To say that there arenÂ’t historical references to Jesus is false. Here are some to add to your collection:
First, we have statements from non-Christian sources. These sources were from “Pagan” sources, and not the happy neo-pagan kind that exists today. Many of them just didn’t understand the Hebrew religion because it contrasted there poly-theistic beliefs, so they met “Christians” with distrust. So these non-Christian sources might not be very “Christian friendly,” yet they do unwittingly point to the existence of “Christ.”
Tacitus (A.D. 54-119) states: the Founder of the Christian religion, a deadly superstition in the eyes of the Romans, had been put to death by the procurator Pontius Pilate under the reign of Tiberius; that His religion, though suppressed for a time, broke forth again not only throughout Judea where it had originated, but even in Rome, the conflux of all the streams of wickness and shamelessness; furthermore, that Nero had diverted from himself the suspicion of the burning of Rome by charging the Christians with the crime; that these latter were not guilty of arson, though they deserved their fate on account of their universal misanthropy.
Tacitus, moreover, describes some of the horrible torments to which Nero subjected the Christians (Ann., XV, xliv). The Roman writer confounds the Christians with the Jews, considering them as a especially abject Jewish sect; how little he investigated the historical truth of even the Jewish records may be inferred from the credulity with which he accepted the absurd legends and calumnies about the origin of he Hebrew people (Hist., V, iii, iv). Despite all of this, it is estimated that he lived around this time period to give an account that “Christians” and “Christ” did indeed exist.
Another Roman writer who shows his acquaintance with Christ and the Christians is Suetonius (A.D. 75-160). It has been noted that Suetonius considered Christ (Chrestus) as a Roman insurgent who stirred up seditions under the reign of Claudius (A.D. 41-54): "Judaeos, impulsore Chresto, assidue tumultuantes (Claudius) Roma expulit" (Clau., xxv). In his life of Nero he regards that emperor as a public benefactor on account of his severe treatment of the Christians: "Multa sub eo et animadversa severe, et coercita, nec minus instituta . . . . afflicti Christiani, genus hominum superstitious novae et maleficae" (Nero, xvi). The Roman writer does not understand that the Jewish troubles arose from the Jewish antagonism to the Messianic character of Jesus Christ and to the rights of the Christian Church.
Of greater importance is the letter of Pliny the Younger to the Emperor Trajan (about A.D. 61-115), in which the Governor of Bithynia consults his imperial majesty as to how to deal with the Christians living within his jurisdiction. On the one hand, their lives were confessedly innocent; no crime could be proved against them excepting their Christian belief, which appeared to the Roman as an extravagant and perverse superstition. On the other hand, the Christians could not be shaken in their allegiance to Christ, Whom they celebrated as their God in their early morning meetings (Ep., X, 97, 98). Christianity here appears no longer as a religion of criminals, as it does in the texts of Tacitus and Suetonius; Pliny acknowledges the high moral principles of the Christians, admires their constancy in the Faith (pervicacia et inflexibilis obstinatio), which he appears to trace back to their worship of Christ (carmenque Christo, quasi Deo, dicere).
The remaining pagan witnesses are of less importance: In the second century Lucian sneered at Christ and the Christians, as he scoffed at the pagan gods. He alludes to Christ's death on the Cross, to His miracles, to the mutual love prevailing among the Christians ("Philopseudes", nn. 13, 16; "De Morte Pereg"). There are also alleged allusions to Christ in Numenius (Origen, "Contra Cels", IV, 51), to His parables in Galerius, to the earthquake at the Crucifixion in Phlegon ( Origen, "Contra Cels.", II, 14). Before the end of the second century, the logos alethes of Celsus, as quoted by Origen (Contra Cels., passim), testifies that at that time the facts related in the Gospels were generally accepted as historically true. However scanty the pagan sources of the life of Christ may be, they bear at least testimony to His existence, to His miracles, His parables, His claim to Divine worship, His death on the Cross, and to the more striking characteristics of His religion.
NextÂ….letÂ’s go to some of the Jewish sources:
Philo, who dies after A.D. 40, is mainly important for the light he throws on certain modes of thought and phraseology found again in some of the Apostles. Eusebius (Hist. Eccl., II, iv) indeed preserves a legend that Philo had met St. Peter in Rome during his mission to the Emperor Caius; moreover, that in his work on the contemplative life he describes the life of the Christian Church in Alexandria founded by St. Mark, rather than that of the Essenes and Therapeutae. But it is hardly probable that Philo had heard enough of Christ and His followers to give an historical foundation to the foregoing legends.
