Three simple words yet this one question of did Jesus exist has been asked and debated by many people, including myself, over many years and generations. Many within the atheist and mythic community state that Jesus never existed. That the central figure in the world’s leading religion was created entirely in people’s minds. That at the end of the day Christianity is simply a well told story. Richard Carrier, who is an atheist, stated that those that wrote about Jesus, in the bible, were having a hallucinational experience. In a debate with William Lane Craig at Northwest Missouri State University, Mr. Carrier stated that those who wrote about Jesus never actually saw anyone real by the name of Jesus. He was just a made up character to make people feel good and have hope in something. So where do we start in this journey of proving or disproving Jesus’ existence?
First let’s start with some interesting facts in regards to Christianity and the Bible. The Bible has sold over five billion copies worldwide. To put that into perspective, outside the Bible the top selling book of all time is a book called “Don Quixote” which has sold around 500 million copies. You would need to sell Don Quixote four and a half times over again to equal the sales of the Bible. Another perspective, the entire Harry Potter Series (7 books in all) has sold a total of 500 million copies. One of the most popular book series, if not the most popular book series in history, never reached the billion mark.
The Bible has been translated into over 700 languages. The book Don Quixote that I mentioned earlier has only been translated into 50 languages. Christianity has created around 37 million churches across the world. I say all that to say if the story of the Bible and the story of Jesus are in fact made up, as some are claiming, and it never happened. Then it will go down as the greatest fictional story in the history of mankind, past, present, or future. Yet if we really look at it, we have to ask ourselves what is behind the popularity of this story? Is it really just a story or is there something more to this? You cannot just simply explain five billion copies translated into 700 languages that created 37 million churches away as easily as good story telling, can you? Is there evidence that in fact this story is historical? If so, are we willing to seek it out with an open mind and allow the facts to lead us down paths we find quite uncomfortable?
So where is the evidence of Jesus? Is there any evidence of Jesus being real and existing in the timeline of our history? What historical evidence do we have? What evidence can be produced right now to support the belief that Jesus existed? That last question is the single question that led me on this journey that I am still currently traveling down even as I type these words. When I asked myself what proof I had to support the existence of a historical Jesus, outside the Bible, I could not come up with any. I had been told my whole life, by the church, that you should just believe. That is what the scriptures states after all. Believe and do not doubt. Do not question anything. But if the source of the material we are told to believe is wrong then the whole entire structure crumples. So I decided to find out for myself if the source, the Bible, is wrong.
The first thing that people need to understand about the Bible is this. The Bible is not one solid book. It is a composition of letters written that was then compiled together around 1455 CE. So understand until about the last 600 years, there was no Bible. There were however individual letters written by people that were out there for the community and early churches to get a hold of. So where do I start this journey? I needed a letter that was unique and different from the rest. One that stood out from the rest. One that was personal. I found that in only one place. The book of Luke.
Now let’s look at the book of Luke. This book is a letter but not just any letter. It is a personal letter to a gentleman by the name of Theophilus. Luke did not write this letter to a church. He did not write this to the Jewish community. He did not write this to the Gentile Community. He did not even write this to the Roman community or Roman nation. He wrote this to one person in a personal manner. Why is this important? Because the atheist and mythic want to say this is all a story created to create a false narrative and religion. Yet understand the times back them. There were no printing presses. There were no mass publications. At best you might have a group of scribes that could transcribe your material and then hand it out but it would take a while to produce a mass scale of your writings to be handed out all over the region.
Think about it like this. There are roughly around 1,100 verses in Luke’s letter. Meaning there are at least 1,100 sentences in this letter. Can you imagine how long it would take one person to write that many sentences over and over again? So if Luke is trying to spread lies and false narratives, why would he take the time to write one letter to one singular person who to the best of our knowledge holds no position of power or influence? One person who to the best of our knowledge was not the head of a church to take that letter and then read it out to a large following he had. To the best of our knowledge this was just a normal person who had questions and maybe doubts, like we all do, about this man named Jesus. So why would Luke do that when instead he could have written to a church or a group of people to be read and had a greater chance of his false narrative being impactful and spreading?
