6. Jesus, the Unfounded Fiction?: The Dissemination Fallout

Books are the carriers of civilization. Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled, thought and speculation at a standstill. Without books, the development of civilization would have been impossible.

—BARBARA TUCHMAN

Christ and the life of Christ is at this moment inspiring the literature of the world as never before, and raising it up a witness against waste and want and war. It may confess Him, as in Tolstoi’s work it does, or it may deny Him, but it cannot exclude Him.

—WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS

Every case has an unexpected twist. Some are more detrimental than others. This one was about to sidetrack our investigation for a month.

“Wow,” said Kyle, reading the letter for at least the twentieth time. “This guy was living right across the street . He sounds more like the killer than Steve!”

Kyle was right, although I hated to admit it.

Everything in the fuse pointed to Steve as a person of interest, until now. The activities, statements, and facts we uncovered in the weeks and months prior to Tammy’s disappearance predicted something bad was about to happen, and Steve was the most reasonable explanation for her disappearance.

Until Frank Webb complicated matters.

It all started when we returned to Steve and Tammy’s old neighborhood and interviewed as many neighbors as we could find. Some remained in the area, others had moved, and one stood out in a disturbing way.

Frank lived directly across the street from Tammy and Steve. He died about a month before we reopened the case, but his daughter, Samantha, still lived there. When we knocked on her door, she told us that her father often talked about Tammy, and after Tammy disappeared, he wrote a letter to Steve. Frank even made a copy of the letter before placing the original in Steve’s mailbox. Samantha was cooperative, and after digging through a box in Frank’s bedroom, she allowed us to read and photograph it.

Steve,

I am writing to you because I don’t want a confrontation. Don’t bother coming over here, I won’t answer the door. I see that you’ve packed up all of Tammy’s things and put some of them in the trash. She’s only been gone a week! Why would you do that? Why not wait to see if she comes back?

I had a very close relationship with Tammy. We talked a lot. She shared her innermost feelings with me. I bet she never told you that. She told me that she was getting ready to leave you. But she said she was afraid of you.

Every day when you were gone at work, she would spend time over here. She told me about your job at the garage and that she wanted more from life than you could give her.

I know she would have contacted me if she left you on her own. She’s never reached out to me. Honestly, I haven’t talked to her since she disappeared. Honest. But now I wonder how much you know about her disappearance.

I am praying for you Steve and for Tammy as well. I hope that you do the right thing.

Frank

Frank’s letter was cryptic and confusing. The Tammy he described was different from the woman we learned about previously. He also seemed to have an awkwardly close relationship with her, and that’s what led us to investigate Frank more fully. What we found was troubling.

Frank had been a security guard at a local storage company. One night, on the way home from work, he decided to kidnap a girl. He saw her walking and offered to give her a ride home. Once she got in the car, he pulled out a gun, assaulted her, and then attempted to kill her. Thinking she was dead, he dumped her body on a long embankment overlooking the beach.

EXCULPATORY EVIDENCE

Exculpatory evidence is evidence that tends to excuse, justify, or absolve the defendant in any given case. While Frank’s letter certainly complicated our investigation, it did not yet prove that Frank was the real killer. If the evidence pointing to Steve remained strong, he would still be the most likely candidate. In a similar way, if the evidence for the existence and nature of Jesus remains strong, alternative descriptions (like the noncanonical accounts described in this chapter) don’t eliminate Jesus as a person of interest.

His victim survived the attack and later identified him in a jury trial. He served fifteen years for that assault and attempted murder. After his release from prison, he moved in with his grown daughter. That house happened to be across the street from Tammy.

“If he was willing to kill one victim and dump her body, maybe he did the same thing to Tammy.” Kyle continued to examine the words Frank used in his letter. “Maybe he was determined to do a better job this time and that’s why we never recovered Tammy’s body.”

Frank’s letter was the first piece of data in the fallout portion of our investigation (given that Frank wrote the letter after Tammy’s disappearance). It provided several new pieces of information. First, Frank was now someone we had to consider as a suspect. We also had to reconsider what we thought we knew about Tammy and her attitude toward Steve. Finally, almost lost in the drama related to Frank was his observation that Steve trashed Tammy’s belongings as early as a week after she disappeared. Samantha confirmed that she also saw Steve place boxes containing Tammy’s belongings in the trash.

