Often, we come across titles on the internet, which say things like,
it is doubtful whether Christ ever existed at all.
Then these articles go on to say, if he did exist, we don't know anything
about him outside of the Bible.
However, one would be very hard-pressed to find a historian who agrees with these
sensational articles.
Many people have raised questions about Jesus Christ, and some have doubted what
the Bible says about him is true.
But the circle of those who claim he never lived at all, or that if he did live,
we can know nothing about him, is very, very small.
In fact, you'd be very hard-pressed to find a real historian who would make the
claim that Jesus did not exist.
However, today I'm going to address the extra biblical accounts of Jesus Christ.
These are secular, or pagan, Jewish, and Christian accounts of Christ in the
early period after his death.
Let's start with something relatively modern.
One of the great American revolutionaries, Thomas Paine, was not a fan of
Christianity.
However, he never questioned the historical nature of Jesus of Nazareth.
While Paine believed that the biblical statements about Jesus' deity were false,
he still believed that Jesus actually lived.
This is what Paine said.
He, Jesus Christ, was a virtuous man.
The morality that he preached and practiced was of the most benevolent kind.
And though similar systems of morality had been preached by Confucius and by some of
the Greek philosophers many years before, by the Quaker sins, and by many good men
in all the ages, it has not been exceeded by many.
The historical accounts of Christ, for an unbiased historian, is equal to
that of Julius Caesar.
It is not historians who propagate the Christ myth theories.
No serious scholar has attempted to venture into the non-historical nature of
Jesus.
The history of Jesus isn't just a matter of curious interest for the Christian.
The Christian faith itself is grounded in history.
Let's begin with some secular historical authorities on Jesus.
By secular, I mean pagan, non-Christian, and non-Jewish, and generally
anti-Christian.
Some of these historical accounts of Jesus are very negative, but realize they're
coming from people who are trying to disprove his deity and his resurrection.
The first one we will begin with is Tactus.
He was a Roman historian who lived through the reigns of over a half dozen Roman
emperors.
He has been called the greatest historian of ancient Rome, an individual generally
acknowledged among scholars for his moral integrity and essential goodness.
Tactus' most acclaimed work are the annuals of the histories.
The annuals cover the period from Augustine's death in AD 14 to Nero in AD
68.
The histories begin after Nero's death and proceed to about AD 96.
Writing on the reign of Nero, he alludes to the death of Christ and to the
existence of Christians in Rome.
He didn't misspell Christ.
He wrote C-H-R-I-S-T-U-S.
This was a common spelling error made by pagan writers.
This is what Tactus wrote in the annuals of the histories.
Christus, the founder of the name, was put to death by Pontius Pilate of
Judah in the reign of Tiberius.
But this superstition, repressed for a time, broke out again.
Not only through Judah, where the mischief originated, but through the city of Rome
also.
Note that Pilate's existence is never questioned.
However, Pilate is not mentioned in any other pagan document which has come down
to us.
And it may be regarded as an instance of the irony of history that the only
surviving reference to him in a pagan writer mentions him because of the
sentence of death which he passed upon Christ.
For a moment, Tactus joins hands with the ancient Christian creed suffered under
Pontius Pilate.
Although Pilate is only mentioned in this pagan work, the Pilate stone was found.
The Pilate stone is a name given to a damaged rock of carved limestone with a
particularly intact subscription attributed to and mentioning Pontius
Pilate of the Roman-controlled providence of Judah from 26 to 36 AD.
It was discovered on an archaeological site in 1961.
The artifact is significant because it is not only widely accepted as an
archaeological find to date, but of a first century Roman inscription mentioning
the name Pontius Pilate.
It is contemporary to Pilate's lifetime and accords with what is known of his
reported career.
In effect, the writing constitutes the earliest surviving record and only
contemporary evidence of the historical existence of this person, otherwise known
only from the New Testament and brief mentions in Roman histories.
The Pilate stone is now being held at a museum in Israel.
The next we will look at is Lucian.
He was a Greek satirist of the later half of the second century.
He spoke scornfully of Christ and of the Christians.
However, he never assumed or made arguments that they were unreal.
As he said, the Christians you know worship a man to this day, the
distinguished personage who introduced their novel rites and was crucified on
that account.
