Gospels portray a mythical Jesus? little we can know about his life [Answered]

Modern scholars are in complete agreement that the Gospels portray a mythical Jesus. There is very little that we can really know about his life.

The real myth is that we cannot know anything certain about the life of Jesus! The issue is one of presuppositions. Those scholars who are skeptical about knowing anything certain about the life of Jesus presuppose that the Gospel accounts are not reliable, just as they presuppose that the accounts in the Hebrew Bible about Abraham, Moses, or David are not reliable.

The same scholars who deny the resurrection of Jesus also deny the exodus from Egypt. In any case, a strong case can actually be made for the historical reliability of the New Testament accounts.

This objection, along with several others addressed in this section, is not specifically Jewish and has been treated at length in other books and monographs, so we will not treat it at length here. For a more full response to the related criticism that the New Testament writings are not historically accurate, see above, 5.6; for refutation of the idea that there is no historical support for the existence of Jesus in sources outside of the New Testament, see 5.7.

Those wishing to pursue this matter further will profit from the writings of the following scholars: Craig Blomberg, The Historical Reliability of the Gospels (see above, 5.6); Michael J. Wilkins and J. P. Moreland, eds., Jesus Under Fire: Modern Scholarship Reinvents the Historical Jesus (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1996); Luke Timothy Johnson, The Real Jesus: The Misguided Quest for the Historical Jesus and the Truth of the Traditional Gospels (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1997)

Ben Witherington, The Jesus Quest: The Third Search for the Jew from Nazareth (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1997); N. T. Wright, The Challenge of Jesus: Rediscovering Who Jesus Was and Is (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1999).

For a debate between a leading critical scholar and a leading conservative scholar, see Paul Copan, ed., Will the Real Jesus Please Stand Up? A Debate Between William Lane Craig and John Dominic Crossan (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1998). For a useful compendium of essays on all sides of the debate, see James D. G. Dunn and Scot McKnight, eds., The Historical Jesus in Recent Research (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2005).

For those who are unfamiliar with the debate in question, I will offer some food for thought. First, for the most part, Jewish scholars dealing with the Gospels, as compared to liberal scholars, are far more inclined to take the historical accounts there seriously. For further discussion of this, see below, 5.26. Second, to a great extent, the whole debate is a matter of presuppositions.

In other words, with rare exception, scholars who claim that the Gospels are unreliable in their portrayal of Jesus are those who come predisposed to that point of view or who studied under professors who were so inclined. Thus it is no coincidence that most of the scholars in the well-known Jesus Seminar were trained by a small group of liberal scholars sharing the same nihilistic views. Little wonder that their conclusions were also nihilistic. As Luke Timothy Johnson noted,

What becomes clear from scanning the academic training of the participants [of the Jesus Seminar] is that they overwhelmingly come from a cluster of graduate programs in New Testament that have in recent decades championed the sort of methodological and ideological stances reflected in the Seminar’s work.

Forty of the seventy-four fellows listed by the Five Gospels [one of the major publications of the Jesus Seminar] received their doctorates from five schools: fourteen from Claremont, nine from Vanderbilt, eight from Harvard, five from Chicago, and four from Union Theological Seminary.¹⁵⁰

Again, little wonder that they came to such skeptical conclusions, most famously, concluding by vote that Jesus only said 18 percent of what the Gospels attributed to him! As Johnson pointed out, “Like a great deal of Gospel criticism, [the Seminar] began with the assumption that the Gospels are not accurate histories but are narratives constructed out of traditional materials with literary art and theological motives.”¹⁵¹

Taking this even further, Johnson notes that there is an agenda behind the work of the Jesus Seminar and, in particular, professor Robert Funk, who has led the Seminar since its inception:

The Seminar has, to a great extent, carried out the agenda set for it by Funk’s keynote address at the first meeting in 1985, as reported in the Seminar’s publication Forum 1/1 (1985) under the title “The Issue of Jesus.” Funk there begins with a complaint against the established church: “The religious establishment has not allowed the intelligence of high scholarship to pass through pastors and priests to a hungry laity” (p. 8).

More specifically, he objects to the way television evangelists have “preyed on the ignorance of the uninformed.” He sees the work of the Seminar, therefore, as spelling “liberty for… millions.”¹⁵²

With an agenda like this, where is the objective scholarship? Johnson’s critique, then, is certainly deserved:

From the start, then, we see that the agenda for the Seminar is not disinterested scholarship, but a social mission against the way the church controls the Bible, and the way in which the church is dominated by a form of evangelical and eschatological theology—that is, a theology focused on both the literal truth of the Gospels and the literal return of Jesus—that Funk finds intolerable.

It is important to note from the start that Funk does not conceive of the Seminar’s work as making a contribution to scholarship but as carrying out a cultural mission.¹⁵³

And it is the Jesus Seminar, due to its popularity and public presence, that has put forth the idea that the Jesus of the Gospels is mythical.¹⁵⁴ To repeat: So much for objective scholarship!

Third, the same scholarly assumptions that call into question the veracity of the New Testament witness also call into question—more radically still—the veracity of the Hebrew Scriptures, rejecting many (if not most) of the pivotal events recorded there as myths and fables.

