Evangelicals make all sorts of claims about God, Jesus, Christianity, and the Bible. Most often, these utterances of certainty are little more than regurgitations of what church members hear from their pastors on Sundays. Unsurprisingly, most Evangelicals don’t regularly read or study the Bible. That’s why, week after week, pastors encourage congregants to read the Bible; to invest time in knowing and understanding the Word of God. Sometimes church members are warned about neglecting the Bible, but these warning often fall on deaf ears. Whatever “Bible” congregants will learn, they will learn it during regularly scheduled church services. Their theology becomes whatever their pastors believe and preach.
Pastors make all sorts of pronouncements from the pulpit, often speaking authoritatively when they have no grounds to do so. Congregants carry these authoritative utterances into the wild, repeating them as if they were gospel. Yesterday, I listened to a young, uneducated Evangelical woman as she claimed that “Jesus is the most attested person in human history.” I laughed as I heard this, knowing she was likely repeating a claim made by her pastor or an apologist. This claim, of course, is a big, fat whopper. While I certainly think Jesus was a historical figure, we know very little about his life. Jesus didn’t leave behind any writings. The gospels were written by unknown authors, decades after the death of Jesus. These gospels tell conflicting stories about the life of Jesus. Outside of the Bible, we have a handful of historical references to Jesus. That’s it. So, to say that Jesus was the most attested person in human history is absurd.
Compare the life of Jesus to that of mine. We know very little about the first thirty years of his life. Most of what we know about Jesus takes place in the last three years of his life. And what we do know often is contradictory. We don’t even know when Jesus was born, whereas the historical record reveals exactly when I was born: date, time, place, attending physician. My life is well attested in oral, written, and photographical form. I am the main subject of this blog, and I have been mentioned in countless books, magazines, newspapers, blogs, and social media sites. When someone does a search on “Bruce Gerencser,” they receive pages and pages of links. It is clear, at least to me, that my life is more attested in human history than that of Jesus. And I suspect the same can be said for many of us. We live in the twenty-first century. We have owned computers and had Internet access for almost 40 years. Data about all of us continues to accumulate, especially for those of us who are public figures. Jesus? We haven’t heard a word from him in two thousand years. All we know about him is recorded in the gospels and a handful of extra-Biblical texts. The most attested person in human history he is not, contrary to what over-confident preachers utter on Sundays.
Bruce Gerencser, 69, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 48 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
You can email Bruce via the Contact Form.
Want to Respond to Bruce? Fire Away! If You Are a First Time Commenter, Please Read the Comment Policy Located at the Top of the Page.