The title of the name “Christus” is found in both Roman and Jewish literature within about a hundred years of the life of Jesus, even the writers were not attempting to justify the Christian faith. That fact alone makes a commonplace contemporary presupposition difficult, namely, that Christianity can be winnowed down to an interior spirituality that can be nourished by nothing but in-group sources. Supposing that the movement had originated as a popular demand upon a man in real time, in a real province, under real officers, the question whether Scripture can be opened or not is irrelevant; it is the nature of the evidence which is required to determine the main character in the drama of faith.
The old pathway to generic theism, which is design, contingency, or the alleged “fine-tuning” of nature, can show the existence of intelligence out there, but not alone can it be used to determine the identity of that intelligence. An anonymous creator is one who drew his conclusions based on physicology or biology. That difference is significant since Christianity is not simply the assertion that there is a creator, but that God has a specific personality which is manifested in a specific life.
Historical investigation works instead of laboratory science, although it has its own instruments. The first is that one of the long-standing methods would be inquiring whether a statement was supported by several streams of tradition, or not. The other question is whether or not a tradition had elements that early believers would not have been so keen to create. These techniques are controversial and flawed, and nevertheless, they are applied due to the fact that the ancient history does not provide direct verification very often. The Gospels might be handled in such a context as sources but not as unquestionably accurate in every particular a distinction which historians have long been accustomed to exercise when dealing with partisan or participant texts.
With no referencing to the New Testament, there is an astonishingly large amount of scaffolding to be found around the figure of the central place of Christianity. Communities singing a hymn to Christ to Christ as a god before dawn were described by the Roman governor Pliny the Younger in Book 10, Letter 96. The thing is, that Pliny does not support the worship; it is that the worship has already become established enough to attract the attention of the administration, and there are routines and ethical obligations connected with it.
Tacitus, who is not friendly to this movement, nevertheless traces its beginning to a certain execution: “Christus… was subjected to the utmost penalty… to the hands of… Pontius Pilatus”. Under the patronage of the Romans, as a Jewish historian, Josephus, in the Antiquities 20.9.1, speaks of James as “the brother of Jesus, who was known as Christ.” In a passing remark, Suetenius associates the disturbance in Rome with controversies that were related to “Chrestus,” which was stored in Claudius 25.4. Each source is small, yet all of them put the movement in the historical record: there was a man called Christ; his disciples became many; the authorities became interested; war became inevitable.
That does not eliminate the specifically Christian statement the resurrection from what can be attested by others.
In this case the argument takes another form. Other apologists put the case in terms of a set of claims, which many scholars regard as having a historical weight, namely that Jesus was crucified; that followers shortly after that claimed experiences which they took to be appearances; that the message was preached early; and that those who experienced the risen Jesus most of all were James and Paul. This method does not circumvent the New Testament as much as it applies it selectively together with the other sources since the earliest information on the claims is still found embedded in Christian literature.
That is, Christianity can be treated without a Bible as the existence of Jesus, his execution and the resurrection of the worship can be seen some other than a Bible. Christianity cannot, however, be Christianized of the identity of God revealed in Jesus without involving the traditions of witness of the earliest witnesses that tell what really was said by those who followed him. The New Testament may have its historical record extruded by the history beyond it: the claim of character may be set upon the books which are nearest to the origin of the movement.
