Besides the bible , are there any records of Jesus being alive?

Question

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Answer 1

No, this one Jewish guy, Josephus is brought up, but although he mentions a Jesus, the lineages don't match up.

Answer 2

As you knew before you asked this question, contemporary accounts are limited - just as one would expect. Think of all the thousands of other individuals, extraordinarily important in a particular region, of which there would have been no record preserved! Literacy, even among the Jews, was severely limited at that time, and the average letter does not survive even 1 century, let alone 20. What is amazing is that any contemporary account has survived at all! And we have at least 4 - the gospels, even if Josephus is discarded for unreliability. How many non-officials of the Roman Empire do we have accounts of from this time, apart from the bible? Very, very few indeed.

Jim, http://www.jimpettis.com/wheel/

Answer 3

Josephus mentioned Jesus but his reference is suspect as he was against all of the other "messianic hopefuls" at the time. He also was not a contemporary but would might have been a boy at the time of Jesus' death.

The Babylonian Talmud states that a sorcerer named Jesus was held and presented for 40 days without any testifying for him, then he was stoned or hung. I'm not sure when this was written.

Other than that, no. Most of the early writings are about his followers and occur after the gospels were written some 30 to 70 years after his death.

Answer 4

No.

The Qu'ran is not a "contemporary" document to the alleged time Jesus was alive. The Josephus document is also non-contemporary, and many now believe it is a forgery. Even the gospels themselves were written a minimum of three generations (about a hundred years) *after* their alleged sources all died -- and not all of them were written at the same time.

It's *possible* that he existed, but there are not even Roman documents that state they executed any one man for the alleged crimes of the Christian messiah (and Muslim prophet) nor any that state such a man was arrested under the specific circumstances which the Christian bible depict. The earliest Christians maintained that Jesus was an ethereal spirit, in many ways syncretic with the Roman Sol, and was later "humanised" to create sympathy for their previously obscure cult through martyrdom.

Answer 5

As said, there are no other records of Jesus' life, beside that of several Roman historians. The first is Josephus, whose account has been proven to be nonsense. The other two are Tacitus and Pliny, who were good friends. One probably heard it from the other, who heard it from Josephus.

Something another user mentioned: last time I was in Rome, I was with a colleague who is a native Italian, and Latin speaker much like myself. When were visiting the Vatican, we actually showed our credentials from VCU, and they let us into the private library. We weren't allowed to go back into it, but we were asked to specify a document, and they would find it for us. We spent four or five hours in there looking through things, but we didn't bother to look up anything about Jesus.

If I had my guess, I'd say that the Vatican Library does have something in there, as far as records go, concerning the life of Jesus from his actual time here on Earth. I don't know what they are, but next time I'm in Rome, I'm going to try and see what I can come up with.

Answer 6

Not that I know of, all reports the the Jesus tomb has been discovered are oxes, The new testament was written in Latin 300 years after the supposed birth of Jesus, How can such a detailed account be kept from mouth to mouth for 300 years? Draw your own conclusion

Answer 7

There are historical records of a man named Jesus who was hung on a tree after being arrested in the temple but it is unclear if it was Jesus the Christ. It did occur at about that time and though there are stories of all the events that took place, there is no written records. The temple was destroyed later, which may have destroyed the records as well.

Answer 8

Josephus-Antiquity of the Jews, The Gospel of Thomas and all the other uncanonized "scriptures" that Da Vinci Code followers cry about. The Letters of Pontius Pilate.
I fail to see the point though because the Bible has the most authenticated historical manuscripts ever. By your criteria you would have to get rid of all historical figures like, Plato, Socrates, Homer, Shakespeare because we have less historical evidence for them.

Answer 9

Well, from my standpoint, there wasn't a conflict on if Jesus really existed...it is god.

Take a read of this:


Delusional Schizophrenic? Jesus began his (apparently one-year) ministry as a follower of John the Baptist (whose embarrassing baptism of Jesus is played down or not mentioned in the later gospels). In the earliest gospel (Mark), Jesus never calls himself Christ/Messiah, is reluctant for his special nature to be known, and (as he does in Matthew) despairs on the cross. (By contrast, in the later Luke and John, Jesus asserts he is Christ, and confidently assures a co-crucified convict of their impending ascension.) Jesus "could not do many miracles" in his hometown [Mk 6:5, Mt 13:58, Lk 4:24], and he at times was considered mad by other Jews [Jn 8:48, 10:20]. Jesus' movement seems not to have been joined in his lifetime by a single family member or prior acquaintance, but only by strangers. Jesus satisifed the diagnostic criteria of paranoid schizophrenia:

hallucinations: hearing or seeing God, Satan, demons, and angels;
delusions of grandiosity: belief that he is the salvific Christ/Messiah with miraculous powers and apocalyptic foreknowledge;
delusions of persecution: temptation by Satan; opposition by demons;
an insidious reduction in external relations and interests: nomadic asceticism; estrangement from his family.

Answer 10

Almost.

Josephus mentions him, although it's almost certainly an interpolation, and Tacitus mentions a "Chrestus" causing some trouble. Outside of that, it's pretty spotty.

I still think a historical Jesus makes slightly more sense than an invention out of whole cloth and legends.

Answer 11

There are rcords in India in Hinduism, in Buddhism, also there were records in Inca and Aztc pictographs, but the monks destroyed as many of them as they could.