STUDY: Jesus May Not Have Existed

Researcher Michael Paulkovich combed many historic texts — writings of over 126 historians of that time — trying to find out if Jesus really existed; he came up empty-handed. This is actually not a new discovery; the “mythical Jesus” theory has been around for a while. Paulkovich’s findings have been published in Free Inquiry. He writes:

“When I consider those 126 writers, all of whom should have heard of Jesus but did not — and Paul and Marcion and Athenagoras and Matthew with a tetralogy of opposing Christs, the silence from Qumran and Nazareth and Bethlehem, conflicting Bible stories, and so many other mysteries and omissions. I must conclude that Christ is a mythical character.”

The story of the virgin birth and the son who could perform miracles can be found in religious beliefs of many ancient religious groups that pre-date Christianity. There was the god Horus in ancient Egyptian mythology. He was born of a virgin, had 12 disciples, had three wise men show up, and he walked on water. Other civilizations have similar stories.

There was a problem with Paulkovich’s report. Most biblical scholars do believe that Jesus existed. Sources tell us that Paulkovich is not really a biblical scholar. He is more of a born-again (anti) Christian. His claims have been dismissed by Biblical scholars.Historians argue over the details, but they do say that Jesus existed sometime in the first-century C.E. There are a couple of problems with Paulkovich’s list. First, some of the scholarly text he was looking at were written a hundred years before Jesus existed. Also, some of these texts were from philosophers; they don’t usually write about current events. Fourteen of these texts were from doctors, and they wouldn’t be writing about religion either. There are some legitimate historians on the list, but if they were writing about Rome or Alexander the Great then they wouldn’t have room to fit Jesus in there.

Some of the writers that were cited were not from the region. Athenian philosopher Maximus probably had not heard of Judea or Galilee. One writer cited, Moeragenes, is not widely known.

However, we are missing some important resources that would prove Jesus existed. There are no eyewitness or contemporary accounts of Jesus in historical texts. Religious writings, including the Bible, have evolved over the years. They get translated. They get rewritten. Manuscripts on this subject were protected by Christians, so they could have easily been changed or rewritten over the centuries.

Yes, it can be hard to find more proof about this subject. But, Christianity is definitely not original. If Jesus was a real person, they used concepts from other ancient traditions to describe him and his life. There are plenty of archaeological discoveries all the time; maybe we can use science and reason to find out if Jesus existed.

Featured image via flickr, available under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic license.