Traditional External Evidences for a Historical Jesus

There are not a lot of surviving external references to Jesus in secular writing contemporary to the New Testament. This may seem to be a problem, until one considers that there are also very few contemporary historical documents that survive from that time.

Jesus lived His public life in Palestine under the Roman rule of Tiberius (A.D. 14-37). There are only four existing secular Roman historical sources for his reign: Tacitus (55-117), Suetonius (70-160), Velleius Paterculus (a contemporary), and Dio Cassius (3rd century). There are two Jewish historical resources that describe events of this period: Josephus (37-100?), in Greek, and the Rabbinical Writings (written in Hebrew sometime after 200).

Vellius did not live in the area where the events in the Gospels were described, so one we wouldn't expect to find evidence in those writings. Likewise, Dio Cassius writes outside of the contemporary time, so may not have been knowledgeable (or concerned) about the stories of Jesus.

The other Roman and Jewish sources that do remain all offer compelling evidence for the existence of Jesus. There are also contemporary references, as in the mention of the Thallus History by Africanus and the letter of Mara Bar-Serapion, that offer indirect evidence.

"Pagan" Sources

Thallus was a Samaritan historian, who lived around 52 A.D. He wrote (in a lost work, referred to by Julius Africanus in Chronography, XVIII from the third century) attempting to give a natural explanation for the darkness which occurred at the crucifixion of Jesus:

"On the whole world there pressed a most fearful darkness; and the rocks were rent by an earthquake, and many places in Judea and other districts were thrown down. This darkness Thallus, in the third book of his History, calls, as appears to me without reason, an eclipse of the sun."

An important note here is that Thallus evidently did not deny the existence of Jesus, but merely tried to explain away the strange circumstances (cf. Mark 15:33) surrounding His death.

Mara Bar-Serapion wrote a letter to his son from prison, in about 73 A.D., exhorting him to seek wisdom, and mentioneing the the deaths of Socrates, Pythagoras, and of a "wise king" of the Jews:

"What advantage did the Jews gain from executing their wise king?...Nor did the wise king die for good; he lived on in the teaching which he had given."

The person mentioned here has a striking similarity to Jesus, but since he is not mentioned by name, there is some room for skeptics to doubt that the Jesus of the Bible is the one mentioned. See The "Testimony" of Mara Bar-Serapion, from the Skeptical Review.

Tacitus

Cornelius Tacitus was a Roman Historian who lived c.55-A.D. c.117. He writes of "Christus" in his ANNALS Book XV, Chapter 44:

"Nero looked around for a scapegoat, and inflicted the most fiendish tortures on a group of persons already hated by the people for their crimes. This was the sect known as Christians. Their founder, one Christus, had been put to death by the procurator Pontius Pilate in the reign of Tiberius. This checked the abominable superstition for a while, but it broke out again and spread, not merely through Judea, where it originated, but even to Rome itself, the great reservoir and collecting ground for every kind of depravity and filth. Those who confessed to being Christians were at once arrested, but on their testimony a great crowd of people were convicted, not so much on the charge of arson, but of hatred of the entire human race."

Pliny The Younger

Pliny The Younger was Governor of Bithynia in Asia Minor, in about 112 A.D. He wrote to the emperor Trajan, in Epistles X.96, about the dedication of Christians whom he had been persecuting. He had:

"...made them curse Christ, which a genuine Christian cannot be induced to do."

In the same letter he describes the trials of Christians who had been arrested:

"They affirmed, however, that the whole of their guilt, or their errors was, that they were in the habit of meeting on a certain fixed day before it was light, when they sang in alternate verse a hymn to Christ as to a god, and bound themselves to a solemn oath, not to any wicked deeds, but never to commit any fraud, theft, adultery, never to falsify their word, not to deny a trust when they should be called upon to deliver it up."

Seutonius

Seutonius was a court official and annalist under Hadrian around 120 A.D., who wrote:

"As the Jews were making constant disturbance at the instigation of Chrestus, he expelled them from Rome." Life of Claudius, 25.4

Luke makes reference to this same expulsion in Acts 18:1-2.

Another mention of Christianity by Seutonius is made in Lives of the Caesars, 26.2:

"Punishment by Nero was inflicted on the Christians, a class of men given to a new and mischievous superstition."

Link to a document in the BYU library online of the 1508 Aldine Pliny Works.

Jewish Sources

The Talmud

The Talmuds were the rabbinical interpretations of the Old Testament that dealt with Jewish law, written during the period from 100 A.D. to 500 A.D.

These Rabbinical Writings speak frequently of Jesus of Nazareth, in perhaps odd and unflattering terms, as one would expect. Jesus is referred to in many places as "Yeshua ben Pandera" or "Yeshu ben Pantere", where the name "Pandera" was widely supposed to be the real father of the illegitimate son of Mary.

Why isn't the name "Jesus" ever mentioned in the Old Testament text? See Yeshua in the Tenach: http://www.menorah.org/yeshname.html

Flavius Josephus

Josephus was a Jewish general turned Roman historian, born in 37 A.D. Much knowledge about the culture and backgrount of New Testament times can be gleaned from his writings.

One important point to make is that Josephus was not likely to be sympathetic to Christianity, and perhaps risk Roman ire. However, he makes several references to Jesus in his History Of The Jews, such as in Antiquities XVIII, 3:3:

"At that time lived Jesus, a wise man, if he may be called a man; for he performed many wonderful works. He was a teacher of such men as received the truth with pleasure. He drew over to him many Jews and Gentiles. This was the Christ. And when Pilate, at the instigation of the chief men among us, had condemned him to the cross, they who before had conceived an affection for him did not cease to adhere to him. For on the third day he appeared to them alive again, the divine prophets having foretold these and many other wonderful things concerning him. And the sect of Christians, so called from him, subsists to this time." (Lardner s translation)

Also, in Antiquities XX, 9:1, we find a reference to James, the brother of Jesus:

"...and brought before it the brother of Jesus, the so-called Christ, whose name was James."

There still remains criticism by modern scholars over all of these evidences, mostly centered around the idea that these references originated from historians who did not show a detached impartiality characteristic of modern historical writing.

Is this fair?

Let’s consider next some strong modern arguments for the Historicity Jesus and the Gospel account of the Resurrection.