Historicity of Jesus

This article discusses whether Jesus, the central figure of Christianity, actually existed as a historical figure. For the historical setting in which Jesus is said to have lived, see Cultural and historical background of Jesus; for historical perspectives on Jesus' life, assuming he existed, see Historical Jesus; for discussion of the theory that Jesus is entirely mythical, see Jesus-Myth.

The historicity of Jesus (i.e., his existence as an actual historical figure), is accepted as a theological axiom by three world religions, Christianity, Islam and the Bahá'í Faith, based on their respective scriptures. Nevertheless, there are no extant contemporaneous documents that make mention of Jesus. The earliest known sources are Christian writings - the New Testament - which, according to modern historians, were written several decades after he is said to have died. However, while Christianity and the Bahá'í Faith also consider Jesus to be the Christ (Messiah) and Son of God, and Islam views him as a prophet, secular historians and followers of most other world religions (including Judaism) tend to regard him as an ordinary human, and some dispute whether he ever existed.

Many scholars see the Biblical narratives of Jesus' life as theological or mythologized accounts of a historical figure's life, aimed at winning new converts rather than at being a neutral historical record. The difficulty of distinguishing which parts of Jesus' life may be historical and which may be unhistorical is one of the main obstacles for Biblical historians. Even accurate accounts of events in Jesus' life may have changed in subtle ways during re-tellings. Others may have been exaggerated on purpose, and some may even have been totally invented, possibly reinterpreted from older stories.

The "mythological school" sees Jesus as an interpolation into one of the older mystery religions with dying/reborn gods such as Osiris-Dionysus. This theory is commonly known as the Jesus Myth. Others see the apparent relationship between Gnosticism and Christianity as being based on an historical figure acting as the focal point for the linking of Jewish religious traditions and political history with a mystery religion, a syncretism—ultimately more popular among Gentiles than Jews—which would become Christianity.

Earliest known sources

The earliest known sources are:

Christian writings

Jesus features prominently throughout the New Testament and other early Christian writings.

The most detailed sources of historical information about Jesus in the Bible are contained within the Gospels but recent critics have asserted that these weren't written until between 68 and 100. However, some also claim that evidence for a historical Jesus is provided by the Epistles, especially those by Paul in the latter half of the 1st century.

Jesus is also a large factor in New Testament apocrypha, works that some early Christians, notably in the Council of Laodicea, chose to exclude from the canon, based on judgments regarding whether or not they were inspired by God. Again, the most detailed extra-biblical information is contained within apocryphal Gospels, but the contents of other books has also been presented as evidence.

The Gospels

The Gospel of Mark was, according to most scholars, written in the 60's or slightly after the year 70. Matthew and Luke were then probably written ten to twenty years after Mark. John was then probably composed around the years 90-100. (Brown 7) They do not explicitly claim to be written by first-hand witnesses (though a tradition, often disputed by scholars, has the first written by a scribe to the apostle Peter, the second by the apostle Matthew, and the third by a close disciple of the apostle Paul), and thus these may be subject to the distortions any second- or third-hand account would tend to have. The Gospel of John, on the other hand, has a strong tradition of apostolic authorship; however, many dispute this authorship for a number of reasons. Others have argued that the information provided about specific events demonstrates that the Gospels must have been written by people who had contact with Jesus; however, use of multiple textual sources or fabrication of some details could also account for the specificity of the accounts.

Some historians believe that the texts on which the Gospels were based were written within living memory of Jesus' presumed lifetime. They therefore accept that the accounts of the life of Jesus in the Gospels provide valid evidence for the historical existence of Jesus, and a partially reliable account of his life and death.

Believers in Biblical inerrancy, such as Christian fundamentalists, reject all claims that the Gospels are anything less than the literal truth regarding Jesus' life. The Catholic Church likewise upheld at the Second Vatican Council the historicity of the Gospels in the document Dei Verbum. Nevertheless, subjecting the Bible to the same level of source criticism that secular historical texts receive raises questions of historiography.

