Argument

Messiahs Before Jesus Objection Defeater

Intro

The objection usually comes in one of two forms. The first is "Jesus was not special. There were lots of messiahs back then, and he was just one more." The second is stronger: "There was a messiah before Jesus who died and rose in three days. It is written on a stone older than Christianity. The Christians copied the story."

Start by agreeing with the true part. There really were many men in Jesus's time who claimed to be Israel's king or deliverer. The New Testament says so itself. In the book of Acts, a respected Jewish teacher named Gamaliel names two of them, Theudas and Judas of Galilee, and Jesus warned that "many shall come in my name, saying, I am the Christ" (Matthew 24:5, ASV). Nobody discovered this fact to embarrass Christians. Christians wrote it down first.

Now look at what happened to every one of them. The Jewish historian Josephus tells their stories. Simon, a former slave of Herod, put on a crown and was beheaded. Theudas promised to split the Jordan River, and Roman soldiers cut off his head. Judas of Galilee led a revolt against a Roman tax and died; later, two of his sons were crucified. A prophet from Egypt promised that Jerusalem's walls would fall, then ran away and was never seen again. A hundred years after Jesus, the greatest rabbi of the day called Simon bar Kokhba the Messiah, and he was killed in a war that devastated Judea. Every time, the leader died and the movement fell apart, or the followers went looking for a new leader.

Jesus's movement is the one exception. His followers had seen him crucified, which to them looked like the worst possible ending. Two of them said, "we hoped that it was he who should redeem Israel" (Luke 24:21, ASV), in the past tense. Yet within weeks they were calling him the Messiah in Jerusalem, and they said the reason was that God had raised him from the dead. Nobody said that about Simon, Theudas, Judas or Bar Kokhba.

What about the stone? It is a real stone tablet with ink writing, bought from an antiquities dealer, with no record of where it was found. One scholar, Israel Knohl, read one faded word as "live," so the line said "in three days, live." Most experts who studied it read the same word as "the sign," and in 2011 Knohl himself agreed that "sign" is the more likely reading. The stone also never names the man Knohl thought it was about. A guessed name and a disputed word are not evidence that Christians copied anything.

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In full

Defeater for the objection in three forms. (A) The "one of many" form: "First-century Judea was full of messiahs; Jesus is one more, so nothing about him is unique." (B) The precedent form: "A Jewish messiah died and was believed to rise after three days before Jesus, as shown by the Gabriel's Revelation tablet or by Israel Knohl's 2000 reconstruction from the Dead Sea Scrolls, so the resurrection story was borrowed." (C) The invention form: "The messiah idea existed before Jesus, so the church simply fitted him to it."

This page divides the labor with its neighbors. Copycat-Christ Hypothesis and Dying and Rising God Motif answer the pagan-parallel version (Horus, Mithras, Dionysus). Essene Origin of Christianity Objection Defeater answers the claim that the Teacher of Righteousness at Qumran was a proto-Jesus. Christ Before Jesus Thesis Defeater answers the mythicist claim that Jesus was assembled in the second century. Failed Messianic Prophecy Objection Defeater and Jesus Failed the Messianic Job Description Objection Defeater answer whether Jesus fulfilled the prophecies. This page takes the narrower historical question: does the existence of other messianic claimants, or of a supposed rising messiah before Jesus, explain away the Christian claim?

The defeat structure has five steps. (1) Concession: the claimants are real, and the New Testament names them first. (2) The fate test: in every documented case the leader was killed or vanished and the movement scattered or found a new leader, as Gamaliel argued in Acts 5:36-39, as Origen noted in the third century, and as N. T. Wright argues in The Resurrection of the Son of God. (3) The reversal: only Jesus's movement proclaimed its executed leader Messiah after his death, and it gave the resurrection as the reason. (4) The precedent test: the Gabriel's Revelation reading "in three days, live" has given way to "in three days, the sign," a reading its main advocate accepted in 2011, and Knohl's earlier slain-messiah thesis rests on an assumed name and fragmentary hymns. (5) Expectation is not invention: Christians have always said the Messiah was promised before Jesus came; prior hope explains why people asked "is this the one?", not why a crucified man was hailed as the risen Lord.