The earlist non-Christian writer who refers Christ is the Jewish historian Flavius Josephus; born A.D. 37, he was a contemporary of the Apostles, and died in Rome A.D. 94. Two passages in his "Antiquities" which confirm two facts of the inspired Christian records are not disputed. In the one he reports the murder of "John called Baptist" by Herod (Ant., XVIII, v, 2), describing also John's character and work; in the other (Ant., XX, ix, 1) he disappoves of the sentence pronounced by the high priest Ananus against "James, brother of Jesus Who was called Christ." It is antecedently probable that a writer so well informed as Josephus, must have been well acquainted too with the doctrine and the history of Jesus Christ. Seeing, also, that he records events of minor importance in the history of the Jews, it would be surprising if he were to keep silence about Jesus Christ. Consideration for the priests and Pharisees did not prevent him from mentioning the judicial murders of John the Baptist and the Apostle James; his endeavour to find the fulfilment of the Messianic prophecies in Vespasian did not induce him to pass in silence over several Jewish sects, though their tenets appear to be inconsistent with the Vespasian claims. One naturally expects, therefore, a notice about Jesus Christ in Josephus. Antiquities XVIII, iii, 3, seems to satisfy this expectation:
About this time appeared Jesus, a wise man (if indeed it is right to call Him man; for He was a worker of astonishing deeds, a teacher of such men as receive the truth with joy), and He drew to Himself many Jews (many also of Greeks. This was the Christ.) And when Pilate, at the denunciation of those that are foremost among us, had condemned Him to the cross, those who had first loved Him did not abandon Him (for He appeared to them alive again on the third day, the holy prophets having foretold this and countless other marvels about Him.) The tribe of Christians named after Him did not cease to this day.
A testimony so important as the foregoing could not escape the work of the critics. Their conclusions may be reduced to three headings: those who consider the passage wholly spurious; those who consider it to be wholly authentic; and those who consider it to be a little of each.
Those who regard the passage as spurious
First, there are those who consider the whole passage as spurious. The principal reasons for this view appear to be the following:
· Josephus could not represent Jesus Christ as a simple moralist, and on the other hand he could not emphasize the Messianic prophecies and expectations without offending the Roman susceptibilities;
· the above cited passage from Josephus is said to be unknown to Origen and the earlier patristic writers;
· its very place in the Josephan text is uncertain, since Eusebius (Hist. Eccl., II, vi) must have found it before the notices concerning Pilate, while it now stands after them.
But the spuriousness of the disputed Josephan passage does not imply the historian's ignorance of the facts connected with Jesus Christ. Josephus's report of his own juvenile precocity before the Jewish teachers (Vit., 2) reminds one of the story of Christ's stay in the Temple at the age of twelve; the description of his shipwreck on his journey to Rome (Vit., 3) recalls St. Paul's shipwreck as told in the Acts; finally his arbitrary introduction of a deceit practised by the priests of Isis on a Roman lady, after the chapter containing his supposed allusion to Jesus, shows a disposition to explain away the virgin birth of Jesus and to prepare the falsehoods embodied in the later Jewish writings.
Those who regard the passage as authentic, with some spurious additions
A second class of critics do not regard the whole of Josephus's testimony concerning Christ as spurious but they maintain the interpolation of parts included above in parenthesis. The reasons assigned for this opinion may be reduced to the following two:
· Josephus must have mentioned Jesus, but he cannot have recognized Him as the Christ; hence part of our present Josephan text must be genuine, part must be interpolated.
· Again, the same conclusion follows from the fact that Origen knew a Josephan text about Jesus, but was not acquainted with our present reading; for, according to the great Alexandrian doctor, Josephus did not believe that Jesus was the Messias ("In Matth.", xiii, 55; "Contra Cels.", I, 47).
Whatever force these two arguments have is lost by the fact that Josephus did not write for the Jews but for the Romans; consequently, when he says, "This was the Christ", he does not necessarily imply that Jesus was the Christ considered by the Romans as the founder of the Christian religion.
Those who consider it to be completely genuine
The third class of scholars believe that the whole passage concerning Jesus, as it is found today in Josephus, is genuine. The main arguments for the genuineness of the Josephan passage are the following:
· First, all codices or manuscripts of Josephus's work contain the text in question; to maintain the spuriousness of the text, we must suppose that all the copies of Josephus were in the hands of Christians, and were changed in the same way.
· Second, it is true that neither Tertullian nor St. Justin makes use of Josephus's passage concerning Jesus; but this silence is probably due to the contempt with which the contemporary Jews regarded Josephus, and to the relatively little authority he had among the Roman readers. Writers of the age of Tertullian and Justin could appeal to living witnesses of the Apostolic tradition.
