Is there any solid evidence of the existance of Jesus of Nazareth that I should know about?

Question

You know, things such as records and scribes' writings, or artifacts? I'm not talking about the gospels, since that's not third party sources that I'm asking for. Is there any solid, unequivocal evidence for the existance of Jesus other than the Bible?

Hope: there is much evidence for Alexander the Great. Records, artifacts, cities named after him.

Answer 1

Well, I agree with your perception.

Personally, I think it's all a bunch of Hoo-Hah.

The way I look at it, I think there probably was a man called Jesus. I don't believe he was divine in anyway. I do believe that he was of extraordinary intelligence and charisma....as some people are.

I think that through his intelligence, he was able to think spatially, question current authority, question the standard thinking about the universe as it was known during those times. I believe he was a rebel who stirred things up among the population and was a threat to the status-quo - meaning those in power. I believe he was put do death by those who were fearful of their own position and power should his revolution be successful.

The stories written about him were written by men who didn't understand the natural world around them...didn't understand how things worked...and, who themselves, held certain positions of power. What they didn't understand, they attributed to some mythical or mystical entity.

I think he gathered many "free-thinkers" around him who listened to his suppositions and theories and became followers - who, in turn, tried to get the points across to others.

There are people in past history who's actions have changed civilizations and cultures.... I think he probably was one of them. He sure stirred things up among the people of the day.
That, I think, is why he is still spoken of today....

I don't for a minute believe in all the holy, holy crapola or the god thingie or resurrection or any of that nonsense. I believe he was a man with the extraordinary ability to change peoples minds and to have them look at their world with another eye.

I believe that any evidence of his existence through the common man has been destroyed, hidden or lost by those who wanted to make him devine. The chronical of an ordinary man with extraordinary talent would not have much meaning. But, a "devine" man, son of some mystical god thingie, would increase the authors power and have much influence in the community.

Answer 2

Josephus (Antiquities of the Jews, c.93)
Letter from Pliny the Younger to Trajan (c. 110)
Tacitus (Annals, c.115-120)
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)

"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."

For a more detailed presentation, go to this link:
http://www.christian-thinktank.com/jesusref.html

Answer 3

Outside the bible, there is no historical evidence that a man call jesus existed. There is also no archaeological evidence that a town called Nazareth existed.
What is most damning is the silence of the writers & historians of the time. In fact there was a man named Philo who live at the same time & traveled thought the area documenting religious beliefs, & he wrote nothing of jesus.
Christians will dispute this fact & try to quote vague sources, But the truth is. there is nothing!

Answer 4

Aside from the Bible, there is no record anywhere of this person. You would think that there would be if he existed anywhere but in the minds of some delusional people who supposedly wrote the gospels.
Chances are the gospels were written by a group of people looking to start a new religion and just created everything out of thin air, since all factual records of his existence seem to have been just that, thin air, nothing more.

Answer 5

No evidence for Jesus, strong evidence against the existence of Jesus, and Nazareth did not exist in the first century CE. All of this information is available through multiple sources online.

Answer 6

I heard there was this shroud, but the church took it and does not let anyone make some tests in it. Anyhow according to the scholars of those times there was no record of a Jesus of Nazareth on the crucifixion manuscripts (lists of people crucified by Romans for their crimes).

Edit: Rukidding, care to cite a source? Don't take it the wrong way, I just want to learn more.

Answer 7

If we look at the Bible simply as a historic document, it should be among the most reliable on record compared with others.

Historians routinely cite Herodotus as a key source of information. He wrote from 488 B.C. to 428 B.C. and the earliest copy of his work comes from 900 A.D. (1,300 years later). There are only eight known copies of his work.

By contrast, the New Testament of the Bible (with all its information about Jesus) was written between 40 A.D. and 100 A.D. The earliest known copy is from 130 A.D. and there are 5,000 known copies in Greek, 10,000 in Latin and 9,300 in other languages.

Still, to put to rest the notion that there is no historic and scientific proof of Jesus outside the Bible, we may look to Jewish historian Flavius Josephus and to Roman historian Carius Cornelius Tacitus - both well known and accepted.


Josephus, in the book Jewish Antiquities" wrote:

"At that time lived Jesus, a wise man, if he may be called a man; for he performed many wonderful works. He was a teacher of such men as received the truth with pleasure. . . .And when Pilate, at the instigation of the chief men among us, had condemned him to the cross, they who before had conceived an affection for him did not cease to adhere to him. For on the third day he appeared to them alive again, the divine prophets having foretold these and many other wonderful things concerning him. And the sect of the Christians, so called from him, subsists at this time" (Antiquities, Book 18, Chapter 3, Section 1).

Tacitus, in writing about accusations that Nero burned the city of Rome and blamed it on Christians, said the following:

". . .Nero procured others to be accused, and inflicted exquisite punishment upon those people, who were in abhorrence for their crimes, and were commonly known by the name of Christians. They had their denomination from Christus (Christ, dm.), who in the reign of Tibertius was put to death as a criminal by the procurator Pontius Pilate. . . .At first they were only apprehended who confessed themselves of that sect; afterwards a vast multitude discovered by them, all of which were condemned, not so much for the crime of burning the city, as for their enmity to mankind. . . ." (Tacitus, Annals, 15, 44).


recent discoveries have given more credibility to the nature and content of the New Testament record than ever before. Actually, except for the propagated view of the mainstream media, the trend in the last two decades has been for liberal scholars to become more conservative in their views on the reliability of the New Testament record, not less. Recent finds in archaeology are showing more (not less) consistent detail of the time, culture, religion and politics at the time Jesus walked the earth. At the same time, Biblical manuscript credibility has taken great leaps forward (not backward). Do these things prove the miracles or resurrection of Jesus? No. However, when these things are combined with the record of historical accuracy, messianic prophecy, early church growth, Christian persecution, and extra-biblical sources, we see powerful substance (not mythology) underlying the claim that the writers of the New Testament record were eye-witnesses to the events themselves.


we now know that the Gospels were written 30 to 50 years after the crucifixion of Jesus. More dramatically, we now date some of the early Christian creeds, proclaiming the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, to 3 to 10 years after His crucifixion. This includes Paul's letters to the Corinthians, Romans and Galatians. Finally, if Jesus' claim of deity was a myth, the early Jewish opponents of Christianity would surely have presented the fact that these claims never happened. Unlike modern skeptics, the Jewish rabbis never denied that Jesus made the claim that He was God. Instead, they called Him a liar, and tried Him for blasphemy.

Roman historians, Jewish historians, the finding of the Gnostic materials at Nag Hammadi and now the finding of Caiaphas' burial cave, establishes an historic fact that Jesus lived and died in a time and a place described in the New Testament. Some of the evidence supporting these writings surfaced nearly 2000 years later, adding a strong rule of evidence toward their historic accuracy.

Answer 8

i can a sure you not one word exist about jesus out side of the bible and the koran. several diaries exist today from that area and time but not one word about water walking , raising the dead, feeding thousands with piece of bread, flying up to heaven. they didn't even worship two boards with a man nailed to them.

Answer 9

Actually there was a great Roman historian who wrote about Jesus' existence. His existence, though, would not confirm his divinity. That's where the faith comes in.

Answer 10

Pliny the younger