Who was Jesus Christ? Is he an invention? Did he ever really exist? Is there any evidence for his life?

I apologize that this is a long post! Scroll to the sub-title which takes your fancy…

IMBALANCE

Did Jesus Christ really exist as a man on earth? There are those in our world who have made it their mission in life to convince as many people as possible that he didn’t. What’s their motivation? Of all the issues they could take up; of all the causes they could devote themselves to, why do they want to rob people of their faith and hope? And it’s not just any old faith or hope: it’s one specific faith and hope.

I didn’t realize as I was growing up that we don’t live in a world of intellectual or spiritual balance or neutrality. I assumed, perhaps until the age of twelve, that we can just trust in our “experts”, and the people who appear on TV and at the front of our classrooms. But I came to see the truth, that the world that passes on the “facts” of human and earth history has its own ignorance, its own bias, its own propaganda, and often its own agenda. There is an unseen, un-named empire attempting to rule us all, and what we think and believe. We don’t hear about the evidence for the life of Christ because most historians, media people and even some theologians have themselves been misled, or consciously have an anti-Christ bias. 

We’re all indoctrinated with their biases, and then we’re all amused to death-until we die-so that we don’t even start thinking such thoughts as, “Is there a God? Was there really a Jesus Christ? Who was he? Am I missing something? Did I really evolve out of soup? Where did the soup come from? How can I find out?”

However, there are not only “experts” who tell us that the Bible is myth, but experts who believe that the life and claims of Jesus Christ and his disciples are supported by solid evidence and reason. So which “experts” do we believe? Do we just believe the majority? Is a majority always right, or is, perhaps, a majority adequately brainwashed? It’s my contention that most people will believe the experts they choose to believe, often without taking much notice of the evidence offered on either side. Your choices reflect your heart. 

THE HISTORICAL JESUS

In his book “Did Jesus Exist?”, well-known textual critic Bart Ehrman, famous as a textual critic and no friend to the Bible-Believing Christian, writes that he has been amazed to see a growing body of literature stating that Jesus Christ never actually existed as a human being. But he wrote:

“I should say at the outset that none of this literature is written by scholars trained in New Testament or early Christian studies, teaching at either the major or the minor accredited theological seminaries, divinity schools, universities, or colleges of North America, or Europe (or anywhere else in the world). Of the thousands of scholars of early Christianity who do teach at such schools, none of them, to my knowledge, has any doubt that Jesus existed” (17).

Gary R. Habermas, with a DD from Oxford and a Ph D from Michigan State University, states in his book “The Historical Jesus”:

“Very few scholars…” (and he is including the unbelieving scholars) ”…hold the view that Jesus never lived”.

He also says:

“There is a substantial body of data that argues for a historical Jesus who lived early in the first century” 1.

Habermas even lists some of the critical scholars of our age who admit to the early first century existence of important Christian creeds. One such creed from the first century outlines the original gospel of Jesus Christ, as I noted in my post, “What is the gospel of Jesus Christ?”

We have to admit that there are not any surviving photographs of Jesus Christ, or first century newspaper or web page reports of his movements, or coffee tables with his family business logo on, or fish which were caught, stuffed, mounted and autographed by the disciples. You can’t expect a nobody carpenter who was branded a criminal by even the religious leaders of his time and then executed, to have monuments built by the Romans or the Jews in honor of his life. They didn’t even make movies about him.

However, there are certainly some evidences for his life and works.

NON-CHRISTIAN REFERENCES TO JESUS

-In AD 115 Tacitus, the most important Roman historian of the first century, mentioned “Christus” as the ringleader of a sect, who:

“…suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius”.

Not a believer himself, Tacitus wrote that there was an “immense multitude of believers willing to die rather than recant their faith” 2.

-Pliny the Younger took pleasure in torturing and killing Christians. In AD 111 he wrote that he killed them for “belonging to that degenerate sect”. He also commented that they chanted to Christ “AS IF TO A GOD” 3.

-The Jewish Talmud mentions Christ as a “False Messiah who practiced magic” 4.

-Josephus, the widely referenced first century Jewish historian, in his “Antiquities”, refers to “James”…“the brother of Jesus, who is called the Christ”.  

