20 Answers
The Real Jesus Trent Horn
All booklets are published thanks to the generous support of the members of the Catholic Truth Society
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CATHOLIC TRUTH SOCIETY publishers to the holy see
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All rights reserved. This edition © Copyright 2015 by The Incorporated Catholic Truth Society, 40-46 Harleyford Road London SE11 5AY Tel: 020 7640 0042 Fax: 020 7640 0046. Originally published as 20 Answers The Real Jesus. © Copyright 2014 Catholic Answers, Inc. 2020 Gillespie Way, El Cajon, California 92020.
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ISBN 978 1 78469 048 9
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Introduction In 1813, Thomas Jefferson composed The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth (later known as the Jefferson Bible) by using a razor to cut out sections of the New Testament that he felt were the only reliable descriptions of the real Jesus’s life. Jefferson was a deist - he believed that God doesn’t intervene in the world - so parts of the New Testament about Jesus’s claim to be God’s son, and the vindication of that claim through miracles, ended up on a literal “cutting room floor”. What remained was the story of a wise moral teacher who was tragically killed and then buried in a tomb. Jefferson would not be the only explorer in what would later be called “the quest for the historical Jesus.” This quest has taken many forms over the past two centuries. In our age we see it every Christmas and Easter in lurid tabloid headlines promising the “shocking truth” about “the Jesus we never knew.” There are even whole groups that exist solely to extract the real story of Jesus from the Jesus of religious myth. One such group is the Jesus Seminar, a collection of sceptical scholars who publish an annotated collection of the Gospels. This collection includes the recorded sayings of Jesus printed in different colours based on the probability (in their opinion) that the
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historical Jesus ever really uttered them. (Their conclusion? Less than twenty percent of Jesus’s words make the cut.) Other groups of sceptics, called “mythicists”, go even further, claiming that Jesus never existed at all: he was just a myth invented by early Christians. If that were true, then Christianity would be a waste of time and, as Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15:17, our faith would be in vain and we would still be in our sins. Is the Christ of faith a mere fantasy? Or is he the same person as the Jewish carpenter who lived in Palestine two thousand years ago? This is an essential question. As Pope Benedict XVI wrote in his book Jesus of Nazareth, “For biblical faith the historicity - and thus the ‘facticity’ - of the Incarnation is indispensable. Faith demands that we consider Jesus as approachable by historical research.”1 Since faith and reason cannot contradict one another, there must be rational, evidence-based answers to pressing questions about Jesus of Nazareth that do not contradict the “Christ of faith” who is worshipped by billions of Christians around the world. In this booklet we will look at some of those answers. 1. Is there any evidence that Jesus actually existed as a historical person? To judge by some very recent controversies, you might think that scholars are bitterly divided over this question. But in reality, that Jesus really existed is a mundane
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and rarely contested fact of history. As Bart Ehrman, an agnostic scholar who is widely regarded as an expert on New Testament documents, writes, “The view that Jesus existed is held by virtually every expert on the planet.”2 When sceptics ask, “Is there evidence for Jesus?” they usually mean “Is there non-biblical evidence for Jesus?” Their question betrays the hidden assumption that the Bible does not count as “historical evidence.” But why should we rule out the Bible as evidence that Jesus existed? Some critics will say that the Bible is biased text that contains stories of miracles, which means it’s unreliable as history. But such criteria would make it virtually impossible to do any ancient history, since ancient historians were also biased, and many of them (such as Tacitus or Herodotus) also recorded miracle stories. Yet modern historians don’t discard ancient accounts of history, but investigate them and critically examine their historical content. And even if sceptics were determined to dismiss the historical reliability of the Gospels, we could use the principles of historical inquiry to come to the conclusion that Jesus existed by examining another biblical source: the letters of St Paul. Sometime in the early AD 30s, Paul underwent a conversion: from persecutor of the fledgeling Church to an apostle who went on to write several letters defending and clarifying Christian theology. His authorship of major New Testament epistles such as Romans, Corinthians, and Galatians is well established even among sceptical
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scholars. In those letters Paul makes it clear that the Jesus he believed in was a man who was descended from David (Rm 1:1-3), was born of a woman (Ga 4:4), had a last supper with his disciples (1 Co 11:26), was crucified and rose from the dead (1 Co 15:3-7). Paul was able to corroborate this information because he met the disciples of Jesus; he recorded that meeting in Galatians 1:18-19. In fact, the Greek word that Paul uses to describe this discussion with the apostles about Jesus is historesai, from which we get the word “history”. In that passage, Paul describes a personal meeting he had in Jerusalem with Peter and James, the latter of whom he described as “the brother of the Lord.” If Jesus had been a mere legend, then surely one of his alleged relatives, not to mention his chief apostle, would have known it. Some of those who deny that Jesus existed claim that “brother of the Lord” does not mean that James was Jesus’s flesh-and-blood relative,* but rather a spiritual “brother” just as today Christians will call each other “brother” and “sister”. But if that is what Paul meant, then why isn’t Peter also described that way? Moreover, why is James called the brother of the Lord as opposed to a brother? Other critics claim that James was really the leader of a pre-existing Jewish monastic group called “the brothers of the Lord.”3 But we have no corroborating evidence that such a group existed in Jerusalem at that time. *
The Greek word can mean brother, cousin, or another close relative.
