Jesus in
The Historical Facts
The importance of Jesus Christ’s life and death is recorded in the New Testament. Yet for those who do not accept the New Testament as accurate history, other records have been preserved which clearly show that the human life of Jesus Christ was fact—not fiction.
In times past and present, some atheists and agnostics have gone so far as to claim that no real evidence exists outside the New Testament to prove that Jesus of Nazareth actually lived, and died. And the New Testament, of course, is dismissed as a pious fraud.
It is true that no record of the crucifixion of Jesus has come down to us from Pilate himself. But other records have been preserved which do mention Jesus of Nazareth. These records are non-Christian in origin and, hence, can be regarded as neutral, disinterested, historical proof of Jesus’ life and subsequent crucifixion by the Romans.
Writing around the end of the first Century A.D., the Roman historian
Suetonius tells us that in A.D. 49 the Emperor Claudius banished all Jews from
the city of Rome (an incident also mentioned in Acts 18:2): “He expelled the
Jews from Rome, on account of the, riots in which they were constantly
indulging, at the instigation of Chrestus” (Claudius, 25, 4).
“Chrestus” was a common misspelling of the name of Christ. These riots were
probably a result of the recent arrival in Rome of Christianity, which would
have caused considerable dissension in the Jewish community there, as it did
elsewhere (see, for example, Acts
A more detailed account of Christ comes from the Roman historian Tacitus. Writing
between A.D. 115 and 117, Tacitus tells us that in A.D. 64 the Emperor Nero
tried to blame the disastrous fire in
From Tacitus’s comments it is clear he had no sympathy for Christianity. Yet
for him there was no question that its founder actually lived and was executed
by Pontius Pilate while he was procurator over
Roman historians are not the only ones who tell us of Jesus of Nazareth.
Ancient Jewish traditions preserved in the Talmud also mention Him. Jewish
scholars generally agree that some traditions of Jesus’ death by crucifixion
were maintained among the Jews for several centuries after the event and were
finally put in written form in the Babylonian Talmud about A.D. 500. One such
passage—which some think refers to Jesus, though a number feel it refers to
someone else—reads as follows: “On the eve of Passover they hanged Yeshu and
the herald went before him for forty days saying, He is going forth to be
stoned in that he hath practiced sorcery and beguiled and led astray
Another account of Jesus is found in the writings of the famous Jewish historian Flavius Josephus of the first century AD. However, historians feel that the passage was later altered by a Christian scribe to make Josephus say that Jesus was possibly the Messiah—something Josephus himself probably did not write. However, one Jewish scholar has rendered the passage as follows: “Now, there was about this time Jesus, a wise man; for he was a doer of wonderful works, a teacher of such men as receive the truth with pleasure. He drew over to him both many of the Jews and many of the Gentiles. And when Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men among us, had condemned him to the cross, those that loved him at the first ceased not so to do; and the race of Christians, so named from him are not extinct even now” (Klausner, Jesus of Nazareth, pp. 55-56).
Josephus also mentions Jesus briefly in another passage which scholars feel
is quite genuine: “He [Annas] convened a judicial session of the Sanhedrin and
brought before it the brother of Jesus the so-called Christ—James by name—and
some others, whom he charged with breaking the law and handed over to be stoned
to death (Josephus, Antiquities, XX,200).
Many other accounts, mostly fragmentary, have come down to us besides the ones that are quoted here. Many of these give further details which corroborate the New Testament accounts of Jesus. These documents so vindicate the New Testament record that Professor Klausner stated: “If we possessed them alone, we should know nothing except that in Judaea there had existed a Jew named Jesus who was called the Christ, the ‘Anointed’; that he performed miracles and taught the people; that he was killed by Pontius Pilate at the instigation of the Jews; that he had a brother named James, who was put to death by the High Priest Annas, the son of Annas; that owing to Jesus there arose a special sect known as Christians; that a community belonging to this sect existed in Rome fifty years after the birth of Jesus, and that from the time of Nero, the sect greatly increased; regarded Jesus as virtually divine, and underwent severe persecution” (Jesus of Nazareth, p. 62).
False concepts of a false Jesus would be at least partially removed by
understanding more of the environment that was
It is incredible that so many books of theological research, Bible dictionaries, histories of the Holy Land, and other works on the life and time of Jesus use the illustrations of a Palestine of the turn of the century—the old woodcuts, travelogue photos, and oft-reprinted scenes of the bleak ruins of ancient cities, Bedouin tents, camel caravans, filthy streets and rocky, barren hillsides—which tend to leave the impression that this is the Palestine of the time of Christ.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
The land that is now drastically depleted, mostly deforested, heavily eroded and reduced to dust, was, almost nineteen hundred years ago, a verdant, beautiful, rich part of the world, virtually unrivaled in industry, wealth and strength.
If you could have walked the streets of the cities of
In ancient times, God had promised the Israelites a land “flowing with milk and honey.” One remembers the account of the spies sent to search out the land who came back with tales not only of giant men, but of fruits and produce so abundant and so large that they are virtually unknown among modern agricultural products today.
