Question: Hi Greg,

In a discussion with a co-worker, the topic of God and Christ came up. I’m a guy who likes to have answers, solid supportable ones. Here is what I was posed with and I had no good answer for it.

"There is absolutely no historical records of the Jesus of the New Testament." My co-worker said that Christ could not have been crucified because the Romans kept meticulous records of executions and Pilate would have had some hefty explaining to do for carrying out a death sentence without proper "paper work".

Is there any solid historical evidence of our Lord? Is there anything to explain how Pilate could carry out an execution without "paper work"?

As far as I am concerned, once it can be shown that our Lord was indeed a living, breathing human being who was crucified and his disciples died for what they proclaimed, then Christ has to be either written off as a nut-bar, or, as I firmly believe, he is the Son of God.

God bless always.

Steve

Answer: Hello Steve,

Here’s how I would respond to your co-worker:

Wow! Now that would be a great story – if it’s true. Front cover of all magazines, not to mention the tabloids. Jesus, worshipped and followed by millions over the past 2000 years, never even existed! But would it be true (that is – if we want to be bothered with the facts)?

We should remember that Karl Marx once taught that Jesus was a mythical figure, but that Communism, some 50 years after Karl Marx, was finally forced to concede that Jesus was a real historical person.

Very few informed people would seriously attempt to prove that Jesus never existed. If it were possible to do so, we can be assured that many Ph.D. candidates in history would have attempted just such a topic for their dissertation. But we do not find educated individuals, schooled in the methodology and tools of research, attempting to prove such a thing.

Let’s suppose that we wanted to prove that Jesus didn’t exist. First, it would be fair to determine our motivation. Why would we want to? What would be driving us? Why is such a study necessary? Would we be running away from something? Motive is important for serious historians and scholars, for motive can quickly attempt to distort reality. Of course, the study of history has safeguards that attempt to prevent and to reveal such conclusions.

Of course, the answer is that Jesus, if he really lived, and if he really lives today, presents some real challenges. He makes authoritative claims on us – on how we live our lives. Many attempts to disprove Jesus arise from our human desire to live our lives exactly as we please. Failing that (and as I will note below such attempts always do fail), the best that we can do is to ignore him.

But, let’s leave the issue of motive behind and simply go to the problem. What problems do we have ahead of us in proving that Jesus didn’t exist? Well, for one, the record of the Bible.

We could try to deal with that by claiming that the Bible is just a religious book, filled with myth and superstition. But this tactic has been tried for hundreds of years and the majority of scholars have given up – for scientific findings, particularly in the field of archaeology, keep proving the Bible to be true. So we would have to deal with the science and discipline of archaeology as well – question it right out of existence as a legitimate science. But many attempts to do so have failed. We might try literary analysis, but literary analysis, along with textual criticism, only reveals a long and careful and accurate transmission and translation of the Bible. The only way to discount the Bible would be to adopt methodologies that would disprove that Shakespeare, Dickens, Poe, Martin Luther, etc. ever lived, and that what they wrote is also "myth". But if we agree to such questionable and subjective methodologies to disprove the Bible and all other products of literature, such methodologies could "prove" that I am not typing this message to you on my keyboard right now!

But most sane and logical individuals would reject such subjective attempts, for they would see them to be filled with motive and baggage, and not objectively documented or grounded in reality.

Okay – let’s bypass the Bible issue for a minute. Let’s assume that somehow we could "get around" the Bible. What other problems would we face if we tried to prove that Jesus never existed?

Here’s where the rubber hits the road. There is simply too much non-biblical (or extra-biblical) information available. That’s the primary problem that has stopped all such attempts and continues to. This information is secular, not based in any one belief system, not based upon faith, but grounded in historical methodology. It proves that Jesus existed. If this methodology doesn't prove that Jesus existed, then no historical figure has ever existed. No Caesar, no Justinian, no King Edward, no Louis XIV, no Napoleon, no Abraham Lincoln, no one. We must discount all history as myth if we set aside original sources that prove that Jesus was a real, historical person.

What are these sources? All kinds of non-Christian authors: The Jewish historian Josephus, the Roman historian Tacitus, other Roman writers like Pliny, Suetonius and Lucian. Archaeology: Inscriptions on walls in Pompeii, recent findings in digs in Israel. Of course, it goes without saying, that no Jew would want to try to prove that Jesus existed. They had another religion. No Roman, who believed in a pantheon of gods, would have any reason to try to prove that Jesus existed. So these sources are free from incriminating prejudice of faith and belief.

This is where the serious minded student of history strikes out in attempting to disprove Jesus’ existence.

Let’s be hypothetical for just a moment. Why – just a few weeks after Jesus’ death and resurrection, would thousands of people in the city where he was killed, believe in his claims; and believe that not only had he lived, but he had died, was resurrected and continued to live? Why would they become Christians and continue to be Christians, sometimes at the risk of their own lives, at times when it was illegal to be a Christian? Why would his original disciples then go out and die for that same cause? Why would they devote their lives to a lie? Surely some of these people, both original disciples as well as the population of Jerusalem, would know that this whole thing was a fabrication.

If you wish to study this topic further, two excellent books that make mention of original secular source material that Jesus existed are: 1) Jesus and Christian Origins Outside the New Testament, F.F. Bruce, published by Eerdmans, 1974 and 2) The New Testament Background, C.K. Barrett; Harger and Row, 1961. These are among the documents that end the discussion.

Hope this helps!

In Christ,

Greg Albrecht