Not many Christians are familiar with first century Jewish historian Josephus, which is unfortunate. The life, death, and resurrection of Jesus (the latter rejected purely out of anti-supernatural bias) are the most well-attested facts in all of ancient history. But skeptics insist that because the writers of the Bible, and specifically the gospels, had a religious ax to grind, it cannot be trusted as objectively historical. I’m not sure there is such a thing, but if it can be established that the basic outline of Jesus’ life and death, and the Jewish, Greco-Roman world he inhabited, all existed, then the biblical record becomes incredibly compelling.
Most Christians don’t know that there are a number of extra-biblical sources that confirm this history, including Roman historian Cornelius Tacitus (56-120 AD), and Pliny the Younger (61-113), but the most important by far is Flavius Josephus (37-100). Previous generations of Christians were very familiar with Josephus because of his importance to the credibility of the Bible’s historical record, but he’s unknown to most Christians today.
I recently read Josephus: The Essential Works complied by Paul L. Maier, and realized first hand why Josephus was held in such high esteem by the Church throughout its history. Briefly, Josephus was a Jewish priest who fought in the Jewish war that ended up in the destruction of the temple is 70 AD. He was captured and ended up becoming a Roman citizen, and served at the favor of the emperor Vespasian. He wrote several historical works, including a history of the Jews which gives us a lot of background on what happened from the closing of the Old Testament with Malachi and the coming of Jesus, what’s known as the “intertestemental period.”
The reason reading Josephus via Maier is so thrilling is that you realize how rooted in real, historical events, people, and places is the founding of our faith. And because I define faith as trust based on adequate evidence, Josephus helps me realize how much I can trust the biblical record. Scholars and skeptics of all sorts insist that the Bible is made up fairy tales and myths, but when you read the Bible, and Josephus, you see that it reads like anything by fairy tales and myths. It reads like history! Almost like the writers lived during the times they wrote about, witnessed the events, and were concerned about accurately conveying what actually happened. Go figure.
If this is not true, and the skeptics are right, then we have to believe that the writers of the Bible made it all up. You can think they were deluded or liars, but you have to believe it’s all fiction, which can be defined as, “the type of book or story that is written about imaginary characters and events and does not describe real people or deal with facts, or a false report or statement that you pretend is true.” As I’m reading the Bible I’m always asking myself the question, could this be made up? The deeper you get into the history of the Jews, and the psychology of the people we read about, the harder it is to believe that it is in fact all made up. It’s important to understand that it’s either one or the other. I find it far more difficult to believe that 40 different authors of 66 different books over 1500 years could have made up the basic outline and details of the biblical story. As you invest time in the text yourself, I think you’ll agree. So start investing the time!
In addition to investing time reading and studying the Bible itself, a good short starter book to help you grasp the historical reliability of the biblical text is a book by Peter J. Williams called, Can We Trust the Gospels? The simple answer is, YES!
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