Sources on Jesus

For information on Jesus as historical figure, one is, to a large extent, dependent on the four Gospels of the New Testament. Since the Gospel of John is even further removed from the historical figure of Jesus than the other three, the last-mentioned are in reality the main sources. Although Paul's letters predate the Gospels, he has already largely left the historical figure of Jesus, and the details of his life and ministry behind. The only aspects of Jesus's life that function prominently in Paul's writings are Jesus's crucifixion and resurrection.

In addition to the Gospels in the New Testament, there are a number of extracanonical writings which are currently regarded as valuable sources for Jesus. This applies especially to the Gospel of Thomas, which should, according to a number of scholars, be dated among the earliest writings of the New Testament. Attention will be paid to this when discussing the earliest Christian literature (cf Part 3).

Apart from the Gospels, in which Jesus is the main figure, a few historians of the time referred to him in passing. In his Jewish Antiquities (approximately 9394 CE), the Jewish historian Flavius Josephus wrote as follows about him (later insertions excluded):

In his Annals, the Roman historian Tacitus (56-118 CE) also refers to Jesus when he says that the designation Christians ‘comes from Christ, who had been executed by Pontius Pilate during the reign of Tiberius’ (Annals 15.44).

These sources do not provide new information about Jesus. They merely confirm the historical existence of Jesus and a number of facts that are known about him from the Gospels. It is, nevertheless, significant that the portrayal of an outsider such as Josephus shows clear similarities with the image of Jesus encountered in the Gospels.