While we can definitely learn a lot from the Bible and early Christians about what happened in the first century, it's also very important to see what we can learn from non-Christian sources. First of all, we can learn far more than most skeptics realize, and also, it ends up shedding a lot of light on the situation of early Christianity. We even end up learning a lot about the context that isn't found in the Bible. In this episode, we continue to look at the ancient non-Christian sources of Lucian of Samosata, the Babylonian Talmud, and Mara bar Serapion.
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Transcript:
Hello, and welcome once again to the Ultimate Questions podcast.
This podcast is brought to you in association with “Culture at a Crossroads”, which is back after a brief hiatus. It’s a podcast hosted by David Mann from Life 100.3. His goal is to help navigate different cultural challenges, and how we can engage with those around us on these pertinent issues. So far he has had people on like Humboldt Broncos head coach Scott Barney, Ontario leader of the Green Party Mike Schreiner, LIFE founder Scott Jackson and his new episode with Bruxy Cavey. You can check out his podcast on all platforms or by going to davidmannmedia.com.
Last time we began looking at early non-Christians sources that confirm different biblical concepts. The reason we do this is that many people criticize Christianity, as if we don’t actually know what happened in the life of Jesus and the Early Church, because all we have is the Bible. They discount the historical accuracy of the knowledge of Christianity in the first century, because they dismiss all of our biblical data, and all the data by Early Church writers, seeing them all as “biased”, simply because they’re Christian. While this is quite literally fallacious, committing the fallacies of confirmation bias and the genetic fallacy, it is still worth considering, because it does prevent some people from contemplating Christianity. Last episode, we spent most of our time looking at the first century Jewish historian, Josephus, and seeing that he gives us quite a bit of information about the historical events surrounding Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection. For this week, we’ll study a few other early non-Christian accounts that can give us some further confirmation of the biblical data. We’ll be looking at the Babylonian Talmud, Lucian of Samosata, and Mara bar Serapion.
Now first, before diving into these historians, I’ll give you just a quick piece of evidence. As many of us have seen, skeptics will do their best to throw doubt on anything and everything they can in the Bible, often arguing from silence, which again is a fallacy that means they argue based on the lack of evidence. One of these arguments was that, decades ago, skeptics claimed Pontius Pilate might not have even existed. However, in 1961 excavations found a stone slab in Caesarea that gives Pontius Pilate’s name in Latin, and says he was the prefect of Judea from 26 to 36 ad, meaning, right during the time of the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. So this is a small piece of archeological data that confirms a bit of information about the death of Jesus.
Our first example of a non-Christian writer is Lucian of Samosata, who wrote his work “The Passing of Peregrinus”, which we’ll be looking at, between about 170 to 180ad. Lucian wrote satire, in other words, he was a sort of ancient comedian, who took a very mocking attitude towards things he disagreed with. He also seems to have been quite skeptical of anything supernatural, and speaks about miraculous things in a very derogatory fashion, referring to them as superstitions, or that the people who believe in miracles are gullible and easily deceived. Now, while Lucian was not necessarily trying to convey perfect historical truth, we are still able to glean historical information from it. After all, the joke is only funny if it’s actually referring to something real, that people could relate to, and understand. So what we do, is we try to understand what he’s talking about, from his own perspective, as an anti-supernaturalist comedian, trying to poke fun at Christians, who, to him, were a group of gullible fools. In Lucians’ “The Passing of Peregrinus”, he writes about Jesus as being someone Christians “still worship, the man who was crucified in Palestine because he introduced this new cult into the world.” He then continues to write the following:
The Christians, you know, worship a man to this day—the distinguished personage who introduced their novel rites, and was crucified on that account. … You see, these misguided creatures start with the general conviction that they are immortal for all time, which explains their contempt of death and voluntary self-devotion which are so common among them; and then it was impressed on them by their original lawgiver that they are all brothers, from the moment that they are converted, and deny the gods of Greece, and worship the crucified sage, and live after his laws. All this they take quite on faith, with the result that they despise all worldly goods alike, regarding them merely as common property.
