This is a thread for those who claim that not only did Jesus Christ exist, but there is historical proof that he did and that “historians almost unanimously accept that he existed”.
So, let’s see the proof.
Oh crap, be prepared for a bunch of cut and paste jobs from Josh McDowell’s books. Or is there a more modern canon for junior proselytizers? Because Josh was the guy when I was in college, back in the 70’s.
But to repeat my point from the other thread, IMO the best evidence that Jesus of Nazareth existed is that his name is not “Jesus of Bethlehem.” The Messiah had to be born in Bethlehem, and if his whole life was fabricated, he would have just lived there.
But Matthew and Luke make up two completely different stories about how it happened that, in a time and place where most people lived and died in the village of their birth, Jesus was born in Bethlehem and raised in Nazareth. The stories contradict both secular history and each other, so they are obvious fabrications, but there would be no necessity for them if there hadn’t been an actual “Jesus of Nazareth.”
First of all, we will need to establish what we mean by “proof”.
In the ancient world, historical records were rather thin on the ground, and were often written several generations or centuries after the fact. As a few examples:
Much of what we know about the foundation of Athens, the early history of the Persian Empire, and the war between Greece and Persia comes from a single source, namely Herodotus. Herodotus wrote around 430 B.C. and covered events from well over a century earlier, up to events fifty years prior.
Josephus, the only Jewish historian of the first century, wrote in 90 A.D., covering events in Jewish history ranging from Old Testament times up to the first century. Most of the people and events he covered, we know about only from him.
For most of the pre-Socratic philosophers, and many from later times as well, all we know comes from biographies or fragments written anywhere from 200 to 1,000 years later.
In comparison to that, with Jesus we have the first biography, Mark’s Gospel, probably written about 35 years after the fact, and three further biographies, the gospels of Matthew, Luke, and John, written probably 40-60 years after the fact. By the standards of ancient world history, this is a phenomenally large amount of evidence, not even including mentions of the life of Jesus in the epistles.
AFAIK, there is no direct ‘proof’ that Jesus ever lived…just circumstantial evidence and testimonials, mostly writings from folks who either lived during Jesus lifetime or shortly after (say within a hundred years of his presumed death).
Here’s Cecil’s take on the question, fwiw:
There have been a number of threads on this subject in the last year or so, btw, so you might want to do some searching if you don’t get a large response in this one.
-XT
Let’s use the M-W definition of proof:
*a : the cogency of evidence that compels acceptance by the mind of a truth or a fact *
And let’s narrow it down even further, since truth could be a little open to interpretation, to mean:
*a : the cogency of evidence that compels acceptance by the mind of a fact *
Except that you aren’t going to get that here. Except for kings and emperors, and the like, there’s pretty well no contemporary evidence for the existence of anyone from about 2,000 years ago.
Proof? No, I don’t think there is such a thing.
I think it’s more reasonable (slightly, maybe) to suppose that Jesus existed then the converse. His existence seems an easier explanation for the rise of Christianity. We have modern founding figures of religions as a comparison. In the other thread I mentioned the argument that Dr. Price had about the early succession disputes that the church had, which were similar to disputes in other faiths with historical figures (Islam).
That’s about it, as far as I’m aware.
I’m not sure this is very compelling, to be honest. No one suggests that Jesus was invented out of whole cloth in 70 AD. Further, if Jesus was, then the ‘40 years’ figure is unnecessary - if we are going that route, why put a beginning date at 30 AD?
The argument that is usually made is that the Jews of the time were combing through the Old Testament and finding verses related to the Messiah. Modern Christians do this too (the tend to quote from the book of Daniel, for instance). So, you could possibly peace together a narrative using the Old Testament - there is some thought that Matthew did this, and I’m referencing the parallels between the Moses birth narratives and Jesus’s birth narrative, the slaying of the innocents and all that.
Also, it’s likely that some of the Jesus story were graphs from other messiah figures and such. In one of these threads, I mentioned a miracle story revolving around Vespasian, where he healed a blind person with spit. Jesus does the same thing.