Next let us look at some important questions in regards to the mythic and atheist viewpoints. Like I have stated earlier and will continue to state, their stance is this is a made up story. The events of the Bible never happened. So let us look at the book of Luke and ask ourselves the following questions. Did Luke write about real people? Did Luke write about real places? Lastly, did Luke write about real events? Now Luke writes in Luke 1:3 that he has “carefully investigated everything”. So let’s see if that is true.
Did Luke write about real people? In Luke 1:5 Luke writes “when Herod was King of Judah”. In Luke 2:1–2 Luke writes about “Roman emperor, Augustus” and “when Quirinius was governor of Syria”. In Luke 3:1–2 Luke writes the following “Now in the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, and Herod was tetrarch of Galilee and his brother Philip was tetrarch of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias was tetrarch of Abilene, in the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John, the son of Zechariah, in the wilderness.” In the verses I mentioned above Luke writes about nine historical people who existed. Luke also writes about other people as well, outside normal bible characters we have all heard. Luke writes about Simon from Cyrene in Luke 23:26 and Joseph of Arimathea in Luke 23:50–51.
So it is clear that Luke wrote about real historical people. Anyone can go and see that these people lived historically. Not just from biblical sources but from secular sources as well. So if Luke wrote about real people then what about the other names mentioned in his letter? Should we not believe that those are real people also? John the Baptist is written about in outside sources apart from the Bible. Josephus, a Jewish historian, wrote about John in the following “Now some of the Jews thought that the destruction of Herod’s army came from God as a just punishment of what Herod had done against John, who was called the Baptist” (SOURCE #1). So should we not take the characters of the disciples and the women mentioned in the letter, and even Jesus to be real people who existed in real history? Why would Luke create a made up story centered around a fake person while surrounding the story and the character of Jesus with real people? There is no logic to it. So therefore the only conclusion is that Luke did write about real people in his letter and that includes a man named Jesus.
Did Luke write about real places? In his letter Luke writes about the story of Jesus and His disciples going to various places in Israel. Are these real places? The answer is simply yes. Luke writes about the following places, hill country of Judea, Bethlehem, Jerusalem, Nazareth, the country of Galilee, the Jordan River, Roman Empire, Capernaum, Sea of Galilee, Tyre, Sidon, Gerasenes, Bethsadia, Samaria, Jericho, Bethpage, Bethany, Mount of Olives, All of these places I mentioned are not only historical places but many, if not all of them, you can still physically go to this day and see or see the ruins where they once stood. You can walk in the same area as they did back 2,000 years ago.
Luke also writes about other places as well that historians and archaeologists have yet to provide the exact existence of where these places were. Places like Nain and Emmacus. However we have absolutely no reason to believe that Luke would mention all these various places and write about 99% accurately historical places and then decide to make up places like Nain, Emmacus and others. There is no logical reasoning behind Luke making up locations. Therefore we must assume and confidently believe that these places were real as well and have gotten lost in the history of time and nature. There are many historical places outside Christianity and the Bible that once stood and fell never to be found and yet we still to this day talk and believe that they existed. Even though we have never found their historical location. As I mentioned in the previous section about the people, why would Luke write about real places within the context of a made up story? The reasons do not add up.
Lastly, did Luke write about real events? Did Luke write about real historic events that took place and can be verified outside the Bible. There are two events I want to talk about to support the reality that Luke did. The first is about John the Baptist. In Luke 9:9 it talks about Herod saying “I myself had John beheaded”. Now we do not know anymore than this as to why John was beheaded, however other gospels (Matthew 14:1–12 and Mark 6:19–29) go into more detail behind what caused the beheading. Basically Matthew tells us that John publicly disapproved of Herod taking his own half brother’s wife Herodias to be his wife. You can read more about it in Matthew and Mark.
I mention that story to turn our attention back to Josephus. Josephus does not mention anything about the reason for John’s beheading being his public disapproval of Herod’s marriage but Josephus does go into great detail about the event. Josephus writes about how Herod and Herodias make an agreement to get married and for Herod to divorce his current wife (SOURCE #2). Josephus goes on to write about how Herod, fearing John’s influence, had John the Baptist thrown into prison and ultimately beheaded. Why is this a valid source outside the Bible? Two reasons, one is that Josephus is a historian, writing about history. He is not a theologian trying to spread a religion around. Second is that to the best of our knowledge and understanding, even from Josephus’ own writings, Josephus was not even a believer in Jesus. So it makes no sense for him to want to help spread a false narrative and to help support Luke’s mention of John’s beheading and Matthew and Mark’s telling of the death of John the Baptist, especially if Josephus did not believe in Jesus’ divinity.
