The 25th of December

Few Christians are aware that there is not a single piece of legitimate historical evidence that the gospel Jesus ever existed.

The birth, life, miracles, teachings and death of Jesus are not referred to by any historians of the time, despite the fact that the centuries surrounding the beginning of the Christian era were some of the best documented in history.

Apart from Luke's Gospel, no historical sources mention the Roman census that supposedly required Mary and Joseph to travel to Bethlehem. In fact, a Roman census could not have been carried out in Palestine in the time of King Herod, for his territory was not part of the empire.

Nor are there any independent historical accounts of the guiding star (which, very unstarlike, wandered through the sky and came to rest over the building where Jesus was born!), Herod's slaughter of the innocents, or the dramatic events that allegedly accompanied the crucifixion -- i.e. three hours of global darkness, an earthquake and the rending of the veil of the temple of Jerusalem, followed, according to Matthew, by corpses emerging from their graves, including the resurrection of the saints and their subsequent appearance to many in Jerusalem!

The only Roman writers to mention anything of relevance to the historical reality of Jesus are Pliny, Tacitus and Suetonius, but they were all writing at the beginning of the 2nd century and none of them mention Jesus by name. Pliny simply says that some Christians had cursed 'Christ' to avoid being punished. Tacitus mentions that Christ was executed by Pontius Pilate, but it is clear that he is merely quoting hearsay information from his own day. Suetonius states that Jews were expelled from Rome around 49 CE because a man called Chrestus instigated disturbances among them. But Chrestus was a popular name, and even if Suetonius really meant 'Christus', Jesus was never said to have been at Rome, and certainly not nearly 20 years after his supposed crucifixion. Moreover, the authenticity of all these passages has been questioned.

Turning to Jewish historians: Philo was an eminent Jewish author who lived at the same time that Jesus is supposed to have lived and wrote around 50 works that still survive. They tell us much about Pontius Pilate, yet make no mention of Jesus. Philo's contemporary, Justus of Tiberias, wrote a history that began with Moses and extended to his own times, but again made no mention of Jesus.

Josephus, on the other hand, a younger contemporary of the apostle Paul, wrote two famous history books, one of which (Antiquities of the Jews) contains two passages which do refer to Jesus: one of them speaks of him as the messiah, who was crucified under Pilate and appeared to his disciples three days later.

For hundreds of years these passages were seized on by Christians as conclusive proof that the gospel Jesus was an historical figure. But more careful scrutiny has shown them to be later forgeries. Since Josephus was an orthodox Jew, he would hardly have called Jesus the messiah if the Jews had really put him to death for blasphemy.

Origen explicitly stated in the 3rd century that Josephus did not believe that Jesus was the messiah. It was not until the beginning of the 4th century that Bishop Eusebius, the Roman Church's notorious propagandist and falsifier, suddenly produced a version of Josephus which contained these passages. Nevertheless, given the lack of any other serious, non biblical evidence for an historical Jesus, some Christian apologists still go to desperate lengths to claim that the passages in Josephus are at least partially authentic

The Jewish Talmud comprises an older stratum called the Mishna and additional matter known as the Gemara or 'completion'. The Mishna was founded in 40 BCE and was edited and amplified till about the beginning of the 3rd century CE. It contains an unbroken record of all the rebels against the authority of the Jewish Sanhedrin from 40 BCE to about 237 CE, and provides a history of the Pharisees, who allegedly put Jesus to death. H.P. Blavatsky asks:

how is it that not one of the eminent Rabbis, authors of the Mishnah, seems to have ever heard of Jesus, or whispers a word in the defence of his sect charged with deicide, but is, in fact absolutely silent as to the great event?

The Talmud does contain references to a certain Jeshu, on whom the gospel Jesus may partially have been based, but one passage implies that he lived about 100 BCE. The Talmud certainly provides no support for the historical reality of a gospel Jesus living in the early 1st century

D.P.