几乎所有当代研究古代史的学者都同意《圣经》里描述的耶稣是史实人物,耶稣基督是西元三十年左右生活于今日巴勒斯坦地区一带的历史人物、接受施洗者约翰受洗并且被钉死在十字架上,及耶稣基督是《圣经》里提及的那个人物且对人类文明造成深远影响等这几点,迨无争议,这些内容已经成为学界共识,研究古代历史的学者,不论是否是基督徒,都同意这些内容。在2011年一篇回顾现代学术界状况的文章中,巴特·叶尔曼写道:“耶稣当然是史实人物,几乎所有够格的古代史学者,不论是否是基督徒,都会同意这点的。”[4]Richard A. Burridge(一名英格兰教会的牧师与圣经学者)则说道:“有些人主张耶稣基督是教会虚构的人物、耶稣未曾存在过,对此,我必须说,我没听过有任何值得敬重且持批判观点的学者依旧有这样的主张。”[5]
根据新约学者詹姆斯·邓恩,几乎所有现代学者都认为耶稣受洗和被钉十字架在历史上是确定的。他说“耶稣生平的这两个事实几乎是得到普遍确认的”,并且“几乎是无可置疑的,这两个事件是试图澄清什么是耶稣的使命,为什么这是耶稣的使命等问题的明显出发点”。John P. Meier将耶稣钉十字架视为历史事实,并指出,基于尴尬标准,基督徒不会虚构他们的领袖痛苦地死亡的事件。[61]尴尬标准同样也用来支持施洗约翰施洗耶稣的历史性,因为这个事件是早期基督教会从来不想虚构的故事。[62][63]基于这个标准,同时考虑到约翰是为了罪的减轻而受洗,并且考虑到耶稣被视为没有罪的,因此发明这个故事是毫无目的,而且还可能带来一个尴尬——因为,这个故事把约翰置于耶稣之上。[64][65]
现阶段这个理论在当今学者中几乎没有得到什么支持[100],是基本上已经被淘汰的学说;然而,历史上,这种神话主义观点在学术界[101][102][103][104][105]中有不同程度的影响力,有些甚至成为主流学术研究的一部分,例如大卫·施特劳斯的观点。[106]在一个短暂的时期内,这个理论在苏联很受欢迎,Sergey Kovalev, Alexander Kazhdan, Abram Ranovich, Nikolai Rumyantsev, Robert Wippe和 Yuri Frantsev(英语:Yuri Frantsev)都支持这个观点。[107] 然而,后来,包括Kazhdan在内的几位学者收回了对神话耶稣的看法,到80年代末,在苏联学术界中几乎不存在对这一理论的支持。[108]
最近,Richard Carrier(英语:Richard_Carrier)在他的《耶稣的历史性:为什么我们可能有理由去怀疑》(On the Historicity of Jesus: Why We Might Have Reason for Doubt)一书中指出,没有足够的“贝叶斯概率”,也就是证据,能相信耶稣的存在。此外,他认为,耶稣的形象可能最初只是通过私人的启示和隐藏在圣经中的信息而来的,然后被雕刻成一个历史人物,以寓言的方式传达福音书中的观点。然后,这些寓言在公元一世纪基督教教会的控制权争斗中开始被认为是事实。Philip R. Davies认为,认识到耶稣历史性的不完全确定性将推动耶稣文献得到学术的尊重[109]在Jesus Project中的R. Joseph Hoffmann 指出,耶稣越变得模糊、含混和不确定,就有越多的学者研究他,而不是相反。[110]
Hare Rom and Moghadda Fathali "Historicity, Social Psychology and Change" in Rochmore, Tom and Margolis, Tom (2008) "History, Historicity and Science" (Ashgate)
In a 2011 review of the state of modern scholarship, Bart Ehrman (a secular agnostic) wrote: "He certainly existed, as virtually every competent scholar of antiquity, Christian or non-Christian, agrees" B. Ehrman, 2011 Forged : writing in the name of GodISBN 978-0-06-207863-6. p. 285
Robert M. Price (an atheist) who denies the existence of Jesus agrees that this perspective runs against the views of the majority of scholars: Robert M. Price "Jesus at the Vanishing Point" in The Historical Jesus: Five Views edited by James K. Beilby & Paul Rhodes Eddy, 2009 InterVarsity, ISBN 0830838686 p. 61
Michael Grant (a classicist) states that "In recent years, 'no serious scholar has ventured to postulate the non historicity of Jesus' or at any rate very few, and they have not succeeded in disposing of the much stronger, indeed very abundant, evidence to the contrary." in Jesus by Michael Grant 2004 ISBN 1898799881 p. 200
Jesus Christ. Encyclopædia Britannica. 2010. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. [27 November 2010]. (原始内容存档于2020-05-10). The Synoptic Gospels, then, are the primary sources for knowledge of the historical Jesus
Paul Rhodes Eddy & Gregory A. Boyd, The Jesus Legend:A Case for the Historical Reliability of the Synoptic Jesus Tradition. (2008, Baker Academic).309-262.