The second event is that of the crucifixion of Jesus. In Luke 23:14 Luke states the following “It was about the sixth hour, and darkness fell over the whole land until the ninth hour, because the sun became obscured…”. Matthew mentions in his letter that there was an earthquake. Luke mentions the veil of the temple being torn in two from top to bottom which I am sure some could argue that this is Luke’s reference to an earthquake. Anyways, where does this fit into historical evidence? The evidence comes from a second century historian who makes mention of an event that happened hundreds of miles away but connects historically to Jesus’ crucifixion. Phlegon was a second century historian who was to the best of our knowledge not a believer of Chrstianity. This is important because, just like Josephus, it shows this was not written to help spread a false narrative. Phlegon was writing about the Olympiad, specifically the 202nd Olympiad that took place between the years 29–33 CE.
Phlegon, wrote the following over 100 years after the events of Jesus saying “In the fourth year, however, of Olympiad 202, an eclipse of the sun happened, greater and more excellent than any that had happened before it; at the sixth hour, day turned into dark night, so that the stars were seen in the sky, and an earthquake in Bithynia toppled many buildings of the city of Nicaea” (SOURCE #3). The fourth year was the year 33 CE, the year most people believe Jesus was crucified. Now I know that even the year of Jesus’ crucifixion is up for debate. However having events that mirror each other happening a couple years apart seem highly unlikely to prove. Meaning it is highly unlikely an eclipse and earthquakes happened at the same time and then a year or two later the exact same thing happened in the exact same region. Now let us look at this statement. He writes about what appears to be a massive eclipse to a scale never seen before. Considering the event that was happening in the world at that time, Jesus; crucifixion, it would make sense that this would be to a scale never seen before. He also writes that it happened at the sixth hour, the same time Luke and others write about it in the Crucifixion.
He then goes on to talk about an earthquake and here is where things get interesting. Phlegon writes about an earthquake in Bithynia that toppled buildings in Nicaea. When you look at historical maps these locations were in the northern part of modern day Turkey. From these locations the distance from there to Jerusalem was about 650 miles. That seems pretty far for an earthquake to be felt in two different locations separated by hundreds of miles. Or does it? The National Geophysical Data Center has a chart with data showing past earthquakes. When it happened, where it happened, and the distance from the epicenter in which seismic activity was felt. On September 5th, 1944 there was an earthquake in New York that registered a 5.8 on the scale and was felt as far away as 881 miles away from the epicenter. This data shows at least two other earthquakes in history that had seismic activity felt at even a greater distance of over a thousand miles away.
So it is easily possible that an earthquake which happened between Jerusalem and modern day northern Turkey could have been felt by both locations. Even if the earthquake was in Bithynia it is possible that it could still be felt in Jerusalem. Luke, nor any other writer specifically states the earthquake happened in Jerusalem, just that one occurred at the moment of Jesus death. So we have two non believing writers who write about events that took place just as Luke states it happened also. The only logical conclusion a person can make is that these events, that I mentioned above, actually happened. That they were real historical events. If that is the case as I have mentioned at the end of the other sections, why would Luke make up the rest? It makes no logical reasoning that he would.
Another area I would challenge you to look at is the verses in Luke 19:43–44. In it Jesus says “For the days will come upon you when your enemies will throw up a barricade against you, and surround you and hem you in on every side, and they will level you to the ground and your children with you, and they will not leave in you one stone upon another, because you did not recognize the time of your visitation”. Now Jesus at this moment is speaking about Jerusalem and as most people know Jerusalem was destroyed in 70 CE by the Romans. Why I would encourage you to look into this as proof of Jesus and his divinity is when this was written.
