If Jesus was real and not a fictional Bible character, why is he not mentioned in any other literature at all?

Question

Please don't refer to the account by Josephus, it is generally accepted that a fake addition was later inserted into his writings.

I am referring to contemporary writers one's who were alive at the time Jesus supposedly "Walked the Earth" as Christians like to say.

Searcher: The Romans kept very good records of all criminal prosecutions and Jesus doesn't appear in them.

Answer 1

Scholars generally think that a few messianic types of persons could've inspired the idea of the Biblical Jesus although there is no historical record that corrorborates the Gospel stories (or even allegedly historical passages within the Old Testament). There was a person who may have lived during the first century BC who might have been a primary prototype of the Biblical Jesus and there ARE records of that person in Roman and Jewish documentation, and his name was Yeshua (Jesus) (The Judaic tracts are particularly scathing). The writings of Josephus, Tacitus, etc., are now considered questionable hearsay, not accurate historical or journalistic documentation.

Answer 2

First of all, only SOME scholars discount that whole paragraph. I think there was some interpolation, but there are other copies of the manuscript that say exactly the same thing...minus the "He was the Christ" line.

Secondly, there are several other writers from the time that mention Jesus, either directly or indirectly: Thallus, Pliny the Younger, Tacitus, Suetonius, Lucian, and Celsus, among others.

There is a great article on this at wikipedia (I know, not a particularly unbiased source, but at least the article has a lot of references for a person to look into):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historicity_of_Jesus

If you're going to use the fact that nothing was written about Jesus within five years of His death/resurrection (or while He was alive) to prove that He didn't exist...then you're going to have to pretty much dismiss ancient history as a whole. This includes most of the Roman emperors, as well as many others whom are considered by the majority of scholars to have existed.

Interestingly enough, hardly ANY scholars believed that Jesus didn't exist until the 19th century. Don't you think if there had been any doubt as to His existence, someone would have said so, oh I don't know, nineteen hundred years ago? Come on. You seem like a critical thinker. Why don't you really consider this?

Answer 3

Actually Joesphus mentions him twice and they have found a very early version that the only change was the line about "if he could be called a man". The rest remained the same. Pliny Jr talks about early Christians and then there is Tachitus and another I can never remember when I am answering peoples misinformation.

Anyway many copies of the books of the Bible were written within just a few years of Jesus death so why not trust them... we have the Gospel of Mark written before 70 and the Gospel of Matthew written between 40 and 70 and the writings of Paul written in the 40's and 50's. People have been lying and trying to disprove them for millenia and still fall on their faces when people look for the truth.

Lee Strobel, Alister McGrath, C.S. Lewis... all promoters of Christianity were all atheist until they looked at the evidence.

I have also repeatedly seen it in my life and in others when they put their trust in him...WOW!

Todd


"Now is our chance to choose the right side. God is holding back to give us that chance. It won't last forever. We must take it or leave it." C.S. Lewis.

Answer 4

It's a good question. The fact is, there were lots of reformers and wandering preachers at the time, plenty of arguments on the fine points of interpretation of the Law, and self-proclaimed messiahs were pretty easy to come by. So there is no reason anybody would have bothered to mention any particular one of these guys with just a dozen followers.

As it happens, he picked up some followers who (a) after he died were willing to come up with a rationalization of his obvious failure to be the messiah, and (b) had great marketing skills. But the fact that almost no one noticed his existence at the time is not proof that he did not exist. We have no reason to believe that there wasn't a guy named Joshua preaching reform in Northern Israel with limited success around those years.

This happens not infrequently, when someone becomes famous after his death. Someone long after his death might try to piece together a biography through oral accounts, even though there are no contemporaneous written accounts. Accuracy suffers, and some of the stories, as with various parts of the Jesus stories, will be demonstrably false or clearly re-remembered through a later-day perspective, but we can still generally feel pretty safe assuming the person actually existed. Shakespeare lived much more recently, was himself a writer whose writings were popular and did survive, and still there is extremely little direct contemporary writing about him.

