“The reality is there is not one shred of secular evidence there ever was a Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ and Christianity is a modern religion. And Jesus Christ is a compilation from other gods: Osiris, Mithras, who had the same origins, the same death as the mythological Jesus Christ.” - Ellen Johnson, atheist
I hear from many that believe that Jesus didn't exist. Many people believe this assumption because of what others have told them or what they hear on television.
Is this really true? Is Jesus mentioned in the Scriptures exclusively?
No.
If people would just research this, they would find evidence apart from the Bible, or as the Book says, 'Seek and You Will Find.'
Now, please note, some of these historians were ROMANS. They HATED Jesus! So, these historians were not advancing a 'myth' for their own purposes.
Cornelius Tacitus
Tacitus lived from A.D. 55 to A.D. 120. He was a Roman historian and has been described as the greatest historian of Rome, noted for his integrity and moral uprightness. His most famous works are the Annals and the Histories. The Annals relate the historical narrative from Augustus’ death in A.D.14 to Nero’s death in A.D. 68. The Histories begin their narrative after Nero’s death and finish with Domitian’s death in A.D. 96. In his section describing Nero’s decision to blame the fire of Rome on the Christians, Tacitus affirms that the founder of Christianity, a man he calls Chrestus (a common misspelling of Christ, which was Jesus’ surname), was executed by Pilate, the procurator of Judea during the reign of the Roman emperor Tiberias. Tacitus was hostile to Christianity because in the same paragraph he describes Christus’ or Christ’s death, he describes Christianity as a pernicious superstition. It would have therefore been in his interests to declare that Jesus had never existed, but he did not, and perhaps he did not because he could not without betraying the historical record.
Lucian of Samosata
Suetonius
Suetonius was a Roman historian and a court official in Emperor Hadrian’s government. In his Life of Claudius he refers to Claudius expelling Jews from Rome on account of their activities on behalf of a man Suetonius calls Chrestus [another misspelling of Christus or Christ].
Pliny the Younger
Both were ancient historians and both confirmed the fact that the land went dark when Jesus was crucified. This parallels what the Bible said happened when Jesus died.
Mara Bar-Serapion
Some time after 70 A.D., Mara Bar-Sarapion, who was probably a Stoic philosopher, wrote a letter to his son in which he describes how the Jews executed their King. Claiming to be a king was one of the charges the religious authorities used to scare Pontius Pilate into agreeing to execute Jesus.
Josephus
Josephus was a Jewish historian who was born in either 37 or 38 AD and died some time after 100 AD. He wrote the Jewish Antiquites and in one famous passage described Jesus as a wise man, a doer of wonderful works and calls him the Christ. He also affirmed that Jesus was executed by Pilate and actually rose from the dead!
Further, a young man in the late 40's was looking for his dog in the Qumran region of Israel. He was throwing rocks into a cave and heard a clinking noise. What he found would later be called The Dead Sea Scrolls.
What is interesting about The Dead Sea Scrolls is that the entire Old Testament was included in the Dead Sea Scrolls (as were books like the Book of Enoch).
The Dead Sea Scrolls have been dated back to before the time of Christ (BC). Why is this significant? Because the book of Isaiah actually predicts the coming of the Messiah.
It's like finding a book written in the 1800s that talked about Bruce Collins, this blog and other portions of my life.
-Bruce
