Did Jesus Exist?

By David Bodner

There are many people who don't believe the supernatural aspects of the life of Jesus. However, they see in his teachings and life a philosophy worth following. Whether they call him prophet, teacher, rabbi, or whatever, these people manage to continue to revere Jesus even though they no longer believe he is the son of god. They believe in Jesus the man, not Jesus the god.

But, did Jesus even exist as a man? I will outline the three possibilities for Jesus' existence.

The first possibility for Jesus' existence is the traditional one: Jesus is our lord and savior who died on the cross for our sins. I won't belabor this one. Other people have done satisfactory jobs of debunking this, and I have nothing to add here.

Jesus wasn't the son of god, didn't perform miracles, and wasn't resurrected. But, he spoke in public, had a following, and he was killed after attracting the attention of the Jewish and Roman authorities. I call this second possibility the big-splash Jesus. This is a Jesus who made a big splash, someone who became popular enough that he was perceived as a threat to the religious and secular powers in Judea who found it necessary to kill him. The problem with the big-splash Jesus is the complete lack of corroborating evidence. There is simply no evidence, outside of the decidedly partisan and unreliable gospels, that Jesus ever existed. There is no eyewitness testimony, no archeological evidence, nothing to even suggest that he may have existed.

But, what kind of evidence would we expect? There were no daily newspapers reporting the news. We can't check social security records, DMV records, or any of the thousand other places we might expect to find someone today. Is it possible that Jesus could have made such a big splash and for nothing to have remained in the historical record?

One place we might expect to find Jesus is Josephus. An upper-class Jew who eventually threw his lot in with the Roman cause, Josephus wrote a history of the Jews in which he mentioned just about everyone he knew about. Josephus was present during the Jewish rebellion of 68 to 72 C.E. He wrote a detailed analysis of that war. However, he wrote nothing of Jesus—who presumably died 40 years previously and whose followers would have been the focus of persecution. Josephus' omission speaks loudly. In fact, the early Christian leaders saw that, too. Someone, at some point, slipped a description of Jesus' ministry into Josephus' manuscript. This mention of Jesus is fairly roundly identified as a forgery. I don't know of anyone, religious or not, who believes in it. The fact that someone felt it necessary to alter Josephus does tell us this: It was very important to the early church leaders that we believe—so important that they went to extraordinary means to ensure we did. Given that, it becomes that much more important to view skeptically the gospels or any similar writings.

That a big-splash Jesus could have existed despite a mute historical record is a possibility. Just how possible we think it is depends on our prejudices. I find it difficult to believe that someone could have caused such a commotion in the Temple and had as large a following as the gospels imply—so large that he is brought before high priest, king, and military governor—without there being some kind of historical mention.

The third possibility is the little-splash Jesus. This is someone who may have done some preaching and said some of the things that have been attributed to Jesus. A few people may have even proclaimed him the messiah. But in the end he lived and died a largely unnoticed life. The problem we have here is, is this: Can we really recognize this as Jesus? Messiahs were a dime-a-dozen in those turbulent times. Judaism was quickly evolving under the pressure of Roman rule. Turn-of-the-millennium Judea was a kind of primordial soup of religious movements (Sadducees, Pharisees, Essenes), out of which arose modern Judaism and Christianity. All kinds of ideas were being preached by all kinds of people. But, even if we can identify someone, or some group of people, who may have espoused the teachings of Jesus, can we really say that that's Jesus? How far can our historical character stray from the stories in the New Testament and let us say, "That's Jesus?" Given that what Jesus preached wasn't so radical that others couldn't have said the same thing, I would conclude that the little-splash Jesus can't be said to be Jesus.