So Cecil’s claim isn’t taking into consideration that there are precedents for the Jesus story - or so the mythicists claim.
Again, I think it’s more likely that Christianity was the result of some sort of messiah figure who lived in history.
I think it’s clear that the circumstantial evidence we have makes it more likely than not that Jesus existed…
Let me clarify that statement because it needs clarification. Specifically: who is the Jesus for whom we have evidence - circumstantial as it may be.
The Jesus the evidence points us to is NOT the Jesus described in the bible, or rather he (or they since it’s not improbable that the legends are base don more than one person) is certainly not the Jesus some of the Bible talks about, but he possibly might be the Jesus the Bible talks about in other places. This is perhaps a bit obvious, since many of the tales can be established to be fabricated some off-hand, others though other historical sources/archaeology/language and literature studies.
So when I say Jesus was more likely to have existed than not I would say, to be more specific, that the evidence shows that it’s more likely than not, than the person (or persons) the written tales we have with us now are loosely based on existed and that that person was likely some itinerant doomsday preacher who may or may not have pissed of some Jews/Romans and got himself linched/executed.
That’s about all we can tell. Which is not to say that the rest of the stories about Jesus are more likely to be true than not. The opposite, actually.
Or that Jesus was an amalgam of all the various messiahs and miracle workers bandied about at that time.
True - even the ancient credible historians accepted some obvious b.s. (from our modern eyes) as ‘truth’ back then.
I’m always curious why some people accept the whole of the Gospels as truth - miracles included - yet other ancient documents with as much fabulous stuff in it as obvious falsehood.
Or even modern documents, like Hawaiian birth certificates. I’d bet 90% of birthers believe that Jesus was born of a virgin, with angels singing and a magic star guiding the magi to him.
Briefly, there was no secular historian covering events in Galilee and Jerusalem during the time of Jesus’ ministry. Though not particularly important in this thread, we should mention the bloody obvious fact that Josephus was a Jewish historian, writing for the purpose of defending and promoting the Jews as a people against Rome.
More importantly, there isn’t actually a particular reason to suppose that Jospehus would have mentioned events such as the slaughter of the innocents if they happened. While Josephus did write about Herod he never gave or claimed to give an exhaustive account of every action Herod took during his reign. Most importantly, it is fairly certain that Josephus copied his information about Herod’s reign from a pagan historian, Nicolas of Damascus (cite), so what Josephus mentioned was determined by what Nicolas mentioned.
I think you nailed it on the head (no pun intended) the flaw in my OP. How do we define what is a historical Jesus Christ?
One thing would be to skip all of the miracles that have been attributed to him. That would move down a hijacked path.
Maybe agree on several attributes. (lemme know if I’m missing anything, but I tried to document while skipping any supernatural things)
- He was born somewhere between 7-2 BCE and died 30+ years later.
- Born in Bethlehem due to traveling to Quirinius for the census.
- Left Bethlehem due to a slaughter of all male infants and went to Egypt
- Returned and lived in Nazareth
- Was a carpenter
- Goes to the desert for 40 days to fast
- He starts his ministry when he’s 30 years old
- He then goes to Jerusalem
- Brought to trial for heresy and convicted.
- He is then crucified
(Extra credit for him :
11) missing from the grave and
12) visiting America)
Wow, that’s a quibble I never heard before, but fine. Change “secular” to “extra-Biblical.”
That is incredibly lame. The Slaughter of the Innocents, if it had occurred, would be the most spectacular event of Herod’s reign. Biographies of Lincoln don’t include every action he took, but they do mention the Civil War.
And it doesn’t have to be Josephus, anyway. Palestine was occupied by Rome. An event like that would have been the biggest thing in Palestine for years, and Roman soldiers returning home, if no one else, would have spread the story. Same with Moses and Elijah walking around Jerusalem.
