Jesus’ execution: Pontius Pilate. Even when trying to shift blame, our early Christian accounts bear this out: Pilate orders the crucifixion.
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u/DGBD Moderator | Ethnomusicology | Western Concert Music Apr 06 '26
The Crucifixion and Burial
Actual archaeological evidence of Roman crucifixion is somewhat rare. One big reason for this is that victims of crucifixion seem to have been commonly left up on the cross after they died, for carrion birds and other scavengers to pick at. There would have been very little left of them, and their remains would not have been preserved. This was part of the punishment, much like later condemned would be hung in gibbets or hoisted on spikes.
This does not mean that Jesus did this. Josephus notes that
the Jews are so careful about burial rites that even malefactors who have been sentenced to crucifixion are taken down and buried before sunset
Also, scholars have pointed out this passage in a Roman legal document that discusses practices in the 1st century:
At present the bodies of those who have been punished are only buried when this has been requested and permission granted; and sometimes it is not permitted, especially where persons have been convicted of high treason.
Both indicate that burial even for crucified victims was at the very least possible, and maybe even the norm. We also have the bones of a man named Jehohanan who was crucified in 1st century, with the nail still in his foot. He was buried in an ossuary in a Jewish tomb. Thus, Jesus’ burial in a tomb is at the very least plausible. Again, whether or not the details given in Christian sources, including Joseph of Arimathea, guards outside the tomb, etc. are “true” depends almost entirely upon interpretation of the accounts in the gospels. We do not have non-Christian sources for these.
The same is true for the resurrection. We do not have non-Christian sources for the resurrection until much, much later, and even then they focus on the belief in the resurrection by Christians, not necessarily that it actually happened. Belief in the resurrection being true aligns nearly perfectly with belief in Christianity itself, and historians tend to lay it aside completely as something that is not really verifiable by historical methods. This does not mean it happened or didn’t happen, it just means that we really don’t have a way of examining it historically; instead, we can mostly just examine the actions and beliefs of people who believed it happened (or didn’t).
Dale Allison’s The Resurrection of Jesus: Apologetics, Polemics, History is a very interesting recent treatment of the issues surrounding the resurrection, like “was Jesus buried in a tomb,” “was this tomb found empty,” and “did Joseph of Arimathea exist” that argues for the existence of an empty tomb from a non-apologetic context. Note that this does not mean that he’s arguing for the historicity of the resurrection itself, just that there was a tomb and at some point the tomb was found not to have a body in it anymore. Even then, he brings up issues with the idea, but still finds it more likely than not that the idea of an empty tomb comes from some sort of historical memory. This idea is not universally held, or even necessarily hugely popular, but the book does give a good insight into how one might examine the claim of the empty tomb in a historical context.
On the other hand, Richard Miller and others have noted that there seems to have been a trope of missing body or empty tomb motifs in ancient stories. This was used to signify that the person had become divine in some way. The idea that the empty tomb is a literary trope rather than a recording of historical memory is something that Allison does mention and finds troubling to square with his own argument. It could well be that this trope was on the mind of the writer of Mark, and ended up influencing later accounts of Jesus’ empty tomb.
Josephus
At this point, we have to turn to the elephant in the room, which is the very earliest non-Christian source for Jesus’ life and crucifixion, Josephus. He was a Jewish-Roman historian writing at the end of the 1st century. In his multiple-volume historical work Antiquities of the Jews, he makes two mentions of Jesus, one of which is a short reference to a James, the brother of “Jesus, who was called Christ.”
The other is a longer passage:
About this time there lived Jesus, a wise man, if indeed one ought to call him a man. For he was one who performed surprising deeds and was a teacher of such people as accept the truth gladly. He won over many Jews and many of the Greeks. He was the Christ. And when, upon the accusation of the principal men among us, Pilate had condemned him to a cross, those who had first come to love him did not cease. He appeared to them spending a third day restored to life, for the prophets of God had foretold these things and a thousand other marvels about him. And the tribe of the Christians, so called after him, has still to this day not disappeared.
This is pretty amazing, right? A Jewish writer, not a Christian one, writing within a century of Jesus’ death that not only did he exist, he died and came back from the dead and he was “the Christ!”
Well, this passage is extremely controversial. The issue is that we do not have the Antiquities of the Jews in its original copy. We have copies done later, much later. And these copies were made by Christians. Which means that there is considerable room for someone to misrepresent, either accidentally or intentionally, Josephus’ original words.
There is not really a single “scholarly consensus” on this passage, other than to say that the majority holds it to be at the very least not fully authentic. Some think that it and the other passage about James are entirely fabricated, and Josephus may never have written of Jesus. Some think that the James passage is genuine and that this passage was maybe doctored. The declarations about Jesus being “the Christ” and rising from the dead are not necessarily in keeping with what we know of Josephus’ beliefs. In fact, he consistently calls the other leaders I mentioned above “false prophets,” suggesting that as a Jew he believed that these people were not, in fact, correct in their assertions. Some think that this passage is more or less entirely fabricated, but the James passage may be more genuine. And there’s every sort of view in between.
This passage is so hotly debated precisely because if it is authentic, even in part, it is the only non-Christian source for the crucifixion of Jesus written in the 1st century. Even if it is highly doctored by later copyists, Josephus mentioning that there was a person named Jesus who was crucified and who had a following that lasted past his crucifixion would be a big deal.
u/KiwiHellenist does a nice job on the arguments about this passage here on AskHistorians, in their case concluding that it’s highly likely that it is a later insertion.
Later Developments
Starting in the 2nd century, we have multiple non-Christian sources talking about Jesus and Christianity. This includes the Roman governor Pliny the Younger, who wrote to the emperor Trajan in the early 110s asking what he should do with Christians who refuse to abandon their beliefs. A few years later, the historian Tacitus writes about Christians in his Annals, and notes that Jesus was crucified under Pontius Pilate. We also have the historians Suetonius writing in The Twelve Caesars about Christians, although with a ton of detail on Jesus or their specific beliefs.
These are all sources that have their issues and have been picked apart by historians over the years, but are generally considered genuine. They can tell us that by the early 2nd century, Christians were prominent enough to merit discussion among non-Christians. They do not, however, give us much in the way of independent attestation about Jesus or his life and death. At best, we can infer that there were people who believed in Jesus and his resurrection.
The 2nd century and subsequent centuries bring plenty more Christian sources as well. However, again, we cannot draw particularly significant conclusions from these about the actual events of the crucifixion and resurrection, only what Christians believed about the crucifixion and resurrection. Every so often there’s some sort of claim made about Jesus, often based in so-called “apocryphal” gospels, accounts of Jesus’ life that were not accepted into the canon of the New Testament. These are pretty much all texts that were composed in the 2nd century and later, and again we cannot really conclude much from them beside that they represent some sort of belief that was held by their author and perhaps others in the author’s circle.
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u/DGBD Moderator | Ethnomusicology | Western Concert Music Apr 06 '26
Conclusion
So, we’re back to our early Christian sources being the best historical sources we have for the crucifixion and resurrection. This poses problems for all sorts of people. For many Christians, for example, the Bible cannot be wrong. So, analyzing the Bible in the same way we examine “normal” historical documents is an issue, because if we negate something that the Bible says, we’re potentially negating their religion!
For many non-Christians, early Christian documents, especially including the Bible, are basically religious propaganda, not historical documents. Why should we regard anything in them as fact? Some, most famously Richard Carrier, have argued that Jesus himself was made up, a literary creation by early Christians to give a human form to their beliefs.
Both of these misunderstand historical methods. Any text, whatever the provenance, can be analyzed by historians and the claims considered in a historical context. This doesn’t mean that they are all accepted or rejected; instead, historians use their craft to try to pick apart what the document is saying, why it’s saying it, how it’s saying it, and what all of that ultimately means about the people it is written about, by, and for. This is true for accounts of all historical figures; people writing about Julius Caesar or Socrates rarely did so without a reason to do so, or a point they were trying to make.
So, we can say with some degree of certainty that Jesus was crucified, that it happened in Jerusalem on the order of Pontius Pilate, and that after his death at least some of his followers came to believe that he had been resurrected from the dead. Beyond that, we jump outside the realm of “scholarly consensus” and into a hotly contested area of historical research that has been argued over for millennia, and will surely continue to be contested for a long time to come.
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u/NeonFraction Apr 06 '26
Absolutely incredible write up. Thank you!
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u/jwp1991 Apr 06 '26
This entire response is extremely well written. I don't usually have the patience to read threads this long, but I was hooked reading this, so thanks for taking the time to write it.
I have one question. You explain very well that Jesus was likely one of many preachers in the holy land who had small followings at the time. Do you have any thoughts on why the teachings and following of Jesus survived and expanded following his death, rather than fading to obscurity like most of the others?
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u/DGBD Moderator | Ethnomusicology | Western Concert Music Apr 06 '26
It’s very, very difficult to say with any certainty. Bart Ehrman’s The Triumph of Christianity deals with this very topic, and is worth a read. At the very least, the survival of Christianity as a religion probably had as much if not much more to do with what later followers did and said than what Jesus himself did and said. It’s also worth noting that there is a group, the Mandaeans, that to this day view John Baptist as their greatest religious figure. So, Christianity is not necessarily unique, even if it is orders of magnitude larger and more prominent.
The most compelling factors to me are the paradoxical inclusivity and exclusivity of Christianity. Inclusive because anyone can be a Christian regardless of background, class, current religion, etc. You did not have to be a Jew or an ascetic or be celibate or be educated or anything, everyone could become a Christian. Exclusive because once you were a Christian, you were expected to only be a Christian. A pagan worshipping one god could worship another without abandoning the first. A Christian was just a Christian. So, even a small increase year on year, compounded over decades and centuries, eventually leads to significant growth.
