Jesus of Nazareth – man or myth? 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Introduction

 

As I say in the introduction to this section, Jesus Christ is central to Christianity and yet remains an enigmatic figure who still provokes discussion over just who he was and what he was saying. Indeed, it has become fashionable in recent times to think that he never even existed and is entirely mythological.

 

 

So, it may come as a surprise to some that most scholars of the New Testament are clear that he was a real person (see, for instance, Bart Ehrman ‘Did Jesus Exist?: The Historical Argument For Jesus Of Nazareth’.) This is not to say that they believe he was the Son of God, was born of a Virgin, that he performed miracles, rose from the dead or ascended into heaven and so on. Some do, some don’t. But there is a wide consensus that there was a real person, who we may call Jesus of Nazareth, onto whom these beliefs were grafted.

 

 

So, what is the evidence? This piece draws heavily on Ehrman’s book which, in my view, makes the case persuasively and is an interesting read. I would recommend readers of this article who would like to delve into the arguments in more detail to read it.   

 

 

Jesus as Myth

 

Whilst there have been different views on just who Jesus was down the ages, the idea that he never existed is a relatively recent one, probably dating back to the 18th century period of the enlightenment. This idea that Jesus is myth rather than a real person has taken hold around the fringes of academia and more so in popular culture. It is widely dismissed and often ignored by serious scholars.

 

 

The first author to deny the historical existence of Jesus was a Frenchman called Constantin Francois Volney, a member of the Constituent Assembly during the French Revolution. In 1791, he published an essay called ‘Ruins of Empire’ in which he argued that all religions are the same at heart and that Christianity was simply a variation of the one universal religion. He went on to argue that Christians made up their Christ as a sort of Sun God and that his name is derived from the Indian ‘Krishna’.

 

 

A few years later in 1795, another Frenchman, Charles Francois Dupuis, who was the secretary of the revolutionary National Convention, published a book called ‘The Origin of All Religions.’ In this book, he argued that there was an original solar deity who lies behind all religions. Dupuis argued that the gods of the various mystery religions of antiquity, such as Osiris, Adonis (Tammuz), Bacchus, Attis and Mithra were all manifestations of this solar deity and agreed with Volney that Jesus was constructed as just another version of this sun god.   

 

 

The first New Testament scholar to claim that Jesus never existed was a German theologian called Bruno Bauer. He came to the view that Jesus was a literary invention of the Gospel writers and that Christianity was an amalgamation of Judaism and the classical philosophy of Stoicism. This was such a radical view for a mainstream theologian that it ended up costing him his job.

 

 

The mythicist view was first taken up in the English speaking world by JM Robertson, sometimes considered to be the premier British rationalist of the early 20th century. His book ‘Christianity and Mythology’, produced in 1900, argued that there are striking similarities between what the Gospels claim about Jesus and the Pagan gods of fertility who were said to have died and risen from the dead. Even if there once had been a real Jesus, he argued that the Jesus of Church doctrine was a mythical figure based on the fertility cult of Joshua, a dying-rising vegetative god who was ritually sacrificed and eaten.

 

 

One of the leading proponents of the mythicist view in more recent times is the Canadian classicist Earl Doherty, who argued that Christianity began as a belief in a spiritual, mythical figure, that the Gospels are essentially allegory and fiction and that no single identifiable person lies at the root of the Jesus story. Whilst Doherty was a trained classicist, he had no formal qualifications in biblical studies. Thomas L Thompson, who is primarily a scholar of the Old Testament, in his book ‘The Messiah Myth: The Near Eastern Roots of Jesus and David,’ argues that Abraham, Moses and David are all mythical figures and that Jesus is too. His view is that Christians sought to create a saviour figure out of stories found in the Old Testament.

 

 

Other writers placed in the mythicist camp take a slightly different position, usually along the lines that there was a historical Jesus, but that he wasn’t the founder of Christianity which is instead rooted in a mythical Christ figure. This view was represented by Archibald Robinson, who thought that even though there was an historical Jesus, ‘we know next to nothing about this Jesus.’  George A Wells, perhaps the best known mythicist of modern times, takes a similar position explained in his book ‘Did Jesus Exist’.

