Sources of Information on Jesus

The canonical gospels, i.e. the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John in the New Testament, are the most obvious source for information about Jesus of Nazareth. From an historian’s point of view, this is something of a disadvantage, as these texts are all written from the perspective of Christian faith. In addition, there is the issue of dependence between these gospels, in other words how many independent accounts of the life and ministry of Jesus they contain. This second issue will be considered in detail at a later stage in the course. For the present we will consider what sources of information about Jesus we have apart from the canonical gospels.

The earliest Roman author to refer to Jesus, and whose writings are still extant, was the younger Pliny. Pliny was a Roman Senator of some eminence, who held several public offices. Much of his correspondence, personal and official, has been preserved. Pliny became Legate of Bithynia about 112 CE, during which time he wrote to the emperor Trajan about the Christians in the region, to whom his attention had been drawn, and whose activities were suspected of being subversive. Pliny provides a brief description of Christian worship and of the accusations which had been associated therewith. In this account he mentions that the Christians sing a hymn Christo quasi deo (Ep.10.96), which translates “to Christ as if to a god”. Pliny’s reference is of interest in many respects. He was not a Christian and, while not personally hostile to the Christians, saw it as his duty to enforce the imperial cult. Pliny’s account is therefore that of a persecutor of the Church. However, he tells us nothing about Jesus himself. He refers to him as “Christ” as though that were a name, when in fact it is a title. He mentions nothing about his life, only that he was an object of worship. How much more Pliny new about Jesus as a figure of history we cannot be certain, but he does not convey any historical information on the subject in his letters.

Shortly after Pliny wrote to Trajan, Tacitus was compiling his Annals. He refers to the persecution of the Roman Christians by Nero (64 CE). He explains that the Christians derived their name from “Christus, who in the reign of Tiberius as emperor was condemned to death by the procurator Pontius Pilate” (15.44). This information is of course essentially correct, except that Pilate’s rank was Praefectus not Procurator, and, more importantly, that Christus was not the name of Jesus of Nazareth. The Roman author, like Pliny before him and like many gentile Christians since the time of Paul, confused the Greek or Latin translation of the Hebrew meshiakh, the anointed one (from which our word messiah is derived), with the name of the person so titled. Therefore, while referring to known historical events, Tacitus provides very little information indeed about Jesus of Nazareth. His mention of Pontius Pilate, however, may provide independent testimony to the date of Jesus’ crucifixion, as we know from other sources that Pilate was Prefect of Judaea from 26 or 27 CE until 36 or 37 CE. On the other hand, Tacitus may have been dependent on Christian sources for his information concerning Jesus.

Tacitus’ much younger contemporary Suetonius also mentions the persecutions of 64 CE (Nero 16). He mentions also riots among the Jews of Rome which took place impulsore Chresto (Claudius 25). Translated this means “at the instigation of Chrestus”. The most obvious interpretation is that one Chrestus, otherwise unknown to us, stirred up trouble in the Roman Jewish community. But many scholars believe it may allude to something else. Chrestus may be a corruption of Christus, and this may be a somewhat garbled account of strife between Christians and other Jews in Rome during the reign of Claudius (41-54 CE), which led Claudius to expel at least some of the Jews from Rome (cf. Acts 18:2). This is of course speculative, and in any case cannot mean that Jesus was in Rome in person. Therefore Suetonius at most refers to the followers of Jesus, and not to Jesus himself. Furthermore, if this line of interpretation is correct, then Suetonius had no knowledge of Jesus himself.

Of the three earliest extant Roman authors who make any mention of the Christians, therefore, Tacitus alone provides any information about the historical figure of Christ, or Jesus of Nazareth as contemporary scholarship more correctly calls him. Pliny knows of him only indirectly as an object of worship, and Suetonius at most as the occasion for disturbances in Rome. These authors were all Roman officials who lived in a very different social and cultural context to that in which the Christians of their own day, and Jesus and his disciples previously, lived and worked. They are accordingly remote from the social and economic environment of the early Church, and, at least as important, from the heritage of Judaism from which Christianity emerged.

The earliest Jewish writer to mention Jesus is the first century historian Flavius Josephus, in a work known as the Antiquities of the Jews, written in about 94 CE. The passage in which he refers to Jesus is commonly known as the Testimonium Flavianum (18.63-4). This is worth quoting in full before making any comment on the text:

About this time there lived Jesus, a wise man [if indeed one ought to call him a man]. For he was one who performed surprising works, and was a teacher of the people who received [the truth] gladly. He stirred up many of the Jews, and also many Greeks. [He was the Messiah.] When Pilate, on hearing him accused by the most eminent among us, had condemned him to be crucified, those who had loved him from the first did not desist [for he appeared to them on the third day, alive again for the prophets of God had foretold these and countless other marvellous things about him.] And until now the tribe of Christians, so named after him, have not yet disappeared.

