I read ahead on what I am writing about on my Jesus Reconstructed website, so the interesting things I come across have not all reached my pages yet. In this post I want to share three pieces of evidence that strike me as favoring some of the claims of Christianity.
1. Jesus as a real human being. T.S. Schmidt’s new book Josephus and Jesus: New Evidence for the One Called Christ (click for a free copy) makes a very strong case for the authenticity of the famous Testimonium Flavianum passage in Josephus’ Antiquities of the Jews. In Schmidt’s translation the passage is more ambivalent about Jesus than in other translations, and Josephus’ references to Jesus’ “mighty” words and deeds, the resurrection, and the identification of him as the Christ could have been derived from Christian sources. But as Josephus knew some of the chief priests alive in the early 1st century, or knew their immediate descendants, he would have been in a position to know if the crucifixion actually happened. Schmidt’s case, plus references to James the brother of Jesus by both Josephus and Paul, have persuaded me that the historical evidence favors the reality of Jesus as an actual human being and not, as the mythicists argue, a figure known only through visions.
2. Jesus’ self-conception. Many scholars argue that high claims for the role of Jesus in history were developed sometime after the resurrection reports, and that Jesus in his lifetime did not see himself as more than a prophet and rabbi (a teacher of the correct interpretation of the Jewish laws). Yet in Paul’s account of the last supper, Jesus said he was instituting a “new covenant.” I have not been able to find evidence of manuscript variations in his use of this phrase. This is a pretty high claim, as the last covenant God made was through Moses on Mount Sinai. Jesus is claiming that the Passover meal was now, for his disciples, a remembrance of a new covenant made by the sacrifice of his body and blood, not a remembrance of the old covenant given through Moses. This quote is evidence that Jesus himself saw his death as instituting a new phase in God’s plan for humanity.
3. The resurrection. Although I find the gospel accounts of appearances of the risen Jesus unconvincing as historical evidence, the appearances referred to in Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians carry weight as reports derived from witnesses. Lately commentators have favored explanations comparing these reports to other types of visions of deceased people, such as grief visions by survivors (Peter/Cephas and James would be candidates for this), or visions induced by mystical practices (Paul is the candidate here). These comparisons are meant to show that the visions of the risen Jesus were not unique. It is true that there are contemporary reports of realistic appearances by deceased people, including appearances to multiple people at the same time and appearances to both those who knew and did not know the departed in their lifetime. However, to my knowledge there are no other examples of appearances of the same dead person to multiple individuals and groups (especially a group as large as 500 people) at different times. This aspect seems unique. It is also far from clear if all of the contemporary incidents can be explained as purely psychological rather than actual communications from a dead person. In some reports the deceased communicates information that otherwise could not have been know to the recipient. (I experienced this myself in a dream of a former colleague who informed me he had died.) From a historical standpoint, the events behind the appearance reports in Paul’s passage remain an unsolved mystery.
As I consider all this, I find myself leaning toward the position that the historical evidence shows at least these three things: Jesus was a real person, he saw his death as instituting a new covenant with God, and the reports of his appearances after his death remain an unsolved mystery. I am surprised at this, not because I had a firm opinion about traditional Christian claims one way or the other, but because I expected the historical evidence to be inconclusive about these particular topics. Of course the Christian claims are not proven by any of this, but it does provide a historical basis for some apologetic arguments.
I don’t mind moving closer to traditional Christianity (I still have a ways to go on some issues), but I am left with a further dilemma. Which church would I join? So far I see them all as problematic. We’ll see where all this takes me.
Jesus Reconstructed 
Hi Alan,
I’m just lifting off from Istanbul to head home after a splendid trip with my middle daughter in Greece, culminating in her graduation in London from her course in Costume Design there. And this sentence serves two purposes (1) as an exercise in parental pride in one of my kids and (2) to observe that I have the next 14 hours to thumb out a comment on your post on my phone!
JC as a real person.
Is T. S. Schmidt’s book the one which suggests that the T Flav was real, but derisory? I heard a podcast to that effect earlier this year by the author of a book which poses that thesis. Ie, Josephus was saying ‘Those funny Xtns call him the messiah.’ If that is not Schmidt, let me know and I’ll dig out the pod which I found to be thrilling (to the extent any of this is thrilling).
But yes, I agree that JC was a real figure and yes, it is fascinating to think that Jo S knew many of the relevant players personally.
Jesus’ self-conception.
