Non-Christian scholars on the History of Jesus

The below is something I cobbled together as a pre-made Facebook comment when dealing with Jesus mythicists, though it works pretty well against most New Atheists in general. I’ve decided to post it as a blog post and will hopefully update it over time with more relevant quotes and better citation quality (page numbers, for example).





Let's consider what a variety of non-Christian or anti-Christian scholars have to say about the existence of Jesus on the points of the crucifixion, burial, and later appearances of Jesus.


The below list includes Gerd Ludemann, Bart Ehrman, Jodi Magness, Geza Vermes, Reginald H. Fuller, John Dominic Crossan, Michael Grant, Richard Burridge, Graham Gould, and E. P. Sanders, along with summary by amateur scholars Tim O'Neill and The Dutch Maverick.


General opinion of the records:

  • “As we will see in a moment, the oldest and best sources we have for knowing about the life of Jesus—despite what Leigh Teabing intimates—are the four Gospels of the New Testament, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. This is not simply the view of Christian historians who have a high opinion of the New Testament and its historical worth; it is the view of all serious historians of antiquity of every kind, from committed evangelical Christians to hardcore atheists. This view is not, in other words, a biased perspective of only a few naive wishful thinkers; it is the conclusion that has been reached by every one of the hundreds (thousands, even) of scholars who work on the problem of establishing what really happened in the life of the historical Jesus, scholars who (unlike Teabing and his inventor, Dan Brown) have learned Greek and Hebrew, the languages of the Bible, along with other related languages such as Latin, Syriac, and Coptic, scholars who read the ancient sources in the ancient languages and know them inside and out. We may wish there were other, more reliable sources, but ultimately it is the sources found within the canon that provide us with the most, and best, information. I do not mean to say that these sources are unproblematic. In fact, they are riddled with problems, as we will see. But when used judiciously, they can yield important information about what Jesus really said and did.”

    • Bart Ehrman, Truth and Fiction in the Da Vinci Code, 2004, Page 102


Historical Consensus:

  • "He certainly existed, as virtually every competent scholar of antiquity, Christian or non-Christian, agrees."

    • B. Ehrman, 2011 Forged: writing in the name of God, page 285

  • "In recent years, 'no serious scholar has ventured to postulate the non historicity of Jesus' or at any rate very few, and they have not succeeded in disposing of the much stronger, indeed very abundant, evidence to the contrary."

    • An Historian's Review of the Gospels by Michael Grant 2004, page 200

  • "There are those who argue that Jesus is a figment of the Church’s imagination, that there never was a Jesus at all. I have to say that I do not know any respectable critical scholar who says that any more."

    • Jesus Now and Then by Richard A. Burridge and Graham Gould (Apr 1, 2004) page 34

  • "Scholars who specialise in the origins of Christianity agree on very little, but they do generally agree that it is most likely that a historical preacher, on whom the Christian figure "Jesus Christ" is based, did exist. The numbers of professional scholars, out of the many thousands in this and related fields, who don't accept this consensus, can be counted on the fingers of one hand."

  • "For Mythicists, elements which seem to indicate historicity cannot be allowed to stand, so they have to find ways to make this one go away. Their attempts to do so are, as ever, convoluted, contrived, based on carefully selected snippets of scholarship and a lot of suppositions and – in the most extreme cases – crackpot pseudo archaeology and crazed conspiracy theories.”

  • "Defending the historical Jesus has nothing to do with Jesus, but with how historians work. And this is another reason why I am writing this. We all care about how science is being conducted and when people from, for instance, Answers in Genesis come up with a bogus story telling us it is science based, we all get agitated. That’s exactly how I feel about the mythicist position. It’s not a proper position based on proper historical arguments."



Crucifixion of Jesus

  • “The fact of the death of Jesus as a consequence of crucifixion is indisputable, despite hypotheses of a pseudo-death or a deception which are sometimes put forward. It need not be discussed further here.”

    • Gerd Ludemann, What Really Happened To Jesus?

  • “I take it absolutely for granted that Jesus was crucified under Pontius Pilate. Security about the fact of the Crucifixion derives not only from the unlikelyhood that Christians would have invented it but also from the existence of two early and independent non-Christian witnesses to it, a Jewish one from 93-94 C.E. and a Roman one from the 110s or 120s C.E.” 

    • John Dominic Crossan, The Historical Jesus: The life of a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant (New York: HarperCollins, 1991), 372.

  • "Christians who wanted to proclaim Jesus as messiah would not have invented the notion that he was crucified because his crucifixion created such a scandal. Indeed, the apostle Paul calls it the chief "stumbling block" for Jews (1 Cor. 1:23). Where did the tradition come from? It must have actually happened."

    • Bart Ehrman, The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings


Burial

  • “Jesus came from a modest family that presumably could not afford a rock- cut tomb. Had Joseph not offered to accommodate Jesus’ body his tomb (according to the Gospel accounts) Jesus likely would have been disposed in the manner of the lower classes: in a pit grave or trench grave dug into the ground. When the Gospels tell us that Joseph of Arimathea offered Jesus a spot in his tomb, it is because Jesus’ family did not own a rock- cut tomb and there was no time to prepare a grave- that is there was no time to dig a grave, not hew a rock cut tomb(!)—before the Sabbath. It is not surprising that Joseph, who is described as a wealthy and perhaps even a member of the Sanhedrin, had a rock-cut family tomb. The Gospel accounts seem to describe Joseph placing Jesus’ body in one of the loculi in his family’s tomb."

    • Jodi Magness, Stone and Dung, Oil and Spit: Jewish Daily Life in the Time of Jesus 

  • “There is no need to assume that the Gospel accounts of Joseph of Arimathea offering Jesus a place in this family tomb are legendary or apologetic. The Gospel accounts of Jesus’s burial appear to be largely consistent with the archeological evidence.”

    • Jodi Magness, Stone and Dung, Oil and Spit: Jewish Daily Life in the Time of Jesus

  • “When every argument has been considered and weighed, the only conclusion acceptable to the historian must be that the opinions of the orthodox, the liberal sympathizer and the critical agnostic alike—and even perhaps of the disciples themselves—are simply interpretations of the one disconcerting fact: namely that the women who set out to pay their last respects to Jesus found to their consternation, not a body, but an empty tomb.” 

    • Geza Vermes, Jesus the Jew


Resurrection appearances

  • “The only thing that we can certainly say to be historical is that there were resurrection appearances in Galilee (and in Jerusalem) soon after Jesus’s death. These appearances cannot be denied.”

    • Gerd Ludemann, ”What Really Happened To Jesus?”

  • “We can say with complete certainty that some of his disciples at some later time insisted that . . . he soon appeared to them, convincing them that he had been raised from the dead.”

    • Bart Ehrman, Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millennium

  • “That Jesus’ followers (and later Paul) had resurrection experiences is, in my judgment, a fact. What the reality was that gave rise to the experiences I do not know.”

    • E.P. Sanders, The Historical Figure of Jesus

  • “That the experiences did occur, even if they are explained in purely natural terms, is a fact upon which both believer and unbeliever can agree.”

    • Reginald H. Fuller, Foundations of New Testament Christology

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