Is Jesus real?

Jesus of Nazareth is a historical Personage, no one doubts His existence, but how are we to account for Him, if the testimony of Scripture is not correct?

Bear in mind that revealed truth condemns the world, and must be so unpalatable to men, that one cannot expect their testimony save unwittingly. Yet the Roman remains (for we have no more) testify by the way to the appearance of Christ at the very time when Scripture puts Him in Palestine; and to a new faith in His followers, most offensive to those who loved, or at least sanctioned, the demoralising idolatries of Jupiter, Venus, Mars, and the other imaginary deities, or real demons, the empire honoured. I am away from my library or any books that I could cite. But if you are familiar with the scanty residue of the Latin classics so-called, you will not have forgotten the references in the brief historical works of Tacitus (bitter, haughty, and cynical as he was), or in the Lives of the Caesars by Suetonius, or in the Letters of Pliny the younger from his Bithynian government with the Emperor Trajan's replies. The later scoffing sketches in Greek of Lucian (of Samosata) also bear witness to the facts of Christ's history ("more suo," of the Punch style, or indeed lower still), and notably of His most widely known follower the apostle Paul. It is irrational (taking the ground of nature) to doubt what even these avowed enemies of Christianity attest. The men who then defended traditional and effete Paganism, regarded it as a new and dangerous superstition. That they did write of Christ and of His religion in a hostile spirit is beyond controversy, as then uprising and progressing far and wide. Pilate's act, as crucifying Him, is disputed neither by Jew nor by Gentile. So that we assuredly have adequate proof of His birth, life, and death from His enemies, confirming the allegations of scripture. Later still, Celsus and Porphyry wrote against Christianity as philosophers. But the outward facts are not disputed; and Christ's allowed miracles are imputed by Gentiles to magic, as the Jews at the time imputed them to Beelzebub.

The following extract is well worth reproducing. It has been well said: “We must destroy the Annals of Tacitus, the Biographies of Suetonius, the Letters of Pliny, if we wish to get rid of the testimony to the fact that in the reign of the Emperor Tiberius there lived one called Christ, that Judea and Galilee were the places of His teaching, that He was put to death by the command of Pontius Pilate, that after His death His doctrines and teaching spread rapidly through Greek-speaking and Roman-speaking lands, that multitudes of converts were made, who worshipped Jesus as God, and for His sake suffered bitter persecution.

“In the New Testament we have the names of Roman Emperors—Augustus, Tiberius, Claudius; Roman Governors as Cyrenius, Pontius Pilate, Felix, Festus, Sergius Paulus, Gallio; Jewish kings as Herod the Great, Archelaus, Herod Antipas, Agrippa I, Agrippa II. Classical history and the writings of Josephus attest that they existed at the time specified, bore the offices assigned them in the Bible, and in the chronological order in which their names appear. Every quotation from Josephus, Tacitus, or Suetonius; every fresh archaeological discovery in Asia Minor, Cyprus, Greece, Egypt, Palestine, Syria, Mesopotamia, serves to illustrate the minute accuracy with which every particular respecting them is recorded, even in facts apparently the most insignificant.”

And when we come to rationalism, we come to something even worse. Why should men gird at the miraculous? Is not Christ Himself the greatest of all miracles to us mortals? If there were no miraculous, no insoluble mysteries in the Christian faith, it would not command our belief. In truth the rationalist believes more incredible things, as men speak, than the Christian. He believes in mighty effects flowing from utterly inadequate causes. How can men deny the virgin birth, the sinlessness of the Lord, attribute to Him the limitations of ordinary men, deny even the resurrection, and yet account for Christianity? It has been well said: “Do you deny that Jesus existed? Who then invented Jesus? It would take a Jesus to invent a Jesus.”

The notion that events happening on earth, quite late in historical times, before a public exercised in all matters so as to be tending towards no faith in anything, and going on for three years or more with a public government trial at the end, related in its result by heathen historians of the empire - connecting itself by public facts, from that day on, with the state of that empire - a fact believed by hostile Jews or adverse heathen - should be a myth, is simply ridiculous. But it does prove this, that the eternal, moral, spiritual principles involved in the life and death of Jesus are so immense that they eclipse, so to speak, to a thinking, I do not say converted person, the historical facts, and what does this show? I look upon it as a divine mercy, and proof of goodness, that Christianity is a religion of persons and facts. It is more real, more simple, more divine, deeper yet more accessible. God become a Man! I have not ideas in man's mind about Him, but Himself. It is not what love is in my mind, but God who is Love. So even atonement - not a questionable reconciliation in abstract possibilities, not expiation wrought by love. Yet the principles, in relationship with God in these facts, are so deep and immense that they absorb, specially when He is not really known, the facts in which they are verified.

The history of Christianity no one attempted to deny when any denial of it would have been of the smallest value. They hated it, opposed it, sought to destroy it by force, and to subvert it by argument and ridicule; but it was there to be hated. No man thought of denying that. The documents were reasoned against, and objections made to them; but they, and they only, were received, by friends and foes, as the authentic documents of the religion professed by Christians. This is beyond all question. The Jews exist to this day the living witnesses of the truth of this history. They possess the books of the Old Testament, which we do. Their state confirms the Christianity they deny. It is well known that the Talmudists confirm the history of Christ's death, His flight into Egypt, and His miracles (though attributing them to sorcery He had learned when there, or, as some say, He wrought them by the means of God's ineffable name, which He stole).

