Tag Archives: Jesus Outside the New Testament: An Introduction to the Ancient Evidence

#4 Post of 2013 – When Did the Idea That Jesus Never Existed Originate?

Post Author: Bill Pratt 

Contemporary Jesus mythicists like Richard Carrier, Robert Price, and Earl Doherty have argued that Jesus, as a historical figure, never really existed. They, however, are hardly the first to make this claim.

Biblical scholar Robert Van Voorst, in his book Jesus Outside the New Testament: An Introduction to the Ancient Evidence, traces the historical development of Jesus mythicism from the 1700’s in Europe. It is fascinating to see how this movement began. According to Van Voorst,

At the end of the eighteenth century, some disciples of the radical English Deist Lord Bolingbroke began to spread the idea that Jesus had never existed. Voltaire, no friend of traditional Christianity, sharply rejected such conclusions, commenting that those who deny the existence of Jesus show themselves “more ingenious than learned.”

Nevertheless, in the 1790s a few of the more radical French Enlightenment thinkers wrote that Christianity and its Christ were myths. Constantin-François Volney and Charles François Dupuis published books promoting these arguments, saying that Christianity was an updated amalgamation of ancient Persian and Babylonian mythology, with Jesus a completely mythological figure.

These ideas, however, did not seem to gain much traction until another gentleman, Bruno Bauer, came on the scene in the mid-1800’s to further the arguments.

Bauer was the most incisive writer in the nineteenth century against the historicity of Jesus. In a series of books from 1840 to 1855, Bauer attacked the historical value of the Gospel of John and the Synoptics, arguing that they were purely inventions of their early second-century authors. As such, they give a good view of the life of the early church, but nothing about Jesus.

Bauer’s early writings tried to show that historical criticism could recover the main truth of the Bible from the mass of its historical difficulties: that human self-consciousness is divine, and the Absolute Spirit can become one with the human spirit. Bauer was the first systematically to argue that Jesus did not exist. Not only do the Gospels have no historical value, but all the letters written under the name of Paul, which could provide evidence for Jesus’existence, were much later fictions. Roman and Jewish witnesses to Jesus were late, secondary, or forged.

With these witnesses removed, the evidence for Jesus evaporated, and Jesus with it. He became the product, not the producer, of Christianity. Christianity and its Christ, Bauer argued, were born in Rome and Alexandria when adherents of Roman Stoicism, Greek Neo-Platonism and Judaism combined to form a new religion that needed a founder.

How can Bauer’s arguments be summarized? Van Voorst explains that

Bauer laid down the typical threefold argument that almost all subsequent deniers of the existence of Jesus were to follow (although not in direct dependence upon him). First, he denied the value of the New Testament, especially the Gospels and Paul’s letters, in establishing the existence of Jesus. Second, he argued that the lack of mention of Jesus in non-Christian writings of the first century shows that Jesus did not exist. Neither do the few mentions of Jesus by Roman writers in the early second century establish his existence. Third, he promoted the view that Christianity was syncretistic and mythical at its beginnings.

Obviously Bauer’s arguments were highly controversial. How did academia and church authorities respond to him?

Bauer’s views of Christian origins, including his arguments for the nonexistence of Jesus, were stoutly attacked by both academics and church authorities, and effectively refuted in the minds of most. They gained no lasting following or influence on subsequent scholarship, especially in the mainstream.

Perhaps Bauer’s most important legacy is indirectly related to his biblical scholarship. When the Prussian government removed him from his Berlin University post in 1839 for his views, this further radicalized one of his students, Karl Marx. Marx would incorporate Bauer’s ideas of the mythical origins of Jesus into his ideology, and official Soviet literature and other Communist propaganda later spread this claim.

The ideas of Bauer, however, have obviously not died. In the next post, we’ll look at the most prolific contemporary proponent of Jesus mythicism, a man named George A. Wells.

What Are We to Conclude from the New Testament Apocrypha?

Post Author: Bill Pratt 

In the last few blog posts, we have looked at just a few of the documents produced by Christians in the second century and beyond. What can we conclude, from the study of these documents, about their historical reliability?

