Jesus and the Gospels

The historical case for Jesus and the tests that can be applied to the Gospel traditions. This page is the front door to the section and links to all of it; the summary and verdict are still to be written.

Summary

To be written.  The historical case for Jesus and the tests that can be applied to the Gospel traditions.  11 articles in this section are written;  the rest are planned.  This page will eventually state where they came out, which arguments survived, and which were retired.

The articles

Linked titles are written.  Bold titles are planned.

  • Who Wrote the Gospels? — All four Gospels are formally anonymous, and even conservative specialists grant that the titles are second-century. The attributions still hold up unevenly: Luke and John have real support, Mark rests on one early witness, and the apostle Matthew almost certainly did not write Matthew.
  • When Were the Gospels Written? — External evidence sets hard ceilings — Luke by 144, Matthew and John by 155, Mark by 170 — but no floors. The standard dates of 70 to 95 are a chain hanging off one assumption about Mark, and the ending of Acts, usually called decisive, has been retired by its own best defender.
  • The Synoptic Problem — Matthew, Mark and Luke share long runs of identical Greek — measured here at up to 33 words — so at least two of them copied a text. Mark was almost certainly first, which is the strongest evidence against the apostle Matthew writing Matthew. John shows no copying at all.
  • Ancient Historiography and Compositional Convention — Most Gospel differences are what honest independent testimony looks like: courts and memory studies agree the core holds while details drift. Literary dependence explains a documented handful more. 'Compositional device' explains few, and Plutarch never called his own variations devices. Six hard cases remain unresolved.
  • Is New Testament Scholarship Unusually Skeptical? — Classicists accept Xenophon's authorship of the Anabasis on one witness writing 470 years later and reject the Historia Augusta despite six named authors, so the age of an attribution decides almost nothing. By that standard New Testament scholarship is not unusually skeptical — with one real exception, and four documented cases of conclusions outliving the arguments that produced them.
  • Did Jesus Exist? Jesus Mythicism Audited — Paul's letters, an early creed, Josephus, Tacitus, and hostile sources make a historical Jesus who died under Pilate far more likely than a celestial one. Mythicism survives only by dismissing each source separately; the Resurrection is a separate question.
  • Gospel Name Frequencies — The 79 Gospel men match Palestinian names at 10^36 to 1 against ignorance and reject the diaspora at p = 4.29 × 10^-13. This supports Palestinian tradition, not eyewitness authorship: apocryphal texts fit similarly, and names cannot prove each person historical.
  • Undesigned Coincidences — Biblical accounts contain details that fit without noting the connection. The strongest support shared memory; copying and design explain weaker cases.
  • The Nativity Accounts — Quirinius, the two genealogies, the Star of Bethlehem, and whether Matthew and Luke can be reconciled.
  • Jesus in Archaeology and Outside Sources — Pilate, Caiaphas, crucifixion, burial, Josephus, Tacitus, and the evidence independent of Christian scripture.
  • Chronology of Christ — Jesus likely began his ministry in the second half of AD 29, continued for a little over three years, and was crucified on Friday, April 3, AD 33. The date combines Tiberius's fifteenth year, John's Passovers, the weekday, and lunar evidence.
  • The Resurrection — The burial, empty tomb, appearances, earliest creed, conversion claims, and competing explanations.
    • The Historical Case for the Resurrection — The empty tomb, burial, appearances, early creed, women witnesses, Paul, James, and the minimal-facts method.
    • Natural Explanations of the Resurrection Claims — Hallucination, legend, theft, wrong tomb, swoon, and cognitive dissonance compared against the surviving evidence.
    • The Shroud of Turin — The Shroud bears anatomically detailed crucifixion bloodstains and a superficial, three-dimensional body image without detectable paint. The article argues that its cloth, dust, chemistry, image formation, and disputed dating identify it as Jesus's burial cloth and that no known natural or artistic process explains the image.
    • Shroud of Turin: 1988 Carbon Dating — The 1988 laboratories dated one corner of the Shroud to AD 1260–1390. The article argues that historical warnings, dyes, cotton, gum, vanillin, and chemical differences show that the sampled corner contained a medieval repair, so its date cannot establish the cloth's age.
  • Hard Sayings and Gospel Differences — The return within a generation, divergent resurrection accounts, criteria of authenticity, and when harmonization becomes strained.
  • Early Christology and Paul — How early Christians came to call Jesus divine and whether Paul changed the message Jesus taught.

Verdict

To be written.