Over the next several days and weeks, Kyle and I continued to investigate Frank and the full nature of the fallout that resulted from Tammy’s disappearance. Was Frank’s description of Tammy accurate? Was Frank involved in Tammy’s disappearance? Would the evidence in the fallout continue to point to Steve as our person of interest?

ELVIS AND JESUS

“Wow, I never knew Elvis was such a big deal.”

Susie and I were watching a documentary on the history of rock and roll. I was embarrassed to admit I didn’t really know much about Elvis Presley, aside from my teenage memory of his death in 1977.

“My mom was a fan,” replied Susie. “But I didn’t know he set all those records.”

At the time of his death, Elvis had more number-one albums than any other male recording artist in history. Even today Elvis remains the second “richest dead celebrity” (with over one billion albums sold, earning $39 million in 2019 alone). In the four decades after his passing, hundreds of books were written about Elvis’s extravagant career and tragic death.

Authors seeking to retell the story of Elvis typically fall into one of three groups:

1. Presleys (family members and close friends) who liked Elvis

2. Non-Presleys (strangers) who liked Elvis

3. Non-Presleys (strangers) who disliked Elvis

The truthfulness of these Elvis books is closely tied to which of the three groups the author belongs. Some authors favored Elvis; some did not. Some were close to Elvis; some were not. Some were accurate; some were not. You might wonder how someone could write something untrue about Elvis and get away with it, but remember, Elvis died in 1977, long before the internet turned the world into an accessible, global community. Unless you happened to live in Elvis’s hometown (Memphis, Tennessee), you were probably unlikely to bump into true eyewitnesses who could verify the claims of an author. In addition, some of these Elvis books were written long after living witnesses could fact-check them. As a result, truth and legend emerged, the latter more likely from the pen of someone with a bias as distance and time increased.

Even though a wild variety of fables and tales were written about Elvis, they were crafted upon common features of the true Elvis story. A careful reading of every book will reveal core truths related to Elvis’s life, accomplishments, and death:

Elvis was born into a poor family in Tupelo, Mississippi

His parents bought him a guitar for his eleventh birthday

His family moved to Memphis when he was thirteen years old

Elvis did a series of recordings with the Memphis Recording Service (Sun Studio)

One of his recordings became very popular

He formed a group, performed a live show, and was loved by the crowd

He signed a recording contract with RCA Records

He recorded his first album and the single “Heartbreak Hotel” in Nashville

Elvis made his TV debut on Stage Show

He starred in a film called Love Me Tender

He named his home “Graceland”

He was drafted into the Army and served with pride

He returned home and made a record-breaking album called G.I. Blues

He married a woman named Priscilla

He met President Nixon at the White House

He received the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award

Elvis died at his home, Graceland

Every “tall-tale” distortion of Elvis borrows from the truth of the real Elvis, an Elvis who really existed, even though late, embellished accounts may exaggerate or misstate the truth. When someone has the kind of cultural impact Elvis had, we should expect there to be significant fallout, including literature written by people who would distort the truth and even co-opt his story for their own advantage.

Something similar happened to Jesus, thousands of years before Elvis ever recorded “Heartbreak Hotel.”

My investigation of the fuse leading up to the arrival of Jesus revealed three lines of evidence and expectation.

As I investigated the fallout caused by Jesus’s life and ministry, I immediately recognized several areas of oversized historical impact, the first of which involved the incredible influence Jesus had on literature:

Jesus had a much greater literary impact on human history than Elvis. So much so that manuscripts describing Jesus clutter the fallout of the Common Era, and I’m not referring to the New Testament documents. Instead, I’m describing literary evidence from three early groups:

1. Christians who liked Jesus

2. Non-Christians who liked Jesus

3. Non-Christians who disliked Jesus

What does this literature tell us about Jesus? What kind of impact did the explosive arrival of Jesus have on the history of world literature, and is this impact robust enough to reconstruct the truth, even without considering the New Testament manuscript evidence?

That’s what I hoped to discover as I studied the early history of Christianity.

