Changes

The existence of Jesus is well supported with more than 14 independent sources, many of which are from the first century AD from both supporters and opponents of Christianity.<ref>Ken Dark. 2023. Archaeology of Jesus' Nazareth. Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780192865397. Pages 150-152</ref> Some secular scholars estimate that there could be even more sources, perhaps 25 independent authors who wrote perhaps 30 independent sources if we look for internal evidence as well.<ref>Bart Ehrman. 2016. Bart Ehrman Blog. [https://web.archive.org/web/20230411080649/https://ehrmanblog.org/gospel-evidence-that-jesus-existed/ Gospel Evidence that Jesus Existed]. “By my count that’s something like twenty-five authors, not counting the authors of the sources (another six or seven) on which the Gospels were based (and the sources on which the book of Acts was based, which were different again)…. But how can you make a convincing case if we’re talking about thirty or so independent sources that know there was a man Jesus?  These sources are not all living in the same village someplace so they are egging each other on. They didn’t compare notes. They are independent of one another and are scattered throughout the Mediterranean.  They each have heard about the man Jesus from their own sources of information, which heard about him from their own sources of information. That must mean that there were hundreds of people at the least who were talking about the man Jesus. One of them was the apostle Paul, who was talking about Jesus by at least the year 32 CE, that is, two years after the date of Jesus’ death. Paul, as I will point out, actually knew, personally, Jesus’ own brother James and his closest disciples Peter and John.”</ref>

The existence of Jesus is well supported with more than 14 independent sources, many of which are from the first century AD from both supporters and opponents of Christianity.<ref>Ken Dark. 2023. Archaeology of Jesus' Nazareth. Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780192865397. Pages 150-152</ref> Some secular scholars estimate that there could be even more sources, perhaps 25 independent authors who wrote perhaps 30 independent sources if we look for internal evidence as well.<ref>Bart Ehrman. 2016. Bart Ehrman Blog. [https://web.archive.org/web/20230411080649/https://ehrmanblog.org/gospel-evidence-that-jesus-existed/ Gospel Evidence that Jesus Existed]. “By my count that’s something like twenty-five authors, not counting the authors of the sources (another six or seven) on which the Gospels were based (and the sources on which the book of Acts was based, which were different again)…. But how can you make a convincing case if we’re talking about thirty or so independent sources that know there was a man Jesus?  These sources are not all living in the same village someplace so they are egging each other on. They didn’t compare notes. They are independent of one another and are scattered throughout the Mediterranean.  They each have heard about the man Jesus from their own sources of information, which heard about him from their own sources of information. That must mean that there were hundreds of people at the least who were talking about the man Jesus. One of them was the apostle Paul, who was talking about Jesus by at least the year 32 CE, that is, two years after the date of Jesus’ death. Paul, as I will point out, actually knew, personally, Jesus’ own brother James and his closest disciples Peter and John.”</ref>

