First of all, let’s address the elephant in the room: For many American Christians, the term “deconstruction” is problematic at best and heretical at worst. But the truth is that it simply refers to the act of reevaluating the faith that many of us grew up with and digging deep to figure out why we believe what we believe. It’s not a rejection of Christianity, per se, but a rejection of various long-held opinions and ideas that may not stand up to critical examination. I’ve already done this with a few topics (without necessarily using that terminology), and I’ll re-share the links to some of those posts below:
- Men, Women & Biblical Equality
- Marriage, Sexuality, and the Bible
- Love Drives Out Fear
- The Red Letters
- TheoBros, Muscular Christianity, and Other Hyper-Masculine Nonsense
- The Ethiopian Eunuch: Race, Gender, and the Early Church
That being said, I intend to start writing multiple blog posts in this “Deconstruction Diaries” series, looking at a number of different theological, historical, and textual issues with a fresh perspective. And the safest place to begin is probably examining the evidence for an historical Jesus.
The overwhelming majority of historians (even non-religious historians) believe that Jesus of Nazareth was a real historical person, but that doesn’t mean they all believe in his divinity. Rather, only two specific events are subject to almost universal assent: that Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist, and he was crucified by the order of the Roman Prefect Pontius Pilate. It’s also evident that he engaged in debates with Jewish authorities on theology, taught in parables, and gathered numerous followers.
The two most important extra-biblical sources for the historical Jesus come from the writings of Josephus and Tacitus, although numerous secondary or minor sources exist as well.
Josephus (AD 37-100):
Flavius Josephus was a Roman-Jewish historian and military leader best known for writing a book about the Jews’ wars against the Romans. There are two references to Jesus in his book Antiquities of the Jews, which was written around AD 94. One excerpt simply mentions James “the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ,” and the other describes Jesus’ ministry and crucifixion:
About this time there lived Jesus, a wise man, if indeed one ought to call him a man. For he was one who performed surprising deeds and was a teacher of such people as accept the truth gladly. He won over many Jews and many of the Greeks. He was the Christ. And when, upon the accusation of the principal men among us, Pilate had condemned him to a cross, those who had first come to love him did not cease. He appeared to them spending a third day restored to life, for the prophets of God had foretold these things and a thousand other marvels about him. And the tribe of the Christians, so called after him, has still to this day not disappeared.
Tacitus (AD 56-120):
Publius Cornelius Tacitus was a Roman politician who is also widely regarded as one of the greatest Roman historians by modern scholars. In his final work, Annals, Tacitus made reference to Jesus, his execution by Pontius Pilate, and the persecutions of Christians in Rome by Emperor Nero. It’s also worth noting that Tacitus was fairly hostile toward Christianity. The passage in question reads as follows:
Nero fastened the guilt [for the Great Fire of Rome] and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace. Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus, and a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judaea, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome…
One of the notable minor sources is the Roman historian Suetonius (AD 69-122), who wrote that “since the Jews constantly made disturbances at the instigation of Chrestus, [Emperor Claudius] expelled them from Rome.” Suetonius refers to the leader of the Christians as Chrestus, referred in Latin dictionaries as a (amongst other things) version of Christus. This is, however, a weaker source than those previously referenced, since it only mentions Christ as a historical figure and nothing else about his life.
Tertullian (AD 155–220), an early Christian author, made reference in his writings to the existence of census records taken during the time of Gaius Sentius Saturninus, which corroborate Jesus’ birth during that time period. He also refers to records from the Roman Archives that would back up the account of the crucifixion darkness from the Bible. Unfortunately, none of these records have been located.
But even if we look only at the Gospels, that’s still four narrative accounts of Jesus’ life and death, written by different people at different times and places, all within the first century. How many (non-autobiographical) narratives do we have of the life of Josephus, the great historian? None. How many do we have of Caiaphus, the Jewish high priest of Jesus’ day? Zero. How many do we have of Pontius Pilate, the most powerful man in all of Palestine back then? Nada. Apart from Jesus of Nazareth, how many narratives do we have of any of the thousands of people living in Palestine in the first century? Zilch.
If we can at least agree that Jesus of Nazareth existed, and if we give any credibility to the accounts of his life and death provided in the Gospels, then (in my opinion) the next logical step is the famous argument made by C.S. Lewis in his seminal work, Mere Christianity:
A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us…. Now it seems to me obvious that He was neither a lunatic nor a fiend: and consequently, however strange or terrifying or unlikely it may seem, I have to accept the view that He was and is God.
The Eagle and Child 