Josephus’ “Testimonium Flavianum” contains a disputed passage which talks about Jesus and his followers and their martyrdom 5.

-Darrell Bock writes about a piece of graffiti found in 1857 on some stone on the Palatine Hill of Rome:

“It portrays a man with the head of an ass with hands outstretched on a cross. Another man is said to worship this figure, as the picture has the inscription ‘Alexamanos, worship God!’ The drawing has been dated to somewhere between the first and third centuries” 6

The Roman historian Seutonius (AD 69-130) attests to Rome’s execution of Jesus (7). He wrote, “Punishments were also inflicted on the Christians, a sect professing a new and mischievous religions belief” (18).

EARLY CHRISTIAN WRITINGS

Apart from the Bible, there are thousands of writings by the early “Church Fathers”, dated between AD 90 and 160, containing quoted portions of the New Testament. Of course these speak of Jesus (8). The early church believed the authorship of the gospels and letters, including Papias in 125 AD and Iranaeus in 180 (9).

Of the “Apostolic Fathers”, Ignatius, martyred before AD 117, wrote that Jesus was both God and man (10).

THE BIBLE

The Bible is a collection of books by many different authors, written over many centuries, which all have at their core the story of Jesus Christ. The Old Testament writers often prophesied the life and death of the Messiah, and the New Testament writers were centred on a man called Jesus Christ and his life, death and resurrection. It doesn’t make sense to dismiss the Bible as no evidence at all: it is in itself a witness by many people of the life of Jesus. It is a collection of documents. It contains such statements by the numerous different writers of its pages as this by John:

That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched—this we proclaim concerning the Word of life. The life appeared; we have seen it and testify to it, and we proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and has appeared to us. We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard, so that you also may have fellowship with us (1 John 1:1-3).

The Old Testament, known to have been written before Christ, contains many prophecies of the Messiah, prophecies which were fulfilled in the life of Christ. For example, the Dead Sea scrolls contain an entire book of Isaiah- a copy made or posessed by the Essenes, a separatist Jewish sect (not Christian), which existed from 300 BC to 68 AD. The Isaiah scroll is virtually identical in content to the book which has been passed down to us through the centuries in the Bible, and which therefore has not been changed or corrupted in over two thousand years (11). Isaiah contains prophecies like this one:

“Surely he took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows, yet we considered him stricken by God, smitten by him, and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed….He was led like a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before his shearers he was silent, so he did not open his mouth…..He was assigned a grave with the wicked…Yet it was the Lord’s will to crush him” (Isaiah 53).

In the Jewish scriptures, a man “hanged” as Jesus was on the cross was considered to be cursed by God (Deuteronomy 21: 22-23): hence the phrase “yet we considered him stricken by God”.

Isaiah was prophesying- foretelling- the crucifixion of Christ who would be paying for the sins of his people.

Many books have been written on the evidence within the scriptures for the life and person of Jesus Christ. It is something you could spend your lifetime researching, and still not exhaust the evidence.

THE TESTIMONY OF HISTORY

There’s no denying that someone, or something, had a profound effect on the world from the first century onwards. Much of the woke and politically correct world now shares the view of Adolph Hitler, who stated that the advent of Christianity wreaked terror on the “free” (ha ha) Pagan world that existed before it. (See my post on Adolph Hitler for the quote from “Mein Kampf”). Something certainly did happen to change the world (and Christ haters are attempting to restore paganism over us all). Something happened to make a bunch of nobodies decide to travel the world, risking their lives to tell everyone about this Jesus. Despite the attempts of various rulers such as Nero to stamp out the Christian faith, it was that small bunch of un-armed, un-trained believers who turned the known world upside down. They did not advance their cause with violence or with the help of any government body- this was done later by leaders who borrowed the name of Christ to help cement their power over men and to gain lands and worldly wealth.

We do not find people denying the existence of Mohammed today: why deny the existence of Jesus Christ, who people were prepared to die for? Why would they die for someone that they KNEW didn’t exist, or who was just a Joe Nobody? Bruce M Metzger, a believer in Christ, with Ph Ds from Princeton, St Andrews in Scotland and Munter in Germany, said that no one doubts the existence of Julius Caesar, yet there are far more manuscripts attesting to the life of Jesus than there are manuscripts attesting to the life of Julius Caesar (12).