 

 

And then there are what Ehrman calls the sensationalists, those who write fantasy and dress it up as history but which can be shown to be full of inaccuracies, bias and untruths. For instance, in 1999, under the pen name Acharya, S., the American writer Dorothy M Murdock published a book titled ‘The Christ Conspiracy: The Greatest Story Ever Sold.’ This book argued that Christianity is rooted in a myth about the sun god Jesus, who was invented sometime in the 2nd century AD. Jesus was actually a personification of the sun and the stories about him are  based around the movement of the sun through the heavens. Acharya went on to argue that this sun god was transformed into a real person by a group of Gnostics and Therapeutae (healers) in Alexandria, Egypt, to bring about salvation to a group of Jews after a failed revolt against Rome.

 

 

Also appearing in 1999, was the book ‘The Jesus Mysteries: Was the original Jesus a Pagan god?’ by Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy. This argues along similar lines to Acharya S, although they do not see Jesus as a sun god, but rather an amalgamation of the various dying and rising gods known throughout the Pagan world. Freke and Gandy argue that these gods were fundamentally the same and shared features such as their father being God, their mother a human virgin, that they were born in a cave on December 25th, that they performed miracles, including turning water into wine, that they rode into town on a donkey, they were all crucified at Easter, descended into hell and on the third day they rose from the dead.

 

 

Freke and Gandy go on to argue that it was Mark who turned this Pagan Christ into an historical, real person. They further argue that the Apostle Paul knew nothing of this person Jesus and like many Christians in the eastern part of the Empire was a Gnostic who understood Christ as a mythical or spiritual figure and not a real person. 

 

 

Ehrman examines the pagan myths cited as evidence that Jesus is based on them and finds that there is actually very little comparison to base this view on. None can be shown to have been born of a virgin, to have been crucified, to have died for our sins or to have been bodily resurrected. The stories are sometimes radically different to the Christian story, for instance that of Osiris is completely different. There may be similarities between them at a superficial level, especially with the ‘mystery cults’, but we cannot say that the one was based on the others. This does not mean that aspects of the Jesus of orthodox Christianity have not been influenced by Pagan thinking and mythology, just that Jesus the man was not.

 

 

The historical Jesus

 

The biggest argument against Jesus ever having existed is the allegation that there are virtually no references to him outside of the Gospels and those that do exist are highly suspect. Let’s have a quick look at them.

 

 

The Roman historian, Suetonius, in his biography of the Emperor Claudius (41 – 54 AD), relates that the Emperor had all of the Jews deported from Rome because of riots instigated by ‘Chrestus’. It is not clear whether this Chrestus was Jesus Christ of the Bible, but if so it must have been instigated by his followers rather than by him personally as Jesus had been crucified several years before Claudius became Emperor.  

 

 

Another Roman historian Tacitus, writing in his famous Annals of Imperial Rome in 115 AD, tells us that Christ was put to death by the procurator Pontius Pilate whilst Tiberias was Emperor. This is a clear allusion to a real Christ even if it is a second hand account and possibly influenced by the oral stories being circulated that later were codified into the Gospels. It is sometimes  argued that this and other passages have been fraudulently inserted into the texts at a later date, a view that Ehrman tells us is not held by any trained classicist he is aware of.

 

 

In his Antiquities of the Jews, written around 93 or 94 AD, the Jewish historian Flavius Josephus refers to Jesus on a number of occasions. One of these is brief and simply refers to an incident that happened in 62 AD just before the Jewish uprising where the local High Priest Ananus unlawfully put to death a man named James who Josephus identifies as the ‘brother of Jesus, who is called the Messiah’. The second, longer, passage is known as the Testimoniun Flavianum, referring to a testimony given to Flavius Josephus regarding the life of Jesus. In this, he refers to the appearance of ‘Jesus, a wise man, if one should call him a man’ who was a ‘doer of startling deeds, a teacher of people’. Josephus goes as far as to state that Jesus ‘was the Messiah’ and that after he had been put to death ‘he appeared to them (his followers) on the third day, living again.’ It is often claimed that this passage from Josephus has also been inserted by a later Christian scribe. However, again most experts on the subject believe that, whilst Christians may have touched up the passage a bit, it is in the main authentic.