Robert van Voorst, in his book Jesus Outside the New Testament: An Introduction to the Ancient Evidence, summarizes the situation:

[W]e have seen that the agrapha have a limited witness to the teaching of the historical Jesus. Although the results are disappointingly meager, some isolated sayings do surface as likely candidates for authenticity. We have also raised the methodological issue of circularity: what from the agrapha is deemed authentic rests on a prior determination of what is deemed authentic in the canonical Gospels, with the result that the authentic agrapha tend to duplicate the canonical sayings.

Van Voorst asks:

[D]o the second and third centuries yield valuable, independent, historical information about Jesus that enables us to revise significantly our understanding of him? Put another way, does the literature from this time period tell us anything historical about Jesus that we do not already know with some confidence from the canonical Gospels?

On the whole, probably not. Jesus was not an anti-Semite, as the Gospel of Peter implies. He was not a “talking head,” as the Gospel of Thomas portrays him. He certainly was not a libertine, as the Secret Gospel of Mark has been read to portray him. The sources of second-and third-century passion narratives were probably not sources for the canonical passion narratives.

If these documents give us little in terms of non-derivative historical information about Jesus, then what is their value?

[T]he primary historical value of these documents is rooted in their own time and space. The same is true, of course, of the canonical Gospels, but they stand much closer to the period of Jesus’ public ministry and were probably subject to criticism and correction by first-generation followers of Jesus.

Therefore, by commonly accepted rules of historical evidence, the canonical Gospels are of greater value in understanding the historical Jesus. The writings considered above give us a rich perspective on the diversity of Christianity after the New Testament era. These documents reflect the diverse views within Gnosticism, the depth of popularizing tendencies in emerging orthodoxy, and the distinctive witness of Jewish Christianity.

Where does current scholarship stand on the New Testament apocrypha?

Their relationship to the New Testament, although an important and enduring question, is now given less attention, while their role in reconstructing the religious and social history of second- and third-century Christianity is given much more attention.

The most important takeaway from this series of posts on the New  Testament apocrypha is that unless a document can be shown to have its source in the eyewitnesses of Jesus’s life, death, and resurrection, then we should be skeptical when snake oil salesmen make extravagant claims about Jesus based on these documents.

Might these documents have value in telling us how second century and following Christians thought about and practiced their faith? Of course. But that is a completely different matter. Read these documents devotionally if you like, but never confuse yourself into thinking that these documents can give you historical insights about Jesus on par with the New Testament canon. They were simply written too late.

What Is the Gospel of Peter?

Post Author: Bill Pratt 

During the second through ninth centuries, a large body of Christian literature was produced that claimed (falsely) to be produced by apostles of Jesus or those close to the apostles. These works, rejected by the Church as authentic, came to be known as the New Testament Apocrypha.

One of the most famous of these documents is the Gospel of Peter.  Biblical scholar Robert Van Voorst, in his book Jesus Outside the New Testament: An Introduction to the Ancient Evidence, describes how this document was found.

In 1886, a French archaeological team excavating the necropolis of an ancient Pachomian monastery about 250 miles south of Cairo found a small book in a monk’s grave. Pages two through ten of this book, which was dated to the seventh to ninth centuries, contain an account of the death and resurrection of Jesus which scholars soon concluded was part of the Gospel of Peter mentioned by early Church Fathers from the beginning of the third century. (No other parts of the Gospel of Peter were found.)

How was the Gospel of Peter received by scholars?

Scholarship at first paid close attention to the Gospel of Peter, but when the consensus developed that it was a popularizing and docetic adaptation of the canonical Gospels, especially Matthew, disinterest soon marginalized it. . . .

Although scholarship at first branded the Gospel of Peter docetic, recent study has seen it as equally at home in what came to be orthodox Christianity. The Gospel of Peter does indeed share several characteristics of orthodox Christian literature of the second century. It popularizes the traditions with which it works, as can be seen in both its style (the somewhat crude parataxis) and its content.

