Evidences Outside the New Testament for the Historical Jesus

Introduction

Skeptics have always challenged the authenticity of historical documents related to Jesus. Some of them have argue that the references to Jesus in the writings of Tacitus and Josephus fail to provide sufficient independent testimony for the existence of Jesus. In this paper I will argue that Tacitus’s Annals and Josephus’s Testimonium provide strong evidences that Jesus of Nazareth was a historical person. Taken together, the combined weight of the accounts found in The Annals and The Testimonium makes a much stronger case for the historicity of Jesus than either document could on its own. 

Tacitus, The Annals, and Jesus

Cornelius Tacitus was a Senator and historian of the Roman Empire and is considered to be one of the greatest Roman historians.[1] Tacitus wrote a historical account from the reign of Tiberius to Nero, titled The Annals. These writings are an important source of Roman history of the first Century.[2] In them, Tacitus makes the following claims about Jesus:

    “Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace. Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus”.      

Tacitus recorded what is probably the most important  reference to Jesus outside the New Testament, says Scholar Yamauchi.[3] But, skeptics have made several arguments against the reliability of this text as a reference to the historical Jesus. D.M. Murdock, member of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens, says the entire passage is a forgery since there is no record of the quotation by the early Church Fathers, attributing the reference to a later edition.[4]
However, this argument is less than convincing. There wouldn’t be any reason for the Fathers to mention such a negative quote against Jesus and Christians, so its absence in their writings is expected. Furthermore, Tacitus’s works were lost to posterity until the 11th century, so it is likely that the Church Fathers may not have known of him. And despite Murdock’s skepticism, the fact remains that most scholars today accept Tacitus’s reference to Christ’s crucifixion to be describing a true event.[5] Cicero, who was a Roman statesman, called it the cruelest, disgusting and extreme penalty.[6] Nevertheless, it was the capital punishment for those condemned to death in Ancient Roman Empire.

A second objection, argued for by skeptics like Kraus and Woodman, is the accusation that Tacitus was a biased writer who often manipulated materials for his own purpose.[7] However, there are no evidences to validate such accusation. Tacitus wrote a great deal of Roman history that matches other historical sources, including the gospel accounts. He was admired by his contemporaries like Pliny the Younger, who congratulated him for the above-average precision in his Histories, asserting this work would be immortal. As Professor Van Voorst writes, Tacitus is considered to be one of the greatest Roman historians[8]. Furthermore, when one reads The Annals, one can see clearly that Tacitus wanted to expose the tyranny and total moral decrepitude of the emperors, probably exposing his own life at great peril, is not likely to make things up on a whim.

A third objection raised against the reliability of the passage in question is raise by Wells, who says that Tacitus was merely repeating what Christians were then saying, and that ” the context of Tacitus’ remarks itself suggests that he relied on Christian informants.”[9] He was surely glad to accept from Christians their own view that Christianity was a recent religion, since the Roman authorities were prepared to tolerate only ancient cults, says Wells.

However, there is no evident reason for Tacitus to repeat information from Christians, whom he clearly hated, as shown in The Annals. Professor Ronald Martin recognizes that “there were difficulties discerning Tacitus’ exact sources, but was clear that Tacitus read widely and that the idea that he was an uncritical follower of a single source is quite untenable.”[10] The weight of Tacitus’s writings concerning Jesus, is that we have a testimony by an unsympathetic witness to the success and spread of Christianity, based on a historical figure – Jesus, which was crucified under Pontius Pilate, said Professor Yamauchi.[11]

Josephus, The Testimonium, and Jesus

Josephus was a very important Jewish historian of the first century. He was born in AD, 37 and wrote most of his works toward the end of the first century. In his work Antiquities of the Jews, which was a history of the Jewish people from Creation until his time, Flavius Josephus wrote the following about Jesus in a section that has now come to be known simply as The Testimonium:

 
“Now there was about this time Jesus, a wise man, if it be lawful to call him a man; for he was a doer of wonderful works, a teacher of such men as receive the truth with pleasure. He drew over to him both many of the Jews and many of the Gentiles. He was [the] Christ. And when Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men among us, had condemned him to the cross, those that loved him at the first did not forsake him; for he appeared to them alive again the third day, as the divine prophets had foretold these and ten thousand other wonderful things concerning him. And the tribe of Christians, so named for him, are not extinct at this day.”[12]

In response to this excerpt, Wells argues that parts of the Testimonium are interpolations or forgery, claiming that the phrases “if it be lawful to call him a man,” or “He was the Christ,” and “for he appeared to them alive again the third day, as the divine prophets had foretold these and ten thousand other wonderful things concerning him,” were added to the text by someone other than Josephus, long after the original text was written.[13] Scholars agree that those passages are probably interpolations, since Josephus wasn’t a Christian. Recently, Professor Shlomo Pines found an Arabic Version of the Testimonium dated from the 10th Century.[14] In this version the supposed additions are not present which confirm some interpolations. However, Professor James Tabor says “we are more than fortunate that those passages seems blatant and obvious, in both placement and phrasing”.[15] Because, even without the interpolations, Josephus corroborates important information about the historical Jesus: that he was a wise leader, a miracle worker, was crucified by the religious and political authorities and established a movement that continued after his death.
While the passages offer important independent verification about Jesus, skeptic Michael Martin, philosopher at Boston University critiques the passage saying “if Jesus did exist, one would expect Josephus to have said more about him.”[16] In the same way, Murdock critiques the entire Testimonium saying if Josephus had such a regard for Jesus, to call him “a wise man”, he would have written more about him”.[17] One of the skeptic objections is that the Testimonium refers to Jesus as a “wise man”, phrase used by Josephus only when referring to David and Solomon. But, Professor France believes the phrase “a wise man” was in fact written by Josephus. He writes, “Thus the clause ‘if indeed one should call him a man’ makes good sense as a Christian response to Josephus’ description of Jesus as (merely) a ‘wise man’, but is hardly the sort of language a Christian would have used if writing from scratch.”[18] Also, the Jewish Scholar Geza Vermes agrees that “a wise man” was written by Josephus, since he sees a connection for the use of the term between Daniel and Solomon and the Testimonium description of Jesus.[19] Professor Yamauchi’s response to such statement “one expected Josephus to have written more about Jesus” is this: “There is overwhelming evidence that Jesus did exist, and these hypothetical questions are really very vacuous and fallacious, Josephus was interested in political matters and struggle against Rome …Jesus didn’t pose a great political threat”[20]