 

 

One of the most significant authors of the early Christian period was Ignatius of Antioch. Ignatius was the bishop of the large and prestigious Church in Antioch and was caught up in a persecution of Christians around 110 AD. Indeed, Ignatius was himself arrested and sent to Rome for execution. Whilst on route, he wrote seven letters to churches in Asia Minor and one to the Christians of Rome. In these letters, he spoke out against various forms of Christianity he considered to be wrong. These include those who insisted on keeping Jewish laws and, more pertinently to this study, those who claimed that Jesus was not a real flesh and blood human. These were the docetists who believed that Jesus was spirit and only seemed to take human form. In response to this, Ignatius expresses his belief in the orthodox Christian position and finishes with ‘for I know and believe that he was in the flesh even after the resurrection.’ The importance of this is that, whilst he is writing after the Gospels had been set down, scholars do not think he was quoting from them, but rather drawing from earlier sources.

 

 

These accounts are fairly well known amongst people interested in the subject and are often dismissed as fakes or forgeries. However, the scholarly view is that they are likely to be genuine, although they do not contain a smoking gun such as a first hand eye witness account. They merely indicate that there were stories of a Jesus of Nazareth circulating at around the time the Gospels were written, stories that were at least in part drawn from different sources than the Gospels were. They may not be eye witness accounts, but they do show that there was an early tradition of people believing that Jesus was a real person. There is, however, another external source which is much less known and yet in many ways far more important. This is the testimony of Papias.

 

 

Papias was a church father of the early 2nd century whose writings survive only in fragments. However, from later writings that quote him, we know he wrote a monumental five volume work called ‘Expositions of the Sayings of the Lord’, sometime around 120 to 130 AD. The church father Eusebius, despite calling him ‘a man of very small intelligence’, tells us that Papias had received the words of the apostles from those who had been their followers and that he had himself spoken to Mark and John. Papias wrote that when Mark was acting as interpreter for Peter, he wrote down accurately everything that he recalled of Jesus’ words and deeds, although not in order. He later spent much time with Peter, who used to adapt his teachings for the needs at hand. About Matthew, Papias tells us that he composed his words in Hebrew and each recipient translated them to the best of their ability.

 

 

As Ehrman says, this isn’t an eyewitness testimony to the life of Jesus as such, but it is getting very close to that.

 

 

The Gospel Sources

 

Those who claim Jesus never existed dismiss the Gospels as a reliable source of his historicity on the basis that they are ‘internal’ and biased. In other words, ‘they would say that wouldn’t they.’ Others go further and say that the Gospels are unreliable historical sources because they are made up stories to back up the Jesus myth. Grounds cited for this lack of credibility include being written decades after Jesus was put to death, not being written by the names that they bear, being full of discrepancies and contradictions, or that they contain information that cannot be historically verified or is clearly legendary. Ehrman’s view is that whilst these accusations contain truth, they are irrelevant to the central issue of whether Jesus existed. His point here is that these deficiencies do not mean they are unreliable in everything they say and that they should be tested using the same academic scrutiny as any other historical records.    

 

 

The New Testament is made up of four Gospels, the Book of Acts, the letters (mainly written by Paul) and the Book of Revelation. Let’s start with the Gospels; Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Matthew, Mark and Luke are similar to each other in many ways and are often grouped together. For this reason, they are known as the ‘Synoptic Gospels’, which literally means ‘seen together.’ Critical examination of these three Gospels focusses on their similarities, their differences, which stories they include and which they exclude. It is important to bear in mind here, that whilst they are similar, they are not the same.

