Intro to Apologetics Series: Did Jesus even exist?
To
continue with my introductory apologetics series, I wanted to take a step back
from the scriptures and Jesus and look at a matter of history. There is a
staunch crowd that one can find on the internet that will claim that Christians
are crazy for believing in Jesus because Jesus never existed at all. That Jesus
is merely a myth like Santa Claus or the Tooth Fairy. Is this the case? Have
roughly a third of the world deluded ourselves into believing in a myth? I
think we will find that historical records, including those outside of the
Bible, will side with the Christian. There is a secondary issue, or separate
issue entirely depending on who you are talking to, that Jesus did exist, but
he wasn’t the son of God, and that the council of Nicea was responsible for the
deification of Jesus. What I want to do today is take a brief look at the extra
biblical sources for the existence of Jesus and the writings of church fathers
to show that not only did Jesus exist, but that the early church firmly
believed that Jesus was the son of God.
First,
let’s take a look at the extra biblical sources. Tacticus mentions during a report
on Nero’s decision to blame Christians for a fire that ravaged Rome in 64 A.D.,
that “Christians derived their name from Christus, who suffered the extreme
penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of Pontius Pilatus…” So we
have an ancient historian confirming the fact that there was a historical
Christ figure that was crucified, and that Christians derived their name from
him, and supposedly followed him. Tacticus also mentions a “mischievous superstition”
that arose from Judea to spread throughout the Roman empire, this must be an
allusion to one of the main tenants of Christianity, that Jesus bodily rose
from the dead.
Pliny the
Younger, a Roman official who wrote a letter in 112 AD to Emperor Trajan, was seeking
advice on how to deal with a multitude of people of every age, class, and sex
that was accused of Christianity. He writes “They were in the habit of meeting
on a certain fixed day before it was light, when they sang in alternate verses
a humn to Christ, as to a god, and bound themselves by a solemn oath, not to
any wicked deeds, but never to commit any fraud, theft, or adultery, never to
falsify their word, nor deny a trust when they should be called upon to deliver
it up; after which is was their custom to separate, and the reassemble to
partake of food – but food of an ordinary and innocent kind.” This provides
evidence that the early church did believe in Jesus’ divinity. We also see
evidence as to what the Christians believed in what oaths they took, which
gives us an outside window as to what Christ had taught his followers.
The last
historian that I want to cover here is Josephus, who is probably the most
common historian cited by Christian apologists for extra-biblical references to
Jesus. In Jewish Antiquities,
Josephus mentions Jesus in two passages. In the first, he describes the condemning
of James by the Jewish Sanhedrin, where he describes James as “the brother of
Jesus the so-called Christ”. This actually was one quotation that I had read
for the first time as I researched for this blog post. Josephus’ second mention
of Jesus that I will talk about is probably his most cited: “About this time
there lived Jesus, a wise man, if indeed one ought to call him a man. For he …
wrought surprising feats…. HE was the Christ. When Pilate … condemned him to be
crucified, those who had.. come to love him did not give up their affection for
him. On the third day he appeared… restored to life… and the tribe of the
Christians has not disappeared.” Now, this quote itself has been contested to
have been altered in parts by a Christian scholar, as Josephus was a Jew and
did not hold Jesus to be the Messiah, but regardless, we have plenty of
corroborating evidence from Josephus to show that Jesus was a historical
figure.
Now we
can quickly take a look at the early church, outside of Pliny the Younger’s
letter, to show that the early church did indeed believe in Jesus’ divinity. We
have a handful of early church fathers, Polycarp, Ignatius, and Justin Martyr. All
3 of these were leaders in the church from 50 AD to 165 AD, with Ignatius and Polycarp
being earlier and Justin Martyr being later. All of these leaders are quoted as
Christ being Lord and the Son of God. We have the fathers of the church within
a generation of Jesus (33 AD) that were proclaiming his divinity. The Council
of Nicea, where some people claim that Jesus’s divinity was invented, did not occur
until 325 AD, so the divinity of Jesus was there from the very start of
Christianity.
So
hopefully this has helped to establish that Christianity has been consistent in
our beliefs about Christ, and that we believe in someone who has existed in the
first place. In my next article, I hope to take a look at the claim that scriptures
have slowly been corrupted over time, like a game of telephone. God bless and
have a good rest of your day.
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