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Instead, a fair reading of Paul’s letters shows that he believed Jesus was a real person and since he met the apostles who actually knew Jesus during his ministry, we have a great piece of evidence for the existence of Jesus. 2. But is there any evidence outside of the Bible that Jesus was real? The first-century Jewish historian Josephus mentions Jesus twice in his monumental history of the Jewish people called Antiquities of the Jews. The shorter reference is in Book 20, where Josephus describes the stoning of lawbreakers in AD 62. One of the criminals is described as “the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ, whose name was James.” What makes this passage authentic is that it lacks Christian terms like “the Lord”, it fits into the context of this section of the Antiquities, and it’s found in every manuscript copy of the Antiquities. According to New Testament scholar Robert Van Voorst, “The overwhelming majority of scholars hold that the words ‘brother of Jesus, who was called Christ,’ are authentic, as is the entire passage in which it is found.”4 The longer passage in Book 18 is called the Testimonium Flavianum. Scholars are divided on this passage because although it does mention Jesus, it contains phrases that were almost certainly added by later Christian copyists. These include phrases that would never have been used by a Jew like Josephus, such as, “He was the Christ” or
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“he appeared alive again on the third day.” Mythicists maintain that the entire passage is a forgery because it is out of context and interrupts Josephus’s previous narrative. But this view neglects the fact that writers in the ancient world did not use footnotes, and would often wander into unrelated topics in their writings. According to New Testament scholar James D.G. Dunn, the passage has clearly been subject to Christian additions, but there are also words Christians would never use of Jesus. These include calling Jesus “a wise man” or referring to themselves as a “tribe” - which is strong evidence Josephus originally wrote something very close to the following: At this time there appeared Jesus, a wise man. For he was a doer of startling deeds, a teacher of people who received the truth with pleasure. And he gained a following both among many Jews and among many of Greek origin. And when Pilate, because of an accusation made by the leading men among us, condemned him to the cross, those who had loved him previously did not cease to do so. And up until this very day the tribe of Christians (named after him) has not died out.5 The Roman historian Tacitus also records in his Annals that after the great fire in Rome, Emperor Nero fastened the blame on a despised group of people called Christians. Tacitus identifies this group thusly: “Christus, the founder of the name, was put to death by Pontius Pilate, procurator
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of Judea in the reign of Tiberius.” This corroborates the Gospel data about the basic circumstances of Jesus’s life and death. Those who deny that Jesus existed, called “mythicists”, usually claim that the first Christians believed Jesus was just a cosmic saviour figure who communicated to believers through visions. Later Christians then added the apocryphal details of Jesus’s life (such as his execution under Pontius Pilate) in order to ground him in first-century Palestine. However, if the mythicist theory is true, then at some point in Christian history there would had to have been a break or outright conflict between new converts who believed in a real Jesus and the older establishment view that Jesus never actually existed. The curious thing about this theory is that the early Christian leaders, known as Church Fathers, loved to stamp out heresy. They wrote massive treatises criticizing heretics, and yet in all of their writings, the heresy that Jesus never existed is never mentioned.6 In fact, no one in the entire history of Christianity (not even early pagan critics like Celsus or Lucian) seriously argued for a mythic Jesus until the eighteenth century. Heresies of every kind plagued the Church for centuries, yet mythicism is simply unheard of. This makes it more likely that Christians always believed in an historical Jesus because such a person really did exist.
