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Did a historical Jesus exist?
 
by Jim Walker 
 
originated: 12 June 1997 / additions: 22 Sep. 2007
 
Amazingly, the question of an actual historical Jesus rarely confronts the religiousbeliever. The power of faith has so forcefully driven the minds of most believers, andeven apologetic scholars, that the question of reliable evidence gets obscured bytradition, religious subterfuge, and outrageous claims. The following gives a brief outlook about the claims of a historical Jesus and why the evidence the Christianspresent us cannot serve as justification for reliable evidence for a historical Jesus.
 
ALL CLAIMS OF JESUS DERIVE FROM HEARSAY ACCOUNTS
No one has the slightest physical evidence to support a historical Jesus; no artifacts,dwelling, works of carpentry, or self-written manuscripts. All claims about Jesus derivefrom writings of other people. There occurs no contemporary Roman record that showsPontius Pilate executing a man named Jesus. Devastating to historians, there occursnot a
single
contemporary writing that mentions Jesus. All documents about Jesus gotwritten well
after 
the life of the alleged Jesus from either: unknown authors, people whohad never met an earthly Jesus, or from fraudulent, mythical or allegorical writings.Although one can argue that many of these writings come from fraud or interpolations, Iwill use the information and dates to show that even if these sources did not come frominterpolations, they could still not serve as reliable evidence for a historical Jesus,simply because all sources derive from hearsay accounts.Hearsay means information derived from other people rather than on a witness' ownknowledge.Courts of law do not generally allow hearsay as testimony, and nor does honest modernscholarship. Hearsay provides no proof or good evidence, and therefore, we shoulddismiss it.If you do not understand this, imagine yourself confronted with a charge for a crimewhich you know you did not commit. You feel confident that no one can prove guiltbecause you
know 
that there exists no evidence whatsoever for the charge against you.Now imagine that you stand present in a court of law that allows hearsay as evidence.When the prosecution presents its case, everyone who takes the stand against youclaims that you committed the crime, not as a witness themselves, but solely becauseother people said so. None of these
other 
people, mind you, ever show up in court, nor can anyone find them.Hearsay does not work as evidence because we have no way of knowing whether theperson lies, or simply bases his or her information on wrongful belief or bias. We knowfrom history about witchcraft trials and kangaroo courts that hearsay provides neither 
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reliable nor fair statements of evidence. We know that mythology can arise out of nogood information whatsoever. We live in a world where many people believe in demons,UFOs, ghosts, or monsters, and an innumerable number of fantasies believed as facttaken from nothing but belief and hearsay. It derives from these reasons why hearsaycannot serves as good evidence, and the same reasoning must go against the claims of a historical Jesus or any other historical person.Authors of ancient history today, of course, can only write from indirect observation in atime far removed from their aim. But a valid historian's own writing gets cited withsources that trace to the subject themselves, or to eyewitnesses and artifacts. For example a historian today who writes about the life of George Washington, of course,can not serve as an eyewitness, but he can provide citations to documents which givepersonal or eyewitness accounts. None of the historians about Jesus give reliablesources to eyewitnesses, therefore all we have remains as hearsay.
 