It emphasizes the miraculous more than the canonical Gospels do, making miracles into seemingly incontrovertible proofs of the faith. It has some strong connections (oral and written) with the canonical Gospels. Like the Acts of Pilate, the other main passion narrative of the time, the Gospel of Peter has a strong anti-Jewish polemic. This may be connected with its location in popular circles, where anti-Judaism was probably stronger than in official circles. Finally, the Gospel of Peter has a pronounced devotional element, especially seen in its consistent use of “the Lord” rather than “Jesus.”

A closer examination of the Gospel of Peter, though, also reveals the influence of gnosticism, a heterodox strain of Christianity present in the second century.

[T]he Gospel of Peter can also be read as at least incipiently Gnostic and as having an appeal to Gnostic Christians. The phrase “as though he had no pain” (4:10) would appeal to Gnostic Christians who downplayed or denied the suffering of Christ. The cry of dereliction, “My power, O power, you have forsaken me” (5:19), would also appeal to Gnostics who held that the divine element of Jesus left him shortly before the crucifixion. That the Gospel of Peter could appeal to and be used by both orthodox and Gnostic Christians should not surprise us; after all, both groups also used the Gospel of John and the letters of Paul.

Van Voorst then explains the controversy that currently surrounds the Gospel of Peter among biblical scholars.

The most controversial issue in current scholarship on the Gospel of Peter centers on whether an earlier form of its passion narrative was also the source of the passion narrative in the canonical Gospels. Helmut Koester and John Dominic Crossan are the two leading advocates of this position, but they have failed to convince the majority of scholars.

Crossan’s major statement of his hypothesis, in his book The Cross That Spoke; lacks the sort of detailed source-critical analysis that many scholars demand. Unless and until those who promote such a source hypothesis for the Gospel of Peter match the source-critical arguments of those who oppose it (e.g., Joel B. Green, Raymond E. Brown, Alan Kirk, and Susan B. Schaeffer), this fascinating hypothesis will continue to hold a minority position. The passion narrative of the Gospel of Peter fits well in the second century, and the argument against its containing a precanonical passion source seems at present much stronger than the argument in its favor.

If you would like to read the Gospel of Peter for yourself, you can find it at this link.

What Are the Protevangelium of James and the Infancy Story of Thomas?

Post Author: Bill Pratt 

During the second through ninth centuries, a large body of Christian literature was produced that claimed (falsely) to be produced by apostles of Jesus or those close to the apostles. These works, rejected by the Church as authentic, came to be known as the New Testament Apocrypha.

One of the most interesting genres of the Apocrypha is the “infancy gospel.” Biblical scholar Robert Van Voorst, in his book Jesus Outside the New Testament: An Introduction to the Ancient Evidence, describes two of the most studied “infancy gospels,” the Protevangelium of James and the Infancy Story of Thomas.

The Protevangelium of James, better known in the ancient world by the more accurate title “The Birth of Mary,” is a second century work by a Gentile Christian author. Widely popular in ancient and medieval Christianity for its piety and literary beauty, it survives in many manuscripts in the original Greek and subsequent versions in eight different languages.

It tells the story of Mary the mother of Jesus: her parents Joachim and Anne, her miraculous (but not yet “immaculate”) conception and birth, her childhood upbringing in the temple, her betrothal by lot to the aging widower Joseph and her continuing virginity, and finally her bearing of Jesus. The Protevangelium of James uses the infancy narratives of Matthew and Luke, extending and supplementing them for its own purposes.

The main theme of this work is the praise of virginity, important in the rising ascetic and monastic movements in Christianity. Because it focuses on the Virgin Mary, using legendary embellishments to tell her story, and draws what it says about the birth of Jesus from the canonical Gospels and popular legend, it has little or no significance for our study of the historical Jesus (emphasis added).

What about the Infancy Story of Thomas?

The Infancy Story of Thomas originated in the late second century, and relates the miracles of the child Jesus between the ages of five and twelve as told by Jesus’ disciple Thomas. It exists today in a Greek original and five other language versions.