Josephus was not a Christian, or even remotely sympathetic to Christianity. As an aristocratic priest he was in fact hostile to religious movements of the common people, and as a supporter of Roman hegemony he would have been particularly intolerant of a movement associated with anyone crucified by the Romans. All extant texts of Josephus’ writings have passed through the hands of Christian copyists who have somehow amended this section so as to be inoffensive to them and to Christian readers. Some scholars argue that this entire section is an interpolation, in other words that Josephus never made any reference to Jesus and the early Church. This is unlikely, however, as Josephus later in the Antiquities refers to “James, the brother of Jesus the so-called messiah” (20.200). This allusion presupposes a previous reference to Jesus in the Antiquities, and it betrays Josephus’ own antipathy to the Christians. This confirms therefore that Josephus did write about Jesus, but also that this text originally made no profession of belief in him. It is therefore a question of how much Christian material has been interpolated into Josephus’ text. In the above quotation I have enclosed in brackets [] those sections which I, along with most recent scholars, believe to be interpolations. The case is most carefully argued by James Charlesworth in Jesus within Judaism (London: SPCK, 1988) 90-98.

Later references to Jesus are found in the rabbinic literature, Jewish writings dating from the late second to the sixth century CE. These add nothing of historical worth to our knowledge. Jesus is referred to as Ben Pantiri (Tosephta Hullin 2.22-24) or Ben Pandera (Jerusalem Talmud Shabbat 14d). This name reflects a story that Jesus was born out of wedlock, as a consequence of seduction; or that his father was a Roman soldier who raped his mother. These stories were common among pagan anti-Christian polemicists such as Celsus and Porphyry as well as among the rabbinic Jews. Jesus is also alleged to have learned magic in Egypt, and to have been tried by the Sandhedrin as a deceiver and teacher of apostasy. This perspective on his trial may reflect an element of truth, however partisan, as we shall discover when we consider the circumstances surrounding the death of Jesus.

Jewish and Roman records of Jesus are therefore both late, and in the case of the former essentially unreliable. They provide very little historical information which can be summarised as follows: Jesus was a Jewish teacher, crucified by Pilate during the reign of Tiberius. His followers were subsequently found not only in Palestine but also in Rome and elsewhere in the Empire.

For more substantial information about Jesus we are dependent on a variety of Christian sources. From an historical point of view this is a great disadvantage. The earliest surviving records of Jesus all reflect Christian commitment; their interpretations of Jesus vary considerably, but there is nevertheless a common Christian orientation which colours all our extant first century sources. The earliest of all illustrate this point well.

The letters of Paul are, in the view of most scholars, the oldest surviving Christian writings. Jesus, as an historical figure, is mentioned in these rarely. There is the general presupposition to Paul’s writings that Jesus was a Jew who had been crucified. As historical facts these are all but beyond dispute. There is also the presupposition that Jesus was raised from the dead; a tenet of Christian belief but not a verifiable historical fact by the methods of contemporary scholarship. In specific texts Paul provides further information. In 1 Thess 2:15, his earliest extant writing, Paul states that Jesus was killed by the Jews, an interpretation of the events which we will find to be historically questionable when we consider the passion narratives later in this course. In Rom 1:3 Paul states that Jesus was a descendant of David. This claim is of course made also in the genealogies and nativity narratives in Matthew and Luke, and echoed in several synoptic pericopae (Mt 9:27; Mk 10:47; Lk 18:38), as well as in several apocryphal writings. This is incapable of historical verification, and would not have been an established fact in Jesus’ lifetime. For the present we should simply note that the early Christians made use of this motif, which may or may not have been founded on genealogical fact, but certainly could not have been demonstrated to have been the case. Paul and other early Christian writers therefore move beyond historical fact to theological description of the life, the person, and the work of Jesus. What they say about Jesus is written in affirmation of their beliefs about him. In Paul’s case this is illustrated most graphically in such texts as 1 Cor 15:3 and Phil 2:5-11 which expound theological convictions which cannot be verified as historical facts.

