Some people who deny Jesus even existed claim nearly 40 ancient authors who should have mentioned Jesus failed to do so, but Trent shows why this argument from silence fails.
Welcome to the Counsel of Trent podcast, a production of Catholic Answers.
Hey everyone, welcome to the Counsel of Trent podcast, I’m your host Catholic Answers apologist and speaker Trent Horn. I remember when I was in high school, this was shortly after my conversion. I was hanging out with a friend at his house, we were watching videos on the internet, and he told me, “Hey, you got to see this one video called Zeitgeist, because there’s a part of it that shows Jesus never existed.” Those videos have been out there for a while and obviously because I saw it in high school. There’s a lot of different rebuttals to it though I might do a full length rebuttal to Zeitgeist because I haven’t found any rebuttals that I’ve been super happy with, that they’re really comprehensive, go through the whole thing. But I wanted today to address one of the arguments that are made by people who claim Jesus never existed. These people are called mythicists. They believe that Jesus was just a story or an allegory, and Christians came to believe he was a historical individual later. This is a radical fringe view in scholarship.
There’s only a handful of people with PhDs in the relevant fields who believe this. You read Bart Ehrman who was an agnostic scholar, a big critic of Christianity. He wrote a book called Did Jesus Exist back in 2012. In that book he said that it’s the opinion of virtually every expert on the planet that Jesus existed. But if you go on the internet, you go on YouTube, atheist YouTube channels, there is a very high percentage of people who believe Jesus did not exist, and coincidentally it’s among people who are very active in the atheist community. Well that’s not a coincidence, they already have a bias against Christianity, so they’re more likely to want to accept this thesis than someone else.
Because if there were no Jesus there could have been no resurrection, no miracles or anything like that. I want to address one of the arguments that’s used to try to claim that Jesus never existed, and it’s the argument from ancient silence. This argument says that if Jesus really did exist and He performed miracles, rose from the dead things like that, more ancient historians and writers would have written about Jesus. They would have said hey, there was this guy who rose from the dead in Judea, in Jerusalem. Yet they don’t. This is the argument from ancient silence. Here is how Zeitgeist briefly mentions the argument. Here’s what they say.
You would think that a guy who rose from the dead and ascended into heaven for all eyes to see and performed the wealth of miracles acclaimed to him would have made it into the historical record. It didn’t because once the evidence is weighed, there are very high odds that the figure known as Jesus did not even exist.
Before I talk about what’s wrong with the argument the Zeitgeist and other mythicists make, I want to talk about arguments from silence in general. They’re not always fallacies or errors in reasoning. The argument from silence says look, if historical event X happened, we would expect evidence Y. Evidence Y does not exist or we have not found evidence Y, therefore historical event X did not happen. You can reach incorrect conclusions with an argument from silence. But you can also reach helpful conclusions. I think for example that the Acts of the Apostles, because it does not mention the destruction of Jerusalem, the death of Paul or the death of Peter, that to me provides good evidence that Acts of the Apostles was written prior to the year 62, before these events take place because it ends with Paul under house arrest. If Acts was written during this time then Luke would have been written even before Acts. Not every historian buys this particular argument from silence, but I think that it has merit to it, and you can construct other arguments from silence that are even more potent. But the argument from silence for Jesus does not work. It does not work for several reasons.
In order to show you why it doesn’t work, this idea oh, Jesus didn’t exist because all these ancient historians didn’t mention Him, let’s do a summary of the argument then I’ll point out what’s wrong with it. So when you ask mythicists I would ask them okay, what ancient historians are you talking about? That’s what you should always do. When someone says why didn’t more ancient writers talk about Jesus? You can ask who? Who would you have expected to write about Jesus? Nine times out of 10 they can’t give you a list because they’ve just heard the argument summarized by other people. Freke and Gandy are their last names they wrote a book called The Jesus Mysteries. They make this argument they cite 24 people. I think I have a list here, I think there’s 40 people on this list I have here I’ll put it up on the screen. It’s Remsberg’s list, Remsberg was a mythicist an atheistic writer. He wrote a book in 1909 called The Christ, and that was a big heyday for mythicism. A lot of people were promoting mythicism and then it died out in that period when it was debunked.
