Did Jesus really exist?

Ask the skeptics first

Start with the scholars who trust the Bible least. Bart Ehrman is an agnostic who has spent his career arguing with what Christians believe. Ask him whether Jesus existed:

“He certainly existed, as virtually every competent scholar of antiquity, Christian or non-Christian, agrees.”

Bart Ehrman, Forged (2011)

Christian, Jewish, agnostic, or atheist, nearly all of them accept the basics. A Jewish teacher named Jesus lived in the first century and gathered followers, and the Romans crucified him under the governor Pontius Pilate.

E. P. Sanders and John Dominic Crossan disagree about almost everything else, but both treat Jesus's life and his crucifixion under Pilate as history. So the question worth asking is not whether he existed, but who he was.

Sources:Ehrman, Forged (2011)Historicity of JesusMykytiuk, “Did Jesus Exist? Searching for Evidence Beyond the Bible” (Biblical Archaeology Review)

The paper trail starts early

Within about twenty years of the cross, Paul was writing letters we still have. He had stayed with Peter in Jerusalem, and he met “James, the Lord's brother” (Galatians 1:19). Around AD 70, Mark wrote the earliest Gospel, while people who had known Jesus were still alive.

Compare Alexander the Great. The oldest accounts of his life that survive were written about three hundred years after he died, and nobody doubts he lived.

Sources:Galatians 1:18–19Pauline epistles: when they were writtenWhen Mark was writtenThe oldest histories of Alexander

A Roman who despised Christians

Tacitus was a Roman senator, and around AD 116 he wrote a history of the emperors. When he reaches the great fire of Rome, he says Nero blamed it on “a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace.” Then he explains the name:

“Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus, and a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out.”

Tacitus, Annals 15.44, tr. Church and Brodribb (1876)

Tacitus had no reason to help the church, and he still names the man, how he died, the emperor, and the governor. Luke dates the story by the same two rulers: “In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar—when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea” (Luke 3:1).

Sources:Tacitus, Annals 15.44, tr. Church and Brodribb (1876)Tacitus on JesusLuke 3:1

A Jewish historian who fought Rome

Josephus was a Jewish priest and general who fought Rome, changed sides, and wrote his people's history in Rome around AD 93. He was no Christian, and he mentions Jesus twice. The first time, he writes:

“Now there was about this time Jesus, a wise man… for he was a doer of wonderful works… And when Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men amongst us, had condemned him to the cross, those that loved him at the first did not forsake him.”

Josephus, Antiquities 18.63–64, tr. Whiston

Christian copyists later added a few words to that passage, like “He was the Christ.” Most scholars, Christian or not, still think its core is Josephus's own. The second time is in passing. Telling how a high priest had men stoned in AD 62, Josephus names one of them: “the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ, whose name was James.”

Sources:Josephus, Antiquities 18.63–64 and 20.200, tr. WhistonJosephus on Jesus

Two more Romans

Around AD 112, Pliny, a Roman governor, wrote to the emperor Trajan to ask what to do about the Christians. They told him they “met on a stated day before it was light, and addressed a form of prayer to Christ, as to a divinity.”

And the Roman writer Suetonius says the emperor Claudius expelled the Jews from Rome over “Chrestus,” which many scholars read as a garbled “Christ.” Acts says it too: “Claudius had ordered all Jews to leave Rome” (Acts 18:2).

Put the writers in order. Paul's letters come first, about twenty years after the cross, then Mark around AD 70. Then the men outside the church: Josephus around 93, Pliny around 112, Tacitus around 116. Friends and enemies alike wrote him down, and none of them waited centuries to do it.

Sources:Pliny, Letters 10.96, tr. Melmoth and BosanquetPliny the Younger on ChristiansSuetonius, Claudius 25.4, tr. Rolfe (1914)Acts 18:2Pauline epistles: when they were writtenWhen Mark was written

“Christians just forged all this”

No Christian forger calls the faith “a most mischievous superstition.” And a forger who invented Jesus's brother would hardly bury him in one line about a high priest.

Why don't more Romans mention him? Roman historians wrote about emperors, wars, and senators. A Jewish teacher executed in a far province was nothing to them, until his followers turned up in Rome. That is when Tacitus notices them.

Sources:Tacitus on JesusJosephus on Jesus