Is There Corroborating Evidence for the Gospels?
When I was teaching Sunday school, I did a series of classes using Lee Strobel's works. The following is from The Case for Christ, chapter 4. While there may be the stray original item from me, I deserve no credit for what is written in this particular article. It is properly attributed to Lee Strobel in its entirety.
If I recall correctly, when I first read of Charles Templeton, I learned he was at one time an evangelical minister who even toured with Billy Graham in the early days of both their ministries. But for Templeton, things took a stark turn very early on. He saw a picture of an African woman cradling her emaciated child, looking heavenward. The child was either dead or very nearly so due to starvation. A drought had taken its toll on crops, and many people had died and would continue to die of starvation. It was then that Templeton said he lost his faith. He wondered how, but for some rain, a loving God could let this happen. He reckoned the only answer must be that there can be no God since a loving God couldn't possibly withhold rain and allow people to suffer so. He then devoted the rest of his life to dismantling belief in God.
From his book Act of God:
“The [Christian] church bases its claims mostly on the teachings of an obscure young Jew with messianic pretensions who, let’s face it, didn’t make much of an impression in his lifetime. There isn’t a single word about him in secular history. Not a word. No mention of him by the Romans. Not so much as a reference by Josephus.”
Is Templeton right? Is it the case that not a peep is heard of Jesus from all of secular history? Is His life only recorded in a book centered around Him? That hardly strikes us as impartial. Well, it turns out that Templeton was wrong. We actually do have very, very important references to Jesus in Josephus and Tacitus as well as other extra-biblical sources.
Josephus
I have written extensively on the references to Jesus by the Jewish historian Josephus. What follows is an excerpt from that work. The detailed four-part series can be found starting here.
We have two brief references in his Antiquities of the Jews, but “while we do not have a wealth of references to Jesus in non-Christian sources in the ancient world, we have as much or more than we should expect, given the marginal status of Jesus and the early Christian movement in the first-century Roman Empire.”[1]
Because it is the lesser contested and shorter of the two passages, we will look first at what is commonly referred to as the “James Passage.” It states:
When, therefore, Ananus was of this disposition, he
thought he had now a proper opportunity [to exercise
his authority]. Festus was now dead, and Albinus was but
upon the road; so he assembled the Sanhedrin of judges,
and brought before them the brother of Jesus, who was
called Christ, whose name was James, and some others
[or, some of his companions]; and when he had formed
an accusation against them as breakers of the law, he
delivered them to be stoned. (Antiquities 20.9.1)[2]
No scholar has successfully disputed the passage. Here we have a reference to the brother of Jesus - who had apparently been converted by the appearance of the risen Christ, if you compare John 7:5 and 1 Corinthians 15:7 - and corroboration of the fact that some people considered Jesus to be the Christ, which means “the Anointed One” or “Messiah.”
The second passage has become known as the Testimonium Flavianum. It is a longer, much more hotly contested passage. It is found before the James passage, and it states:
At this time there appeared Jesus, a wise man, if indeed
one ought to call him a man. For he was a doer of amazing
deeds, a teacher of persons who receive truth with
pleasure. He won over many Jews and many of the
Greeks. He was the Messiah. And when Pilate
condemned him to the cross, the leading men among us
having accused him, those who loved him from the first
did not cease to do so. For he appeared to them the third
day alive again, the divine prophets having spoken these
things and a myriad of other marvels concerning him. And
to the present, the tribe of Christians, named after this
person, has not disappeared. (Antiquities 18.63-64)[3]
The content of the Testimonium is the single biggest source of contention for scholars. Since it is a foundational issue, it is best addressed first. There are three theories regarding the authenticity of this passage - that it is authentic in its entirety; that it is inauthentic in its entirety; or that the truth lies somewhere in between. “The majority of scholars of early Judaism, and experts on Josephus, think that it [is the third option] - that one or more Christian scribes ‘touched up’ the passage a bit. If one takes out the obviously Christian comments, the passage may have been rather innocuous.”[4] In the passage above, the words in italics are likely later Christian insertions into Josephus’ account. Without them, the passage might read as follows:
At this time there appeared Jesus, a wise man. He was a doer of amazing deeds, a teacher of persons who receive
truth with pleasure. He won over many Jews and the
Greeks. And when Pilate condemned him to the cross,
the leading men among us having accused him, those who
loved him from the first did not cease to do so. And to
the present, the tribe of Christians, named after this
person, has not disappeared.