So what do we learn from Lucian? It was understood that Christians worshipped Jesus, that Jesus was crucified in Palestine because of His new teachings, that these new teachings were essentially starting a new cult of Judaism. Also, that Christians believed themselves to be immortal, which is why they didn’t fear death, and were so devoted to Christ that they gladly gave their lives. Christians also denied the worship of other gods, which is a major quality of monotheism, and then lastly, that they didn’t really care much about worldly wealth, and they shared all their belongings and property communally. All this is information that helps verify different things we learn from the New Testament about the life of Jesus, and the beliefs and practices of the Early Church.
Our next source is the Babylonian Talmud, which are Jewish writings. Now when we read this portion, you’ll notice Jesus is called “Yeshu”. Someone unfamiliar with this might think it’s obviously referring to someone else, but actually, Jesus’ name in Hebrew would be pronounced, Yeshua, or Yeshu. Really, a closer English version is actually Joshua, which is actually one of the reasons I named my son Joshua. So let’s read this passage in the Talmud:
On the eve of the Passover Yeshu was hanged. For forty days before the execution took place, a herald ... cried, "He is going forth to be stoned because he has practiced sorcery and enticed Israel to apostasy."
Now there’s a few complaints some might make at this. First of all, why does it say Jesus was hanged? Doesn’t this contradict the crucifixion? Actually, the concept of being hanged can work as a synonym for crucifixion. If you don’t believe me, there’s even two cases within the New Testament where crucifixion is referred to this way. In Galatians 3:13 it says, “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us—for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree””. So yes, it’s referring to crucifixion, but describing it as hanging. Another case is Luke 23:39, where it’s referring to the crucifixion of Jesus, and it says, “One of the criminals who were hanged railed at him, saying, “Are you not the Christ? Save yourself and us!”“ Elsewhere, we know that these criminals it mentions were actually crucified with Jesus, and yet, this passage says he was hanged.
A second complaint is that this passage says people were calling for Jesus to be stoned. Again, wasn’t He crucified? Now notice, even within the passage in the Talmud, it says Jesus was crucified, or hanged, so it’s not saying Jesus “was in fact” stoned, only that people were calling for it. This makes sense, if they were accusing Him of blaspheming, by claiming to be God, which we see elsewhere in Scripture, like John 8, where Jesus says, “Before Abraham was born, I AM”. After Jesus said this statement, everyone understood He was claiming to be God, and so they picked up stones to stone Him. From this passage in the Talmud, it looks like the original intent was to stone Jesus, but Roman involvement caused the execution to turn into a crucifixion.
So what do we learn from this passage in the Talmud? Firstly, it confirms the execution of Jesus, and quite likely confirms it was done by crucifixion. It also confirms that people were calling for Jesus’ death, by stoning, over a month before He was actually killed. It also gives us the reason for this call to execute Jesus, with the claim being that Jesus had been practicing sorcery, and calling the Jews to apostasy. All these things line up perfectly with what we read in the New Testament, which again says in John 8 that Jesus made a very clear claim to divinity, and the people pick up stones to stone Him, which would have happened over a month before the cross. We also see a very interesting case in Matthew 12 and Mark 3, where the religious leaders accused Jesus of being possessed by a demon, in order to try and explain why Jesus was able to perform such amazing miracles. Here in the Talmud it says Jesus was doing sorcery, which is quite similar to the claim made by these religious rulers. I should also mention here that Celsus, who wrote around 175ad, also refers to Jesus doing miracles, and says He did these supernatural things by sorcery and the work of Satan. This also matches other accounts of Jesus that refer to Him doing “marvelous deeds”, or miracles, which includes Josephus, who we talked about last episode. This fits our previous historical approach of enemy attestation, if you can remember back to that episode of the podcast. In other words, here we have quite a few different sources, from varying backgrounds, all telling us that even the enemies of Christianity admitted that Jesus quite clearly did amazing and supernatural deeds, like miracles. The other part in the Talmud that refers to Jesus leading the Jews into apostasy lines up perfectly with the New Testament, because the religious leaders accused Him of blasphemy, and leading the Jews away into false religious beliefs. Really, what we find in this passage of the Talmud, is exactly how a Jewish audience would understand the miracles, teachings, and death of Jesus, and it confirms the actual historical details quite nicely.