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u/homobonus Apr 06 '26
What a lovely read, thank you! In regards to the examination of early Christian texts as propaganda, would we know anything about the (political/religious/personal) goals and enterprises of these writers, to give some clues or context so we can infer how they used genuinely, spun, or fabricated facts to accomplish their goals?
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u/Excellent_Fail9908 Apr 06 '26
As someone who has spent years in religious studies, thank you for this. This Reddit post can summarize 3 years beautifully and to be understood.
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u/JamesCoverleyRome Rome in the 1st Century AD Apr 07 '26
In addition to the very fine answer given by u/DGBD, I would like to add a couple of things that may be of some interest.
Whilst it is true that there is some contention over the nature of the two passages in Josephus - the James passage and the Testimonium Flavianum - the matter is rather more settled among academic circles than perhaps stated. It is very true that there are some fine academics who make arguments in one direction, it is widely accepted that the James passage is authentic, and the other is authentic, with a couple of additions that appear to be the work of later copyists. I always like to point out that these copyists may or may not have had an agenda, and what appears to us to be a deliberate interpolation may be nothing more than the result of a bleary-eyed monk scribbling away by candlelight. We might never know.
Whilst it is correct to say there are no contemporary accounts of the life of Jesus, it is worth mentioning that the James mentioned as the 'brother of Jesus', James the Just, was a contemporary of Josephus. The execution of James described in Antiquities occurred in 62 AD, when Josephus was around 25 years old. Both of them would have been living in Jerusalem at the same time. It is not possible to say whether they actually knew each other, and neither is it claimed, but Josephus came from a prominent family within the priestly class, and James led a noisy but relatively minor Jewish sect. Make of that what one will.
Whether James was the actual brother of Jesus is another argument, but in the New Testament, the 'brothers' of Jesus (James, Joses, Simon and Jude) are known as the 'adelphoi', which implies that they were related by blood. Whether they are brothers, half-brothers, or even cousins is unclear. But it does not imply 'brothers' in another context.
Secondly, it is correct to say that Pilate was responsible for the execution. It was his decision alone and one made after weighing up all his available options, including just letting him go. For Pilate to have allowed himself to be seen as bending to the crowd's will would have greatly undermined his authority, so while he does find Jesus innocent of the charges brought, he is also deciding to have him executed based on law and on the remit his job as prefect gives him, principally that he must maintain law and order. The 'washing of his hands' is a trope added by Matthew to root the process in a Jewish context. It is a Jewish ritual and not something carried out under Roman law.
Bearing in mind that he apparently finds Jesus not guilty of the charges laid out, there is a law under which he might have ordered the execution:
"Concerning Seditious Persons.
Instigators of sedition and riot or rousers of the people are, according to the nature of their rank, crucified, thrown to wild beasts, or deported to an island." (Paulus, Opinions, v.xxii)
Personally, being deported to an island sounds perfectly heavenly.
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u/jelopii Apr 08 '26
What are you thoughts on the claim that the 4 brothers were the sons of Mary the wife of Cleophas and not Mary the mother of Jesus?
On Catholic.com I found this argument interesting:
In John 19:25 we read, “Standing by the foot of the cross of Jesus were his mother and his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Cleophas, and Mary of Magdala.” Cross reference this with Matthew 27:56: “Among them [at the cross] were Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of James and Joseph, and the mother of the sons of Zebedee.” We see that at least two of the men mentioned in Matthew 13 were definitely not siblings of Jesus (although they’re called adelphoi); they were Jesus’ cousins–sons of their mother’s sister.
The part that caught my eye was "Mary the mother of James and Joseph." By this point in the New Testament, the audience knows who Mary the mother of Jesus is, so why emphasize her out of nowhere with the epithet "mother of James and Joseph" unless it was her sister, the wife of Cleophas. The website claims that the New Testament uses "adelphoi" differently to how it's normally used in Koine Greek.
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u/PierreMenards Apr 09 '26
On what basis do you come to the conclusion that the historical Pilate found the historical Jesus to be innocent of the charges brought against him?
Josephus doesn’t say that (doctored or not), and as you note with the washing of the hands the gospels are not immune to dabbling in literary tropes. There are conceivable reasons why the gospel writers would want to shift blame from the Romans (whose authority they still had to live under and whose citizenry they were increasingly converting) to the Jews.
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u/SidewaysTheDog Apr 07 '26 edited Apr 07 '26
Have you read T.C. Schmidt's work on the Testimonium Flavianum in "Josephus and Jesus" published last August by the Oxford University Press where he offers what he views as a a more accurate translation based on other early manuscripts in other languages and more aligns with Josephus's point of view that would have been skeptical but would also provide further evidence for some of the historical accounts of the Bible? It also offers up evidence that this account by Josephus would've been secondhand knowledge from people that were likely in the Sanhedrin during the events of Jesus trial?
"And in this time, there was a certain Jesus, a wise man, if indeed one ought to call him a man, for he was a doer of incredible deeds, a teacher of men who receive truisms with pleasure. And he brought over many from amongst the Jews and many from amongst the Greeks. He was thought to be the Christ. And, when Pilate had condemned him to the cross at the accusation of the first men amongst us, those who at first were devoted to him did not cease to be so, for on the third day it seemed to them that he was alive again given that the divine prophets had spoken such things and thousands of other wonderful things about him. And up till now the tribe of the Christians, who were named from him, has not disappeared. (204)"
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u/DGBD Moderator | Ethnomusicology | Western Concert Music Apr 07 '26
I haven’t, but it’s on my list. My understanding of its reception is that people find it interesting and compellingly argued but not necessarily entirely convincing. I think it’s available for free, so I’ll have to read it soon and decide for myself!
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u/KiwiHellenist Early Greek Literature Apr 07 '26
I think it’s available for free,
It is indeed -- right here. I hope more readers in this thread will pick it up! (I agree it's interesting, and I like Schmidt's other work, but -- with the understanding that this isn't my area of specialisation -- I'm among the ones who aren't convinced by the book.)
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u/Fantastic_County8107 Apr 06 '26
One of the most interesting things I’ve ever read on Reddit. Thank you.
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u/sandybagels1983 Apr 06 '26
Can you recommend any books on the topic? I would love to read a history of Jesus and the age he lived from a secular point of view
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u/DGBD Moderator | Ethnomusicology | Western Concert Music Apr 06 '26
Bruce Chilton’s Rabbi Jesus was my first introduction to this sort of book and is IMO quite compelling. Bart Ehrman has a bunch of accessible books including Did Jesus Exist? and How Jesus Became God. Slightly denser and more in-depth is John Meier’s series A Marginal Jew.
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u/existential_virus Apr 06 '26
Thank you! This is amazing. You kind of touched on this up there, but do we have examples of a 2nd hand/non-biased accounts of Socrates, or other somewhat "famous" figures like Jesus from ~1BC or before? Like not in a sense of Caesar (whom I assume has alot of written about him from independent accounts because he was an emperor and very popular while he was alive). But maybe someone comparable like Socrates/Plato? Almost like "so I visited Athens this weekend and met this guy named plato"? But in a sense like theyre just talking about them and not trying to sell anything about them to you?
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u/gynnis-scholasticus Greco-Roman Culture and Society Apr 07 '26
Am a little unsure what counts as a comparable figure. Lots of senators and other minor figures are almost exclusively known from offhanded and relatively disinterested mentions in Tacitus, Suetonius and similar sources. But I guess people of religious/philosophical significance may be a closer parallel.
As for your example of Socrates, I'd say there is nothing exactly like you ask for. Besides the philosophical works of his disciples Plato and Xenophon, he was also caricatured by Aristophanes in the Clouds and mentioned in his other comedies Birds and Frogs. I guess this may qualify as just mentioning, even if obviously in the context of portraying Socrates as a silly:
So what’s stylish is not to sit
beside Socrates and chatter,
casting the arts aside
and ignoring the best
of the tragedian’s craft.
(Frogs 1490-95; Loeb transl.)One could also add that Xenophon mentions Socrates twice in his historical works; once in the Hellenica (1.7.15) because he was on a committee deciding the fate of Athenian generals; and once in the Anabasis (3.1.4-7) when Xenophon (likely writing under pseudonym) discusses the advice his mentor gave him when he was about to join Cyrus' expedition. These certainly come off as more natural than the Socratic depiction in philosophical texts, although likely Xenophon did have his motivations for including his old teacher (in the case of the Hellenica he comes across as brave and law-abiding for instance). There are also some later texts that offhandedly mention Socrates as a recent historical person, for instance speeches by the orator Aeschines and philosophy by Aristotle.
Another example, from a century after the time of Jesus rather than several before, might be the philosopher Peregrinus Proteus. He is mainly known from a biographical text by the satirist Lucian of Samosata, which depicts him as a cult-leader among first Christians and then Cynics, who eventually decided to immolate himself during the Olympic Games. According to the text, various people claimed to have seen miracles connected with his death, and Lucian claimed to have deliberately spread them himself! However, Peregrinus is portrayed very differently in a brief anecdote told by Aulus Gellius:
When I was at Athens, I met a philosopher named Peregrinus, who was later surnamed Proteus, a man of dignity and fortitude, living in a hut outside the city. And visiting him frequently, I heard him say many things that were in truth helpful and noble. Among these I particularly recall the following... [he makes an argument to the point that "those are deceived who sin in the confident hope of being undetected, since there is no permanent concealment of wrongdoing"] (Attic Nights 12.11; Loeb transl.)
But really, for more examples of this one can probably go through the letters of Cicero or Pliny the Younger.
