In my previous post, I parsed the belief that Jesus Christ is God into four supporting beliefs. The least controversial of these is that Jesus of Nazareth is a real historical figure, vice a mere myth or legend.
Some people, called Jesus mythicists, believe that the founder and focus of the Christian faith never even existed. They argue that the story of Jesus is pure myth and possesses no historical substance whatsoever.
There are many reasons why mythicists are wrong, which I will address in future posts. But, for now, I will just offer one simple argument that should suffice for any reasonable person to reject the mythicist position:
Nearly all scholars of ancient history—regardless of their religious beliefs—affirm that Jesus undeniably lived, preached, and died in 1st-century Judea. And they disregard mythicism as a fringe theory unworthy of serious consideration.
I say “nearly” all scholars because there are a few mythicists with relevant advanced degrees. But they don’t work in a college or university, nor are they taken seriously by those who do.
I’ll end this post here with a sample of quotes from currently living non-Christian scholars who affirm that Jesus is indeed a real historical figure:
“There is a consensus of sorts on the basic outline of Jesus’ life. Most scholars agree that Jesus was baptized by John, debated with fellow Jews on how best to live according to God’s will, engaged in healings and exorcisms, taught in parables, gathered male and female followers in Galilee, went to Jerusalem, and was crucified by Roman soldiers during the governorship of Pontius Pilate (26-36 CE).”
-Amy-Jill Levine, Jewish professor at Vanderbilt and Hartford. The Historical Jesus in Context, page 4.
“Serious historians of the early Christian movement—all of them—have spent many years preparing to be experts in their field. … It is striking that virtually everyone who has spent all the years needed to attain these qualifications is convinced that Jesus of Nazareth was a real historical figure. … It is fair to say that mythicists as a group, and as individuals, are not taken seriously by the vast majority of scholars in the fields of New Testament, early Christianity, ancient history, and theology. This is widely recognized, to their chagrin, by mythicists themselves.”
-Bart Ehrman, agnostic-atheist professor at UNC-Chapel Hill. Did Jesus Exist? The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth, pages 4-5, 20.
“By now almost everyone, Christian and non-Christian, is happy enough to refer to Jesus, the human, as a Jew…. Many, perhaps even most, New Testament scholars today argue that the most striking parts of the Jesus story … stem ex eventu (after the fact) from the earliest followers of Jesus, who developed these ideas in the wake of his death and their experiences of his resurrection appearances. … I have no doubt that he was a remarkable person….”
–Daniel Boyarin, Jewish professor at UC Berkeley. The Jewish Gospels: The Story of the Jewish Christ, introduction and epilogue.
“The majority of mythicist literature is composed of wild theories, which are poorly researched, historically inaccurate, and written with a sensationalist bent for popular audiences. … Whereas mythicists will accuse scholars of the historical Jesus of being apologists for the theology of historic Christianity, mythicists may in turn be accused of being apologists for a kind of dogmatic atheism. … Despite their hopes, the historical Jesus lives on.”
-Daniel N. Gullotta, atheist assistant professor at Ohio State. “On Richard Carrier’s Doubts,” Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus Vol. 15 Iss. 2-3, pages 314, 346.
“The ‘historical Jesus’ refers to the Jesus who historians reconstruct from the earliest accounts we have about him. The implication is the work we have to do as critical historians is to access the extent to which our earliest presentations of Jesus tell us something about the individual figure who was alive in Galilee and Judea during the first 3 decades of the first century. … As is well known, Jesus’ participation in incendiary activities was used by the authorities as the reason to arrest and crucify him. His maimed body hung on a cross under a sign displaying his charge, ‘Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews’; he was put to death as a deranged royal pretender. But this was not the end of the story, or the movement for that matter. Not long after Jesus’ martyred corpse was laid in a tomb by Joseph of Arimathea, key figures in the vanguard sincerely believed God had resurrected him back to life. … That Jesus’ associates and sympathizers reported seeing him after his death is one important reason for the survival of the movement.”