One of the earliest examples we have of a non-Christian writing about Jesus is found in the writing of Mara bar Serapion, who was a Stoic philosopher, who lived in the province of Syria, just north of Israel. He wrote a letter to his son, with the letter being dated by most to about 73ad. He wrote about the unjust execution of three different wise teachers, which includes the “wise king” of the Jews. Here’s what he wrote:
What else can we say, when the wise are forcibly dragged off by tyrants, their wisdom is captured by insults, and their minds are oppressed and without defense? What advantage did the Athenians gain from murdering Socrates? Famine and plague came upon them as a punishment for their crime. What advantage did the men of Samos gain from burning Pythagoras? In a moment their land was covered with sand. What advantage did the Jews gain from executing their wise king? It was just after that their kingdom was abolished. God justly avenged these three wise men: the Athenians died of hunger; the Samians were overwhelmed by the sea and the Jews, desolate and driven from their own kingdom, live in complete dispersion. But Socrates is not dead, because of Plato; neither is Pythagoras, because of the statue of Juno; nor is the wise king, because of the "new law" he laid down.
Mara bar Serapion was not a Christian, and most scholars consider him to have been a pagan. You can see through his writing here that he seems to have considered Jesus nothing but a good teacher, similar to Socrates and Pythagoras. He writes that, in a sense, these wise teachers all live on in some way, because they have been immortalized by writings, a statue, and a new law. There is also a sense that these unjust deaths resulted in divine judgment upon the people that committed these evil acts. This letter was written not long after the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem, which happened in 70ad, which is interesting because this destruction would have been fresh in the minds of everyone around, and it would have only been natural for people during that time to see something major like that happening because they were being punished by a divine source. If you look at the Jews’ temple being destroyed as a punishment, and then you think about the recent events, they had just finished unjustly having someone executed who claimed to be their king and messiah. It would have been quite easy, as a pagan, to think of this as the just deserts that the Jews brought upon themselves, which is exactly what we find in the writings of Mara bar Serapion. We also find reference to this king of the Jews as laying down a “new law”. In Christian theology, this is known as the “new covenant”, which is the fulfilment of the “old covenant” that God made with the Jews in the Old Testament, and it’s incredibly interesting to see someone who isn’t a Christian referencing this concept so early.
While there is debate regarding this passage, because it doesn’t explicitly name Jesus, but it’s hard to make sense of who this is referring to, if not Jesus. Who else was called the king of the Jews, and was then unjustly killed by the Jews, not long before the destruction of the temple? The link to Jesus’ death and the destruction of the temple is also a common concept, even having Jesus giving a prophecy about the temple’s destruction in the Gospels.
So just from these ancient sources, which are not Christian, we can see that there is archeological data confirming the existence of Pontius Pilate, that Christians also wouldn’t worship any other gods, that they didn’t care about worldly wealth, and that the Early Church shared all their belongings collectively as a community. We know that at least some people considered Jesus the “king of the Jews”, and that, because of Jesus’ teachings, people were calling for His death by stoning, which is a sign that they thought Jesus was a blasphemer, that he was later crucified for these teachings, and also because He performed supernatural deeds that some considered sorcery. We also learn that by the Jews killing Jesus, some thought they brought divine wrath upon themselves, which resulted in the destruction of their temple in 70ad. Also, that Jesus was then worshipped by His followers, that Christians believed themselves to be immortal, that this is why they didn’t fear death, and that this is why they weren’t afraid to die for their devotion to Jesus Christ. Again, we get all this, from non-Christian sources. If you’ve read the Gospels and Acts, you’ll see a lot of similarities between what I just read, and what the New Testament tells us. And as we go into more sources next episode, you’ll see that we get even further clarification of the historical events. Next time, we’ll be looking at Suetonius, Pliny the Younger, and Tacitus, and we’ll see how the supernatural elements of Christianity, even including the concept of the resurrection, were at least partly understood, even by the Roman government officials. So I hope you’ll join me next time as we finish our look at non-Christian sources, on the Ultimate Questions Podcast.
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