Transcript
Stephen: I want to talk about the historical evidence for Jesus. Is he a man or is he a myth?
Joel: Yeah, good question. And lots of people would answer by saying he is a myth. It’s important to see that that’s not the way Luke presents the Lord Jesus at all. In the third chapter of his gospel, he says, “In the fifteenth year of Caesar Tiberius.” What he’s doing there is inviting scrutiny. He’s saying, “Look, here’s a date, here’s a historical marker — go back and compare against this.”
Stephen: He packs it with historical detail after historical detail.
Joel: Absolutely. And again at the very start of the gospel in chapter one, when he’s writing to Theophilus, he says, “I have carefully investigated these matters.” This is not a sensationalised work of fiction. This is, in some ways, the quite basic and ordinary, unspectacular recording of events just exactly as they happened.
It’s important that we understand that any serious scholar agrees on the fact that the man known as Jesus of Nazareth did exist. It’s only fringe kind of internet lunatics who deny the existence of Jesus Christ. Even people who are skeptical and atheistic, who don’t believe in God, recognise that Jesus existed.
John Dominic Crossan, who as far as I’m aware is an agnostic, said that Jesus’s crucifixion under Pontius Pilate is about as certain a historical fact as anything we can be about. That’s the position of serious modern scholars.
Joel: Yeah, and there are so many historical characters that we all believe in and never dispute — people like Alexander the Great or Julius Caesar. But as far as I can read, they don’t come close in terms of the evidence that backs up the events of their lives compared to the Lord Jesus.
Stephen: Yeah. You’ve mentioned Alexander the Great — the details that we know about him are based on biographies written three to four hundred years after the events took place. Whereas all of the gospel writings — Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John — were all completed by around AD 70, if not before, well within the lifetimes of eyewitnesses and people who could easily refute or dispute the details if they wanted to.
Joel: Yeah, and the growth of the church was in the very place where these people were living. It wasn’t like the events of Christ’s life happened in Israel but the church exploded in Gaul or France or something like that. The very same place that the church grew was the place where the eyewitnesses were.
Stephen: Yeah. But what about other evidences — people who weren’t Christians? Do we have anything from them around those times that speak about Christ’s life?
Joel: Yeah, we absolutely do. Within a hundred years of the life of Jesus, we have probably around ten historians who recorded events — people who weren’t Christians, who had no interest in authenticating or verifying the Christian gospel — and yet they asserted that these were the things this man Jesus Christ did, and that his followers believed and proclaimed these things.
You have people like Flavius Josephus, Tacitus, and Pliny the Younger. Josephus was a Jew; Tacitus and Pliny were Romans. They had nothing to gain from propagating the Christian message, and yet they recorded that these were historical facts that had happened — that Jesus Christ was crucified under Pontius Pilate. These are things that people very close to his life, and in the same locality, recorded.
Stephen: Yeah. When we pick up the gospel of Luke, for example, it doesn’t begin, “Once upon a time there was this man called Jesus.” It invites us to take it seriously. How else are we to read the likes of the gospel of Luke or the other gospels?
Joel: I think whenever these four writers — Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John — present the life of Jesus Christ, they’re not saying, “Here is a myth or a fairy tale.” They’re not asking us to make a leap in the dark. They’re asking us to step into the light of history. They’re saying, “Here are things we witnessed. We were there. These things are true. You must respond to them.”
It’s worth bearing in mind that many of these men died for their faith. They could have renounced what they had written, said they made it all up, but they would rather die than recant their words about Jesus of Nazareth. The only reason that would be the case is because these men were utterly convinced that these things were true and that these events took place.
Stephen: Yeah. Any other implications?
Joel: Well, I guess then we have to respond. If these historical records are serious historical records — and they are — then, like any other historical work, like the biographies of Alexander the Great or Julius Caesar’s Gallic Wars, we take them seriously. We read the information, and unless we have good reason to dismiss what they say, we accept it. We have to respond to what Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John say about Jesus Christ in the same way. We have to take seriously what he says.
Stephen: Yeah. And I remember someone once said about Christianity — and it was potentially Chesterton or C.S. Lewis, as it always is — that Christianity is a matter of events: times, places, and happenings. The point is, our lives aren’t changed by the mere teaching of Jesus, which could have been helpful to us even if it were a parable. Our lives are changed because a real man, who was the Son of God, died on a cross and rose again in this real world that we live in.
Joel: Absolutely. Christianity is not just timeless precepts and wise sayings. It does have elements of that — the book of Proverbs, for example — but ultimately it is truth revealed in history. It is the claim that God has spoken, that God has acted, and particularly in the person of Jesus Christ, that God has come among us that we might be redeemed and reconciled to him.
