PROOFS OF JESUS spong
Richard from the Internet writes:
"Is there any material proof of any sort whatsoever that the man Jesus ever lived at all? So many things are attributed to him that sometimes I think he is a fantasy figure people make up in their minds, endowing him with more capabilities that the fiction hero Superman had that prompts me to wonder if that's all he was, a make-believe figure, like the action hero, Zorro, who was inspired by the life of a real 19th century person."
Dear Richard,
This question is asked regularly but since it keeps coming up I will try once more to speak to it. The problem is not that there is no evidence to support the historicity of Jesus, because there is. The difficulty arises because so much mythology has been laid on the historic figure of Jesus that he has become unbelievable to many.
First, the data about his historicity. Paul writing to the Galatians around the year 51 C.E. chronicles his activities, including his consultations with Peter and others who were called by Paul "the pillars" of the Christian movement. This means that Paul knew Peter and others who were the disciples of the Jesus of history. Paul says that this meeting took place three years after his conversion (see Galatians 1:18-24). The best evidence that has been amassed to date the conversion of Paul was done by a 19th century church historian named Adolf Harnack, who places it no earlier than one year and no more than six years after the crucifixion. So Paul was in touch with disciples of Jesus within 4 to 10 years after the crucifixion. These disciples did not think of Jesus as a fantasy or a mythical person. Indeed myths take far longer than 4 to 10 years to develop. There is thus ample data to support the historicity of the man Jesus. Paul would hardly have given his life to a myth.
There are other things that are so counter-intuitive about the way the Jesus story has been told that to me they constitute compelling additional evidence for his historicity. One is that Jesus is said to have come out of Nazareth, a dirty, petty and insignificant town that had a dreadful reputation. It was said even in the New Testament that people asked "can anything good come out of Nazareth" (see John 1:46)? His Nazareth and Galilean origins were an embarrassment to the Jesus movement. No one creates a myth that will embarrass them. It was undoubtedly this embarrassment that helped to create the myth of his birth in Bethlehem. One does not try to escape a lowly place of origin unless that place is so deeply a part of the person's identity that it cannot be suppressed. Jesus of Nazareth was a person of history.
Another counter-intuitive piece of data is that Jesus began his public life as a disciple of John the Baptist. John was originally the teacher that Jesus followed. That is why the gospels seem compelled to have John say constantly things like: "He must increase, I must decrease." "After me comes one whose shoelaces I am not worthy to tie." Luke goes so far as to have the fetus of John the Baptist leap to salute the fetus of Jesus before either was born. When people try to alter history it is not because there is no history, it is because the reality of history has caused embarrassment. The early Christians worked hard to prove that though John was older, he was quite secondary, the one who "prepared the way."
The third fact in the life of Jesus, to which we can point as history, is that Jesus was crucified. The Christian movement had to find a way to understand and even to celebrate his death, which ran counter to everything they believed about a messiah. If they could not transform his crucifixion, there would have been no resurrection. Indeed the resurrection was the story of that transformation. That took hard work. They did not do that by making up the story of the crucifixion. His death was real. The interpretation of his death as the gateway to life made the Christian faith possible.
Mythology was surely added to the Jesus of history even in the writings of the gospels, but those myths were placed on the back of a real person. Mark, writing in the 8th decade, said that at his baptism the heavens opened and the Holy Spirit poured out on him. Then Mark said that after his crucifixion that the grave could not contain him.
In the ninth decade, Matthew added such details to the growing mythology as the miraculous birth, the heavenly star, the wise men, and the physiological appearances of the raised Jesus. Some five to ten years after Matthew, Luke added to the developing story such parts of our tradition as the shepherds, the swaddling cloths and the appearances of the angels. Later he intensified the physical character of the resurrection until it became resuscitation back into the life of this world, which in turn necessitated his eventual escape from this earth in the story of the cosmic ascension. Still later John identified him with the Word of God spoken in creation. As these mythological layers were laid on top of him, his humanity began to fade. That is where the faith crisis of today emerges. We have begun to strip away the mythology, and as we do we begin to fear that there is nothing under it. So we hesitate and even pretend to believe what, when pressed, we would say we no longer believe. Many of the fundamentalist churches are made up of pretenders who reveal their vulnerability by getting angry whenever they are forced to face the game that they are playing. There is, I believe, another way. I am now convinced that only by recovering the full humanity of Jesus is there any possibility of seeing the meaning of his divinity. That is the dominant theme of my next book JESUS FOR THE NON-RELIGIOUS, which will be out in March of 2007. I see it as a radical restatement of the earliest Christian proclamation that in the human Jesus, the holy God has been encountered. I look forward to the debate and the dialogue that I hope this book will engender.