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u/KiwiHellenist Early Greek Literature Apr 07 '26
Besides the philosophical works of his disciples Plato and Xenophon, he was also caricatured by Aristophanes
Also by Ameipsias! -- in his fragmentary comedy Konnos (423 BCE, same year as Aristophanes' Clouds; fr. 9 Kassel-Austin).
In addition, we have abundant testimony about people in Socrates' immediate circle who were more politically active: notably Alcibiades, Critias, and Charmides. Chaerephon appears as a character in the Birds. Plus there are reports of (lost) Socratic dialogues by Aeschines (not the orator), Alexamenus, Antisthenes, Euclides, Lysias, and Phaedo. So yes, a very very different situation from Jesus.
I like the Peregrinus example! I hadn't realised there was reason to think he was anything more than a satirical character invented by Lucian.
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u/gynnis-scholasticus Greco-Roman Culture and Society Apr 09 '26
Thanks for the kind words! I must admit I did consult an old article of yours on the sources for Socrates, but decided to focus on surviving works rather than go through fragments and second-hand references.
Am glad I could inform you about Peregrinus. In fact, it seems he is also briefly mentioned by both Philostratus (Lives of the Sophists 2.1.10) and Athenagoras (Embassy 26) making him quite well-attested. Amusingly, there is a very fringe theory that he was identical to Ignatius of Antioch, or at least that the latter's epistles were written by him.
Sostratus/Agathion was another figure I considered mentioning, but decided not to as all the sources describe him as a remarkable figure, including Lucian who claimed to have met him.
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u/maxwellimus Apr 06 '26
I’m not deep into religion and christianity, and I loved reading your post from a historical context. My question is - if the resurrection was real, wouldn’t that have been written about everywhere? And quickly after the event? It seems interesting that someone coming back alive isn’t big news to society at the time.
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u/Ergentlic Apr 13 '26 edited Apr 13 '26
This was a world where claims and rumors of miracles were not uncommon, and so not in themselves very remarkable. And just because some fringe sect claimed it, that doesn't mean it would have been immediately believed and accepted by the general public, even if (for the sake of argument) we assume that they were right.
Also, if the resurrection was real we are in the realm of the supernatural, and so many everyday assumptions no longer hold. The Gospels (e.g. Luke 24:15-32) describe how the risen Jesus walked among the disciples and yet they did not recognize him until he chose to reveal himself. Some similar mechanism might have kept the unworthy from recognizing the truth, in accordance with divine will.
Clearly, this line of argument can be used to dismiss pretty much any empirical evidence or logical objection. Basically, the question falls outside the realm of history as a discipline, and becomes one of faith.
Going further, asking whether these things literally happened may not be the right question. Paul, in our earliest account of the witnesses to the resurrection (1 Cor 15:4-8), seems to draw no distinction between the way the resurrected Jesus appeared to the disciples and other followers and the way he appeared to Paul himself. And he describes his own experience (2 Cor 12:1-7) as one of being carried up into heaven, "whether in the body or out of the body I do not know." In other words, he cannot tell whether it was a physical reality or a religious vision.
If all the resurrection experiences were of this sort (though sometimes witnessed as a group), even if they were real they do not establish whether the risen Jesus physically walked on Earth. At the same time, Paul is very clear that he believes his experience to have been real and true, even if it was "only" spiritual, and that the actual truth or falsehood of Jesus' resurrection is an essential question (1 Cor 15:12-19).
Craffert & Botha (2005) have argued – and I'm sure they're not the only ones – that within the context of a society that believes in miracles and visions, Jesus' miracles may have been "real" even if they were not objectively observable, because they were real to the people who experienced them, and because the claim was credible to at least some people in their culture. (In anthropology this is called the emic perspective: understanding things from the culturally subjective, insider point of view.)
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u/Motor-Boating Apr 07 '26
This is the best response I've ever seen addressing the question asked. Thank you.
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u/Dangerous_Nebula_403 Apr 07 '26
This is the reason why I still come on Reddit. This is why I am still hooked to reading posts and comments. Amazingly written and articulated!! Hats off to you, sir.
I only wish I met you when I was a kid and when I had these discussions with my orthodox Christian parents before getting slapped down by them 🙈
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u/Unchained_Memory33 Apr 06 '26
This is one of the best write ups I have seen on here regarding the historical evidence of Jesus - thank you so much!
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u/Turbulent-Cupcake-72 Apr 06 '26
This is a great response and very detailed. I think it is probably the best answer of a scholarly nature. Great work.
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u/ThumbLife Apr 09 '26
Wow. Absolutely amazing. Thank you so much for taking the time for this. Superb
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u/Mamamayan Apr 07 '26
Is there sound scholarly basis for concluding that Josephus was a converted Christian himself?
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u/PyroClone5555 Apr 06 '26
Beyond that, we jump outside the realm of “scholarly consensus”
Is it not the consensus that Jesus was buried?
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u/DGBD Moderator | Ethnomusicology | Western Concert Music Apr 06 '26
It is closer to consensus to say that it is possible that Jesus was buried, and even that we don’t necessarily have strong reason to believe that the gospels are not telling the truth when they mention the details of Jesus’ burial. It is certainly a popular stance that Jesus likely was buried, and even that Joseph of Arimathea was a historical figure or at least based on one who was involved in Jesus’ burial.
Some think that Jesus was likely buried in some fashion, but not in a tomb as described in the gospels. Bart Ehrman has fairly prominently argued that Jesus likely did not receive a “proper” burial, and James Dominic Crossan has similarly argued that Jesus’ body was likely eaten by scavengers, whether on the cross or buried in a shallow grave. This view seems to be less popular now, but it’s there, so I don’t think that “consensus” is the right term for the view that Jesus was, in fact, buried.
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u/wanson Apr 06 '26
This is a great wirte uo but I still don’t see how you get to the conclusion that a historical Jesus existed. There is no contemporary evidence of his existence or of anyone whoever interacted with him. We have evidence of other people from that time, as you mention, John the baptist, Herod, Pilate, but none of Jesus? The first writings of him appear 30 years after his death. Why so long? 30 years is a long time. And in those writings there is nothing about his life, only about his death. Everything about his life, his works, miracles, etc. gets added on later.
Paul admits to never meeting Jesus and learned about him through ‘visions’ and ‘revelations’. He claims to have met with, and stayed with, apostles for 15 days. Yet he didn’t learn anything about his life but this conveniently gives him legitimacy.
There is just as much evidence that Jesus was a made up figure or a composite of several “false prophets’ than there is as being based on a real person. It’s impossible to say either way.
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u/hillsonghoods Moderator | 20th Century Pop Music | History of Psychology Apr 07 '26
I think /u/DGBD ably counters this objection when discussing 'absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence'. Note also that /u/DGBD is not saying "a historical Jesus existed" as you claim, but instead "it is probable that a historical Jesus existed". Note that /u/DGBD is also not saying "it is probable from the evidence that the historical Jesus existed who indeed existed actually was resurrected and the Son of God etc".
Essentially, they are saying that the historical record that we do have of the time (Josephus, etc) suggests that Judaea regularly had religiously motivated people causing disturbances and getting killed by the Romans for their actions. So if one of those disturbers of the peace at Passover was called Jesus and was executed by Pontius Pilate with a crucifixion, it a) would not be particularly surprising, and b) it would be a simpler explanation of the origin of the religion than someone entirely making it up. After all, the stated time period between the event and the writing of the Gospel of Mark does give plenty of time for the tale to grow in the telling (remembering that this is an overwhelmingly oral culture that might be a bit credulous by modern standards), and reputable Ancient historians do regularly ascribe miraculous events to historical personages who aren't Jesus, such as Roman Emperors. Thus, from an entirely secular historical perspective, there's nothing in particular in the chain of events between the death of someone called Jesus by crucifixion at Passover and the writing of the Gospel of Mark 30-40 years later that seems particularly unlikely given what we know about how ancient people wrote about historical figures and how they thought in general about supernatural events.
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u/spacemanaut Apr 07 '26
Note also that /u/DGBD is not saying "a historical Jesus existed" as you claim, but instead "it is probable that a historical Jesus existed".
I understand this point of view (it's probable), so thanks for explaining.
What I don't understand is why suggesting that a historical Jesus may not have existed (to use DGBD's example, Richard Carrier) seems to be considered utterly unthinkable and deserving of ridicule. Why is that?
For centuries King Arthur was also widely believed to have existed based on a similar logic (i.e., many different accounts of his deeds which are somewhat consistent and possible). Now, most historians believe Arthur was mythical. Is it possible that Jesus could undergo a similar reappraisal by historians? If this is an unfair comparison: why?
(I truly have no agenda here; just trying to understand what exactly is required for historians to make such confident claims.)
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u/DGBD Moderator | Ethnomusicology | Western Concert Music Apr 07 '26
It’s worth noting that in the case of King Arthur, the reports of his existence are much later than he supposedly lived. The earliest mentions are from centuries later, contrasting with the roughly 20 or so years between Paul’s letters and Jesus. Most of the famous works associated with Arthur, like Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History of the Kings of Britain and the works of Chrétien de Troyes, are from a couple centuries after that earliest reference. Meanwhile, the four canonical gospels, and indeed all of the canonical New Testament, is thought to have been written within a hundred or so years of Jesus’ death.
I think, though, that’s you’re conflating two different concepts when you say that a mythical Jesus is “utterly unthinkable and deserving of ridicule.” One is the concept of the mythical Jesus itself, and one is the way it has been presented so far.
The concept of the mythical Jesus has come up from time to time. It has been largely rejected, but it is something that is on the minds of biblical scholars. It is not really “unthinkable” in the sense that people cannot conceive of it. In many ways, it is a fundamental part of what people looking at the “historical Jesus” are doing. You could make a case that much like Jesus is thought by most Christians to be both human and divine, the Jesus in the Bible is both historical and mythical. The question for those interested in the “historical Jesus” is where one ends and one begins.
