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The historicity of Jesus is the debate "on the fringes of scholarship" and in popular culture whether Jesus historically existed or was a purely mythological figure.[1][2] Mainstream New Testament scholarship ignores the non-existence hypothesis and its arguments,[1][2] as the question of historicity was generally settled in scholarship in the early 20th century,[3][4][5][6][7][note 1] and the general consensus among modern scholars is that a Jewish man named Jesus of Nazareth existed in the Herodian Kingdom of Judea and the subsequent Herodian tetrarchy in the 1st century AD, upon whose life and teachings Christianity was later constructed.[note 1] However, scholars distinguish between the 'Christ of faith' as presented in the New Testament and the subsequent Christian theology, and a minimal 'Jesus of history', of whom almost nothing can be known.[note 2]
There is no scholarly consensus concerning the historicity of most elements of Jesus's life as described in the Bible, and only two key events of the biblical story of Jesus's life are widely accepted as historical, based on the criterion of embarrassment, namely his baptism by John the Baptist and his crucifixion by the order of Pontius Pilate.[8][9][10][11][12][13] Furthermore, the historicity of supernatural elements like his purported miracles and resurrection are deemed to be solely a matter of 'faith' or of 'theology', or lack thereof.[note 3]
The Christ myth theory, developed in 19th century scholarship and gaining popular attraction since the turn of the 20th century,[14][15][2] is the view that Jesus is purely a mythological figure[16] and that Christianity began with belief in such a figure.[17] Proponents use a three-fold argument developed in the 19th century: that the New Testament has no historical value with respect to Jesus's existence, that there are no non-Christian references to Jesus from the first century, and that Christianity had pagan or mythical roots.[18][19] The idea that Jesus was a purely mythical figure has a fringe status in scholarly circles and has no support in critical studies, with most such theories going without recognition or serious engagement.[20][2][note 4]
Academic efforts in biblical studies to determine facts of Jesus's life are part of the "quest for the historical Jesus", and several criteria of authenticity are used in evaluating the authenticity of elements of the Gospel-story. The criterion of multiple attestation is used to argue that attestation by multiple independent sources confirms his existence. There are at least fourteen independent sources for the historicity of Jesus from multiple authors within a century of the crucifixion of Jesus[21] such as the letters of Paul (contemporary of Jesus who personally knew eyewitnesses since the mid 30s AD),[note 5][note 6][22] the gospels (as biographies on historical people similar Xenophon’s Memoirs of Socrates),[23] and non-Christian sources such as Josephus (Jewish historian and commander in Galilee)[24] and Tacitus (Roman historian and Senator).[25][26] Multiple independent sources affirm that Jesus actually had family.[22][27]
- ^ a b Van Voorst 2003, p. 658.
- ^ a b c d Meggitt 2019, p. 2.
- ^ Wells 2007, p. 477.
- ^ Casey 2014, p. 1.
- ^ Casey 2010, p. 33.
- ^ Johnson 2011, p. 4.
- ^ Van Voorst 2003, pp. 658, 660.
- ^ Davies & Sanders 2008, pp. 623–625.
- ^ Levine, Allison & Crossan 2006, pp. 4.
- ^ Herzog 2005, pp. 1–6.
- ^ Powell 1998, pp. 168–173.
- ^ Dunn 2003, p. 339.
- ^ Crossan 1994, p. 145.
- ^ Gray 2016, p. 113-114.
- ^ Gullotta 2017, pp. 313–314, 346.
- ^ Bromiley 1982, p. 1034.
- ^ Ehrman 2012, pp. 12, 347, n.1.
- ^ Van Voorst 2000, p. 8–9.
- ^ Price 2009, pp. 55–83.
- ^ Gullotta 2017, p. 312, 314.
- ^ Dark 2023, p. 150-151.
- ^ a b Gathercole, Simon (2018). "The Historical and Human Existence of Jesus in Paul's Letters". Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus. 16 (2–3): 183–212. doi:10.1163/17455197-01602009.
- ^ Gray, Patrick, ed. (2021). The Cambridge Companion to the New Testament. Cambridge University Press. pp. 98–99. ISBN 9781108437707.
At the moment, the consensus in scholarship is that the gospels are best described as a variation of Greco-Roman biography. David Aune defines an ancient biography as "a discrete prose narrative devoted exclusively to the portrayal of the whole life of a particular individual perceived as historical."...they stand in some literary analogy to the Greco-Roman biographical tradition and books such as Xenophon's Memoirs of Socrates and similar works.
- ^ T.C. Schmidt (2025). Josephus and Jesus: New Evidence for the One Called Christ. Oxford University Press. p. 9,145–147,149–151,188. ISBN 9780191957697.
Later, in the 60s ce, Josephus was stationed in Galilee for several years at which time he visited many places where Jesus once ministered, such as Cana and Capernaum.".."Then, a year or so later, Josephus was appointed general of Galilee and later sent by 'the first men of Jerusalem' (τῶν Ἱεροσολυμιτῶν οἱ πρῶτοι) into Galilee itself...Upon arriving in Galilee, Josephus gathered an army of 100,000 men and began planning defenses, all while staying in communication with the 'Sanhedrin'(τῷ συνεδρίῳ) and the 'first men of Jerusalem' (τῶν ἐν Ἱεροσολύμοις πρώτων). He also set about becoming familiar with the geography of Galilee and its inhabitants...Josephus was further acquainted with places where early Christians are known to have had residence. He, for example, was stationed in Sepphoris for a time, where the Tosefta (third–fourth centuries ce) reports that some early Christians were ministering. Sepphoris, like Cana, was also only three or so miles down the road from Nazareth, Jesus' hometown, and it surely would have had citizens in Josephus' day who remembered Jesus...Ananus II was therefore known to Josephus directly, if not intimately..It was he, the reader will remember, who considered James, the brother of Jesus, such a threat that at enormous political risk he went to the extent of having James illegally executed in 62 ce...And of course, it was this Ananus' father and brother-in-law who personally had Jesus arrested, interrogated, and condemned to death.
- ^ Davies & Sanders 2008, p. 621.
- ^ Tuckett 2001, p. 124–125.
- ^ Ehrman 2012, p. 151.
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