Proof that Jesus existed?

Question

People in another post insist that jesus existed. We,, prove it.

I would like some evidence presented to prove this.

And do not mention the bible - that is not proof - a book written50-100 years after he supposedly died does not constitute proof. Especially, as that s the only book that mentions him.

giggles,

That is the most asinine response I have ever read. How do I know my heart is in my chest? I can feel it every time I put my hand over it.

Does Jesus Coem and hold your hand at night?

As I said, the bible is not proof, as it was written long after the people in it died. Just because a book says something, doesnt make it true.

Scientifically proven ressurection? What kind of drugs are you on? There is nothing scientific or proven about the resuurection - in fact science proves that it is impossible!

I am not saying he did not exist, I dont know, I never met him, just wondering on what evidence people insist that he did.

If you want to say "I believe he existed", I can accept and respect that.

To say that he definitively existed though is absurd.

Answer 1

Since you don't want to accept one of the most accepted historical texts with over 26000 complete or partial manuscript copies, more than an other ancient literature, I offer this:

Extrabiblical, Non-Christian Witnesses to Jesus before 200 a.d.
[Last update: 4/2/96...minor update in Dec/02] The question often comes up as to "are there ANY evidence of or references to the historical figure of Jesus of Nazareth OUTSIDE OF THE NT?" I plan to discuss the other possible witnessess to Jesus' existence in the first two centuries of the Christian Era. These vary in their historical trustworthiness, but are worthy of our examination. I will try to deal with ALL of the commonly advanced instances, but want to raise one or two others that are not commonly discussed (e.g. Celsus, Galen).

From a historiography standpoint, this is mostly an 'academic' exercise, since the 'existence' of Jesus of Nazareth could easily be established with only a tiny fraction of our New Testament documents. The mere existence of someone in history is (often) easily established on the basis of small textual samples (sometimes even single paragraphs). The amount of data (especially historically 'incidental') we have about Jesus in the New Testament--and the appearances that the authors were not collusive--gives us a very, very high level of assurance in this matter.

Again, professional and academic scholars of the period -- Christian, Jewish, Secular -- accept the New Testament as an adequate witness, both for historical 'existence' and for many pieces of historical detail about Jesus.

I should also mention at the outset that, in spite of the sporadic complaints on the Internet about the matter(!), the manuscript evidence in support of the iron-clad, "pre-accretions" reference to Jesus in Jospehus is strong, stable, and accepted by the mass of professional historians. Between the NT and Jospheus, there is no serious reason whatsover to doubt the historical 'existence' of the Jesus of Nazareth behind those references.

The internet debate about this subject (generally NOT participated in by the more historically-informed skeptics and Christians) is a very peculiar phenomenon. Graham Stanton is a New Testament scholar of a 'moderate' position. In the most recent edition of his excellent "The Gospels and Jesus" (Oxford:2002), Professor Stanton includes this section commenting on the debate [GAJ2, 143-145]:

"Many readers will be surprised to learn that the very existence of Jesus has been challenged. From time to time since the eighteenth century a number of writers have claimed that our gospels were written C. AD 100 (or later) and that only then did the early Christians 'invent' Jesus as a historical person. During the communist era Soviet encyclopaedias and reference books consistently made that claim. In recent years the existence of Jesus has been debated heatedly on the Internet.

"The most thoroughgoing and sophisticated statement of this theory has been set out in five books by G. A. Wells; the most recent is The Jesus Legend (1996). His case is quite simple: until the beginning of the second century AD Christians worshipped Jesus as a mythical 'Saviour' figure; only at that point did they make their 'Saviour' a historical person who lived and taught in Galilee.

"This intriguing theory rests on several pillars, all of which are shaky. Nonetheless it is worth taking it seriously, for it raises important issues for the student of the gospels.

"Wells argues that before C. AD 150 there is no independent non-Christian evidence for the existence of Jesus. The slender Jewish and pagan references to Jesus all echo Christian insistence that Jesus died under Pontius Pilate-and Christians began to make this claim only at the end of the first century. Why did Roman writers such as Tacitus, Suetonius, and Pliny say hardly-anything about Jesus and his followers? As Wells himself concedes, from their point of view Jesus and earliest Christianity were no more important than the many other charismatic religious leaders and movements which were two a penny all over the Roman empire-and Palestine was a remote corner of the empire!

"Wells stresses that in the earlier New Testament letters there is a strange silence about the life of Jesus and his crucifixion under Pontius Pilate. Wells notes (correctly) that the very earliest Christian credal statements and hymns quoted by Paul in his letters in the 50s do not mention either the crucifixion or Pilate, or in fact any events in the life of Jesus. But as every student of ancient history is aware, it is an elementary error to suppose that the unmentioned did not exist or was not accepted. Precise historical and chronological references are few and far between in the numerous Jewish writings discovered in the caves around the Dead Sea near Qumran. So we should hardlyexpect to find such references in very terse early creeds or hymns, or even in letters sent by Paul to individual Christian communities to deal with particular problems.