 

 

The earliest Gospel is probably Mark, written around 70 AD, almost 40 years after Jesus’ death. It is generally thought that both Mathew and Luke, both written around 80 to 85 AD, had access to Mark’s Gospel and used it for some of their stories. However, both contain accounts not found in Mark or with each other for that matter. So, we are not dealing with three Gospels which are all based on a single source as some claim. They all contain elements which are independent of each other. The Gospel of John was written a little later, around 90 to 95 AD. Up until the accounts of Jesus’ death, most of the stories found in this Gospel are only found in this Gospel. And when it does contain the same stories, these are written in such a different way as to strongly indicate that John did not have access to the other three. In other  words, this is very much an independent account.  

 

 

The Gospel of Thomas is a non-canonical Gospel discovered in 1945 as part of the Nag Hamadi finds. Some scholars date it as early as 60 AD, making it possibly older than the four canonical Gospels, although most date it, or at least the current version it, to around 110 to 120 AD. Thomas consists of 114 ‘sayings’ of Jesus about half of which are found in one or more of Mathew, Mark or Luke. This means that the other half are sourced from somewhere else. So, in addition to the four canonical Gospels, this is a fifth independent witness to the life and teachings of Jesus.

 

 

Then there is the Gospel of Peter, discovered in 1886 and which contains a fragmentary account of Jesus’ trial, death and resurrection. As with Thomas, parts of this account are found in the canonical Gospels, but other parts are not and it is widely thought by scholars that Peter preserves an independent narrative that has been drawn from other non-canonical sources. Whilst we only have a partial fragment of this Gospel, this was almost certainly part of a whole Gospel at some time. How much this differed from the canonical Gospels we don’t know, but as there are accounts in the part we do have that are not in the canonical Gospels, it is a logical conclusion that the rest of it also included accounts not in the others. This is therefore a sixth independent witness.

 

 

Another independent account occurs in a fragment of text known as Papyrus Egerton 2. Again, it is difficult to know to what degree this is a fragment from a full Gospel, but it is likely. The fragment that survives contains four episodes from the life of Jesus, one of which is not found in any other known Gospel whether canonical or not.

 

 

We therefore have at least seven accounts of the life of Jesus which portray him as a real person and not myth. It is true that they were not written during his lifetime and probably none of the authors had ever actually met him. But nevertheless, they are valuable pieces of evidence, with elements unique to each, and put to bed the argument that all the Gospels are just a repetition of Mark. But where did they get their information and does that make them more or less credible? This is an important question because many people believe that the Gospels, as they appear in the Bible, are the earliest records of Jesus’ life and, because this was so long after his death, they are unreliable. However, this is not the case. Each of these Gospels drew from older written sources that no longer exist and which themselves drew from oral stories that were widely circulated amongst the early Christians.

 

 

Luke, for instance, begins with ‘Whereas many have attempted to compile a narrative of the things that have been fulfilled amongst us, it seemed good to me also, having followed all these things closely from the beginning, to write to you an orderly account.’ He says ‘many’ rather than just Mark. He also seems to imply that these earlier accounts, presumably including Mark, were in some way deficient and that he felt a need to present a more orderly version. Whilst he did draw to some degree from Mark, he clearly also drew from some of these other sources. But what were they?


 

In fact, there is a wide consensus amongst scholars as to what they were. One of them is a lost Gospel simply known as Q – which is derived from the German word ‘Quelle’ meaning source. Q is believed to be a ‘sayings’ source in the same vein as Thomas, written no later than the Gospel of Mark and arguably as early as 50 AD. It is widely believed to be the source of the material that Matthew and Luke have in common with each other, but which is not found in Mark. 

 

 

Luke’s Gospel includes material not found in either Mark or Matthew, such as the story of the prodigal son and good Samaritan. This suggests that Luke got these stories from somewhere else: scholars have long agreed that he didn’t make these up. This other now-lost source is known as L and may have been a single document, multiple documents, oral sources or a mix of written and oral sources.

 

 

Matthew uses Mark even more than Luke does. He also uses Q, attested by those stories shared with Luke but not with Mark. Matthew also includes stories not found in either Mark or Luke, for instance the visit of the wise men to the baby Jesus and the parable of the sheep and goats at the last judgement. Again, it is widely accepted that he did not make these up and so they must have come from another source. This is known as M. As with L, this may have been a single source, multiple sources, from oral traditions or a mix.

