He never ...

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on the whole, the gospels are excellent sources of historical reliability, as a matter of fact, they're the most trustworthy, complete and reliable sources for Jesus, the incidental sources really don't add much detailed information; however, they are valuable as corroborative evidence, let's be honest, some people scoff at how much corroborative evidence there really is, for example, in 1979 Charles Templeton wrote a novel called Act of God, in which a fictional archaeologist made a statement that reflects the beliefs of alot of people ...

The [Christian] church bases it's claims mostly on the teachings of an obscure young Jew with messianic pretentions who, let's face it, didn't make much of an impression in his lifetime, there isn't a single word about him in secular history, not a word, no mention of him by the Romans, not so much as a reference by Josephus ...

now that doesn't sound as if there's much corroboration of the life of Jesus outside the bible, Templeton's archaeologist is simply mistaken, because we do have very, very important references to Jesus in Josephus and Tacitus, the gospels themselves say that many who heard him - even members of his own family - did not believe in Jesus during his lifetime, yet he made such an impression that today, Jesus is remembered everywhere, whereas Herod the Great, Pontius Pilate, and other ancient rulers are not as widely known, so he certainly did make an impression on those who believed in him, he did not of course, among those who did not believe in him

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Josephus was a first century historian who's well known among scholars but whose name is unfamiliar to most people today, he was a very important Jewish historian, he was born in AD 37, and he wrote most of his four works toward the end of the first century, in his autobiography, he defended his behavior in the Jewish-Roman war, which took place from AD 66-74, he had surrendered to the Roman general Vespasian during the siege of Jotapata, even though many of his colleagues committed suicide rather than give up, Josephus decided it wasn't God's will for him to commit suicide, he then became a defender of the Romans, he was a priest, a Pharisee, and he was somewhat egotistical, his most ambitious work was called The Antiquities, which was a history of the Jewish people from Creation until his time, he probably completed it in about AD 93, as you can imagine from his collaboration with the hated Romans, Josephus was extremely disliked by his fellow Jews, but he became very popular among Christians, because in his writings he refers to James, the brother of Jesus, and to Jesus himself, in The Antiquities he describes how a high priest named Ananias took advantage of the death of Roman governor, Festus - who is also mentioned in the New Testament - in order to have James killed, he convened a meeting of the Sanhedrin and brought before them a man called James, the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ, and certain others, he accused them of having transgressed the law and delivered them to be stoned, there has been no scholar who has successfully disputed this passage, so here you have a reference to the brother of Jesus - who had apparently been converted by the appearance of the risen Christ, if you compare John 7:5 and 1 Corinthians 15:7 - and corroboration of the fact that some people considered Jesus to be the Christ, which means "the Anointed One" or "Messiah" ...

Edwin M. Yamauchi PH.D.

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Josephus had written an even lengthier section about Jesus, which is called the Testimonium Flavianum and it is among the most hotly disputed in ancient literature bcause on it's surface it appears to provide sweeping corroboration of Jesus' life, miracles, death and resurrection ...

About this time there lived Jesus, a wise man, if indeed one could call him a man, for he was one who wrought surprising feats and was a teacher of such people as accept the truth gladly, he won over many Jews and many of the Greeks, he was the Christ, when Pilate, upon hearing him accused by men of the highest standing among us, had condemned him to be crucified, those who had in the first place come to love him did not give up their affection for him, on the third day he appeared to them restored to life, for the prophets of God had prophesied these and countless other marvelous things about him, and the tribe of Christians, so called after him, has still to this day not disappeared ...

scholarship has gone through 3 trends about this passage, the early Christians thought it was a wonderful and thoroughly authentic attestation of Jesus and his resurrection, then the entire passage was questioned by at least some scholars during the Enlightenment, but today, there's remarkable consensus among both Jewish and Christian scholars that the passage as a whole is authentic, although there may be some interpolations, that means that early Christian copyists inserted some phrases that a Jewish writer like Josephus would not have written, for instance, the first line says, "about this time there lived Jesus, a wise man ..." that phrase is not normally used of Jesus by Christians, so it seems authentic for Josephus, but the next phrase says, "if indeed one ought to call him a man", this implies Jesus was more than human, which appears to be an interpolation, the bottom line is that the passage in Josephus probably was written about Jesus, Josephus corroborates important information about Jesus: that he was the martyred leader of the church in Jerusalem and that he was a wise teacher who had established a wide and lasting following, despite the fact that he had been crucified under Pilate at the instigation of some of the Jewish leaders