What the page does not claim. It does not claim that Jesus was the only man ever called a messiah, that the Gabriel tablet is a forgery, or that the uniqueness of the Christian claim by itself proves the resurrection. The claim is that the other messiahs are evidence against the objection: they show what normally happened when a messiah died, and the Jesus movement did the opposite. Whether the resurrection happened is argued in Argument from the Resurrection and Minimal Facts Argument.

Argument structure

Form

Defensive (a defeater). P1 is a concession that removes the objection's surprise value. P2 is an inductive pattern built from the dated record in Josephus, Tacitus and the Talmud. P3 shows the one exception to that pattern and the reason its own members gave for it. P4 is an epigraphic test of the specific precedent claim. P5 answers the genetic-fallacy form (Genetic Fallacy): where an idea came from does not settle whether an event happened. Soundness is contemporary: the fate of the claimants is not disputed, and the reading of the Gabriel tablet has moved decisively away from the "live" reading the objection needs.

Cheatsheet

The 30-second reply (read aloud). You're right that there were other messiahs. The Bible names some of them. But look at how each one ended. Simon put on a crown and was beheaded. Theudas said he'd split the Jordan, and the Romans cut off his head. Judas of Galilee died and his sons were crucified. The Egyptian ran off and vanished. Bar Kokhba was hailed as Messiah by the greatest rabbi of his day and was killed. Every time, the leader died and the movement broke up or found a new leader. Jesus is the one case where the followers watched him die on a cross and then said he was the Messiah anyway, because he rose. As for the stone that says "in three days, live": most scholars read that word as "sign," and the scholar who made the claim agreed in 2011 that "sign" is more likely. So why did this one movement do what none of the others did?

The 5 fast facts:

1. The claimants are real. Josephus says that after Herod's death, whenever the rebels "lighted upon any one to head them, he was created a king immediately" (Antiquities 17.285, Whiston). Gamaliel names Theudas and Judas of Galilee in Acts 5:36-37.
2. Every one ended in death or disappearance. Simon of Peraea beheaded by Gratus (Ant. 17.276); Theudas beheaded under Fadus, c. AD 44-46 (Ant. 20.97-98); the sons of Judas of Galilee, James and Simon, crucified under Tiberius Alexander, c. AD 46-48 (Ant. 20.102); the Egyptian "did not appear any more" (Ant. 20.172); Simon bar Giora executed at Rome's triumph, AD 71 (War 7.153-155); Bar Kokhba killed when his revolt was crushed, AD 135.
3. Gamaliel and Origen both drew the lesson. Gamaliel: their followers "were dispersed, and came to nought" (Acts 5:36, ASV). Origen, about AD 248: after Theudas died "his deluded followers were completely dispersed," and Judas's doctrine "was overturned" (Against Celsus 1.57).
4. Only one movement claimed its dead leader rose. N. T. Wright: such movements "routinely" ended "with the violent death of the central figure," after which followers gave up or found another messiah (Surprised by Scripture, 2014; argued at length in The Resurrection of the Son of God, 2003).
5. The stone's key word reads "sign." Ronald Hendel, Elisha Qimron and Alexey Yuditsky, and Moshe Bar-Asher all rejected "live" in line 80; Knohl accepted in 2011 that "sign" is more probable (in Matthias Henze, ed., Hazon Gabriel, 2011).

The 3 strongest counter-moves:

• "How did those movements end?" Walk through them one by one. The pattern does the arguing.
• "Why didn't they just pick a new messiah?" Jesus's brother James led the Jerusalem church and was respected by all. Nobody ever called him the Messiah. Why not, if that was the normal move?
• "What does the stone actually say?" Ask whether the objector knows the word is disputed and that its main advocate gave up the reading.