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3. If Jesus really existed and performed miracles, then why didn’t more ancient historians write about him? I’ve heard that there were dozens of ancient historians who lived shortly after Jesus and none of them wrote about Jesus being a real person. In their book The Jesus Mysteries, Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy list twenty-four ancient authors who lived within one hundred years of Jesus, and make that very claim.7 This style of argument actually goes back to a list of forty-two authors devised by the sceptic John Remsburg in 1909. The list contains some impressive names: Philo-Judaeus, Seneca, Pliny the Elder, Suetonius, Juvena, Martial, Persius, Plutarch, Justus of Tiberius, Apollonius, Quintilian, Lucanus, Epictetus, Silius Italicus, Statius, Ptolemy, Hermogones, Valerius Maximus, Arrian, Petronius, Dion Pruseus Paterculus, Appian, Theon of Smyrna, Phlegon, Pompon Mela, Quintius Curtius, Lucian, Pausanias, Valerius Flaccus, Florus Lucius, Favorinus, Phaedrus, Damis, Aulus Gellius, Columella, Dio Chrysostom, Lysias, Appion of Alexandria. Although this list can seem daunting, when each author is examined individually we find that Remsburg’s “argument from silence” is faulty, because sometimes silence is justified. For example, many of the authors on these lists didn’t even write about history at all. Pausanias
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and Pompon Mela wrote Greek and Roman geographies. Ptolemy, Columella, and Pliny the Elder were scientists who recorded information about the natural world. Theon of Smyrna, Favorinus, and Gellius wrote reflections on philosophy, and Theon’s only surviving work is entitled On Mathematics Useful for the Understanding of Plato. Other writers, such as Hermogenes, Quintilian, Apollonius Dyscolus, and Dio Chrysostom focused on practical subjects like speech-making. And Columella limited his writing to the subject of trees that existed within the Roman empire! The ones who were historians often did not even write about the time period in which Jesus lived. Statius, Flaccus, and Appolonius the Sophist only wrote about ancient Greek subjects. Other writers, such as Arrian, were devoted to writing about world conqueror and larger-thanlife legend Alexander the Great - who lived four hundred years before Christ. What about authors whose subject might have reasonably included mention of Jesus? Atheist David Fitzgerald notes, for example, that the first-century writer Justus does not mention Jesus in his History of the Jewish Kings.8 And yet, although Jesus might at first seem like a related topic for this writer, a faithful Jew like Justus would not have written about a disgraced and executed criminal. Expecting Justus to mention Jesus in a history of Jewish kings would be like expecting a faithful Catholic
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author to mention some obscure cult leader in his history of the popes. More generally, that many ancient authors did not mention Jesus simply underscores how little Jesus meant to the ancient world. As scholar John Meier put it, from the perspective of ancient people, Jesus was a “marginal Jew” who was executed in a backwater Roman province. As a result, most ancient historians would not have written about a man who would only later be known as the object of worship in a persecuted cult movement. Finally, it’s important to note that the only written sources we have for the existence of Pontius Pilate are Josephus, Tacitus, and the Jewish historian Philo. If we only have these few sources to account for the administrator of an entire Roman province, then why should we expect there to be a wealth of literature about an obscure itinerant preacher like Jesus? 4. Can we trust the Gospel accounts of Jesus’s life? I heard they were written decades or even centuries later by anonymous authors. When most people think of evidence for the existence of Jesus, they usually think of the four canonical Gospels: Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. It’s true that the names of the Gospel authors were added to the manuscripts later in accordance with Church tradition. For example, the second-century Church Father Papias wrote, “Mark,
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being the recorder of Peter, wrote accurately but not in order whatever he [Peter] remembered of the things either said or done by the Lord‌Matthew composed the logia [sayings] in Hebrew style; but each recorded them as he was able.�9 But many documents in the ancient world that modern critics consider to be trustworthy are also technically anonymous. For example, the works of Tacitus do not bear his name but very few historians have ever questioned that Tacitus wrote the Annals. We know Tacitus is the author of that work simply because other ancient writers, such as Tertullian, identify him as the author. St Augustine dealt with this argument against the Gospels in the fourth century, in his reply to Faustus. He convincingly argued that just as the authorship of pagan works is confirmed by a long succession of testimony, the authorship of the New Testament could be confirmed in the same way.10 Plus, the fact that the Gospels were written only decades after the events they describe makes them much closer to their source material then many other works of ancient history, giving us more reason to trust them. For example, the biographies of Alexander the Great and Siddhartha Gautama (or the Buddha) were written nearly four hundred years after the death of their subjects.11 Even if the Gospels were written as late as AD 70-100 (dates typically given by sceptical scholars), or forty to seventy years after the events they describe, that is well within the range for
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the apostles to accurately remember what happened and for other eyewitnesses to support or challenge what was written down. Just as we have confidence in the ability of Vietnam and World War II veterans to remember events that happened forty to seventy years ago, we should have confidence that eyewitnesses to Jesus could accurately remember what happened during his earthly ministry. In fact, we should have more confidence, since ancient cultures - lacking computers, printing presses, or even ready paper - were proficient at preserving accurate and detailed oral traditions. Another important fact to keep in mind is that Jesus was a travelling preacher who used memorable examples and catchy phrases in order to teach the crowds. This would have given the disciples many opportunities to remember what Jesus taught and did during his three-year ministry. In addition, there is good evidence that the Gospels were written even earlier than the dates claimed by sceptical scholars. The book of Acts ends with Paul under house arrest and fails to record either his execution in AD 64 or the fall of Jerusalem in 70. Therefore, it is very likely that Acts was written before those events, and if that is the case, then the Gospel of Luke would have been written earlier still, since Acts is the sequel to Luke’s Gospel. This would place the Gospels within thirty years of the events they describe. There are still other details in the Gospels that point toward their authenticity.12 For example, they contain
