I took an intro to ancient history as an elective at university. I remember my lecturer explaining that the writer of 'Mark' did an especially good job because he was factual. He left us with a paradox essentially, that the tomb was empty, and therefore it is on us to conclude how that could be - of course with the hope that we conclude Jesus must have resurrected.
However, I asked my lecturer about it afterwards, but more to do with how reliable the gospels are. He began by asserting (in passing) Mark himself wrote it. When I clarified some other point, which contradicted the idea of Mark being the author, he intellectually took a step back, and said the unknown author did this and that etc. I also remember he confessed he was a catholic during this lecture.
Now, my point here is that as a professional (the lecturer), I would have thought the historicity of Jesus' life would be very plausible and easy to explain, if that's what he, as a professional, believes to be the case. Of course, there was the bias of his religious beliefs. But the fact that even I noticed he was skewing details makes me wonder just how factual it is. Or maybe, like 'Mark' alluded, you really do need faith to believe, not just in the resurrection, but that the whole lot is even remotely trustworthy.
I guess my question is, what is the best way to approach this subject? What can we get out of the New Testament as being factually true? And how do we make sense of other things beyond Christian writings, such as no roman records of Jesus' crucifixion, and Josephus not even batting an eye about something he explicitly would have been interested in (Jewish affairs)? Even Paul/Saul lacked a huge amount of knowledge about the man he decided to follow - Mary's name, the Virgin birth, Sermon on the Mount, Joseph's name, events around Galilee... I know a lack of evidence isn't evidence in itself, but when things systematically stack up to paint a gaping hole in history, you can't help but wonder.
I’m not going to revisit the whole historicity of Jesus question. You can read my answer in the faq. I don’t have anything substantial to add to that post today.
Instead, I’m just going to talk through some of the questions about historiography and early Christian studies, and how we approach things/ought to approach things.
1) Approaches to the subject
There are different ways to approach the subject or the topic of the New Testment texts (NTTs). One of these is theological. That is, to treat them as authoritative texts that give divine revelation of importance for people to understand and believe. Theology is a separate, though not unrelated, discipline to history. I think it’s important to grasp this at a discipline level – conclusions you make about theology may (indeed probably should) influence basic methodological approaches to history for confessional historians; conclusions you make about history may, indeed probably will, influence approaches to theology. Though, of course, not all those involved in history will have any theology to reckon with. But they are two different disclipines, and ought to be pursued separately (even though they impact on each other).
But history isn’t theology, and theology isn’t history. And disregarding someone’s research in a historical area because of their theology isn’t itself “good history”, it’s just another form of bias.
All of which is to say, if we want to talk about the New Testament texts in the discipline of history, we can certainly do so – without doing theology, but also without prematurely discarding the historical research of confessional scholars. No less importantly, deciding that the New Testament texts are not of historical value because they are religious, is the same kind of bias.
There is much value in adopting a historical approach to the New Testament and related texts. In this instance, we will be interested in questions such as, when were these texts written? Who wrote them? For what purpose? What do they tell us about the beliefs of their authors and their communities? And so on. Even if you decide that the NTTs are unreliable about the historical events of Jesus’ life and death (and/or resurrection), they are historical documents that providence evidence of what early Christians believed and wanted to say.
2) On evidentiary standards
In my view, working in ancient history, the primary question the NTTS provoke is, “What is the simplest explanation for these?” That’s why I think, and wrote, that there is substantial evidence for a historical Jesus to have existed. This is the consensus view of historians on the subject. There’s very little consensus about what this Jesus did, though probably a majority agree that he was a Jewish preacher of somewhat apocalyptic views, who was indeed crucified under Roman rule in 30 or 33 AD.