He had a list I think almost near 40 authors, saying that these people did not mention Jesus so Jesus probably did not exist. Let me see, I don’t know if I could read through them all. Philo, Seneca, Pliny the Elder, Suetonius, Juvenal, Martial, Persius, Plutarch, Justus, Apollonius, Quintillian, Lucanus, Epictetus, Silius Italicus, Statius, Plotemy, Hermogones, Valerius Maximus, Arrian, Petronius, Dion Prusaeus, Paterculus. Take a break there, that’s halfway through the list, let’s see if I can do the rest in one breath. Appian, Theon of Smyrna, Phlegon, Pompon Mela, Quintius Curtus, Lucian, Pausanias, Valerius Flaccus, Florius Lucius, Favorinus, Phaedrus, Damis, Aulus Gellius, Columella, Dio Chrysostom, Lysias, Appion of Alexandria. Here’s the thing, when someone throws a big list at you like this, like why didn’t these people mention Jesus? It could be overwhelming. Like wow, look at all these authors and why didn’t they? But remember this old saying, how do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.
But the problem is a lot of people don’t have the free time to debunk this stuff, but I do and that’s why I want to serve other people. I went through and looked up all of these authors, and I specifically wanted to look at when were they born? When did they die? Where did they live? And what did they write? Because then I can see if they actually wrote it. Now here’s the problem to the argument. Number one, there are ancient authors who do mention Jesus. Josephus, Tacitus is another one. They’re not on this list because Remsberg says oh, those are forgeries. Well, they’re not, I’ll cover that in a future video. But Suetonius for example on here, he does talk about how there was an instigation, a fight amongst the Jews over someone named Chrestus. That the Jews were fighting, Claudius expelled them from Rome and the Jews were fighting over someone called Chrestus. Now that could be a reference to Christus or Christ that Jews and Christians were fighting about. It’s not a slam dunk, but I think it points in that direction. Some of the people are on this list.
There’s another one I think it’s Lucian of Samosata Remsberg is talking about here. But that one provides a very helpful insight, I’ll get into here shortly. The second point I would raise is this, there were a lot of ancient writers who did mention Jesus, but they’re not on this list. Think about Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, Paul, Peter, James, Jude, the author of the letter to the Hebrews, Ignatius of Antioch, Papias, Polycarp of Smyrna, Irenaeus, Quadratus, Tatian the Syrian. Now what the mythicist will say is, oh, those are Christian writers they don’t count. Well they’re ancient writers why don’t they count? What this person is saying is I want these ancient non-Christian sources to talk about how there was a guy named Jesus who rose from the dead and did miracles. Because here’s the thing, if these ancient non-Christian sources if they thought that Jesus was just a rabbi, they would have no reason to write about Him. If they thought He really did rise from the dead, well then they would be Christian sources they wouldn’t be non-Christian.
The mythicist wants me to show me all these ancient non-Christian writers writing about a guy rising from the dead doing miracles, but they don’t believe the guy actually did any miracles. Well, if they thought He was a huckster or a charlatan, they probably wouldn’t write about Him at all. That’s another problem right there. But here’s the biggest problem with this list. There are only two ways any authors on this list would end up writing about Jesus. Either they witnessed Jesus’s miracles firsthand, or they heard Christians tell them about these miracles. Let’s say that they just heard Christians talking about these miracles, and they wrote it down. Suppose some of these authors did do that. Would that show the mythicist that they’re wrong? Not in the slightest. Because what the Mythicist they say is, well, Pliny the Younger, he wrote about how he persecuted Christians. Well he arrested them and he would persecute them if they refused to worship the pagan gods.
