historical Jesus

The term historical Jesus refers to the life and teachings of Jesus as interpreted through critical historical methods, in contrast to traditionally religious interpretations. It considers the historical and cultural contexts in which Jesus lived. Scholars differ about the beliefs and teachings of Jesus as well as the accuracy of the biblical accounts, with only two events supported by nearly universal scholarly consensus: his baptism and his crucifixion.

Reconstructions of the historical Jesus are based on the Pauline epistles and the gospels, while several non-biblical sources also support his historical existence. Since the 18th century, three separate scholarly quests for the historical Jesus have taken place, each with distinct characteristics and developing new and different research criteria. and rabbi. There is little scholarly agreement on a single portrait, nor the methods needed to construct it,

Historical existence

Virtually all scholars of antiquity agree that Jesus existed. Historian Michael Grant asserts that if conventional standards of historical criticism are applied to the New Testament, "we can no more reject Jesus' existence than we can reject the existence of a mass of pagan personages whose reality as historical figures is never questioned." There is no indication that writers in antiquity who opposed Christianity questioned the existence of Jesus.

There are at least 14 independent sources from multiple authors within a century of the crucifixion of Jesus that survive. Other independent sources did not survive, but are broadly referenced directly in the surviving sources themselves (e.g. Luke) or inferred from modern source analysis. The letters of Paul are the earliest surviving sources referencing Jesus, and Paul documents personally knowing and interacting with eyewitnesses such as Jesus' brother James and some of Jesus' closest disciples around 36 AD, within a few years of the crucifixion (30 or 33 AD). Paul was a contemporary of Jesus and throughout his letters, a fairly full outline of the life of Jesus can be found including details such as being born of a woman, descending from regular people such as Abraham and David, being a Jew and being brought up in Jewish Law, gathering together disciples, having family, the Last Supper, being betrayed, being crucified, people being involved in his crucifixion, etc.

Since the 1970s, various scholars such as Joachim Jeremias, E. P. Sanders and Gerd Theissen have traced elements of Christianity to currents in first-century Judaism and have discarded nineteenth-century minority views that Jesus was based on previous pagan deities. Mentions of Jesus in extra-biblical texts exist and are supported as genuine by the majority of historians. The presence of details of Jesus' life in Paul, and the differences between letters and Gospels, are sufficient for most scholars to dismiss mythicist claims concerning Paul. Theissen says "there is broad scholarly consensus that we can best find access to the historical Jesus through the Synoptic tradition." Bart D. Ehrman adds: "To dismiss the Gospels from the historical record is neither fair nor scholarly." Historian James Dunn writes: "Today nearly all historians, whether Christians or not, accept that Jesus existed". In a 2011 review of the state of modern scholarship, Ehrman wrote: "He certainly existed, as virtually every competent scholar of antiquity, Christian or non-Christian, agrees."

The Christ myth theory is the proposition that Jesus of Nazareth never existed, or if he did, he had virtually nothing to do with the founding of Christianity and the accounts in the gospels. In the 21st century, there have been a number of books and documentaries on this subject. For example, Earl Doherty has written that Jesus may have been a real person, but that the biblical accounts of him are almost entirely fictional. Many proponents use a three-fold argument first developed in the 19th century: that the New Testament has no historical value with respect to Jesus's existence, that there are no non-Christian references to Jesus from the first century, and that Christianity had pagan and/or mythical roots.

Contemporary scholars of antiquity agree that Jesus existed, and biblical scholars and classical historians view the theories of his nonexistence as effectively refuted. Robert M. Price, an atheist who denies the existence of Jesus, agrees that his perspective runs against the views of the majority of scholars. Michael Grant (a classicist and historian) states that "In recent years, no serious scholar has ventured to postulate the non-historicity of Jesus, or at any rate very few have, and they have not succeeded in disposing of the much stronger, indeed very abundant, evidence to the contrary."