A significant factor in considering the historicity of the Gospels is the Synoptic problem: in some areas, the first three Gospels seem to contradict each other, while in other areas they are so close in wording that one could almost be a direct copy of the other. The most common theories explaining these discrepancies are that either some of the Gospels drew partly from a common source, or that the Gospels were based, directly or indirectly, on one another.

Although the traditional stance of the early Church was that the Gospel of Matthew was the first to be written, the Gospel of Mark is now considered by almost all Biblical historians to be the earliest of the four (see Markan priority). These scholars date it before AD 70 ^[1], fairly close to the early oral preaching about Jesus' life. Similar preaching may also have survived in part through the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, as it is believed that those two Gospels both based much of their accounts on Mark and on another, unknown and possibly even earlier, document—a hypothetical "sayings Gospel" dubbed the Q document by New Testament scholars.

However, these late dates are hardly late at all compared to other ancient records that historians regard as credible. For instance, "the two earliest biographies of Alexander the Great were written by Arrian and Plutarch more than four hundred years after Alexander's death in 323 B.C, yet historians consider them to be generally trustworthy. Yes, legendary material about Alexander did develop over time, but it was only in the centuries after these two writers. In other words, the first five hundred years kept Alexander's story pretty much intact; legendary material began to emerge over the next five hundred years. So whether the gospels were written sixty years or thirty years after the life of Jesus, the amount of time is negligible by comparison. It's almost a nonissue." (The Case For Christ by Lee Strobel, p41; The Historical Reliability of the Gospels by Craig Blomberg)

Beyond this, it is possible that the gospels were written sooner than the estimate cited above (which dates Mark around A.D. 70, Matthew and Luke around A.D. 80 and John around A.D. 90). The book of Acts "was written by Luke. Acts ends apparently unfinished--Paul is a central figure of the book, and he's under house arrest in Rome. With that the book abruptly halts. What happens to Paul? We don't find out from Acts... because the book was written before Paul was put to death... That means Acts cannot be dated any later than A.D. 62. Having established that, we can then move backward from there. Since Acts is the second of a two-part work, we know the first part-- the gospel of Luke-- must have been written earlier than that. And since Luke incorporates parts of the gospel of Mark, that means Mark is even earlier. If you allow maybe a year for each of those, you end up with Mark written no later than about A.D 60, maybe even the late 50s. If Jesus was put to death in A.D. 30 or 33, we're talking about a maximum gap of thirty years or so." (ibid, 41-2) However, many scholars do not accept the premise that Acts was written contemporaneously with Paul's ministry. Assuming Luke wrote Acts before Paul's death is based on an argument from silence, as Luke not listing Paul's death does not prove he is unaware of it.

Further, from a historical perspective, (as opposed to a presentist one based on our contemporary standards) "the definition of memorization was more flexible back then. In studies of cultures with oral traditions, there was freedom to vary how much of the story was told on any given occasion-- what was included, what was left out, what was paraphrased, what was explained, and so forth... in the ancient Middle East, anywhere from ten to forty percent of any given retelling of sacred tradition could vary from one occasion to the next. However, there were always fixed points that were unalterable, and the community had the right to intervene and correct the storyteller if he erred on those important aspects of the story." And "ten to forty percent is pretty consistently the amount of variation among the synoptics on any given passage." Thus, allowing for "the elements...of paraphrase, of abridgment, of explanatory additions, of selection, of omission-- the gospels are extremely consistent with each other by ancient standards which are the only standards by which it's fair to judge them." (The Case For Christ by Lee Strobel, p54-7; The Historical Reliability of the Gospels by Craig Blomberg)

The Epistles

Paul, according to both the Acts of the Apostles and his own letters, had never met Jesus; he knew him only from his visions and his conversations with other Christians. Nevertheless, his epistles, being written over a period from 55 to 65, are often consulted for evidence regarding the historicity of Jesus. However, all but 7 of his epistles are regarded by many modern scholars as having not genuinely been authored by him.

