Sources of Information About Jesus

Some years ago, just before Christmas day, a TV documentary series on the life of Christ was screened. Far from promoting the ‘Christ’ part of Christmas, the show claimed to cast ‘serious doubts’ over the reliability of our knowledge about Jesus of Nazareth. One of the people interviewed on the program, a professor from a large German university, even stated that “Jesus probably never existed at all”. The man sounded smart—German accents tend to do that—and he was a professor after all, so I was left with some questions: Is the Christian faith built on an invention or a myth? What and how do we know about Christ? Indeed, did he exist at all?

Only much later did I learn that the sceptical professor in the documentary was actually a professor of modern German literature. He was not a historian at all. He had a fancy title and was no doubt a highly intelligent man, but he was about as ‘expert’ on the question of the life of Christ as a professor of music would be on the existence of black holes. It turns out that the producers of the TV program had searched long and hard for a historian who would go on camera and deny the reality of Jesus’ existence. When they couldn’t find one they resorted to an ‘expert’ from another field, without letting the audience in on the secret. Since then I have discovered that finding a professional historian who denies the first century existence of Jesus Christ is about as difficult as finding a professional scientist who rejects the existence of DNA.

So then, historically speaking, how and what do we really know about the man Jesus Christ? Many, many books have been written on this topic so the following pages are offered only as a summary of some of the relevant points.

Our knowledge of the life of Jesus Christ derives mostly from ancient documents of two types: those written by non-Christians in the period shortly after Christ and those written by Christians. Of course, there are many more Christian texts than non-Christian ones, but this is to be expected, since obviously Christians were highly motivated to preserve the facts about their leader. To offer a modem parallel, I imagine more financial documents have been produced by economists this century than by rock musicians, and certainly more lyrics have been written by pop artists than by financiers!

Non-Christian Documents

Nevertheless, the few documents we have from non-Christian sources in the ancient period provide some interesting pieces of information about the life of Jesus. In fact, it may surprise you to know that the broad outline of Christ’s life can be known from these references, without even turning to the Christian documents. Let me quote just four of the six references from antiquity.

Flavius Josephus, a Jewish historian writing around 80 AD, mentions Jesus on two separate occasions in his books. In his multi-volume work The Antiquities of the Jews (Book 18, chapter three) he writes about Jesus in the following way:

Now about this time there lived a wise man called Jesus… Indeed, he was a man who performed startling feats. He was a teacher of the people… and he drew in many from among both the Jews and the Greeks. And those who were devoted to him from the start did not cease their devotion even after Governor Pilate, on the basis of charges laid against him by our leaders, condemned him to a cross. For [it is reported] he appeared to them alive again… And the group of ‘Christians’, named after him, has still not disappeared to this day.

A little later in the work (Book 20, chapter nine), Josephus recounts the execution of one of Jesus’ brothers (yes, Jesus had several younger brothers and sisters), and in so doing, again makes passing reference to Jesus:

But this younger Ananus. who, as we have told you already, took the high priesthood, was a bold man in his temper, and very insolent.., he assembled the Sanhedrin of judges, and brought before them the brother of Jesus whom they call the Christ, whose name was James, and some others, and when he had formed an accusation against them as breakers of the law, he delivered them to be stoned to death…

This text is fascinating for historians of early Christianity. The New Testament (the second half of the Bible) recounts a little about Jesus’ brother, James. We know, for instance, that although he started out a sceptic about his famous brother’s career, he ended up being one of the key early Christian leaders, claiming even to be an eyewitness to Jesus’ resurrection. Our biblical information about James, however, cuts off with him still alive and well in Jerusalem, actively proclaiming the significance of Jesus. What Josephus writes completes the picture. Obviously, James’ efforts to promote the message about his brother ran foul of the authorities and, just like his brother 25 years before, James found himself paying the supreme price of his own life.

Cornelius Tacitus is regarded as ancient Rome’s greatest historian. His Annals of Imperial Rome, written shortly after Josephus (in 115 AD), are the basis of much of our most accurate information about Emperors Tiberius, Claudius, Nero, and many of the other famous figures of the period. In recounting the persecutions against the early Christians, Tacitus records the following about Jesus:

Christians derived their name from a man called Christ, who, during the reign of Emperor Tiberius had been executed by sentence of the procurator Pontius Pilate. The deadly superstition, thus checked for the moment, broke out afresh not only in Judaea, the first source of the evil, but also in the City of Rome, where all things hideous and shameful from every part of the world meet and become popular.
Cornelius Tacitus, Annals of Imperial Rome (25.44)

As you can tell from his comments, Tacitus was not exactly a ‘fan’ of Christ or of the early Christians. Yet as a matter of historical accuracy Tacitus feels it necessary to include a reference to Jesus and confirm some details about his execution—where, when and by whom. Though Tacitus provides no new information about Christ, it does confirm from the Roman side some of the details we already knew. It also shows that the events of Jesus’ life had a significant enough impact around the Mediterranean to gain the attention (and disdain) of an elite Roman intellectual on the other side of the Empire. That a wandering Jewish peasant-teacher from Palestine rated a mention at all in Tacitus’ Annals of Imperial Rome is surprising.