You see, these misguided creatures start with the general conviction that they are
immortal for all time, which explains the contempt of death and voluntary
self-devotion which are so common among them.
And then it was impressed on them by their original lawgiver that they are brothers
from the moment that they are converted and deny the gods of Greece and worship
the crucified sage and live after his laws.
All this they take quite on faith, with the result that they despise all
worldly goods alike.
The next person we will look at is another grand Roman historian.
He was a court official and annualist of the imperial house.
Stated in the life of Claudius 25.4, as the Jews were making constant
disturbances at the instigation of C-H-R-E-S-T-U-S, which is another
spelling, he, Claudius, expelled them from Rome.
Luke also refers to this event in Acts 18.2, which took place in A.D.
49.
In another work, he wrote about the fire that swept through Rome in A.D.
64 under the reign of Nero.
He recounts the punishment by Nero was inflicted upon the Christians,
a class of men given to a new and mysterious superstition.
That's in the lives of Caesar 26.
The Claudius reference, particularly the part that says, since the Jews constantly
made disturbances at the instigation of Christ, he expelled them from Rome.
As it is highly unlikely that a hypothetical Christ interloper would have
been called Jesus and placed him in Rome in 49, or called him a troublemaker,
the overwhelming majority of scholars conclude that the passage is genuine.
The passage indicates that Claudius only expelled those Jews who were making
disturbances because of Christ.
Or, as it has been translated from the Latin, from Rome, he, Claudius,
expelled the perpetually troublemaking Jews prompted by Christ.
Most scholars assume that the disturbances mentioned in this text, in this passage,
are due to the spread of Christianity in Rome.
These disturbances were likely caused by the objections of the Jewish community to
the continued preaching of the Hellenistic Jews in Rome and their insistence that
Jesus was the Messiah, resulting in tensions with the Jews in Rome.
In Nero 16, he also lists various laws by Nero to maintain public order,
including halting chariot races as the drivers were cheating and robbing the
shows which frequently were scenes of brawls.
Among these punishments were punishments for Christians.
He states, during his reign many abuses were severely punished and put down,
and no fewer laws were made.
A limit was set on expenditures.
Public banquets were confined to the distribution of food.
The sale of any kind of cooked things in the taverns were forbidden, with the
exception of vegetables, where before, every sort of dainty was exposed for sale.
Punishment was inflicted on the Christians, a class of men given to a new
and mischievous superstition.
He put an end to the divisions of the chariot drivers, who from immunity of
long-standing claim the right of ranging at large and amusing themselves by
cheating and robbing the people.
The actors and their partitions were banished from the city.
As a church father wrote, we read the lives of the Caesars.
At Rome, Nero was the first who stained with blood the rising faith.
Also, this early church father used this author as a source by quoting lives of the
Caesars as proof that Nero was the first Roman emperor to murder Christians.
The next we will look at is Pinley the Younger.
He was the governor in Asia Minor in A.D.
112.
He was writing the emperor to seek counsel on how to treat the Christians.
He explained that he had been killing both men and women, girls and boys.
There were so many Christians being put to death under him that he began to wonder if
he should continue killing them, or if he should just kill certain
Christians.
He explained that he had made the Christians bow down to the statues.
He goes on to say that he also made them curse Christ, which a genuine Christian
cannot be induced to do.
In the same letter, he says of the people being tried, they affirmed, however,
that the whole of their guilt, or their error, was that they were in the
habit of meeting in a certain fixed day before it was light, that they sang an
alternate verse, a hymn to Christ as to a God, and bound themselves in a solemn
oath, not to do any wicked deeds, but never to commit any fraud,
theft, adultery, never to falsify their word, not to deny a trust when they should
be called upon to deliver it up.
Note that he says Christ as to a God.
Here, he is implying that Christ is indeed a historical figure.
However, he is denying Christ's deity.
The next we will be looking at is one of the first secular writers who mentions
Christ.
This one is dated perhaps around AD 52.
He wrote, a history of the eastern Mediterranean world from the Trojan War to
his own time.
Unfortunately, his writing now only exists in fragments that have been cited by other
writers.