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many confusing and often embarrassing elements that a fabricator would have removed. These include the apostles’ cowardly and stupid behaviour (and Jesus’s rebuking them for it), Jesus’s hard sayings, and the overall high ethical demands of the Gospel. Historians call this the criterion of embarrassment, and it makes these portions of the New Testament very reliable. Furthermore, if the Gospels had been invented by the early Church, then we would expect to find Jesus being used as a ventriloquist dummy on behalf of the factions within the early Christian community, which was divided over issues such as the eating of meat sacrificed to idols. Since we never read Jesus speaking on the many issues that later affected the early Church, we can have increased confidence in their early dating, and in taking the Gospel accounts not as purely theological treatises but as bioi, or ancient biography.13 Finally, if someone wanted to write fictional literature about Jesus that would be widely read, you would think that person would claim his Gospel was written by Peter, the chief apostle, or Mary, Jesus’s mother (indeed, there are many apocryphal, or false, Gospels that bear those titles). But who are Mark and Luke? It seems more likely that the Gospel of Mark and the Gospel of Luke have those names because those were just the names of the people who wrote them. Even the Gospel of Matthew seems unlikely to be a forgery, because Matthew had been a tax collector and would have been among the lowliest of the apostles.14
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As the Greco-Roman Historian A.N. Sherwin White writes, “It is astonishing that while Greco-Roman historians have been growing in confidence, the twentieth century study of the Gospel narratives, starting from no less promising material, has taken so gloomy a turn in the development of form criticism.” When it comes to the standards of ancient history, the Gospels are among our best and most reliable sources for the life of Christ.15 5. We don’t even have the original manuscripts of the Gospels, so how can we know that the words and deeds of Jesus were not made up or changed by various scribes who copied the New Testament? Some people question the validity of the New Testament accounts of Jesus because they are very old, and because we don’t have any of the original manuscripts but only copies of them. This is true, but irrelevant, because there are practically no original copies of any ancient manuscript of any kind. For example, the hundreds of copies of Plato, Aristotle, and Thucydides (considered the ancient world’s most reliable historian) that we possess were written over a thousand years after their originals, yet hardly anyone doubts that the texts we now possess correspond to what those authors originally wrote. In fact, we only have one manuscript copy of the first six chapters of Tacitus’s Annals, our main primary source about Roman
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history, and it was written nearly seven hundred years after the original copy. In comparison to these works, the New Testament has abundant manuscript evidence for its authenticity. There are currently over 25,000 whole and partial copies of ancient New Testament manuscripts in existence - more than any other manuscript in the ancient world, and probably more than all other ancient Greek manuscripts put together. This large number of manuscripts, as well as the communities that passed on the New Testament in oral form, means that no one person was ever in a position to destroy or alter all of the records of the life of Christ. According to biblical scholar F.F. Bruce, “There is no body of ancient literature in the world which enjoys such a wealth of good textual attestation as the New Testament.”16 Some critics like to compare the copying of biblical manuscripts to the children’s game of Telephone. In this game, children stand in a line and whisper a sentence to each other one at a time; through errors and embellishments, the sentence is often humorously different by the time it reaches the last child. But is this how the Bible was transmitted to us? Not really. The game of Telephone depends on people quickly and haphazardly passing information to each other so that funny errors are created. In contrast, ancient copyists - who weren’t entrusted with transmitting nonsense phrases but with the solemn task of preserving the revealed word
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of God - worked very hard to avoid any errors, double and triple-checking the previous copyist’s work. When errors did occur, they were usually minor (such as a misspelled name) and thanks to the large number of manuscripts that could be checked, it was easy to discover and correct afterward. In addition, we’re able to check the accuracy of manuscript copies by comparing them to how the early Church Fathers quoted Scripture, in the thousands of pages of commentary they wrote on the Bible. Even Bart Ehrman, who in his book Misquoting Jesus promotes the idea that we can’t trust New Testament documents in their current form, concedes, Besides textual evidence derived from New Testament Greek manuscripts and from early versions, the textual critic compares numerous scriptural quotations used in commentaries, sermons, and other treatises written by early Church Fathers. Indeed, so extensive are these citations that if all other sources for our knowledge of the text of the New Testament were destroyed, they would be sufficient alone for the reconstruction of practically the entire New Testament.17 In conclusion, if sceptics want to say that the Bible can’t be trusted because we don’t have the original manuscripts, then they must be prepared to throw out all of ancient history, too. However, since they are probably unwilling to do the latter, then they should have the academic integrity to not subject the New Testament to undeserved criticism.
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