Was Jesus really God?

Jesus must have been God because of the simple process of elimination: none of teh alternative explanations even makes sense! [1] Billions of people claim that the Bible is true when it claims that Jesus was God, the creator of the universe, who took the form of a simple man. But are they wrong? Let’s look at the alternatives:

Option 1: Jesus never existed; he was completely invented in the first century. [2] The problem with this option is that much of the documentary evidence we have, both Biblical and Roman, dates between the mid-first century and early second. For instance, Tacitus, the greatest of all Roman historians, wrote disparagingly about Jesus in the very early second century. [3] There was not enough time for such an elaborate myth to develop, particularly when first- and second-hand witnesses were still living. [4] There is no way a Jesus myth could have been invented in the first or early second centuries.

Option 2: Jesus never existed; he was completely invented much later. As noted above, there are multiple documents from the first and early second century describing Jesus, and dozens of manuscript fragments from the second century. [5] There is no way a Jesus myth could have been invented later than 150 CE.As well, if there really was an original form of Christianity that didn't believe Jesus was a man, then it makes no sense that there is no trace of it

 

Option 3: Jesus was a simple itinerant rabbi whose story was completely distorted and embellished. In fact, Jesus of Nazareth was only one of many itinerant rabbis in that era, [6] who happened to gather an enormous following which continued to grow after his execution. Could the miracles be later additions? Is it possible Jesus didn’t claim to be God? As with option 1, the problem with this theory is timing. The three synoptic gospels were written between 60 and 90 CE, likely based on an earlier written version [7] and oral histories. At this time, there were dozens or hundreds of surviving eyewitnesses to the events. The distortions and embellishments could not have happened earlier, or they would have been denounced. They could not have happened in 60-120 CE, because Tacitus writes in 116 CE that Nero blamed the Christians for a fire that burned Rome in 64 CE. [3] And they could not have happened after that because we have a very clear continuity of manuscript integrity from the mid-second century onwards. [5]

Option 4: Jesus was a Roman agent whose mission was to quell Zionist unrest. In particular, the Romans faked his death and removed his still-living body from the tomb. This option has a number of failings:

1.      First, if it was a plot, it certainly failed horribly. There was a catastrophic Zionist uprising in the 60s ending with the destruction of the Temple and expulsion of the Jews in 70 CE. From an Imperial point of view, this is very bad for business.

2.      Second, if the objective was to change Jewish opinion, why did the earliest groups adopt a communal life, separate from mainstream society? [8] Why did the Romans allow the Pharisees to persecute the Christians from the very beginning? [9] Why did the apostles insist on Jesus’ divinity, a heresy that isn’t core to Roman interests, rather than focusing on Jesus’ message of love, peace and subservience to secular Rome? [10]

3.      Third, were the apostles in on the plot? If yes, why would they willingly be martyred after it had failed, rather than deny it? And if not, how were so many people – the apostles and hundreds of more skeptical bystanders – convinced of the dozens of miracles? How do you fake healing a paralytic, a leper and an epileptic?

4.      Finally, when the Christian hoax had gone awry and become a problem rather than a solution, a mere 40 years after it was invented, surely someone in Rome would have recalled the conspiracy and trotted it out to show the early Christians were dupes. Indeed, all memory of the conspiracy had disappeared by the time Tacitus wrote. As a senator Tacitus would have had access to any records or witnesses, and as a rigorous historian he would have investigated this.

The conspiracy theory has no evidence and several gaping logical holes. It doesn’t make any sense.

Option 5: Jesus was a lunatic who convinced his followers he was God. After all, we have seen modern people start cults of self-aggrandizement, such as Jim Jones or David Koresh. But the one thing these people all have in common is secrecy. They keep their truths private, they perform miracles in secret, and they amass a hidden fortune. But Jesus was not at all like that. In Matthew 5 he preached to thousands of people at once in the open country-side. In Matthew 9 he openly debated theological points with the church authorities. In Matthew 14 he miraculously fed thousands of people, in public. In Matthew 27 he died penniless and was buried in a borrowed tomb. Jesus does not match the universal pattern of a lunatic cult leader.

Option 6: Jesus was an evil spirit who deceived us all. This option is very rare, being rejected by every Christian and every person who denies that demons exist. The convincing argument against it is the actual message preached by Jesus: love your neighbour, forgive your enemies, forgive each other’s’ sins, be generous, worship God, and so on. Why would a demon work so fervently to support his enemy’s cause?

Option 7: Other non-divine explanations. In keeping with the Holmesian fallacy, [1] this option claims that Jesus was not divine but we have not yet found an explanation for the phenomenon of Christian belief that he was. This is grasping at straws, a tenacious dogma that “Jesus wasn’t God because God doesn’t even exist,” which is motivated by an emotional refusal to accept even the possibility that it could be true. This is bad history; this is bad science; and this is bad logic. It is irrational.

Option 8: Jesus was God, as he claimed. To me, incredible as it may seem, this is the last remaining explanation.

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[1] This is an informal fallacy known as the Holmesian fallacy, which points out the flaw in Holmes’ saying: it assumes we know all of the possible explanations. While this is strictly speaking true of Jesus – there could be another explanation we haven’t thought up yet – it is also true of every claim of science. In fact, it is the core weakness of inductive logic, as opposed to deductive logic. But as Rene Descartes found, you can’t get very far with deduction alone. The only way we know anything about reality is by induction, and every so-called fact we know about reality is also susceptible to this criticism.

[2] Invented, in the sense of complete fiction, or an amalgam of other people, or an amalgam of existing myths, or some combination.

[3] See Tacitus - Wikipedia and Tacitus on Christ - Wikipedia.

[4] Non-Biblical ancient manuscripts indicate that for a myth to develop takes at least several centuries. See How long does it take for a fact to become a legend?

[5] There is a short overview of second century scripture fragments at Bible archaeology report: The earliest New Testament manuscripts.

[6] The Jewish tradition of itinerant rabbis is described in Maggid - Wikipedia.

[7] It is reliably thought that Matthew and Luke based parts of their gospels on the so-called Q Source - Wikipedia, a previous written collection of Jesus’ sayings.

[8] Acts 2:42-47 and Acts 4:32-37

[9] Acts 4:1-22 and Acts 5:17-42

[10] Jesus’ words in Matthew 22:20-22 (“render unto Caesar…”) certainly seem to serve Roman interests, but are not reported at all as being repeated by the apostles in Acts. Quite the opposite, in Act 4:10-12, Peter insists that Jesus is the Messiah, which would serve only to alienate the Jewish leaders!