The problem I have in relying on Paul’s assertion that JC instituted a new covenant is that Paul never knew JC, and is therefore in no position to assert what JC himself thought about himself, let alone that considered he was instituting a new covenant. Certainly, Paul in the exposition of his philosophy of Christ thought that was what JC was doing, but he has no way at all of knowing what JC actually said, or did, other than by what he may have been told by those who did witness the events.
And there is scant evidence anyone told him anything. Sure he met Peter and James but there is no record of what they discussed. We only have Paul’s one sided record of that relationship which was obviously very fractious.
Did Peter tell Paul that he saw JC in the flesh again, post death, eating fish and displaying his stigmata for all and sundry doubters to poke around in? We simply don’t know. No one says so.
My conclusion is that Paul viewed the resurrection as the instantaneous alteration of the flesh (which he equates with death) to pneuma (the spiritual or divine – that’s in 2 Cor somewhere, yes?). As a Pharisee Paul believed in the resurrection of the dead at the end of times. Convinced that JC had been resurrected in this flesh-to-pneuma fashion, JC was thus the ‘first fruits’ of this end-of-times process.
I suspect Peter and James agreed, although I admit we have no record of what they thought (subject to comments below on 1 Cor 15). But, given my view that JC saw himself as prophesying, if not actually being the harbinger of, the new world order where YHWH would restore Jerusalem to the shining exemplar of piety and political power, then it I find it quite conceivable that Peter and James concurred with Paul as to the nature of the resurrection, and did not profess that they had actually seen a corporeal JC on the days following the crucifixion. (As we can be confident, the stories of Peter and the other apostles poking about a fleshy JC as found in the gospels were written long after Peter and James – and anyone else in the gang – had died).
In short I don’t think we can rely on Paul for any assessment of JC’s self conception. The most we have are the gospels themselves, and the (im)possibility of trying to extract from them the dregs of what might represent what the historical JC actually said or believed about himself.
Lastly on this point, Bart Ehrman (and I think James Tabor among other) is a keen advocate for the differences between JC’s vision of things and Paul’s, the one foretelling a political restoration, the other predicting a spiritual one. I’ll leave that for another day.
The resurrection.
The list in 1 Cor 15 is a curiosity but Linton it leads us nowhere.
It mentions what was passed on to Paul. If so, then it is possible that Paul and Peter discussed these matters. Peter could have described to Paul the nature of the appearance.
But, frustratingly, there is no record of what Peter and James saw, what appeared to them or what they told/passed on to Paul.
Incidentally I understand the better translation here is that JC ‘was seen’ by Cephas etc etc, not that he appeared to them. Appearance is a translation which presumes an active interventionist deity, whereas ‘was seen’ is more passive and speaks from the point of view of the observer: it assumes less theology.
So, if Peter and James agreed with Paul’s view of the resurrection outlined above, then they may well have told Paul, yes we ‘saw’ the risen Christ too, ie we hold an intimately close belief that JC’s resurrection was an ascendance from the cross directly to heaven. I can envisage Paul then explaining to the pair that this was the flesh/pneuma conversion.
But what of the 500? This is an old chestnut. I am of the view that this is a rumour that became truth. There is no record of such an event taking place, of an appearance to a gathering of 500 ‘at the same time’ (ie it was a mass event). To me it smacks of ‘She turned me into a newt’ in the witch scene in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Rumour that explodes into a fact upon the retelling.
In other words Paul has been told of the 500 but he offers no verification of it. No names, no places, no dates. Sure, some of the peeps are still alive, you can go ask them. But where? Who?
If he’s telling the Corinthians this, is he implying that some of the 500 can be contacted there? Or that the 500 had gathered near there? I dunno. There is simply nothing to go on.
One may suggest that the mere recounting of the ‘appearances’ is evidence of a physical resurrection, if not merely a belief in such. At the time Paul is writing 1 Cor, some folk held a view that JC turned up in the flesh after dying on the cross. And from the existence of that belief we may infer that witnesses actually observed it, giving fire to the smoke that was passed down to Paul.
But there are too many leaps to make here. Some people believed: who, how many, what credibility can they show, where they actually there? We cannot infer any of them were eye witnesses because we don’t know who was holding this belief. And in the absence of any sensible detail at all, we cannot jump from there to an actual resurrection.
At the end of the day the question is who passed the lists of appearances down to Paul? Peter? James? Someone else? What did they say, beyond what Paul writes in 1 Cor 15? It is frustratingly unclear.
I have dealt with Peter and James above: we have no clear record of what Paul had been told. And we have no other candidate for a ‘passer downer’ (if you’ll forgive such a term).