Josephus’s reference to James, brother of Jesus

In the second mention of Jesus in the Antiquities, Josephus mentions James, the brother of Jesus, writing: “Festus was now dead, and Albinus was but upon the road; so he assembled the Sanhedrin of judges, and brought before them the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ, whose name was James, and some others; and when he had formed an accusation against them as breakers of the law, he delivered them to be stoned”[21] Is this passage Josephus records the existence of Jesus, who had a brother called James. But, skeptic Wells says the passage was interpolated because Josephus as an orthodox Jew would write something like “called Christ by some” but not “who was called Christ ”which was a Christian use of the phase at that time.[22] As convincing as Wells argument might seems, this passage is widely accepted by most scholars as authentic.[23]
The reason it is widely accepted is presented by Mc Dowell and Bill Wilson. “The phrase ‘James the brother of Jesus who is called Christ’ is too noncommittal to have been inserted by a later Christian interpolator who would have desired to assert the messiahship of Jesus more definitely as well as to deny the charges against James.” Also, if the passage is an interpolation why so little is said about Jesus and James.[24] A second argument against the authenticity of the passage is that Josephus wrote “the brother of the Lord” but not “the brother of Jesus”, as a sect they may have been known as “brothers of the Lord” said Earl Doherty.[25] The skeptic Earl admits that it is difficult to explain why and how it was changed, but Christian copyists may have felt otherwise, and regarded “brother of the Lord” as an inadequate identification of the new historical Jesus for the general reader. In response to Earl, I say that this argument is very improbable and fallacious. Louis Feldman states that the authenticity of the Josephus passage on James has been “almost universally acknowledged”.[26] “I know of no scholar that has disputed this passage successfully” affirms Professor Yamauchi.[27]

Conclusion 

            The first century historians Tacitus and Josephus references to Jesus in the Annals and in the Testimonium are extremely important. The weight of the evidences presented in them, strongly favors that Tacitus and Josephus references to Jesus are authentic. These non-Christian evidences have gone under extensive scrutiny through the centuries and survived as reliable accounts, and as strong and stunning corroboration for a historical Jesus.

Joel Stevao

[1] Robert Van Voorst, Jesus Outside the New Testament: An Introduction to the Ancient Evidence (Grand Rapids: William B Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2000), 39-42.
[2] Ronald H. Martin, Tacitus and the Writing of History (California: University of California, 1981), 104–105.
[3] Lee Strobel, The case for Christ (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1998), 86.
[4] http://www.truthbeknown.com/pliny.htm > accessed February 28, 2015.
[5] Paul Eddy and Gregory Boyd, The Jesus Legend: A Case for the Historical Reliability of the Synoptic Jesus Tradition (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2007), 127.
[6] Marcus Tullio Cicero: Verrem 2:5.165, 168.
[7] C.S.Kraus and A.J. Woodman, Latin Historians (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 97-100.
[8] Robert Van Voorst, Jesus Outside the New Testament: An Introduction to the Ancient Evidence (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Publishing, 2000), 39-42.
[9] George Albert Wells, Who was Jesus? A Critique of the New Testament (La Salle: Open Court Publishing, 1989), 20.
[10] Ronaldo H. Martin, Tacitus and the Writing of History (California: University of California, 1981), 211.
[11] Lee Strobel, The case for Christ (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1998), 87-88.
[12] Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews, 18:3.
[13] George Wells, The Jesus Legend (Illinois: Open Court Publishing, 1996), 48.
[14] Shlomo Pines, An Arabic version of the Testimonium Flavianum and its implications (Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, 1971).
[15] http://jamestabor.com/2012/08/12/josephus-on-john-the-baptizer-jesus-and-james/#identifier_2_2977 accessed on 3/06/2015
[16] Michael Martin, The case against Christianity (Philadelphia: Temple Univ. Press, 1991), 49.
[17] Acharya Murdock, Suns of God: Krishna, Buddha and Christ Unveiled (Kempton: Stellar House Publishing, 2004) http://www.truthbeknown.com/josephus.htm accessed on 2/27/2015.
[18] R.T.France, The Evidence for Jesus (Regent College Publishing, 2006), 30.
[19] Geza Vermes, Jesus in his Jewish Context: The Jesus Notice of Josephus Re-Examined (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2003), 97.
[20] Lee Strobel, The case for Christ (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1998), 85.
[21] Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews, Book 20, Chapter 9, Paragraph 1.
[22] George Wells, Who was Jesus? A Critique of the New Testament Record (La Salle: Open Court), 22.
[23] Paul L. Maier, Josephus, the essential works: a condensation of Jewish antiquities and The Jewish war (Grand Rapids: Kregel Academic, 1995), 284-285.
[24] Evans 1995, p. 106.
[25] http://jesuspuzzle.humanists.net/supp10.htm#What did Josephus accessed on 3/7/2015.
[26] Louis H. Feldman and Gohei Hata, Josephus, Judaism, and Christianity (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1987), 55-57.
[27] Lee Strobel, The case for Christ (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1998), 83.