Not as literarily or theologically sophisticated as the Protevangelium of James, the Infancy Story of Thomas features a crude emphasis on miracles. Jesus possesses even as a boy an omniscience and omnipotence that the canonical Gospels do not attribute to the adult Jesus during his ministry.

The boy Jesus does some good with his miraculous power, but he often uses it cruelly, as for example when he kills another boy who knocked against his shoulder (4:12), causes those who accuse him to go blind (5:1), and even issues a veiled threat to Joseph when he disciplines him (5:2). The contents of this document are so oriented to later popular piety that they offer no glimpse into first-century traditions about Jesus (emphasis added).

As Van Voorst notes, although these works may give us insight into what some second century Christians were thinking about, they are virtually worthless for telling us anything about the historical Jesus. They were written far too long after Jesus and his disciples lived.

What Are the Infancy Gospels?

Post Author: Bill Pratt 

During the second through ninth centuries, a large body of Christian literature was produced that claimed (falsely) to be produced by apostles of Jesus or those close to the apostles. These works, rejected by the Church as authentic, came to be known as the New Testament Apocrypha.

One of the most interesting genres of the Apocrypha is the “infancy gospel.” Biblical scholar Robert Van Voorst, in his book Jesus Outside the New Testament: An Introduction to the Ancient Evidence, explains just what these “infancy gospels” are.

The “Infancy Gospels” are so-called because they are stories of Jesus, albeit only of his early years. In the canonical Gospels, Mark has nothing about Jesus’ birth, Matthew and Luke each have two chapters as a prologue to Jesus’ ministry, but John also does not write about Jesus’ birth. To judge from these writings, and both orthodox-Christian and gnostic-Christian writings outside the NT, Christians were primarily interested in the words and deeds of the adult Jesus.

As time went on, beginning from the first century, many ancient Christians developed a stronger interest in Jesus’ birth and early years. Oral traditions arose to supplement Matthew and Luke, mostly with popular Christian imagination and with Greco-Roman and Indian legends about the birth of supernatural children.

Just what was the aim of these infancy gospels? Why did this genre develop during the centuries following Jesus’s life and death?

The aim of the infancy gospels was not just to fill in a gap in the Gospels. They have a wider doctrinal and apologetic motive: to define the Davidic descent of Jesus by way of Mary’s supposed Davidic descent, and to defend against rising Jewish attacks on the legitimacy of Jesus’ birth. The Infancy Gospels at their oral and written stages drew on Matthew and Luke, but went far beyond them. As Oscar Cullmann stated, “The tendency to draw upon extraneous legends, already discernible in the infancy narratives of Matthew and Luke, is greatly increased.”

In our next blog post, we’ll look at the two most well-known infancy gospels.

A Response to George A. Wells’ Claim that Jesus Never Existed – Part 2

Post Author: Bill Pratt 

According to biblical scholar Robert Van Voorst, in his book Jesus Outside the New Testament: An Introduction to the Ancient Evidence, George A. Wells is the “most prolific and persistent contemporary critic of the historicity of Jesus.”

In part 1, we reviewed Wells’ arguments. In part 2, we’ll look at Van Voorst’s summary of the response that scholarship has given to Wells’ hypotheses.

First, Wells misinterprets Paul’s relative silence about some details in the life of Jesus: the exact time of his life, the exact places of his ministry, that Pontius Pilate condemned him, and so forth. As every good student of history knows, it is wrong to suppose that what is unmentioned or undetailed did not exist. Arguments from silence about ancient times, here about the supposed lack of biblical or extrabiblical references to Jesus, are especially perilous. Moreover, we should not expect to find exact historical references in early Christian literature, which was not written for primarily historical purposes. Almost all readers of Paul assume on good evidence that Paul regards Jesus as a historical figure, not a mythical or mystical one.

Second, Wells argues that Christians invented the figure of Jesus when they wrote gospels outside Palestine around 100. Not only is this dating far too late for Mark (which was probably written around the year 70), Matthew, and Luke (both of which probably date to the 80s), it cannot explain why the Gospel references to details about Palestine are so plentiful and mostly accurate.