Jesus Remembered by James D. G. Dunn 2003 ISBN 0-8028-3931-2 p. 339 states of baptism and crucifixion that these "two facts in the life of Jesus command almost universal assent".
Crossan, John Dominic. Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography. HarperOne. 1995: 145. ISBN 0-06-061662-8. That he was crucified is as sure as anything historical can ever be, since both Josephus and Tacitus ... agree with the Christian accounts on at least that basic fact.
John P. Meier "How do we decide what comes from Jesus" inThe Historical Jesus in Recent Researchby James D. G. Dunn and Scot McKnight 2006 ISBN 1-57506-100-7 pp. 126–128
Jesus Research: An International Perspective (Princeton-Prague Symposia Series on the Historical Jesus) by James H. Charlesworth and Petr Pokorny (Sep 15, 2009) ISBN 0802863531 pp. 1–2
John P. Meier "Criteria: How do we decide what comes from Jesus?" in The Historical Jesus in Recent Research by James D. G. Dunn and Scot McKnight (15 Jul 2006) ISBN 1575061007 p. 124 "Since in the quest for the historical Jesus almost anything is possible, the function of the criteria is to pass from the merely possible to the really probable, to inspect various probabilities, and to decide which candidate is most probable.
The Cradle, the Cross, and the Crown: An Introduction to the New Testament by Andreas J. Köstenberger, L. Scott Kellum 2009 ISBN 978-0-8054-4365-3 pp. 124–125
Amy-Jill Levine in the The Historical Jesus in Context edited by Amy-Jill Levine et al. 2006 Princeton University Press ISBN 978-0-691-00992-6 p. 1: "no single picture of Jesus has convinced all, or even most scholars"
Lataster, Raphael. Afterword by Richard Carrier. Jesus Did Not Exist: A Debate Among Atheists. November 12, 2015: 418. ISBN 1514814420. [T]here is no independent evidence of Jesus’s existence outside the New Testament. All external evidence for his existence, even if it were fully authentic (though much of it isn’t), cannot be shown to be independent of the Gospels, or Christian informants relying on the Gospels. None of it can be shown to independently corroborate the Gospels as to the historicity of Jesus. Not one single item of evidence. Regardless of why no independent evidence survives (it does not matter the reason), no such evidence survives.
Lataster, Raphael. Weighing up the evidence for the ‘Historical Jesus’. The Conversation (website). December 14, 2014 [2017-02-27]. (原始内容存档于2021-02-23). There are no existing eyewitness or contemporary accounts of Jesus. All we have are later descriptions of Jesus’ life events by non-eyewitnesses, most of whom are obviously biased.
Mitchell, Logan. The Christian mythology unveiled, lectures. Cousins. 1842: 151 [2017-02-27]. (原始内容存档于2019-12-17). Jesus Christ in the New Testament, has no reference whatever to any event that ever did in reality take place upon this globe; or to any personages that ever in truth existed: and that the whole is an astronomical allegory, or parable, having invariably a primary and sacred allusion to the sun, and his passage through the signs of the zodiac; or a verbal representation of the phenomena of the solar year and seasons. (Image of Title page & p. 151 at Google Books)
Carrier, Richard. On the Historicity of Jesus: Why We Might Have Reason for Doubt. Sheffield Phoenix Press Limited. 2014: 52 [2017-02-27]. ISBN 978-1-909697-49-2. (原始内容存档于2017-03-13). [T]he basic thesis of every competent mythologist, then and now, has always been that Jesus was originally a god just like any other god (properly speaking, a demigod in pagan terms; an archangel in Jewish terms; in either sense, a deity), who was later historicized.