One interesting passage relates to the darkness that enveloped the land during
the late afternoon hours when Jesus died on the cross.
Thelius, in the third book of his histories, explains away this darkness as
an eclipse of the sun.
Unreasonably, of course, because a solar eclipse could not take place at that time
of the full moon, and it was at the season of the partial moon that Christ died.
This reference shows that the gospel account of the darkness that fell upon the
land during Christ's crucifixion was well known and required a naturalistic
explanation from non-Christians.
Thelius did not doubt that Jesus had been crucified and that an unusual event had
occurred in nature that required an explanation.
What occupied his mind was the task of coming up with a different interpretation.
The basic facts were never called into question in his works.
Another secular historical authority wrote another history called the chronicles.
While the original text has been lost, small fragments have been preserved of his
writing.
Like Thelius, this work confirms that the darkness came upon the earth at Jesus's
crucifixion, and he too explains it as the result of a solar eclipse.
He writes, during the time of Caesar, an eclipse of the sun occurred during the
full moon.
This event is also mentioned by a 3rd century Christian apologist and a 16th
century writer.
Next, we move on to AD 70.
A Syrian philosopher wrote a letter from prison to his son, encouraging him to
pursue wisdom.
In his letter, he compares Jesus to the philosopher Socrates.
He writes to his son, what advantage did the Thetians gain from putting Socrates to
death?
Famine and plague came upon them as judgment for their crime.
What advantage did the men gain from burning Pythagoras?
In a moment, their land was covered with sand.
What advantage did the Jews gain from executing their wise king?
It was just after that their kingdom was abolished.
God justly avenged these three wise men.
The Athenians died of hunger.
Others were overwhelmed by the sea.
The Jews, ruined and driven out from their land, live in complete desperation.
Nor did the wise king die for good.
He lived on in the teaching which he had given.
The father was certainly not a Christian, since he put Jesus on equal footing with
Socrates.
He has Jesus living on in his teaching, rather than his resurrection.
And in another place, he indicates a belief in polytheism.
Nonetheless, his reference to Christ indicated he did not question whether
Jesus really lived or not.
Now we will move on to Jewish references to Jesus in history.
Scholars have found many reliable references to Jesus, as well as many
unreliable ones, and ones that were once thought to refer to Jesus but do not.
I am going to go through a very select few of the more important and reliable
references.
Similar to secular references, the ones found in ancient Jewish sources
are unfriendly toward Christianity's founder, followers, and belief.
For this reason, their testimony to the events surrounding Jesus's life are very
valuable testimony.
The first one we will look at is the Babylonian Talmud.
It has been taught on the eve of Passover that they hanged Jesus.
And an announcer went out in front of him for 40 days saying, he is going to be
stoned because he practiced sorcery and enticed and led Israel astray.
Anyone who knows anything in his favor, let him come and plead in his behalf.
But not having found anything in his favor, they hanged him on the eve of
Passover.
Another version of this text calls him Jesus the Nazarene, using the spelling
Y-E-S-H-U.
This translates through Greek to English as Jesus.
And the reference to him being a Nazarene makes the link to Jesus Christ even
stronger.
Moreover, the word hanged is another way of referring to the crucifixion,
which we can see in Luke 23-39 and Galatians 3-13.
A Jewish scholar wrote that the Talmud speaks of hanging in place of crucifixion,
since this horrible Roman form of death was only known to Jewish scholars from
Roman trials, and not from the Jewish legal system.
Even Paul the Apostle expounds this passage, for the curse of God is that
which is hanged, as applicable to Jesus.
Therefore, this text clearly affirms the historic nature of Jesus and his death.
It also affirms that the Jewish authorities were involved in the
sentencing, but it tries to justify their actions.
In a backhanded way, it even testifies to Jesus's miracles.
But it attempts to explain them away as a work of a sorcerer or magician.
A response mentioned by the gospel writers in Mark 3-22, Matthew 9-34 and 12-24.
Following the Jewish text, appears a comment by a late 3rd century writer,
which states,
This phrase, near to the kingship, may refer to Jesus's genealogical descent
from Israel's King David, or it may denote Pilate's washing his hand before turning
Jesus over to crucifixion.
