The Historical Evidence For Jesus Vs. Tiberius Caesar

This is a response to a blog page with the same title that can be found here. The blog, by Sean McDowell, has the byline "Bringing Truth To A New Generation", which is kind of ironic, if this article is anything to go by.

He introduces the topic:

“How does the historical evidence for Jesus compare with other prominent figures of his day?”
This is one of the most common questions I get from believers and skeptics alike. It is a fair question. One of the best responses I have found is to compare the sources for Jesus with the sources for Tiberius Caesar, the Roman emperor from AD 14-37.

The Historical Evidence for Tiberius

To determine what historical evidence we have of Tiberius, he goes to a book by Sherwin White published about sixty years ago, and selects this quote:

The story of [his] reign is known from four sources, the Annals of Tacitus and the biography of Suetonius, written some eighty or ninety years later, the brief contemporary record of Velleius Paterculus, and the third-century of Cassius Dio. These disagree amongst themselves in the wildest possible fashion, both in major matters of political action or motive and in specific details of minor events…But this does not prevent the belief that the material of Tacitus can be used to write a history of Tiberius.

Here it is in a bit more context, and the first point to note is that White admits he is an amateur here!

So, it is astonishing that while Graeco-Roman historians have been growing in confidence, the twentieth century study of the Gospel narratives, starting from no less promising material, has taken so gloomy a turn in the development of form-criticism that the more advanced exponents of it apparently maintain – so far as an amateur can understand the matter – that the historical Christ is unknowable and the history of his mission cannot be written. This very curious when one compares the case for the best known contemporary of Christ who like Christ is a well documented figure – Tiberius Caesar.

The story of his reign is known from four sources, the Annals of Tacitus and the biography of Suetonius, written some eighty or ninety years later, the brief contemporary record of Velleius Paterculus, and the third-century of Cassius Dio. These disagree amongst themselves in the wildest possible fashion, both in major matters of political action or motive and in specific details of minor events. One would admit that Tacitus is the best of all the sources, and yet no serious modern historian would accept at face value the majority of the statements of Tacitus about the motives of Tiberius. But this does not prevent the belief that the material of Tacitus can be used to write a history of Tiberius. The divergences between the synoptic gospels or between them and the Fourth Gospel, are no worse than the contradictions in Tiberius material.

It also becomes clear that White's purpose is rather different. He is looking at sources historians use to understand Tiberius' life, not whether he existed at all. This is very important because there is a huge amount of evidence that Tiberius existed, but that give little clue about what he actually did.

The fact is we have numerous statues of Tiberius, numerous coins with his image on them, numerous inscriptions with his name in them.  These can all be found with a quick Google Images search. This is a man from thousand years ago whose existence is so certain we know exactly what he looked like!

There is even a city named after him (founded in 20 AD, when he was emperor)!

Unlevelling the Playing Field

McDowell says:

Yet how does this compare to the sources for Jesus?
Remember, unlike Tiberius, Jesus had no political position, military power, or governmental authority. He was an itinerant preacher who was largely rejected by his own people. His public ministry was 2-3 years long and he only traveled within Judea. Any historical comparison of Tiberius and Jesus must take into account the length and nature of their ministries.

While I agree that we may well expect there to be less for Jesus, this has absolutely no bearing on which actually has the more evidence. This is rationalising why there is less for Jesus, quite different to showing that there is in fact more for Jesus.

The Historical Evidence for Jesus

McDowell says:

In comparison with Tiberius, what historical evidence do we have for Jesus?
Simply put, we have four historical biographies (Gospels) written in the first century when there would still would have been eyewitnesses around to confirm or reject the claims. We also have the letters of Paul, seven that are accepted by critical scholars, which date from 20-30 years after Jesus’ death. There are also short creeds embedded within Paul’s letters, such as 1 Corinthians 15:3-5, which likely dates within 5 years of Jesus’ death. And we also have the other NT books, early church fathers, and secular sources such as Mara Bar-Serapion, Josephus, Tacitus, Suetonius, and so on.

Two of those historical biographies are clearly based on one of the others (and the third may be too). The earliest of them was written forty years after Jesus died and over a thousand miles from Jerusalem, while the last was some sixty years later; to claim "there would still would have been eyewitnesses around to confirm or reject the claims" is quite a stretch.

Yes, we have letters from Paul, but they say very little about Jesus. Neither Joseph or Mary are mentioned in any of them, for example, nor Galilee or Nazareth or Bethlehem. No miracles, no parables, nothing about his teachings at all.

Other NT books and the works of the early church fathers are likely derived from these earlier works, so offer no additional support.

As for the secular sources: Mara Bar-Serapion may not have been even talking about Jesus; Josephus has clearly been redacted by later authors, and it is not clear what is authentic; Tacitus and Suetonius were both more concerned with what the Christians were doing than Jesus himself, and really only tell us what the Christians believed.

Where are the statues? Where are the paintings? Where are the inscriptions? There are none.

Conclusion

To be clear, I think the evidence is sufficient to say Jesus probably did exist. But to say there is more evidence for Jesus than Tiberius only really shows how religion blinds it followers to evidence they do not want to see.