Reciprocal concessions (grant the small point, then collect a bigger one):

• Grant: there were many messianic claimants, and Jesus was executed as one ("King of the Jews"). Now collect: then you have supplied the control group. Every other case shows what happens when a messiah is killed: the movement ends or moves on. Jesus's did neither, so the comparison makes the resurrection claim harder to explain, not easier.
• Grant: some Jews before Jesus may have expected a suffering or slain messiah (Isaiah 53, Daniel 9:26, Zechariah 12:10, and the later Messiah ben Joseph tradition). Now collect: then the cross was not a foreign idea that Christians had to invent, and Jesus's predictions of his death fit his own Scriptures. Knohl himself presents Jesus as a successor who could take up that pattern, not as a later invention.
• Grant: the Gabriel tablet is probably authentic and pre-Christian. Now collect: then its best reading is "in three days, the sign," which is not a resurrection, and it never names the man you say it describes.

The closing line. The other messiahs are not Jesus's rivals in this argument. They are his witnesses. Each one shows what should have happened after Good Friday, and none of it did.

P1, The claimants are real, and the Bible names them first

Affirmative case

1. Josephus describes a crowd of kings after Herod. On Herod's death in 4 BC, revolts broke out across the land. Judas son of Hezekiah seized the armory at Sepphoris "out of an ambitious desire of the royal dignity" (Antiquities 17.271-272). Simon, a former royal slave, "was so bold as to put a diadem on his head" and burned the palace at Jericho (Ant. 17.273-274; Tacitus confirms him, Histories 5.9). Athronges, a shepherd, "was so bold as to set up for king" (Ant. 17.278). Josephus sums up: "as the several companies of the seditious lighted upon any one to head them, he was created a king immediately" (Ant. 17.285, Whiston).
2. More followed in the first century. Judas of Galilee led the revolt against the census of AD 6 (Ant. 18.4-6). Theudas told the people "he was a prophet, and that he would, by his own command, divide the river" (Ant. 20.97). An Egyptian prophet promised that "at his command, the walls of Jerusalem would fall down" (Ant. 20.170). Menahem, son of Judas of Galilee, "returned in the state of a king to Jerusalem" in AD 66 (Jewish War 2.434). Simon bar Giora led the defense of Jerusalem in AD 70.
3. After Jesus came Bar Kokhba. The Jerusalem Talmud records that Rabbi Akiva, on seeing Simon bar Kosiba, said "this is the king messiah," and Yohanan ben Torta answered that grass would grow from Akiva's cheeks before the son of David came (y. Taanit 4:5). See Jesus Failed the Messianic Job Description Objection Defeater for how this bears on the messianic criteria.
4. The New Testament records the phenomenon itself. Gamaliel names Theudas and Judas (Acts 5:36-37). A Roman officer mistakes Paul for "the Egyptian, who before these days stirred up to sedition and led out into the wilderness the four thousand men of the Assassins" (Acts 21:38, ASV). Jesus warned, "there shall arise false Christs, and false prophets" (Matthew 24:24, ASV).

Anticipated objections

1. "Then Jesus was just one more."
2. "Josephus never mentions these men because he wanted to hide Jewish messianism. Jesus was one of many, and the Christians simply won."
3. "Acts gets Theudas wrong. Josephus puts him around AD 45, after Gamaliel's speech, so Acts is unreliable here."

Rebuttals

1. "One of many" is where the argument starts, not where it ends. Being one of a class is how historians find out what is unusual. Every other member of this class shared the same ending (P2). The question is why one member did not.
2. Josephus does mention them, as kings and prophets. He usually avoids the word "messiah," which is a fair point about his reticence. But he describes their royal claims plainly, and he names Jesus "who was called Christ" when he records the death of his brother James (Ant. 20.200). Josephus's silence about messianism does not make the other movements survive; his narrative shows that they did not.
3. It is a real difficulty, and an old one. Josephus dates his Theudas to the governorship of Fadus (AD 44-46), and Gamaliel's speech is earlier. Two solutions are proposed: Luke and Josephus describe different men named Theudas (a common name, in a period Josephus says produced rebels without number), or one of the two writers has the date wrong. Origen in the third century placed a Theudas "before the birth of Christ" (Against Celsus 1.57). Nothing in this page's argument depends on resolving it: on either dating, Theudas was beheaded and his movement vanished. See Acts as History (Ramsay's Verification) for Luke's record where it can be checked.

