There is no question that there are stories about a man named Jesus who claimed to be God and performed miracles. But there are questions about how to explain the existence of these stories. Some who don't believe they come from true events suggest that the stories are legends. Legends are created by people, so the existence of a legend can ussually can be explained socially. They are often created to express the beliefs of a society or to meet a societal need. In the Roman culture legends about miracle-working gods were common. In the fourth century Rome tried to make the people they had conquered become like them which was called Hellinization. Those who believe Jesus was a legend created by the Jews would have to explain what would cause Jews to create such a legend. If they can't, then we would have to consider that the stories grew out of actual historical events.
The Jews believed in one creator God and strongly resisted pagan polytheistic stories about humans becoming divine. It seems highly unlikely that they would generate a story like the one about Jesus. Some believe that since Israel was controlled by Rome in the first century, they were influenced by the pagan ideas or Hellenized enought to create a story about a miracle working divine man. Those who believe this use the following arguments, that we will look at in our next blog.
- The books found among the Dead Sea Scrolls included non Jewish material such as magical/astrological texts.
- Excavations of ancient Synagogues have shown that they included zodiac symbols.
- Some Jewish literature prior to the time of Jesus gives humans divine attributes.
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