Introduction:

There are some people today who claim that Christ never existed; that Jesus
was a mere fabrication of a group of people who needed a new religion to
accommodate their beliefs and practices.

But if there had been no Jesus Christ, everything we do is in vain. In a way, our
faith depends on the fact that once upon a time, God walked on our planet.

This module intends to focus on the historical evidences for Jesus’ existence.
Let us journey together as we search for The Historical Jesus.

HISTORICAL EVIDENCES FOR JESUS’ EXISTENCE: NON-CHRISTIAN AND CHRISTIAN

SOURCES

The Christian Scriptures are our principal sources in proving the existence of the
historical Jesus.
The New Testament tells us of a certain Jesus of Nazareth who preached, performed miracles,
was crucified and rose again from the dead.
The Early Christian chose to give up their lives than to renounce Jesus. Why would
these men opt to die if Christ had not been raised from the dead, or much more if he had not
existed at all?

Even outside Christianity, there are writings that point to the existence of Jesus Christ.

A. Non-Christian Sources

A.1.Pagan Roman Sources. Is there any evidence for the existence of the historical Jesus
outside the New Testament? If we realize that Palestine was considered a bothersome, though
minor, province in the large Roman Empire, we should not be too surprised to find little written
evidence by the pagan* Roman historians concerning the wondering Jewish preacher and
teacher, Jesus of Nazareth. But it was inevitable that some Romans would have to take notice
because of the existence of the ever-increasing group of believers in Jesus, the Christians.
They claimed they came into being because this Jesus who was put to death now lived. Their
message under the guidance of the Holy Spirit spread by men like St. Paul reached every
corner of the Roman Empire. As a result, eventually some Roman historians had to take notice
of the group and ultimately of their founder. From those early years, we have mention of Jesus
and his followers in three separate Roman writers: namely, Suetonius, Tacitus and Pliny the
Younger.

Suetonius. The Roman author Suetonius compiled biographies of the first 12 Roman
emperors, from Julius Caesar onward. Writing about 120 A.D. in his Life of Claudius he says
of the emperor:
He expelled the Jews from Rome, on account of the riots in which they were constantly
indulging, at the instigation of Chrestus. **
Suetonius made a mistake in his retelling of the Jewish expulsion from Rome in 49 A.D. in
assuming that Christ was there. What probably happened was that when the early Christian
missionaries went to the synagogues in Rome to tell the Jews that their long-awaited Messiah
had come, the Christians met with such resistance that street riots resulted. Claudius thought
Christians and Jews were really members of the same religious sect and consequently
banished them from Rome because of the civil disturbances. Luke writes in Acts 18:2 that
when Paul arrived in Corinth about 50 A.D., he found there “a Jew named Aquila, a native
of Pontus, recently arrived from Italy with his wife, Priscilla. An edict of Claudius had ordered
all Jews to leave Rome.
Suetonius (on the life of Emperor Claudius 25:4) mentioned the expulsion of Jews
from Rome in A.D. 49 because of their riots at the instigation of Chrestus. Suetonius wrote
around A.D. 120 and, like many Romans, considered Christians and Jews as members of
the same religious sect. What is most significant in this piece of evidence is the point that by
the middle of the first century, a strong testimony of Christ was made in the capital of the
Roman Empire (Rome).

Tacitus. Tacitus, a Roman historian, writes in his Annals (15. 44.) of the great fire which swept
through the city of Rome in 64 A.D. Since the Emperor Nero (stepson and successor to
Claudius) was generally believed to have started the fire, Nero wanted to fix the blame
on someone else. He falsified a charge of fire-raising against the Christians in Rome. Many
Christians perished by being burned at the stakes or being exposed to wild beasts.
Tacitus in 115-117 A.D. recounts the story of the fire and Nero’s successful attempt to
fix the blame on the Christians. He writes:
They got their name from Christ, who was executed by sentence of the procurator
Pontius Pilate in the reign of Tiberius. That checked the pernicious superstition for a short
time, but it broke out afresh ---not only in Judaea, where the plague first arose, but in Rome
it-self, where all the horrible and shameful things in the world collect and find a home.
It is interesting to note that the historian Tacitus has gone out of his way to seek
information about the origins of Christianity. Perhaps he checked official Roman records----
including Pontius Pilate’s reports---which told of Jesus’ death sentence. Significantly, this is
the only place in all ancient Roman histories where Pilate is mentioned, though the Jewish
writers Philo and Josephus record his cruel rule in Judea.
Finally, the Roman historian Tacitus, in his Annals 15:44, which was written around
A.D. 110, stated: “They got their name from Christ, who was executed by sentence of the
procurator Pontius Pilate in the reign of Tiberius. That checked the pernicious superstition for
a short time, but it broke out afresh not in Judea, where the plague first rose, but in Rome itself
where all horrible and shameful things in the world collect and find a home.
This passage reveals Tacitus’ account of the great fire swept through the city of Rome
in A.D. 64 during the reign of Emperor Nero. Nero blamed the Christians for the fire and so
put to death many Christians. The value of Tacitus’ writing is that he did not secure his
information about Jesus’ death from the Christian source. Tacitus did not use Jesus’
proper name; he used the word Christ, the religious title which was used by Christians outside
of Palestine as a proper title for Jesus.

