JESUS IN HISTORY!

Christianity, far from being a philosophy or merely some ethical system, is pre-eminently a redemptive system. It is belief in Christ as the son of God who will redeem us from sin and raise us from the dead to an eternal judgment. Thus an investigation into the genuineness of the claims of the Christian religion must begin with the historical reality of Jesus, for apart from him, redemption from sin and a resurrection from the grave become mere “pie in the sky by and by.”

I. EVIDENCE FOR THE HISTORICAL JESUS

A. FROM PAGAN SOURCES

1.Thallus. A Samaritan born historian named Thallus lived and worked in Rome about the middle of the first century (c. 52 AD). Though his works are lost to us, Julius Africanus, a writer of the early third century, was familiar with Thallus’ history of Greece. Africanus in commenting on the darkness which fell over the land during the crucifixion of Jesus (Mark 15:33) said that, “Thallus, in the third book of his histories, explains away this darkness as an eclipse of the sun.” 1 Will Durant observed that Thallus’ “argument took the existence of Christ for granted.”2 The chief point of this reference to Thallus lies in the fact that a knowledge of the circumstances surrounding Jesus’ death were well known in the imperial city of Rome as early as the middle of the first century. The fact of Christ’s crucifixion was already common knowledge by that time, even to the extent that unbelievers like Thallus thought it necessary to explain the matter of the darkness as a natural phenomenon. But they never denied the darkness as a fact. Will Durant summed up the matter of Christ’s historical existence by stating that it simply never occurred to the early opponents of Christianity to deny the existence of Jesus.

2. Mara-Bar-Serapion. A manuscript in the British Museum preserves the text of a letter written some time after 73 AD. It was sent by a Syrian named Mara-Bar-Serapion to his son, Serapion. In prison at the time of the writing the father pleads for his son to be wise by illustrating the folly of persecuting such wise men as Socrates, Pythagoras, and Christ: “What advantage did the Athenians gain from putting Socrates to death?

Famine and plague came upon them as a judgment for their crime. What advantage did the men of Samos gain from burning Pythagoras? In a moment their land was covered with sand. What advantage did the Jews gain from executing their wise King? It was just after that their kingdom was abolished. God justly avenged these three wise men: the Athenians died of hunger; the Samians were overwhelmed by the sea; the Jews, ruined and driven from their land, live in complete dispersion. But Socrates did not die for good; he lived on in the teaching of Plato. Pythagoras did not die for good; he lived on in the statue of Hera. Nor did the wise King die for good; he lived on in the teaching which he had given.” It is obvious that by the time of this writing, Jesus was already placed on an equal footing with the accepted wise men of the ancient world.

3. Cornelius Tacitus. Usually rated as the greatest historian of Rome, Tacitus (born c. 52-54 AD) at about the age of sixty, while writing of the reign of Nero (54-68 AD), told how the Christians were made scapegoats for the Great Fire of 64 AD. It had been rumored that Nero himself started the fire in order to gain glory by rebuilding the city. Tacitus says, “Consequently, to get rid of the report, Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace. Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus...”

To the pagan Tacitus, “Christus” was more than likely a proper name. Tacitus was in a good position to learn of Christianity, being governor of Asia in 112 AD.

4. C. Plinius Secundus (Pliny the Younger). Pliny, governor of Bithynia, often wrote to the Emperor Trajan asking his Imperial advice on how best to deal with the sect of the Christians which according to him were troubling his province. One letter (c. 112 AD) reveals information he extracted from some Christians by torture: “They were in the habit of meeting on a certain fixed day before it was light, when they sang an anthem to Christ as God, and bound themselves by a solemn oath not to commit any wicked deed...after which it was their custom to separate, and then to meet again to partake of food, but food of an ordinary and innocent kind.” The innocence of the matter seemed to perplex the governor sufficiently to write to the Emperor about it.

5. Suetonius. During the reign of Hadrian, Suetonius was annalist and court official of the Imperial House. About 120 AD he wrote his Life of Claudius, from which is taken his most of the quoted reference:

“As the Jews were making constant disturbances at the instigation of Chrestus, he expelled them from Rome.” Since so many Jews had become Christians at Rome, Claudius probably equated the Jews with Christians and thus expelled them from Rome by an Imperial decree. Luke, by the way, records this same event much earlier in Acts 18:1-2. After referring to these same pagan writers as evidence of the historical Jesus, Will Durant says, “These references prove the existence of Christians rather than of Christ; but unless we assume the latter we are driven to the improbable hypothesis that Jesus was invented in one generation; moreover, we must suppose that the Christian community in Rome had been established some years before 52, to merit the attention of an imperial decree.” This evidence, especially in company with such an historian as Tacitus and Roman officials of the stature of Pliny and Suetonius, make the historicity of Jesus of Nazareth as certain as that of any outstanding figure of antiquity. This evidence is worth considering.

