Letter: Jesus lived? (2002)

Letter to the Editors from the February 2002 issue of the Socialist Standard

Jesus lived?

Dear Editors,

Dear, oh dear! This journalistic rhetoric will not do. In the December Socialist Standard you say “Jesus, for whose historical existence there is no evidence”.

In the first place the Jews, who should know better than anyone, have never denied his existence. One of them, the historian Josephus (c.37 – c. 100), refers in his books to Jesus and James his brother as historical persons.

Secondly, we have the evidence of the New Testament, starting with Paul’s letters, written to established churches and dated from 50 onwards and followed by the Gospels beginning with Mark. This was written about 65-70 AD and based on earlier written and oral sources. The details of Jewish daily life given in the Gospels with regard to history, geography and religious practice agree with information supplied by contemporary non-Christian sources.

Thirdly, three Roman writers refer to Christians. They are Tacitus, describing in 64 AD the persecution of Christians by Nero, Suetonius writing in 52 and 64, and Pliny writing in c. 112. Did the first generation of Christians invent Jesus? If so, why?

Bryan Fair, 

Dorchester, Dorset

Reply: 

Saying that there is no historical evidence for the existence of Jesus Christ is not the same as saying that no person called Jesus existed. For all we know – for all anybody knows – there may well have been at least one itinerant Jewish preacher in Galilee some two thousand years ago who called himself Jesus even though, in our reviewer’s opinion, there is no concrete evidence for this. In the end, of course, it is not a matter of great importance whether or not there was an “historical Jesus” since if there was he would not have been the “Son of God”. And he wouldn’t have walked on water, turned water into wine or raised the dead either.

Those who doubt the historical existence of Jesus – and this view was pioneered not by atheists but by Protestant theologians (who else would be interested in biblical studies and have the requisite knowledge of Latin, Greek, Hebrew and Aramaic?) – would not find your evidence very convincing.

1. It is generally agreed the references in Josephus were inserted by later Christian scribes copying his work. Later Jews regarded the Christians’ Jesus as being the illegimate son of a Roman soldier.

2. Paul certainly existed and his writings are the earliest that mention the Christians’ Jesus. Which is why it is odd to say the least that they give very little detail about his life, presenting him rather as a shadowy spiritual being who sacrificed himself to save his followers.

3. Christians certainly existed but references to them by Roman historians is no more evidence that their “saviour” Jesus existed than similar references to the followers of Mithras or Dionysus is evidence that their respective “saviours” existed either.

4. Some early Christians did not regard their Jesus as having existed as a living human. See the recently published (1999) The Jesus Mysteries by Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy for more details.

Editors