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why didn't a historian like Josephus say more about such an important figure of the first century? if Jesus did exist, one would have expected Josephus to have said more about him, it is unexpected that Josephus mentioned him in passing while mentioning other Messianic figures and John the Baptist in greater detail, from time to time some people have tried to deny the existance of Jesus, but this really is a lost cause, there is overwhelming evidence that Jesus did exist, and these hypothetical questions are really very vacuous and fallacious, Josephus was interested in political matters and the struggle against Rome, so for him John the Baptist was more important because he seemed to pose a greater political threat than did Jesus, these two references by Josephus are highly significant, especially since his accounts of the Jewish War have proved to be very accurate, for example, they've been corroborated through archaeological excavations at Masada as well as by historians like Tacitus, he's considered to be a pretty reliable historian and his mentioning of Jesus is considered extremely important

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Tacitus recorded what is probably the most important reference to Jesus outside of the New Testament, in AD 115 he explicitly states that Nero persecuted the Christians as scapegoats to divert suspicion away from himself for the great fire that had devastated Rome in AD 64 ...

Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace, Christus, from whom the name had it's origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilate, and a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judaea, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome ... accordingly, an arrest was first made of all who pleaded guilty: then, upon their information, an immense multitude was convicted, not so much of the crime of firing the city, as of hatred against mankind ...

it is speculated that when Tacitus says this "mischievous superstition" was "checked for the moment" but later "again broke out" he was unconsciously bearing testimony to the belief of early Christians that Jesus had been crucified but then rose from the grave, regardless of whether the passage had this specifically in mind, it does provide us with a very remarkable fact, which is this: crucifixion was the most abhorrent fate that anyone could undergo, and the fact that there was a movement based on a crucified man has to be explained, how can you explain the spread of a religion based on the worship of a man who had suffered the most ignominious death possible? of course the Christian answer is that he was resurrected, others have to come up with some alternative theory if they don't believe that, but none of the alternative views are very persuasive, characterizing the weight of Tacitus's writings concerning Jesus is very important testimony by an unsympathetic witness to the success and spread of Christianity, based on a historical figure - Jesus - who was crucified under Pontius Pilate, and it's significant that Tacitus reported that an "immense multitude" held so strongly to their beliefs that they were willing to die rather than recant

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there was another Roman, called Pliny the Younger, who also referred to Christianity in his writings, he was the nephew of Pliny the Elder, the famous encyclopedist who died in the eruption of Vesuvius in AD 79, Pliny the Younger became governor of Bithynia in northwestern Turkey, much of his correspondence with his friend, Emperor Trajan, has been preserved to the present time, in book 10 of these letters he specifically refers to the Christians he has arrested ...

I have asked them if they are Christians, and if they admit it, I repeat the question a second and third time, with a warning of the punishment awaiting them, if they persist, I order them to be led away for execution; for, whatever the nature of their admission, I am convinced that their stubbornness and unshakable obstinancy ought not to go unpunished ... they also declared that the sum total of their guilt or error amounted to no more than this: they had met regularly before dawn on a fixed day to chant verses alternately amongst themselves in honor of Christ as if to a god, and also to bind themselves by oath, not for any criminal purpose, but to abstain from theft, robbery and adultery ... this made me decide it was all the more necessary to extract the truth by torture from 2 slave-women, whom they called deaconesses, I found nothing but a degenerate sort of cult carried to extravagant lengths ...

this reference was written about AD 111, and it attests to the rapid spread of Christianity, both in the city and in the rural area, among every class of persons, slave women as well as Roman citizens, since he also says that he sends Christians who are Roman citizens to Rome for trial, and it talks about the worship of Jesus as God, that Christians maintained high ethical standards, and that they were not easily swayed from their beliefs

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one of the most problematic references in the New Testament is where the Gospel writers claim that the earth went dark during part of the time that Jesus hung on the cross, wasn't this merely a literary device to stress the significance of the Crucifixion and not a reference to an actual historical occurrence? after all, if darkness had fallen over the earth, wouldn't there be at least some mention of this extraordinary event outside the bible? Dr Gary Habermas has written about a historian named Thallus, who in AD 52 wrote a history of the eastern Mediterranean world since the Trojan War, although Thallus's work has been lost, it was quoted by Julius Africanus in about AD 221 - and it made reference to the darkness that the gospels had written about, could this be independent corroboration of this biblical claim? in this passage Julius Africanus says, "Thallus, in the third book of his histories, explains away the darkness as an eclipse of the sun - unreasonably as it seems to me" so Thallus apparently was saying yes, there had been darkness at the time of the Crucifixion, and he speculated it had been caused by an eclipse, Africanus then agrees that it couldn't have been an eclipse, given when the Crucifixion occurred, quoting what scholar Paul Maier said about the darkness in a footnote in his 1968 book Pontius Pilate, he said ...

