Jesus and me (Part 2)

Fact or fiction?

I will start with the big one! Did Jesus Christ really exist? Was he a living breathing human being just like you now reading these words? Or was he a fictional character akin to Conan the Barbarian or Miss Marple?

In the first part I made my own position clear.

I believe that Jesus Christ was a real historical person.

The emphasis here is definitely on the word ‘believe’. I can offer no tangible evidence that might persuade a jury in a court of law. But could anyone?

‘No’ is the answer, and here is why.

The main documentary sources relating to Jesus Christ are to be found in the New Testament of the Bible. This part of the Bible consists of the four Gospels and some other books and letters, written mainly by Paul, or Saul as he was known before changing his name. There are also a few ‘scrappy’ non-biblical sources by the likes of Josephus, a Jewish author who lived a few decades after Christ. But the main starting point for any discussion about Jesus Christ has to be the Gospels. They contain an extraordinary level of detail absent in all other sources.

What I have found is that the Gospels we know today are based not, as one might expect, on actual manuscripts written by friends or followers of Christ himself. Instead they are the work of medieval monks, that is, literate clerics writing over a thousand years after the events they relate. Nothing survives today of the original texts. All we have are copies (in fragmentary form) dated to several centuries after Christ, and even these might not be as old as we think.

But how could it be otherwise? The further back in time you go, the less likely it is that hard evidence is available now for any historical figure.

Take Plato for instance.

We are told that Plato lived in Greece about 300-400 years before Christ, and that he was a student of Socrates and a teacher of Aristotle. But how do we know this? Plato is said to have written a lot of stuff but, as far as I can see, none of it has come down to us in its original form. The same is true for anything written by others about him. What we have are copies of copies, sometimes written down centuries after Plato (or his biographers) lived and died. Even those copies survive to this day only as fragments of papyrus or parchment.

Yet most if not all scholars accept that Plato was an authentic person, whose writings are studied all over the world. Yes, academics might argue over this or that detail of Plato’s life and his works, but no one questions Plato’s reality.

The same is true for Jesus Christ. Virtually all serious scholars accept the basic facts of Jesus Christ’s life in 1st century Palestine. Although, as with Plato, other details are contested.

In short we cannot prove that Plato, Jesus Christ, and many other ancient figures, were real people. Yet, because everyone seems to believe in them, we do too, even serious scholars. So, if we go back far enough in time, is historical truth more about popular consensus than tangible proof? Is what people believe more important than the facts?

In these strange days it seems like everything is up for grabs. Even the timeline that takes us back into the past, and which has always seemed to be beyond question, is now being questioned. Is it the case that we can accept as true only what we can see before us with our own two eyes? Sadly it looks like it – and I am an historian!

Where does that leave Jesus Christ? If no one can prove he existed, isn’t it better just to forget about him altogether?

But then I think about Brian Cleeve. He believed in the reality of Jesus Christ. And my attitude to Brian is straightforward. He claimed that anyone could learn to obey the Will of God by ‘listening’ and ‘hearing’. Not only did I accept that claim, I proved it - to myself anyway.

But Brian taught me something else. He urged me to think, to use my God-given mental faculties to figure out answers for myself. By all means, he would advise, let us ‘ask’ about what worries or concerns us in the moment, but we should never park our brains while doing so.

So when I went back to the Gospels a few years ago I tried to apply a sense of mental freedom to what I was reading about Jesus Christ. The results were shocking! Why had I not seen before what was now clear to me?

Some of what I found I have already covered elsewhere, like Jesus’ poor relationship with his mother, and his contempt for money.¹ Overall I was struck forcibly by something I had not been taught in school. Time after time Jesus is reported to have said or done strange and radical things. These sometimes surprised even the writers who recorded them. Jesus’ unusually positive attitude towards women is just one example.²

If Jesus were an invented character surely the Gospel authors would have made him more conventional and more ‘normal’? Wouldn’t he have been given words to speak and things to do that lie within the bounds of human imagination?

If Jesus Christ never actually lived, whoever created this fictional character deserves a medal. In fact his inventors would have to be admired for having conceived such a distinctive figure, one whose personality put him at odds with the society in which he lived.

This indirect ‘evidence’ tends to support what every fibre of my being is telling me anyway. Despite the absence of any concrete data Jesus Christ was not fiction, he was fact.

More in Part 3

1. Into the Memory Hole: Despatches from the “world of lies” (2023), pp. 221-4, pp. 260-3.

2. See, for example, John 4:27.