P2, Every movement died with its leader

Affirmative case

1. The record, claimant by claimant.

2. Gamaliel's argument depended on this pattern. He did not say the claimants were all frauds. He said their followers "were dispersed, and came to nought" and were "scattered abroad," and that a movement "of men" would "be overthrown" (Acts 5:36-37, Acts 5:38-39, ASV). His audience knew the pattern well enough for it to carry the argument.
3. Origen made the same point to a pagan critic. Answering Celsus, he wrote that after Theudas's death "his deluded followers were completely dispersed," and that when Judas of Galilee "had paid the penalty of his rebellion, his doctrine was overturned, having taken hold of very few persons indeed" (Against Celsus 1.57, ANF 4). See Origen.
4. Wright's survey: give up, or find another messiah. N. T. Wright argues that Jewish messianic and prophetic movements of the period "routinely" ended "with the violent death of the central figure," after which members faced a choice: abandon the cause or find a new messiah (Surprised by Scripture, 2014, condensing The Resurrection of the Son of God, 2003). The family of Judas of Galilee shows the second option: leadership passed to his sons and then to Menahem and to Eleazar at Masada, "a descendant from that Judas" (War 7.253). Nobody claimed Judas was alive. See N.T. Wright.
5. Bar Kokhba shows the same thing a century later. He was the best-supported messianic claimant in Jewish history, backed by Akiva himself. When he died, the claim died with him. Maimonides later reasoned that the sages concluded he was not the Messiah once he was killed (Mishneh Torah, Kings 11:3; see Maimonides).

Anticipated objections

1. "We only have Josephus's side. Maybe some of these movements did claim their leader rose, and the record was lost."
2. "The Jesus movement survived because it was non-violent and spiritual, not because anyone thought he rose."
3. "Other movements did survive their founders: John the Baptist's followers continued after his death."

Rebuttals

1. Then name one. The claim is an argument from a hypothetical lost source. The sources we have, Jewish, Roman and Christian, record no such claim for any of these men, and Christian writers such as Origen, who had every reason to deal with a rival, knew of none.
2. That fits half the evidence. Non-violence explains why the Romans did not crush Jesus's followers in battle. It does not explain why they called a crucified man Messiah, a title that meant a living king who defeats Israel's enemies. A dead messiah was, by definition, a failed one. See Cursed Messiah Objection Defeater on why crucifixion made the claim worse, not easier.
3. John's case confirms the pattern. John was regarded as a prophet, and some wondered whether he was the Christ. After his execution, disciples who continued in his name are mentioned (Acts 19:1-7), but none of them proclaimed that John had been raised and was Lord. A remembered teacher survives his death; a messiah, as a messiah, does not, unless something happens.

P3, Jesus's movement did the opposite

Affirmative case

1. Crucifixion looked like the end. On the road to Emmaus, two disciples described Jesus as "a prophet mighty in deed and word" whom the authorities "crucified," and said, "we hoped that it was he who should redeem Israel" (Luke 24:21, ASV). The tense is past. That is how the other movements ended too.
2. Then they proclaimed him Messiah, in the city that killed him. "Let all the house of Israel therefore know assuredly, that God hath made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom ye crucified" (Acts 2:36, ASV). Paul's received creed, dated by most scholars to within a few years of the crucifixion, gives death, burial, resurrection and named witnesses (1 Corinthians 15:3-7; see Pre-Pauline Creeds).
3. They gave the resurrection as the reason. Paul says Jesus "was declared to be the Son of God with power... by the resurrection from the dead" (Romans 1:4, ASV), and that "if Christ hath not been raised, then is our preaching vain" (1 Corinthians 15:14, ASV). They did not argue that a dead messiah could still be the messiah. They argued that he was not dead.
4. A hostile Roman saw the reversal. Tacitus wrote that Christus "suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus, and a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judaea, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome" (Annals 15.44). "Checked for the moment, again broke out" is exactly what did not happen to the others.
5. They did not choose a new messiah. Jesus's brother James led the Jerusalem church and was well known; Josephus calls him "the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ" (Ant. 20.200). On the usual pattern, a royal relative was the obvious successor. Nobody called James the Messiah. The title stayed with the one who had been crucified.