Pliny the Younger. Pliny the Younger is known to history as a master letter writer. In 111
A.D. he was appointed imperial legate of the Roman province of Bithynia in northwest Asia
Minor. There he carried on a constant correspondence with the Roman emperor, Trajan. In
one of these letters he advised the emperor about how he ought to treat the rapidly
spreading religious group known as the Christians. Pliny the Younger (Epistle 10:96ff), who
was governor of Asia Minor, wrote a letter to Emperor Trajan (c. A.D. 111). He asked for
advice in the matter of dealing with Christians who come together at fixed seasons and sing
hymns to Christ as god.
This letter and Trajan’s reply are too lengthy to quote here but several interesting facts
are worth nothing. Pliny mentioned that the “superstition” of Christianity had spread so rapidly
that the pagan temples had fallen into disuse. As a result, the salesmen of the fodder for the
sacrificial animals were in serious economic trouble. Secondly, Pliny advised Trajan to set free
any accused Christian if he/she rejected Christ and worshiped the pagan gods of the emperor,
but that he march off to death any Christian who persisted in his/her belief in Jesus. And,
finally, Pliny recounted the Christian custom of celebrating what we know as the sacrament of
the Eucharist on “a fixed day of the week”. Trajan’s reply to Pliny advised him that he had
acted well in relation to the Bithynian Christian. He told Pliny that he must punish any non-
recanting Christians that came to his attention, but that he must not ferret them out. Obviously,
Trajan saw the Christians as dangerous, but not terribly dangerous.

A.2. Jewish Source

Josephus. Born around 37 A.D., he fought against the Romans in the great revolt of 66-70
A.D. and was appointed commander of the Jewish forces in Galilee. Josephus was captured
by the Romans, but, because he predicted that he commander-in-chief of the Roman army in
Palestine, Vespasian, would one day be emperor, his life was spared to see if his prediction
would come true. Two years later (69 A.D.), it did, and Josephus became a friend of the Roman
emperor. Writing later, Josephus tried to demonstrate that the real Messiah was not to be a
Jew, but none other than Vespasian himself. The Jewish historian, Josephus, wrote the
history of his people and Jewish-Roman war (A.D.66-70). In his work, Antiquities 20,200, he
wrote: “James the brother of Jesus who was called the Christ…” This passage was in
reference to the stoning death of James who was an apostle of Jesus.

Josephus later composed a 20-volume history of the Jews entitled the Jewish
Antiquities. In this history Josephus attempted to demonstrate to the Roman world, and
especially to the new emperor, the Jew-hating Domitian (81-96 A.D.), that the Jews were a
noble people. In the 18th book of the history, he gave a favorable report of John the Baptist
and called him a good man. Josephus noted in the 20th book that Annas the younger (the son
of the high priest mentioned in the Gospels) put to death in 62 A.D. James the Just whom we
identify as the apostle and one of the leaders of the Christian community in Jerusalem.
Now we come to one of the most interesting passages in all of ancient literature. In the
18th book of his Jewish Antiquities, Josephus gives an account of various troubles the people
of Judea suffered under the governorship of Pontius Pilate (26-36 A.D.). Please carefully study
the text of this section as it has been handed down to us:
Now, there was about this time Jesus, a wise man, if it be lawful to call him a man, for he was
a doer of wonderful works, a teacher of such men as receive the truth with pleasure. He drew
over to him both many of the Jews, and many of the Gentiles. He was the Christ. And when
Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men amongst us, had condemned him to the cross,
those that loved him at first did not forsake him; as the divine prophets had foretold these and
ten thousand other wonderful things concerning him. And the tribe of Christians, so named
from him, are not extinct at this day.*
Many scholars find problems with this version of the text. It sounds as if Josephus were a
Christian. They theorize that certain passages which support Christian belief were later added
by a Christian copyist----like the phase, “if it be lawful to call him a man,” and references to
him as the Christ (Messiah) and his resurrection. The Church father Origen maintained that
Josephus was a nonbeliever. Regardless of what Josephus either wrote to believed, it is most
significant that he did not question the actual historical existence of Jesus.

