Jesus - A Fictional Character?

I am reading Kim Stanley Robinson's Red Mars, Nebula Winner from 1993, and just read through a scene where one of the protagonists, John, argues with a co-worker Phyllis concerning the truth of Christianity -- namely the authenticity of the gospels and the person of Jesus Christ. I think KSR is setting this up for something larger, as the cool headed protagonist seems unreasonably angry over the subject, leading one to think something left him scarred in his past. Nonetheless, he makes the claim all the gospels were fiction -- written long after Christ died -- and Christ himself was a product of creative literature.

For 20+ years of my life, I felt much the same way. I felt the Bible to be compromised and probably full of human tampering and error --- not that I ever bothered to investigate it, mind you. I was too busy indulging myself in whatever. So, I understand the almost reflexive response logical and rational people -- who do not know the Lord -- have regarding Jesus and the gospels. I also understand almost every single one of them -- if they are honest with themselves -- would admit they have not spent any real effort to investigate the claims of Christianity but just on the sheer surface of the claims, they brush it aside as nonsense.

This is where the story of Lee Strobel is compelling. As a lawyer and journalist for the Chicago Sun Times (if memory serves), he was very put out and upset when his wife embraced Christianity years into their marriage. He set out to debunk it all. He was going to prove that it was all hogwash. And so, he spent the next year trying to do just that using his journalistic skills and legal training. But, in the end, he had to admit he couldn't. In fact, he knew it to be true at the end of his search. God does say 'Seek me and you will find me'. Strobel lays out his journey and findings in the Case for Christ -- a book and then movie.

The claim that the gospel and the person of Jesus being fiction is not a defendable claim. Here are just a few areas (out of many) as to why this is not the case, taken from Norman Geisler and Frank Turek's excellent book "I don't have enough faith to be an atheist." I will put some detailed resources at the bottom, if anyone wants to investigate for themselves.

Non-Christians Wrote About Jesus

Notably is Flavius Josephus (ca. 37 - ca. 100), a historian under the Roman Emperor Domitian. In his work Antiquities of the Jews, Josephus (who was not a Christian) wrote the following:

At the time [the time of Pilate] there was a wise man who was called Jesus. His conduct was good and (he) was known to be virtuous. And many people from among the Jews and the other nations became his disciples. Pilate condemned him to be crucified and to die. But those who had become his disciples did not abandon his discipleship. They reported that he had appeared to them three days after his crucifixion, and that he was alive; accordingly he was perhaps the Messiah, concerning whom the prophets have recounted wonders.

From an Arabic text of Josephus' writings scholars agree to be uncorrupted.

Besides Josephus, nine other 'non-Christian' writers documented the existence of Jesus within 150 years of his life for a total of 10 sources. By contrast, over the same time period, there are only 9 non-Christian sources that mention Tiberius Caesar, the Roman Emperor at the time. And if you add in Christian sources within those first 150 years, then one has a total of 43 original source accounts of the historical Jesus vs. 10 accounts of Tiberius --- and no one disputes that Tiberius existed, even though there are more sources supporting the existence of Jesus.

Further some of those non-Christian sources were considered to be not just non-Christian but really anti-Christian -- Celsus, Tacitus and the Jewish Talmud. They have no reason to support the story of Jesus. What do these non-Christian sources claim to be true about the events of the New Testament?

1. Jesus lived during the time of Tiberius Caesar

2. He lived a virtuous life

3. He was a wonder-worker

4. He had a brother named James

5. He was acclaimed to be the Messiah

6. He was crucified under Pontius Pilate

7. He was crucified on the eve of Jewish Passover

8. Darkness and an earthquake occurred when he died

9. His disciples believed he rose from the dead

10. His disciples believed it so much, they were willing to die for their belief

11. Christianity spread as far as Rome

12. His disciples denied Roman gods and worshipped Jesus as God.

    
    

So, how and why would non-Christian writers (some of whom earnestly did not want it to be true) collectively reveal a line of events congruent with the New Testament, if Jesus was fiction? It makes no sense.

Geisler and Turek submit if the New Testament is record of actual history, then two questions must be answered concerning the documents that comprise the New Testament:

1. Do we have accurate copies of the original documents that were written down in the 1st Century?

2. Do those documents speak the truth?

   
   

As they say, it is not enough that there exists sufficient documentation from the 1st Century -- since they could all be lies -- such documentation must really point to what actually happened. For the rest of this blog, I will tackle Q1 and leave Q2 for next time.

Do we have accurate copies of New Testament?

This is where I felt -- personally -- there was some probably error. But it was just an assumption that by oral tradition the New Testament was handed down from person to person, causing it to twist over the years.

This is not how the New Testament was transmitted. It was written by 9 different authors over 27 different writings over a 20-50 year period, during which many other eye-witnesses were alive at the time to corroborate or deny. So, the New Testament of the Bible is not single sourced, but multiple sourced. There is one hitch to this: none of the original written documents have been discovered, only copies of the original writings. But is this a problem?

No. Given much of the significant literature from the ancient world is reconstructed through copies. To have an accurate reconstruction one needs: a) several manuscripts to compare and b) they had been written soon after the original. In other words, more and early manuscripts.

The New Testament documents have more manuscripts, earlier manuscripts and more abundantly supported manuscripts than the best 10 pieces of classical literature combined.

• There are nearly 5,800 hand written Greek manuscripts of the New Testament. In addition, there are over 20,000 more in other languages. Some are complete Bible, some are just fragments. Nothing from the ancient world comes even close. See pic below (apologies on the quality)

• The time gap between the first surviving copies of the originals for the New Testament is around 25 years. The next closest is Homer at 400 years.

• Despite the fact Diocletian issued an three edicts of persecution against Christians in 303 AD, specifically calling for destruction of their written material and murdering them, early church fathers quoted the New Testament so extensively, one could almost reconstruct the New Testament simply from their references.

The question might be asked, why wouldn't God just preserve the original? One can only speculate but one reason might be that if one original had been preserved, then it could have been tainted by the holder of that document. Instead, by causing widely distributed copies, there is an inherent built-in redundancy of corroboration. It effectively has become open sourced with a lot of eyes on any edited new version.

So these are just a few reasons why the historicity of the New Testament can be relied upon. Next will be to look at its narrative and implications.

AV

Geisler and Turek Book on Amazon here: https://a.co/d/51Tf5EH

Leading expert on the Resurrection: https://garyhabermas.com/

CS Lewis classic: https://www.desiringgod.org/articles/mere-christianity