THE BIBLE GOSPELS
The most "authoritative" accounts of a historical Jesus come from the four canonicalGospels of the Bible. Note that these Gospels did not come into the Bible as originaland authoritative from the authors themselves, but rather from the influence of earlychurch fathers, especially the most influential of them all: Irenaeus of Lyon who lived inthe middle of the second century. Many heretical gospels existed by that time, butIrenaeus considered only some of them for mystical reasons. He claimed only four innumber; according to Romer, "like the four zones of the world, the four winds, the four divisions of man's estate, and the four forms of the first living creatures-- the lion of Mark, the calf of Luke, the man of Matthew, the eagle of John (see
 Against theHeresies
). The four gospels then became Church cannon for the orthodox faith. Most of the other claimed gospel writings were burned, destroyed, or lost." [Romer]Elaine Pagels writes: "Although the gospels of the New Testament-- like thosediscovered at Nag Hammadi-- are
attributed 
to Jesus' followers, no one knows whoactually wrote any of them." [Pagels, 1995]Not only do we not know who wrote them, consider that none of the Gospels existedduring the alleged life of Jesus, nor do the unknown authors make the claim to have metan earthly Jesus. Add to this that none of the original gospel manuscripts exist; we onlyhave copies of copies.The consensus of many biblical historians put the dating of the earliest Gospel, that of Mark, at sometime after 70 C.E., and the last Gospel, John after 90 C.E. [Pagels, 1995;Helms]. This would make it some 40 years after the alleged crucifixion of Jesus that wehave any Gospel writings that mention him! Elaine Pagels writes that "the first Christiangospel was probably written during the last year of the war, or the year it ended. Whereit was written and by whom we do not know; the work is anonymous, although traditionattributes it to Mark..." [Pagels, 1995]The traditional Church has portrayed the authors as the apostles Mark, Luke, Matthew,& John, but scholars know from critical textural research that there simply occurs noevidence that the gospel authors could have served as the apostles described in theGospel stories. Yet even today, we hear priests and ministers describing these authorsas the actual disciples of Christ. Many Bibles still continue to label the stories as "The
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Gospel according to St. Matthew," "St. Mark," "St. Luke," St. John." No apostle wouldhave announced his own sainthood
before
the Church's establishment of sainthood. Butone need not refer to scholars to determine the lack of evidence for authorship. As anexperiment, imagine the Gospels without their titles. See if you can find out from thetexts who wrote them; try to find their names.Even if the texts supported the notion that the apostles wrote them, consider that theaverage life span of humans in the first century came to around 30, and very few peoplelived to 70. If the apostles births occured at about the same time as the alleged Jesus,and wrote their gospels in their old age, that would put Mark at least 70 years old, andJohn at over 110.The gospel of Mark describes the first written Bible gospel. And although Mark appearsdeceptively after the Matthew gospel, the gospel of Mark got written at least ageneration
before
Matthew. From its own words, we can deduce that the author of Markhad neither heard Jesus nor served as his personal follower. Whoever wrote the gospel,he simply accepted the mythology of Jesus without question and wrote a crude anungrammatical account of the popular story at the time. Any careful reading of the threeSynoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke) will reveal that Mark served as the commonelement between Matthew and Luke and gave the main source for both of them. Of Mark's 666* verses, some 600 appear in Matthew, some 300 in Luke. According toRandel Helms, the author of Mark, stands at least at a third remove from Jesus andmore likely at the fourth remove. [Helms]
* Most Bibles show 678 verses for Mark, not 666, but many Biblical scholars think the last 12 verses came later from interpolation. Theearliest manuscripts and other ancient sources do not have Mark 16: 9-20. Moreover the text style does not match and the transitionbetween verse 8 and 9 appears awkward. Even some of today's Bibles such as the NIV exclude the last 12 verses.
The author of Matthew had obviously gotten his information from Mark's gospel andused them for his own needs. He fashioned his narrative to appeal to Jewish traditionand Scripture. He improved the grammar of Mark's Gospel, corrected what he felttheologically important, and heightened the miracles and magic.The author of Luke admits himself as an interpreter of earlier material and not aneyewitness (Luke 1:1-4). Many scholars think the author of Luke lived as a gentile, or atthe very least, a hellenized Jew and even possibly a woman. He (or she) wrote at a timeof tension in the Roman empire along with its fever of persecution. Many modernscholars think that the Gospel of Matthew and Luke got derived from the Mark gospeland a hypothetical document called "Q" (German
Quelle
, which means "source").[Helms; Wilson] . However, since we have no manuscript from Q, no one could possiblydetermine its author or where or how he got his information or the date of its authorship.Again we get faced with unreliable methodology and obscure sources.John, the last appearing Bible Gospel, presents us with long theological discourses fromJesus and could not possibly have come as literal words from a historical Jesus. TheGospel of John disagrees with events described in Mark, Matthew, and Luke. Moreover the unknown author(s) of this gospel wrote it in Greek near the end of the first century,and according to Bishop Shelby Spong, the book "carried within it a very obviousreference to the death of John Zebedee (John 21:23)." [Spong]Please understand that the stories themselves cannot serve as examples of eyewitnessaccounts since they came as products of the minds of the unknown authors, and notfrom the characters themselves. The Gospels describe narrative stories, written almost
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