Lastly, another small piece of information deriving from the second century comes from a Jewish religious document called the Talmud. Although Jesus himself had been a popular Jewish teacher a century or so before, as time passed a number of very unflattering opinions were being formed about him:

Jesus of Nazareth was hung up on the day of preparation for the Passover… because he practiced sorcery and he led Israel astray.
Baraitha Sanhedrin 43

It is difficult to know exactly what to make of this statement, since it is clearly a piece of official anti-Christian propaganda from a century or more after Jesus. Nevertheless, it does confirm that Jewish people of the second century thought Jesus to have been a real figure who had had a dramatic effect on many of their Palestinian Jewish forebears (‘he lead Israel astray’). It also provides historians with another piece of corroborating evidence to support the wide-ranging claim that Jesus had performed unusual (miraculous?) feats. For it is curious that the statement makes no attempt to deny the rumoured exploits of Jesus. Instead, conceding that Jesus had inexplicable abilities, the document tries to explain these away as ‘sorcery’, something Jewish people were forbidden to be involved with.

If we piece together all the information contained in the above references it is fascinating that just about the whole story of Jesus can be uncovered, without even opening a Bible. We learn:

• when he lived
• where he lived
• that he was an influential teacher
• that he engaged in activities thought to be supernatural
• that he was executed; when and by whom
• that he had a brother called James who was also executed
• that people claimed to have seen him raised from the dead
• that he was widely known by the prestigious title ‘the Christ’

This is a lot of material to glean from documents composed by people who were anything but supporters of the Christian faith.

None of these texts actually ‘proves’ Christianity. Statements made by non-Christians are no more trustworthy than those by Christians. From the historian’s point of view, we must look at non-Christian accounts with the same healthy suspicion we apply to biblical documents. Nevertheless, the interesting thing is that whatever the sources, biases and (mis)information lying behind each of these documents, taken as a whole, they substantially corroborate the picture of Jesus presented in the earliest Christian literature. Indeed, one of Australia’s most eminent ancient historians, Emeritus Professor F. A. Judge of Macquark University, Sydney, has commented:

An ancient historian has no problem seeing the phenomenon of Jesus as an historical one. His many surprising aspects only help anchor him in history. Myth or legend would have created a more predictable figure. The writings that sprang up about Jesus also reveal to us a movement of thought and an experience of life so unusual that something much more substantial than the imagination is needed to explain it.
(Quoted in P. Barnett, The Truth about Jesus, Aquila, Sydney, 1994)

Christian Documents

Although the non-Christian references to Jesus provide a historical “grounding” for the life of Jesus, they do not provide us with the detail we need to assess the importance of Jesus for our lives. So, for instance, although they tell us that he taught, they say nothing about what he taught; again, although they inform us that he died, they reveal nothing of the significance Jesus himself placed on his death, and so on. To know these things we need to turn to some other, even more ancient, documents.

Our detailed knowledge of Christ comes from the biographies of his life written in the middle to late first century AD. Since Jesus died around 33AD, this is a time gap of only 30 - 60 years after the events. This makes these documents among the most chronologically proximate historical texts from the ancient world (that is, written close in time to the events they describe). Tacitus, for instance, wrote about events that had occurred over a century earlier, and yet his writings are still rightly regarded by all scholars as superb historical sources.

These biographies of Jesus are called ‘Gospels’ (meaning literally ‘grand-news’) and there are four of them. Originally, they circulated somewhat independently of each other, but within about 50 years or so they were brought together, along with a collection of letters written by early Christian leaders, to form what would eventually be called the New Testament, that is, the second section of the Bible.

The four biographies, or Gospels, are titled after the name of their probable author. They each have their own particular ‘angle’ on Jesus:

THE GOSPEL OF MATTHEW is famous for its lengthy record of Jesus’ great ethical teachings. Many of those great sayings you may have heard - “turn the other cheek”; “blessed are the peacemakers”; “our Father who art in Heaven” - come from Matthew’s biography.

THE GOSPEL OF MARK is famous for its short, punchy style. It is a brilliant read if you’ve only got about an hour to discover the meaning of the world’s most influential man.

THE GOSPEL OF LUKE is famous for its emphasis on Jesus’ friendship with “non-religious” people. Here we read about Jesus criticising the hypocritical religious hierarchy of his day and yet welcoming prostitutes, criminals and greedy businessmen.

THE GOSPEL OF JOHN is famous for its profound insight into the nature of Jesus. Although the story is the same, the angle at which John comes at Jesus is quite amazing.

Of course being written by Christians raises several important questions: Can we trust what we read there? Are they reliable? Are they biased? These are good questions to ask and they are addressed here. However the best way to weigh the issues relating to the trustworthiness of the original biographies is to read the books themselves and decide for yourself.

Reproduced With Permission from:
John Dickson, “Simply Christianity” (Matthias Media and John Dickson 2001)