In yet another passage, we find his mother Mariam, a woman's hairdresser,
as they say, this one strayed from her husband, who was a descendant of princes
and governors, played a harlot with carpenters.
This passage is, of course, an attempted explanation for the Christian confession
of Jesus's virgin birth.
Princes and governors may refer to some of the names in Luke's genealogy,
which some of the church fathers assigned to Mary's ancestors, all the way back to
King David.
The New Testament records that the scribes and Pharisees indirectly leveled this
charge against Jesus in John 8-41.
Although the New Testament affirms that these charges are baseless, the accusation
does confirm that the Christian account of Jesus's miraculous birth was an early
claim of the church that required a response.
And now we move to the very controversial and much talked about testimony of
Josephus.
Josephus was born in 37 or 38 AD and died after 100 AD.
He was a Jewish aristocrat, a priestly politician, a not-so-eager commander of
the rebel troops in Galilee during the first Jewish revolt in Rome, a tricky
turncoat, a Jewish historian in the pay of the emperors, and a supposed Pharisee.
He was captured in 67.
He served the Romans as mediator and interpreter during the rest of the revolt.
Brought to Rome, he composed two great works, the Jewish War, written in early
70s, and the much longer Jewish Antiquities, finished around 93 or 94.
Josephus became part of the emperor's inner circle.
He was given the emperor's name as his Roman name.
Josephus was his Jewish name.
In the Jewish Antiquities, a passage occurs that has created much-heeded debate
among scholars.
This is how it reads.
Now there was a time Jesus, a wise man, if it be lawful to call him a man,
for he was a doer of wonderful works, a teacher of such men, as received the
truth with pleasure.
He drew over to him both many Jews and many Gentiles.
He was the Christ, and then Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men
among us, had condemned him to the cross.
Those that he loved at first did not forsake him, for he appeared to them alive
again on the third day, as the divine prophets had foretold these and ten
thousand other wonderful things concerning him.
And the tribe of Christians so named from him are not extinct at this day.
This passage has raised much debate because Josephus was a non-Christian Jew.
He would not make statements about Jesus that an Orthodox Jew could not affirm.
For instance, he refers to Jesus as the Christ, Messiah, and claims that he rose
from the dead, as the Hebrew prophets had foretold.
After looking at the evidence, scholars see that there are some Christian
additions to this passage.
Notably, the phrases which are italicized have been made to the text that are
clearly foreign to it.
The testimonium contains a good deal of truth that Josephus could have easily
affirmed.
If you read the testimonium without the italicized passages, you will see that the
flow of thought is clear.
Josephus calls Jesus by the generic title wise man.
Josephus then proceeds to unpack the generic designation of wise man with two
of its main components in the Roman world.
Miracle working and effective teaching.
I will now read it without the italicized words which most scholars have confirmed
to be the actual writing.
Now there was about this time Jesus, a wise man, for he was a doer of wonderful
works, a teacher of such men as received the truth with pleasure.
He drew over to him both many of the Jews and many of the Gentiles.
And when Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men among us, had condemned him
to the cross, those that loved him at first did not forsake him.
And the tribe of Christians so named after him are not extinct to this day.
Following this testimonium, a couple of sections later, Josephus refers to James
the brother of Jesus.
He describes the action of the high priest.
Here's what he says.
But the younger who, as we said, received a high priesthood was of a bold
disposition and exceptionally daring.
He followed the party of the Sadducees who are severe in judgment above all the Jews,
as we have already shown, and therefore was of such a disposition he thought he
had now a good opportunity, as Festus was now dead.
So he assembled a council of judges and brought before the brother of Jesus the
so-called Christ, whose name was James.
Together with some others, and having accused them as lawbreakers, he delivered
them to be stoned.
Louis Feldman, a professor of Classics and translator for the edition of the Niquity
states, few scholars have doubted the genuineness of this passage.
The passage referring to Jesus as the so-called Christ does not make sense
unless Josephus had provided a longer discussion about Jesus earlier in his
iniquities.
This is yet another indication that the earlier and more extensive treatment of
iniquities is genuine, excluding the obvious Christian insertions.
So even the great first century Jewish historian Josephus, writing just a little
more than a half century after Jesus's life and crucifixion, attests to the truth
that Jesus was not a figment of the church's imagination, but a real
historical figure.