Answer 5

I'm not taking a position one side or the other. What I find curious. Jerusalem was a relatively big town and part of the Roman empire. When looking at Jewish history and Roman history of the era, we can find confirmation of signficant historical events in both. Things like uprisings, droughts, earthquakes, riots etc. During the course of Jesus's life incredible feats were performed which did not escape the eye of both the romans and the indigenous Jews. Feeding thousands of people for example with a few loaves and fishes--would have been viewed as a threat and sent to rome--viewed as a threat I'm sure by the Jewish heiarchy--but no record of that miracle exists. When Jesus was crucified, dead people arose from the tomb according to scripture, the sun was blotted out--earthquakes were felt (enough to move the stones again according to scripture)-and the curtian to the holy of holies to the Jews was rent in half-a near impossible feat. Neither the roman nor local jewish accounts of that era mention earthquakes-eclipses or a blotting of the sun--dead people raising up--no notation by the Jews of the era of something as siginifcant as the curtain to the holy of holies being rent in half. I'd argue that Josephus account was not real--but if it were--there is no confirmation of it from any other source. To this day--tax docuemts--local history survives--a lot of it--and there is no mention. It just seems odd to me that one can find no independent confirmation of these events from multiple sources.

Answer 6

One part of Josephus' account is considered fake. There's a smaller mention of him in Josephus that is considered accurate, but it says almost nothing, and we're not positive its actually referring to the same Jesus the Bible talks about. There's a good article in wikipedia about the Josephus debate.

The thing I find funny is that people doubt Jesus' existence simply because they don't believe he was the son of God. Some of the arguments here reflect that: just because there's no evidence of miracles means that Jesus didn't exist? That doesn't follow! The man could have existed and the miracles could be the fabrications. I could mention King Arthur and Robin Hood as examples of real men whom legend conflated into larger than life characters whose reality and whose legend no longer correspond...why not Jesus too?

Answer 7

how could anyone answer this question as to tell you why jesus wasnt mentioned in any other writings from that time period. None of us were alive back then. so how could we say ..... yeah Akbar Smithsonian Mention Jesus in his writings because he didnt like his Flip Flops. All you can do is be a Believer or a Non-Believer. So if you believe in God, and it all works out that way in the end you will def be happy. If you believe in God and it doesnt work out in the end. You will be dissapointed def. but you will die a happy person.

So now lets take the ladder. If you are a Non-believer and it all works out in the end. I dont want to say your going to hell. obviously i have no final say so where anyone goes. But if you mock christians, the lord, christian beliefs, and are blasphemous than your outcome will not be good. I promise. And if it doesnt work out in the end and there is no God, Heaven, or Hell. Then you will just die and thats it. I dont know if you would die happy or not.

I hope this answer helped many people that dont believe understand why i have chosen to believe. But im not hatin on anyone that doesnt believe. Because everyone cant think alike .


Kevin Compton
Gadsden Alabama

Answer 8

Presumably you would discount Tacitus too?

First, the truth is that his immediate impact in his own time was minimal and geographically isolated. It was the spread of Christianity over the course of the century or so thereafter that brought him and the religious movement focused on him to the attention of authors outside Christianity.

Second, the idea that someone just made him up doesn't make historical sense. I am not saying that everything in the New Testament that is said about him is historically accurate. But you are claiming that he is a PURELY fictional character, and that makes no sense. The early Christians were trying to persuade people to believe that Jesus was the Messiah. If they were making him up, they would not have made up a story about him being crucified, since that disqualified him in the eyes of most people.

Answer 9

Some people forget that the Bible is not a book, but a collection of books. He is written of in a number of books constituting the Bible. He was also written of in a number of books that were not included in the Bible. Still, they are all "religious" books. Many of these are not accepted by the Christian church as acceptable or authoritative texts.

Where he is not found is in public records or historical documents.

Answer 10

True, there is no creditable corroborating evidence in other literature of the time that Christ supposedly lived. However, I think in all fairness, we have to look at the great and good footprint that has been stamped upon humanity with his name upon it. A footprint suggests a foot. Someone made a mega-impact on the world and transformed societies and individual lives, and things concerned with it were called Christian based on the founder Christ's name. Christ is also mentioned and discussed in later revealed sacred scripture; that of Muhammad, The Bab, and Baha'u'llah. I hope it's understood that I'm not trying to be sarcastic by the use of the word footprint.