Outside the Gospels, What Can We Really Know About Jesus?
Outside the Gospels, What Can We Really Know About Jesus?
Compelling evidence for Jesus' life is often found in overlooked places.
According to atheist New Testament scholar, Bart Ehrman, “It is a large mistake to think that when it comes to the New Testament, only the Gospels attest to the historical existence of Jesus.”1 Simcha Jacobovici provides a good example of one who made precisely this kind of blunder during one of his History Channel programs.2 Because he believes that the Gospels “come to us from writers with a religious agenda,” he asks whether there is “any evidence outside the Gospels that confirms that Jesus actually existed?” His conclusion? “Only one, in the writings of a first-century historian named Flavius Josephus.”3
Claims of this kind raise important questions. Should the Gospels be dismissed because they were written by people with a religious agenda?4 Clearly there would be a host of religious implications if Jesus really said and did the things described in these texts, so couldn’t the bias be working in the opposite direction? Perhaps it’s an anti-religious agenda that refuses to allow the possibility that such things could occur or that such a person could exist.5 Secondly, is Josephus the only non-Christian source to mention Jesus?6 This is quite easy to disprove. To give just one example, according to the Roman historian Tacitus: “Christus…suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilate.”7
In reality, we have quite a lot of ancient reliable sources that end up confirming Jesus’ existence. On some occasions, I’ll begin lectures before Christian audiences using a video clip in which Simcha Jacobovici makes the claim I cited above. “Outside the Gospels and Josephus,” I’ll probe, “what sources do we have that serve to vindicate Jesus as a historical figure?” Sometimes this query generates little more than blank stares, but most of the time one or two individuals will begin throwing out names of secular historians who write about Jesus, such as Tacitus, Suetonius, and Pliny the Younger. While these sources are certainly relevant to the question, I believe that appealing to them at this stage of the conversation reveals an important misconception related to the strength of our case.
You see, outside the Gospels, the strongest evidence for the life of Jesus is actually found in other parts of the New Testament itself—a fact that is recognized by historians and New Testament scholars around the world. The problem is that most Christians haven’t been trained to recognize the evidential and historical value of texts such as Acts or 1st Corinthians. Instead, we view them almost exclusively as spiritual or religious works that are treasured by believers and dismissed by unbelievers. We also tend to think of the Bible as a single volume sent from heaven, rather than as a collection of many different kinds of ancient texts written across a vast amount of time.
Though the writings of Paul, for example, may not be read and appreciated by your secular friends and relatives, whether we realize it or not, these ancient texts are certainly respected and valued by ancient historians. From a completely historical perspective, Paul may or may not have been inspired, but he certainly lived, and he certainly wrote several letters in the middle part of the 1st century which need to be studied and evaluated on their own terms.
In his book, Did Jesus Exist, Bart Ehrman discusses all the various historical sources for our knowledge of Jesus, and surprisingly, he ends up concluding that the most reliable information we have about Jesus apart from the Gospels are found in the book of Acts, the epistles of Paul, and other New Testament texts. No one disputes the fact that Paul wrote his letters from the late 40s to the early 60s, and according to Ehrman, this “is highly relevant for establishing the historical existence of Jesus.”8 Similarly, the book of Acts, he says, “preserves traditions about the life of Jesus that are both independent of anything said in the Gospel and, in the judgment of most critical historians, [are] based on traditions in circulation before the production of the Gospel.”9 He even goes on to say that Luke’s second volume “shows how the Christian movement went from being a small group of Jesus’ followers immediately after his death to becoming a worldwide phenomenon.”10