 

 

Many scholars believe that the Gospel of Mark itself drew not just from oral traditions, but from various now lost written sources. So, rather than there being just three synoptic Gospels, we have at least four sources in addition to Matthew and Luke; Mark, Q, L and M, the latter two of which could have been many different sources.

 

 

The Gospel of John is also thought to be based on written sources that no longer survive and these are probably completely independent of those used to write the synoptic Gospels. The reason for this is that John contains a great deal of material not found in the three Synoptic Gospels. John’s accounts of Jesus’ miracles, at least two accounts of Jesus’ speeches and possibly his account of the passion are all widely thought to be drawn from earlier written accounts now lost.  

 

 

It cannot be determined for certain whether any of the non-canonical Gospels, such as those of Peter and Thomas, go back to earlier written sources, though there are scholars who believe so. The most plausible case has been made for the Gospel of Thomas by April DeConick, who argues that the core of the surviving Gospel goes back to a now lost Gospel in circulation prior to 50 AD. All of these now lost sources are considerably older than the canonical Gospels and corroborate many of the things said about Jesus in those Gospels. Importantly, they are all independent of each other. We do not have just one Gospel that everyone else has copied, as some maintain, but multiple independent sources. And it is this that makes the idea that Jesus the man was invented improbable.

 

 

There are, of course, many other non-canonical Gospels, not least those known as the Gnostic Gospels, which can be seen as more mythical or legendary and so less valuable as evidence in a real Jesus. I have therefore left these alone.

 

 

Ehrman then moves on to deal with the question of where did these various sources get their information. Even the earliest amongst them were written down almost 20 years after his death. But are they based on more contemporary oral accounts?   

 

 

He starts with an explanation of a method of studying historical documents known as ‘form criticism’ which was developed in the early 20th century by a group of German scholars. They were known as ‘form critics’ because they were interested in how the different stories about Jesus came to assume the shape or form that they have. For instance, many miracle stories follow the same basic pattern. A person comes to Jesus, their problem is described, there is a brief conversation with Jesus who agrees to heal the person which he then does. Or the ‘controversy stories’ in which Jesus or his disciples does something that offends the Jewish leaders, the leaders protest, Jesus has a conversation with them which ends with him verbally outsmarting them. In other words these stories have a similar pattern to each other.

 

 

Whilst form critics do not agree with each other on details, they do share key principles. These are that stories came to be shaped over time in the telling as a sort of formula was developed and that some stories were probably made up to suit the needs of the situations faced by particular Christian communities. In other words, stories emerged of what Jesus might have said in various situations as well as what he actually is likely to have said.

 

 

Even though the Gospels were originally written in Greek, as were the earlier sources, some of the oral traditions were spoken in Aramaic, the language of Palestine and the language Jesus would have spoken. These oral traditions date from the very earliest years of the Christian movement, before it had moved into the Greek speaking world. What is interesting about this is that in several Gospel passages, key words and phrases have been left in the original Aramaic, suggesting an earlier oral source. For instance, the story of raising a young girl from the dead in Mark 5. At the key moment Jesus says to her ‘Talitha Cumi’. This is an Aramaic phrase which Mark has to translate for his Greek speaking readers: ‘Little girl, I tell you to arise’. Which she does. Perhaps the most famous example of an Aramaic phrase in the mainly Greek Gospels is in Mark 15, where Jesus, dying on the cross pleads in Aramaic, ‘Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani’ which Mark again translates as ‘my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’

 

 

There are other instances, where the narrative is in Greek, but only makes sense if it is translated back into Aramaic, meaning that it was originally spoken in Aramaic. One of the best examples of this, is in Mark 2, where the Pharisees complain that the disciples are picking corn from the fields and eating it – thus breaking the Sabbath. Jesus’ response to them is that the ‘Sabbath is made for man, not man for the Sabbath. Therefore, the Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath.’ This doesn’t make sense because the Pharisees are not complaining about Jesus, but about his disciples. In fact, the last line doesn’t seem to follow from the first one at all. The key word in this passage is ‘barnash’ which is an Aramaic word that means both ‘man’ and ‘son of man’. So what Jesus was saying in the original is that ‘Sabbath was made for man (barnash), not man for the Sabbath. Therefore man is the Lord of the Sabbath’. In other words, the disciples are the masters of the Sabbath which was created for their sake. It has nothing to do with Jesus as the Son of Man. Again, these instances suggest an earlier source incorporated into the Gospels

