#STRask - No One Wrote About Jesus During His Lifetime

Episode Date: July 14, 2025

Questions about how to respond to the concern that no one wrote about Jesus during his lifetime, why scholars say Jesus was born in AD 5–6 rather than AD 1, and what Paul meant when he said God sent his son “when the fullness of the time came.”   What should I say to someone who is hung up on the fact that no one wrote about Jesus during his lifetime? If Jesus’ birth started AD 1, why do scholars say he was born in AD 5–6? Paul says in Galatians 4:4–5 that God sent his son “when the fullness of the time came.” What was “just right” about that point in history, and is God doing anything special in our day?

This is the hashtag S here ask podcast. Welcome to you. I'm Amy Hall and I'm here with Greg Kogel. And Greg, are you ready for the first question today? Yes, I am. I think. We'll see, won't we? Fire away, Amos. All right. So this one comes from Vani. My brother is hung up on the fact that no one wrote about Jesus during his lifetime, but writers have done this about other historical figures. I guess I would want to ask, what is the liability of that? What is the problem of that? All right. I guess the presumption is, if he was such a great man, then why weren't other people writing about him as they did about other great

men? But of course, Jesus wasn't a great man in that sense in his time. He's a man who had a great influence afterwards. There's a famous poster meme, I guess you could call it now. This is before memes were memes. Talking about one solitary life and it listed all the inconsequential elements of the life of Jesus of Nazareth. He only was in his ministry for three and a half years. He never went to school. He didn't get a degree. He didn't this, that, and the other thing. In other words, all of the kind of qualifications that make men noticeable to other men, Jesus didn't have. And then it goes on to say, but in this one solitary life, no one has influenced the world more than that. Now, J. Warner Wallace has made a

magnificent case for this in his book, A Person of Interest, alright? And so all of that impact came later, and as a result, the historical references by other writers came later. All right? So this is where the somewhat around 17 additional sources in non-Christian writings, secular writers like Josephus, etc., etc., Tacitus, Pliny, these show up because of the impact of Jesus of Nazareth in that early history during which they wrote. So you do see it there, but you don't see it while Jesus was an itinerant preacher in a country not even the size of New Jersey,

during a period of time where people like him never got national attention. There was no reason for him to do that. The others, like who wrote about Caesar, for example, well, he was the leader of the nation and others like that. But not Jesus at his time. But the thing is, he does have, in a certain sense, biographers who wrote extensively about him accounts that historians trust. Now they don't believe everything in the counts because they have a predisposition against supernatural claims, all right? But even the most well-known, currently most well-known New Testament or gospel critic, Bart Ehrman, wrote a book about Jesus, all drawing from the Gospels. And when he had an objector in an event, and I have the video

of it, many have seen it, who said, I don't see any evidence that Jesus even existed, Bart Ehrman jumps in and says, well, I do. I wrote a whole book about it. And there's a reason why we believe the things that we do about Jesus, because he is attested by multiple sources, the sources corroborate each other, and the sources are early. So from a historian's perspective, in this case, a critical historian, another one, in other words, a person who does not believe everything in the Gospels. I mean, after all, he's the one who wrote misquoting Jesus and a whole bunch of others. He affirms the basic reliability of the historical material in the Gospels. Now, he thinks it's been glamorized, etc., etc., but what my point here is that Jesus did not go unnoticed in his time, but his life was written about by the people who were most intimately acquainted with the details of

his life, all right, and during the lives of the eyewitnesses of the events themselves. So we have every reason to have confidence in these documents. The history of civilization, which is a multi-tome work by Will and Ariel Durant, which is a Pulitzer Prize winning historical reference material, I guess you could say it's the greatest work of history in history, most best-selling, whatever. And they have a whole volume on Caesar and the Christ. So historians take the material seriously, even if no one outside of the Christian circles wrote extensively about Jesus of Nazareth. So in a way, I'm offering a rebuttal, I mean a rationale why somebody didn't write, but even if nobody else wrote, any famous historians of the period, how is that a liability on the Gospels, the Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John