CHRISTIANS WHO LIKED JESUS

In the first three centuries of the Common Era, early believers lived cautiously within the Roman Empire and—depending on the emperor at the time—experienced some form of hesitant tolerance, general disdain, or intense persecution. Roman authorities would have allowed their citizens to embrace Jesus as yet another regional deity, but Christians worshiped Jesus as the one true God, to the exclusion of other gods in the Roman pantheon. This refusal to worship the Roman deities often led to Christian martyrdom. But that changed when two edicts were issued in the fourth century.

In 313 CE emperors Constantine and Licinius issued the Edict of Milan, proclaiming religious tolerance and ending the persecution of Christians. By 380 CE emperors Theodosius I, Gratian, and Valentinian II issued the Edict of Thessalonica, declaring that citizens of the empire “should continue to profess that religion which was delivered to the Romans by the divine Apostle Peter.” This edict firmly established Nicene Christianity as the religion of the empire, culminating in an amazing transformation of national worship.

Even before Rome embraced Jesus as God, Christians (who liked Jesus) were writing about their Master. The students of the apostles were the first to describe what their teachers told them about Jesus. Ignatius of Antioch and Polycarp, for example, described the Jesus they learned about at the feet of the apostle John, and Clement of Rome described the Jesus he learned about from the apostle Paul. For the next two hundred years, even before Christianity was accepted as the state religion, Christian leaders reiterated the claims of Christianity in letters and manuscripts written to local congregations and to each other. From Barnabas in the late-first century to Arnobius of Sicca in the late third century, the ante-Nicene church fathers wrote about Jesus, repeatedly citing the earliest descriptions offered by the gospel authors.

Unsurprisingly, the story of Jesus had a tremendous impact on early believers, resulting in a significant collection of early literature. While admonishing local congregations, encouraging one another, and writing about the impact Jesus had on their lives, these leaders often quoted from the New Testament. In fact, much of the data the gospel authors offered can be found in the early church literary fallout.

Letters from Christian leaders in the first three hundred years of the Common Era reveal 935 verse quotations from the gospel of Matthew (87.3 percent of the text), 453 verses from the gospel of Mark (66.9 percent of the text), 990 verses from the gospel of Luke (86.0 percent of the text), and 859 verses from the gospel of John (97.8 percent of the text). In addition, church leaders also quoted from many other New Testament documents. This diagram depicts the number of gospels (upper number) and New Testament letters (lower number) quoted by each leader:

Even without any details from the New Testament manuscripts from antiquity, we could reconstruct the gospel authors’ claims from the citations, quotes, and descriptions found in this ancient, explosive body of literature. In fact, if we limited our investigation to the earliest leaders who are believed to have had personal contact with the gospel eyewitnesses and authors (Barnabas, Ignatius, Clement of Rome, the Didache authors, Papias, and Polycarp), we could retrieve the important details related to the life, ministry, death, and resurrection of Jesus.

A robust description of Jesus, his teaching, mission, and followers is available before the early second century , and by the end of the third century, Jesus followers would quote or reference 3,237 verses from the New Testament gospels. That’s the kind of early impact Jesus had, and this was before Christianity became the religion of the Roman Empire.

If someone truly wanted to erase Jesus from history, they would have to do far more than destroy the New Testament; they would also have to destroy every copy of the many letters and books written in the early centuries of the Common Era by Christians who liked Jesus.

OBJECTION: THE STORY ABOUT JESUS WAS CHANGED OVER TIME

If we trace the story of Jesus through the earliest centuries, comparing the writings of Christians who liked Jesus to one another, one thing is certain: the account of Jesus’s life—his miracles and teaching, his nature and his claims—has not changed. The gospel accounts are consistently reiterated, regardless of century or region.

NON-CHRISTIANS WHO LIKED JESUS

While assembling my library of historical Christian documents, I stumbled upon a book in a small used bookstore. It was entitled The Lost Books of the Bible: Being All the Gospels, Epistles, and Other Pieces Now Extant Attributed in the First Four Centuries to Jesus Christ, His Apostles, and Their Companions, Not Included, by its Compilers, in the Authorized New Testament . The book cover claimed it contained the work of “several accepted Christian apostles” whose works “were omitted from” the canon of Christian Scripture. I purchased it immediately, suspicious that those who assembled the New Testament might have altered or eradicated the truth about Jesus.

