Historicity of Jesus
[note 2] There is no scholarly consensus concerning most elements of Jesus's life as described in the Bible stories, and only two key events of the biblical story of Jesus's life are widely accepted as historical, based on the criterion of embarrassment, namely his baptism by John the Baptist and his crucifixion by the order of the Roman Prefect Pontius Pilate (commonly dated to 30 or 33 AD).
[12][13][14] Besides the gospels, and the letters of Paul, non-biblical works that are considered sources for the historicity of Jesus include two mentions in Antiquities of the Jews (Testimonium Flavianum, Jesus' own brother James) by Jewish historian and Galilean military leader Josephus (dated circa 93–94 AD) and a mention in Annals by Roman historian Tacitus (circa 116 AD).
[18][note 1] Since the 18th century, three separate scholarly quests for the historical Jesus have taken place, each with distinct characteristics and based on different research criteria, which were often developed during that phase.
[24][26][27] Lightfoot Professor of Divinity James Dunn stated that these two facts "rank so high on the 'almost impossible to doubt or deny' scale of historical 'facts' they are obvious starting points for an attempt to clarify the what and why of Jesus' mission.
[29] Alternatively, Bart Ehrman (who himself rejects the Christ myth theory) summarises Earl Doherty's view as being "that no historical Jesus worthy of the name existed, that Christianity began with a belief in a spiritual, mythical figure, that the Gospels are essentially allegory and fiction, and that no single identifiable person lay at the root of the Galilean preaching tradition".
[31][32][note 10] Justin Meggitt partially attributed the recent cultural prominence of mythicism to the popularisation of a new wave of scholarship promoting the idea.
[3][42][43][web 1][note 4] Mythicism is criticized on numerous grounds such as commonly being advocated by non-experts or poor scholarship, being ideologically driven, its reliance on arguments from silence, lacking positive evidence, the dismissal or distortion of sources, questionable or outdated methodologies, either no explanation or wild explanations of origins of Christian belief and early churches, and outdated comparisons with mythology.
[54][note 15] According to British biblical scholar and Anglican priest Christopher M. Tuckett, most available sources are collections of early oral traditions about Jesus.
[64] However, evangelical New Testament scholars like Craig Blomberg argue that the source material on Jesus does correlate significantly with historical data.
[note 16] Christian origins scholar Craig A. Evans argued that there are also archeological finds that corroborate aspects of the time of Jesus mentioned in the surviving sources, such as context from Nazareth, the Caiaphas ossuary, numerous synagogue buildings, and Jehohanan, a crucified victim who had a Jewish burial after execution.
[67] Historiographical approaches associated with the study of the poor in the past, such as microhistory, can help assess what type of sources can be reasonably expected in the historical record for individuals like Jesus.
[68] Ehrman argues that the historical record for the first century was so lacking that no contemporary eyewitness reports for prominent individuals such as Pontius Pilate or Josephus survive.
[69] Theissen and Merz observe that even if ancient sources were to be silent on any individual, they would not impact their historicity since there are numerous instances of people whose existence is never doubted and yet were not mentioned by contemporary authors.
[77] From Paul's writings alone, a fairly full outline of the life of Jesus can be found: his descent from Abraham and David, his upbringing in the Jewish Law, gathering together disciples (including Cephas (Peter) and John), having a brother named James, living an exemplary life, the Last Supper and the betrayal, numerous details surrounding his death and resurrection (e.g. crucifixion, Jewish involvement in putting him to death, burial, resurrection; seen by Peter, James, the twelve and others) along with numerous quotations referring to notable teachings and events found in the Gospels.
[17] The particular term used by Paul to refer to Jesus being 'born of a woman' also relates to human births in other ancient literature such as Plato’s Republic and Josephus’ Antiquities.
[86][87] The Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke recount the life, ministry, crucifixion and resurrection of a Jew named Jesus who spoke Aramaic.
There are different hypotheses regarding the origin of the texts because the gospels of the New Testament were written in Greek for Greek-speaking communities,[88] and were later translated into Syriac, Latin, and Coptic.
On the first reference, the general scholarly view holds that the longer passage, known as the Testimonium Flavianum, in Book 18 most likely consists of an authentic nucleus that was subjected to later Christian interpolation or forgery.
He writes that the founder of the sect was named Christus (the Christian title for Jesus); that he was executed under Pontius Pilate; and that the movement, initially checked, broke out again in Judea and even in Rome itself.