Anticipated objections

1. "The disciples could not accept failure, so they reinterpreted it."
2. "Movements sometimes grow after a prophecy fails (cognitive dissonance)."

Rebuttals

1. Then why did no other group do it? Every movement in the table had followers who could not accept failure. Grief and loyalty were common; a resurrection claim was not. Reinterpretation is a cause present in every case, so it cannot explain the one case that differs. See Resurrection-Centric Growth Argument.
2. The studies cited for that effect describe a different situation. The usual example is a group that predicted a date and then reinterpreted it. The disciples did not report a reinterpreted prediction; they reported meeting Jesus alive, and many of them, Paul and James included, had not been in the movement at all. See Minimal Facts Argument.

P4, The "rose in three days" stone does not say that

Affirmative case

1. What the tablet is. Gabriel's Revelation (Hazon Gabriel) is a limestone tablet about 93 cm high with 87 lines of Hebrew written in ink, a collection of first-person prophecies. It was reportedly found near the Dead Sea in Jordan around 2000, passed through a dealer and was bought by the collector David Jeselsohn. It has no excavation record. Ada Yardeni and Binyamin Elitzur published the first edition in 2007 and dated the script to the late first century BC or early first century AD.
2. Knohl's reading. Israel Knohl read line 80 as "In three days, live, I Gabriel com[mand] yo[u]," and took it as a command to rise addressed to Simon of Peraea, the rebel beheaded in 4 BC (Knohl, "The Messiah Son of Joseph," Biblical Archaeology Review, September/October 2008). This is the reading behind the "messiah who rose in three days" claim and the 2008 newspaper headlines.
3. The key word is faded, and most specialists read "sign." Ronald Hendel proposed reading the word as ha-ot, "the sign," in reply to Knohl in Biblical Archaeology Review; Elisha Qimron and Alexey Yuditsky (2009) read "In three days the sign will be [given]"; Moshe Bar-Asher also rejected "live." Hendel's reading has gained wide support.
4. Knohl accepted that "sign" is more probable. In 2011, writing in Matthias Henze, ed., Hazon Gabriel: New Readings of the Gabriel Revelation (Society of Biblical Literature), Knohl granted that "sign" is the more probable reading while holding "live" possible, and shifted his argument to the claim that the slain leader's death is linked to redemption.
5. Simon of Peraea is not on the stone. The identification is Knohl's inference from his reading of the text and from Josephus, not a name in the inscription. Ada Yardeni, the tablet's first editor, described it as "badly preserved" and agreed that line 80 could not be read with confidence. Remove "live" and nothing in the text says a messiah died and rose. Even Ben Witherington, who thought the tablet significant, wrote that it "certainly does not demonstrate that the Gospel passion stories are created on the basis of this stone text."
6. Knohl's earlier book is a hypothesis too. In The Messiah Before Jesus (2000), Knohl argued from the Self-Glorification Hymn and other fragmentary Qumran texts that a messianic leader of the sect was killed in 4 BC and believed raised on the third day. The leader's name, Menahem, is assumed, not attested in the scrolls, and the thesis was challenged by John J. Collins ("An Essene Messiah?", in Christian Beginnings and the Dead Sea Scrolls, 2006) among others. On Qumran and Christianity generally, see Essene Origin of Christianity Objection Defeater and Dead Sea Scrolls.

Anticipated objections

1. "Scholars are biased toward 'sign' because 'live' threatens Christianity."
2. "Even if it says 'sign,' the tablet still shows Jews expected a dying messiah before Jesus."

Rebuttals

1. The readings came from Jewish and secular epigraphers, and the main concession came from Knohl. Qimron, Yuditsky and Bar-Asher are Israeli Hebrew philologists; Hendel teaches at Berkeley. The "live" reading was abandoned as most probable by the scholar who proposed it. That is how evidence moves, not bias.
2. Possibly, and that is P5's question. Whether line 80 or the surrounding lines speak of a slain leader is still debated, and the text is fragmentary. But a prior expectation of a suffering messiah is not a prior resurrection, and it is an expectation the Hebrew Scriptures themselves had already raised.