 

 

Interestingly, the corollary of this is also true. There are certain things that Jesus is purported as saying in the Gospels that he could not have said because they cannot be translated into Aramaic. For instance, in John 3 we have the well known story of Jesus’ conversation with the Rabbi Nicodemus which has spawned the Evangelical ‘Born Again’ movement. Nicodemus says to Jesus that he knows he is a teacher from God and Jesus replies ‘unless you are born ‘again’ you will not be able to enter the kingdom of God.’ The Greek word from which ‘again’ is translated from is ‘anothen’ which can either mean ‘a second time’ (which is how Nicodemus interprets it) or ‘from above’. Nicodemus is shocked at this and asks how he could possibly crawl back into his mother’s womb to be born again, when in fact Jesus means ‘from above.’ The conversation is structured around Nicodemus’ misunderstanding of what Jesus was actually saying, thinking he meant being born a second time rather than from above or spiritually. This misunderstanding is a result of the double meaning of the Greek work ‘anothen’. However, Aramaic does not have this double meaning. The Aramaic for ‘from above’ is not the same as for ‘a second time’. In other words, we have another piece of evidence that earlier material in Aramaic have found their way into the Greek Gospels.

 

 

But there’s more!

 

 

Book of Acts

 

The Acts of the Apostles was written by the author of Luke’s Gospel and tells the story of the spread of Christianity in the immediate years after the death of Jesus. In particular, it records the activities of Peter and Paul. An important point here is that Acts recounts events that are not recorded in Luke and which are presumably drawn from other sources. One of these tells the story of Judas Iscariot who had betrayed Jesus for 30 pieces of silver. Judas is said to have bought a field with this money and then fallen headlong on it splitting his innards open. It is for this reason, we are told, that the field came to be known as ‘Akeldama’, an Aramaic word meaning Field of Blood (note the survival of another Aramaic word in a text mainly written in Greek.) Luke says nothing about Judas in his Gospel. However, Matthew does. In Matthew’s account, Judas is said to have tried to give the money back to the Temple, but they could not put it into the Temple treasury because it was blood money. Instead, after Judas had hanged himself, the temple priests used the money to buy a field which came to be known as the field of blood. These two accounts are similar enough to each other to indicate they are based on real recollections, but different enough to show that the details had changed over time and that they came from two different sources. But both allude to a real Jesus.

 

 

Whilst it was common for ancient writers to make up the speeches recorded in their works, the speeches in Acts are almost certainly drawn from oral traditions rather than having been made up. The reasons scholars are so sure of this is that portions of the speeches in Acts represent theological positions that are not consistent with Luke’s own views. One of the most striking things about some of these speeches is that they present a view of what many scholars consider to be one of the oldest, if not the oldest, Christian understanding of what it meant to call Jesus the Son of God. This is that rather than Jesus having always been the pre-existent Son of God, he only became so when he was born. This view seems to be embodied in the Gospel of Luke itself. Not a single word of Luke’s describes Jesus as the pre-existent son. This is part of a tradition known as ‘adoptionism’ in which it is believed that Jesus was at some point adopted by God as his son rather than him always having been so. But whilst Luke believed that Jesus was adopted as God’s son at birth, he included passages in Acts which allude to him being adopted at his resurrection. This form of adoptionism is thought to be older than the idea of adoption at birth, possibly the oldest. This is another indication of lost oral sources that have been absorbed into the written records in the Bible and again strongly suggestive that they are based on a real flesh and blood Jesus. 