In his Epistle to the Galatians, Paul claims he went to Jerusalem three years after his vision of Jesus on the road to Damascus. He had traveled in Arabia and back to Damascus before going to see Peter, who Paul calls an apostle of Jesus, and James, "the Lord's brother", believed by many to be James the Just. (1:18-20) Paul then says that fourteen years later he traveled back to Jerusalem, at which time he held a meeting with the Jerusalem Christians. Believed by most scholars to be the Council of Jerusalem, this was a debate with Paul arguing against the need for circumcision to be a member of the group. Paul says he won the argument and that Peter, James, and John agreed that he should be the preacher to the Gentiles. Peter later visited Paul at Antioch and associated with the Gentiles, but when certain friends of James showed up they seem to have discouraged Peter from associating with the Gentiles, and Paul rebuked Peter for this. (2) Galatians is one of the undisputed letters of Paul, so if one believes him and accepts these events as historical, then this is the earliest textual evidence for the existence of Jesus. Having a "brother" and "apostles" who are arguing with Paul over what Jesus' real intentions were during his life is impossible if he never existed. Acts of the Apostles, written at least twenty but probably thirty or forty years after Galatians, gives a more detailed account of the Council.

The significance of non-Pauline authorship varies depending on which epistle is considered, but it is notable that the 7 uncontested epistles appear to some scholars to present a more docetic and gnostic view than the far more orthodox epistles which constitute those in dispute, particularly more so than the pastorals. Princeton University's Professor of Religion, Elaine Pagels, a specialist in the study of gnosticism has in consequence proposed that Paul was in fact a gnostic, in her book The Gnostic Paul; a view which implies that the Pastorals, and the other disputed Pauline epistles, were created by the church to bring Paul's followers into the fold and to simultaneously subtly counter his arguments. Pagels' arguments have not found widespread acceptance in academia.

The epistles that the Bible itself attributes to other individuals (Peter, James, John, and Jude) are generally considered to be written at a much later date, and hence are rarely considered in this context.

Non-canonical texts

Gospel of Thomas

The Gospel of Thomas is a collection of logia, a "sayings gospel", which consists entirely of phrases and sayings attributed to Jesus, much like the theoretical Q document to which it may be related. This text is believed by some scholars to possibly predate the canonical Gospels, but other scholars date the Gospel of Thomas as late as 150, citing possible gnostic influences in it and the lack of any quotations from it in any contemporary writings, and believe that it suffers from a paucity of manuscripts. [2][3]

In addition, some scholars see the lack of mention of a resurrection of Jesus within the Gospel as significant. On the other hand, many textual scholars have argued that the Gospel of Mark may originally have ended without mentioning the appearances of the resurrected Jesus, particularly given that the most ancient manuscripts of Mark 16 do not present the ending used in modern translations. [4]

Gnostic texts

Some Gnostic texts also provide fairly early accounts of Jesus' life, and these can be considered valuable as they never became part of the canon and hence never had to adhere to Christian orthodoxy. However, Gnostic texts tend to deliberately be more allegorical than historical, so the search for evidence of Jesus' life centers more around other early writings that give more of an impression of being based on real events. The Gnostics opinion of Jesus varied from viewing him as docetic to complete myth, in all cases treating him as someone to allegorically attribute gnostic teachings to, his resurrection being regarded an allegory for enlightenment, in which all can take part.

Non-Christian writings

Of the non-Christian commentators, very few are known to have written anything at all about Jesus or Christianity. No archival or archaeological evidence referring to him exists from the period when he is said to have lived, even though the writings of several contemporary authors have survived.

Most writers of the time whose works have survived had little interest in the Middle East in general, and Judea in particular, and so would have had little reason to write about a local religious leader who preached there for a handful of years. The absence of any mention of Jesus by writers such as Philo, Seneca the Elder, and Plutarch seems to indicate that if Jesus had existed, he must have been a relatively minor figure since these writers mention many people who are of much lesser historical significance.