P5, Expectation is not invention

Affirmative case

1. Christians claim the expectation, they do not hide it. The whole New Testament argument is that the Messiah was promised before he came. Jesus, after the resurrection, began "from Moses and from all the prophets" to show "the things concerning himself" (Luke 24:25-27). Finding messianic hope before Jesus confirms the setting the Gospels describe. See Messianic Prophecy and Two-Stage Messianic Prophecy.
2. Even a suffering-messiah idea is older than any claimant. "He was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities" (Isaiah 53:5, ASV); "shall the anointed one be cut off" (Daniel 9:26, ASV). If some Jews read these texts of a slain deliverer, they got the idea from the same Scriptures the apostles quoted. See Rabbinic Sources Attest a Suffering Messiah Argument.
3. Expectation explains the question, not the answer. Expectation explains why crowds asked whether Theudas, Judas, Bar Kokhba or Jesus was the one. It does not explain why, of all of them, only the crucified one was proclaimed raised. Hope produced many candidates; only one produced Easter.
4. Jesus did not fit the popular template anyway. When a crowd wanted "to take him by force, to make him king," he "withdrew again into the mountain himself alone" (John 6:15, ASV). Before Pilate: "My kingdom is not of this world: if my kingdom were of this world, then would my servants fight" (John 18:36, ASV). The other claimants seized armories; Jesus told Peter to put away his sword (Matthew 26:52). A movement copying the available models would not have produced this one.
5. Where an idea came from does not settle whether an event happened. That is the Genetic Fallacy. If Jesus rose, a prior hope that the Messiah would be vindicated would be fulfilled, not falsified.

Anticipated objections

1. "The Gospels could have written the predictions back into Jesus's mouth after the fact."
2. "If Jews expected a dying messiah, why did the disciples not expect it?"

Rebuttals

1. That is a separate question about the Gospels, answered elsewhere. See Historicity of Jesus. For this page the point holds either way: whether or not Jesus predicted his death, his followers' reaction to it (Luke 24:21) was despair, the normal reaction, until the appearances.
2. Because it was a minority reading, if it existed at all. The dominant hope was for a conquering king, which is why a cross was a scandal (Cursed Messiah Objection Defeater). The disciples' failure to expect the cross is evidence that they did not invent the cross to fit a template.

Chrestus was not a messiah before Jesus

The name most often offered as "another messiah before Jesus" is Chrestus. The name comes from one sentence of the Roman biographer Suetonius, writing around AD 121 to 122: Iudaeos impulsore Chresto assidue tumultuantis Roma expulit, "since the Jews were constantly making disturbances at the instigation of Chrestus, he [the emperor Claudius] expelled them from Rome" (Life of Claudius 25.4).

1. The date rules out "before Jesus." The expulsion is placed around AD 49 to 50. The fifth-century historian Orosius puts it in the ninth year of Claudius, AD 49 (History Against the Pagans 7.6.15), and Acts records the same event: Aquila and Priscilla had come "from Italy... because Claudius had commanded all the Jews to depart from Rome" (Acts 18:2, ASV). Jesus was crucified around AD 30 to 33. Whoever Chrestus was, his disturbance came nearly twenty years after the crucifixion, so he cannot be a messiah who came first and was copied.
2. The usual reading is that Chrestus is Christ, misspelled. "Chrestus" (Greek chrēstos, "good" or "useful") was an ordinary name; Heikki Solin's study of Roman inscriptions counted 126 people in Rome named Chrestus, 59 of them slaves. "Christus" (from christos, "anointed") was a title Romans did not understand, and the two were pronounced almost alike. Most scholars, as James D. G. Dunn puts it, infer that Suetonius misheard "Christus" as "Chrestus" and took the name of the man preached in the Jewish synagogues of Rome for the name of a troublemaker present there. The same confusion appears in the oldest manuscript of Tacitus, Annals 15.44, where the word for Christians was first written "Chrestianos" and later corrected by another hand.
3. The minority reading still gives no messiah. Some scholars, notably H. Dixon Slingerland, argue that Chrestus was an otherwise unknown agitator in Rome. On that reading he is a local troublemaker known from one sentence, and no ancient source calls him a messiah, a king or a prophet.
4. Either way the objection fails. If Chrestus is Christ, the sentence is early Roman evidence that Christ was being preached in Rome by about AD 49. If he is someone else, he is an unknown man who came after Jesus and left no movement and no claim to be anything. See Christ Before Jesus Thesis Defeater for Suetonius among the non-Christian witnesses to Jesus.