· Third, Eusebius ("Hist. Eccl"., I, xi; cf. "Dem. Ev.", III, v) Sozomen (Hist. Eccl., I, i), Niceph. (Hist. Eccl., I, 39), Isidore of Pelusium (Ep. IV, 225), St. Jerome (catal.script. eccles. xiii), Ambrose, Cassiodorus, etc., appeal to the testimony of Josephus; there must have been no doubt as to its authenticity at the time of these illustrious writers.
· Fourth, the complete silence of Josephus as to Jesus would have been a more eloquent testimony than we possess in his present text; this latter contains no statement incompatible with its Josephan authorship: the Roman reader needed the information that Jesus was the Christ, or the founder of the Christian religion; the wonderful works of Jesus and His Resurrection from the dead were so incessantly urged by the Christians that without these attributes the Josephan Jesus would hardly have been acknowledged as the founder of Christianity.
All this does not necessarily imply that Josephus regarded Jesus as the Jewish Messias; but, even if he had been convinced of His Messiahship, it does not follow that he would have become a Christian. A number of posssible subterfuges might have supplied the Jewish historian with apparently sufficient reasons for not embracing Christianity.
The historical character of Jesus Christ is also attested by the hostile Jewish literature of the subsequent centuries. His birth is ascribed to an illicit ("Acta Pilati" in Thilo, "Codex apocryph. N.T., I, 526; cf. Justin, "Apol.", I, 35), or even an adulterous, union of His parents (Origen, "Contra Cels.," I, 28, 32). The father's name is Panthera, a common soldier (Gemara "Sanhedrin", viii; "Schabbath", xii, cf. Eisenmenger, "Entdecktes Judenthum", I, 109; Schottgen, "Horae Hebraicae", II, 696; Buxtorf, "Lex. Chald.", Basle, 1639, 1459, Huldreich, "Sepher toledhoth yeshua hannaceri", Leyden, 1705). The last work in its final edition did not appear before the thirteenth century, so that it could give the Panthera myth in its most advanced form. Rosch is of opinion that the myth did not begin before the end of the first century.
The later Jewish writings show traces of acquaintance with the murder of the Holy Innocents (Wagenseil, "Confut. Libr.Toldoth", 15; Eisenmenger op. cit., I, 116; Schottgen, op. cit., II, 667), with the flight into Egypt (cf. Josephus, "Ant." XIII, xiii), with the stay of Jesus in the Temple at the age of twelve (Schottgen, op. cit., II, 696), with the call of the disciples ("Sanhedrin", 43a; Wagenseil, op. cit., 17; Schottgen, loc. cit., 713), with His miracles (Origen, "Contra Cels", II, 48; Wagenseil, op. cit., 150; Gemara "Sanhedrin" fol. 17); "Schabbath", fol. 104b; Wagenseil, op.cit., 6, 7, 17), with His claim to be God (Origen, "Contra Cels.", I, 28; cf. Eisenmenger, op. cit., I, 152; Schottgen, loc. cit., 699) with His betrayal by Judas and His death (Origen, "Contra cels.", II, 9, 45, 68, 70; Buxtorf, op. cit., 1458; Lightfoot, "Hor. Heb.", 458, 490, 498; Eisenmenger, loc. cit., 185; Schottgen, loc. cit.,699 700; cf."Sanhedrin", vi, vii). Celsus (Origen, "Contra Cels.", II, 55) tries to throw doubt on the Resurrection, while Toldoth (cf. Wagenseil, 19) repeats the Jewish fiction that the body of Jesus had been stolen from the sepulchre.
Among the Christian sources of the life of Jesus we need hardly mention the so called Agrapha and Apocrypha. For whether the Agrapha contain Logia of Jesus, or refer to incidents in His life, they are either highly uncertain or present only variations of the Gospel story. The chief value of the Apocrypha consists in their showing the infinite superiority of the Inspired Writings by contrasting the coarse and erroneous productions of the human mind with the simple and sublime truths written under the inspiration of the Holy Ghost.
Among the Sacred Books of the New Testament, it is especially the four Gospels and the four great Epistles of St. Paul that are of the highest importance for the construction of the life of Jesus.