 

 

The non-Pauline Epistles

 

The Epistles are full of references to a real life Jesus who lived and died by crucifixion. Most of these letters are attributed to Paul, who of course never personally met Jesus. Some of the letters attributed to Paul were not, or probably were not, actually written by him. One of these is 1 Timothy, which includes the statement (6:13) ‘I command you before the God who makes all things alive and Christ Jesus, the one who, bearing his testimony before Pontius Pilate made the good confession..’ This was not written by Paul and whilst we do not know who did write it, there is no evidence that that person was familiar with the Gospels.

 

 

In 1 Peter (5:1), which was probably not written by Peter, we read a creedal statement that is both orthodox and yet also shows no familiarity with the Gospels. 2 Peter was also not written by Peter or even the same author as 1 Peter. This also shows no signs of familiarity with the Gospels and yet clearly knew of the tradition of the transfiguration: ‘For not by following sophistic myths have we made known to you the power and presence of Our Lord Jesus Christ… when we received honour and glory from God the Father and the voice was brought to him by the magnificent glory, “this is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased.”

 

 

The letter of the Hebrews, also written anonymously and showing no signs of familiarity with the Gospels, contains numerous references to the life of a historical Jesus. These include reference to Jesus appearing in the last days (1:2), that God spoke through him (1:2), that he died a bloody death (1:3), he partook of flesh and blood (2:14), he was like his brothers (2:17), he was tempted (2:18), he offered up prayers and loud cries and tears to be saved from death (5:7), he was crucified (5:8), he was from the tribe of Judah (7:14), he taught about God (10:18) and he suffered outside Jerusalem and endured abuse (13:12 & 13).

 

 

Although not usually included in the New Testament canon, the letter 1 Clement, which is attributed to Clement, the fourth bishop of Rome, was written to the Church in Corinth which was experiencing significant upheavals and rivalry amongst its leadership. This letter is thought to have been written during the 90’s AD which would have been around the time some of the later books in the New Testament were written. Although he refers to several deeds and sayings of Jesus that do appear in the Gospels, the wording he uses is quite different suggesting his sources are from elsewhere. So we have yet another testimony to the reality of Jesus that is independent of the Gospels.    

 

 

The Witness of Paul

 

It is commonly assumed that the Gospels are the earliest records contained in the New Testament, mainly because they are placed first in order, but this is not true. The letters of Paul were written much earlier; the first one (1 Thessalonians) around 49 AD and the last (Romans) around 61 or 62 AD. This puts his earliest works as having been written less than 20 years after the traditional date of Jesus’ death.

 

 

Perhaps because Paul never met Jesus in person and that the Vision of Jesus he saw on the road to Damascus was not a bodily Jesus, many people think that Paul did not believe in a real, historical Jesus. It is true that Paul says very little about what Jesus said and did. He doesn’t quote his teachings, such as the Sermon on the Mount, he doesn’t refer to any of his parables or his miracles or even events such as his trial before Pontius Pilate. But it is not true that Paul saw Jesus as a purely spiritual entity who had never lived in bodily form.

 

 

Paul clearly indicates that he believed that Jesus was born as a human (Galatians 4:4), “But when the fullness of time came, God sent his son, born of a woman, born under the law, that he might redeem those who were under the law…’ in other words, not only did Paul believe that Jesus was born of a woman, but that his mission was expressly to those under the law, ie. Jews. This is because Paul was convinced that Jesus was the Jewish Messiah (translated as Christ in Greek). This explains why Paul was at pains to point out that Jesus was a physical descendent of David. So, Paul clearly saw Jesus as a real, historical person.

 

 

Elsewhere, Paul mentions Jesus’ brothers, who after his death became missionaries along with their wives. In 1 Corinthians 9:5, he writes, ‘do we not have the right to take along a believing wife as do the other apostles and the brothers of the Lord and Cephas (the Apostle Peter). This sentence would not make sense unless he was referring to Jesus’ actual brothers rather than spiritual brothers or band of brothers as he refers to other ‘apostles’ separately. This idea that Jesus did have actual brothers may come as a surprise to some, especially those raised on doctrines of Mary having remained a virgin all her life. But this is made clear in the Gospels. The Gospel of Mark (6:3) names them as James, Joses, Judas and Simon. It also indicates that Jesus had sisters, though these are not named. Paul also names one of Jesus’ brothers, James, in Galatians 1:18 – 19. “Then after three years I went up to Jerusalem to consult with Cephas (Peter). And I remained with him for fifteen days. I did not see any of the other apostles except James, the brother of the Lord. What I am writing to you, I tell before God, I am not lying!’ Again, this sentence would not make sense if he was not referring to James as Jesus’ actual brother as it is this that distinguishes him from Peter.

