THE HISTORICAL JESUS.

Press, Volume LXVI, Issue 20096, 27 November 1930, Page 7

THE HISTORICAL JESUS.

LECTURE BY DR. J. J. NORTH.

"The Historical Evidence for the Existence of Jesus" was the subject of a lecture given by the Kov. J. J. North, D.D., principal of tlie Baptist Training College, Auckland, at the Oxford Terrace Baptist Church last evening, when Mr E. J. D. Ilercus presided. There was a good attendance. The question, said Dr. North, was whether Jesus was a myth, formed suddenly like an icicle in the night, or slowly like a stalactite in a cave, or whether lie was historically real. In a world which had been full of religious speculation Christianity had gained its footing on the ground of the historicity of Jesus: it had maintained that the Hero God had been living a few years before, under the Roman Emperor, subject to their census, and that His death had been recorded. Then, when doubts on this matter were to be expected, none had doubted that such a man had lived. Even the Jews, who had most to gain by proving that He was a fabrication, had merely maintained that the Christians had misunderstood Jesus. Had there been any doubt on the matter they could have said, "Such a man never lived, you have invented Him," but they did not. Doubt concerning His historical existence had not been brought forward until Napoleon's time, and it was largely based oil the ground of tlie paucity of reference to Jesus in the contemporary literature. There was as much evidence for Jesus—m fact more —as there was for Socrates or Alexander the Great, and nobody doubted that these two men had really lived. Dr. North quoted references to the Christians existing as a sect in the Roman world shortly after the year 30 A.D. and to the man Christ as their founder, from Tacitus (55-120 A.D.), Suetonius, and from Pliny's letters. It had to be remembered that Jesus at thqt time would naturally not loom large in the eyes of historians, for He had been of obscure origin, had lived In Judea, on the outer fringe of the Roman world, and had not occupied or sought to occupy a world stage. It was interesting that'He had, been noticed at all by contemporary historians. It was impossible also to reject the evidence of the Gospels and of the letters of Paul, for original letters were one of the surest bases for historical truth. Paul in the Epistles was much occupied in dispute with those who claimed to have known Jesus, and who claimed authority because of it. If Jesus was not real, then the mountains were but shadows and the sun itself only a ghost.