The four great Pauline Epistles (Romans, Galatians, and First and Second Corinthinas) can hardly be overestimated by the student of Christ's life; they have at times been called the "fifth gospel"; their authenticity has never been assailed by serious critics; their testimony is also earlier than that of the Gospels, at least most of the Gospels; it is the more valuable because it is incidental and undesigned; it is the testimony of a highly intellectual and cultured writer, who had been the greatest enemy of Jesus, who writes within twenty-five years of the events which he relates. At the same time, these four great Epistles bear witness to all the most important facts in the life of Christ: His Davidic dscent, His poverty, His Messiahship, His moral teaching, His preaching of the kingdom of God, His calling of the apostles, His miraculous power, His claims to be God, His betrayal, His institution of the Holy Eucharist, His passion, crucifixion, burial, resurrection, His repeated appearances (Romans 1:3-4; 5:11; 8:2-3; 8:32; 9:5; 15:8; Galatians 2:17; 3:13; 4:4; 5:21; First Corinthians 6:9; 13:4; etc.). However important the four great Epistles may be, the gospels are still more so. Not that any one of them offers a complete biography of Jesus, but they account for the origin of Christianity by the life of its Founder. Questions like the authenticity of the Gospels, the relation between the Synoptic Gospels, and the Fourth, the Synoptic problem, must be studied in the articles referring to these respective subjects.
HmmmÂ….No writings to support the existence of Christ, eh? Next youÂ’ll all try telling me that the Holocost never happened.
Conclusion:
I think a major problem is that Critics and Christians alike forget also that the Bible is not just one book. It is a compelation of writtings. Some of these are ment to be historical references, like the Gospels. Some are just letter to the different churches, like Paul’s letters. Some are legendary truths to be taken figuratively, with many different levels of meaning, like the creation story. Some are ment almost strictly for record keeping, like numbers. To require evidence outside “The Bible” (because you see the bible as only one book) is retarded. Count how many books you have in the new testement, and that’s how many “references” you have to “Christ” and “Christians”. Then start counting the references outside. You’ll find plenty.
Another thing that people forget is how Jesus and the Apostles lived their lives. They were wandering nomads, teaching their beliefs and living off the land. They didn’t carry a pen and notepad with them. They didn’t use a “Bible” like we do today. They wandered and taught concepts that were unheard of at the time. It wasn’t til much later when different followers saw the importance of writing some of these accounts down that the Gospels were created to be a historical account. Jesus didn’t have a Biographer because that was really not the way things were taught back then, by that group. Many Hebrews were still “tribal” in nature, and Oral tradition was of great importance, as well as the Torah, and other written laws. Plus, the Romans had such a vast kingdom that writings and records were not kept well in the outer lands of Rome, including Jerusulam. Anyways, I could go on and on with valid points here, but the fact is that asking for more written records is almost absurd given the circumstance. We have enough to at least point to the existence of a “Christ” around 2000 yrs ago, regardless of what your beliefs as to what this Christ was.
And for my final point; just because many of you may feel that writings are “scarce,” that doesn’t make the existence of Jesus, the acts of Jesus, or the Religion invalid. To think so is one of the biggest fallacies of them all. If you don’t want to be Christian, fine, but argue it in some other way rather then through illogical assumptions. There are many historical findings out there that people will believe and not question with very little “written” records at all. Go through all the major religions and even some of the minor ones, and you won’t find any better evidence supporting them. Where is Budda’s Autobiography? Oh…he didn’t have one so he must have never existed, right? Oh…Taoism only has 1 text written by one guy, so it must not be true either. Druids never existed either because there is very few written accounts of them. Native American Shamans and religions didn’t exist either because where are there written accounts? Even if there are some, I need to see more proof then just some, don’t I ????????????? Do you see where this get’s us? No where. Yet as stupid as these arguments are, people use them to attempt to invalidate Christianity all the time. Now, are there Historians who through an attempt to either make a name for themselves, or just to appease their need to feel superior then their collegues, who maintain that Christ never existed? Sure….but their “proofs” are extremely flawed, and these historians have yet to prove themselves to the academic community.
Bottom line: I am going to use Tom Browns Tracking school as a secular example to my final point. Tom Brown (a favorete of mine) is noted as the greatest Tracker and wilderness survivalist in North America, and possibly the world. What is his source; his serogot native American Grandfather who was supposedly taught the ways of an Apache scout and Shaman by his people. He passed these ways to Mr. Brown. SoÂ…where is our written record of this while he was alive? How do we know, other then Tom Browns word, that this isnÂ’t all a bunch of Balognie? We have nothing, no written documents. So, we could say that it is all crap if we wanted to. But the fact is, Tom Brown and his students have proven time and time again their abilities to survive and track in the wilderness to Military, FBI, and through many other credible sources who have NEEDED their skills. So what is the point; we have no proof of the orgins of these techniques in writing, but the fact isÂ…IT WORKS!! The methods and philosophy behind the methods work. Christianity can be argued by protagonists and antagonists all day long. But the fact is, if applied correctly, (and not used as a ruse for men in power to control, start wars, etc.) Christianity works! ButÂ…if you canÂ’t make it work for you then it is your loss, in my opinion. However, donÂ’t make ludicrous claims with no supporting evidence to try to drag down the rest of the world with you!
Thank you for putting up with me...
I go home now...
PAUL
