Chapter 4
Jesus Existed
On that first Christmas day, there was
a real, actual, flesh-bone-and-blood, physical baby in that animal’s feeding
trough. Baby Jesus existed. It’s important to remember, perhaps especially at
Christmas time, that this was real.
Several years ago, I received a phone
call from a high school girl who came to our church. She was crying as she told
me about her biology teacher. He had challenged his class by declaring,
"There is no evidence that Jesus ever existed." This shocked a
number of students.
The teacher then added, "If you
can show me evidence that Jesus existed, please feel free to bring it to
class."
I suggested to her that she bring me into the class to present the case
for the existence of Jesus. I wrote a letter to the teacher. When I learned his
name, I realized he was, at the time, a student in my Monroe County Community
College Philosophy of Religion class.
When the time came for me to speak on the existence of Jesus at Monroe High
School, so many students had heard about this that it was decided to hold the
event in the school auditorium. 175 students filled the auditorium as I spoke
for sixty minutes, making the historical case for Jesus' existence.
There was a Q&A after my talk. Several
students stayed to ask questions. They were so interested in the subject of
Jesus! Now, years later, I've had people who were in the high school auditorium
that day tell me how much it impressed and influenced them. Some of them
enrolled in my college philosophy classes as a result of this.
Perhaps you have heard, or read, on the Internet, the claim that Jesus never
really existed, and that the figure of Jesus in the Bible is all made up. That
claim is false. As small a point as it seems to be, Jesus actually existed. No
reputable New Testament scholar believes otherwise (actually, maybe one
does, but he is in the extreme minority). Even the skeptic Bart Ehrman believes
Jesus existed.[i]
One of the best explanations of and
refutations of "the legendary Jesus theory" is Paul Eddy and Greg
Boyd’s book The Jesus Legend: A Case for
the Historical Reliability of the Synoptic Jesus. While the
whole book needs to be read, here's a summary of reasons why the biblical Jesus
story can be considered reliable.[ii]
1.
"The general religious environment of
first-century Jewish Palestine would not have provided a natural environment
for birthing a legend/myth centered around a recent, Torah-trumping,
cruciform-messianic God-man."
2.
Core "countercultural and embarrassing
features of the Jesus story provide further evidence against the Synoptic
portrait(s) being significantly legendary."
3.
"The claims that Jesus's identity was
inextricably bound up with that of Yahweh-God and that he should receive
worship, the notion of a crucified messiah, the concept of an individual
resurrection, the dullness of the disciples, the unsavory crowd Jesus
attracted, and a number of other embarrassing aspects of the Jesus tradition
are difficult to explain on the assumption that this story is substantially
legendary."
4.
"The fact that this story originated and
was accepted while Jesus's mother, brothers, and original disciples (to say
nothing of Jesus's opponents) were still alive renders the legendary
explanation all he more implausible. In our view, it is hard to understand how
this story came about in this environment, in such a short span of time, unless
it is substantially rooted in history."[iii]
5.
"Attempts to argue against the
historicity of the Jesus tradition on the basis of the alleged silence of Paul
or ancient secular writers have not been forceful."[iv]
6.
"Much of what we have learned about oral
traditions in orally dominant cultures over the last several decades gives us
compelling reasons to accept the earliest traditions about Jesus as having been
transmitted in a historically reliable fashion."[v]
7.
"The Synoptics themselves give us
plausible grounds for accepting that the basic portrait(s) of Jesus they
communicate is substantially rooted in history. Yes, they are
"biased," but no more so than many other ancient or modern historical
writers whom we typically trust." (Ib., 453)
Eddy and Boyd conclude:
"Where does
all this leave us? We suggest that these lines of evidence… provide reasonable
grounds for the conviction that the portrait(s) of Jesus in the Synoptic
Gospels are substantially is rooted in history.”
As you celebrate the Christmas season, keep in mind that the gospel accounts are not human-invented myths, but are rooted in
[i] See Bart Ehrman, Did
Jesus Exist? The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth. See also Craig
Keener’s article “Jesus Existed,” and my blog post “Jesus Existed (but of
course…)”.
[ii] Eddy
and Boyd, The
Jesus Legend,
pp. 452-453.
[iii] See also
Richard Bauckham's excellent Jesus and
the Eyewitnesses: The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony. And, Craig
Keener, Christobiography:
Memory, History, and the Reliability of the Gospels.
[iv] Ib.
[v] Ib.