primary sources, historical material that we have about Jesus of Nazareth? It's mistaken thinking from the outset. Well, nobody else wrote about him. So what? I mean, this is a rejoinder, so what, that applies to a massive number of objections that people make about Christianity. What follows from the observation, even if it were true, and I suspect that's an accurate observation, but even if it were true, what follows from that? And the answer is nothing follows from that with regards to the reliability of the New Testament documents. You have to measure, assess the reliability of those documents on their own merits. Not because, well, somebody else didn't write about it, you know, only Christians wrote about it. There's a fairly well-known John Loftist who, when I started reading his book on atheism and his critique

of Christianity, he said, I just disregard the Gospels because they're all written by Christians. It's a classic example of the genetic fallacy. All right? And this is a smart guy. Loftist is smart, but he makes these foolish mistakes in thinking because spiritual issues are the issue. It's like somebody is saying, if you disregard all the evidence we have, then we have no evidence.

That's exactly right. So there's no, like you said, there's no reason to disregard it. I also think, Vani, it's unclear here, because you didn't actually give a reason why your brother is concerned about this. This is just a statement no one wrote during his lifetime and other writers did. Like you said, what follows from that? You need to find out why that concerns him. Why specifically?

Is he saying it was added to later? Is he saying Jesus didn't exist? I mean, there's all sorts of different concerns that could be behind this statement that you need to figure out what they are. So yeah, and that video of Ehrman is on our website at str.org. If anyone puts his name into our search, you should be able to find it. Yeah, it's magnificent, actually. I quoted extensively from that video in Street Smart and the references there as well. People have that book. But yeah, it's amazing that such a harsh critic of Christianity would make such a robust defense of the basic historicity of the Gospels.

And then one thing I wanted to say is that, again, and you've touched on this already, Greg, but when you think about it, why would anyone have written about Jesus during his time? He didn't start his ministry until a few years before his death, and even then, he didn't start causing problems until the end of that. So if he didn't, and on top of that, so it was only a few years, he didn't start doing anything controversial and stirring things up until the end of that. So if he didn't – and on top of that, so it was only a few years, he didn't start doing anything controversial and stirring things up until the end. Nothing newsworthy in a sense. Right. Because before that, of course, Israel had all sorts of teachers. It didn't mean

everybody all over the world was writing about them. And then on top of all of that, you have the fact that the main thing Jesus did was at the very end of his life, his death and resurrection. So it's hard for someone to write about that while Jesus is alive, you know, before his death and resurrection. So there's all sorts of reasons why people didn't write about it early. But of course, you have a lot written about him very soon afterwards, particularly by Paul, who's probably earlier than any of the Gospels. And you have the Creed in 1 Corinthians that can be traced back to within a couple of years of Jesus' resurrection.

1 Corinthians 15. 1 Corinthians 15, the first few verses of that, are all about his, you know, dying for our sins and being raised from the grave and all this. That was very, very soon. So you have early, early information about Jesus. You have information from people who knew Jesus. Also early, too early for huge legends to grow up. So all of these concerns, you already addressed the concern about Jesus not existing by mentioning Bart Ehrman. So this is the concern about it not being early. And so both those concerns can be covered. And so this just really isn't a valid problem to have.

Valid concern. Now some would say, well, if he's working all these miracles like the Gospels say then, why wouldn't that be news? All right. What's interesting, partly, part of it assumes kind of a news cycle mentality like we have today and the ability to produce news. Nobody produced news back then, you know. But it's interesting though that the Talmud that speaks about Jesus said that he was executed because he was a sorcerer. Now what is the implication of that? Calling him a sorcerer is probably a reference to his working or allegedly working miraculous deeds,

all right? That's why they would call him a sorcerer, not just a false teacher. But he had sorcery at his disposal, you know, and he, as the Jewish leadership then said, you are doing your works by the power of the devil, which is what sorcery amounts to, at least in their terminology. So there is an attestation even to his miraculous deeds by a hostile witness there. All right, here's a question from Jeremy. If Jesus' birth starts the 0-1 AD, why do most scholars say he was born 5-6 BC? I've always struggled with this. Okay, I'm not sure why the struggle, okay? Now, on the one hand, I can see someone scratching