Nonetheless, the work of four major non-Christian historians contain passages possibly relating to Jesus: Pliny the Younger, Josephus, Suetonius, and Tacitus. But these are generally references to early Christians rather than a historical Jesus. Pliny the Younger condemned Christians as easily led fools, as did the rhetorician Lucian some years later. There is an obscure reference to a Jewish leader called "Chrestus" in Suetonius. Surviving manuscripts of Tacitus (in a passage in the Annals written c. 115) summarize popular opinion about Jesus, but do not demonstrate access to any independent source of information. Of the four, Josephus' writings are the most interesting to scholars dealing with the historicity of Jesus.

However, there was no mention of these passages by early Christian writers, and in the case of Tacitus nothing was noted about Christianity until the translation by Sulpicius Severus. The most substantial non-Christian source is Josephus. Both John the Baptist and James the Just are also documented in Josephus, although some dispute whether the reference to James as Jesus Christ's brother is original or a later interpolation by a Christian scribe. The only record that unambiguously mentions Jesus himself is that of Josephus in a passage known as the Testimonium Flavianum. However, its authenticity is still greatly debated as well, since it seems odd that Josephus (who was a life-long Jew) would have called Jesus the Messiah.

Josephus

Flavius Josephus (c. AD 37–c.100) is quoted by many scholars as providing evidence concerning Jesus. In Antiquities of the Jews, written in 93, Jesus is mentioned twice, most notably in the Testimonium Flavianum. However, John Dominic Crossan and K. H. Rengstorff have noted that the passage has many internal indicators that seem to be inconsistent with the rest of Josephus' writing and with what is known about Josephus, leading them to think that part or all of the passage may have been forged.

A 10th century manuscript has been discovered which reports the existence of an alternate version of the passage. No explanation has been provided as to how this text came to be and why it differs from the other texts. Some scholars consider this text to also be in error, since the author, Agapius of Hierapolis, seems to have quoted it from memory.^{[citation needed]}

The growing consensus among scholars is that the passage is not entirely forged, but it is difficult to be sure what the original passage said.^{[citation needed]}

Pliny the Younger

Around 112, in a correspondence between Emperor Trajan and the provincial governor of Pontus and Bithynia, Pliny the Younger, a reference is made to Christians. In it, Pliny asks for the advice on how to handle Christians who refused to worship the emperor, but instead worshiped "Christus" as a god. However, Pliny simply recounts what the beliefs of the arrested were; he does not mention the name "Jesus". Pliny's words are

"Christians... asserted, however, that the sum and substance of their fault or error had been that they were accustomed to meet on a fixed day before dawn and sing responsively a hymn to Christ as to a god, and to bind themselves by oath, not to some crime, but not to commit fraud, theft, or adultery, not falsify their trust, nor to refuse to return a trust when called upon to do so. " (Pliny to Trajan, Letters 10.96–97)

Suetonius

Gaius Suetonius (c.69–140) wrote the following in 112 as part of his biography of Emperor Claudius (12 Caesars): Iudaeos, impulsore Chresto, assidue tumultuantes Roma expulit ("As the Jews were making constant disturbances at the instigation of Chrestus, he expelled them from Rome.").

Some have interpreted Chrestus as a misspelling of Christus, and thus as a possible reference to Jesus. However, Suetonius implies that the person in question was in Rome in 54, making the likelihood that he is writing about Jesus very slim.

The term Chrestus also appears in some later texts applied to Jesus, indicating that such a spelling error is not unthinkable. However, Chrestus is itself a common name in Rome, meaning good or useful. It was a particularly common name for slaves, and, indeed, the passage deals with a slave revolt. As such, this passage is not held by the vast majority of scholars to be a reference to Jesus.