The implication of the account of one cluster of grapes being carried on a pole by two men is clear; each grape must have been about the size of a plum or a lemon!
“And they came to the Valley of Eshcol, and cut down from there a branch with a single cluster of grapes, and they carried it on a pole between two of them; they brought also some pomegranates and figs.
“And they came to Moses ... and they told him, ‘We came to the land to which
you sent us; it flows with milk and honey, and this is its fruit’” (Num.
The early Israelites weren’t only impressed by the gigantic size of the
fruits and produce of the land—they were frightened to death at the size of the
people living, there! They said, “. . . all the people that we saw in it are
men of great stature . . . and we seemed to ourselves like grasshoppers...” (Num.
The
In your mind’s eye, you need to imagine a country more like some of the western mountain states of the United States—perhaps portions of northern or central California, but in a much smaller area, encompassing a deep depression (such as Death Valley) wherein lies the Salt Sea and the terminus of the Jordan River, together with lofty snow clad mountains, higher elevations festooned with conifers of every sort, especially the world-famed “Cedars of Lebanon,” seemingly endless corn and pasture lands, terraced hills covered with olives and vines, glades and pleasant valleys bubbling with springs and streams. Naturally, by the time of Christ, a great deal of the land had been abused and no small amount of depletion of natural resources and subsequent erosion and loss of arable soil had already occurred. Still, it was immensely richer than it is today.
Therefore, although many glowing accounts of the beauty of that land exist
in the books of Exodus, Leviticus, and some of the major prophets, descriptions
of pastures which seemed to be “clothed with flocks” and of “the land of milk
and honey” may not have been quite so accurate by Jesus’ day. Nevertheless,
abundant literature exists, and archaeological finds substantiate, that the
Palestine of Jesus’ day was luxuriously wealthy in natural resources; dotted
with towns and cities that were resplendent examples of the finest engineering
and architectural principles of that day and represented one of the most
important possessions of the
Herod was a great builder. Not only was the temple during Jesus’ day an absolute marvel of glittering stone and beautiful architecture, but there were so many fortresses, palaces, temples, amphitheaters and public monuments that it was said even in faraway Rome that some structures of the area of Palestine were among the very finest in the empire, looked upon as a jewel in the crown of Caesar himself.
Try to imagine the city of
Millions of Bible illiterates think of Christ’s ministry as having taken
place in the streets of
Galileans were generally regarded as a crude half-breed lot, looked upon
with Varying degrees of pity and contempt. The present-day attitudes of some
New Englanders toward those from
Even though Jesus grew up in
It was hardly a cheerful time for carefree young children to grow up with time on their hands for endless play and daydreams. Jesus had been taught His father’s trade from His earliest youth, and no doubt labored, first at His father’s side (Joseph), and, following Joseph’s death, as the head of the family and its business.
His building trade was well known throughout the area; and, just as it is quite common for a contractor or a carpenter to live in a home built with his own hands, by his own design, or by his own firm, so Jesus and His brothers, Joses, Simon, Jude and James, together with their helpers, must have constructed a large home for their family in Capernaum.
That home in
According to archaeological discoveries, the city of
Peter and Andrew both lived in nearby
Try to imagine that you are standing in one of the main streets in
On entering such a home, you would have noticed the beautiful stone work, or marble or more expensive stone, the walls painted with delicate colors such as vermilion (or white-washed), and a large interior courtyard, where you would have seen a pool and possibly a fountain. Opening to either side would be living quarters, and to the rear and upstairs would be large public rooms for dining and family meetings. A wide stairway of beautiful quarried stone would lead directly from the street up the side of the home to the rooftop. Building codes of the time required that the large rooftops be provided with decorative handrails to protect people from falling. The roof would probably have been paved with brick or stone, or possibly one of the cements used at the time. The roofs always sloped slightly toward the front, so that the cisterns (sometimes contained even within the homes themselves) were filled with rainwater by ducts which caught the rains of the wet season.
It would be quite common to see families of the cities of
Once, Jesus was gathered together with His disciples and a large crowd of
people inside His own home in the city of
This reveals that Jesus was in a home which was obviously His own. It was noised abroad that He was “in the house” which is rendered by other translations “at home.” This also illustrates the fact that those who were so anxious to have their friend healed were easily able to climb to the rooftop via the outer stairway.
Jesus was in His own home, either in a large upper room capable of accommodating more than one hundred persons, or, possibly, in a large central courtyard that was a feature of Jewish homes of that size and scale. Servants’ quarters and the vestibule for guests were located near the front, sleeping quarters around both sides, and larger upper rooms toward the rear with a large family kitchen. It was not unusual for such homes to have interior fountains with plantings, and many of them would have been open to the outside air, not unlike those Spanish villas designed at a much later time.
Jesus’ ministry centered around the area of
He was teaching “by the seaside” (Mark 4: 1) of the
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