I discovered instead that the book was mistitled. It should have been called The Lost Untruths about Jesus: Being All the Late Gospels, Epistles, and Other Pieces Written By Non-Christians Who Liked Jesus and Hoped to Alter and Co-Opt His Story for Their Own Religious Purposes, Only to Have True Christians Recognize Them as Forgeries. I realize this title isn’t nearly as provocative, but it is at least more accurate.

Years after the completion of the four canonical gospels (Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John), dozens of noncanonical gospels and writings emerged across the empire. The authors of these texts hoped they would be taken seriously. In fact, religious groups of one kind or another used most of these noncanonical writings alongside the gospels of Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John. The authors liked Jesus and recognized his influence and power. But their desire to co-opt the power and authority of Jesus led them to contradict, falsely supplement, or alter the canonical narrative. Groups that embraced the teachings of these texts (many of whom were Gnostic ) strayed so far from orthodoxy that they were not recognized or identified as Christians by the earliest church leaders. While the noncanonical authors certainly liked Jesus, these non-Christians sought to co-opt his story for their own purposes.

You might be wondering how someone could write something untrue about Jesus and get away with it. Just like those who lied about Elvis Presley, noncanonical authors waited until people who knew the truth about Jesus were dead, or they wrote their stories far from the region where eyewitnesses could fact-check the narratives. Once again, legend emerged as distance and time increased.

Despite the legendary distortions, these noncanonical documents presupposed and acknowledged the claims of the canonical gospels, just as the legendary distortions of Elvis assumed and affirmed the core truths related to Elvis’s life, accomplishments, and death.

CO-OPTING THE TRUTH FOR A LIE

Elvis’s life created a tidal wave of fiction, but Jesus’s life created much more. Just as the underlying truths related to Elvis can be reconstructed from later, legendary accounts, so too can the foundational truths related to Jesus be reconstructed from late noncanonical fictions. I discovered this as I read The Lost Books of the Bible .

The Gospel of Peter, for example, (often described as a Gnostic or “Docetic” narrative) was written after the eyewitnesses of Jesus were dead (likely between 150 and 200 CE). Gnostics generally held a low view of the material universe and the human body, and this late gospel was written to reflect that view. Jesus is therefore described as a spirit whose body was only an illusion. But despite many distortions, the Gospel of Peter affirms many details of the Passion Week as described in Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John. It also lists the names of the disciples and affirms critical features of the canonical gospels, such as the resurrection of Jesus.

OBJECTION: EARLY CHRISTIANS ELIMINATED COMPETING ACCOUNTS OF JESUS

Why aren’t the noncanonical accounts (the writings from non-Christians who liked Jesus) considered equally authoritative? Were they eliminated solely because they disagreed theologically with Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John? No. More than any other reason, they are disqualified as eyewitness accounts because of their late arrival outside of the region of Jesus’s life and ministry. True eyewitness accounts are written early and within the region, as were the four gospel accounts we have in the New Testament. For more information about the early dating of the Gospels, read Cold-Case Christianity .

Another late narrative, the Gospel of Philip (written between 180 and 250 CE), is similarly Gnostic in its representation of Jesus. The author of this text describes Jesus as the source of secret wisdom (a common feature of salvation in Gnostic groups). Despite this variation from the canonical gospels, the Gospel of Philip acknowledges Jesus as the Savior, Messiah, and “Son of Man” and repeats many verses from the New Testament and the gospels of Matthew and John.

The distorted narratives written by these non-Christians who liked Jesus repeat many common truths from the Gospels, even as they insert unique falsehoods. There are many other late, noncanonical narratives and legendary accounts, and from the common assumptions described in these accounts (the areas where the authors agree on the foundational claims of the canonical gospels), we can retrieve a detailed description of Jesus and his followers. For a more robust description of these texts, consult the Case Notes file for this book, available on the Cold-Case Christianity website (see endnote #18).

These details about Jesus and his followers come not from the church fathers but from the authors of heretical texts. Even if you destroyed every page of Christian Scripture and the writings of Christians who liked Jesus, you would still know a lot about him from these non - Christians who liked him. But the noncanonical authors weren’t the only non-Christians to talk about Jesus. There were others who interacted with Christians in antiquity, and unlike the noncanonical writers, they didn’t like Jesus at all.