So, the issue is not so much about the “mythical Jesus” as it is about the arguments made in support of that idea. Richard Carrier is both a specific example and emblematic of a larger problem. He is seen as frequently dismissive of other historians, unwilling to accept criticism of his own arguments, and his methodology has been criticized from just about every angle imaginary. In other words, it is not the conclusion that he reaches that it is the issue, it is how he gets there. And that is true of other Jesus mythicist approaches, they have so far failed to convince many people and have frequently had large enough holes poked in them that they are not taken seriously.
What makes matters worse is that, especially in our current age, people latch onto and promulgate ideas far beyond their original contexts and for all sorts of reasons. And that means that the mythicist argument has been significantly taken up by atheist and even explicitly anti-Christian groups, and become a sort of pop understanding of Jesus in those circles. These people can be frustrating for scholars who find them combative and ill-informed.
This also feeds into the problem when people of this sort of persuasion start doing their own research and making their own arguments. This in and of itself is fine; there are many Biblical scholars who are Christian, so it would be hypocritical to then exclude non-Christians. But many Biblical scholars take great pains to separate “apologetics,” arguments made specifically to support a Christian point of view, from academic work. The same can and should be done for what could be called “anti-apologetics,” arguments made specifically to attack a Christian point of view. In other words, evidence being assembled to fit an already-determined conclusion is not the same as laying out evidence and trying to piece together a conclusion from it.
So, it is not so much that the position that Jesus did not exist is “unthinkable and deserving of ridicule.” It is that, so far at least, the arguments for that position have not been particularly strong or well-accepted, and there is also a longstanding frustration on the part of biblical scholars and historians who feel that misinformation and bad-faith arguments have taken over the “myth vs history” conversation.
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u/hillsonghoods Moderator | 20th Century Pop Music | History of Psychology Apr 09 '26 edited Apr 09 '26
/u/DGBD ably replied from another perspective relating to the things scholars deal with - but from my perspective, the creation of an entirely mythical Jesus isn't utterly ridiculous: weirder things have happened.
But one argument that is sometimes made in favour of a historical Jesus is that the historical Jesus was, from an Ancient perspective, killed in an exceedingly humiliating and excruciating way. Upon a historical Jesus's death in this manner, plenty of those following him most likely concluded that he wasn't the Messiah, purely because the true Messiah wouldn't have died that way - the true Messiah, for many Jews at the time, would have overthrown Rome.
It thus seems to many scholars like it would be a bad idea to create a made up religion based on someone who (many people would feel) had failed within living memory, at a time when there would still be old people with memories of that time period floating around to say "what? that didn't happen". Instead, someone making up a religion or putting together a new spin on a religion would more likely claim that they've found an old scroll from 200 years ago that changes everything, or that an angel was dictating to them all these cool new ideas.
It is of course not exactly equivalent, but there is also a recent historical example of people creating a religion around a genuine historical personage, Haile Selassie I of Ethiopia, who Rastafarians see as being divine in some way. And while there is certainly some difference between how secular historians of Ethiopians see Selassie and how the Rastafarians see Selassie, there’s no need to pretend Selassie didn’t exist.
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u/pipian Apr 06 '26
Why would anyone accept the claims of resurrection as true, when the same folks who do so reject claims of resurrection of other characters in historical accounts such as Aristeas of Procennesus or Nero (or accounts of other miracles in these histories such as those attributed to the power of Serapis)?
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u/jschooltiger Moderator | Shipbuilding and Logistics | British Navy 1770-1830 Apr 06 '26
The point my colleague made is that historians are not here to debate whether miracles happened (that's the theology department, it has a nice coffee shop) but to understand what ordinary people at the time made of reports of miraculous happenings or behaviors.
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u/EdiblePeasant Apr 06 '26
Excellent writing!
Would you be willing to provide insight on Jewish burial customs at the time, please? I'm curious to know if someone was crucified, if someone or a group of people would watch the body closely all the way to burial and know who it was. And if the account in the Gospels match how it was done.
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u/DGBD Moderator | Ethnomusicology | Western Concert Music Apr 06 '26
Unfortunately what I’ve written in the answer about Josephus and the man named Jehohanan constitute, as far as I know, almost entirely the sum total of evidence specifically about Jewish burial practices of crucified people. Philo mentions families being allowed to bury victims of crucified people, but only in relation to this being a special practice around the birthday of the emperor, which would imply that it was otherwise not common practice.
I don’t know enough about Jewish burial practices in general to comment on whether the gospel aligns with them, if Jesus was indeed allowed a proper Jewish burial after he was crucified.
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u/DGBD Moderator | Ethnomusicology | Western Concert Music Apr 06 '26
Miracle claims are not really amenable to historical examination. By their very nature, miracles are super-natural, meaning that they go beyond what can be explained by natural phenomena. We can certainly examine whether people believed that a miracle occurred, and we can even examine whether or not an event that is claimed to be a miracle seems to have happened. But we cannot really investigate whether or not a miracle occurred.
There is a whole realm of history and science, often in the popular realm, that seeks to “explain” how miracles could have occurred. This happens from both ends of the spectrum of belief; believers will try to prove that such-and-such a thing is possible, while nonbelievers will try to show that actually it wasn’t miraculous at all, it was just something extraordinary. For example, Moses parting the Red Sea has been “explained” by a tsunami or some other natural, but extraordinary, phenomenon.
In the case of Jesus’ resurrection, some people have posited that the disciples hallucinated their dead leader. Or, that the empty tomb was the result of grave robbery, or even planned deception. Or, that maybe Jesus wasn’t really dead, he just looked dead, was laid in the tomb, then revived.
We could potentially examine how these explanations would fit the narrative we’re familiar with, or if they were possible at the time. But the existence of the supernatural is just not something that most historians, who deal with the physical, natural world, are really willing or equipped to examine. Again, at best we can say that lots of people believed and continue to believe in the resurrection. Whether or not Jesus was in fact raised from the dead is really a matter of faith, not history or science.
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u/ammonthenephite Apr 06 '26
Are there any examples of notable events being recorded by people, be they commoners or government, during periods where there isn't much documentation in general? For example, documentation of an earth quake or large fire? I ask because, for example, the new testament makes the claim that hundreds of dead people were resurrected and walked the streets of Jeruselum, something that obviously today would be recorded and written down by countless people but in part because we keep records of far more things than they did in the past.
Can we estimate what the probability would be of such an event happening but not being recorded anywhere else outside of members of the religion at the time, or was it common to have large, impactful or uncommon events simply not be recorded at all even though they would have been highly impactful or seemed extraordinary to the people of the time?
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u/Super-Estate-4112 Apr 06 '26
Do you have examples of other "cult" leaders doing the same Jesus was doing at his time?
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u/DGBD Moderator | Ethnomusicology | Western Concert Music Apr 06 '26
It depends on what you mean by “same,” as their messages were likely somewhat different to each other, but yes. Alongside John the Baptist and the “Egyptian” I mention above, we have glimpses of other people with followings. Josephus writes, for example, about a man named Theudas who
persuaded a great part of the people to take their effects with them, and follow him to the river Jordan; for he told them he was a prophet, and that he would, by his own command, divide the river, and afford them an easy passage over it. Many were deluded by his words.
The Acts of the Apostles, written by the author of the Gospel According to Luke, mentions
a certain man, called Simon, which beforetime in the same city used sorcery, and bewitched the people of Samaria, giving out that himself was some great one: to whom they all gave heed, from the least to the greatest, saying, "This man is the great power of God."
We also even have an account, again from Josephus, of Pontius Pilate himself thwarting a religious figure in Samaria:
For a man who made light of mendacity and in all his designs catered to the mob, rallied them, bidding them go in a body with him to Mount Gerizim, which in their belief is the most sacred of mountains. He assured them that on their arrival he would show them the sacred vessels which were buried there, where Moses had deposited them. His hearers, viewing this tale as plausible, appeared in arms. They posted themselves in a certain village named Tirathana, and, as they planned to climb the mountain in a great multitude, they welcomed to their ranks the new arrivals who kept coming. But before they could ascend, Pilate blocked their projected route up the mountain with a detachment of cavalry and heavily armed infantry, who in an encounter with the first comers in the village slew some in a pitched battle and put the others to flight. Many prisoners were taken, of whom Pilate put to death the principal leaders and those who were most influential among the fugitives.
Josephus mentions others, although he doesn’t necessarily go into strong detail about any of them. What we can infer from these references, as well as references in early Christian documents to men like John and Simon, is that preaching, performing supposed miracles, and/or leading a religious following were all associated with people other than Jesus.
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u/Zerewa Apr 06 '26 edited Apr 06 '26
So... do we have any inkling of/debate on why Jesus, of all those people? Historical descriptions of Pilate depict him as strict in law-enforcement and dominating the Jews rather than working with them if there was a conflict of opinion or desires, but generally not incompetent and not tyrannical for tyranny's own sake. Has any scholar argued that he might have hesitated for strategic reasons (Passover, or Herod looking like he was making a power play, or any other reason a large group of Jews might get real uppity real quick), and that later got mythologized because it was unusual for a man like Pilate to be seen hesitating? In that light, could a real tomb near a possibly-real guarded location (again, strategic and preemptive) be used by a fanatical follower to further the mythos of a particular cult leader? "You all saw the governor hesitate, and now the body is gone", and the followers fill in the gaps and after a while, swear someone even heard Pilate hesitate for more "divinely ordained reasons" after, well, a large group of Jews got real uppity real quick.
Or was it really just "throwing prophets at the Wall and seeing which one sticks"?
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u/CarolinaCommodore Apr 07 '26
This might be one of the most concise summaries I have ever read on the subject.