Tacitus

Tacitus wrote two paragraphs on the subject of Jesus and Christianity in 116. The first states that Christians existed in Rome in Nero's time (AD 54-68). The second states that Christianity arose in Rome and Judea, and that 'Christ' was sent to death by 'the procurator Pontius Pilate'. Tacitus' description of Christianity is decidedly negative, as he calls it a "dangerous superstition" and "something raw and shameful," which makes it relatively improbable that the text was interpolated by later Christians.

Tacitus simply refers to 'Christ' - the Greek translation of the Hebrew word “Messiah”, rather than the name "Jesus", and he refers to Pontius Pilate as a "procurator", a specific post that differs from the one that the Gospels imply that he held - prefect or governor. In this instance the Gospel account is supported by archaeology, since a surviving inscription states that Pilate was prefect.

Some scholars suggest that the second paragraph is merely describing Christian beliefs that were uncontroversial (i.e. that a cult leader was put to death), and that Tacitus thus had no reason not to assume as fact, even without any evidence beyond that spiritual belief. Others, including Karl Adam, argue that, as an enemy of the Christians and as a historian, Tacitus would have investigated the claim about Jesus' execution before writing it.

Jewish records

There are very few historical documents from the late Second Temple era. Aside from the works by Josephus, the oldest text from that period, the Mishnah is a law code, and not a record of legal proceedings, nor a general history.

Jewish records of the period, both oral and written, were compiled into the Talmud, a collection of legal debates and stories so large that it fills over 30 volumes. There is no mention of anyone called "Jesus" (in Heb. Yehoshuah) within it, the closest match being a person (or persons) called Yeshu from the Babylonian Talmud. However, the description of Yeshu does not match the biblical accounts of Jesus, and the name itself is usually considered to be a derogatory acronym for anyone (possibly, but not necessarily, Christians) attempting to convert Jews from Judaism, standing for yemach shemo vezichro ("erased be his name and memory"). Additionally, the term does not occur in the Jerusalem version of the text, which would be expected to mention Jesus more often than the Babylonian version, rather than less.

However, the lack of references to Jesus in Talmudic writings may simply be due to Christianity being a minor, negligible organization when most of the Talmud was created, in addition to the Talmud being more concerned with teachings and law than with recording history.

Jesus as historical figure

While some historians consider Jesus to largely be a mythological and legendary entity, others—generally, though not always, Christians—consider accounts of Jesus' life to be largely, or even entirely, historical and factual in nature. Some of these historians have also suggested that one treat the existence of Jesus and the accuracy of the New Testament as distinct questions.

In The Historical Figure of Jesus, E.P. Sanders presents Alexander the Great as paradigmatic—the available sources tell us much about his deeds, but nothing about his thoughts. Sanders considers the quest for the "historical Jesus" to be much closer to a search for historical details on Alexander than to those historical figures with adequate documentation. For this reason, he concludes, "the sources for Jesus are better, however, than those that deal with Alexander" and "the superiority of evidence for Jesus is seen when we ask what he thought" (1993:3).

Paul Barnett has also pointed out that "scholars of ancient history have always recognized the "subjectivity" factor in their available sources" and that "they have so few sources available compared to their modern counterparts that they will gladly seize whatever scraps of information that are at hand". He notes that modern history and ancient history are two separate disciplines, with differing methods of analysis and interpretation. ^[5].

Consequently, scholars like Sanders, Geza Vermes, Paula Fredriksen, John Dominic Crossan and John Meier argue that although many readers are accustomed to thinking of Jesus solely as a theological figure, whose existence is a matter only of religious debate, the source documents on which several modern source hypotheses argue the four canonical Gospel accounts are based were written within living memory of Jesus' lifetime, and therefore provide a basis for the study of the "historical" Jesus. These historians draw on the canonical Gospel accounts, but also on other historical sources and archaeological evidence, to reconstruct as best they can the life of Jesus in his historical and cultural context.

The "Pilate Inscription" as evidence of the Roman official who ordered Jesus' execution

File:Pilate-inscription 03.jpg

Limestone block discovered in 1961 with Pilate's tribute in Latin to Tiberius. The word "Pilatus" can be clearly seen.