THE TRUTH IN A SLANDER

The voices of non-Christians who disliked Jesus can be heard on the pages of historical manuscripts. These ancient Roman and Jewish voices were clearly hostile to Christianity, but they inadvertently provided us with additional information about the man they sought to obliterate from history.

It’s impossible to estimate how many hostile nonbelievers came into contact with Christians prior to the edicts of Milan and Thessalonica, but the words of more than fifty of them were documented in ancient manuscripts.

These manuscripts represent authors from many regions within the Roman Empire and beyond. Some were religious; some were not. Thallus, for example, was a Greek-speaking historian. Mara bar Serapion was a Syrian philosopher. Akiva ben Yosef was a Jewish rabbi. Epictetus was a stoic philosopher in what is now known as Turkey. Pliny the Younger was a lawyer and magistrate in a region along the Black Sea. Granianus was an Asian proconsul under Emperor Hadrian. Eliezer ben Hurcanus was an ancient Jewish sage.

It’s remarkable to encounter this level of regional, ethnic, and professional diversity among Jesus’s most ancient critics, but that’s the kind of response he evoked. He was loved deeply by his followers but dismissed or despised by his critics. From just this group of hostile non-Christians who disliked Jesus, a robust profile of Jesus can be reconstructed. Even though these historical figures typically slandered him, they based their attacks on a set of common claims. These foundational details related to Jesus (and his followers) can be heard from the voices of those who opposed him.

An incredibly detailed summary of Jesus’s life, ministry, death, and resurrection (along with details related to his followers) came from people who denied his power and opposed the men and women who followed him (visit the Case Notes for the specifics). Even if you silenced the voices of the New Testament authors, you would still have a robust description of Jesus and his followers from ancient, hostile, non-Christian voices in the fallout.

The statements of those who followed Jesus, those who later co-opted his name for their own purpose, and those who rejected him provide a tidal wave of information:

This impressive group of historical voices was immediately aware of the impact Jesus had on history. At a time when Christians were pursued, pillaged, and persecuted, we might not expect much information related to Jesus and his followers to survive. Instead, we can reconstruct every major claim of the New Testament without reading a single gospel or letter of Scripture, even though many of these non-Christian authors did their best to co-opt and twist the story of Jesus or were mockingly hostile toward the claims of Christianity.

There are more non-Christian voices in this extrabiblical collection (ninety-two historical figures) than Christian ones (just fifty-one), and regardless of their social stature, ethnicity, motivation, or region, the common description of Jesus (at their core) remained the same. At their foundation, they reiterated the claims of the New Testament authors long before these claims became popular or Christianity became the religion of the empire.

And this explosion of literary activity was only the beginning.

JESUS DOMINATES THE BOOKSHELVES

With every passing century in the Common Era, the number of authors who wrote about Jesus grew exponentially. The dissemination fallout is cluttered with classic literature written by authors who were forever changed by the person and teaching of Jesus.

You may not be familiar with the more ancient volumes in this diagram. But if you’re a Christian (or even if you aren’t), you probably recognize the more recent titles. Human history, and the lives of millions of readers, has been shaped by many of these classic volumes:

History of the Church by Eusebius (c. 330 CE)

The City of God by Augustine of Hippo (405 CE)

The Rule of St. Benedict by Benedict of Nursia (516 CE)

The Imitation of Christ by Thomas à Kempis (c. 1418 CE)

On the Freedom of a Christian by Martin Luther (1520 CE)

The Dark Night of the Soul by St. John of the Cross (c. 1578 CE)

The Pilgrim’s Progress by John Bunyan (1678 CE)

Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God by Jonathan Edwards (1741 CE)

Humility by Andrew Murray (1895 CE)

Orthodoxy by G. K. Chesterton (1908 CE)

The Cost of Discipleship by Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1937 CE)

Mere Christianity by C. S. Lewis (1952 CE)

Through the Gates of Splendor by Elisabeth Elliot (1963 CE)

The God Who Is There by Francis Schaeffer (1968 CE)

Some of these books are old, many are ancient, yet all of them are still being published and continue to inspire, correct, and instruct. In every century since the appearance of Jesus, iconic books have been written about his life, teaching, death, and resurrection.