"Wells claims that the four gospels were written C. AD 100 and that the evangelists largely invented their traditions about the life of Jesus. But by this date Christianity was flourishing in many parts of the Roman Empire: it had hardly survived at all in Palestine and the four gospels were almost certainly not written there. If, as Wells claims, they were largely invented in a Roman and Hellenistic cultural setting, it becomes much harder than he supposes to account for the numerous details, many of which are purely incidental to the purposes of the evangelists, which do fit into our knowledge of first-century Palestine.

"As we have stressed repeatedly in the preceding chapters, traditions about Jesus were preserved and to a certain extent modified in the light of the convictions about his significance held by his followers in the period after Easter. But indications of modification do not (as Wells supposes) necessarily imply invention. If the gospel traditions were invented about AD 100 why is it far from easy (with the exception of John's gospel) to find in them traces of the convictions, emphases, and problems of the Christians of that period?

"Why would proclamation of Jesus as a historical person assist Christian evangelism more than proclamation of a mythical figure? If the historical existence of Jesus was invented only in about AD 100, why was it necessary to create so many detailed traditions?

"We have a good deal of information about the polemical and often bitter arguments Christians, Jews, and pagans had with one another in the early centuries. But the early Christians' opponents all accepted that Jesus existed, taught, had disciples, worked miracles, and was put to death on a Roman cross. As in our own day, debate and disagreement centred largely not on the story but on the significance of Jesus.

"Today nearly all historians, whether Christians or not, accept that Jesus existed and that the gospels contain plenty of valuable evidence which has to be weighed and assessed critically. There is general agreement that with the possible exception of Paul, we know far more about Jesus of Nazareth than about any first- or second-century Jewish or pagan religious teacher."

(Also, it should be noted that I am MERELY dealing with the issue of evidences for Jesus' EXISTENCE--NOT for his character, words, deeds, etc.)

Introduction

Jesus lived His public life in the land of Palestine under the Roman rule of Tiberius (ad 14-37). There are four possible Roman historical sources for his reign: Tacitus (55-117), Suetonius (70-160), Velleius Paterculus (a contemporary), and Dio Cassius (3rd century). There are two Jewish historical resources that describe events of this period: Josephus (37-100?), writing in Greek, and the Rabbinical Writings (written in Hebrew after 200, but much of which would have been in oral form prior to that time). There are also sources (non-historians) writing about the Christians, in which possible mentions are made (e.g., Lucian, Galen).

Of these writings, we would NOT expect Velleius to have a reference to Jesus (i.e. the events were just happening OUTSIDE of Velleius' home area), and Dio Cassius is OUTSIDE of our time window of pre-3rd century. Of the remaining Roman writers--Tacitus and Suetonius--we have apparent references to Jesus (discussed below), even though the main section in Tacitus covering the period 29-32ad is missing from the manuscript tradition. If these are genuine and trustworthy 'mentions' of Jesus, then we have an amazing fact--ALL the relevant non-Jewish historical sources mention Jesus! (Notice that this is the OPPOSITE situation than is commonly assumed--"If Jesus was so important, why didn't more historians write about Him?" In this case, THEY ALL DID!).

Of the Jewish resources--Josephus and the Rabbinical writings (e.g. Talmud, Midrash)--BOTH make clear references to the existence of Jesus (even though the details reported may be odd). So ALL the Jewish sources refer to Him.

In addition, there are three OTHER candidates for historical 'mentions' of Jesus that fall in the 2nd century: one Roman (Pliny the Younger) , one possibly Syrian (Mara Bar Serapion), and one Samaritian (Thallus). [We can also include here the writings of Celsus, Galen, Lucian]

I would like to take these in probable historical order.

* (First, a methodological note about the issue of 'independent sources')

* Thallus (c. 50-75ad) [4/2/96]

* Josephus (Antiquities of the Jews, c.93) [The best current discussion on this passage is in a skeptical piece by my friend Jeff Lowder.]