There are many, many early Christian sources on the history of Jesus.
Early Christians often paid with their lives or suffered great persecution for
the reports that Jesus had lived, died, and risen from the dead,
and appeared to many after his resurrection.
These early Christians had nothing to gain and everything to lose for their testimony
that these things had actually happened.
For this reason, their accounts are highly significant historical resources.
We call these pre-new testament confessions.
An apologist explains, these affirmations preserve some of the earliest reports
concerning Jesus from about 30 to 50 AD.
Therefore, in a real sense, the creeds preserve the pre-new testament material
and our earliest sources of the life of Jesus.
In the book, Verdict of History, they focus on several of the creed
affirmations embedded in the New Testament.
There are many of these and you can view them on our website.
For example, in Romans 1, 3, and 4, it is an ancient creed and is shown by the
parallelism of the clauses, which is especially seen in the contrast between
Jesus as both the Son of David and the Son of God.
The same Jesus who was born in space and time was raised from the dead.
This creed proclaims that Jesus was shown to be the Son of God, Christ or Messiah
and Lord and vindicated as such by his resurrection from the dead.
Kuhlman adds that redemption and Jesus' final exhalation were also included in the
significant creedal affirmation.
Such an encompassing statement including three major Christian titles and implying
some of the actions of Jesus reveals not only one of the earliest formations of
Christ's nature, but also conveys an apologetic motif in relating all of this
theology to the vindication provided by Jesus' resurrection.
It is clear that these New Testament creeds provide the earliest testimony to
the church's conviction that Jesus, the sinless God-man, actually lived,
died, and rose from the dead and ascended into heaven for the salvation of anyone
who would confess him as Lord and truly believed that God resurrected him.
If you're interested in the Christian sources for Jesus' history, please visit
our website at thestoryofliberty.net.
Next we look at the Clement of Rome.
Clement was bishop of the church of Rome toward the end of the first century.
He wrote a letter to help settle a dispute between the church and Corinth,
between the church leaders and the people.
In this work he said, the apostles received the gospel for us from the Lord
Jesus Christ.
Jesus Christ was sent forth from God.
And so then Christ is from God and the apostles are from Christ.
Both therefore came of the will of God in the appointed order, having therefore
received a charge and having been fully assured through the resurrection of our
Lord Jesus Christ and confirmed in the word of God with full assurance of the
Holy Ghost.
They went forward with the glad tidings of the kingdom of God should come.
So preaching everywhere in country and town, they appointed their firstfruits
when they had proved them by the Spirit to the bishops and the deacons unto them that
they should believe.
Among other things, this passage affirms that the gospel message came from the
historical Jesus who had been sent by God and that his message was authentic by his
actual resurrection from the dead.
Next we look at Ignatius.
While on his way to an execution in Rome, Ignatius, who was a bishop of Antioch,
wrote seven letters, six to different churches and one to his friend.
Three references Ignatius makes to the historical Jesus are especially permanent
and characteristic of his other statements.
He said Jesus Christ who was of the race of David, who was the son of Mary,
who was truly born and ate and drank, was truly persecuted under Pontius Pilate,
was truly crucified and died in the sight of those in heaven and on earth and those
under earth, who moreover was truly raised from the dead, his father having raised
him, who in the like fashion will so rise us also who believe on him.
Ignatius, who Christian tradition identifies as the disciple of Peter,
Paul and John, was obviously convinced that Jesus really lived and that he was
all the apostles said he was.
Quadratus was a disciple of the apostles and a bishop at the Church of Athens.
He was one of the earliest apologists.
A Christian historian has preserved the only lines remaining of his defense of the
faith to the Roman emperor.
This is what it says.
The deeds of our Savior were always before you, for they were true miracles.
Those that were healed, those that were raised from the dead, those who were seen,
not only when healed and when raised, but were always present.
They remain living a long time, not only while our Lord was on earth,
but likewise when he left the earth, so that some of them have also lived to
our own times.
Here he observes and affirms the actual existence of Jesus through the history and
of his miracles.
Many of those healed or raised were still alive when Jesus left the earth and some
were reportedly still alive in his own time.