The earliest sources on Jesus that have survived are the letters from the apostle Paul who specified that he had very close relationships with very intimate eyewitnesses of Jesus such as the James, the brother of Jesus and the closest disciples to Jesus in his ministry such as Peter (Cephas) and the apostle John going back to at least 35 or 36 AD.<ref>Bart Ehrman. 2012. Did Jesus Exist?: The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth. Harper Collins. ISBN 9780062206442. pages 130-132 "Where did Paul get all this received tradition, from whom, and most important, when? Paul himself gives us some hints. He indicates in Galatians 1 that originally, before his conversion, he had been a fierce persecutor of the church of Christ, but then on the basis of some kind of mysterious revelation he came to see that Jesus really was the Son of God, and he converted. After three years, he tells us, he made a trip to Jerusalem, and there he spent fifteen days with Cephas and James. Cephas was one of Jesus’s twelve disciples, and James was his brother.. And when would this have been? Since Paul sometimes provides a time frame (“three years later” or “after fifteen years”), it is possible to put together a rough chronology of Paul’s life... So Paul converted sometime in the 30s CE... it appears that he must have converted early in the 30s, say, the year 32 or 33, just two or three years after the death of Jesus. This means that if Paul went to Jerusalem to visit Cephas and James three years after his conversion, he would have seen them, and received the traditions that he later gives in his letters, around the middle of the decade, say the year 35 or 36. The traditions he inherited, of course, were older than that and so must date to just a couple of years or so after Jesus’s death.. We do not have to wait for the Gospel of Mark around 70 CE to hear about the historical Jesus, as mythicists are fond of claiming. This evidence from Paul dovetails perfectly with what we found from the Gospel traditions, whose oral sources almost certainly also go all the way back into the 30s to Roman Palestine."</ref> The crucifixion occurred around the early 30s AD, so he knew such eyewitnesses very close to the time Jesus was crucified.<ref>Bart Ehrman. 2012. Did Jesus Exist?: The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth. Harper Collins. ISBN 9780062206442. "And so in the letter to the Galatians Paul states as clearly as possible that he knew Jesus's brother. Can we get any closer to an eyewitness report than this? The fact that Paul knew Jesus's closest disciple and his own brother throws a real monkey wrench into the mythicist view that Jesus never lived." page 146.</ref> Paul was a persecutor of Christians before all of this, so his testimony of Jesus carries empirical force. Paul also displayed a good amount of knowledge of the life and teachings of Jesus, giving numerous pieces of information that predate the Gospels and end up matching the Gospels later on.<ref>Craig Blomberg. 2022. Jesus and the Gospels: An Introduction and Survey (Third Edition). B&H Academic. ISBN 9781087753157. pages 601-605</ref>  

The earliest sources on Jesus that have survived are the letters from the apostle Paul who specified that he had very close relationships with very intimate eyewitnesses of Jesus such as the James, the brother of Jesus and the closest disciples to Jesus in his ministry such as Peter (Cephas) and the apostle John going back to at least 35 or 36 AD.<ref>Bart Ehrman. 2012. Did Jesus Exist?: The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth. Harper Collins. ISBN 9780062206442. pages 130-132 "Where did Paul get all this received tradition, from whom, and most important, when? Paul himself gives us some hints. He indicates in Galatians 1 that originally, before his conversion, he had been a fierce persecutor of the church of Christ, but then on the basis of some kind of mysterious revelation he came to see that Jesus really was the Son of God, and he converted. After three years, he tells us, he made a trip to Jerusalem, and there he spent fifteen days with Cephas and James. Cephas was one of Jesus’s twelve disciples, and James was his brother.. And when would this have been? Since Paul sometimes provides a time frame (“three years later” or “after fifteen years”), it is possible to put together a rough chronology of Paul’s life... So Paul converted sometime in the 30s CE... it appears that he must have converted early in the 30s, say, the year 32 or 33, just two or three years after the death of Jesus. This means that if Paul went to Jerusalem to visit Cephas and James three years after his conversion, he would have seen them, and received the traditions that he later gives in his letters, around the middle of the decade, say the year 35 or 36. The traditions he inherited, of course, were older than that and so must date to just a couple of years or so after Jesus’s death.. We do not have to wait for the Gospel of Mark around 70 CE to hear about the historical Jesus, as mythicists are fond of claiming. This evidence from Paul dovetails perfectly with what we found from the Gospel traditions, whose oral sources almost certainly also go all the way back into the 30s to Roman Palestine."</ref> The crucifixion occurred around the early 30s AD, so he knew such eyewitnesses very close to the time Jesus was crucified.<ref>Bart Ehrman. 2012. Did Jesus Exist?: The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth. Harper Collins. ISBN 9780062206442. "And so in the letter to the Galatians Paul states as clearly as possible that he knew Jesus's brother. Can we get any closer to an eyewitness report than this? The fact that Paul knew Jesus's closest disciple and his own brother throws a real monkey wrench into the mythicist view that Jesus never lived." page 146.</ref> Paul was a persecutor of Christians before all of this, so his testimony of Jesus carries empirical force. Paul also displayed a good amount of knowledge of the life and teachings of Jesus, giving numerous pieces of information that predate the Gospels and end up matching the Gospels later on.<ref name="CB">Craig Blomberg. 2022. Jesus and the Gospels: An Introduction and Survey (Third Edition). B&H Academic. ISBN 9781087753157. pages 601-605</ref>  