Bart Ehrman concludes:
If this is the original form of the passage, then Josephus
had some solid historical information about Jesus’ life:
Jesus was known for his wisdom and teaching; he was
thought to have done remarkable deeds; he had
numerous followers; he was condemned to be crucified
by Pontius Pilate because of Jewish accusations brought
against him; and he continued to have followers among
the Christians after his death.[5]
Given the information supporting the authenticity of the Testimonium, it is no wonder that James Charlesworth concludes: “We can now be as certain as historical research will presently allow that Josephus did refer to Jesus,” providing “corroboration of the gospel account.”[6]
Of the mythicists Ehrman says, “Their agenda is religious, and they are complicit in religious ideology. They are not doing history; they are doing theology."[7]
Josephus’ accounts of the Jewish War have proved to be very accurate; for example, they’ve been corroborated through archaeological excavations at Masada as well as by historians like Tacitus, so his mentioning of Jesus is considered very important.
Tacitus
He recorded what is probably the most important reference to Jesus outside the New Testament. In 115 AD he explicitly states that Nero persecuted the Christians as scapegoats to divert suspicion away from himself for the great fire that had devastated Rome in 64 AD. “Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace. Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilate, and a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judea, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome…. Accordingly, an arrest was first made of all who pleaded guilty: then, upon their information, an immense multitude was convicted, not so much of the crime of firing the city, as of hatred against mankind.”
Many believe “checked for a moment” was a reference to Christian belief that Christ rose from the grave. Crucifixion was the most abhorrent fate that anyone could undergo, and the fact there was a movement based on a crucified man has to be explained. How can you explain the spread of a religion based on the worship of a man who had suffered the most ignominious death possible? Others have to come up with a suitable alternative theory if they don’t believe that, none of which are very persuasive.
Pliny the Younger
Pliny the Younger became governor of Bithynia in northwestern Turkey. We get much from his correspondence with his friend, Emperor Trajan:
I have asked them if they are Christians, and if they admit
it, I repeat the question a second and third time, with a
warning of the punishment awaiting them. If they persist, I
order them to be led away for execution; for, whatever
the nature of the admission, I am convinced that their
stubbornness and unshakable obstinacy ought not to go
unpunished….
They also declared that the sum total of their guilt or error
amounted to no more than this: they had met regularly
before dawn on a fixed day to chant verses alternately
amongst themselves in honor of Christ as if to a god, and
also to bind themselves by oath, not for any criminal
purpose, but to abstain from theft, robbery, and
adultery….
This made me decide it was all the more necessary to
extract the truth by torture from two slave-women,
whom they called deaconesses. I found nothing but a
degenerate sort of cult carried to extravagant lengths.
This is very important. It was written about 111 AD, and it attests to the rapid spread of Christianity, both in the city and the countryside, among every class of persons, slave women as well as Roman citizens.
And it talks about the worship of Jesus as God, that Christians maintained high ethical standards, and that they were not easily swayed from their beliefs
The Day the Earth Went Dark
The New Testament claims the earth went dark during part of the time Jesus hung on the cross. Dr. Gary Habermas has written about a historian named Thallus who wrote a history of the eastern Mediterranean world since the Trojan War in 52 AD.
Although Thallus’ work has been lost, it is quoted by Julius Africanus in about 221 AD - and it made reference to the darkness that the gospels mentioned. Julius Africanus says Thallus explains away the darkness as an eclipse, but Africanus then argues that it couldn’t have been an eclipse given when the Crucifixion occurred. Paul Maier in his 1968 book Pontius Pilate:
This phenomenon, evidently, was visible in Rome, Athens,
and other Mediterranean cities. According to Tertullian…
it was a “cosmic” or “world event.” Phlegon, a Greek
author from Caria writing a chronology soon after 137
AD, reported that in the fourth year of the 202nd
Olympiad (i.e., 33 AD) there was “the greatest eclipse of
the sun” and that “it became night in the sixth hour of the
day [i.e., noon] so that stars even appeared in the
heavens. There was a great earthquake in Bithynia, and
many things were overturned in Nicaea.”
So there is non-biblical attestation of the darkness that occurred at the time of Jesus’ crucifixion, and apparently some found the need to try to give it a natural explanation by saying it was an eclipse
Different Views of Pilate
Some critics question the gospels because of the way they portray Pilate as vacillating and willing to yield to Jewish pressure versus other historical accounts which paint him as obstinate and inflexible. His protector or patron was Sejanus, who fell from power in 31 AD because he was plotting against the emperor. This loss would have made Pilate’s position very weak in 33 AD at the time of the Crucifixion. So it's understandable that Pilate would have been reluctant to offend the Jews at that time and get into further trouble with the emperor; thus, the biblical description is most likely correct.