-- John Shelby Spong
"Is there any material proof of any sort whatsoever that the man Jesus ever lived at all? So many things are attributed to him that sometimes I think he is a fantasy figure people make up in their minds, endowing him with more capabilities that the fiction hero Superman had that prompts me to wonder if that's all he was, a make-believe figure, like the action hero, Zorro, who was inspired by the life of a real 19th century person."
Dear Richard,
This question is asked regularly but since it keeps coming up I will try once more to speak to it. The problem is not that there is no evidence to support the historicity of Jesus, because there is. The difficulty arises because so much mythology has been laid on the historic figure of Jesus that he has become unbelievable to many.
First, the data about his historicity. Paul writing to the Galatians around the year 51 C.E. chronicles his activities, including his consultations with Peter and others who were called by Paul "the pillars" of the Christian movement. This means that Paul knew Peter and others who were the disciples of the Jesus of history. Paul says that this meeting took place three years after his conversion (see Galatians 1:18-24). The best evidence that has been amassed to date the conversion of Paul was done by a 19th century church historian named Adolf Harnack, who places it no earlier than one year and no more than six years after the crucifixion. So Paul was in touch with disciples of Jesus within 4 to 10 years after the crucifixion. These disciples did not think of Jesus as a fantasy or a mythical person. Indeed myths take far longer than 4 to 10 years to develop. There is thus ample data to support the historicity of the man Jesus. Paul would hardly have given his life to a myth.
There are other things that are so counter-intuitive about the way the Jesus story has been told that to me they constitute compelling additional evidence for his historicity. One is that Jesus is said to have come out of Nazareth, a dirty, petty and insignificant town that had a dreadful reputation. It was said even in the New Testament that people asked "can anything good come out of Nazareth" (see John 1:46)? His Nazareth and Galilean origins were an embarrassment to the Jesus movement. No one creates a myth that will embarrass them. It was undoubtedly this embarrassment that helped to create the myth of his birth in Bethlehem. One does not try to escape a lowly place of origin unless that place is so deeply a part of the person's identity that it cannot be suppressed. Jesus of Nazareth was a person of history.
Another counter-intuitive piece of data is that Jesus began his public life as a disciple of John the Baptist. John was originally the teacher that Jesus followed. That is why the gospels seem compelled to have John say constantly things like: "He must increase, I must decrease." "After me comes one whose shoelaces I am not worthy to tie." Luke goes so far as to have the fetus of John the Baptist leap to salute the fetus of Jesus before either was born. When people try to alter history it is not because there is no history, it is because the reality of history has caused embarrassment. The early Christians worked hard to prove that though John was older, he was quite secondary, the one who "prepared the way."
The third fact in the life of Jesus, to which we can point as history, is that Jesus was crucified. The Christian movement had to find a way to understand and even to celebrate his death, which ran counter to everything they believed about a messiah. If they could not transform his crucifixion, there would have been no resurrection. Indeed the resurrection was the story of that transformation. That took hard work. They did not do that by making up the story of the crucifixion. His death was real. The interpretation of his death as the gateway to life made the Christian faith possible.
Mythology was surely added to the Jesus of history even in the writings of the gospels, but those myths were placed on the back of a real person. Mark, writing in the 8th decade, said that at his baptism the heavens opened and the Holy Spirit poured out on him. Then Mark said that after his crucifixion that the grave could not contain him.
In the ninth decade, Matthew added such details to the growing mythology as the miraculous birth, the heavenly star, the wise men, and the physiological appearances of the raised Jesus. Some five to ten years after Matthew, Luke added to the developing story such parts of our tradition as the shepherds, the swaddling cloths and the appearances of the angels. Later he intensified the physical character of the resurrection until it became resuscitation back into the life of this world, which in turn necessitated his eventual escape from this earth in the story of the cosmic ascension. Still later John identified him with the Word of God spoken in creation. As these mythological layers were laid on top of him, his humanity began to fade. That is where the faith crisis of today emerges. We have begun to strip away the mythology, and as we do we begin to fear that there is nothing under it. So we hesitate and even pretend to believe what, when pressed, we would say we no longer believe. Many of the fundamentalist churches are made up of pretenders who reveal their vulnerability by getting angry whenever they are forced to face the game that they are playing. There is, I believe, another way. I am now convinced that only by recovering the full humanity of Jesus is there any possibility of seeing the meaning of his divinity. That is the dominant theme of my next book JESUS FOR THE NON-RELIGIOUS, which will be out in March of 2007. I see it as a radical restatement of the earliest Christian proclamation that in the human Jesus, the holy God has been encountered. I look forward to the debate and the dialogue that I hope this book will engender.
-- John Shelby Spong
posted by lbutler1 at
2:23 PM
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