Master objections

MO1: "There were other Christs, like Krishna or Horus." That is the pagan-parallels claim, a different argument with its own record of misquotation. See Copycat-Christ Hypothesis, Dying and Rising God Motif and Zeitgeist - Pagan Parallels.

MO2: "The Teacher of Righteousness was the real first messiah." The Qumran scrolls do not call the Teacher the messiah, and they do not say he rose. See Essene Origin of Christianity Objection Defeater.

MO3: "Jesus was just a failed revolutionary like the rest." If so, his movement should have ended like theirs. Rome executed him as "King of the Jews," but it did not hunt down his followers as an armed band, which suggests that even Pilate did not see a military threat in them.

Honest limits

The word "messiah" is used loosely. Josephus calls most of these men kings, bandits or false prophets, not messiahs, and scholars debate which of them made a specifically messianic claim. This page calls them claimants in that broad sense; the argument needs only that they claimed to be Israel's deliverer and that their followers believed them.

The Theudas date is unresolved. Acts and Josephus disagree on when a Theudas acted. The page states the difficulty rather than forcing a solution.

The Gabriel tablet is still debated. Its authenticity is accepted by most who have examined it but questioned by some, and the meaning of the accepted "sign" reading is unclear. The page claims only that the tablet does not establish a pre-Christian messiah who rose in three days.

Uniqueness is not proof. That the Jesus movement alone survived its leader's death is a fact that needs an explanation. It does not by itself prove which explanation is right.

Tactical opening / closing

Opening. You're right, there were other messiahs. Acts names two of them, and Josephus names a lot more. Can we look at how each of those stories ended? I think that's where it gets interesting.

Closing. Here's what I see. Every messiah in that period ended the same way: dead, and his followers scattered or looking for someone new. Jesus's followers watched him die the most shameful death there was, said "we hoped," and then a few weeks later stood up in Jerusalem and said God had raised him. They didn't pick his brother. They didn't give up. And the stone that supposedly says "in three days, live" most likely says "in three days, the sign." So the other messiahs don't explain Jesus away. They show what should have happened after Good Friday. What's your explanation for why it didn't?

Cross-examination

Four rounds, asked in order.

Round 1, Grant the claimants

1. Question: "Which messiahs before Jesus do you have in mind?"
2. Expected answer: "There were lots. Josephus lists them."
3. Follow-up: "Agreed. Theudas, Judas of Galilee, Simon, Athronges, the Egyptian, later Bar Kokhba. Acts names two of them itself. So we agree on the list. Can we look at how they ended?"

Round 2, The fate of each

1. Question: "What happened to Theudas?"
2. Expected answer: "He was killed by the Romans."
3. Follow-up: "Beheaded, says Josephus. And Simon of Peraea? Judas of Galilee? Bar Kokhba? Did any of their followers say they had risen?"
4. Expected answer: "Not that I know of."
5. Follow-up: "Then what normally happened to a messiah movement when the messiah died?"

Round 3, The one exception

1. Question: "What happened to Jesus's movement after he was crucified?"
2. Expected answer: "It kept going."
3. Follow-up: "It did more than keep going. They called him Messiah in the same city, a few weeks later, and even Tacitus says it 'again broke out.' Why didn't they do what everyone else did, give up or make James the new leader?"

Round 4, The stone

1. Question: "Do you know which word on the Gabriel stone says 'live'?"
2. Expected answer: "Line 80, 'in three days, live.'"
3. Follow-up: "That word is faded. Hendel, Qimron and Yuditsky read it 'the sign,' and in 2011 Knohl agreed 'sign' is more probable. Does a stone that says 'in three days, the sign' show that someone rose from the dead?"