-James Crossley and Robert Myles, Marxist professors at Cambridge, MF Oslo, and University of Divinity. Jesus: A Life in Class Conflict, chapter 1.
“Jesus—a Jewish man from first-century Judea—was perhaps the most influential person in world history. His life and beliefs sparked a movement that influenced the course of global civilization, and his teachings gave rise to a faith currently practiced by over 2 billion people around the world. … Jesus’s actions and teachings didn’t emerge from a vacuum. Rather, they were the product of a fascinating dialogue with—and reaction to—the traditions, cultures, and historical developments of ancient Jewish beliefs.”
-Jodi Magness, Jewish professor at UNC-Chapel Hill. Jesus and His Jewish Influences, overview.
“Let’s get one thing straight: There is nigh universal consensus among biblical scholars—the authentic ones, anyway—that Jesus was, in fact, a real guy. They argue over the details, of course, as scholars are wont to do, but they’re pretty much all on the same page that Jesus walked the earth (if not the Sea of Galilee) in the 1st century CE.”
-Joel Baden, Jewish professor at Yale. “So-Called ‘Biblical Scholar’ Says Jesus a Made-Up Myth,” Daily Beast.
“Virtually no scholar working in the field of New Testament studies or early Christian history doubts the historical existence of Jesus of Nazareth. Indeed, the arguments of those that deny his historicity are usually judged by most working professionally in the discipline to be so weak or bizarre that they relegate them to footnotes or often ignore them completely. Works advocating such a position are often dismissed with amused contempt.”
-Justin J. Meggitt, (faith unknown) professor at Cambridge. “More Ingenious Than Learned? Examining the Quest for the Non-Historical Jesus,” New Testament Studies, Vol 65.
“The Isma’ili Muslim philosophers of the tenth and eleventh century were able to achieve a remarkable reconciliation and rapprochement between the Qur’anic and Christian views of the crucifixion. … All of them are in agreement in affirming the historicity of the crucifixion, confirming that it was indeed Jesus himself who was crucified and not a substitute as maintained by many other Qur’anic commentators. … Denying the historicity of the crucifixion is to contradict a historical fact established by the testimony of two major religious communities, the Jews and the Christians. … If the Qur’an does not actually deny the historical crucifixion of Jesus, then Muslims can join Christians in recognizing the historical event, although they may not attribute to it the same theological significance.”
-Khalil Andani, Muslim assistant professor at Augustana College. “They Killed Him Not: The Crucifixion in Shi’a Isma’ili Islam,” The Matheson Trust.
“The heart of what we know past doubting to be historically true [is] that Jesus was executed by Rome as an insurrectionist…”
-Paula Fredriksen, Jewish professor at Boston and Hebrew Universities. Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews: A Jewish Life and the Emergence of Christianity, page 11.
“I have come to regard [the mythicist] thesis as fatally flawed and subject to a variety of objections…. Jesus ‘the Nazarene’ did not originate as a myth or a story without historical coordinates, but as a teacher in first century Roman Palestine. … The attempt of ‘mythicists’ to show that Jesus did not exist … has been largely incoherent, insufficiently scrupulous of historical detail, and based on improbable, bead-strung analogies. … The complex of material that survives and tells us the story of Christian beginnings points to [the] conclusion that Jesus existed, when and where the gospels say he did. … I think the basic factuality of Jesus is undeniable unless we (a) do not understand the complexity of the literature and its context, or impose false assumptions and poor methods on it; (b) are heavily influenced by conspiracy theories that … are even more incredible than the story they are trying to debunk; or (c) are trying merely to be outrageous. … The idea that Jesus never existed requires the concoction of a myth more incredible than anything to be found in the Bible.”
–R. Joseph Hoffmann, atheist professor in Uzbekistan. “The Jesus Process: A Consultation on the Historical Jesus,” The New Oxonian.
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