Just as there has been a debate over the existence of a historical Jesus, so also, the historical existence of his mother, Mary, his disciples, the witnesses/apostles and other characters in the Gospel accounts of his life have been debated. For centuries, there has been discussion on the historicity of Pontius Pilate, the Roman official who was supposed to have ordered the execution of Jesus. As Pontius Pilate is not mentioned in official imperial records from his time, some scholars have maintained that his existence is, at best, a legend, and at worse, one more "forged fact". Likewise, there has been an ongoing debate over an alleged Pilate's rank. Critics have debated what sort of rank a Roman official would have had to order the execution of the Jewish Jesus the Nazarene. Was he a Roman prefect or procurator?

In 1961, new evidence for Pilate's existence, was unearthed by an archeological dig in Israel. A block of limestone was found in the Roman theatre at Caesarea Palaestina, the capital of the province of Iudaea, bearing a damaged dedication by Pilate of a Tiberieum. This dedication states that he was prefectus (usually seen as praefectus), that is, governor, of Iudaea. The word Tiberieum is otherwise unknown: some scholars speculate that it was some kind of structure, perhaps a temple, built to honor the emperor Tiberius. The inscription is currently housed in the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, where its Inventory number is AE 1963 no. 104. It has come to be known as the Pilate Inscription.

Many supporters for the existence of a historical Jesus point to the discovery of the so-called "Pilate Inscription" as one more bit of ancillary evidence that supports the New Testament account of the historical Jesus. They say that the same critics that argued against the existence of Jesus, argued against the existence of the characters that supported him, and that the "Pilate Inscription" supports the existence of one more historically significant New Testament character in the life of an actual historical Jesus.

The idea that Jesus never existed

File:CopticJesusWithGrapes.gif

This 6th- or 7th-century Egyptian depiction of Jesus includes grapes. Many historians believe that contemporary Pagan myths had several things in common with the story of Jesus, including the virgin birth, the concept of godmen and sacrifice.

The existence of Jesus as an actual historical figure has been questioned. The Second Epistle of John warns that "many deceivers are entered into the world, who confess not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh," which populist writers Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy have cited to support the view that such doubts date back to very early Christianity; established critical scholarship maintains that the passage refers to docetism, which critical scholarship considers unrelated to the question of Jesus' existence. The views of scholars who entirely reject Jesus' historicity are summarized in the chapter on Jesus in Will Durant's Caesar and Christ. In support of this claim, they cite a complete lack of eyewitness and contemporary, or near-contemporary accounts; the great number of contemporary and near-contemporary works which they feel should, could, or might have mentioned Jesus but didn't; a lack of detailed accounts of Jesus' life from sources other than Jesus' followers; nonexistent physical evidence; and alleged similarities between early Christian writings and many contemporary mythological accounts. Perhaps the most prolific of these Biblical scholars disputing the historical existence of Jesus is the professor of German, George Albert Wells. In more recent times, it has been advocated by the scholars Earl Doherty and Robert M. Price.

Jesus and syncretism

The existence of Gnosticism and various mystery religions with similarities to Christianity has led the mythological school to suggest that Christianity was strongly influenced by these, essentially building a mystery religion on the foundation of a Judaic tradition (syncretism). This would have included linking the two through Jesus' attempts to fulfill Old Testament prophecies. More generally, it would have included mythologizing a Jewish leader into a Son of God, and a representative of wisdom and knowledge.

Jesus as Sol-Invictus, the image is found in the oldest parts of the centre of Roman catholicism - the grottoes of the Vatican

Some of the most well-known early adherents of the mythological school include Voltaire, Friedrich Engels, Karl Kautsky (Whose 1908 work 'Foundations of Christianity' [6] remains one of the important works in this respect) and David Strauss (1808-1874), who was the most intellectually influential early mythologist. Many of these authors did not absolutely deny Jesus's existence, but they believed the miraculous aspects of the Gospel accounts to be mythical and that Jesus' life story had been heavily manipulated to fit Messianic prophesy. Both Strauss and Kautsky argue that very little can be deduced from the surviving documents concerning the historical Jesus. According to the Slovenian scholar Anton Strle, Nietzsche lost his faith in Christianity as a result of reading Strauss' book Leben Jesu. Another important mythologist was Paul-Louis Couchoud (1879-1959), a philosopher and a consistent defender of the thesis that Jesus did not exist.