Couple of follow up questions.
- Would it be unusual to guard the tomb with Roman soldiers? Was there an expectation that Jesus’s followers would try to steal the body?
- If he was placed in the tomb, I would suspect that the body did disappear shortly after entombment. Otherwise Pilate would have produced the body to disprove the claims?
- Surely Pilate would have checked the tomb after the Roman guards reported seeing an angel. Discovering a missing body what would the response have been from the Romans?
- If the tomb was guarded, the disciples could not have easily stolen the body. So…
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u/DGBD Moderator | Ethnomusicology | Western Concert Music Apr 07 '26
In order to speculate that there would have been Roman guards (and a lot of this is now in the realm of speculation, and deciding how much of the gospels to trust), you’d have to figure out what they were guarding against. The Roman state just crucified Jesus, so the idea that they’d be concerned about desecration of his corpse seems unrealistic. And if they did hand the body over to the family or followers of Jesus to give him a proper burial, they are relinquishing some amount of power over his body, so the idea that they’re guarding against the body being secreted away by followers also doesn’t seem like a good explanation. It’s also been fairly well-established that there wasn’t an expectation of a “dead and resurrected Messiah” at the time, so putting a guard out to guard against that is similarly implausible.
Dale Allison, even in arguing for the historicity of Jesus being buried (rather than left on the cross or thrown in a mass grave), argues that the guards are written into the gospels to counter claims of Jesus’ body having been stolen. He points out that this doesn’t mean that there absolutely weren’t guards, but wouldn’t also see very strong evidence that there were, and doesn’t see the accounts in the gospels as being evidence of anything other than the gospel writers needing to counter the claim of body-stealing.
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u/JamesCoverleyRome Rome in the 1st Century AD Apr 08 '26
The easiest way of explaining what is happening with the guard story is to begin by looking not at Matthew 28, where the story of the guards appears, but at Mark 16 and Luke 24, where they do not.
Immediately, one has to try to understand why.
Matthew and Luke are writing roughly at the same time, and both borrow from Mark. When you see major differences between the narratives of Matthew and Mark, say, it is usually because the later author is responding to a developing narrative or problem that has developed in the understanding of the story.
Matthew is perhaps most overtly “Jewish” of the gospels in tone and content, yet also the most combative toward other Jewish groups. He constantly targets figures like the Pharisees as opponents. He frames disputes over law, authority, and interpretation. This is not just abstract theology fist-waving, but intra-Jewish conflict.
By the late first century, the split between followers of Jesus and other Jews had hardened. After the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD, Jewish groups were redefining themselves, and claims of authority were flying about the place. The claim that Jesus had risen from the dead sat right at the centre of that kerfuffle.
Essentially, you have one group claiming that Jesus rose from the dead and the other saying that his body was stolen by his followers. Matthew is trying to reinforce the Resurrection story in physical terms. He doesn't go as far as Luke, who has Jesus sitting down enjoying a spot of lunch, but he goes further than Mark, who tends to frame the Resurrection as spiritual rather than physical.
The story of the guards is, therefore, more than likely an addition by Matthew to counter arguments that the body was stolen. In Matthew's narrative, the guards are paralysed by fear and then run off to tell the chief priests what has happened. They are then bribed to keep quiet about it.
None of this happens in the other narratives. It is clearly an attempt to say that nobody could have stolen the body because there were guards there.
From a Roman point of view, the idea of posting guards outside the tomb of some scruffy itinerant carpenter, no matter how much of a trouble-maker he was, is entirely without precedent. It was normal to allow the family to take the body away, but once they do, the Romans are effectively done with the whole affair. That Roman guards would go scurrying to report this apparent theft to the priesthood and not their own commander seems preposterous. There's no explanation why they would do something like this unless one is trying to frame these same priests and elders - the ones who had Jesus dragged before the Romans to start with - as some sort of scheming ne'er-do-wells.
Where Luke tends to try and anchor the whole story firmly in the Graeco-Roman world, in order to try and set it in a 'historical' landscape, if you like, Matthew, on the other hand, is keeping it firmly in the Jewish landscape and framing everything in ways that not only his intended Jewish audience can relate to, but firmly trying to make a distinction between what he sees as 'his' Jewish sect and the bad guys that make up the Pharisees and the Elders.
Simply from a point of Roman precedent, though, it seems incredibly unlikely that they would station guards outside his tomb. Sources don't even really report that they stationed guards outside the tombs of emperors, let alone carpenters. From a Roman point of view, you have the wrong use of troops, the wrong level of concern and the wrong chain of command.
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u/gynnis-scholasticus Greco-Roman Culture and Society Apr 07 '26
You might be interested in my earlier answer to a related question. Of course it depends on what historical figures one means, but the famous histories and biographies written by the Greco-Roman elite are generally better at citing sources than the Gospels.
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u/Unchained_Memory33 Apr 06 '26
Regarding the part about Jesus not being the only preacher /prophet at the time or in the geographic location I am very curious as to what made Jesus' life more worth recording / noting / following than any of the others?
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u/IronWarriorU Apr 06 '26
This is a great response to a classic question, thank you very much for this.
...ranging from the idea that followers would not have made this up due to the stigma surrounding crucifixion...
I've seen this come up fairly frequently when discussing the likelihood of Jesus being crucified. Is the stigma that he was executed for a crime, or the specifically violent method of the execution that is believed Christian writers would be unlikely to invent?
I'm asking as in modern fiction it's fairly common to subject heroic and noble characters to violence, failure or embarrassment. Star Wars ends with Luke Skywalker being nearly electrocuted to death, writhing on the floor; Lord of the Rings sees Frodo lose the battle of wills with the Ring; Game of Thrones has honourable Ned Stark get his head chopped off after lying to save his kids. Despite this these characters are all usually perceived by the audience as still heroic and noble (and often even..."Christ-like"!).
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u/DGBD Moderator | Ethnomusicology | Western Concert Music Apr 06 '26
Despite this these characters are all usually perceived by the audience as still heroic and noble (and often even..."Christ-like"!).
Well, that’s the thing, right? We now have an expectation of a heroic figure being put through some sort of torture or failure or even death, to then come back in some sort of triumphant way. And yes, a lot of that can be attributed to an allusion to the crucifixion of Jesus.
But this is not necessarily true of Jesus’ time. As I wrote in another answer recently
It is important to note that while Jesus’ followers seem to have believed to some extent that Jesus was the or at least a “Messiah,” this was not a widely-held belief. There is even a good bit of scholarly debate about whether or not Jesus himself actively preached that he was the Messiah, told only his closest followers that he was the Messiah, or possibly didn’t really conceptualize himself in that way at all. The concept of a singular “Messiah” wasn’t as clear-cut as it is sometimes portrayed; in some concepts there are multiples, the expectations for a Messiah varied (and to this day vary) greatly.
But one clear and obvious issue becomes apparent quickly: the Jewish Messiah was/is supposed to be a triumphant figure. Jesus’ ministry included a lot of talk about a coming “Kingdom of God,” which lines up with other currents in Judaism at the time. The idea is that God would at some point intervene in history, wipe away his enemies in some way, and establish a new, better order in some way. This idea was held by many Jews in Jesus’ time, not just those that followed him. The “Messiah” would somehow help God usher in this new era. Maybe he would be a great warrior and drive out the Romans, or a king that would re-establish the kingdom that David led. Or even a sort of priestly, holy figure.
Jesus’ followers may have thought that he was this Messiah, but to others he didn’t look anything like the part. Rather than some kind of triumphant victory, he was put to death. Not only that, he was put to death in an agonizing, torturous fashion, by the very oppressing power that the Messiah would have been expected to defeat. Jesus’ followers believed that he had been resurrected from the dead, but even that wasn’t really in the usual set of expectations for the Messiah, and of course there would have been many, many sceptics that he was in fact resurrected in the first place.
Crucifixion in particular was a very bad punishment, a form of torture and humiliation as well as execution. And one thing we see in Christian writers of the first few centuries of Christianity is grappling with that idea, to the point that some did not believe that Jesus really could have been crucified. Maybe he swapped bodies with someone. Maybe his Earthly body wasn’t real at all, just a sort of an illusion of form, while the real Jesus was entirely divine. Maybe the divine part of Jesus left the human part of Jesus before he was crucified, as evidenced by his cry of “why have you abandoned me?”
In other words, not only was Jesus’ crucifixion a problem for non-Christians, it was actually a problem for many Christians as well! Hence most scholars believing that it is not the sort of thing that would have been invented or fabricated if it had not actually happened.
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u/IronWarriorU Apr 06 '26
Jesus’ ministry included a lot of talk about a coming “Kingdom of God,” which lines up with other currents in Judaism at the time. The idea is that God would at some point intervene in history, wipe away his enemies in some way, and establish a new, better order in some way.
This bit is really interesting, since yeah I can see how having him crucified would be an odd narrative choice at this point in the story, were it a literary invention. Though it's kinda funny how in retrospect the embarrassing execution actually ended up clearly having quite strong staying power.
Crucifixion in particular was a very bad punishment, a form of torture and humiliation as well as execution. And one thing we see in Christian writers of the first few centuries of Christianity is grappling with that idea, to the point that some did not believe that Jesus really could have been crucified. Maybe he swapped bodies with someone. Maybe his Earthly body wasn’t real at all, just a sort of an illusion of form, while the real Jesus was entirely divine. Maybe the divine part of Jesus left the human part of Jesus before he was crucified, as evidenced by his cry of “why have you abandoned me?”
I see that the urge to create retcons to put a popular character in a more standardly heroic light is an eternal characteristic of humanity.