their head. But if you know anything about the calendar, the calendar is a man-made feature, okay? And so when the calendar was first established, they didn't have the resources to pinpoint with any accuracy the actual birth date of Jesus, all right? Again, this to some degree presumes sophistication, cultural sophistication that just wasn't in place at the time. No, didn't people have calendars? Sure, they had calendars. That's where you get, I want to say the Gregorian calendar, or maybe it's the Georgia, it starts with a G, but whatever the calendar is that we're working from, that's where we get that. There's a calendar that was set up. The question is, what is the, in a certain sense,

the zero hour of that calendar? Where do you start the calendar from? And they started the calendar at one point, which turns out in further assessment was not the point that Jesus actually was born. And we know this because it has to do with the death of one of the rulers that's listed in the Gospel of Luke or Matthew, the birth accounts. And historically, well, we certainly know when this ruler, Caesar Augustus, I think died,

and according to the calendar dates, he died before Jesus was born, or before the zero year, which there is no zero year actually. You go from one to one, okay? But nevertheless, he died before that, but Jesus was alive before he died, and he died before, I want to say the zero date, but I just said there was no such thing. But you know what I'm talking about? The commencement of the calendar. So all this represents is just some faulty bookkeeping, so to speak, of calendar makers. Yeah, it's not a conflict between Scripture and what scholars are saying about when he

was born. Because Scripture didn't establish that calendar. Exactly. Yeah, you're right. This was all manmade, so it's nothing to worry about. What it does is establishes the political context in which Jesus was born, the rulers, the people, the geographical setting and all these things with some clarity. So this is why we know, because we have that information, that it doesn't, the actual historical information does not match up with the calendar assessment or the calendar creation.

It's not as if they, back then Jesus said, this is year 30. That wasn't how it worked out. Do you know when they established the calendar? I don't. Okay. I think it's either Georgian or Gregorian. It starts with a G. It was much later though. Yeah, it could have been a couple hundred years later. I'm not

sure. And now they, in deference to certain sensibilities, they don't even, they don't use AD and BC anymore. In scholarship, they use BCE and, before the common era, which is that dating system, or in the common era. And it's the same thing as BC, before Christ, and AD, Anno Domini, which is Latin, the year of our Lord. But they just use different terminology now. Okay, let's do a question from James. In Galatians 4, 4 and 5, Paul says, When the fullness of the time came, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, so that he might redeem those who were under the law, that we might receive the adoption. So what was just right about that point in history, and how might God be at work since then

at that time? Is he doing anything special in our day? Well, the just right at the fullness of time is God's, in a certain sense, God's assessment of the circumstances that Paul was aware of enough to write this down. All right. Now, J. Warner Wallace in his book, Person of Interest, actually does some work on this, and others have done it too. Why was Jesus being born at this time ideal? Well, it was ideal in a number of ways. The location and also the Pax Romana and the lingua franca, the trade language was Greek, and this provided a vehicle for very clear, precise communication. There were trade routes that were going through that Middle East area. It was a bottleneck of sorts where massive numbers

of people or representatives from massive numbers of nations, maybe that's the better way of putting it, could pass through and be influenced by the gospel, which by the way, within a few hundred years, actually a little more than 300, Christianity became the religious coin of the realm, for goodness sake. No, 400 years. It was after Constantine. He didn't do that. The Edict of Milan just made Christianity legal and that ended the persecution, but

it wasn't until later in the fourth century that Christianity became the religion of the realm, so to speak. But nevertheless, I mean, it's amazing how the entire Mediterranean Roman Empire region and beyond was captivated by the gospel message. And the only blood that was shed to accomplish that was the blood of the Christians themselves. So it wasn't a military effort like it was with the Muslims. And so you can see the influence, you know, the flow of influence there that I think will help us see that there's some sense to the statement in the fullness of time.

Now there's probably a whole lot more that such a statement pertains to, all right? But at least we can say, and all we can do, this is God's perspective in the fullness of time. It must be, it might be a whole bunch of other things. But we can look culturally and see in a certain sense the propriety of that at the time, how that fit into a larger plan that effectively and eventually brought the gospel to the entire world. Yeah, so that is, you've touched a lot on the outside, what was going on outside of Israel, but we can also look at what was going on inside of Israel because God had to go

