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Loading...I continue here with the re-post of an interview from years ago but of ongoing relevance, about how we can know what we know about Jesus. The interview was with Ben Witherington, a conservative evangelical Christian New Testament scholar, who asked me to respond to a number of questions about my book Did Jesus Exist in light of criticism I received for it (not, for the most part, from committed Christians!).
Some of Ben Witherington’s most popular books are The Jesus Quest, and The Problem with Evangelical Theology, among others.
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Q. Sometimes you make a distinction between literary evidence and other sorts of written evidence (e.g. records of trials or tax records), and you place especial stress on the former as a way of answering the question of whether or not Jesus existed. Can you explain why you do this?
A. Yes, there is a clear distinction to be made between literary and documentary evidence. The only reason I place special evidence on the former, when talking about the historical Jesus, is that there is no documentary evidence for his existence. (For lots and lots of historical issues, documentary evidence is invaluable; but only when it exists for the issue under consideration. If any did exist for Jesus, that would, of course, be highly significant.) We do not have any birth records or land deeds, no reports of his trial (other than in literary sources), and no death warrant related to Jesus – no documents (or inscriptions) of any kind. All we have are later literary references. And so these are the sources that we have to focus on.
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Mr. Ehrman, one thing mythicists say quite often is that people were used for so long to assume that Jesus existed for sure that they wouldn’t even bother to sieve through the evidence. Is there any truth in that or is it another overstatement on behalf of mythicists?
I would say they are absolutely right about that. Most people don’t know the evidence or even think about it. Virtually everyone who actually does know it, though, is convinced by it.
Dr Ehrman, that was interesting about the James Ossuary. I had followed the early newspaper reports on its ‘discovery’ and the initial controversy but then lost track of it. I was unaware that people were now taking it seriously again as I thought it was a forgery. You referred in your answer to something Jodi Magness has said about it (?recently). Was that in a book or scholarly journal?
That comment was from nine years ago; I don’t really hear anyone talking about it these days. Jodi may well have written on it, I don’t remember. I believe I was referring to a conversation we had in the hallway!
I’m curious about why Josephus would be interested enough to mention Jesus at all. I first have to admit to ignorance about what kinds of topics he covered. However, if Jesus was viewed as a failed messiah (at least in some proposed unmodified original version), did Josephus mention other failed messiahs? If it was that Jesus had a large enough following by Josephus’ day to be noteworthy, are there other splinter sects of Judaism of similar size that he mentioned? For that matter, do we have a sense of how large Jesus’ following was by that time?
The following was small — surprisingly so. If you want to see the statistics, I give them in my book Triumph of Christianity. Josephus mentioned Jesus simply because he was talking about historical events in the period and this was one of them. He gives it very low priority, but at least he mentions it.
An oddity of Josephus references – both of them – is that the appellation “the one called Christ” is unique in Josephus; and some mythicists argue this especially against the authenticity of the second “James” reference. Josephus discusses a considerable number of other figures in this period for whom messianic claims appear to have been made – by some estimations, at least ten of them – but does not allow any other than ‘Jesus’ the explicitly messianic title “Christ”.
What, if anything, might we read into this discrepancy?
My own view is that Josephus does need to be able to distinguish one “Joshua” from another, he has a total of 22 of them. Josephus, in the Antiquities, is writing for a Graeco-Roman readership, and it may well be that by this date (the end of the first century),’Christ’ already functioned in literary culture as denoting a known specific dead Jewish prophet, who still had followers.
And also there is Josephus own agenda; that Jewish messianic prophecies, properly interpreted, actually point to Vespasian – as a ruler of the nations arising from Judea. So, he avoids detailed examination of messianic terminology.
I’m out of the country and don’t have my reference books with me, but if I recalled Josephus says something about Jesus who is legomenon Christ. Is that right? That participle is commonly used to mean either “so people say” or even “supposedly” or both. If he used it for Jesus it would be because that was the one thing he was best known for, that some people were calling him the messiah. Why not the others? Maybe they weren’t being called Messiah when Josephus was writing, but were called that only before they were clearly shown *not* to be the messiah? I don’t know: I’d have to look them up.
“tou legomenou Christou” I think. Mythicists suggest a parallel at Matthew 1:16 – “.. ho legomenos Christos”. As I understand it, secular Greek had no concept of royal anointing; so the term ‘christos’ would be understood as ‘ the greasy one’ or ‘the smeared one’, without any sacral undertones. Hence Aquila renders the Hebrew ‘masiah’ not as ‘christos’ but as ‘eleimmenos’. In Josephus’s other career as a professional toady, I suspect he steered clear of being too exact in fitting Jewish messianic concepts onto his Flavian patrons.
Easier for Josephus to treat ‘Christ’ as a proper name – which in Christian usage it had already become; and as it clearly would function for the younger Pliny.
Right — but Josephus knew perfectly well what a messiah was. And yes, by then it was becoming a proper name. Interesting that along with Pliny Tacitus and possibly Suetonius don’t appear to know the name Jesus.
James Talbot seems to be convinced that various ossuaries can be linked to a Jesus “dynasty”– the book (Jesus Dynasty) makes an interesting read but I’m not sure how seriously I should take it. Have you had any discussions with him on the topic?
Yes he does; I think we may have discussed it, but not at any length. Relatedly: I’ve asked him if he wants to do some (more) guest posts (he’s on the blog).
Dr.Ehrman,
What would you say to Richard Carrier that might make him think twice about his thesis of Jesus never existing? What is he overlooking?
His main point of Jesus being crucified on a lower earth(?) is completely new to me. Did the early Jews really think there was an exact copy of earth(in outer space) where Satan existed? Where does he get this idea from?
I wrote a book on it. (!) And no, the idea of Jesus being crucified in a different realm is a completely modern fabrication.
Is there any article or book hopefully online and available to us non scholars that spells out what Josephus actually said about Jesus according to scholarly consensus?
I discuss it in my book Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millennium. And if you search for Josephus on the blog you’ll see some posts on it.
Professor, just curious. Have you ever seen a mythecist argue their point without yelling “hearsay” with respect to (at least) Josephus, Tacituts, Seutonius and Pliney?
Well, they have lots of points that they argue, and often they focus on other ones than these. But offhand I can’t think of a mythicist who accepts the witness of these other authors.
Why would they? The story is fabricated!! You sound like they SHOULD accept them. Why not admit your bias? I really think you don’t even see it.
Why do you think that Josephus didn’t know about any of the gospels? At the time he wrote Antiquities (c. 90), at least 3 of the canonical ones would have been circulating.
As I recall, Lémonon makes the point that Josephus singled out Pilate more than the other governors because he was so much more vicious. So the Testamonium is just Josephus using Jesus as one more example of Pilate’s cruelty.
Do records survive of any trials or other judicial proceedings from around the time and place of Jesus?
We have some from later periods; they are literary accounts, but they may be based on records. (THe only ones I know about are trials of Christians; even these can’t be taken as stenographic reports, though sometimes they read like them)
On my web site, http://www.Topics InChristianity.com, under the heading ‘Confirming Authors’, I have detailed and discussed the Roman writings about Jesus: Josephus on Jesus, John the Baptist, and James the brother of Jesus; Pliny the Younger; and Tacitus. This includes the issue of the alterations that were likely done to what Josephus wrote about Jesus Christ, to make it look like Josephus recognized his divinity.