The Jesus of History

The Jesus Of History

The historicity of Jesus refers to the analysis of historical data to determine if Jesus existed as a historical figure, approximately where and when he lived, and if any of the major milestones in his life, such as his method of death, can be confirmed as historical events. In contrast, the study of the historical Jesus goes beyond the question of his historicity and attempts to reconstruct portraits of his life and teachings, based on methods such as biblical criticism of gospel texts and the history of first century Judea.

Virtually all modern scholars of antiquity agree that Jesus existed, and biblical scholars and classical historians regard theories of his non-existence as effectively refuted. While there is little agreement on the historicity of gospel narratives and their theological assertions of his divinity most scholars agree that Jesus was a Galilean Jew who was born between 7 and 2 BC and died 30–36 AD. Most scholars hold that Jesus lived in Galilee and Judea, did not preach or study elsewhere and that he spoke Aramaic and may have also spoken Hebrew and Greek. Although scholars differ on the reconstruction of the specific episodes of the life of Jesus, the two events whose historicity is subject to "almost universal assent" are that he was baptized by John the Baptist and was crucified by the order of the Roman Prefect Pontius Pilate.

Beyond baptism and crucifixion, scholars attribute varying levels of certainty to the historicity of other events and a list of eight facts that may be historically certain about Jesus and his followers has been widely discussed. However, scholarly agreement on this extended list is not universal, e.g. while some scholars accept that Jesus called disciples, others maintain that Jesus imposed no hierarchy and preached to all in equal terms.

Since the 18th century a number of quests for the historical Jesus have taken place, and historical critical methods for studying the historicity of Jesus have been developed. Various Christian and non-Christian sources are used to study and establish the historicity of Jesus, e.g. Jewish sources such as Josephus, and Roman sources such as Tacitus. These sources are compared and contrasted to Christian sources such as the Pauline Letters and the Synoptic Gospels to determine the historicity of Jesus. These sources are usually independent of each other (e.g. Jewish sources do not draw upon Roman sources), and similarities and differences between them are used in the authentication process.