He arrested them because they seemed suspicious. They would get together at dawn and pray, and he’s thinking what are you guys rebels? What’s going on here? Look, just pray to Jupiter, pray to the Roman gods and you be on your way. The Christians wouldn’t do that and then they would be sent off to the lions for doing that. So Pliny he says, “These Christians worship Christ as to a God.” Pliny writes about that, but what the mythicist will say is, okay, Pliny is just an example that Christians believed in Jesus, later Christians believed in a Jesus. Not that Jesus actually existed. The same as there’s a list name on here between Curtus and Pausanias, Lucian. I don’t know who Remsberg is referring to here. If it is Lucian of Samosata then we have a problem. Because Lucian of Samosata he talks about, he says in the Passing of Peregrinus he talks about Christians, he makes fun of them. This is about the middle of the second century. He says, “Christians still worship the man who was crucified in Palestine because he introduced this new cult into the world.”
Lucian’s on the list but he does mention Jesus. The mythicist will say so what he’s just telling us what Christians already told him. There’s only two ways either they saw the miracles firsthand or Christians told them about it. If Christians told them about it, the mythicist isn’t going to care because they’re just repeating what you can get from Matthew, Mark, Luke and John and the Gospels. They want an ancient non-Christian writer who witnessed firsthand what Jesus did and still didn’t become Christian, and then tells us about it. You’re creating a criteria that nobody can meet. The fact of the matter is the majority of the names on this list they could have only known about Jesus from Christians telling them about it. Most of these people, I would say nearly all of them don’t even talk about Christians. But we know Christians existed in the first century. We know that that’s a fact, even a mythicist can’t deny there were Christians. He might say they didn’t believe in a historical Jesus, but he’ll say there were Christians.
So if these historians don’t mention Christians even, why would they mention Jesus because they’re not even familiar with the only source that they have for who Jesus is. Either they never met Christians, so they couldn’t write about Jesus, or they might’ve met a Christian and just dismissed it or not written about it because they didn’t care about that because that’s not what they wrote about. Only a small minority of these names are even historians. Let me go through some of these names. Well, let me go through the ones, I’ll talk about the ones that could have only heard from Christians because they lived in the wrong time period. Appion, Aulus Gellius, Favorinus, Lucius, Flaccus, Pausanias, these people all lived later. Except for Flaccus, they operated in the second century and they wrote on different subjects. Flaccus wrote about Jason and the Argonauts, Pausanias was a geographer. We’ve got poets, people only about Roman history and nothing else.
Phlegon wrote about… He lived in Greece. He might’ve mentioned the eclipse in Jerusalem. That’s a bit disputed, when Jesus… He might’ve talked about an eclipse and about the darkness when Jesus died, but we’re not entirely sure. Theon only wrote about mathematics. There’s other people on this list by the way they could not have been there not only because they live in the wrong place to hear about it, most of these people lived in either, well let me bring up a map here of ancient Roman empire. This would be the ancient Roman empire from 117 AD around the time of Emperor Trajan, when most of these historical figures on Remsberg’s list when they lived. This was the Roman empire at its greatest extent. Goes up halfway through the British Isles, out to Spain, goes very far East into the Middle East and to Iraq, Egypt, Northern Africa, Greece, Italy, Baltic states here, very large extent of the empire. Most of these ancient writers lived in Spain, Southern France, Italy or Greece.
Some of them lived in Alexandria which is closer to Egypt, so either they were geographically removed, they were removed too far in time they didn’t write about the subject. I’ll give you a few other examples. Columella wrote about trees, that’s the only thing Columella wrote about trees. Dio Chrysostom lived in Turkey, so not that far away, which was Asia Minor back then, wrote on other random stuff. One of his works is called On Praise of Hair. Even people back in that early time liked hair. When you go through these individuals, they lived too far away and they were born after the time of Jesus’s ministry, so they could not have been firsthand witnesses to it. Or they were born too early. You have someone like Paterculus. Paterculus wrote on Roman history, but his histories go only up to the year 30, and of course that’s when Jesus’s ministry began. We wouldn’t expect him to write on Jesus since he was done writing about history. I’ve narrowed it down, so the people who could have possibly been first century witnesses of Jesus and what happened, even though they never converted based on seeing this.