Another integral part of this view is the idea the early Christians were docetic - that Christ was a spiritual being rather than flesh and blood. Professor of German G.A. Wells says regarding the New Testament:

"It is not just that the early documents are silent about so much of Jesus that came to be recorded in the gospels, but that they view him in a substantially different way—as a basically supernatural personage only obscurely on Earth as a man at some unspecified period in the past, 'emptied' then of all his supernatural attributes (Phillipians 2:7Template:Bibleverse with invalid book), and certainly not a worker of prodigious miracles which made him famous throughout 'all Syria' (Matthew 4:24). I have argued that there is good reason to believe that the Jesus of Paul was constructed largely from musing and reflecting on a supernatural 'Wisdom' figure, amply documented in the earlier Jewish literature, who sought an abode on Earth, but was there rejected, rather than from information concerning a recently deceased historical individual. The influence of the Wisdom literature is undeniable; only assessment of what it amounted to still divides opinion."

During the first and second centuries BC, Hellenic philosophy merged with various minor deities to produce mystery religions, in which a Life-death-rebirth deity was used as an allegory for the search for wisdom. Such religions quickly replaced or absorbed local religions and became the dominant beliefs in many places throughout the Mediterranean, with the resulting variations of the central god-man figure becoming known as Osiris-Dionysus.

Some scholars, notably Martin A. Larson, believe that Jesus existed, but that Christianity is based on the soteriology of Osiris and the ethics and eschatology of other beliefs, while the Messianic concept is a uniquely Jewish addition to the development of Christianity. More recently, writer Timothy Freke and scholar of mystery religions Peter Gandy, who wrote The Jesus Mysteries, think that Jesus did not exist as a historical figure but was in fact one of the forms of Osiris-Dionysus. CNN's David Dodson, in a review of their book, however, noted that "while the authors discuss many examples of elements of Osiris/Dionysus in the Jesus story, they virtually ignore the more direct ties to Jewish tradition and prophecy. This oversight undermines the credibility of many of their arguments, and could have the tendency to mislead the novice reader in this subject" [7]. On the other hand, the Canberra Times said

"The theory is not new. For two centuries at least, scholars have been aware of the intriguing parallels between the accounts of Jesus' life and that of preceding and contemporaneous figures such as Osiris, Dionysus, and Mithras. What is new is the powerful scholarship brought to the issue by authors Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy in The Jesus Mysteries, just published in Australia. The result, which draws strongly on the Gnostic gospels discovered at Nag Hammadi in 1945, is so persuasive that it is doubtful whether theological scholarship will ever be the same."

A recent book, The Pagan Christ: Recovering the Lost Light (2004), by journalist-priest Tom Harpur, discusses another possible origin, based partly on the writings of Alvin Boyd Kuhn and Egyptologist Gerald Massey. Massey's The Historical Jesus and Mythical Christ: A Lecture, published in 1880, explores the similarity between what has been written about Jesus and what has been written about Jehoshua Ben-Pandira, who "may have been born about the year 120 B.C." From page 2 of the lecture: "... according to the Babylonian Gemara to the Mishna of Tract 'Shabbath', this Jehoshua, the son of Pandira and Stada, was stoned to death as a wizard, in the city of Lud, or Lydda, and afterwards crucified by being hanged on a tree, on the eve of the Passover. ..." See Yeshu.

Notes

^ , The New Oxford Annotated Bible with the Apocrypha, ISBN 0195283562, New Testament page 47 (Introduction to the Gospel of Mark)
^ Paul Barnett, "Is the New Testament History?", p.1.