“What is the simplest explanation for these?” is a question that takes whatever data we have, and then attempts to provide a plausible historical explanation for them. It’s plausible that given a person like Jesus who ministered and died in Judea in the 20s and 30s, a movement arose after his death from among his followers, which believed that he was a messianic figure, had risen from death, and would return again. Given the particular (and particularly unusual in some ways) combination of beliefs of early Christians, coupled with the conversion of a fairly extraordinary figure (Saul/Paul), that movement spread with a degree of energy similar to other new-religious-movements. That growth occasioned the writing of Paul’s epistles, and as the group of believers became (a) geographically diverse, and (b) moved into 2nd and 3rd generations, and began to lose 1st generation believers who knew Jesus first-hand, created a need for documentary bodies of teaching (the Gospels).
This also avoids the problem of creating a bar of evidence stating, “unless we have X, Y, Z, we can’t believe in A, B, C as factual.” In my view this involves importing a standard of evidence that is arbitrary, and often anachronistic. To imagine that we ought to have contemporary evidence for what amounts to a marginal Jewish figure, when we have so little evidence for any such marginal Jewish figures, is to expect more for Jesus than would reasonably be expected for any other comparable figure. However, the strength of our conclusions ought to match the strength of our evidences. It’s totally fine to say, “Based on X, Y, Z, the best explanation seems to be A + C. Though maybe B could be plausible if evidence T was found. Nonetheless, A + C remains a tentative explanation.”
3) Specific issues:
And how do we make sense of other things beyond Christian writings, such as no roman records of Jesus' crucifixion, and Josephus not even batting an eye about something he explicitly would have been interested in (Jewish affairs)? Even Paul/Saul lacked a huge amount of knowledge about the man he decided to follow - Mary's name, the Virgin birth, Sermon on the Mount, Joseph's name, events around Galilee...
In a lot of these cases, we simply have to return to the question of (a) what do we have and how to explain it, and (b) what could we expect to have.
For example, Romans were meticulous record keepers. But most of that record keeping was on perishable materials, and the best evidentiary remains of written records comes from Egypt. Egypt presents a fairly unique environment that was favourable to preserving papyri and such. Most Roman records were lost. Furthermore, Jesus would have been a non-citizen, and there’s no expectation there would be records on him, even on his execution.
Josephus is an interesting case. Josephus certainly does have an interest in Jewish affairs, but he’s writing for Roman interests. There is, of course, the contested Testimonium Flavianum passage. My position on that is that Josephus did indeed mention Jesus, but that the text has been partly interpolated by a later Christian scribe. This suggests that Josephus did indeed know about Jesus, but certainly didn’t write about him in the favourable terms that surviving manuscripts have. The view that it is genuine but altered is, I would say, a majority position but not a consensus position.
What does Paul know about Jesus? I would be hesitant to affirm that Paul doesn’t know about some of these things simply because he doesn’t choose to mention them. That is, Paul may choose not to mention certain details because they don’t suit his purposes. There are parts of Paul’s writings where he seems to draw on words spoken by Jesus and attested in other documents. For example, Romans 12:14 seems to echo Jesus’ teaching in the Sermon on the Mount, and depending on one’s take on the authorship of Thessalonians, 1 Thessalonians 5:2,4 seems to echo Jesus’ teaching about the unknown and rapid day of judgment.
This is not to underplay the fact that there is a very large scholarly debate about the relationship between Paul and the Jesus’ tradition, and the questions about what Paul knew about Jesus. I am merely trying to open up the ground and say we ought to be cautious about stating what Paul ought to have known, and about deciding what Paul didn’t know, on the basis of what Paul didn’t say.
Hope this was helpful. Feel free to ask follow-up questions.
Hi there, you may be interested in this section of our FAQ on the question of the historical Jesus. The tl;dr is that the evidence for a historical Jesus is about what we'd expect for a figure of his (lack of) stature in that period; however, historians don't get into the question of his divinity. That's theology, the building across the quadrangle.
Because those threads are older and locked, feel free to tag any user here if you have follow up questions (for example: hey u/jschooltiger I want to know more about ...).