Like I said Columella wrote on trees, he lived from four to 70. Didn’t write on history, and he lived in Spain. Curtus wrote on Alexander the Great he lived in Rome. Phaedrus wrote fables, that rhymes kind of. You go to all these other individuals, Pliny the Elder, Seneca, Valerius Maximus. Maximus’s works were published till 30, 31 he’s out. You can start crossing off a lot of these names because they might’ve heard from Christians that wouldn’t have mattered or they didn’t care or they wrote on a different subject, and so they didn’t care. They just dismissed this as just pious legends or they didn’t know about it, or once again they didn’t care about it. Or they did write on histories and they didn’t write in this time period, they didn’t have access to this particular area. There are only four names on the list that I think have any possibility of bolstering the case here for the mythicist. The first would be let’s bring it up here, Apollonius and Damis. Apollonius and Damis were believed to have lived in Asia Minor so nearby in the first century, they would have been teenagers or adults during the time of Jesus’s ministry.
But here’s the problem, our only source for Apollonius and Damis comes from a guy named Philostratus. He was writing a biography of Apollonius of Tyana because he was a miracle worker allegedly and wanted to make a temple to compete with Christians. Apollonius was the competition for Christians, he was the competition. The first biography of him comes from the third century, centuries later it’s just not reliable. Apollonius didn’t even write anything, that’d be from Damis one of his disciples who we can’t reconstruct what he wrote because it’s too far removed anyways. The other one would be Philo. Philo was a Jewish philosopher living in Alexandria so right nearby Israel. But Christianity probably just barely got to Alexandria by the time he was finished with his own writings. This is a conclusion Bart Ehrman reaches, I think Richard Carrier another prominent mythicist even reaches that conclusion.
We shouldn’t be surprised Philo didn’t write about this. He died in the year 50, so Christianity by the time it would have reached Alexandria for him to write about it or hear about it he probably was done with his writings by that time. Finally, we have Justus of Tiberias. He was born in the late first century. He was probably a contemporary of the Jewish historian Josephus who does mention Jesus. We’ll talk about that in a future episode. He was born in Tiberias so he was from the area where Jesus performed His miracles, but he does not mention Jesus. Well, we don’t have Justus’s works, they haven’t survived to the present day, which is another argument some of these people could have written about Jesus, and their works haven’t survived to the present day. Oh, by the way, some of the names in this list like [inaudible 00:17:16], Apollonius they didn’t even write anything. It’s like why didn’t they write anything? Well, they didn’t write anything.
Other people on this list they wrote stuff, but their works haven’t survived to the present day. Papias wrote a five volume series on the church in the early second century it’s lost, we only have fragments of it preserved in Eusebius. There’s a lot of writings, 99% of ancient writings have not survived to the present day. What we do have on Jesus is remarkable. Compare him to Pontius Pilate, the only thing we have on Pilate is some writings in Philo and Josephus, just a few things, nothing Pilate wrote himself, for Roman historians only one line in Tacitus connecting them to Jesus, some coins and the Pilate headstone with his name on it discovered in Caesarea Maritima in 1962. But that’s for the procurator of an entire region. Jesus was an itinerary preacher. You either believe He was God, and so you would talk about Him a bunch, or you believed He was a fake and a charlatan and you wouldn’t give Him the time of day.
Back to Justus, so Justus of Tiberias wrote a history of the Jewish kings hasn’t survived to the present day. Photius though talks about him, another medieval writer I believe, saying that Justus did not mention Jesus in his history of Jewish kings. Well, that makes sense because Justus never became Christian. I have a book on my shelf, the Oxford history of the papacy by J.N.D. Kelly. Guess what, It doesn’t include pope Michael, the guy who lives in Kansas, who thinks he’s the pope who isn’t. If you wrote a history of Jewish kings, you’re not going to include a crucified rabbi that people later came to worship, because that’s the exact opposite of what a Jewish king should be. Great well I hope that was helpful for you all. There’s a lot of great resources out there to combat mythicism. I cover some of it in my book Counterfeit Christs I would recommend. Bart Ehrman’s book actually is a decent treatment of mythicism. I don’t agree with everything he says about Jesus because he’s an agnostic of course, but it’s still a worthwhile resource. But hey thank you guys so much and I hope you have a very pleasant day.
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