A.3. Other Sources

LUCIANO DI SAMOSATA (c.A.D. 120-180)
Luciano was a traveling lecturer and Sophist rhetor who wrote about Jesus Christ as a man
crucified in Palestine for introducing a new cult. In his writings, he said, this Jesus persuaded
his followers that they were all brothers to one another. The Christians, according to Luciano,
“worshiped the crucified sophist and lived under his laws.”

BABYLONIAN TALMUD
A baraita (outside addition) to the Babylonian Talmud spoke of a certain Yeshu who practiced
magic and led his followers into apostacy. This Yeshu was “hanged on the eve of the
Passover.”
The non-Christian sources give us scanty information about Jesus. However, they do establish
the fact that Jesus existed, died and had followers.

B. Christian Sources

Grounding: “The beginning of the good news about Jesus the Messiah the Son of God”
(Mark 1:1a)

Our primary source of knowledge for Jesus and his message and mission is the form
of literature known as the Gospel. The four New Testament Gospels established the facts of
the existence of a man whom the early Christians claimed to be both the most remarkable of
all human beings and the Son of God. The Gospels present clear, strong, carefully reasoned
and repeated evidence that the faith of the early Christians was in fact based on a real
historical person.
Gospels, are neither autobiography nor biography. Jesus did not write them. The
Gospels’ primary purpose is not to give a detailed account of Jesus’ historical (earthly) life. If
the Gospels were attempts at biography, they were very poor attempts indeed. For
example, we know absolutely nothing about the so-called hidden years – the years Jesus
spent in Nazareth or His childhood years before his bar mitzvah in Jerusalem at the age of
12.
The Gospels are faith summaries. They describe what the early Christians held to be
most significant about Jesus, namely, that He is the Gospel, He is the Good News. In Jesus,
God had manifested himself in a total, unconditional way. In him, humankind is saved by
being reconciled to God. Note how the selection from Mark ties together the healing of the
blind man with the concept of faith in Jesus (Mk. 10:46-52). We get some historical
information, to be sure – locale (Jericho), the name of the beggar (Bartimaeus), the scenario
(the scolding of the people. But most important is the faith of the man and Jesus incredibly
kind response to it( From Jesus and You, p. 21).
From the book of Fr. Hendrickx, From One Jesus To Four Gospels: The literary form
“gospel” is a unique product of early Christianity and as such must held to be characteristic
of a distinctive element in early Christian faith. A “gospel” in this sense consists in the
following:

1. A recital of the historical narrative of the death and resurrection of Jesus which make
up the core of the preaching of the early Church.
2. This narrative was prefaced by some account of Jesus’ public ministry: a selection of
words and deeds of Jesus as they were understood after in the light of the
resurrection.
3. In Matthew and Luke, this is again prefaced by an “Infancy Narrative,” which looks
like but is not a report on the circumstances of Jesus’ birth (how Jesus was born), but
rather a theological reflection on the meaning of the person and birth of Jesus. In the
Fourth Gospel (John) the selection of words and deeds of Jesus is prefaced by a
“Prologue.”
Modern scholars insist that the gospels do not give us an accurate portrayal of Jesus’
ministry, but rather a testimony to the early Christian experience expressed by means of an
arrangement of a traditional materials concerning Jesus and His disciples. In other words,
the history of the early Christian experience as lived in various communities is cast in the
form of a chronicle of the ministry of Jesus, which is partly based on actual reminiscences of
that ministry. But the theological viewpoint of the evangelist, often reflecting the situation
and concerns of his community, has played an important part in the formation of the gospel
material.

The Testimony of the Synoptic Gospels (A.D.60-90)

 The Synoptic Gospels (“synoptic” came from the Greek word synoptikos, “common
view”.
The Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark and Luke) basically speak of faith in Jesus Christ as
the messiah who offers salvation to all peoples. These Gospels reveal the sayings, parables,
sermons, miracles and stories about Jesus. These accounts were written approximately
between A.D.60 and 90.

The word “gospel” (from old English “god-spel,” i.e., “good story” is a translation of the
Greek word “vangelion meaning “good news.”

The good news referred to is the coming of Jesus. Jesus is the name which comes
from Hebrew name Joshua or Yehoshua, a name which could be translated as God saves.
The good news, therefore, is that God has come to save His people. Christ from Greek word
Cristos meaning “Anointed One,” i.e., Messiah