Other Jewish Accounts
The Talmud mentions Jesus very little but calls Him a false messiah who practiced magic and who was justly condemned to death. These references also repeat the rumor that Jesus was born of a Roman soldier and Mary, suggesting there was something unusual about his birth.
Professor M. Wilcox:
The Jewish literature, although it mentions Jesus only
quite sparingly (and must in any case be used with
caution), supports the gospel claim that he was a healer
and miracle-worker, even though it ascribes these
activities to sorcery. In addition, it preserves the
recollection that he was a teacher, and that he had
disciples (five of them), and that at least in the earlier
Rabbinic period not all of the sages had finally made up
their minds that he was a “heretic” or a “deceiver.”
Extra-biblical Evidence
When people begin religious movements, it’s often not until many generations later that people record things about them. But the fact is we have better historical documentation for Jesus than for the founder of any other ancient religion.
If we didn’t have the New Testament or other Christian writings, what could we conclude about Jesus from ancient non-Christian sources, such as Josephus, the Talmud, Tacitus, Pliny the Younger and others? First, Jesus was a Jewish teacher; second, many people believed that he performed healings and exorcisms; third, some people believed he was the Messiah; fourth, he was rejected by the Jewish leaders; fifth, he was crucified under Pontius Pilate in the reign of Tiberius; sixth, despite his shameful death, his followers, who believed that he was still alive, spread beyond Palestine so that there were multitudes of them in Rome by 64 AD; and seventh, all kinds of people from the cities and countryside - men and women, slave and free - worshipped him as God.
Corroborating Early Details
Paul never met Jesus before Jesus’ death, but he said he encountered the resurrected Christ and later consulted with some of the eyewitnesses to make sure he was preaching the same message they were. He began writing his New Testament letters years before the gospels were written down.
Paul’s writings are the earliest in the New Testament (so early that no one can make a credible claim that they had been seriously distorted by legendary development) and they make some very significant references to the life of Jesus.
He refers to the fact that Jesus was a descendant of David, that he was the Messiah, that he was betrayed, that he was tried, crucified for our sins, and buried, and that he rose again on the third day and was seen by many people. He focuses on Jesus’ atoning death and resurrection - for Paul these are the most important things about Jesus. Indeed they transformed Paul from being a persecutor of Christians into becoming Christ-ianity’s foremost missionary.
He also corroborates some important aspects of Jesus’ character - His humility, His obedience, His love for sinners and so forth. The fact that Paul, who came from a monotheistic Jewish background, worshipped Jesus as God is extremely significant. It undermines a popular theory that the deity of Christ was later imported into Christianity by Gentile beliefs. It’s just not so - Even Paul, at this very early date, was worshipping Jesus as God.
The Writings of the “Apostolic Fathers”
We have volumes of writings by the “apostolic fathers,” who were the earliest Christian writers after the New Testament. They authored the Epistle of Clement of Rome, the Epistles of Ignatius, the Epistle of Polycarp, the Epistle of Barnabas, and others.
Ignatius, the bishop of Antioch in Syria, was martyred during the reign of Trajan before 117 AD. He emphasized both the deity and humanity of Jesus, as against the docetic heresy, which denied that Jesus was really human. He also stressed the historical underpinnings of Christianity. On his way to being executed, he wrote in a letter that Jesus was truly persecuted under Pilate, was truly crucified, was truly raised from the dead, and that those who believe in Him would be raised, too.
Put all this together - Josephus, the Roman historians and officials, the Jewish writings, the letters of Paul and the apostolic fathers - and you’ve got persuasive evidence that corroborates all the essentials found in the biographies of Jesus. Even if you threw away every last copy of the gospels, you’d still have an extremely compelling picture of Jesus as the unique Son of God.
[1] Paul Rhodes Eddy and Gregory A. Boyd, The Jesus Legend: The Case for the Historical Reliability of the Synoptic Jesus Tradition (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2007), 198.
[2] William Whiston, trans., The New Complete Works of Josephus (Grand Rapids: Kregel, 1999), 656, author’s format maintained.
[3] Craig A. Evans, Fabricating Jesus: How Modern Scholars Distort the Gospels (Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 2006), 160.
[4] Bart D. Ehrman, Did Jesus Exist: The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth (New York: HarperCollins, 2012), 60.
[5] Ibid., 61.
[6] James H. Charlesworth, Jesus Within Judaism: New Light from Exciting Archaeological Discoveries (New York: Doubleday, 1988), 96-97, quoted in Habermas, The Historical Jesus, 195.
[7] Ehrman, Did Jesus Exist, 338.