this phenomenon, evidently, was visible in Rome, Athens, and other Mediterranean cities, according to Tertullian ... it was a "cosmic" or "world event" Phlegon, a Greek author from Caria writing a chronology soon after AD 137 reported that in the 4th year of the 202nd Olypiad (ie AD 33) there was "the greatest eclipse of the sun" and that "it became night in the 6th hour of the day (ie noon) so that stars even appeared in the heavens, there was a great earthquake in Bithynia and many things were overturned in Nicaea ...

so there is, as Paul Maier points out, non-biblical attestation of the darkness that occurred at the time of Jesus' crucifixion

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some critics have questioned the accuracy of the gospels because of the way they portray this Roman leader, while the New Testament paints him as being vacillating and willing to yield to the pressures of a Jewish mob by executing Jesus, other historical accounts picture him as being obstinate and inflexible, doesn't this present a contradiction between the bible and secular historians? Maier's study of Pilate shows that his protector of patron was Sejanus and that Sejanus fell from power in AD 31 because he was plotting against the emperor, this loss would have made Pilate's position very weak in AD 33, which is most likely when Jesus was crucified. so it would certainly be understandable that Pilate would have been reluctant to offend the Jews at that time and to get into further trouble with the emperor

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do any other Jewish accounts besides that of Josephus verify anything about Jesus? what about references to Jesus in the Talmud, an important Jewish work finished in about AD 500 that incorporates the Mishnah, compiled about AD 200? Jews, as a whole, did not go into great detail about heretics, there are a few passages in the Talmud that mention Jesus, calling him a false messiah who practiced magic and who was justly condemned to death, they also repeat the rumor that Jesus was born of a Roman soldier and Mary, suggesting that there was something unusual about his birth, so in a negative way these Jewish references do corroborate some things about Jesus, Professor M. Wilcox put it this way, in an article that appeared in a scholarly reference book ...

the Jewish traditional literature, although it mentions Jesus only quite sparingly (and must in any case be used with caution), supports the gospel claim that he was a healer and miracle-worker, even though it ascribes these activities to sorcery, in addition, it preserves the recollection that he was a teacher, and that he had disciples (five of them), and that at least in the earlier Rabbinic period no all of the sages had finally made up their minds that he was a "heretic" or a "deceiver"

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shouldn't we have expected to find more about Jesus in ancient writings outside the bible? when people begin religious movements, it's not often until many generations later that people record things about them, but the fact is that we have better historical documentation for Jesus than for the founder of any other ancient religion, for example, although the Gathas of Zoroaster, about 1000 BC, are believed to be authentic, most of the Zoroastrian scriptures were not put into writing until after the 3rd century AD, the most popular Parsi biography of Zoroaster was written in AD 1278, the scriptures of Buddha, who lived in the 6th century BC, were not put into writing until after the Christian era, and the first biography of Buddha was written in the 1st century AD, although we have the sayings of Muhammed, who lived from AD 570-632, in the Koran, his biography was not written until 767 - more than a full century after his death, so the situation with Jesus is unique - and quite impressive in terms of how much we can learn about him aside from the New Testament, let's pretend we didn't have any of the New Testament or other Christian writings, even without them, what would we be able to conclude about Jesus from ancient non-Christian sources, such as Josephus, the Talmud, Pliny the Younger and others? we would still have a considerable amount of important historical evidence; in fact, it would provide a kind of outline for the life of Jesus, we would know first, Jesus was a Jewish teacher; second, many people believed that he performed healings and exorcisms; third, some people believed he was the Messiah; fourth, he was rejected by the Jewish leaders; fifth, he was crucified under Pontius Pilate in the reign of Tiberius; sixth, despite this shameful death, his followers, who believed that he was still alive, spread beyond Palestine so that there were multitudes of them in Rome by AD 64; and seventh, all kinds of people from the cities and countryside - men and women, slave and free - worshiped him as God, and not only can the contours of Jesus' life be reconstructed apart from the bible, but there's even more that can be gleaned about him from material so old that it actually predates the gospels themselves