Did Jesus Exist?

Mark Shea writes:

...Here’s the thing about the gospels. There really is nothing quite like them in the annals of world literature and the sooner you confront that fact, the less chance you have of the media making you stupid about them.

On the one hand, the gospels clearly have a sacramental and theological view of the world.  It is a world charged with meaning and sacramental power.  So every detail they record has symbolic significance.  Jesus is born, not just anywhere, but in Bethlehem, the House of Bread.  He is laid in a manger–a feed box, and Luke notices that because Jesus is the Bread of Life.  Luke will make the same eucharistic connection at the other end of his gospel by recording that he was made known “in the breaking of the bread”.  So it becomes easy, once you have gotten used to reading the gospels for all their massive amount of sacramental symbolism, to start imagining that the symbols are being invented and not reported by the authors.

Only here’s the thing, the gospel writers absolutely insist that they are reporting, not inventing this story.  The action takes place not in cloud cuckoo land, but in various locales around the Holy Land.  It happens not once upon a time, but “In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberi-us Caesar, Pontius Pilate being governor of Judea, and Herod being tetrarch of Galilee, and his brother Philip tetrarch of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysani-as tetrarch of Abilene, in the high-priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas”.  Indeed, Luke explicitly tells us, “Inasmuch as many have undertaken to compile a narrative of the things which have been accomplished among us, 2* just as they were delivered to us by those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word, 3* it seemed good to me also, having followed all things closely * for some time past, to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, 4* that you may know the truth concerning the things of which you have been informed.”

Sorry, but this ain’t the language of myth even though the events reported have a mythic quality.  This is the language of an ancient chronicler. Moreover, it is the language of an ancient chronicler who is quite careful to get his facts straight and has been shown, on repeated occasions, to know what he is talking about *better* than modernist scholars who are ready to dismiss him as having made crap up...

Here’s some reality: actual biblical scholarship by real, you know, scholars (even, by the way, unbelieving scholars) laughs to scorn the notion that “Jesus never existed”. What is quite clear is that the gospel are eyewitness accounts of a very real Jesus of Nazareth. And what is most solidly and definitely established by any reasonable assessment of the records we have is that, in the words of Tacitus, “Christus… suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus.” Only a crank–or a member of American Atheists–denies this...

For more on this, see here.