And Matthew wasn’t the only one contradicting extra-Biblical sources. Our records on Roman administration are good enough that we can be sure that there was no world-wide census that required participants to journey to wherever their ancestors lived a thousand years before, as Luke claimed.
And I’m always curious why some people reject the gospels based on the fact that they contain miracles while accepting other works that do. Non-fiction writers of the ancient world report supernatural intervention quite a bit, including Herodotus, Josephus, Tacitus, Plato, Pliny, and others. In some cases, particularly that of Herodotus, modern historians as a group reject some particular things within the narrative, yet they accept the overall narrative as historical nonetheless.
On the particular issue of comparisons between the occurrence of miracles in the gospels and supernatural events in Pagan literature, when you look at the Pagan literature, whether it’s the epics, the comedies and tragedies, the historical records, or anything else, the characters treat the supernatural as normal. Gods and goddesses are smiting cities, sinking ships, sending their voices booming across the land, and everyone reacts as if this were perfectly normal. In the gospels, people treat the miraculous as if it were miraculous. The Virgin Mary responds to the Angel Gabriel’s prediction of pregnancy by pointing out that it can’t happen because she’s never slept with a man. Witnesses who see Jesus perform miraculous healings are amazed and shocked. The Apostle Thomas won’t accept the resurrection until he sees the risen Christ and puts his fingers in the wounds. We can even think of these people as the first skeptics ever recorded. (There was an ancient Greek school known as “skeptics” but they didn’t have a particularly strong resistance to the supernatural.)
Which suggests that Luke (or his sources) made that bit up to fit with what the Jewish Bible said about the Messiah. However, as you said earlier, that’s good evidence that Jesus did in fact come from Nazareth: if he didn’t, why would the census story have been made up?
Sorry, but that is contradicted by Luke. Matthew says that to escape the alleged slaughter in Bethlehem, Joseph and his family fled to Egypt, and remained there until Herod died, and even after that, stayed out of Judea as long as Herod’s son ruled there (another ten years).
Luke never heard of the Slaughter, and says that Joseph and Mary stayed in Bethlehem for about six weeks, the time required for Mary’s ritual purification, and then went to Jerusalem, and displayed Jesus in the Temple, where he was joyfully recognized as the Messiah by various holy people. All this was done right under Herod’s nose, and Herod didn’t make a peep. Joseph and Mary went from Jerusalem straight to Nazareth, completely unmolested, and returned to Jerusalem every year for Passover.
Luke knows nothing about fleeing to Egypt for their lives, staying there for a couple years, and staying away from Jerusalem for ten years after that.
But as ITR will tell you, he can’t list every minor action Joseph took.
The margin is larger. off the top of my head.
Wasn’t Tiberius mentioned?
possibly
Unlikely, he was called the Nazarean.
The Bethlehem story is most likely made up to make him qualify for being the Messiah.
There is no evidence for a census around that time plus it’s idiotic that people would have had to travel to their birthplaces to be registered.
Unrecorded
Possibly to likely he was born and lived there.
Or just a manual laborer (techton was it?)
possible
possible
after hiding out in Ceasarea
More likely for rebellion against Rome.
The standard punishment for rebellion.
Yeah right, no miracles=
I am certainly not an expert, but will intervene anyway since some posts may be following a wrong path. 
The Jews of 30 AD certainly knew whether Jesus existed or not. The Gospels make it clear he was a renowned healer. The Jews of 55 AD certainly had a pretty good idea whether he existed or not … unless they thought all their parents’ generation had been brainwashed.
In other words, if Jesus was a fabrication, many Jews of the late 1st century would have known he was a fabrication. The Jewish Talmud has passages intended to denigrate Jesus. But it lacks the obvious strong charge it might have made: that he didn’t even exist! Josephus’ history has been tampered with but scholars agree, I think, that some of its references to Jesus are in the original; given his dates and experience Josephus knew whether or not Jesus existed.
Personally I consider the healings (supernatural or not) to be better attested and more likely to be based on fact than your points 1, 2, 3, 4(?), 6, and 12(!).