Some Jesus Mythicists in their attempts to discredit a historical Jesus look at the first century Jewish texts and their supposed silence on Jesus. The Gospels portray Jesus and his disciples interacting with other Jews, especially the Pharisees and Sadducees. If these Jewish leaders really had a conflict with Jesus, then surely they would have written about it. Since they didn’t, we should assume that Jesus never existed.
All of this assumes that there is a large quantity of first century Jewish texts and that it is surprising that they would be silent about Jesus. But how many first century Jewish texts do we have?
I encourage you to check out this helpful timeline of Jewish texts. It may surprise you that there are only three Jewish texts listed for the first century:
- Philo
- Josephus
- Shemoneh Esreh
I have addressed Philo here and have talked about Josephus many times, who I believe does mention Jesus.
You may be less familiar with the Shemoneh Esreh, also known as the Amidah. There is a long standing debate over whether one of the benedictions that includes a curse on heretics refers to Jewish followers of Jesus.
The point is that we do not have piles and piles of Jewish texts where the Pharisees and Sadducees are reflecting on their theological opponents and Jesus is strangely missing.
We have three Jewish texts from the first century and there is a good case that one of them mentions Jesus.