The literary fallout Jesus created resulted in the formation of an entire industry. The Bible was the first book ever printed on a printing press, establishing Johannes Gutenberg (the inventor of the movable-type press) as the world’s first printed book publisher. Today, books about Jesus are published by nearly two hundred publishing houses, a large industry designed to meet the intense interest in Jesus. Compare the number of Christian publishers, for example, with publishing houses representing two religious systems that preceded Christianity by centuries: Hinduism and Buddhism. To these, let’s add major religions that followed Christianity: Islam and Bahá’í. These four religious worldviews combined cannot boast the number of publishers that have emerged under the Christian banner.

Jesus matters to authors and publishers. He still dominates the publishing industry like no other person of interest. He’s inspired more writers—and been the topic of more literature—than any other person in history.

If you don’t believe me, ask CIA analyst Peter Dickson. In 1999 Dickson used his considerable investigative skills to identify the historical figure who has been the subject of more books than anyone else. He decided to conduct his search at the Library of Congress in Washington, DC. This is the world’s largest library, containing nearly 110 million volumes in every language and format. It houses 532 miles of bookshelves. You read that correctly—532 miles . It is the “world’s most comprehensive record of human creativity and knowledge.” A computerized analysis of eighteen million volumes revealed that there were nearly twice as many books about Jesus as his nearest challenger:

Jesus (17,239 books)

Vladimir Lenin (4,492)

William Shakespeare (9,801)

Abraham Lincoln (4,378)

Napoleon Bonaparte (4,007)

18.

Richard Wagner (1,680)

Karl Marx (3,817)

19.

Alexander Pushkin (1,614)

The Virgin Mary (3,595)

20.

Friedrich Nietzsche (1,613)

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (3,431)

21.

Sigmund Freud (1,601)

22.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1,592)

Plato (2,894)

10.

Dante Alighieri (2,878)

23.

Gandhi (1,583)

11.

George Washington (2,742)

24.

John Milton (1,533)

12.

Buddha (2,446)

25.

Ludwig van Beethoven (1,476)

13.

Immanuel Kant (2,410)

26.

Simón Bolívar (1,467)

14.

Martin Luther (2,291)

27.

Thomas Aquinas (1,424)

15.

Adolf Hitler (1,989)

28.

Charles Dickens (1,397)

16.

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1,976)

29.

Johann Sebastian Bach (1,361)

30.

Miguel de Cervantes (1,348)

17.

Aristotle (1,696)

When Dickson limited his search to only females, he found that Jesus continued to influence the field:

The Virgin Mary (3,595)

Elizabeth II (442)

Joan of Arc (545)

George Eliot (434)

Jane Austen (544)

Elizabeth I (407)

Queen Victoria (492)

Cleopatra (329)

Mary, Queen of Scots (477)

10.

Emily Dickinson (310)

As you read this list, you might be wondering if the Library of Congress unfairly favors Jesus because of his influence on Western civilization rather than his warranted impact globally. I wondered the same thing as I investigated the fallout Jesus created in the Common Era. When I first started to research Jesus, the internet was still in its infancy, but today we have the benefit of search engines, including Google Books, “the world’s most comprehensive index of full-text books.”

This search engine allows us to update Dickson’s list in a much more comprehensive, global manner that includes every country, every publisher, and every kind of author (including self-published authors). This global database reveals that Jesus is still the subject of more books than anyone else:

Jesus (109,000,000 books)

17.

Adolf Hitler (2,650,000)

George Washington (58,400,000)

18.

Immanuel Kant (2,400,000)

Plato (27,800,000)

19.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (2,230,000)

Aristotle (21,000,000)

John Milton (20,800,000)

20.

Friedrich Nietzsche (1,960,000)

William Shakespeare

21.

Dante Alighieri (1,910,000)

(18,700,000)

22.

Miguel de Cervantes (1,600,000)

Charles Dickens (16,200,000)

23.

Vladimir Lenin (1,500,000)

Buddha (13,300,000)

24.

Johann Sebastian Bach (858,000)

Martin Luther (13,300,000)

25.