We come now to New Testament times. Our first enquiry is as to what reference Josephus made to our Lord. We read, “Now, there was about this time Jesus, a wise man, if it be lawful to call him a 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 many of the Jews, and many of the Gentiles. He was [the] Christ; and when Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men amongst us, had condemned him to the cross, those that loved him did not forsake him for he appeared to them alive on the third day as the divine prophets had foretold these and ten thousand other wonderful things concerning him; and the tribe of Christians, so named from him, are not extinct at this day.” (Antiquities, B. XVIII., C. III.)

279 Mr. N.'s low and disgusting introduction of John as a witness is without sense or force. He puts a question which only shews his ignorance of the matter. The Holy Ghost acted on his memory, "He shall bring to your remembrance." Does he mean to say that God cannot call to a man's memory what He thinks fit? Such a notion is ridiculous — a man can do it. But He puts the memory into activity, and recalls to it the images of what had passed before it. How many scenes and thoughts has the sight of a person called back to our minds! How well does the sinner know that when God acts convertingly on his conscience all his sins come up fresh into his memory! Could God not do as much as to the life of His blessed Son, and control the memory in its activity so as to give what He wished, if He purposed to give a revelation by eye-witnesses? This is what Jesus said the Holy Ghost should do. Hence it is not a "romance," but a history — a real history by eye-witnesses, and a real history by God Himself through their instrumentality. It is much more incredible that He should have sent and given His Son, and not given such a history of Him, but left it unknown, or only traditionally guessed at in after ages.

Further, I repeat, miracles may arrest and draw attention to truth; and truth may arrest and fix attention on divine power shewn by miracles; but the fact is, both were concurrent testimonies to the person and glory of the Lord Jesus Christ. On this point also Mr. N. only shews he is far from the plain and very simple state of the case. Suppose the anxious father, who entreated deliverance for his son, found that the fever left him exactly at the moment that Jesus said, "Go thy way, thy son liveth"; and thus, giving ear to Jesus, found that truth, the entering in of which gives light and understanding to the simple, would an infidel's scepticism or the parent's conduct be more just? In the main, the Gospels just give us an authentic history of those things, and of plenty of scepticism too, which has not happily succeeded in anything save confirming, in the state of the sceptic Jews, the prophecies and warnings which they disbelieved and rejected.

280 Suppose, on the other hand, one heard Him who spake as never man spake, and received precious truth in his soul, yet remained pondering as to who He should be who spake, and whether all His claims were real, and, as John's messengers, saw that the blind received their sight, the lame walked, the lepers were cleansed, the deaf heard, the dead were raised, and, in the absence of all the pride and selfishness of religious grandeur, the poor had the gospel preached to them; was it not a just means of receiving Him who spake grace and truth itself, and confirmed the word by signs following? Or must he have settled the knotty, logical point whether miracles were to be believed on account of doctrine, or doctrine on account of miracles, before he did; or remained in torturing doubt if the Saviour he wanted was there, or in proud and indifferent ignorance? He had nothing to settle. Truth and power concurred in assuring his soul that Jesus was the Christ the Son of God. If he did not believe it, it was that his heart was so hard that it resisted both. We have lost the sight of the miracles and possess the truth more complete as a whole, and an historical testimony which nothing but folly and self-will can dispute: an historical testimony which makes the whole course of miracles more powerful morally, though less impressive to the senses. Christianity exists. It arose from something. What it did arise from is believed by all the world except voluntary sceptics and mythical dreamers like Dr. Strauss, who will serve for a nine years' wonder for the Germans, as the Paulus school did before them.

Add to this the witness of the three groups. Of a solitary individual it might be alleged that he was impressionable by nature, a bit of a visionary; but this could not be said of the Twelve, nor of all the Apostles. An alleged appearance to an individual might have been something very secret, a kind of hole-and-corner affair; but it would be impossible to say this about the occasion when He appeared to five hundred brethren at once. No fact of history is better attested than the resurrection of the Lord Jesus.

And not only is the above the case, but can it be imagined that a few illiterate persons should invent the story that Jesus was God manifest in flesh, and that when He, who was goodness incarnate, came into the world men should hate Him, spit upon and crucify Him. It is very difficult to believe that anybody could have invented such a story, and still more that it should find acceptance, if not true.

Moreover the gospel narratives are all emphatic on this point that He was not only crucified, but also that He rose from the dead. The resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ is the fact upon which the gospel hangs. If then He did rise from the dead, the narrative is doubtless true, and Jesus is indeed the eternal Son of God, who is really all that He professed to be, else why did He alone of all men rise from the dead. If on the contrary He did not rise from the dead, there is the unaccountable difficulty to get over that a few ignorant men should palm a lie off upon the world, be filled with the utmost enthusiasm on the subject, be willing for the sake of this lie to endure scorn, contempt and torture, yea and give up their own lives to carry out their deception. If the narrative is true, and they received supernatural power for the carrying out of their mission, the matter is simple, but if not it seems impossible to make a hypothesis which will account for the known facts. Let the reader test this for himself.