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How do we know that Jesus Christ actually
lived, was a historical person?

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Dr. Reagan Well, we have pretty good
evidence outside anything in the Bible

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from Josephus in a saying in the
Antiquities.

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It's in book 18.

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And in this excerpt, which is disputed
because there are things that are said in

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it in the way it's been passed on to us
that a Jewish person wouldn't say,

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things like, He was the Christ.

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And it also has a confession of
resurrection in there.

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Josephus wouldn't have written that but
most people who look at this citation say

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that it does tell us Jesus existed.

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He had an unusual ministry in which He
performed unusual deeds.

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That He was crucified during the time of
Pilate at the instigation of the Jewish

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leadership.

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And that He created a following as a
result of that death.

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Now those are pretty basic core facts.

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But since there are some people who argue
that Jesus Christ never in fact existed at

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all, it's an important piece of evidence
coming from a Jewish historian writing

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about this period of history.

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Ankerberger, Yeah.

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Let's just put up our old buddy Gary
Habermas and his book, The Historical

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Jesus, where he goes back and he looks at
at least 17 non-Christian sources about

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the life of Christ and comes up with 129
facts, okay, before you get to the New

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Testament.

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And they're in agreement with the New
Testament or they're substantiating what

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the New Testament says.

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Then we need to say you have proof from
the historical records.

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The earliest historical records are?

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Ankerberger Well, the earliest historical
records that we have are the materials

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that we see in the New Testament.

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These are your gospels.

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This is the book of Acts, things that are
said in the epistles of Paul and the other

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epistles.

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So there are several materials that have
come from the first century that are

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incorporated into our New Testament.

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And what's important in talking about them
this way is they are historical documents.

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They tell us what people in the first
century believed.

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We're not talking about these documents
yet at the point of saying these are

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inspired, these are the Word of God,
but that their content is reflective of

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what first century people who allied
themselves to Jesus actually believed.

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Ankerberger Yeah, in fact, when I came to
Christianity, the fact is I did not stop

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and say, here's a book that fell out of
heaven that's inspired and inerrant,

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okay?

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I came to these books like I came to
Herodotus or Catullus or somebody else in

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ancient history.

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And I said, does this give me solid
information about this time period and a

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person in this time period?

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And so I'm saying if you start there,
the idea of inspiration and inerrancy

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comes a little later down the pike after
you accept a couple other things.

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But you don't start there.

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You start with, do we have historical
information that's solid?

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Okay, all of these sources plus other
sources then say, from a group of people

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that follow Jesus.

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Everybody says people are following Jesus
for whatever reason, okay?

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From that group He picks 12 apostles,
alright?

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Tell me how we know He picked 12.

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Ankerberger Well, we have a pretty clear
tradition that 12 were selected.

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In that group we have Judas, which means
that Jesus selected someone who eventually

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would betray Him.

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Sometimes people will say, well,
the number 12 is made up.

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It parallels the 12 tribes of Israel and
it's just a way of getting a nice literary

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mix so that the following of Jesus mirrors
the situation in Israel.

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But if you were making it up, remember
that if you say you get to make it up that

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means you get to make the rules.

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If you're making the rules you wouldn't
pick, you wouldn't have the Son of God

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pick someone who's going to betray Him.

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So this is called in critical studies the
criteria of embarrassment, that there's

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something that doesn't quite fit.

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And because it doesn't fit it's more
likely to have happened than to have been

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made up.