Ludwig van Beethoven (797,000)

10.

Gandhi (12,600,000)

26.

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (665,000)

11.

Abraham Lincoln (9,340,000)

12.

The Virgin Mary (7,400,000)

27.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (640,000)

13.

Karl Marx (5,780,000)

14.

Richard Wagner (5,400,000)

28.

Simón Bolívar (511,000)

15.

Thomas Aquinas (4,720,000)

29.

Alexander Pushkin (236,000)

16.

Napoleon Bonaparte (3,320,000)

30.

Sigmund Freud (25,300)

While some of these historical figures have swapped positions from Dickson’s original list, Jesus remains at the top. The earliest centuries in the Common Era were cluttered with documents describing Jesus, and he has been the consistent topic of literature ever since. Even today, the dissemination fallout of Jesus is filled with millions of books published about Jesus.

But that’s only part of the literary fallout.

MOVIE STAR JESUS

Jesus dramatically affected another literary genre in the Common Era fallout. As visual technology progressed, a new category of literature emerged: the screenplay. From the very invention of the “moving picture,” Jesus became the focus of writers who were inspired by his impact on culture.

Some of the earliest attempts to create motion pictures featured the life and activity of Jesus. In 1897 Albert Kirchner filmed La Passion du Christ , while Mark Klaw and Abraham Erlanger created The Horitz Passion Play . These primitive films started an explosion of cinematic activity depicting the life of Jesus.

No other religious figure has inspired as many screenplays as Jesus of Nazareth, and this diagram doesn’t even include the movies that reflect a Christian worldview but don’t specifically reenact his life, ministry, death, and resurrection. Hundreds more have been written describing the lives and experiences of his followers.

Movies tracing only the life of Jesus have been produced in a variety of countries, including Bulgaria, Canada, England, France, Germany, India, Iran, Italy, Jordan, Lebanon, Mexico, Israel, the Philippines, Portugal, South Africa, Spain, and the United States.

One of these movies, The Jesus Film (created in 1979), depicts Jesus’s life based primarily on the gospel of Luke. It was filmed on location in Israel and adheres closely to the biblical text. Since its creation, this film has been translated into over 1,800 languages and has been viewed by over 8.1 billion people, making it the most-watched and most-translated motion picture of all time.

Christian movie companies and performers aren’t alone in their desire to re-create the story of Jesus. The movie industry’s best production companies, directors, and actors have created cinematic depictions of Jesus. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, for example, produced King of Kings and Ben-Hur , Columbia Pictures produced Godspell , Risen , and The Star , Warner Brothers produced Life of Brian , Universal Studios produced Jesus Christ Superstar , and 20th Century Fox produced Color of the Cross and Son of God .

Cecil B. DeMille directed The King of Kings (1927 version), Martin Scorsese directed The Last Temptation of Christ , Mel Gibson directed The Passion of the Christ , and Andrew Lloyd Webber scored Jesus Christ Superstar .

Richard Burton and Jean Simmons starred in The Robe , Charlton Heston appeared in Ben-Hur , Orson Welles narrated King of Kings , Johnny Cash starred in Gospel Road: A Story of Jesus , the Monty Python cast starred in Life of Brian , Martin Sheen and Alan Arkin appeared in The Fourth Wise Man , Christian Bale starred in Mary, Mother of Jesus , Kelsey Grammer appeared in Killing Jesus , Ewan McGregor appeared in Last Days in the Desert , Joseph Fiennes starred in Risen , and Joaquin Phoenix starred in Mary Magdalene .

Some of these actors and directors were inspired by Jesus, others were intrigued, and some were infuriated. But whether their movies were complimentary or blasphemous, the core truths of Jesus’s life (as described in the Gospels) served as a launching point. In fact, if you compare the common foundational claims of these movies (along with the others we’ve described) with the claims of the church fathers, you’ll find them in agreement. Some of the movies about Jesus are word-for-word reenactments of the gospel accounts.

So without a single New Testament document or ancient text describing Jesus, you could still reconstruct every detail of Jesus’s life, ministry, death, resurrection— and his impact on the lives of believers—from the hundreds of screenplays that have been written and movies that have been made in just the past one hundred years. That’s the kind of impact Jesus had on our collective literary imagination.