In fact the most evident thing we do have contradicts the idea that peeps believed in a physical resurrection: Paul’s writings. As set out above, Paul’s understanding of it all, of what ‘seeing’ JC meant, does not accord with a physical resurrection.
Nor do I consider that there needs to have been any actual vision perceived by any person. Nor hallucinations, nor sightings. All that is needed is a belief that JC rose to heaven. It is an act of the imagination. ‘Yes I can see him there’ cry the faithful, those who were caught up in the vitality of JC’s charisma and movement, and his end-of-times predictions, who were bereft at the brute fact of the crucifixion, who fled in their minds to another possibility – that JC was in heaven leading the charge from there. ‘Oh hope, oh desire, all is not lost, I can see him coming, coming, he is on high now, coming so soon to relieve us of the shackles we bear!’
Differing from you, I find myself leaning toward the position that the historical evidence shows at least these three things:
In short, the historical evidence is wholly inconclusive about these particular topics and provides no historical basis for some apologetic arguments.
There must have been many other people writing about these matters, but we do not have their correspondence. There was a church in Rome by the time Paul was out proselytising – he wrote to them – but we don’t know who started it. (There’s a Ph.D for some buck right there). Nor do we have any of the other letters that Paul must have written. Maybe someone one day will unearth another garbage dump and find a treasure trove.
Perhaps after all is said and done, we can take something from Josephus. Perhaps his acquaintance with the major players surrounding the crucifixion means that he has the most legible of records of who did what at the time, what JC said at any trial, how he might have perceived himself. Perhaps Jo is the closest we have to a credible eye witness, being only one step removed. But interestingly, whatever he knew from his interaction with the Jerusalem elites, Josephus did not quit his adherence to his Jewish faith despite the comments in the T Flavium.
Well, my thumb is worn out. The inflight meal is being served and my wife, bless her soul, has suggested we talk over dinner.
I hope this is helpful.
Regards from (soon to be) down under (when the plane lands some hours hence (Istanbul to Bangkok, then to Sydney. We arrive tomorrow).
Cheers
Rob Wilcher
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Re: Jesus’ self-conception. Paul says he is handing on a tradition when he quotes Jesus at the last supper. Paul had plenty of opportunities to hear traditions deliberately passed down in Christian communities. The issue, I agree, is whether the quote is accurate or somewhere in the transmission someone added the words about the “new covenant.” I lean toward the position that Paul and the larger community were careful about the wording of quotes from Jesus, but there is scant evidence on the topic. (On the rest of your paragraph in this section of your post, I agree with your comments about Paul’s views of the resurrected body and the gospels accounts of Jesus’ appearances.)
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Re: the resurrection. The authors I consulted generally agree that the verb behind “was seen/appeared” was used in both senses indiscriminately. On Paul’s list, I am not presenting it as proof of a physical resurrection. I am presenting it as evidence that the reports of Jesus’ appearances he lists do not quite match current reports of realistic post-mortem appearances of various deceased people. Many scholars have turned toward the latter as evidence that seeing Jesus after his death was not a unique event but like “grief visions” and such in modern times. I don’t think (a) the latter include so many and various reports as Paul’s list, and I do think (b) we don’t know if modern reports are “only” psychological or sometimes involve actual contact by the dead. I don’t take the “500” witnesses at face value, but there is nothing like that in contemporary reports of visitations.
Thanks for taking the time and thumb power for sharing your take! So glad to hear you had time with your daughter. I know how much time with my kids means to me.
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Hi Alan,
I’m just lifting off from Istanbul to head home after a splendid trip with my middle daughter in Greece, culminating in her graduation in London from her course in Costume Design there. And this sentence serves two purposes (1) as an exercise in parental pride in one of my kids and (2) to observe that I have the next 14 hours to thumb out a comment on your post on my phone!
I’ll do it in parts as I think it is too big as one comment.
JC as a real person.
Is T. S. Schmidt’s book the one which suggests that the T Flav was real, but derisory? I heard a podcast to that effect earlier this year by the author of a book which poses that thesis. Ie, Josephus was saying ‘Those funny Xtns call him the messiah.’ If that is not Schmidt, let me know and I’ll dig out the pod which I found to be thrilling (to the extent any of this is thrilling).
But yes, I agree that JC was a real figure and yes, it is fascinating to think that Jo S knew many of the relevant players personally.
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My memory is that Schmidt says Josephus is ambiguous: could be neutral, negative, or even complimentary towards Jesus; he seems to choose his words deliberately to avoid showing his hand. I plan to read the book more closely in the near future. I gave it a quick read because it was relevant to the Emmaus passage.
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