Luke and Acts were written by the same author. There is very little, if any, debate that Luke wrote both books. Now Luke precedes Acts. In Acts, Luke ends his writings with Paul being sent to prison in Rome for the faith. It is believed that Paul was sent as a prisoner to Rome in the early to mid 60’s CE. I do not believe Luke just decided to end the letter to Theoplus on a cliff hanger but that is for another time. I believe he wrote the letter of Acts as it was happening. So that means Luke wrote Acts in the early to mid 60’s CE which then means the letter of Luke was written before that time frame. Possible early 60’s maybe even late 50’s CE. All that to say, how do you explain an accurate prediction that was written about 5–10 years before the event took place and spoken by a man 30 years earlier? The answer is you cannot simply explain it away as a good guess, which means we must ask the hard question of was Jesus divine?
When we look at the totality of everything, we have to begin asking some hard questions and maybe even some questions we have been avoiding. If this is just a story and nothing more then why write about real people, places, and events in the midst of it? When you read the story of Jesus and what all Jesus asked of us and what all He said will happen to those who follow Him, what benefit does Luke get out of trying to spread a false story? What benefit is there of following a person who states that others will hate you and try to kill. That you will suffer and be persecuted for believing this way. If it is just a story and not real then heaven isn’t real, eternity isn’t real, salvation isn’t real. Why spread something to the point that you literally end up being killed for it if it is not real? The answer isn’t because Luke was delusional. Read his letter. That is not the writings of a delusional man. So the only alternative is there is truth to Luke’s writings which then means there is truth in who and what Jesus is.
One more statement or should I say story to drive the point home. This is a story from Charles Colson who was convicted of his involvement in Watergate and how this event proved the reality and historical proof that Jesus was real to Charles Colson. The following is a little long but well worth every word you are about to read. Colson writes…
When I am challenged on the resurrection, my answer is always that the disciples and 500 others gave eyewitness accounts of seeing Jesus risen from the tomb. But then I’m asked, “How do you know they were telling the truth? Maybe they were perpetrating a hoax.” My answer to that comes from an unlikely source: Watergate.
Watergate involved a conspiracy perpetuated by the closest aides to the president of the United States — the most powerful men in America, who were intensely loyal to their president. But one of them, John Dean, turned state’s evidence, that is, testified against Nixon, as he put it, “to save his own skin” — and he did so only two weeks after informing the president about what was really going on — two weeks! The cover-up, the lie, could only be held together for two weeks, and then everybody else jumped ship in order to save themselves. Now, the fact is that all those around the president were facing embarrassment, maybe prison. Nobody’s life was at stake.
But what about the disciples? Twelve powerless men, peasants really, were facing not just embarrassment or political disgrace, but beatings, stonings, and execution. Every single one of the disciples insisted, to their dying breaths, that they had physically seen Jesus bodily raised from the dead. Don’t you think that one of those apostles would have cracked before being beheaded or stoned? That one of them would have made a deal with the authorities? None did. Men will give their lives for something they believe to be true; they will never give their lives for something they know to be false.
The Watergate cover-up reveals the true nature of humanity. Even political zealots at the pinnacle of power will, in the crunch, save their own necks, even at the expense of the ones they profess to serve so loyally. But the apostles could not deny Jesus, because they had seen him face to face, and they knew he had risen from the dead.
No, you can take it from an expert in cover-ups — I’ve lived through Watergate — that nothing less than a resurrected Christ could have caused those men to maintain to their dying whispers that Jesus is alive and is Lord. Two thousand years later, nothing less than the power of the risen Christ could inspire Christians around the world to remain faithful — despite prison, torture, and death. Jesus is Lord: That’s the thrilling message of Easter. It’s a historic fact, one convincingly established by the evidence — and one you can bet your life upon.
Charles Colson, BreakPoint Online Commentaries (4–29–02)
In conclusion I say this. What you decide to do after reading this is up to you. That is the beauty of free will. You get to choose but you also get to live with the ramifications of your choices as well. I hope you will at the very least investigate Jesus yourself and see whether He checks out as historical or nothing more than a myth. Because if He is real then His teachings are real, the words He spoke are real, and the consequences He speaks of are real also. May your journey lead you to peace and truth but also to the cross of Jesus.
SOURCES:
- Antiquities 18.5.2 116–119
- https://www.livius.org/sources/content/josephus/jewish-antiquities/josephus-on-john-the-baptist/
- Phlegon’s 13th book quoted in Jerome’s translation of Eusebius’ Chronicle, 202 Olympad