Let me also just mention something about the Josephus issue. Every now an then I get an email about someone abjectly 'dismissing' the data from Josephus, without even interacting with the data and the positions of solid scholars. This is inappropriate. By far and away, the bulk of modern scholarship accepts that Josephus makes two independent references to Jesus--to argue otherwise requires the objector to dismantle the historical consensus, and this requires argumentation instead of simple assertion (and disallowance of Josephus as a witness!). One of the leading scholars, translators, and commentators on Josephus is Steve Mason. In his book on Josephus and the New Testament (Hendrickson:1992), he discusses the two references to Jesus in Josephus' writings, and concludes that "if it were needed", they would provide independent testimony to the existence of Jesus. He writes:


"Taking all of these problems into consideration, a few scholars have argued that the entire passage (the testimonium) as it stands in Josephus is a Christian forgery. The Christian scribes who copied the Jewish historian's writings thought it intolerable that he should have said nothing about Jesus and spliced the paragraph in where it might logically have stood, in Josephus' account of Pilate's tenure. Some scholars have suggested that Eusebius himself was the forger, since he was the first to produce the passage…Most critics, however, have been reluctant to go so far. They have noted that, in general, Christian copyists were quite conservative in transmitting texts. Nowhere else in all of Josephus' voluminous writings is there strong suspicion of scribal tampering. Christian copyists also transmitted the works of Philo, who said many things that might be elaborated in a Christian direction, but there is no evidence that in hundreds of years of transmission, the scribes inserted their own remarks into Philo's text. To be sure, many of the "pseudepigrapha" that exist now only in Christian form are thought to stem from Jewish originals, but in this instance it may reflect the thorough Christian rewriting of Jewish models, rather than scribal insertions. That discussion is ongoing among scholars. But in the cases of Philo and Josephus, whose writings are preserved in their original language and form, one is hard pressed to find a single example of serious scribal alteration. To have created the testimonium out of whole cloth would be an act of unparalleled scribal audacity." (p.170-171)
"Finally, the existence of alternative versions of the testimonium has encouraged many scholars to think that Josephus must have written something close to what we find in them, which was later edited by Christian hands. if the laudatory version in Eusebius and our text of Josephus were the free creation of Christian scribes, who then created the more restrained versions found in Jerome, Agapius, and Michael? The version of Agapius is especially noteworthy because it eliminates, though perhaps too neatly, all of the major difficulties in the standard text of Josephus. (a) It is not reluctant to call Jesus a man. (b) It contains no reference to Jesus' miracles. (c) It has Pilate execute Jesus at his own discretion. (d) It presents Jesus' appearance after death as merely reported by the disciples, not as fact. (e) It has Josephus wonder about Jesus' messiahship, without explicit affirmation. And (f) it claims only that the prophets spoke about "the Messiah," whoever he might be, not that they spoke about Jesus. That shift also explains sufficiently the otherwise puzzling term "Messiah" for Josephus' readers. In short, Agapius' version of the testimonium sounds like something that a Jewish observer of the late first century could have written about Jesus and his followers." (p.172)
"It would be unwise, therefore, to lean heavily on Josephus' statements about Jesus' healing and teaching activity, or the circumstances of his trial. Nevertheless, since most of those who know the evidence agree that he said something about Jesus, one is probably entitled to cite him as independent evidence that Jesus actually lived, if such evidence were needed. But that much is already given in Josephus' reference to James (Ant. 20.200) and most historians agree that Jesus' existence is the only adequate explanation of the many independent traditions among the NT writings." (p.174f)


* Letter from Pliny the Younger to Trajan (c. 110)
* Tacitus (Annals, c.115-120) [The best current discussion on this passage is in my friend JP Holding's site]
* A fragment of Tacitus, with implications for the existence of the "Nazarene"
* Suetonius (Lives of the Caesars, c. 125)
* Lucian (mid-2nd century)
* Galen (c.150; De pulsuum differentiis 2.4; 3.3)
* Celsus (True Discourse, c.170).
* Mara Bar Serapion (pre-200?)
* Talmudic References( written after 300 CE, but some refs probably go back to eyewitnesses)

There are other references to "Christians" in this period, but I am not concerned with those--although some would offer supporting evidence for someone named 'Christ'. For example, Marcus Aurelius (Meditations 11.3) calls the believers 'Christians', but Epictetus (Discourses 4.7.6) calls them "Galileans".

Answer 2

And in the holy book of Castaldo, the Magic Salami was proven to have eaten Jesus before we was made, as shown in Chapter 1, Verse 1: "How anything whose only proof is a chapter in a book cannot possibly be true."