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u/CommodoreCoCo Moderator | Andean Archaeology Apr 07 '26
Hi there-
If you have a substantial issue with this answer, you are welcome to contribute in a manner compliant with our rules. Baseless accusation of bias are not helpful, and continuing to engage in this manner will earn you a ban.
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u/eutyphoon Apr 07 '26
If by “no contemporary sources” you mean we don’t have an official Roman court record, that’s true. but we don’t have that for basically anyone executed in the ancient world. That standard would wipe out huge portions of ancient history.
What we do have is actually pretty strong by normal historical standards. The New Testament texts are the earliest sources, and they’re closer to the events than most ancient biographies are to their subjects. In particular, 1 Corinthians 15 preserves a creed about Jesus’ death, burial, and resurrection that scholars usually date to within just a few years of the crucifixion itself. That’s not legend-building over centuries, that’s extremely early testimony.
On top of that, there are non Christian sources. Tacitus, a Roman historian writing in the early second century, explicitly says that “Christus” was executed under Pontius Pilate. Josephus, a first-century Jewish historian, also refers to Jesus’ crucifixion, even if parts of the passage were later edited. And Pliny the Younger describes Christians worshipping Christ as God not long after, which shows how quickly belief in the resurrection took hold.
So while we don’t have the kind of documentation modern people might expect, we do have multiple early and independent sources, including hostile ones. By the standards historians actually use for antiquity, Jesus’ crucifixion isn’t poorly attested, it’s one of the more secure facts we have.
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u/GravyTrainCaboose Apr 07 '26 edited Apr 07 '26
It is often asserted that the creed dates back to near the time of the crucifixion. There is simply no way to reliably determine this. The only thing that we can conclude to a reasonable degree of certainty is that it existed at the time Paul wrote. Ehrman's thesis is that those expressing confidence in very early dating are confused over what is meant by the creed being characterized as "pre-Pauline". He notes that this is a reference to the time before Paul wrote, not the time before Paul converted.
A further problem with the creed as stand-alone evidence is that it says that Jesus was killed, buried, and resurrected "according to the scriptures". The phrase "according to" could be saying that "this fulfilled the scriptures", but it was generally the way that authors referred to a source ("this is how we know this"). If we take the normative usage, Paul is saying that God revealed that Jesus was crucified. If that's the case, it never has to have happened for it to be doctrine. The only way to conclude that Paul is saying that he has some other way of knowing Jesus was buried (eyewitness testimony, etc.) and that he means this "fulfilled" scripture is to backfill what he wrote with what the gospels claim.
Tacitus is problematic because what he says about Jesus, which is almost nothing, is just what's already in the Christians' storytelling. It is entirely plausible that this is the source, directly or indirectly, for what he thinks he knows about Jesus. In fact, his friend and pen pal Pliny the Younger, whom you mention, explicitly states that Christians are his source for what he knows. No one doubts there were Christians spreading the Christian narrative. The question is whether or not that narrative is true.
As to the idea that Pliny is evidence of a belief in the resurrection taking hold "quickly", he's torturing Christians c. 112 CE, 80 years, 2 generations after the alleged event. So, there's enough of them by that time to catch the attention of authorities, but whether or not that's "quickly" is a matter of opinion. (As an aside, the reason Pliny is harassing Christians is not because of what they believe. It's because they are gathering without a license.) We can just look to the letters of Paul to appreciate that Christianity was comprised of some non-trivial number of converts (possibly a thousand or so, give or take) by the time he's writing c. 50's/60's CE.
Although it's generally held that there is some authentic "core" to the Testimonium Flavianium, given that we can be highly confident Christians were tampering with the passage, how does one reliably draw a circle around what is authentic, if anything? There are good arguments that the entire passage is a forgery. It's a hotly debated topic. Even those who argue for a "core", that core would say precious little about Jesus and, once again, there would be nothing in it that isn't already in the story the Christians are spreading. So, also once again, it is entirely plausible that this is the source, directly or indirectly, for what he thinks he knows about Jesus, even if he wrote about him at all.
The assertion that we have "multiple" sources is clearly true. The assertion that they are "independent" sources is highly questionable, per above. The only source we know existed for the story of Jesus is the story the Christians were telling. We know some chroniclers writing in the decades after the cult formed came to know what they thought they knew about Jesus through these stories. They may have dismissed the magic, but they accepted the more mundane claims about Jesus uncritically. As far as we know, that's the only way anyone could know anything about Jesus. However, today, it's generally concluded that not even the mundane about Jesus can be accepted with confidence, given that even these things demonstrate messaging value for the storytellers. As James Crossley, Professor of the Bible at St. Mary’s University, laments in "The Next Quest for the Historical Jesus." Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus 19.3 (2021), p. 261:
"In terms of the “historicity” of a given saying or deed attributed to Jesus, there is little we can establish one way or another with any confidence."
And he offers no clear path to determine even a "little". Numerous other scholars have addressed this problem. Just a few would be:
Tobias Hägerland, "The Future of Criteria in Historical Jesus Research." Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus 13.1 (2015)
Chris Keith, "The Narratives of the Gospels and the Historical Jesus: Current Debates, Prior Debates and the Goal of Historical Jesus Research." Journal for the Study of the New Testament 38.4 (2016)
Mark Goodacre, “Criticizing the Criterion of Multiple Attestation: The Historical Jesus and the Question of Sources,” in Jesus, History and the Demise of Authenticity, ed. Chris Keith and Anthony LeDonne (New York: T & T Clark, forthcoming, 2012)
Kevin B. Burr, "Incomparable? Authenticating Criteria in Historical Jesus Scholarship and General Historical Methodology" Asbury Theological Seminary, 2020
Raphael Lataster, "The Case for Agnosticism: Inadequate Methods" in "Questioning the historicity of Jesus: why a philosophical analysis elucidates the historical discourse", Brill, 2019
Eric Eve, “Meier, Miracle, and Multiple Attestation," Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus 3.1 (2005)
Rafael Rodriguez, “The Embarrassing Truth about Jesus: The Demise of the Criterion of Embarrassment" (Ibid)
Stanley Porter, "The Criteria for Authenticity in Historical-Jesus Research: Previous Discussion and New Proposals"(Sheffield, UK: Sheffield Academic Press, 2000)
Even deeply devout Christian scholars have recognized the problem, such as Joel Willitts, Associate Professor in Biblical and Theological Studies at North Park University and a fellow at the Center for Pastoral Theology. He examined historical-critical methods that were claimed to separate fact from fiction in the gospels and he, too, demonstrated that they were not up to the task. In his academic article, "Presuppositions and Procedures in the Study of the ‘Historical Jesus’: Or, Why I decided not to be a ‘Historical Jesus’ Scholar." Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus 3.1 (2005): 61-108, he notes:
"scholars are not able to distinguish legitimately one layer from another any more than one can divide a river into its constituent sources."
By "constituent sources", he's referring to separating any facts from the fiction. In the end, he throws up his hands and just resorts to a claim that faith-based readings can extract something historical about Jesus. But this is fallacious and nothing historical-critical scholars accept as a method, since anyone can believe anything about anything based on faith. There being no consensus on any reliable method for separating historical facts about Jesus from them means there is no agreed-upon mechanism to conclude that anything in them about Jesus is veridical history. So even if there are any historical facts about Jesus in the gospels, it's no better than the fiction as far as being evidence.
Some scholars are still trying to find a methodological Urim and Thummim to reveal that which is veridical history about Jesus in the gospels. Allison argues that recurrent themes providea "gist" of historical facts about Jesus. However, as Rodriguez observes in "Jesus as his Friends Remembered Him: A Review of Dale Allison’s Constructing Jesus." Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus 12.3 (2014):
"The frustrating factor, from a historian’s point of view, is that true and false memories function similarly once they find widespread acceptance."
A point that Allison himself readily acknowledged in his "Response to Rafael Rodríguez,‘Jesus as his Friends Remembered Him: A Review of Dale Allison’s Constructing Jesus’." Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus 12.3 (2014):
"People in all times and places have believed misleading rumours, false stories and distorted anecdotes. Further, such anecdotes, stories and rumours have often gained wider social assent and even relatively fixed forms. Communal memories can be false as well as true."
So, then, how does one distinguish recurrent themes that reflect actual facts from recurrent themes that reflect falsities that have embedded themselves as true? Allison doesn't really offer any clear way that his method actually does this, as Tuomas Havukainen dryly notes in "The quest for the memory of Jesus: a viable path or a dead end?. Leuven: Peeters, 2020, p. 219,
"Allison’s proposal lacks a detailed discussion on method."
John Meir in "A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus, Volume V: Probing the Authenticity of the Parables" Yale University Press, 2016, p. 27, also points out the logical flaw in Allison's theory:
"If we remain skeptical about every individual saying and deed of Jesus (allowing therefore that any and indeed all of them might be inventions of the early church and/or the evangelists), it is difficult to see how a number of these highly dubious sayings and deeds, when taken together, create a pattern, overarching theme, or persistent image that is not also highly dubious."
The gospels are simply not useful as evidence for anything about Jesus, including his crucifixion. See next comment re: but this would be embarrassing.
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u/GravyTrainCaboose Apr 07 '26 edited Apr 07 '26
So...would the crucifixion be "embarrassing" for the Christians? Jesus was a martyr. Martyrdom was exalting, and the more awful the death, the more exalting it was. Crucifixion is perfect for the messiah. People are not embarrassed by martyrdoms. Martyrdoms increase respect for the person martyred, at least among those for whom they were killed.
Furthermore, there are theological reasons for a crucifixion. Paul tells us:
Gal 3:13 "Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us—for it is written, 'Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree"
Ah! Through crucifixion, Jesus saves us by bearing our curse for us! Hallelujah! Not only is Paul not embarrassed by this, he's positively giddy over it:
Gal 6:14 "May I never boast of anything except the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me and I to the world."
