Page 286 - History of The Quranic Text | Kalamullah.Com

266 THE HISTORY OF THE QUR'A.NIC TEXT

i. References toJesus in Non-Christian Books from the First Century

The writings of thejewish historianjosephus (c. 100 C.E.), which cover the
period up to 73 C.E., do indeed contain two passages aboutjesus the Christ.
The longer of these is quite obviously a Christian interpolation, for it is "a
glowing description which no orthodoxJew could have written.?" The second
passage has been scrutinised by Schuror, Zahn, von Dobschutz,juster and
other scholars, and they regard the words "the brother of jesus, him called
Christ" as a further interpolation.t The lone pagan reference that is still
commonly cited is Tacitus' statement,

that Christians 'derive their name and origin from Christ, who, in the
reign of Tiberius, had suffereddeath bythe sentenceof the procurator
PontiusPilate.'Tacituswrote thisabout A.D. 120, and by then Christians
had themselves come to believe that]esus had died in this way. I tried
to show... that there are good reasons for supposing that Tacitus was
simplyrepeating what wasthen the Christian view, and that he isthere-
fore not an independent witness. 6

ii. The Historical Christ in Christian Circles

So we see that provingjesus as a historical figure using primary sources is
impossible. Assuming that he did walk the earth, and was a central figure
in the God-head, then it seems only natural that the Christian community
must have preserved all information regarding him. Like a modern day
sports figure or international movie star, all titbits relating to him must
have been collected, preserved, perused and treasured. The reality was quite
to the contrary.

A. THE LIFE OF JESUS: SECONDARY SOURCES
The influence of jesus Christ on Western civilisation is incalculable, and so
collecting materials about his life and teachings is nothing short of essential
for the modern scholar. But this undertaking is wrought with difficulties.
Source material islimited to the New Testament (NT), and more specifically
to the four gospels. Because they were primarily written to convert unbe-
lievers and strengthen the resolve of the faithful, these gospels fail to provide
much of the crucial historical information sought by biographers. The works

4 ibid, p. 10.
5 ibid, p. 11.
6 ibid, p. 13.