Next we look at the epistle of Barnabas.
The authorship of this letter is unknown.
A commonly accepted date is probably around 130 to 138 AD.
The epistle confirms many of the events claimed as facts and the sources already
cited.
In section five of the letter we read, He himself endured that he might destroy
and show forth the resurrection of the dead, for that he must needs be manifest
in the flesh, that at the same time he might redeem the promise made to the
fathers, and by preparing the new people for himself might show, while he was on
earth, that having brought about the resurrection, he will himself exercise
judgment.
Yea, and further, he preached, teaching Israel and performing so many
wonders and miracles, and he loved him, Israel, exceedingly.
And when he chose his own apostles who were to proclaim his gospel, who that he
might show that he came not to call the righteous but sinners, were sinners above
every sin, then he manifested himself to be the son of God.
In section seven the author also adds, but moreover, when crucified, he,
Jesus, had vinegar and gale given to him to drink.
Next we look at Aristides, who was a second century philosopher of Athens.
His work was lost into the late 19th century when it was discovered in three
separate versions, Armenian, Syrian, and Greek.
He addressed his defense of Christianity to the Roman emperor who resigned between
138 AD and 161 AD.
In part of this, he described Jesus Christ as the son of the Most High God,
revealed by the Holy Spirit, descended from heaven, born of a Hebrew virgin.
His flesh he received from the Virgin, and he revealed himself in the human
nature as a son of God.
In his goodness, which brought glad tidings, he has won the whole world by his
life-giving preaching.
He selected 12 apostles and taught the whole world by his light-giving truth.
And he was crucified, being pierced with nails by the Jews, and he rose from the
dead and ascended to heaven.
He sent the apostles into all the world and instructed by divine miracles full of
wisdom.
Their preaching bears blossoms and fruits to this day and calls the whole world to
illumination.
Next, we look at Justin the Martyr.
The consensus of scholarly opinion is that Justin the Martyr is one of the greatest
early Christian apologists.
He was born around 100 AD and was scourged and beheaded for his faith around 167.
He was a learned man, well-versed in learning philosophies of his day.
After his conversion to Christ, Justin became a professor of Christianity
in his own private school in Rome.
Here are some selections from his works concerning the accuracy of the accounts
about Jesus Christ.
Now, there is a village in the land of the Jews in which Jesus Christ was born.
As you can ascertain also from the registers of the taxing, your first
procurator in Judah.
Also, he wrote, for at the time of his birth, magi who came from Arabia worshiped
him, coming first to Herod, who then was sovereign in your land.
Now, we look at Hephaestus.
We find this passage.
Jerome says that Hephaestus lived near the time of the apostles.
It draws the conclusion that Hephaestus was a Jew and says his work compromised
five books of memoirs.
Only fragments of these memoirs have survived.
What they show is that Hephaestus traveled extensively and was intent on determining
if the true story about Jesus had been passed down from the apostles down through
their successors.
Here is what he wrote.
The Corinthian church continued in the true doctrine until Primus became bishop.
I mixed with them on my voyage to Rome and spent several days with the Corinthians,
during which we were refreshed with the true doctrine.
On arrival at Rome, I pierced together the succession.
In every line of bishops and in every city, things accord with the preaching of
the law, the prophets, and the Lord.
The essential facts about Jesus and his teaching were passed down by the apostles
and carefully preserved and faithfully passed on by the church's generation after
generation, from one location to another.
There are many additional historical sources which we don't have time for in
this video.
They come from Trajan, Macrobius, Hadrian, Antonius Pius, Marcus Aurelius,
in the letter which the emperor describes Christians in fighting action with the
Roman army.
Juvenal, which are satires, makes a valid mention of the tortures of Christians by
Nero in Rome.
Seneca, who like Juvenal, describes the cruelties of Nero dealt upon the
Christians.
Heracles, in which he condemns Peter and Paul as sorcerers.
In discussing Christ as a man of history, one of the most important collections of
material is a volume published by Cambridge in 1923 by C.
R.
Haynes entitled, Heathen Contact with Christianity during its first century and
a half.
The subtitle reads as follows, being all references to Christianity
recorded in pagan writings during that period.
