Friday, February 7, 2025

Short-form list of arguments for and against the historicity of Jesus

I will try to list as many arguments for the historicity of Jesus, often presented by Christian apologists, and brief responses to those arguments. This should be taken more as a "cliffsnotes" type document rather than a comprehensive detailed critique.

"There is an overwhelming consensus among historians and scholars that Jesus of Nazareth was a real existing person. Nobody of any repute doubts this, and it's taken as an almost certainty."

This is a claim only made by (some) Christian apologists and perhaps a couple of atheist scholars, but there is no evidence that it's actually true. I have never seen a comprehensive study or large-scale questionnaire asking the opinion of historians and scholars on this subject. Pretty much all sources cited for this claim are Christian apologists. For all I know, this claim has been completely made up by Christian apologists based on absolutely nothing.

Regardless, even if it were 100% true, this is simply an argument from authority and an argument from popularity. A consensus among scholars does not in itself make something true and factual.

"There is an overwhelming amount of historical and archaeological evidence for the existence of Jesus. There is more evidence for his existence than for most other historic figures."

This is just an outright untruth. In reality there is literally zero contemporary evidence for the existence of Jesus. No contemporary documents that have survived, no artifacts, no statues, no inscriptions, no paintings, no coins, nothing. Not a single piece of contemporary evidence exists. This is very much unlike the evidence that exists for other famous historic figures, like Julius Caesar or Alexander the Great.

Literally the only evidence that exists of Jesus is textual documents that were written many decades after his alleged death, and that's it. These documents were written either by unknown authors, authors who did not meet him personally, Christian authors who were religiously motivated, and non-Christian authors who were born after Jesus's alleged death.

"The texts of the New Testament are a completely valid and credible form of historic documentation supporting the historicity of Jesus."

This would make them the only documents in existence that are accepted as historically accurate regardless of all the supernatural claims made in them. These texts were written by people who were clearly religiously motivated and thus had a strong bias, eroding the credibility of what they wrote. Describing supernatural events, especially ones done by the person they are writing about, does not exactly strengthen the credibility of the text.

"There is plenty of evidence from early non-Christian historians for the existence if Jesus, including that of the historians Josephus and Tacitus."

In reality the amount of non-Christian sources about Jesus is completely abysmal. As mentioned earlier, there is literally zero contemporary evidence (Christian or non-Christian), and the earliest possible non-Christian sources that exist were written well over 60 years after Jesus's alleged death, by people who were born after said death.

Indeed, both Josephus and Tacitus were born after Jesus's alleged death, so they hardly were contemporary to him, and the brief mentions of what Christians believed were written over 60 years after his alleged death. And, indeed, even these mentions are very brief, and were merely repeating what Christians of the time believed. (There is a lot of deception and lying-by-omission among many Christian apologists when they mention Josephus and Tacitus because they very rarely mention when they were born, when they wrote those mentions of Christian beliefs, or what exactly they wrote.)

"The texts of the New Testament were written so early that most people who read them were alive during the life of Jesus and would have objected to the texts if they were not true."

Even the earliest texts of the New Testament were written several decades after Jesus's alleged death, and were distributed among a very small group of people who were essentially cultists. Most of them likely didn't live anywhere near where the alleged events happened, and had no reason to doubt the claims. It's very likely that some people believed the claims while other people dismissed or outright objected to the claims, but this had very little effect on the believers. Even if the doubters were able to convince a few believers, they were not able to convince all of them. Thus, the religious beliefs and texts survived and proliferated, and as more and more time passed, the less possible it was to corroborate the accuracy of the claims.

This isn't anything strange or unusual, as this exact thing happens all the time, even to this day, and even though nowadays we have much more ways to corroborate unusual claims than two thousand years ago.

"Martyrs wouldn't have died for a lie."

Martyrs most definitely would die for a lie, especially since they believed the claims and didn't think of them as lies and falsehoods. There is no reliable evidence that anybody who allegedly met Jesus (most prominently his apostles) was martyred, and later Christians had no reason to think that it was all just a lie not worth dying for.

"The criterion of embarrassment: If the story of Jesus, the Jewish Messiah, was made up, they wouldn't have made him into a weak person who was ignominiously murdered by the oppressors."

On the contrary, if you were making up a story about the Jewish Messiah having existed decades prior, it would have been silly to claim that he was victorious and liberated his people from the oppressors (ie. the Romans), because the Romans were still oppressing the Jews, as anybody could see. It would have made a lot more sense to write a story about a suffering Messiah (something that was supported by the scriptures, and one of the accepted interpretations of the Messiah by Jewish scholars of the time) who was martyred by the hand of the Romans.

Unlike these Christian apologists love to imply, the concept of good people being oppressed and killed by bad people in ignominious ways was a common trope in storytelling of the time, and had been for hundreds of years. Many myths and fictitious stories, even much older ones, involved good people suffering at the hand of bad people, without those bad people getting any sort of punishment for it.

(It should also be noted that, as far as I know, this entire concept of "criterion of embarrassment", as some kind of method to determine historic accuracy, was invented by Christian apologists for the only and sole purpose of trying to argue for the historicity of Jesus, and this argument has never been used for any other purpose by any historian or anybody else.)

"There were tens of thousands of eyewitnesses to the events."

The texts of the New Testament claim that there were eyewitnesses. That doesn't make it any more true than any of the other claims made there, such as the supernatural miracles. Notably the New Testament is the only source that claims that such eyewitnesses existed. There is no other credible evidence that tens of thousands of people witnessed Jesus in person (which, in itself, is quite notable, and a somewhat strong argument against the historicity of the man.)

"The New Testament claimed that women were the witnesses of the empty tomb. If the story had been made up, the authors would have used men as witnesses rather than women, who were considered unreliable."

This is in the same league as the "criterion of embarrassment": Making claims about writing tropes of the time that are simply not true. There are even older pieces of myth and fiction were women play very important roles, and are believed and taken seriously. There is no reason to think that a made-up story about Jesus wouldn't have used women as eyewitnesses. The argument is especially weak given the fact that the same story later has Jesus appear to several groups of people that included many men, including the apostles themselves. The "Jesus has risen from the dead" aspect of the story is not solely reliant on the alleged word of some women.

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