The mystery of Christian origins

I was not raised a Christian. At the time of my conversion to Christianity, many years ago, I had one nagging question: was it all historically true? Over time I have discovered there are several reasons to support the argument that it is.

First, Jesus was a genuine figure of history. The main evidence is the New Testament itself, but there is a scatter of evidence from other sources.

Tacitus, our major source for the Roman world in the century of Jesus, describes the fire that destroyed most of Rome in AD 64. Many blamed the fire on Nero who, in turn, “scapegoated” a new sect, the visible and hated Christiani.

In Annals xv.44 Tacitus explains where these “Christians” came from. The “founder of the name Christian” was “Christ”. This “Christ” had been executed 30 years earlier in Judaea, in the time of Tiberius, by Pilate, the governor of the province. But the sect did not die with its founder as most movements did. It sprang up again in Judaea and spread to Rome where it had become - as Tacitus called it - an “immense multitude”.

Tacitus had been a member of the Roman Senate and governor of a major province. He had access to imperial records and pinpoints Christ’s execution in relation to time - AD 30; place - Judaea; and circumstance - treason. He also explains how these “Christians” came to be in Rome in the year AD 64. No serious scholar known to me doubts Tacitus’ account.

Here I make an observation that is important to me: world history, independent of Christian sources, has noted Christian origins. The narrative of Luke and Acts (which is one book in two volumes) tells the same story as Tacitus when reduced to its broad outline: Christ was executed in Judaea in the time of Tiberius by Pontius Pilate, the governor, and the Christian movement sprang up again after this and spread beyond Judaea, including to Rome.

One further comment about Tacitus: Tacitus is a hostile witness. He hates Jews and he hates Christians and consequently his corroboration of the outlines of Christian history is all the more valuable.

A second reason to support the historical truth of Christ’s story is that the New Testament talks about Jesus and the early Christians in the same way it mentions famous people and events, including Herod king of the Jews, Herod Tetrarch of Galilee, Pilate, Sergius Paulus, Felix, Festus, Roman Governors, Caiaphas High Priest in Jerusalem, Aretas King of the Arabians, Emperors Augustus, Tiberius and Claudius, and a great famine in the time of Claudius. These are all real people and events known from world history and archaeology who also appear in the New Testament in the same way Jesus, Peter, John, Luke, Mark and Paul do.

It’s worth remembering that the Graeco-Roman world was a golden age in terms of education and literature. We know far more about the time of Jesus in the Graeco-Roman world than we do about Europe during the thousand years from the Fall of Rome until the Renaissance for they were indeed “dark ages” compared to the brilliance of the age of Rome and the Caesars.

A few weeks ago I revisited Ephesus, the great city in which Christianity was established by Paul. Aqueducts brought water 40 kilometres to this city of 250,000 people. Running water served the homes, there was reticulated sewerage, elegant villas, frescoes, statues and fountains, a theatre, a library. There were ingenious surgical instruments used by doctors. Civic life was more coherent and focused there than in our sprawling cities of today. And yet cities like Ephesus were found every few kilometres. Magnesia, Priene, Miletus, Aphrodisias, Didyma, Halicarnassus … This world in which Christ was born and his Gospel was preached was not “stone age” or “primitive”.

A third reason is that the texts of the New Testament were written close to Jesus’ time in history, unlike those written about Alexander, Augustus and Nero, which were often written many years after their time.

The Gospel of Mark was written within 40 years of Jesus’ death. The Letters of Paul were written within 30 years, the earliest within 20.This struck me like a thunderbolt: Mark was as close to Jesus in years as I am to the day I was married, the birth of my youngest child, or to the time, 40 years ago, when I was instructed by my Seminary teachers.

Mark’s gospel was not a cold biography but a living text, the written version of preachings in the years between Jesus and the moment Mark dipped his pen in ink and opened his scroll and began to write.

A fourth reason in support of historical truth is that our sources for Jesus are numerous. We have the four Gospels, the Synoptic Gospel sources “Q”, “L” and “M”, we have the Letters of Paul, James, Peter, Jude and John, and the Revelation. About a dozen in all, mostly primary, underived sources, each pointing to Jesus, called Christ of the royal line of David, Son of God crucified for sins, raised alive from the dead.

For Jesus, a crucified nobody from a despised race, we have vibrant documents written within a lifetime of his lifetime. We have earlier and better sources of evidence than for Augustus, the greatest Roman in history.

How did this man Jesus, a sociological “nobody”, generate this plethora of early documentation? In my opinion, two things alone account for this. His identity as the Son of God and he was raised alive from the dead.

A fifth reason is that there is an unbroken transmission of information between Jesus and us. The very nature of the Christian movement created the situation whereby today we may be confident of the integrity of the texts we read.

By an objective science called Textual Criticism we are confident that the New Testament we read is 99 per cent certain to be the New Testament as it was when it left the hands of Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Paul, Peter, James, Jude and the writer to the Hebrews.

Several things guarantee this. One guarantee is that Christianity is historically a missionary movement. Another is that converts were gathered into churches. Another is that churches were adapted synagogues and, like synagogues, their core activity was reading texts. They read the writings of the apostles to one another. The Qu’ran calls Christians “people of the book” and that is correct. 

Another guarantee is that these churches needed more and more copies of texts. The Corinthians copied Paul’s letters to them and exchanged their copies with the Ephesians. The seven churches of Revelation each had their copy. It is no wonder Tacitus and Pliny both called Christianity a spreading disease. And this in itself is another guarantee of authenticity. The movement grew from a few thousand in AD 30 to perhaps 10 million by AD 313. Look at maps of churches in AD 40 - Jerusalem, Lydda, Joppa, Caesarea (in Palestine), Antioch (in Syria), Shechem (in Samaria), Ptolemais, Tyre, Sidon (in Phoenicia), Rome (in Italy). Keep looking at these maps every decade for the next 200 years and what do you see? It is like measles with dots on maps representing churches in every country ringing the Mediterranean.

Another guarantee is that thousands of those copies in various languages have survived the ravages of time, including a few lines from John from early in the second century that is likely a copy of the autograph that John wrote. Also from the second century, P46 (in Dublin) Paul’s letters, P45 (in Dublin) the Gospels and the Acts; from the 300s the whole New Testament, found in the late 1800s and now in the British Museum.

From the early centuries there are 5,000 texts of the New Testament, in part or whole, in Greek, Latin, Coptic, Syriac, Armenian. And how many manuscripts of Tacitus’ Annals have survived? One. Discovered in the 1500s.

A sixth reason, then, to believe in the historical truth of Jesus’ story is that it is difficult to account for the rise of Christianity and the writing of the New Testament unless Jesus was indeed the Son of God, raised from the dead. The sources were either right or they were wrong. If wrong, then logically we would have to say they were either sincerely wrong (misguided) or insincerely wrong (mischievous).

The nature of the evidence, its earliness and its independence, drives me to reach another conclusion - that they portray Jesus as he was. My sense is that they know what they are talking about. The New Testament “rings true”. That is a subjective judgement. It is a judgement each of us must make for ourselves.

Many years ago I asked the question, “Is it true?” You have my answers here. I called this paper, “The Mystery of Christian Origins”. But what is the “mystery”? Just this: Why don’t more people believe it?