[00:00:01] A Primer for the Study of the Historical Our Non Gospel Sources by Marco Marina Read by John Paul Middlesworth Introduced by Bart Ehrman as some of you know, my recording company Paths in Biblical Studies, which normally produces online
[email protected], held its 3rd annual New Insights into the New Testament 9th live remote recorded conference last week. The topic was the Historical Jesus and we had eight speakers, along with a keynote address by Elaine Pagels. There's a link on the online blog About a week prior to the event, I realized, duh, that some in the audience may not know a number of the fundamental critical issues that scholars have to deal with when broaching the topic. And so we asked Marco Marina, an early Christianity specialist who writes online articles and does sundry other things for us at pbs, to write up a primer to explain what scholars who work to unpack what Jesus really said and did have to confront when taking on the task so that viewers would not think, well, why don't they just read the Gospels and see?
[00:01:15] Marco produced a primer to set the stage for the conference that I thought was terrific, and I asked his permission to post it on the blog. It's really valuable as a summary of the critical issues that critical scholars find critical.
[00:01:27] This will take two posts. If you want to learn more about Marco himself, there's a link in the online blog.
[00:01:34] Here's the first bit of it.
[00:01:36] The so called Quest for the Historical Jesus is among the most complex and wide ranging undertakings in biblical studies.
[00:01:44] New books, articles and debates appear constantly alongside a growing world of online discussions and forums, making it nearly impossible to keep track of every development.
[00:01:55] What follows then is a brief orientation to the field, its sources, its challenges and its methods, meant to provide the background needed to follow each lecture with clarity and confidence.
[00:02:07] What sources are available for the historical Jesus?
[00:02:11] Before we list specific texts, it helps to set expectations.
[00:02:15] As with any figure from antiquity, what we know about Jesus depends on the survival of fragmentary evidence.
[00:02:22] Two non critical extremes still show up in public debates. On the one hand, apologetic confidence that our sources are so abundant and precise that we can reconstruct virtually every aspect of Jesus life.
[00:02:36] On the other, ideological skepticism, for example mythicists that treat the sources as so compromised that Jesus likely never existed.
[00:02:46] Most historians find neither view persuasive.
[00:02:49] The evidence is limited and complicated, yet it's not useless.
[00:02:53] Jesus of Nazareth almost certainly existed and our sources can tell us a good deal about him, provided that we read them carefully and refuse to take any of them at face value.
[00:03:04] With that in mind, what do we actually have outside the Christian Bible?
[00:03:09] Pagan, that is Greco Roman sources.
[00:03:13] Many readers instinctively start here, asking, what do non Christian writers say?
[00:03:19] The short answer is far less than we might wish.
[00:03:23] From the first century, we possess hundreds of pagan texts written for diverse purposes.
[00:03:28] Jesus never appears in them.
[00:03:31] That isn't surprising. A Galilean teacher executed as a criminal on the empire's periphery wouldn't typically occupy the attention of Roman elites.
[00:03:41] Our earliest secure pagan references appear in the early second century, around 112 CE. Pliny the Younger reports to Emperor Trajan that local Christians in Bithynia worship Christ as a God and meet for hymn singing and ethical commitments.
[00:03:58] Letters 1096 and 97.
[00:04:01] A few years later, Tacitus explains Nero's persecution after the fire of 64 CE by noting that the name Christians comes from Christos who suffered the extreme penalty under Pontius Pilate during Tiberius reign annals 1544.
[00:04:21] These are valuable confirmations of basic Jesus execution under Pilate, the existence and practices of his followers.
[00:04:31] Other notices are debated. Suetonius, around 120 CE mentions disturbances among Jews at the instigation of Chrestus under Claudius and later refers to Christians under Nero.
[00:04:46] Whether the first alludes to Jesus himself is uncertain, even though I think it does, and neither passage offers biographical detail.
[00:04:55] Bottom line Pagan sources corroborate that a movement centered on a crucified figure called Christ emerged early and spread.