Answer 3

There is overwhelming evidence for the existence of Jesus Christ, both in secular and biblical history. Perhaps the greatest evidence that Jesus did exist is the fact that literally thousands of Christians in the first century A.D., including the twelve apostles, were willing to give their lives as martyrs for Jesus Christ. People will die for what they believe to be true, but no one will die for what they know to be a lie.
http://www.gotquestions.org/did-Jesus-exist.html
Suggested Reading
The Case for the Real Jesus By: Lee Strobel
http://www.christianbook.com/the-case-for-the-real-jesus/lee-strobel/9780310292012/pd/292012?product_redirect=1&Ntt=292012&item_code=&Ntk=keywords&event=ESRCP

'Did Jesus Exist?' A Historian Makes His Case
http://www.npr.org/2012/04/01/149462376/did-jesus-exist-a-historian-makes-his-case
Refuting the myth that Jesus never existed
http://bede.org.uk/jesusmyth.htm
Did Jesus Really Exist?
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/philosophicalfragments/2012/08/29/did-jesus-really-exist/
What do we know about Jesus - from non-biblical sources?
http://www.provethebible.net/T2-Divin/D-0201.htm

Did Jesus Christ Really Exist? Proving Jesus Without the Bible
http://beginningandend.com/jesus-exist-historical-evidence-jesus-christ/

Is There Any Evidence for Jesus Outside the Bible?
http://www.pleaseconvinceme.com/index/pg79644

Is There Any Proof of Jesus Other Than the Bible? (1of2)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HknelAk8_S8&feature=related

Answer 4

The romans kept records very well. Jesus' existence was documented.

Do I believe he existed? Yeah. I think he was a real historical figure, much like Julius Caesar, and George Washington.

Do I believe he was the Son of God? No. I think his followers (Council of Nicea) made him into a God, but I think he was just a regular guy that tried really hard to preach peace.

Answer 5

of path, while you're putting off Christian writers, its like announcing, "are you able to instruct Julius Ceasar existed with out utilising Roman writings?" There are a lot of person writings approximately Jesus written interior of one hundred years of His dying. additionally, Pliny the extra youthful, Tacitus and Suetonius (all non-Christians) wrote approximately Jesus. the best non-Christian writing of Christ from his term, notwithstanding, is thru Josephus, the Jewish historian. He took painstaking efforts in making precise histories. He wrote fairly approximately Jesus and others pronounced in the NT.

Answer 6

just think a little of what ur asking from us. if no book can bring evidence Jesus existed, not even the most spread one, how can one poster bring that evidence?
here's some undeniable evidence. ppl don't just change eras on imaginary persons. ppl don't just die in roman arenas 4 some imaginary guy that never lived. yes, and whether u like it or not, historians spk about him so all these and other aspects give good reason of his existance and the big impression he left on ppl.

Answer 7

Actually, modern biblical scholarship makes a very compelling case for the idea that Jesus was an entirely fictional character.

Answer 8

There was a renowned historian, I believe his name was Josephus who documented a religious leader by the name of Jesus. This is the only secular evidence that we have of Jesus, since his cult wasn't paid much attention at that time in that area (they were pretty common).

Of course, there is no mention of miracles, or rising from the dead, just that he existed.

This wikipedia article probably has better information http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josephus

Here is a page dedicated to Josephus - http://members.aol.com/FLJOSEPHUS/home.htm can't vouch for any accuracy though

Answer 9

1 Listen have you seen your heart before? than how do you know that it is there? you are told that you have a heart and You read about it. The bible is a book to learn from Just like the books of science of today!!!
2 If in the court of law all you need is 2 witnesses for conviction Than how can you debate this? In matthew 27 chapter the 53rd verse The graves open and many who died came out of his grave into the Holy city and appeared unto MANY ,yes MANY. That's what the book called the Bible reads. Plus he was seen by his 12 that followed him. Let us reason...! The 12 that followed him fleed him at his death scared for thier own life, But seeing him alive after his death Made them see that every thing that he said about GOD was rigtht! Face it, No man would Peach life after death with thier life on the line at less they were sure that they would be Ressurected By God Just Like Christ Jesus. All of the 12 Preached Christ's ressurection to the death! Many died by torture. Why would you see someone die and then die for the same reason they died Preaching the Goodness of God by the remission of sins through the person that deid ??? Unless you and the other 11 that followed him seen him alive with out a shadow of doubt in your mind And he promised you that the Same thing God had did for him because of his faithfulness In God, God will do to you!
3 For those of you who question the Bible truth value...The bible has never been contradicted in Historic Findings. Scientist have found city after city that have been told about in the Bible.
For those who don't believe Jesus ever lived, He is talk about in other books than the bible. Josphesus One of the Great historians Of early earth times. Write about his existence more than once! Roman historians speak of Jesus Even that Quran Speaks of Jesus! So many books acknowledge his life on earth it is serious!
4 Not acknowledging Jesus and his scientifically provable ressurection is Like saying Because you don't see your heart that it is not there!
5 In conclusion, Every body Enjoys christmas vacation!
Christmas Honors the birth of Jesus, his Life,
Becuase Jesus was seen alive from the grave!

P.S.

Have a nice day!!

Answer 10

Flavius Josephus COMPLETE WORKS OF JOSEPHUS

Answer 11

Really stupid question, its not the question of if he lived, but if he is/was what everyone says he is/was.