Again, this is largely a matter of presuppositions and methodology, and skeptical scholars tend to find ample confirmation for their skepticism while conservative scholars tend to find ample confirmation for their conservatism.

How true it is that you will find what you are looking for! A key difference, however, is pointed out by Blomberg, who asks, “If the trustworthiness of the gospels represents a verdict which careful historical analysis can yield regardless of the confessional perspectives, why do so many still resist this conclusion?”¹⁵⁵

In other words, if the application of sound and scientific historical methodology results in positive conclusions as to the historicity of the Gospels, regardless of one’s presuppositions or beliefs, why aren’t critical scholars more willing to accept this?

Blomberg addresses this head on, noting that, on both sides of the debate, there are presuppositions:

Too often conservatives summarily dismiss skeptical studies as merely developing the logical inferences of invalid assumptions. To be sure, this allegation has some force, but few works are so consistently deductive that they contain no discussion of hard data for others to take the time to sift through.

Similarly, more radical critics regularly charge conservatives with concluding only what their beliefs about Jesus and the Bible already permit. This charge is also occasionally valid.…

The crucial difference, however, is that this research [referring to the research underlying his book] has self-consciously tried to avoid presupposing the infallibility of Scripture or the deity of Christ, but has merely attempted to follow the standard methods of historical enquiry.

It derives from a willingness to consider the possibility that these traditional beliefs might have to be abandoned if historical investigation were to demonstrate them to be unwarranted.

No such demonstration has yet appeared. On the other hand, the critical scholarship which has abandoned these very beliefs virtually never considers where its investigations might lead if it questioned its starting-point and took seriously the possibility of the divine origin of Scripture and of Jesus.¹⁵⁶

So then, while conservative scholars are often willing to look at both sides of the debate and consider the possibility of the negative and positive evidence, realizing the high stakes involved if the negative position proved true, liberal scholars generally do not even consider the possibility that God inspired the writing of the Gospels and that their depiction of Yeshua is accurate in full.

Of course, it is impossible to prove to a skeptical reader that the Gospel’s depiction of Jesus is accurate, just as it is impossible to prove to a skeptical reader that God spoke to Israel on Mount Sinai (for discussion of this event and its implications, see vol. 5, 6.11). This much, however, can be offered to the serious seeker:

(1) The Gospels are presented as historical accounts, replete with historical and cultural detail, inviting honest investigation.

(2) The more archeological evidence that is discovered, the more confirmation these accounts receive, and to the extent that the Gospels can be placed against the cultural background of the day—especially the Jewish background—the more they ring true.

(3) These accounts were largely written by eyewitnesses, some of whom gave their lives for their Messiah or, at the least, suffered serious persecution and hardship for their beliefs. How many willful concocters of myths are then willing to suffer and die for the myths they created?

(4) The movement that Jesus began continues to this day, growing at a faster rate than at any time in history (see vol. 1, 91–93), and the vast majority of these new adherents to the faith hold to the truth of the Gospel accounts, having experienced the atoning power of Jesus’ death and the reality of his resurrection and ongoing life.

While all these people could merely be dismissed as religious fanatics or, less disparagingly, as naïve and misled sheep, it is also possible that their beliefs are true, confirming what is written in the Gospels. That is to say, they are living witnesses of the fact that “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever” (Heb. 13:8).

If you are truly open-minded and in search of the truth, this is a possibility that you do not want to exclude, and the monographs cited at the beginning of this response will help you sort through the issues involved. I would also encourage you to read the Gospels for yourself, carefully and prayerfully, asking God to show you the truth, keeping an open heart and an inquisitive mind.

Many of those who are staunch defenders of the faith started in this very place of open and honest searching. Jeremiah 29:13, spoken to the Jewish people long ago, remains true to this day.¹⁵⁷

¹⁵⁰Luke Timothy Johnson, The Real Jesus: The Misguided Quest for the Historical Jesus and the Truth of the Traditional Gospels (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1996), 3.

¹⁵¹Ibid., 4.

¹⁵²Ibid., 6.

¹⁵³Ibid.

¹⁵⁴Here is a representative quote from professor John Dominic Crossan, co-chair of the Jesus Seminar: “… I cannot find any detailed historical information about the crucifixion of Jesus. Every item we looked at was prophecy historicized rather than history recalled. There was one glaring exception. The one time the narrative passion broke away from its base in the prophetic passion, that is, from the single, composite trial in Psalm 2, was to assert Jewish responsibility and Roman innocence.

But those motifs were neither prophecy nor history but Christian propaganda, a daring act of public relations faith in the destiny of Christianity not within Judaism but within the Roman Empire,” Who Killed Jesus? Exposing the Roots of Anti-Semitism in the Gospel Story of the Death of Jesus (San Francisco: HarperSan Francisco, 1995), 159. Christian propaganda indeed!

¹⁵⁵Blomberg, Historical Reliability of the Gospels, 256.

¹⁵⁶Ibid., 256–57.

¹⁵⁷For the question of whether the Talmud forbids the study of the New Testament, see vol. 5, 6.4.

Brown, M. L. (2007). Answering Jewish objections to Jesus, Volume 4: New Testament objections. (66). Grand Rapids, Mich.; Baker Books.