When we think of the gospels, we naturally think primarily of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, the four canonical gospels. Many others were written during the early centuries of Christianity, and while the canonical gospels are undoubtedly the most ancient in their present form, it is quite probable that others preserve traditions just as old as those contained in the synoptics. For the most part, however, the extra-canonical gospels are embellishments of the traditions contained in the New Testament. Gospels such as that of Thomas, which we will consider at a later stage, preserve sayings of Jesus, some corresponding to passages in the synoptics, some otherwise unknown. Other gospels, such as that attributed to Peter, embellish the narrative traditions to enhance the miraculous and supernatural elements. Some, including Thomas, reflect later theological tendencies, such as Gnosticism. Others, including Peter, the Gospel of the Nazaraeans, and the Gospel of the Hebrews reflect later Jewish Christianity. It is not necessary to discuss these various writings in any detail here, however, as they add little if anything to our knowledge of Jesus. The texts of the various apocryphal gospels have been published in several English translations, with introduction and notes, e.g. The New Testament Apocrypha Vol. 1 (ed. W. Schneemelcher & R.McL. Wilson: I ed. London: SCM, 1963; new edition 1991); The Other Gospels (ed. R. Cameron; Philadelphia: Westminster, 1982). The critical issues surrounding these gospels, and their relationship with the synoptics, are discussed in most introductions to the New Testament, most particularly in that of Helmut Koester, and also in the editors’ introductions to the various collections of apocryphal gospels.

The canonical gospels Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John are therefore our primary source of information about Jesus. All four are clearly written from a Christian perspective, and aim to promote Christianity to their addressees. John, however, stands apart from the other three gospels (the synoptics) as more reflective and more overtly interpretive of the significance of every word and deed of Jesus. But the christological orientation of John is shared, to varying degrees by the other gospels. Our studies of the gospels, and our attempts to reconstruct the figure of Jesus who lies behind them, must be undertaken in consciousness of the ideology which these documents presuppose.

EARLY NON-CHRISTIAN REFERENCES TO JESUS

1. Pliny, Ep. 10.96 (AD TRAIANUM), c. 112 CE

.... QUOD ESSENT SOLITI STATO IN ANTE LUCEM CONVENIRE CARMENQUE CHRISTO QUASI DEO DICERE SECUM INVICEM SEQUE SACRAMENTO NON IN SCELUS ALIQUOD STRINGERE ....

.... that it was [the Christians’] custom to assemble before dawn on an appointed day, and to sing antiphonally a hymn to Christ as to a god, and that they bound themselves by oath not to commit any crime ....

2. Suetonius, Claudius 25.4, c. 120 CE

.... IUDAEOS IMPULSORE CHRESTO ASSIDUE TUMULTUANTES ROMA EXPULIT ....

.... He expelled the Jews from Rome, who, at the instigation of Chrestus, continually caused unrest ...

3. Tacitus, Ann. 15.44, c. 116 CE

AUCTOR NOMINIS EIUS CHRISTUS TIBERIO IMPERITANTE PER PROCURATOREM PONTIUM PILATUM SUPPLICIO ADFECTUS ERAT, REPRESSAQUE IN PRAESENS EXITIABILIS SUPERSTITIO RURSUM ERUMPEBAT NON MODO PER IUDAEAM ORIGINIS EIUS MALI SED PER URBEM ETIAM QUO CUNCTA UNIQUE ATROCIA AUT PUDENDA CONFLUUNT CELEBRANTURQUE.

Christ, from whom the name derived, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius, at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilate, and a most pernicious superstition thereby suppressed for a time, broke out again, not only in Judaea, the source of this evil, but also in the city [Rome], where all things hideous and shameful from every place converge and acquire popularity.

4. Josephus, Antiquities 18.63, c. 95 CE

Ginetai de kata touton ton cronon IhsouV sofoV anhr eige andra auton legein crh. hn gar paradoxwn ergwn poihthV, didaskaloV anqrwpwn twn hdonh talhqh decomenwn kaipollouV men IoudaiouV pollouV de kai tou Ellhnikou ephgageto. o cristoV outoV hn. kai auton endeixei twn prwtwn andrwn par’ hmin staurw epitetimhkotoV Pilatou ouk epausantooi to prwton agaphsanteV. efanh gar autoiV trithn ecwn hmeran palin zwn twn qeiwn profhtwn tauta te kai alla muria peri autou qaumasia eirhkotwn. eiV eti te nun twn Cristianwnapo toude wnomasmenon ouk epelipe to fulon.

Around this time lived Jesus, a wise man if indeed one should call him a man. For he was a worker of surprising deeds, and a teacher of those people who accept the truth gladly. He won over many of the Jews and also many of the Greeks. He was the messiah. When Pilate, on hearing him accused by the most eminent men among us, had condemned him to be crucified, those who had loved him from the first did not desist, for on the third day he appeared to them restored to life. The prophets of God had foretold of these and countless other marvellous things about him. And the tribe of the Christians, so named after him, has not died out to this day.