through a very long process of choosing Abraham and building up an entire culture and creating a whole system of sacrifice and they got the Mosaic Law and they were shaped as a people to the point where they would recognize Jesus when he came, and there would be a culture for him to fit into, and that would make sense. You plop Jesus down in Abraham's time, and nobody would understand what had happened. In this way, we see that God is faithful to his promises. We see a whole lot about God. We see his sovereignty. We see all the things that he was doing to bring about this particular situation where Jesus would be put to death on the cross for our sins. And there was so much that went into that, and there's so much that's involved with

making sense of that, that God couldn't have done that any earlier or wouldn't have made sense to them. There wouldn't have, I mean, there's a huge, just look at your Bible, look at how much happened before then, leading up to that. And the cross is the pinnacle of what, of the whole story of redemption. So that's what it was leading up to. So in terms of the culture, that was the right time. In terms of the outside culture, this was the right time.

What do you think about his last question? How might God be at work since then? And is he doing anything special in our day? Well, let me make one other observation. Judaism and the nation of Israel came to a crushing halt in 70 AD with the destruction of Jerusalem, the invasion by the Romans, Titus of Rome, and how the whole temple system was destroyed, and the people were scattered. Okay, so all of the thousands of years of history leading up to the point of Jesus

could not continue after Rome destroyed essentially the Jewish nation and scattered them. Now the question, I think, can only be answered in a way consistent with the point that Paul was making in the fullness of time. So it has to be answered theologically. We can't just say, oh, well, God's doing stuff now, or is God doing stuff now? What is it that he's doing now? God has been doing stuff from the very beginning and he will continue to do stuff all the way till the final moment, okay? The final eschaton, so to speak, when it all comes to an end and a conclusion in terms of world

history as we know it. All right, God is always working, okay? Now, knowing where it is that God's working in the micro is sometimes difficult. In the macro, you can see trends, all right? Certainly in the micro, you can see individual instances where it seems God's hand is clearly in play, all right? God's hand is clearly in play, all right? But in general, in terms of the theological plan, all that came to pass in the life of Jesus is now going forward. I mean, think of the Great Commission.

All power has been given to me. Go and make disciples, baptizing, teaching, and lo, I'm with you always." So now we have a new commission. The commission for Abraham came to a fulfillment largely in the life of Jesus, and now there's a new commission in light of the new covenant. And so what God is doing now is in virtue of this new commission and the new covenant going forward. So God is moving that forward. The gospel is going to the nations, and God is in the midst of working in individual people's lives, answering prayers, rescuing as is oftentimes, and often not rescuing, but building and restoring through suffering, so that, as Paul puts it, every Christian can be presented complete in Christ. And I think this is a goal that's often overlooked.

We want to see God working. Well, when we say that, oftentimes we mean I want to see something supernatural happen, like I've got all this trouble in my own life,, I want to see something supernatural happen. Like, I've got all this trouble in my own life, and I want to see a miracle that takes this trouble away, or else God's not working. No, God is working in the trouble, troubling you on purpose, to make you complete in Christ. Momentary light affliction is producing for us, Paul says in 2 Corinthians, an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison. And so, in the famous Rowan's passage that we know that God causes all things to work for good, all things, for those who love him and are called according to his purpose for, those whom he foreknew, he predestined to become conformed to the image of his son. So there's the whole piece there from beginning to end, the entire context there.

God is working good through all the hardship to conform us to be like Jesus. That is God's major work here. And he does it in all kinds of different ways. But the most poignant way and most effective way is he lets bad things stay bad for us to use them for good. He doesn't take the bad. Even Jesus learned piety through the things that he suffered. That's Hebrews, and he's our example. And then even, and you touched on this too, that, and even the bigger picture is that he's gathering his church. He's bringing all of his people to himself. And when the

fullness of everyone has come in, then it will, the next thing on the list is Jesus return and resurrection and all that sort of thing. And judgment and- Yes. And so we can see it, we can just, we can look at Revelation to see what the next thing on the list is. I mean how that all plays out exactly. There are disagreements, but just in the big picture, we know what's coming. So this is what God is working towards now.

All right, that's it. Thank you so much, Vani and Jeremy and James. We appreciate hearing from you. Send us your question on Twitter with the hashtag, strask, or go to our website at str.org. We look forward to hearing from you, send us your question on Twitter with the hashtag STRask or go to our website at str.org. We look forward to hearing from you. This is Amy Hall and Greg Kockel for Stand to Reason. TING! MUSIC