Why We Must Look Elsewhere
Why We Must Look Elsewhere
Even for Josephus, however, Jesus was not a central figure. He is treated far better than any of the leaders of movements considered a threat to the land’s political stability, but is not accorded more space than those other popular leaders. Josephus is interested in government leaders and prominent members of the aristocracy. It was instead those who were interested in Jesus who would preserve his teachings and report more of his life. Not all who came to be interested in Jesus began that way; at least some people began with hostility to Jesus yet became his followers (Paul being the best-known case in point).186 But only those with interest are likely to focus on a person.
Jesus’ group was like other groups in this regard. Qumran documents revere their founder, the teacher of righteousness; but no extant sources outside Qumran speak of him, not even those authors (like Philo, Josephus, and Pliny) who mention the Essenes.187 Josephus claims to have been a Pharisee, and tells us much about the historic role of Pharisees. Yet he never mentions Hillel, founder of the Hillelite school revered in later rabbinic sources.188 Dio Cassius reports the Judean revolt of 132-135 CE without ever mentioning Bar Kochba — its leader!189 Similarly, we would not expect to find much interest in Jesus himself in contemporary Gentile documents,190 or in fact among anyone except his followers.
Similarly, Israeli scholar David Flusser points out, “We can hardly expect to find information about Jesus in non-Christian documents. He shares this fate with Moses, Buddha, and Mohammed, who likewise received no mention in the reports of non-believers.”191 Or as Flusser complains elsewhere, for most charismatic figures in history, outside sources provide a control, but we can know about them only through critically reading their followers’ testimony. Thus
All that is significant about Joseph Smith (1805-1844), founder of the Mormons, can be learned only from him, and from Mormon documents. Then there is the case of Simon Kimbangu, the African who performed miracles of healing in the Belgian Congo from March 18 to September 14, 1921. He died in exile [sic: prison] in 1950 . . . the testimony of the Belgian authorities in the Congo are [sic: is] as helpful in his case as the imagined archives of Pilate or records in the chancellery of the high priest would be in the case of Jesus.192
Similarly, only four works informative about Socrates and from his era survived, and the only three with any useful information derive from his followers.193 (Even if one emphasizes divergences in these portrayals, the agreements point to elements of the common figure of Socrates behind them.)194
It is no surprise that it was those who followed his teachings, or came to follow his teachings, who had the greatest interest in preserving them. And, contrary to what some have said, ancient followers of a teacher were normally interested in what the teacher actually did and taught (especially in the first generation or two, the period in which the canonical Gospels were forming). (We shall argue for ancients’ historical interest more fully in ch. 7.) Most Jesus scholars recognize the canonical Gospels as the earliest substantive sources for historical Jesus research.195 It is thus to these more detailed sources that we must now turn.