 

 

This is the clincher! Paul spent just over two weeks with Peter, who was Jesus’ closest disciple and with James’, Jesus’ blood brother. And afterwards he clearly states in several of his letters that he viewed Jesus as real flesh and blood. Getting this information from Peter and James is pretty close to eyewitness testimony.

 

 

Mythicists put forward several arguments trying to show that these brothers were not actual brothers, but rather ‘brothers’ in the sense of close companions. Ehrman deals with these arguments and I don’t intend to relate them all here, but suffice it to say that they are not compelling. The two main ones are that James was just a close friend of Jesus. However, if this were true, why did Paul call him Jesus’ brother and not Peter, who was his closest disciple? The other one is that James was the head of a religious community that Jesus was a part of and so they were ‘brothers’ in the sense of modern day monks. However, would Peter not also have been a member of this community? Furthermore, there is no reference to James being the head of a religious community other than a disciple of Jesus – along with Peter. Other arguments put forward by the mythicists get even weaker, some to the point of clutching at straws. They are not persuasive at all. No, the reality is that Jesus had actual blood siblings. 

 

 

It is also worth briefly addressing Church traditions about Jesus’ siblings as the doctrine of the virgin birth clearly throws up some challenges. One response, and the one Ehrman supports, is that the virgin birth didn’t happen and that Jesus was the blood son of both Mary and Joseph and the full blood brother to his various siblings. Most Protestant Churches, accepting the virgin birth of Jesus, teach that whilst Joseph was not his father, he was the father to Mary’s other children. Jesus was therefore their half-brother. This view requires an acceptance that Mary did not remain a virgin for all her life, something that goes against the teaching of the Roman Catholic Church. To accommodate this view, one early Church tradition held that Jesus’ brothers and sisters were actually Joseph’s children from a previous marriage and so they were his step brothers and sisters not his blood siblings. This view remains the official position of the Eastern Orthodox Churches. It cannot be dismissed, but does rely on a rather energetic and virile Joseph who is depicted as an old man in early nativity scenes. Another tradition, which is now the position of the Roman Catholic Church, is that Jesus’ siblings were the children of neither Mary nor Joseph, but rather his cousins. There is a problem with this, though. The Greek word for ‘brother’ (adelphoi) is not the same as that for ‘cousin’ (anepsios) and so the Gospels are clearly referring to a ’brother.’

 

 

There is another equally interesting element to this examination of Jesus’ brothers and sisters. This is about Thomas, who is referred to in a number of apocryphal and Gnostic Gospels. In these, Thomas is referred to as Jesus’ twin, there being a play on his full name which is Thomas Judas (not that Judas) Didymus. Thomas is derived from an Aramaic word meaning twin and Didymus from its Greek equivalent. So, whilst we mainly know him as Thomas (Doubting Thomas), his actual name was Judas and the other two names were in effect nick names referring to him being Jesus’ twin. There are several Gnostic books and stories about Thomas, including around his time in India, which I hope to write about at some point in the future. I had thought of this Gnostic Thomas as being mythical in the vein of so many Gnostic stories. However, he is the same Thomas as the disciple ‘Doubting Thomas’ and he is identified in the New Testament as Jesus’ brother Judas. This is quite a revelation! 

 

 

A straight forward reading of the Gospels leads one to the conclusion that these ‘brothers’ of Jesus were most probably his actual siblings. Interestingly, neither Mark nor Paul, who refer to Jesus having brothers and sisters mention the virgin birth. The most natural assumption is that they thought Mary and Joseph were Jesus’ actual parents. Paul knew one of these actual brothers personally. As Ehrman says, it’s hard to get much closer to the historical Jesus than that.    

 

 

 

 

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