Did Jesus Exist? - The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth Bart Ehrman (books to read in your 20s txt) 📖

plenty of traditions that are found in different ones of our early independent sources—Mark, Q, M, L, John and its sources, Paul, other authors of other epistles, Thomas, and even Josephus and Tacitus—all from within a century of Jesus’s death.

We have already seen a few obvious examples. The crucifixion of Jesus under Pontius Pilate is, of course, contextually credible. The Romans crucified lots of people all the time. And this is one tradition that is abundantly attested—in Mark, M, L, John, and the speeches in Acts, not to mention Josephus and Tacitus. It is alluded to, independently, in 1 Timothy. The crucifixion itself is attested (without Pilate) throughout Paul and in a range of other independent sources: 1 Peter, Hebrews, and so on. This is one of the best attested traditions about Jesus and one, as we will see, that passes the next criterion as well with flying colors.

Or take the issue of Jesus’s brothers. As we have seen, in multiple independent sources Jesus is said to have brothers, and most of those sources name one of these brothers as James; this is true of Mark, John (doesn’t name James), Paul, and Josephus. Paul, as we have seen, actually knew James. This establishes reasonably good probability in favor of the tradition.

Moreover, again, Jesus is said to have come from Nazareth, not just in Mark and John but also in independent stories from M and L. Here too, as we will see, this tradition passes both of our other criteria and so seems highly probable.

The Criterion of Dissimilarity

The most controversial criterion that scholars use to establish historically probable traditions about Jesus is one we already discussed, the “criterion of dissimilarity.” This criterion is rooted in the idea that the biases of a source, and those of the source behind the source, need to be taken into account. So the stories about Jesus the miracle-working five-year-old who could wither his playmates when they irritated him—as found in the Infancy Gospel of Thomas—are not historically reliable, since these stories serve a Christian purpose of showing that Jesus was a powerful Son of God even before his public ministry. We saw how the story of Jesus’s birth in Luke does not make historical sense for there is no record of a worldwide census and it could not have been when Quirinius ruled Syria if Jesus was actually born during the reign of King Herod since their reigns did not overlap. And it contradicts Matthew (not that Matthew is necessarily right either; but it is worth knowing that they both can’t be right). So where did the story come from? It seems most likely that Luke, or his source, simply made it up to make sure that Jesus was born where the prophets—in this case Micah—indicated that the Jewish savior would come from, Bethlehem (see Micah 5:2; quoted in Matthew 2:6).

But when we encounter a story about Jesus that does not support an early Christian agenda or that seems to run contrary to what the early Christians would have wanted to say about Jesus, as we saw, the story is more likely to be historically reliable since it is less likely to have been made up. We saw how the story that Jesus was crucified created enormous headaches for the Christian mission because no Jews would have expected a crucified messiah. This tradition clearly passes the criterion of dissimilarity. Given the additional fact that it is so thoroughly attested in so many of our independent sources, it appears highly probable that in fact Jesus was crucified. That is far more probable than an alternative claim, for example, that he was stoned to death or that he ascended without dying or even that he simply lived out his life and died as an old man in Nazareth, none of which is ever mentioned in our sources.

Or take the details of Jesus’s life. The idea that he had brothers does not serve any clear-cut Christian agenda. It is simply taken as a statement of fact by the early authors who mention it (Paul, Mark, John, Josephus). And so Jesus probably had brothers, and one of them happened to be named James. So too with the claim that he came from Nazareth. Since Nazareth was a tiny hamlet riddled with poverty, it is unlikely that anyone would invent the story that the messiah came from there. Given that the story of Jesus coming from Nazareth is widely attested in our sources, it is probable that Jesus came from Nazareth.

I need to reemphasize that both of these latter criteria—multiple attestation and dissimilarity—are best used in a positive way to establish traditions that most probably can be accepted as reliable. They are not as useful when used negatively. That is, just because a tradition is found in one source and one source only does not necessarily mean that it is unreliable. But if there is no corroboration elsewhere, it is at least suspect. And if it does not pass the criterion of dissimilarity, it is doubly suspect. So too, if a tradition does not pass the criterion of dissimilarity, that does not necessarily mean it is inaccurate, but it should at least raise doubts. If it is not widely attested as well, it simply cannot be relied on. And as we have seen, in some instances there are solid historical reasons for arguing that a tradition that does not pass the criterion of dissimilarity should be seen not only as less probable but as almost certainly legendary—as in the case of the census that brought Joseph and Mary to Bethlehem or Matthew’s account of Jesus’s triumphal entry into Jerusalem.

All of the traditions about Jesus, in short, need to be considered in detail on a case-by-case basis to determine if they pass the various criteria and to see if there are other historical grounds for either affirming or denying their historical probability. The likelihood of Jesus having brothers, for example, is increased by the fact that the apostle Paul knew