Third, Wells claims that the development of the Gospel traditions and historical difficulties within them show that Jesus did not exist. However, development does not necessarily mean wholesale invention, and difficulties do not prove nonexistence. (Some of Wells’s readers may get the impression that if there were no inconsistencies in the Gospels, he would seize on that as evidence of their falsehood!)

Fourth, Wells cannot explain to the satisfaction of historians why, if Christians invented the historical Jesus around the year 100, no pagans and Jews who opposed Christianity denied Jesus’ historicity or even questioned it.

Fifth, Wells and his predecessors have been far too skeptical about the value of non-Christian witnesses to Jesus, especially Tacitus and Josephus. They point to well-known text-critical and source-critical problems in these witnesses and argue that these problems rule out the entire value of these passages, ignoring the strong consensus that most of these passages are basically trustworthy.

Sixth, Wells and others seem to have advanced the nonhistoricity hypothesis not for objective reasons, but for highly tendentious, antireligious purposes. It has been a weapon of those who oppose the Christian faith in almost any form, from radical Deists, to Freethought advocates, to radical secular humanists and activist atheists like Madalyn Murray O’Hair. They have correctly assumed that to prove this hypothesis would sound the death knell of Christianity as we know it, but the theory remains unproven.

Finally, Wells and his predecessors have failed to advance other, credible hypotheses to account for the birth of Christianity and the fashioning of a historical Christ. The hypotheses they have advanced, based on an idiosyncratic understanding of mythology, have little independent corroborative evidence to commend them to others.

After this analysis of the grave weaknesses in Wells’ arguments, VanVoorst concludes with the following:

The nonhistoricity thesis has always been controversial, and it has consistently failed to convince scholars of many disciplines and religious creeds. Moreover, it has also consistently failed to convince many who for reasons of religious skepticism might have been expected to entertain it, from Voltaire to Bertrand Russell. Biblical scholars and classical historians now regard it as effectively refuted.

A Response to George A. Wells’ Arguments that Jesus Never Existed – Part 1

Post Author: Bill Pratt 

According to biblical scholar Robert Van Voorst, in his book Jesus Outside the New Testament: An Introduction to the Ancient Evidence, George A. Wells is the “most prolific and persistent contemporary critic of the historicity of Jesus.”

Van Voorst first lays out Wells’ arguments and then provides summarized responses from biblical scholars. What is Wells’ approach, then?

Wells draws ammunition from much recent Gospel scholarship, which has concluded that the Gospels were written more than forty years after Jesus by unknown authors who were not eyewitnesses to him. Wells argues that the Gospels contain much that is demonstrably legendary, and they are directed by theological (not historical) purposes.

Earlier parts of the New Testament, notably Paul’s authentic letters, presuppose that Jesus existed, but provide no detailed evidence that would make his existence credible. Therefore, Wells argues, we need independent corroboration from other, “objective” sources to affirm his existence.

He minutely examines these proposed other sources, from Tacitus to Talmud, and finds that they contain no independent traditions about Jesus. Therefore, they are not admissible, and the likelihood increases that Jesus did not exist. Wells explains Jesus as a mythical figure arising from Paul’s mysticism, for whom other late first-century Christians had to fabricate a life story.

What has been the reaction from other scholars to Wells?

R. Joseph Hoffmann is correct to call Wells “the most articulate contemporary defender of the non-historicity thesis.” Wells does write in a calm, scholarly tone, in contrast to many others who have advanced this hypothesis. However, Richard France’s conclusion on his method is also correct: “[Wells] always selects from the range of New Testament studies those extreme positions which best suit his thesis, and then weaves them together into a total account with which none of those from whom he quoted would agree.”

Van Voorst continues:

France’s conclusion is widely shared, as most New Testament scholars do not address Wells’s arguments at all, and those who do address them do not go into much depth. Although Wells has been probably the most able advocate of the nonhistoricity theory, he has not been persuasive and is now almost a lone voice for it. The theory of Jesus’ nonexistence is now effectively dead as a scholarly question.

Why has scholarship abandoned the questions that Wells has raised? What are the specific problems with his conclusions? That will be covered in part 2 of this series.