But this person of interest didn’t only influence books and screenplays that describe the life and ministry of Jesus.

JESUS IN DISGUISE

If you’re a fan of fictional literature (almost any genre of fictional literature, including novels, screenplays, comics, and even video game scripts), you’ve probably read about Jesus, even if you didn’t know it . No other person in history has influenced the way authors have crafted their heroes and protagonists. If you look closely at many of history’s best-known fictional characters, you’ll find attributes of Jesus, even from the pens of authors who didn’t know much about the Christian Savior. Either knowingly or unknowingly, writers have borrowed the attributes of Jesus and created what scholars now call “Christ figures.” There are hundreds of examples throughout the history of literature in every genre. Harry in the Harry Potter series, Finny in A Separate Peace , Gandalf in The Lord of the Rings , Santiago in The Old Man and the Sea , and Simon in Lord of the Flies are just a few of the many classic characters who resemble and reflect the nature of Jesus.

Most of us are familiar with at least a few of these modern characters from novels, movies, television series, comics, and video games:

If you were inclined to list the attributes of these fictional characters, you would discover that they share common characteristics. In fact, you would find that the authors, screenwriters, and creators seem to borrow from a singular, common prototype, a person of interest who:

Has a virtuous mother and a divine or royal father

Is born mysteriously and appears to be poor

Possesses some form of dual identity (both “common” and “special”)

Has an oddly unknown childhood and is later misunderstood or considered crazy

Provides hope to others and has miraculous, supernatural powers

Behaves in an extremely moral manner and/or is celibate

Cares for people who are poor, distressed, or hungry

Sees truth that is hidden to others and is associated with light

Interacts with and is tempted by the devil or an evil force

Is punished and/or dies unjustly for his claims (usually connected to love or truth)

Is betrayed by a close friend and is denied by those who knew him

Is depicted at some point with his arms spread (like a cross)

Is reborn in some way physically or emotionally

OBJECTION: THERE ISN’T ENOUGH ANCIENT, NON-CHRISTIAN INFORMATION ABOUT JESUS

If you include the noncanonical texts, there are nearly twice as many non-Christian voices as Christian voices in the period preceding the Edict of Milan. In addition, the ancient sources we have for the life and ministry of Jesus are more reliable (and were written much earlier) than the sources we have for the life of Tiberius Caesar, the emperor of Rome who ruled during the latter part of Jesus’s lifetime. Some of these sources (like Tacitus), report on both men. If we have enough information to have knowledge about Tiberius Caesar, then we have enough information to have knowledge about Jesus.

Jesus matters to authors, writers, creators, and screenwriters in the modern era. Either consciously or unconsciously, they’ve crafted characters that resemble Jesus of Nazareth. Even without Christian Scripture and without the writings of the church fathers or the ancients who liked or disliked Jesus, we’d still be left with this nagging profile and would still have good reason to believe there was an ancient person of interest who dominated creative thought and provided the archetype that would permeate the imagination of humanity for centuries to come.

Once again, that’s the kind of influence Jesus had on literature. Even when people didn’t write about him specifically , they still wrote about him metaphorically .

DIFFICULT TO ERASE

“You’ll figure it out.” Susie wasn’t just talking about the fallout related to my criminal case. She was also talking about the Jesus fallout. I’d been getting up at four o’clock every morning to investigate the case for Jesus prior to heading off to work.

“Maybe you should sleep in tomorrow,” she said. “It’s Saturday, you know.”

As much as my professional investigations dominated my thoughts, Jesus had become an even larger obsession. He permeated my thinking in much the same way he’d dominated the thoughts of writers and investigators for thousands of years before me.

As I investigated the literary fallout caused by the explosive appearance of Jesus, I realized it was nearly impossible to erase him from history. His impact on literature was simply too vast and robust. The facts related to Jesus had been preserved and disseminated throughout the Common Era, in every language, in every culture, and in every genre of literature. No one else in the first century had this kind of impact.

In fact, Jesus had more literary impact than any other person in all of history.

But literature isn’t the only way Jesus affected humanity, and it isn’t the only set of evidences in the fallout. Another creative form of fallout points uniquely to Jesus as the most important person of interest in human history.

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