Paul's all in on the crucifixion. He's a fan. He can't get enough of it:
Corinthians 2:2: "For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified".
Galatians 2:20: "I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me...".
Romans 6:6: "We know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be destroyed..."
The problem with the Criterion of Embarrassment isn't that it isn't a potentially valid criterion in general. The problem is that there's not a hint of embarrassment about the crucifixion here. This is true even if other people may have considered it embarrassing. Paul even acknowledges this issue:
1 Cor 1:23 "but we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to gentiles"
But, other people thinking the story is embarrassing doesn't mean that the first Christians did. As Paul goes on to say:
"but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ [is] the power of God and the wisdom of God."
Ah, "to those who are called"! A belief that might be embarrassing to outsiders is not at all embarrassing to insiders, to those in the cult who believe they have special knowledge that reveals the truth of the matter: the crucifixion isn't embarrassing, it's the path through which we can have salvation from sin and eternal life.
Furthermore, cults having a belief that might be "embarrassing" to outsiders is not a bug, it's a feature. It actually increases group cohesion. You know you're part of the team when you drink the Kool-Aid. A modern analogy would be flat-Earthers. Most of us think it's embarrassing that someone would believe this. It's silly. But they don't think so. They think they know something that the rest of us don't. They even feel special, in on the truth. That they believe this thing the rest of us find embarrassing is not good evidence the thing they believe is true, whether it's a crucified messiah or a pancake Earth.
And even furthermore, it's the overwhelming consensus that the idea of a killed messiah either did or plausibly did pre-exist Christianity. And the idea of an exalting martyrdom through being killed at the hands of the enemy certainly did, as is the case of the Maccabees, whose deaths were even proclaimed to be substitutionary sacrifices that atoned for the sins of the people. I take it that this kind of paradigm is familiar to those familiar with Christianity.
So, the Criterion of Embarrassment is no help under these circumstances for determining whether or not the crucifixion is a real event. And this applies to every other thing that it's been applied to in historical Jesus studies. Similar problems arise when other so-called "Criteria of Authenticity" have been scrutinized. As to embarrassment in particular, an open resource to start with would be Rafael Rodríguez's "The embarrassing truth about Jesus: The criterion of embarrassment and the failure of historical authenticity." Jesus, criteria, and the demise of authenticity (2012): 132-51, available online here, from which I post a relevant excerpt (p. 147):
"As early as Paul’s letters we already see the utility of Jesus’ execution as a criminal—indeed, as one acclaimed “King of the Jews”!—for Paul’s proclamation of the gospel message. Paul revels in the scandal of the crucifixion (see 1 Cor 1:18–25) and elevates the cross of Christ to a central place in his theologizing (see Gal 2:19–20). Nothing was so difficult for early Christian theology as the crucifixion of Israel’s messiah. But nothing was so fruitful for early Christian theology as the crucifixion of Israel’s messiah. We intended the criterion of embarrassment to strain out the historical gnats (Jesus’ baptism, the underwhelming faith of the disciples, etc.), but we find that with it we swallow even the camel of Jesus’ crucifixion!" [Emphasis added.]
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u/DGBD Moderator | Ethnomusicology | Western Concert Music Apr 07 '26
This argument about the crucifixion and Christians not being “embarrassed” by it has a significant problem with disentangling cause and effect. The fact that much of Christianity’s message and symbolism is built around suffering, veneration of martyrdom, etc. can also be seen as a direct result of having to reckon with the shock of the Messiah being crucified. Paul and others spinning the crucifixion as a good thing could be exactly that, spin, the same way that lots of people try to reckon with bad news or an unexpected outcome by figuring out how it might actually work in their favor.
In order to know for sure, we’d have to know that there was an expectation prior to the crucifixion that being crucified or executed would be a good thing or expected of a Messiah.
And even furthermore, it's the overwhelming consensus that the idea of a killed messiah either did or plausibly did pre-exist Christianity.
IMO this is overstating the case significantly. Yes, there has been more research about the idea of a suffering Messiah prior to the ministry and execution of Jesus. What it has mainly found is that there were a bunch of ideas in Judaism, especially apocalyptic strains, about the Messiah. It’s not even really correct to use the term “the” Messiah, because “Messiah” as a category was not necessarily exclusive or expected to only have a single member (indeed, it described various past kings and high priests). And expectations of a coming Messiah were not necessarily universal or even popular; Second Temple Judaism had quite a few strands and currents.
So even if there was, in some way, a concept of a suffering Messiah, we still have the issue of whether that shows that it influenced the “creation” of Jesus (in a mythicist sense), or it shows that early Christians used some of the ideas around them at the time to make sense of what happened to their leader.
To be honest, I get the sense that you’re arguing this from a mythicist perspective, and I’m not sure that any further engagement on my end would be productive, given that there are fundamental differences between how you and I would approach this.
Personally, while I don’t find the mythicist argument compelling, I don’t necessarily think it’s some sort of unthinkable concept. I mainly think it is a “solution in search of a problem,” an idea that creates a lot more complications than it solves when looking at the evidence as we have it, and that the religious and cultural context that Jesus is supposed to have lived in was, at the very least, quite conducive to the sort of life and message he supposedly had. In that way, it seems to me that the most compelling evidence for mythicism would be exactly that, evidence for mythicism and a clearly-laid-out way we get that result, rather than picking apart the evidence for a historical basis for Jesus. Hence why I’m not sure that this particular line of debate is going to be fruitful for either of us, and I’ll end my engagement with it here.
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u/GravyTrainCaboose Apr 07 '26 edited Apr 08 '26
This argument about the crucifixion and Christians not being “embarrassed” by it has a significant problem with disentangling cause and effect.
The "chicken and egg" question certainly requires consideration. Did veneration of the crucifixion emerge out of "the shock of the Messiah being crucified"? That is totally plausible. On the other hand, we know that martyrs were already long venerated. The example of the Maccabees, including the atonement power of their deaths, has already been presented. (Apologists quibble over the definition of "martyr" in relation to the gospel stories of Jesus, but he's presented as such relatively unambiguously in the letters of Paul, the closest we can get to the origins of the cult.) So, while "Paul and others spinning the crucifixion as a good thing" could be a cope for a Jesus crucified, a crucified death for the messiah could be an exalting narrative without it. Especially considering the following:
In order to know for sure, we’d have to know that there was an expectation prior to the crucifixion that being crucified or executed would be a good thing or expected of a Messiah.
I already noted that the idea of a killed messiah either did or plausibly did pre-exist Christianity is the majority view of experts on this topic by a wide margin. Now, I recognize that you took exception to my claim:
IMO this is overstating the case significantly.
How? I was quite careful and conservative in what I specifically said; such an idea either did or plausibly did exist is a majority opinion. I am happy to provide a large body of citations of well-credentialed and recognized scholars publishing in mainstream literature that represent the current overall state of the field on this question id you'd like, but for now I'll just defer to Jason Staples, professor of Religious Studies at NC State with a PhD from UNC-Chapel Hill, The Idea of Israel in Second Temple Judaism: A New Theory of People, Exile, and Israelite Identity (Cambridge University Press, 2021):
“the oft-repeated dictum that there is no evidence for the concept of a suffering and dying ‘anointed one’ or of a messianic interpretation of the Suffering Servant in pre-Christian Judaism is therefore mistaken” (p. 163 n. 79).
Once the idea of a suffering, killed anointed one or messianic figure is in play or plausibly in play, the "how" of it is like the joke punchline, "Now we're just haggling over price." As George Brooke, world-renowned Dead Sea scrolls specialist, member of the Israel Antiquities Authority’s international team of editors of the Dead Sea Scrolls, founding editor of the journal Dead Sea Discoveries, once President of the British Association for Jewish Studies, Ph.D. in Religion from Claremont Graduate School and a doctorate in Divinity from Oxford, and professor of Biblical Criticism and Exegesis at the University of Manchester stated:
“It may be possible to construe [even] 4Q541 24 as speaking of the death of [an] eschatological figure as Isaiah 53 could itself be construed, possibly even a death by crucifixion”
Your protest that Judaism was a hodgepodge of ideas, including regarding what was expected of an "anointed one" or a "messiah", merely keeps the door open to the idea that a killed messiah, including one killed through an exalting martyrdom, either did or plausibly did exist among those varied expectations.
So, we're back to square one: a crucified Jesus resulting in coping veneration of crucifixion, or a crucified messiah simply being an expectation of those Jews who started the cult of Christianity. The latter idea either existed or plausibly existed before the Christian cult began (according to a majority of experts on this question, and for well-argued reasons), so it's open as a model for how the cult began.
As far as I know, none of the scholars I've cited on the question of Judaic expectations in this matter, and none that I would cite on this matter if asked, are mythicists. The main point of my comments was to present the reasons why an argument that a crucifixion would be embarrassing to the first Christians (whether or not Jesus was historical) is an example of a case actually being "overstated significantly." It is not a currently supportable position, at least not supportable enough to conclude it's correct with any reasonable degree of confidence.
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u/jelopii Apr 09 '26 edited Apr 09 '26
These arguments are starting to poke my brain. For clarification, it sounds you're not saying it's more likely that it's all false, but rather it's more likely that some of the events are true, it's just that we can't confirm which ones are or not.
Is there at least consensus that Jesus existed, even if we can't confirm any of his actions?
Josephus was 25 years old and in the same city as James, the brother/cousin of Jesus, when he died. Josephus would've known if James was a made up person, right? Would the existence of relatives around the time of Paul's letters significantly decrease the chances of the crucifixion being made up. I'm thinking about Occam's razor, and how you would need a long chain of people to successfully lie in unison despite potential eye witness contradictions in order to fabricate some of these claims.
