Jesus in History

Recently I read Bart D. Ehrman's book, Did Jesus Exist, subtitled The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth. Ehrman is professor of religious studies at the University of North Carolina, and describes himself as a religious agnostic.

His approach to the question of Jesus' existence is as a professional  historian. What are the sources that talk about Jesus, are they verifiable, immediate, and disinterested?  For that matter, how do we know anything that supposedly happened in years gone by really did occur? Is it less reasonable to think Jesus existed than to believe Julius Caesar walked the earth, or Alexander the Great, or even further back in time, Hammurabi, or Ramses, or any of the other pharaohs? Do people who doubt Jesus was a flesh and blood man also question the existence of King David, or any other figure of antiquity?

The argument that there was a Jesus, viewed from a skeptical historical viewpoint relies on the multiplicity of the sources concerning him, at least one from a (more or less) Jewish writer, Josephus. Though Ehrman thinks Josephus' short paragraph about Jesus was doctored by Christians hundreds of years after it was first written, to affirm Jesus as the messiah, he does accept the bare bones of it as a recognition that there was a man named Jesus who lived in Galilee, was a wandering apocalyptic preacher, and who was executed by the Romans at the behest of the Jewish governing council, the Sanhedrin.

Reinforcing this, Ehrman points to Paul, who wrote that he tried to suppress the proto-Christian followers of Jesus, until his own conversion, which Ehrman says took place about 32 or 33 in the Common Era, that is only two or three years after Jesus' death. Paul claims he went to Jerusalem very shortly after that and spent two weeks with Cephus, meaning Peter, and James, the brother of Jesus. There his belief in Jesus as the messiah was confirmed.

Paul's writings constitute a substantial part of Ehrman's evidence about Jesus. Remember, he says, the epistles of Paul pre-date the gospels. They were written by a man who knew some of the followers of Jesus personally. (One  biographer of Paul claims the  "apostle of the gentiles" was a Pharisee, and might have been in Jerusalem at the time Jesus was put through his agonizing death. Perhaps he even witnessed it from afar.)

Another proof comes from the almost incontrovertible evidence that Pontius Pilate was a real person, and was the Roman prelate in Judea at the time Jesus was there. This lends at least some credence to the gospel stories.

Professor Ehrman spends considerable time in the book delving into the source documents for the gospel of Mark, the "Q" document and others now lost. He also cites the recent discoveries of other fragmentary gospels or collected sayings of Jesus which were discarded, or suppressed, by the early Christian leaders.

A last indication that Jesus lived is, ironically, his death. The Jewish vision of a messiah was as both a purifying prophet and a worldly king and conqueror who would chase away the unjust - that is the Romans -  and would institute a new heavenly kingdom on earth. It hardly was seen as a man executed for alleged blasphemy. Crucifixion was a disgrace. To believe the messiah had died on a cross was a radical departure from the accepted idea of what he would be like. Nobody would make up such a thing.

I'm convinced. I personally never doubted that there was a Jesus. As my skepticism has grown through the years, I have come to dismiss the miracles, exorcisms and cures of the gospels, but the charismatic apocalyptic preacher Ehrman describes sounds very believable to  me.

By the way, since it's Christmas season, Ehrman rains on our parade by saying he completely rejects the gospel accounts of Jesus' birth in Matthew and Luke. No choir of angels, no shepherds keeping watch, no kings/wisemen/magi, no virgin birth, no birth in Bethlehem for that matter. Ehrman says there is no evidence that Caesar Augustus ever conducted a census, therefore no reason for Joseph and Mary to go there.

In a previous post, I mentioned The Cherry Tree Carol, the first lines of which say, "When Joseph was an old man, an old man was he, he married virgin Mary, the queen of Galilee." Joseph's supposed greater age is used to explain the biblical references to Jesus' brothers as children from an earlier marriage. The other explanation is that in those days of extended families, cousins were called brothers. Neither argument seems very persuasive to me.