Considering the historical context, it’s remarkable that Jesus was mentioned at all in non-Christian historical documents. Yet while there is little reason we should expect first- and second-century non-Christian writers to mention Jesus Christ, some of them did. One was Josephus, the most important Jewish historian of the first century.[1] Another was a renowned Roman historian Cornelius Tacitus, who referred to Jesus early in the second century.[2]
Numerous second- through fifth-century critics of the Christian faith, including Trypho, Pliny, Celsus, Porphyry, and Julian, questioned what Christians believed about Jesus, but none denied He was a real person.[3] Jewish rabbinical tradition also confirms he lived.[4]
Lee Strobel, a professional journalist and author, points out that there is better historical documentation for Jesus than for the founder of any other ancient religion. Not only did Jesus’ followers worship him as God, but many skeptical historians also affirm His existence and the devotion of His followers.[5]
Even the skeptical participants of the “Jesus Seminar” acknowledge that Jesus was a real, historical person. Given the strength of these textual and historical evidences, it is very likely that Jesus not only lived, but was in fact who He claimed to be.
[1] “When, therefore, Ananus [the high priest] was of this [angry] disposition, he thought he had now a proper opportunity [to exercise his authority]. Festus was now dead, and Albinus was but upon the road. So he assembled the Sanhedrin of judges, and brought before them the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ, whose name was James.” (Antiquities 20.9.1)
[2] “Therefore, to stop the rumor [that the burning of Rome had taken place by order], Nero substituted as culprits, and punished in the utmost refinements of cruelty, a class of men loathed for their vices, whom the crowd styled Christians. Christus, the founder of the name, had undergone the death penalty in the reign of Tiberius, by sentence of the procurator Pontius Pilatus, and the pernicious superstition was checked for a moment, only to break out once more, not merely in Judea, the home of the disease, but in the capital itself, where all things horrible or shameful in the world collect and find a vogue.” (Tacitus, Annals, trans. C. H. Moore and J. Jackson, LCL, reprint ed. [Cambridge, MA; Harvard University Press, 1962], 283)
[3] Trypho, recorded in Justin Martyr’s “Dialogue with Trypho,” denies that Jesus was Christ, but acknowledges Jesus’ historical existence. Pliny the Younger, a Roman senator and governor, refers to Christians as “reciting a hymn antiphonally to Christus as if to a god.” Celsus made the claim (echoed in the Talmud) that Jesus was a sorcerer and a bastard.
[4] “The Talmudic stories make fun of Jesus’ birth from a virgin, fervently contest his claim to be the Messiah and Son of God, and maintain that he was rightfully executed as a blasphemer and idolater. They subvert the Christian idea of Jesus’ resurrection and insist that he got the punishment he deserved in hell—and that a similar fate awaits his followers.
“Schaefer contends that these stories betray a remarkably high level of familiarity with the Gospels—especially Matthew and John—and represents a deliberate and sophisticated anti-Christian polemic that parodies the New Testament narratives.” (From the jacket summary of the content of Peter Schaefer’s book, Jesus in the Talmud)
[5] The Case for Christ, Zondervan, p. 260
