Did Jesus Exist?

Like you, I’m sure, I’ve had folks tell me I can’t even prove Jesus ever existed.  The first couple of times I heard this, I was caught flatfooted.  I didn’t know what to say.  It seemed so obvious to me that Jesus is a real historical figure, I couldn’t believe anyone doubted it at that level.  People do, though, so let’s look at some of the evidence for Jesus’ existence:

The New Testament:  Of course we have 27 historical documents that speak of Jesus of Nazareth in a lot of ways.  He is man, God, Messiah, example, friend, etc.  Of these 27 books, all but four – Luke, Acts, Hebrews, and Jude – were written by eyewitnesses to the resurrected Jesus, and we’re not sure about the writers of Hebrews and Jude.  They may have seen Him as well.

Extrabiblical Writings.  Here is a list of ancient historians and philosophers who mention Jesus Christ (this list is taken from Excavating the Evidence for Jesus: The Archaeology and History of Christ and the Gospels by Titus M. Kennedy PhD): 

Flavius Josephus  “At this time there was a wise man called Jesus, and his conduct was good, and he was known to be virtuous. Many people among the Jews and the other nations became his disciples. Pilate condemned him to be crucified and to die. But those who had become his disciples did not abandon his discipleship. They reported that he had appeared to them three days after his crucifixion, and that he was alive. Accordingly, he was perhaps the Messiah, concerning whom the prophets have reported wonders. And the tribe of the Christians, so named after him, has not disappeared to this day” (Antiquities 18.63-64, ca. AD 93 Agapian version).

“Festus was now dead, and Albinus was but upon the road; so he assembled the Sanhedrin of judges, and brought before them the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ, whose name was James” (Josephus, Antiquities 20.200, ca. AD 93).

Tacitus  “Hence to suppress the rumor, he falsely charged with the guilt, and punished with the most exquisite tortures, the persons commonly called Christians, who were hated for their enormities. Christus, the founder of the name, was put to death by Pontius Pilate, procurator of Judea in the reign of Tiberius; but the pernicious superstition, repressed for a time, broke out again, not only through Judea, where the mischief originated, but through the city of Rome also” (Tacitus, Annals 15.44, ca. AD 116).

Suetonius   “Since the Jews constantly made disturbances at the instigation of Chrestus, he expelled them from Rome” (Suetonius, Divus Claudius 25, ca. AD 121).

Pliny the Younger   “[ T] hey were in the habit of meeting on a certain fixed day before it was light, when they sang in alternate verse a hymn to Christ as to a god…” (Letter to Emperor Trajan, ca. AD 112).

Lucian of Samosata  “He learned the wondrous lore of the Christians, by associating with their priests and scribes in Palestina… they still worship, the man who was crucified in Palestina because he introduced this new cult into the world… denying the Greek gods and by worshipping that crucified sophist himself and living under his laws” (Lucian, Passing of Peregrinus 11-13, ca. AD 166).

Celsus: “For he represents him disputing with Jesus, and confuting him, as he thinks, on many points; and in the first place, he accuses him of having ‘invented his birth from a virgin,’ and upbraids him with being ‘born in a certain Jewish village, of a poor woman of the country, who gained her subsistence by spinning, and who was turned out of doors by her husband, a carpenter by trade, because she was convicted of adultery; that after being driven away by her husband, and wandering about for a time, she disgracefully gave birth to Jesus, an illegitimate child, who having hired himself out as a servant in Egypt on account of his poverty, and having there acquired some miraculous powers, on which the Egyptians greatly pride themselves, returned to his own country, highly elated on account of them, and by means of these proclaimed himself a god’” (Origen quoting Celsus, The True Word ca. AD 176, in Contra Celsus 1.28).

Why is this important?

Believe it or not, there are millions of people in the world who doubt even the physical existence of the historical Jesus (the man born in Bethlehem) let alone the Jesus of faith (the miraculous Jesus Who walked on water).

How wide spread is the view of the Mythicists, people who deny Jesus existed?  Bart Ehrman, in an interview of his book Did Jesus Exist? The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth, Bart Ehrman, historian and professor of religious studies at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, said this in an 2012 interview on NPR: “It was a surprise to me to see how influential these mythicists are,” Ehrman says. “Historically, they’ve been significant and in the Soviet Union, in fact, the mythicist view was the dominant view, and even today, in some parts of the West – in parts of Scandinavia — it is a dominant view that Jesus never existed.”

Even widely recognized publications such as the Washington Post have printed at least one article shedding doubt on the very existence of Jesus: Did historical Jesus really exist? The evidence just doesn’t add up. By Raphael Lataster 12/18/2014.