What are some non-biblical accounts of the history of jesus?

Question

Yeah I believe in the bible im just curios how other people viewed jesus.

Answer 1

Besides the historians already mentioned, there are a number of stories unverified "gospels" supposedly by various disciples, and even one supposedly by Jesus. None of these have gained much credibility.
There are some legendary stories of Jesus' childhood, some charming and fanciful, which I'm sure you'll agree if you read them. There is one story in which the boy Jesus (using his supernatural powers) kills people who upset him, until Joseph says, "From now on we keep him in the house, because he kills anybody that displeases him."
It seems like people had a lot of fun with the Jesus legend during the first few centuries after the resurrection.

Answer 2

I'm sorry to disappoint you, but there are none, at least none that are considered reliable by most scholars, believers and non-believers.

Josephus, the Jewish historian who chronicled the Jewish revolt against Roman rule in the late 1st Century AD, has one brief passage, out of the hundreds of pages that he wrote, which mentions Jesus, who he said was "the Christ." For several reasons, this passage is considered by most scholars to be a much later insertion, i.e., a forgery.

Similarly, the Annals of Tacitus mentions a "Christos" who had a number of followers and was crucified. There are at least two problems with that, the first being that "Christ" is a title, not a name, and there were a lot of people in the 1st Century claiming to be the Christ. The other problem is that the entire Annals, as opposed to Tacitus's Histories, is considered by some scholars to be a Renaissance forgery.

Other than that, there really are no non-Christian writers who mention anybody by the name of Jesus. Certainly there are those who talk about the Christians, but none who talk about Jesus himself or his life.

After I submitted my answer, I noticed that the person before me mentioned Josephus. The passage he quotes is exactly the one I was talking about. Again, this passage is considered to be a much later insertion by someone else. For one thing, Josephus, an orthodox Jew, would not have said that Jesus "was" the Messiah, the Christ. He might have said that his followers proclaimed him as the Messiah, but that would have been as far is it went. Otherwise, Josephus himself would have been a follower of Jesus, which he was not.

Another thing that indicates that the passage was a much later insertion is the part that says that the "tribe of the Christians . . . has still to this day not disappeared." This sounds as if Josephus was writing long after the events of the New Testament are supposed to have happened, but in fact it had only been about forty years. That is hardly a long time in the life of most religions. It probably says more about the time in which the alleged forger was writing.

Answer 3

In Rome, in the year 93, Josephus published his lengthy history of the Jews. While discussing the period in which the Jews of Judaea were governed by the Roman procurator Pontius Pilate, Josephus included the following account:


About this time there lived Jesus, a wise man, if indeed one ought to call him a man. For he was one who performed surprising deeds and was a teacher of such people as accept the truth gladly. He won over many Jews and many of the Greeks. He was the Messiah. And when, upon the accusation of the principal men among us, Pilate had condemned him to a cross, those who had first come to love him did not cease. He appeared to them spending a third day restored to life, for the prophets of God had foretold these things and a thousand other marvels about him. And the tribe of the Christians, so called after him, has still to this day not disappeared.
- Jewish Antiquities, 18.3.3 §63
(Based on the translation of Louis H. Feldman, The Loeb Classical Library.)

Answer 4

there are some interesting passages from non-canonical books such as the gospel of thomas, the gospel of mary, etc. that portray Jesus when he was a teenager. some of these come from gnostic sources while others come from papyrus scrolls from egypt.