A Sign For You Now

Aim of this step: To consider the historical evidence that Jesus was a real person at a point in time in the past.

 

I came across a discussion between ancient historian and liberal scholar Bart Ehrman (an agnostic atheist) and another atheist regarding whether Jesus actually existed. The key points below from the conversation really struck me, as it basically outlines the evidence that Jesus walked the earth:

​

-        There is no serious ancient scholar who doubts the existence of Jesus. Bart Ehrman himself believes Jesus existed and wrote a book on it even though he doesn’t believe in the Christian God (he is agnostic).

-        There was more hard evidence for Jesus than for almost anybody else from his time period.

​

Jesus is mentioned in many sources from both the first and early second centuries. These include the gospels and the New Testament epistles, but some of the other extra-biblical, non-Christian sources include Flavius Josephus, Tacitus, Pliny The Younger, Celcus, and Mara bar Serapion.

​ 

Now that obviously does not mean that Jesus is God. All this evidence merely provides is proof that Jesus existed and he walked the planet. However, this point alone was amazing to me. Why hadn’t this information been known to me before?

 

Furthermore, what I began to find was that there is actually more information about Jesus than any other person in this period of the earth. As I read more about it, I questioned what the motive would be to make up the Bible story and why anyone would do this. Some of these reasons stemmed from the following:

 

1. If you were inventing a religion, especially given the day it was written (some manuscripts dated to between AD25-35), would you write that your religious leader who is the creator of the world gets crucified on the cross, dying as a man the worst possible death at the time? Wouldn’t you have him rising above men and slaying them all or performing a miracle to get out of it?

 

2. Women had no rights during that time period. Given this context, when you were creating your religion (in its day), why would you write that when your religious leader rises from the dead, that he is witnessed first in front of a woman? Wouldn’t you instead have a man meet them who would provide a proper “reliable” testimony of what happened?

 

These were just some questions out of many I was asking.

 

I guess the reason we are talking about this person, and the reason you and I are talking about this right now is because this person made a major impact whilst he was here. There are thousands of witnesses and hundreds of manuscripts. How did he become so popular in such a small space of time? A guy walking around claiming to be God? Either he was a lunatic, or he actually was God.

​