Source: “On the Resurrection: volume 1”: Evidences, 2024 by Gary Habermas Published by B&H Academic Brentwood, Tennessee.
Jesus Extrabiblical Evidence.pdf
This comprehensive source delves into the historical evidence for Jesus's existence, moving beyond the New Testament to explore non-Christian and ancient texts. It first addresses the "mythicist" debate, asserting that the scholarly consensus firmly supports Jesus's historical reality, largely dismissing arguments to the contrary as lacking academic rigor. The core of the discussion then systematically reviews various ancient non-Christian sources, including Roman historians like Tacitus and Josephus, government officials such as Pliny the Younger, and Jewish writings like the Mishnah and Talmud, all of which provide independent corroboration of key events in Jesus's life, death, and the rise of early Christianity. The text also examines gnostic and lost works, acknowledging their later dates and theological biases, before concluding that these diverse sources collectively offer a remarkably consistent outline of Jesus's life, teachings, crucifixion, and the subsequent emergence of his followers, even providing some intriguing, though less conclusive, hints about the empty tomb and his resurrection.
Few topics ignite online debate like the question of the historical Jesus of Nazareth. Discussions often descend into a polarized battle between believers quoting scripture and skeptics demanding proof outside of it. A common claim is that without the New Testament, there is no real evidence that Jesus ever existed at all. But is that true? What happens when we set aside the canonical gospels and letters of the apostles and look only at the surviving records of his contemporaries and near-contemporaries?
This article steps away from the realm of faith and into the domain of historical inquiry. We will explore what ancient, non-Christian sources—Roman historians, government officials, Jewish religious texts, and even hostile Greek philosophers—reveal about Jesus and the movement that followed him. The findings are often more detailed and surprising than most people think. These accounts, sometimes written by people who despised Christians and their beliefs, provide a fascinating cross-section of how the ancient world saw the man from Nazareth.
In modern discussions, the position that Jesus of Nazareth never existed is known as "Jesus Mythicism." While popular in certain corners of the internet, this view is considered a fringe theory by the overwhelming consensus of specialists in ancient history, early Christianity, and New Testament studies.
Interestingly, some of the most withering critiques of mythicism come not from Christian apologists, but from prominent agnostic scholars who do not personally hold to Christian beliefs. A key example is Bart Ehrman, a leading and highly respected New Testament scholar. Ehrman's main criticisms are direct and based on historical methodology: he points out that the vast majority of mythicist writers are not trained scholars in the relevant academic fields, and that their arguments are often poorly constructed, ignoring or misinterpreting the primary data that all other historians in the field rely upon.