Dodge table

Live-cite kit

Scripture:

• Acts 5:36, "before these days rose up Theudas, giving himself out to be somebody; to whom a number of men, about four hundred, joined themselves: who was slain; and all, as many as obeyed him, were dispersed, and came to nought." (ASV)
• Acts 5:38-39, "if this counsel or this work be of men, it will be overthrown: but if it is of God, ye will not be able to overthrow them" (ASV)
• Luke 24:21, "But we hoped that it was he who should redeem Israel." (ASV)
• Acts 2:36, "God hath made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom ye crucified." (ASV)
• Matthew 24:5, "For many shall come in my name, saying, I am the Christ; and shall lead many astray." (ASV)

Primary sources:

• Josephus, Antiquities 17.285 (Whiston): "as the several companies of the seditious lighted upon any one to head them, he was created a king immediately."
• Josephus, Antiquities 20.98 (Whiston), on Theudas: "They also took Theudas alive, and cut off his head, and carried it to Jerusalem."
• Tacitus, Annals 15.44: "a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out."
• Origen, Against Celsus 1.57 (ANF 4): after Theudas's death "his deluded followers were completely dispersed."
• Jerusalem Talmud, Taanit 4:5: Akiva on Bar Kosiba, "this is the king messiah."

Scholarly: N. T. Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God (2003); Israel Knohl, The Messiah Before Jesus (2000) and "The Messiah Son of Joseph" (BAR, 2008), as the objection's best scholarly form; Ronald Hendel and Qimron and Yuditsky on the "sign" reading; Matthias Henze, ed., Hazon Gabriel (2011); John J. Collins, "An Essene Messiah?" (2006).

Aphorism: "The other messiahs are not Jesus's rivals. They are the control group."

Aphorism: "Every messiah movement had followers who couldn't accept failure. Only one had an empty tomb."

Connection to Scripture

• Acts 5:36-37 and Acts 5:38-39, Gamaliel's test: movements of men are overthrown.
• Acts 21:38, the Egyptian and his four thousand.
• Matthew 24:5 and 24:23-24, Jesus's warning about false Christs.
• Luke 24:21 and Luke 24:25-27, from "we hoped" to the Scriptures opened.
• John 6:15 and John 18:36, Jesus refuses the crown the crowds wanted.
• Isaiah 53, Daniel 9:26 and Zechariah 12:10, the anointed one cut off and pierced.

Scholarship

Published academic works this page draws on, each matched to a publisher, index or library catalog record.

• John J. Collins and Craig A. Evans, Christian beginnings and the Dead Sea scrolls (Baker Academic, 2006). Open Library
• Matthias Henze, Hazon Gabriel (2011). Open Library
• Israel Knohl, The Messiah before Jesus: The Suffering Servant of the Dead Sea Scrolls (University of California Press, 2000). doi:10.1525/9780520928749
• N. T. Wright, The resurrection of the Son of God (2003). Open Library
• N. T. Wright, Surprised by Scripture (HarperOne, 2014). Open Library

See also

• Resurrection-Centric Growth Argument, why the movement grew after the crucifixion.
• Cursed Messiah Objection Defeater, why a crucified messiah was a contradiction to first-century Jews.
• Failed Messianic Prophecy Objection Defeater and Jesus Failed the Messianic Job Description Objection Defeater, whether Jesus fulfilled the prophecies, including Bar Kokhba's place in the criteria.
• Essene Origin of Christianity Objection Defeater and Dead Sea Scrolls, the Qumran version of the borrowing claim.
• Copycat-Christ Hypothesis and Dying and Rising God Motif, the pagan version.
• Christ Before Jesus Thesis Defeater, the mythicist version.
• Religious Pluralism Objection Defeater, why the other claimants did not make Jesus's identity claims.
• Acts as History (Ramsay's Verification), Luke's record where it can be checked.
• Josephus and Tacitus, the non-Christian sources for the claimants and for Jesus.
• Minimal Facts Argument and Argument from the Resurrection, the positive case.