[00:05:04] But they do not help us reconstruct Jesus teaching or itinerary.
[00:05:09] Jewish sources.
[00:05:11] Surviving Jewish texts likewise offer little direct information about Jesus. The Dead Sea Scrolls illuminate the religious landscape of early Judaism, but do not mention him.
[00:05:22] Our single most important Jewish author is Flavius Josephus, a 1st century aristocrat and historian.
[00:05:30] In his Jewish War, written in the 70s, he says nothing about Jesus.
[00:05:35] In his later Antiquities of the Jews, dating to around 93 or 94 CE, he refers to Jesus twice.
[00:05:43] The shorter Notice in Antiquities 2200 mentions James, the brother of Jesus, who is called Christ, a sober, widely accepted reference that situates Jesus within a known family member.
[00:05:57] The Longer passage, Antiquities 1863-64, the famous testimonium Flavianum describes Jesus as a wise man, a doer of remarkable deeds, executed by Pilate with followers who persisted after his death.
[00:06:13] This text has been fiercely debated because Christian copyists may have embellished Josephus original wording.
[00:06:21] Many scholars think a historical core remains.
[00:06:24] Others disagree, and one of our nint lecturers, Dr. Tom Schmidt, will revisit this passage using linguistic analysis and Josephus social network to argue for a fresh reading.
[00:06:37] Beyond Josephus, we have no contemporaneous Jewish references to Jesus from roughly 30 to 130 CE.
[00:06:45] Later rabbinic traditions are centuries removed from Jesus time and require cautious handling, so non Christian sources only confirm key anchors.
[00:06:56] Jesus lived in Judea, Galilee, was executed under Pilate and quickly became the focus of a growing movement.
[00:07:05] However, they are too sparse to narrate any details from his life.
[00:07:10] For that, we must turn to the Christian materials themselves, the Gospels and Paul, which are both indispensable and problematic. And that is the topic for the next part.
[00:07:21] Christian Sources within the Christian corpus of texts, the first group to consider are the non canonical Gospels. We know now of a dozen or more such writings outside the New Testament, preserved in varying degrees.
[00:07:34] As fascinating as they are for the history of early Christianity, most of them, with only a possible exception in the Gospel of Thomas, are of little direct use for reconstructing the life and teaching of Jesus.
[00:07:47] As it turns out, they were written much later than the canonical accounts and are filled with legendary or symbolic material that cannot plausibly be traced back to 1st century Palestine.
[00:07:58] A striking example is the Gospel of Peter, which contains a highly embellished resurrection story featuring a talking cross and giant figures emerging from the tomb.
[00:08:10] On the opposite end of the timeline stands the Apostle Paul, where the non canonical gospels reflect later legendary development.
[00:08:18] Paul's undisputed letters are our earliest Christian sources, written between roughly 48 and 62 CE, just two or three decades after Jesus death.
[00:08:29] Unfortunately, Paul gives us very little in the way of biographical detail.
[00:08:34] He doesn't recount Jesus parables, report on his Galilean ministry, or describe the circumstances of his birthday.
[00:08:41] Still scattered throughout his correspondence are valuable glimpses references to Jesus crucifixion, to his brothers, for example James, to his teachings on love and divorce, and to the Last Supper tradition.
[00:08:56] One of this year's NINT lectures by Dr. Robin Walsh promises to explore precisely what can be learned about Jesus from Paul's letters and how historians navigate their limitations.
[00:09:08] That brings us to the canonical Gospels, which stand at the heart of our evidence.
[00:09:14] Through the gradual process of canonization, the early church recognized four Matthew, Mark, Luke and John as authoritative, and they have shaped Christian devotion and theological reflection ever since.
[00:09:28] These writings give us the fullest narrative portrayals of Jesus, his ministry in Galilee, his teachings, his miracles, his confrontations and his final days in Jerusalem.
[00:09:40] While millions of Christians based their faith on these accounts, for historians they are both indispensable and problematic.
[00:09:48] Why?
[00:09:50] The second part of the primer in the next post will explain.