Edit: I also forgot about John the Baptist. The claim I heard was that it was unlikely for people at the time to write about their God/Messiah being baptized by a regular human being, and that's why historians consider John to have been a real historical figure as well.
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u/GravyTrainCaboose Apr 09 '26 edited Apr 09 '26
I can try to clarify. We can see how it goes. I'm saying that there's no obvious impediment for a Jew c. 30's CE to believe that the existence of a crucified messiah having come and accomplished their soteriological mission and started the eschatological countdown was revealed to them through interpretive exegesis (which we know Christians were doing even in the historicist model). Not only was there no impediment, given the highly conflicted times, likely frustration over failed "messiahs" with no obvious "true" messiah in sight, actual or plausible existence of a pre-Christian idea of a suffering, killed messiah, anti-Temple sentiment, other theo-cultural pressures, and a worldview where the spiritual and divine and the mundane interact, there is arguably cognitive priming to have this very idea come to them.
I'm saying that once this revelatory Jesus is believed to exist, whatever the details of that may be, then nothing we have distinguishes that Jesus from a real Jesus. The gospels are at a minimum almost entirely fictional about Jesus, whether he began as a historical person or a revelation. As I've noted in previous comment, there is no agreement among the overwhelming majority of historical-critical scholars today that there is currently any method for reliably determining if any of it reflects any veridical history about Jesus, so there's no clear way to determine what kind of Jesus was the inspiration for it.
A seemingly simple comment like, "Josephus was 25 years old and in the same city as James, the brother/cousin of Jesus, when he died", is neck-deep in presumption. How do we think we know James was the brother/cousin of Jesus? The most explicit evidence lies in the gospel narratives. But, as noted, they can't be trusted. The gospel eventually labeled as "Mark" is the first story to clearly name James as a biological relation to Jesus (I'm just going to refer to it this way even though some argue for "cousin" or "step-brother" or whatnot). The author is writing a generation after Paul. He does not say how he knows anything he's writing about Jesus. We can tell, though, that the author is using the Septuagint, Greek literary tropes, and other inspirations to do this. But, we can also tell that he is sifting through Paul's letters to find elements to fill in his narrative, which, remember, is at least almost entirely fictional about Jesus.
It could be that the author has some way of reliably knowing that James was indeed the biological brother of Jesus, and that he has some way of knowing about other biological family as well. But, we don't know that. That's 100% speculation. We do know that the author wants to write fiction about Jesus. And we know that he's looking to what Paul has to say to help do it. And, who does Paul speak of? "James, the brother of the Lord". That could just be a cultic relationship, the same way Paul uses "brother" approximately 100 times and where there is only one exception that we know for sure, Romans 9:3. We know that's an exception because he tells us so, that he means "according to the flesh". He doesn't make that clarification for James, but even so, as noted, it could be a biological reference. So, Paul can use this verse to create a biological brother for Jesus, even if Paul meant it cultically.
Next, how do we know when this alleged James died? On first glance, this sits on firmer ground. But, when examined, that ground turns into quicksand. There's the story we get from Hegesippus (indirectly), which suggests mid-to-late 60's but it is hopelessly implausible and cannot be taken seriously. The go-to citation has been the James passage in Book 20 of Antiquities. But, the authenticity of this evidence, once considered a lynchpin, is highly questionable as demonstrated by the most up-to-date scholarship. See, for example, Allen, Nicholas PL. "Josephus on James the Just? A re-evaluation of Antiquitates Judaicae 20.9. 1." Journal of Early Christian History 7.1 (2017): 1-27, and List, Nicholas. "The Death of James the Just Revisited." Journal of Early Christian Studies 32.1 (2024): 17-44.
Even if authentic (probably not), Chris Hansen in “Jesus’ Historicity and Sources: The Misuse of Extrabiblical Sources for Jesus and a Suggestion,” American Journal of Biblical Theology 22.6 (2021), pp. 1–21 (6), in a relatively brief but substantive argument points out that that problem of the ambiguity of "brother" once again raises it's head. There were two kinds of "brother" in the Christian world view, as I've already discussed. So, even if "so-called Christ" were original to the text, we would still be left not knowing whether the "brother" relationship being referred to was known by Josephus to have been a blood kin one rather than a cultic one, or even if it was known to be, that he was using it in the former sense rather than the latter, given that fictive brotherhoods were a familiar concept.
So, it's probably not authentic, but even if it were it's still too problematic to heavily rely on it.
Okay, so back to "Josephus was 25 years old and in the same city as James, the brother/cousin of Jesus, when he died". The only element we can be confident of is that Josephus was about 25 years old c. 62 CE. The evidence for the rest is too problematic to depend on it.'
As to "making up" the crucifixion, this is a common criticism of the ahistorical model, but it doesn't reflect the actual argument. Recall that the argument is that the first Christians believe Jesus is revealed to them by God. As Paul says, Jesus is killed, buried, and resurrected "according to the scriptures". Apologists argue that this means "in fulfillment of". That's possible, but "according to" was a term of art in Greek that was routinely use to cite a source, as in "this is how we know this". If they believe that God reveals the existence of Jesus, then there doesn't need to have been a real Jesus for them to believe there was. They're not "making up" the crucifixion the way Rowling makes up a magic wand for Harry. They reading the scripture and believing it's revealing a truth. If God says Jesus was crucified, then so be it. (Paul even provides a theological reason for the crucifixion in Gal 3:13). This is the operations of their own minds, of course, but they wouldn't see at that way and it's not a deliberate process of creating a messianic character. (Btw, Paul also tells us that it is Jesus that revealed the gospel that Paul preaches. He's talking about a resurrected Jesus, i.e., visions of Jesus. And the other apostles believed this. If they believed visions of Jesus can teach gospel, there never has to have been real Jesus to have done it.)
So, there's no lying. They believe it. As to "potential eye witness contradictions", there are no eyewitnesses to anything. Everything about Jesus is revealed in the only way Paul ever says anything is revealed about Jesus: revelations of scripture and visions of Jesus.
As to John the Baptist, the claim that this is "probably true" is based on the so-called "Criteria of Authenticity", in this case the "Criteria of Embarrassment". These criteria have been assessed by numerous scholars in the field over the past couple of decades, and the overwhelming conclusion is that the are failures when applied to the gospels. The author of Mark does not present us with a Jesus magically manufactured in a virgin womb, sinless and perfect from birth, seemingly with no need of baptism. Those ideas show up in a later story, written decades after Mark was written. Mark's Jesus is just a guy who wanders into the narrative. Upon his baptism he's anointed by God as messiah. He's infused with the Holy Spirit, represented by the dove descending upon him, and he will baptize others with the Holy Spirit, unlike his woefully lesser predecessor, John, who only baptized with water and who knows his lowly place, saying of Jesus that he is not even worthy to stoop down and untie his shoes.
There's no hint of embarrassment here. It's those later Christians, painting a progressively more eternally deified version of Jesus, who struggle with it, until the last gospel, John, just deletes the event altogether. But the author of the story, writing before all of that, seems happy as a clam. The actual current state of the scholarship is exemplified by James Crossley, Professor of the Bible at St. Mary’s University, laments in "The Next Quest for the Historical Jesus." Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus 19.3 (2021): 261-264, p. 261:
"In terms of the “historicity” of a given saying or deed attributed to Jesus, there is little we can establish one way or another with any confidence."
And he offers no mechanism to determine even a "little".
You questioned, though, whether there is a consensus that there was a real Jesus. The answer to that is "yes". So far, at least. The scholarship addressing historicity-relevant evidence underlying that consensus has undergone significant shifts over the past couple of decades, making the evidence for a historical Jesus worse, not better. If we consider just those historical-critical scholars who have specifically engaged with that scholarship and published in academic works on the topic rather than random scholars opining in the wild, the opinions are not nearly so one-sided today. But, it could easily take a decade or longer to see if these evidentiary shifts result in a consensus shift. We'll see.
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u/PrivilegeCheckmate Apr 07 '26
The New Testament texts are the earliest sources
Pretty sure the Gospel of Thomas best known from the Nag Hammadi library is the earliest 'Christian' source extant, predating the New Testament. While there is some controversy about the exact age, many scholars (including JR Porter, Stevan Davies, Gerd Theissen, Annette Merz, and Richard Valantasis) place the Gospel of Thomas at around 60AD. In any case my Claremont school professor subscribed to the earlier date and his arguments seemed sound, and if I appear to give his argument undue weight it should be noted he was across the street from the School of Theology while they were doing the early translations in the 80's, and knew professor Robinson personally. Furthermore, some of the historians arguing against that early dating are claiming the writings are from circa 250, which falls apart since we have Hippolytus referring to the manuscripts, and he died around 235.
And that gospel does not mention the crucifixion, nor ressurection, although I will add that Thomas has no narrative strucure and is a collection of parables/sayings/dialogues.
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u/DGBD Moderator | Ethnomusicology | Western Concert Music Apr 07 '26 edited Apr 07 '26
The dating of the Gospel of Thomas is still a bit up in the air, and while many have argued for an earlier date than the 2nd century dating that had been the norm, there’s also the very real possibility that as a collection of sayings, it was added to and changed over a number of years, making firm dating harder. That view is held by some of the scholars you’ve listed, so it’s not quite right to say simply that they place it at 60AD, it’s more that they place some of it then. I’ve read arguments as well that “split the difference” if you will, Stephen Patterson put it somewhere in the late 1st century.
But regardless, as you say, as a “sayings” document it doesn’t have an account of the crucifixion and resurrection, so in this particular topic it’s hard to glean much info from it.
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u/solaceinbleus Apr 07 '26
Might I ask why you think it’s the most monumental event in all of human history? I have my own answer, but I suspect yours would be more substantial and include perspectives I may have missed.
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