Again, Bart Ehrman is an atheist who doesn’t view the New Testament as a collection of sacred texts. Nevertheless, I’m convinced that he and other like-minded scholars have a higher appreciation of their historical value than most conservative Christians do. For example, in his assessment of the book of Acts, Ehrman observes that for this writer, “Jesus was very much a man who really lived and died in Judea, as can be seen…in the speeches that occur abundantly throughout the narrative.”11 These speeches have not been “invented” and are not based on “Luke’s fertile imagination.”12 Rather, his account “incorporates much older traditions. And these traditions are quite emphatic that Jesus was a Jewish man who lived, did spectacular deeds, taught, and was executed, as a human in Jerusalem.”13 In fact, in his discussion of events recorded in the first chapter of Acts, Ehrman goes so far as to admit that Luke’s account “gives clear evidence of being very early and Palestinian in origin…This is a tradition that goes back to the earliest Christian community in Palestine.”14
As he assesses the writings of Paul, Ehrman says, “The reality is that, convenient or not, Paul speaks about Jesus, assumes that he really lived, that he was a Jewish teacher, and that he died by crucifixion.”15 Paul frequently uses “the terminology of ‘received’ and ‘delivered’” which according to Ehrman “is the kind of language commonly used in Jewish circles to refer to traditions that are handed on from one teacher to the next.”16 And as he unpacks the significance of the tradition concerning the Last Supper in 1 Cor. 11, Paul “emphasizes that this event happened ‘on the night in which he was handed over.’”17 For Ehrman, this is significant: “This is not some vague mythological reference but a concrete historical one. Paul knows that Jesus had a Last Supper with his disciples in which he predicted his approaching death, the very night he was handed over to the authorities.”18
“In one of his rare autobiographical passages,” Ehrman continues, “Paul indicates that just a few years after his conversion he went to Jerusalem and met face-to-face with two significant figures in the early Christian movement,”19 namely Peter and James, the brother of Jesus. “These are two good people to know if you want to know anything about the historical Jesus. I wish I knew them.”20 Ehrman then unpacks the significance of all this: “Paul states as clearly as possible that he knew Jesus’ brother. Can we get any closer to an eyewitness report than this? The fact that Paul knew Jesus’ closest disciple and his own brother throws a real monkey wrench into the mythicist view that Jesus never lived.”21 After all, “If Jesus never lived, you would think that his brother would know about it.”22
Ehrman then makes a rather startling admission:
Since no one would have made up the idea of a crucified messiah, Jesus must really have existed, must really have raised messianic expectations, and must really have been crucified. No Jew would have invented him. And it is important to remember that Jews were saying that Jesus was the crucified messiah in the early 30s. We can date their claims to at least 32 CE, when Paul began persecuting these Jews. In fact, their claims must have originated even earlier. Paul knew Jesus’ right-hand man, Peter and Jesus’ brother James. They are evidence that this belief in the crucified messiah goes all the way back to a short time after Jesus’ death.23
In his recently published work, On The Resurrection: Vol. 1, Evidences, Gary Habermas points out that Bart Ehrman ends up listing “over twenty independent sources for the historical Jesus” throughout his books, ten of which “are drawn from the New Testament” which combines to make “quite an impressive collection of works.”24 While this may seem somewhat surprising, particularly in light of Ehrman’s atheism, we need to realize that this kind of approach is not at all out of step in the world of contemporary New Testament scholarship, even among other hardcore liberal, agnostic, and atheist scholars. In fact, in one of his footnotes, Habermas takes the time to cite a variety of atheist and critical scholars who have conceded the fact that the famous early Christian creed found in 1st Corinthians 15:3-5 (which attests to the belief in Jesus’ death, burial, and resurrection),25 dates to sometime before Paul’s conversion.26
According to James Ware, “there is almost universal scholarly consensus that 1 Cor 15:3-5 contains a carefully preserved tradition pre-dating Paul’s apostolic activity.”27 Along these same lines, Ehrman writes, “The idea that Christians were telling stories of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection before…Paul is held by virtually all scholars of the New Testament, and for compelling reasons.”28 So if Paul became a believer within two years of the crucifixion, this would indicate that the idea of Jesus’ resurrection wasn’t a doctrine that was invented sometime later. In fact, atheist scholar Gerd Lüdemann says, “we may reckon that the appearances of Jesus were talked about immediately after they happened.”29 These are frank and startling admissions.