Howard Clark Lee, professor at Boston University, makes the following
conclusions from the sources outside the New Testament.
The result of the examination of the sources outside the New Testament that
bear directly or indirectly on our knowledge of Jesus is to confirm his
historical existence, his unusual powers, his devotion of his followers,
the continued existence of his movement after his death at the hands of the Roman
governor in Jerusalem, and the penetration of Christianity into the upper strata of
society in Rome itself by the later first century.
He adds, in spite of the range of ways in which the tradition about Jesus had been
transmitted, we have available a clear and remarkably consistent array of evidence
about this figure whose life, teachings, and death have continued to have such
impact on the subsequent history of the human race.
In the 1974 edition of Encyclopedia Britannica, the contributor writing about
Jesus Christ uses 20,000 words to describe him, more space than was given to
Aristotle, Alexander, Julius Caesar, Buddha, Confucius, Muhammad, or Napoleon
Bonaparte.
Concerning the testimony of the many independent secular accounts of Jesus of
Nazareth, the author resoundingly concludes, the independent accounts prove
that in ancient times even the opponents of Christianity never doubted the
historical accuracy of Jesus, which was disputed for the first time, and on
inadequate grounds, by several authors at the end of the 18th, during the 19th,
and at the beginning of the 20th centuries.
Those who would deny the historical evidence of Jesus noted British New
Testament scholar Howard Marshall, it is not possible to explain the rise of
the Christian church or the writing of the Gospels and the stream of tradition that
lies behind them without accepting the fact that the founder of Christianity
actually existed.
Though the non-Christian sources do not provide as much detail about Jesus as the
New Testament, they do provide collaboration for some of the basic facts
of the biblical portrayal of Jesus.
Robert Stein, a New Testament professor, states, the non-Christian sources
establish beyond reasonable doubt the following minimum.
One, Jesus was truly a historical person.
This may seem silly to stress, but through the years some have denied
that Jesus ever lived.
The non-biblical sources put such nonsense to rest.
Two, Jesus lived in Palestine in the first century of our era.
Three, the Jewish leadership was involved in the death of Jesus.
Four, Jesus was crucified by the Romans under the governorship of Pontius Pilate.
And five, Jesus's ministry was associated with wonder.
R.T.
Francis writes, non-Christian evidence therefore substantiates the fact of
Jesus's existence.
His popular following, his execution, and the rough date.
A professor of history at Miami University asserts that we have more and better
historical documentation for Jesus than any other religious founder.
For example, we have more secular information on Jesus than Buddha or
Muhammad.
Of the non-biblical sources testifying of Christ, he concludes, even if we did not
have the New Testament of Christian writings, we would be able to conclude
from such non-Christian writings as Josephus, the Talmud, Tacitus,
and Pliny the Younger, that one, Jesus was a Jewish teacher.
Two, many people believe that he performed healings and exorcisms.
Three, he was rejected by Jewish leaders.
Four, he was crucified under Pontius Pilate in the reign of Tiberius.
Five, despite his death, his followers who believed that he was still alive spread
beyond Palestine so that there were multitudes of them in Rome.
By AD 64.
And six, all kinds of people from the cities and the countryside, men and women,
slave and free, worshipped him as God by the beginning of the second century.
As a noted Yale historian wrote, regardless what anyone may personally
think or believe about him, Jesus of Nazareth has been the dominant figure in
history of western culture for almost 20 centuries.
If it were possible with some sort of supermagnet to pull out of that history
every scrap of metal, bearing at least a trace of his name, how much would be left?
His impact on the course of history is without parallel.
As a Newsweek magazine author wrote, by any secular standard, Jesus is also the
dominant figure of western culture.
Like the millennium itself, much of what we now think of as western ideas,
innovations and values, finds its source or inspiration in the religion that
worships God in his name.
Art and science, the self and society, politics and economics, marriage and
family, right and wrong, body and soul, all have been touched and often radically
transformed by Christian influence.
Upon surveying the historical evidence for the existence of Christ, Gary Haberman's
notes, The evidence is conclusive.
Jesus really lived among us and accomplished powerful works that even
hostile, non-Christian sources do not fail to confirm.
The skeptics about Jesus' historical existence are simply wrong.