B. FROM JEWISH SOURCES

1. The Talmud. There are two separate books of writings dealing with Jewish law. The first of these is the Mishnah which is the Jewish code of religious jurisprudence which began to be compiled sometime after 70 AD and completed about 200 AD. This great body of newly codified case-law became the object of Jewish study from which grew a body of commentaries called Gemaras. Together, Mishnah (law book) and the Gemara (commentaries) are called the Talmud. Being pro-Jewish, all the references to “Yeshu’a of Nazareth” in the Talmudic writings are unfriendly, but in sufficient number, nevertheless, to establish the historical reality of Jesus Christ.

2. Josephus. The most important references to Jesus from a Jewish source are from a former Jewish general turned historian by the name of Flavius Josephus. In his writings he tells us who he was, what he did, and of his own evaluation of an historian. He writes of many of the outstanding persons we read of in the New Testament: of Pilate, of Quirinius of Syria, of the Caesars, the Herods, the Pharisees and Sadducees, of Annas, Caiaphas, Felix, and Festus. He also writes of Jesus’ brother James, and of the death of John the Baptist. Most significant is his reference to Jesus: “And there arose about this time Jesus, a wise man, if indeed we should call him a man; for he was a doer of marvelous deeds, a teacher of men who receive the truth with pleasure. He won over many Jews and also many Greeks. This man was the Messiah. And when Pilate had condemned him to the cross at the instigation of our own leaders, those who had loved him from the first did not cease. For he appeared to them on the third day alive again, as the holy prophets had predicted and said many other wonderful things about him. And even now the race of Christians, so named after him, has not yet died out.”

All attempts to impugn the authenticity of Josephus’ references to Jesus Christ have failed. It is included in all of the manuscripts of Josephus. At the close of his excellent little book offering historical evidences for Christianity, F.F. Bruce remarks that, “Whatever else may be thought of the evidence from early Jewish and Gentile writers. . .it does at least establish, for those who refuse the witness of Christian writings, the historical character of Jesus himself. Some writers may toy with the fancy of a Christ-myth,’ but they do not do so on the ground of historical evidence. The historicity of Christ is as axiomatic for an unbiased historianas the historicity of Julius Caesar. It is not historians who propagate the ‘Christ-myth’theories.”

Cambridge historian Michael Grant has written: “That there was a growth of legend round Jesus cannot be denied, and it arose very quickly. But there had also been a rapid growth of legend round pagan figures like

Alexander the Great; and yet nobody regards him as wholly mythical and fictitious. To sum up, modern critical methods fail to support the Christ-myth theory. It has again and again been answered and annihilated by first-rank scholars. In recent years no serious scholar has ventured to postulate the nonhistoricity of Jesus or at any rate, very few, and they have not succeeded in disposing of the much stronger, indeed very abundant, evidence to the contrary.”

C. FROM NEW TESTAMENT WRITERS

Whatever reasons may be given for receiving the testimony of Josephus or of Tacitus or of any other writer from antiquity as reliable history must be equally applied to the New Testament writers. Fairness and consistency demands that we give at least the same consideration to the New Testament as we would to any other document from the same period. All of the New Testament writers were contemporaries of Jesus. Four were eyewitnesses, three accompanied Jesus throughout his ministry,

and all of their writings are in remarkable agreement, and continue to stand the tests of genuineness and historicity. These documents are by no means the least of the evidence to the actual

existence of Jesus as a real person of history. If the New Testament documents were the only single source from antiquity which presented to us the life of Christ that would be more than sufficient proof

of his historical reality. H. G. Wells in commenting on the Gospels, while disavowing the supernatural element, nevertheless, admits that they carry the conviction of reality, and feels compelled to say of Jesus:“Here was a man. This part of the tale could not have been invented” Will Durant examines the evidence for Jesus and writes: “That a few simple men should in one generation have invented so powerful and appealing a personality, so lofty an ethic and so inspiring a vision of human brotherhood, would be a miracle far more incredible than any recorded in the Gospels.” The fact of the historical Jesus, as supplied to us by sources both friendly and hostile, is thus seen to be quite an indisputable matter. In point of fact there was a Jesus of Nazareth, a man of outstanding character and unique personality, whose life and

teaching indeed “constitute the most fascinating feature in the history of Western man."

Not only the new testament records of our Lord Jesus Christ, but as we turn the secular history we find the same picture of Jesus been portrayed even by pagans and Jews.  

Joseph Khati