Schweitzer, Albert. Out of My Life and Thought: An Autobiography. Henry Holt and Company. 7 October 2014: 133. ISBN 978-1-4668-8294-2. In the autumn of 1912, when l was already busy shopping and packing for Lambaréné, I undertook to integrate into The Quest of the Historical Jesus material from the new books that had in the meantime appeared on the subject and to rewrite sections that no longer satisfied me. I especially wanted to explain late Jewish eschatology more thoroughly and to discuss the works of John M. Robertson, William Benjamin Smith, James George Frazer, Arthur Drews, and others, who contested the historical existence of Jesus.
Wood, Herbert George. Christianity and the nature of history. University Press. 1934: 40. [T]he sociological fashion reflected in the rise of Formgeschichte lends colour to Christ-myth theories and indeed to all theories which regard Jesus as an historical but insignificant figure.
A. C. COTTER, S.J. ALFRED LOISY (1857-1940). Theological Studies: A brief survey of Loisy's life and work(PDF). America Press. [2017-02-27]. (原始内容存档(PDF)于2016-10-18). [Loisy] came out with a vigorous attack on Couchoud's mythical theory in Histoire et mythe à propos de Jésus-Christ (1938). To Loisy's credit be it said that, to the end of his days, he maintained Jesus' historical existence against all mythmakers.
Holding, James Patrick. Shattering the Christ Myth. Xulon Press. June 2008: 16. ISBN 978-1-60647-271-2. On George Albert Wells: "For his first book The Jesus of the Early Christians (1971), Wells took advantage of his fluency in German to read the radical work of Drews, Bauer and others. He had access to all the books that had never been translated into English. The result was a restatement of the early-twentieth century argument that used pagan parallels and interpolation as its main planks. The book was released by a trade publisher and received critical reviews in some academic journals. None of his later works received the same sort of attention."
Beilby, James K.; Eddy, Paul Rhodes. The Historical Jesus: Five Views. InterVarsity Press. 4 January 2010: 15. ISBN 978-0-8308-7853-6. One of the most influential figures of the “old” quest is David Friedrich Strauss (大卫·施特劳斯). His book The Life of Jesus Critically Examined, originally published in 1835, became one of the most controversial studies of Jesus ever written.
Dr. Richard Carrier. Questioning the Historicity of Jesus. Brandon Vogt. [6 April 2016]. (原始内容存档于2019-04-27). The hypothesis that Jesus never really existed has started to gain more credibility in the expert community. Some now agree historicity agnosticism is warranted, including Arthur Droge (professor of early Christianity at UCSD), Kurt Noll (associate professor of religion at Brandon University), and Thomas Thompson (renowned professor of theology, emeritus, at the University of Copenhagen). Others are even more certain historicity is doubtful, including Thomas Brodie (director emeritus of the Dominican Biblical Centre at the University of Limerick, Ireland), Robert Price (who has two Ph.D.’s from Drew University, in theology and New Testament studies), and myself (I have a Ph.D. in ancient history from Columbia University and have several peer reviewed articles on the subject). Still others, like Philip Davies (professor of biblical studies, emeritus, at the University of Sheffield), disagree with the hypothesis but admit it is respectable enough to deserve consideration.
Lataster, Raphael. IT'S OFFICIAL: WE CAN NOW DOUBT JESUS' HISTORICAL EXISTENCE. Think. 29 March 2016, 15 (43): 65–79. doi:10.1017/s1477175616000117. Think, Volume 15, Issue 43, Summer 2016, Published online by Cambridge University Press
Tom Dykstra. Ehrman and Brodie on Whether Jesus Existed: A Cautionary Tale about the State of Biblical Scholarship. The Journal of the Orthodox Center for the Advancement of Biblical Studies (JOCABS). 2015, 8 (1): 29 [2017-02-27]. (原始内容存档于2021-03-22). As for the question of whether Jesus existed, the best answer is that any attempt to find a historical Jesus is a waste of time. It can’t be done, it explains nothing, and it proves nothing. [Vol. 8, No. 1 (2015)]
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