Jesus

The Historical Jesus

The entrance of Jesus into the world changed the course of history. Many people have viewed him differ­ently. All Muslims acknowledge that Jesus was a prophet and a messenger of God. Many Muslims believe that Je­sus will return to earth before the final judgment, con­quer evil forces and usher in the reign of God. The Hindus today accept the divinity of Jesus, but not that he is unique. Generally speaking, Marxists reject all gods in­cluding Jesus Christ. For Lenin, Jesus never existed and was a mythical invention. However, since the late 1960s, among the Marxists, there has been a revived interest in Jesus. First, there is an acknowledgment that he existed. Second, neo-Marxists are solely interested in his social messages. Other groups also have an opinion about Je­sus. Of course, for Christians, he is the Son of God, truly human and divine.

Yet there have been people who have asked: How do we know that Jesus ever existed? The existence of Jesus outside of the writings of the New Testament is men­tioned by three Roman writers, Suetonius, Tacitus and Pliny the Younger, and by the Jewish historian Josephus.

Non-Christian Sources

1.   Suetonius (Life of Emperor Claudius 25:4) men­tioned the expulsion of Jews from Rome in A.D. 49 be­cause of their riots at the instigation of Chrestus. Suetonius wrote around A.D. 120 and, like many Romans, considered Christians and Jews as members of the same religious sect. What is most significant in this piece of evi­dence is the point that by the middle of the first century, a strong testimony to Christ was made in the capital of the Roman Empire (Rome).

2.    Another Roman writer, Pliny the Younger (Epistle10:96ff), who was governor of Asia Minor, wrote a letter to the Emperor Trojan (c. A.D. 111). He asked for advice in the matter of dealing with Christians who come together at fixed seasons and sing hymns to Christ as a god.

3. Finally, the Roman historian Tacitus, in his Annals 15:44, which was written around A.D. 110, stated:

“They got their name from Christ, who was executed by sentence of the procurator Pontius Pilate in the reign of Tiberius. That checked the pernicious superstition for a short time, but it broke out afresh not in Judea, where the plague first arose, but in Rome itself where all horrible and shameful things in the world collect and find a horn”

This passage reveals Tacitus’ account of the great fire which swept through the

city of Rome in A.D. 64 during the reign of Emperor Nero. Nero blamed the Christians for the fire and so put to death many Christians. The value of Tacitus’ writing is that he did not secure his informa­tion about Jesus’ death from a Christian source. Tacitus did not use Jesus’ proper name; he used the word Christ, the religious title which was used by Christians outside of Palestine as a proper title for Jesus.

4. The Jewish historian, Josephus, wrote the history of his people and the Jewish-Roman war (AD. 66—70). In his work, Antiquities 20,200, he wrote: “James the brother of Jesus who was called the Christ.   This pas­sage was in reference to the stoning death of James who was an apostle of Jesus.

The non-Christian sources give us scanty information about Jesus. However, they do establish that Jesus ex­isted, died and had followers. Our main source of the his­torical Jesus comes from the New Testament writings and early Christian writings: (1) the testimony of the Synoptic Gospels, (2) the testimony of St. John’s Gospel, (3) the testimony of the Acts of the Apostles, (4) the testimony of Paul’s letters, (5) the testimony of tradition.