ARCHEOLOGY

As I said earlier, there are no coffee tables in museums with “Jesus Christ & Co” printed underneath them, and there are no family portraits in neat frames. The disciples were not celebrated dignitaries, but men who were hounded and chased to the death. No-one wished to preserve their names or a record of their actions in the history books: their message was far too unpopular. They were considered nobodies. They were considered the scum of the earth: they had no power, they were not rich, and they opposed the religion of the day by claiming that there was only one God, and that God had standards of right and wrong which conflicted with the standards of the day, as in our own time.

However, there is plenty of archeological evidence which supports details and characters in the New Testament books. Here are a few of the many examples that could be given:

-King Herod was spoken of in the gospels (e.g. Matthew chapter 2). His name, “Herod, King of Judea”, was found on the remains of a wine bottle at Masada, a structure built by him. First century Jewish historian Josephus wrote about Herod. Herod’s burial place can be seen at Herodium (13).

-Pontius Pilate as Roman governor (Luke 3:1) presided over the judgment of Jesus Christ and gave him the order to be executed (John chapter 19). At Caesarea’s Roman theatre a stone bearing Pilate’s name was discovered. It is a Latin inscription of four lines, saying: “Pontius Pilate, Prefect of Judea” (14).

-Caiaphas, according to Matthew 26: 57, was the Jewish High Priest who led the efforts to have Christ crucified. His ossuary (burial box) was found, containing his remains, with an inscription, “Caiaphas” and “Joseph, son of Caiaphas” . Josephus mentions him as “Joseph who was called Caiaphas of the High Priesthood” (15).

-John the Baptist, mentioned three times in Matthew’s gospel, created such a stir with Herod and his girlfriend that he lost his head, as recorded in chapter 14. John was spoken of by historian Josephus (16).

VIDEOS

A great video covering this subject is available for viewing free, on YouYube: see note 18 below. It includes discussion of Dan Brown’s “The DaVinci Code”. Another is titled “Undeniable Historical Evidence for the Existence of Jesus” by Dr. Gary Habermas.

NOTES

1 Gary R Habermas: “The Historical Jesus: Ancient Evidence for the Life of Christ” (College Press Publishing Company, Joplin Missouri, copyright 1996 by Gary Habermas)

2 “Annals 15.44, in Lee Strobel: “The Case for Christ” (Zondervan, pub. 1998); also Darrell L. Bock “Who Is Jesus?         (Howard Books, New YorkNY, copyright 2012 by Darrell Bock)

3 Lee Strobel: “The Case for Christ” (Zondervan, pub. 1998)  

4 Ibid

5 Ibid

6 Darrell L. Bock: “Who Is Jesus? (Howard Books, New YorkNY, copyright 2012 by Darrell Bock) pg 176

7 Ibid, page 22, (taken from “Claudius” 25.4)  

8 Bruce Metzger in in Lee Strobel: “The Case for Christ” (Zondervan, pub. 1998)

9 Lee Strobel: “The Case for Christ” (Zondervan, pub. 1998

10 Ibid

11 Randall Price: “The Stones Cry Out” (Harvest House Publishers, copyright 1997 by Randall Price) 

12 Bruce Metzger in in Lee Strobel: “The Case for Christ” (Zondervan, pub. 1998) 

13 Randall Price: “The Stones

Cry Out” (Harvest House Publishers, copyright 1997 by Randall Price)  

14 Ibid

15 Ibid

16 “Antiquities” 18.117, as noted in Darrell L. Bock: “Who Is Jesus? (Howard Books, New York NY, copyright 2012 by Darrell Bock) pg 30.

17 Bart D Ehrman, “Did Jesus Exist?: The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth” pub. by HarperOne, 2013.

18 “Refuting Modern Myths About Jesus Christ”, an Answers In Genesis video available on YouTube featuring Tim Chaffey.

• APOLOGETICS
• FAITH
• JESUS CHRIST