Much of the discussion about Jesus on this Forum is based on the assumption that he was just an insignificant peasant.
Justification for this assumption seems to be entirely based on the lack of independent contemporary references to him.
Jewish records were probably lost when Jerusalem was destroyed but where else might references to Jesus be expected?
Josephus mentions some names but omits many more, such as members of the Sanhedrin, who were important at that time.
He communicated with king Agrippa II but does not even mention Paul, who was interviewed by the king while imprisoned at Caesarea, according to Acts. Paul wrote in Greek and travelled widely but there are no references to him, so why expect any for Jesus, who spoke Aramaic, wrote nothing and lived his whole life in Israel? Even today, with all modern forms of communication, people are generally unaware of foreign language matters, so it is unreasonable to expect those elsewhere in the Roman Empire to have noticed events in remote Israel.
If an insignificant peasant from Galilee had arrived in Jerusalem and declared that, after an imminent apocalypse, he would become king, he should have been considered insane. If he was a nuisance, he could have simply been killed without any public reaction. Why draw attention to an idiotic claim by crucifying someone who had committed no violent act and had no capacity to organize an insurrection?
His treatment does not make sense if he was just a nonentity.
The possibility that, in his last year of life, Jesus became a well-known and controversial figure in Israel but was unknown elsewhere is an alternative which should be considered.
I think I agree with Blackwell. I don’t understand the general presumption that Jesus had only a small following. If we are going to try to dig history out of the gospels, I think they make more sense if we take Jesus as well known, enjoying a significant, if fickle, popularity.
Steefen
Steve Campbell, author of Historical Accuracy
There is a Paul-like figure in the second passage after the Testimonium Flavianum.
The passage in Josephus refers to a wicked man who conspired with three others to obtain valuables from a wealthy woman in Rome to send to Jerusalem but they then spent the money themselves. This does not sound at all like Paul.
Now this is a really really interesting question. I have become somewhat dissatisfied myself with Ehrman’s “twenty guys in a room” viewpoint. Why does Mark want the disciples to go back to Galilee? Perhaps when Jesus left for his fateful last trip to Jerusalem he left some kind of community of indeterminate size behind who were not able to make the trip.
How famous did Jesus have to be for Josephus to have heard of him – or his brother?
I think Ehrman and other scholars’ minimalist viewpoint is a reaction to the gospels’ obvious exaggeration of Jesus’ notoriety. I’ve always thought that exaggeration was a response to an ongoing controversy with the community around John the Baptist which we can trace to at least the second century (and further if we take the claims of the Mandaeans seriously).
If Jesus had been a well-known and controversial figure at the time of his crucifixion, a wealthy supporter who believed the claim that Jesus would become king after an imminent apocalypse might very well have attempted a secret rescue mission in the expectation of a huge reward if successful.
we just do not have any evidence to consider these things as anything more than possibilities,
Aside from the testimony of the gospels–which much be taken with at least a grain of salt–the very existence of Christianity as a movement that more than survived his death seems to provide at least weak evidence of his popularity during his life. I mean, how much evidence is there of other figures with significant followings from the same time and place? It isn’t at all conclusive, but the very fact that from this relative black hole of history a major movement that was devoted to Jesus arose, at least of first glace, suggests he was a big deal.
But I’m not sure I’m disagreeing with you, as everything I’ve said amounts to no more than “possibilities”.
The problem is that all the gospel writers have preconceived agendas for characterizing Jesus’ ministry the way they do. I suspect Jesus had a following in Galilee which might have spread to Jerusalem through contacts within an expat community. Outside of that community, who knows? From time immemorial capital cities have boasted such expat communities. Here in DC you can find ethnic groups from literally everywhere on the planet. Doubtless there was a Galilean community in Jerusalem that would have functioned as a support group for travelers. I do doubt that Jesus would have had much contact with the power structure in Jerusalem itself. On the contrary he seems to have had some relationship to groups that critiqued that power structure.
The way I tend to imagine it is that he had a somewhat sizable following from Galilee, with a much much larger number of people from throughout Palestine who had heard of him and were at least curious about him, though not devoted to him (augmented perhaps by a sizable number from the broader diaspora who had only just learned of him as they were on pilgrimage but were similarly interested to see what he was about without necessarily having any conviction about him).
When word starts to spread about a healer, or a person who claims to be messiah, or just someone who likes to go around calling out the authorities in public ways, a lot of people would naturally be interested to see for themselves, either because they are open to the possibility he might be the real thing or just because they have nothing better to do with their afternoon and want to see a spectacle.
If you perceive him like that–a guy who could turn out a big crowd wherever he shows up–it would make the events narrated in the Gospels around holy week plausible. He was perceived as a very serious threat. Whenever he showed up in public he would quickly be surrounded by a big crowd, and the authorities would have had difficulty distinguishing between those who were ready to riot for him and those who were little more than gawkers.
Gospel accounts are unreliable but I agree that they are more plausible if Jesus had attracted crowds of curious peo0ple.
Predicting that authorities would soon be overthrown in an apocalypse would also make Jesus a dangerous threat.
Some indications of his significance are:
1. He was crucified rather than assassinated.
2. A single man may survive by begging but 13 men travelling together require support. According to Luke 8:3, the wife of one of king Herod’s stewards provided resources.
3. Accounts of the last supper place it in a house rather than outside a tent. Whose house? The owner must have been wealthy if it could accommodate 13 men (plus wives and children?)
BDEhrman
FreedomBen
evgendob
Robert
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