Popular ideas have created a groundswell of skepticism that has begun to produce its own literature, so far largely nonacademic but eventually undoubtedly producing some work that will merit an academic response.[1] Some writers even question Jesus’s historic existence, in some cases potentially fueled by religiously-motivated bias,[2] although this concern is inconsistently not applied to other past religious figures such as Muhammad, the rise of whose movement is rightly recognized as implausible without him.
Yet in contrast to some popular ideas that circulate on the internet, specialists in the study of Jesus, almost without exception, agree that Jesus historically existed.[3] His movement had no reason to invent him, and certainly not his execution for treason as a “king”; following someone so executed was itself deemed treasonous, so inventing such a narrative would be suicidal. Certainly Jesus’s execution by crucifixion is consistent with Pilate and/or members of the local elite viewing Jesus as a rebel king.
Imagine that we had documents today from multiple recent writers about someone who founded a movement a few decades ago. Further imagine that this movement revolved around that founder. Naturally, we would expect most writings from within the movement to take very positive views of the founder, but very rarely would we consider doubting that founder’s existence. Yet this is precisely what we have in the case of Jesus; Paul’s letters attest such a movement’s devotion to its founder within twenty years of his death. Denying Jesus’s historical existence hardly makes sense of the data available to us.
This content is by Craig Keener, but edited and posted by Defenders Media.
[1] One scholar of English literature produced a highly speculative, weakly documented work (Helms, Fictions) that was mailed to many biblical studies scholars. One or more sophisticated arguments, however, are reportedly in the works. I say “reportedly” because internet broadsides, which are not peer-reviewed, do not typically merit academic responses, and academic works, by virtue of their own genre, are not typically expected to respond to such broadsides. Nevertheless, see again helpful responses in Ehrman, Did Jesus Exist?; Casey, Evidence; Elliott, “Pseudo-Scholarship.”
[2] Cf. esp. the ideological agendas of Nazi German and atheistic Soviet campaigns noted in AlfeyevHilarion, Beginning, 3–4.
[3] See again Ehrman, Did Jesus Exist?