The lesson here for all of us is that we shouldn’t think of the New Testament as a collection of uplifting spiritual texts intended only for Christians. Rather, these ancient texts describe a series of events that everyone needs to reckon with. The events reported in these texts either happened or they didn’t. The current consensus, even among atheist and critical New Testament scholars, is that these historical artifacts aren’t easily dismissed, and when taken together with a variety of other ancient sources, it becomes rather obvious that the world’s first Christians didn’t invent the story of Jesus. He certainly lived, he was certainly crucified under Pontius Pilate, and from the very earliest days, his followers certainly proclaimed his resurrection.
Now, as a reminder, these are simply the conclusions that result from a close study of the most reliable ancient sources apart from the New Testament Gospels. Perhaps, therefore, we should be cautious about dismissing the message of the Gospels themselves. Perhaps all of us should attempt to read and examine them carefully, not merely for their inspirational and practical value, but as artifacts of the real world that cry out for some kind of explanation.
Shane Rosenthal is the founder and host of The Humble Skeptic podcast and the author of Is Faith Blind? Questioning Our Beliefs About Belief Itself (due this Spring). Shane was one of the creators of the White Horse Inn radio broadcast which he also hosted from 2019-2021, and has written numerous articles for various sites and publications, including TableTalk, Core Christianity, Modern Reformation, and others.
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Can We Trust Luke’s History of the Early Jesus Movement?, Shane Rosenthal
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RELATED BOOKS & RESOURCES
On The Ressurection, Vol. 1: Evidences, Gary Habermas
Can We Trust The Gospels?, Peter J. Williams
A Doubters Guide to Jesus, John Dickson
Jesus & The Eyewitnesses, Richard Bauckham
Redating the New Testament, John A.T. Robinson
The Jesus of History, The Humble Skeptic (Ep. 12)
Authenticating the Book of Acts, The Humble Skeptic (Ep. 24)
The Gospel Creed, The Humble Skeptic (Ep. 9)
Did Jesus Exist? (New York, HarperCollins, 2012), 105-106
The Naked Archaeologist, Episode 113, “Last Man Standing.” I discuss this at some length on Episode 12.
Ibid. This statement is made right at the opening of the program linked above. Jacobovici then goes on in that episode to argue that the Josephus passage is a forgery, therefore, in his view, there are no unbiased sources about Jesus in existence. I discuss this at length here.
I put this question to Peter J. Williams, John Dickson, and other scholars on Episode 15. In particular, Dickson referred to this approach to history as being “historically tone-deaf.”
In my thinking, any view that refuses to consider or evaluate evidence, from either side of the fence, is a form of “blind faith.”
On Episode 12, I discuss numerous additional secular sources for Jesus, including Tacitus, Suetonius, Pliny the Younger, as well as in a variety of lines preserved for us from Emperors Claudius, Trajan, Hadrian, Marcus Aurelius, etc.
Annals, 15:44 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tacitus_on_Jesus). On Episode 12 I discuss numerous additional non-Christian sources for Jesus, including a second citation by Suetonius, Pliny the Younger, and an additional reference by Josephus. along with various lines preserved for us from Emperors Claudius, Trajan, Hadrian, Marcus Aurelius, etc.
Ehrman, Did Jesus Exist?, 95
Ibid., 106
Ibid. The book of Acts is set from just after the crucifixion in 30 AD to the time of Paul’s house arrest in Rome, which most scholars date to around 62 AD. The fact that Ehrman admits that Christianity grew during this period to become a “worldwide phenomenon” is worth noting.
Ibid., 107
Ibid., 109
Ibid., 109-110
Ibid., 108
Ibid. 118
Ibid., 122
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid., 144
Ibid.
Ibid., 145-146
Ibid., 148
Ibid., 164
Gary R. Habermas, On The Resurrection: Volume 1, Evidences (B&H Academic, Brentwood, TN, 2024), 285
Ibid., 380-381. Apart from Ehrman himself, some of the scholars who hold this view include Robert Funk, Gerd Lüdemann, John Dominic Crossan, Marcus Borg, Michael Goulder, Gavin D’Costa, Hans Grass, and others.
Cited by Habermas on p. 386.
Ehrman, Did Jesus Exist, 261
Cited by Habermas on p. 393.