Quotessence
Home / Quotes / Quote / Image

Quote image editor Earl Doherty

Back to previous page

“I decided that to get at the historical Jesus, one should perhaps start by looking at his background: his parents, his family, the places of his birth and life. The Gospels, of course, contained a lot of that stuff, though they didn’t always agree. But one couldn’t prove the validity of the Gospel story by appealing to the Gospel story. But here was the problem I encountered. Using the Muratorian Project Index and my own search of the non-canonical material I had entered, I could find no references to the names of Mary and Joseph, nor to Bethlehem, Nazareth or Galilee, anywhere in the non-Gospel documents of the first century. I decided to look up the name of the man who one might say was the most crucial in Jesus’ life, namely, the man who had tried and executed him: the Roman governor, Pontius Pilate. In the epistles, he appeared only in a single passing reference in 1 Timothy 6:13, at my date of 115. Elsewhere, in all the discussions about Christ’s death and crucifixion, he was nowhere to be found. I could not even locate a reference in Paul or any other epistle writer to the fact that Jesus had undergone a trial! Little did Pilate realize when he washed his hands, that he was washing himself out of the wider Christian record for about 80 years!” — Earl Doherty

Quote 1080 x 1350 Instagram portrait
More
Platforms
Pure ratios
I decided that to get at the historical Jesus, one should perhaps start by looking at his background: his parents, his family, the places of his birth and life. The Gospels, of course, contained a lot of that stuff, though they didn’t always agree. But one couldn’t prove the validity of the Gospel story by appealing to the Gospel story. But here was the problem I encountered. Using the Muratorian Project Index and my own search of the non-canonical material I had entered, I could find no references to the names of Mary and Joseph, nor to Bethlehem, Nazareth or Galilee, anywhere in the non-Gospel documents of the first century. I decided to look up the name of the man who one might say was the most crucial in Jesus’ life, namely, the man who had tried and executed him: the Roman governor, Pontius Pilate. In the epistles, he appeared only in a single passing reference in 1 Timothy 6:13, at my date of 115. Elsewhere, in all the discussions about Christ’s death and crucifixion, he was nowhere to be found. I could not even locate a reference in Paul or any other epistle writer to the fact that Jesus had undergone a trial! Little did Pilate realize when he washed his hands, that he was washing himself out of the wider Christian record for about 80 years!
— Earl Doherty