References

Adam, Karl (1933). Jesus Christus. Augsburg: Haas.
Adam, Karl (1934). The Son of God (English ed.). London: Sheed and Ward.
Brown, Raymond E. (1997) An Introduction to the New Testament. Doubleday ISBN 0385247672
Daniel Boyarin (2004). Border Lines. The Partition of Judaeo-Christianity. University of Pennsylvania Press.
Doherty, Earl (1999). The Jesus Puzzle. Did Christianity Begin with a Mythical Christ? : Challenging the Existence of an Historical Jesus. ISBN 0968601405
Drews, Arthur & Burns, C. Deslisle (1998). The Christ Myth (Westminster College-Oxford Classics in the Study of Religion). ISBN 1573921904
Durant, Will (1944). Caesar and Christ, Simon & Schuster, ISBN 0671115006
Ellegård, Alvar Jesus – One Hundred Years Before Christ: A Study In Creative Mythology, (London 1999).
France, R.T. (2001). The Evidence for Jesus. Hodder & Stoughton.
Freke, Timothy & Gandy, Peter. The Jesus Mysteries - was the original Jesus a pagan god? ISBN 0722536771
George, Augustin & Grelot, Pierre (Eds.) (1992). Introducción Crítica al Nuevo Testamento. Herder. ISBN 8425412773
Habermas, Gary R. (1996). The Historical Jesus: Ancient Evidence for the Life of Christ ISBN 0899007325
Leidner, Harold (2000). The Fabrication of the Christ Myth. ISBN 0967790107
Meier, John P. (1991). A Marginal Jew. Anchor Bible.
Mendenhall, George E. (2001). Ancient Israel's Faith and History: An Introduction to the Bible in Context. ISBN 0-66422313-3
Messori, Vittorio (1977). Jesus hypotheses. St Paul Publications. ISBN 0854391541
New Oxford Annotated Bible with the Apocrypha, New Revised Standard Version. (1991) New York, Oxford University Press. ISBN 0195283562
Price, Robert M. (2000). Deconstructing Jesus. Prometheus Books. ISBN 1573927589
Voorst, Robert Van (2000). Jesus Outside of the New Testament. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.
Wells, George A. (1988). The Historical Evidence for Jesus. Prometheus Books. ISBN 087975429X
Wells, George A. (1998). The Jesus Myth. ISBN 0812693922
Wells, George A. (2004). Can We Trust the New Testament?: Thoughts on the Reliability of Early Christian Testimony. ISBN 0812695674
Wilson, Ian (2000). Jesus: The Evidence (1st ed.). Regnery Publishing.

External links

Christian Evidences: Problems with the Denial of Christ's Claims, a Christian rebuttal of claims of Jesus' historical nonexistence.
Extrabiblical, Non-Christian Witnesses to Jesus before 200 a.d., an argument from a Christian point of view.
From Jesus to Christ, a PBS site.
Historical Evidence for the Resurrection of Christ, a Christian discussion on the reliability of textual evidence.
The Historical Jesus and Mythical Christ by Gerald Massey
Historicity Of Jesus FAQ (1994), a critical look at textual evidence.
Jesus: A Historical Reconstruction
The New Testament Documents: Are They Reliable?, by F.F. Bruce.
The Origins of Christianity, a discussion of potential syncretisms with other religions.
The Quest of the Historical Jesus: A Critical Study of its Progress from Reimarus to Wrede, by Albert Schweitzer
Scholarly opinions on the Jesus Myth, by Christopher Price
Quest for the Historical Jesus
The Jesus Puzzle by Earl Doherty
The Homeric Epics and the Gospel of Mark A review of Dennis R. MacDonald's book by Richard Carrier
Debunking the "Da Vinci Code" Debunkers and the Jesus Myth Overview of the case against a historical Jesus, including many pictures

For factual evidence on Jesus Christ, read Lee Strobel's book, "The Case For Christ".