The Gospels are another set of independent sources that confirm the existence of Jesus and provide the most biographical information. The consensus in scholarship is that the Gospels are a type of ancient biography similar to Xenophon’s biographical works on Socrates, which early Christians like Justin Martyr acknowledged.<ref>Michael Bird.  2021. The Cambridge Companion to the New Testament. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9781108437707. pages 98–100. “At the moment, the consensus in scholarship is that the gospels are best described as a variation of Greco-Roman biography… In the mid-second century, Justin Martyr’s preferred way for referring to the gospels was as “the memoirs of the Apostles” (ta apomnēmoneumata tōn apostolōn). This evinces Justin’s understanding that they stand in some literary analogy to the Greco-Roman biographical tradition and books such as Xenophon’s “Memoirs of Socrates” and similar works. By using the term “memoirs,” Justin is the first, as far as we know, to liken the gospels to the biographical tradition.”</ref>     

The Gospels are another set of independent sources that confirm the existence of Jesus and provide the most biographical information. The consensus in scholarship is that the Gospels are a type of ancient biography similar to Xenophon’s biographical works on Socrates, which early Christians like Justin Martyr acknowledged.<ref>Michael Bird.  2021. The Cambridge Companion to the New Testament. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9781108437707. pages 98–100. “At the moment, the consensus in scholarship is that the gospels are best described as a variation of Greco-Roman biography… In the mid-second century, Justin Martyr’s preferred way for referring to the gospels was as “the memoirs of the Apostles” (ta apomnēmoneumata tōn apostolōn). This evinces Justin’s understanding that they stand in some literary analogy to the Greco-Roman biographical tradition and books such as Xenophon’s “Memoirs of Socrates” and similar works. By using the term “memoirs,” Justin is the first, as far as we know, to liken the gospels to the biographical tradition.”</ref>     

The collection of letters written by Saint Paul discuss Jesus and are the earliest sources on him. Paul was not himself an eyewitness of Jesus until after the resurrection, but was a contemporary of the life of Jesus and personally knew intimately Jesus’ own family members such as James the brother of Jesus (leader of the Jerusalem church) and closest disciples of Jesus, especially Saint Peter and John. Paul's letters are pastoral writings meant to address the needs of particular Christian communities, and as such they are not aimed at providing biographical narratives of Jesus’ life.  Nonetheless, they do mention Jesus, especially his death and resurrection, but also the Last Supper, and they quote Jesus or reference his teachings.  At times Paul qualified his own teachings by stating, “I say, not the Lord”, indicating that he knew Jesus’ teachings.

The collection of letters written by Saint Paul discuss Jesus and are the earliest sources on him. Paul was not himself an eyewitness of Jesus until after the resurrection, but was a contemporary of the life of Jesus and personally knew intimately Jesus’ own family members such as James the brother of Jesus (leader of the Jerusalem church) and closest disciples of Jesus, especially Saint Peter and John. Paul's letters are pastoral writings meant to address the needs of particular Christian communities, and as such they are not aimed at providing biographical narratives of Jesus’ life.  Nonetheless, they do mention Jesus, especially his death and resurrection, but also the Last Supper, and they quote Jesus or reference his teachings.  At times Paul qualified his own teachings by stating, “I say, not the Lord”, indicating that he knew Jesus’ teachings.

Some mythicists have proposed that Paul refers to Jesus as a celestial, rather than earthly being, which is another concept that is universally rejected by modern historians. Nevertheless, such a hypothesis can be discarded, because all of the information given to us from Paul about Jesus during His earthly ministry refer to specific, earthly events, that are unknown in ancient Judaic literature to have any precedence in celestial or supernatural regions. For example, we are told by Paul that Jesus was born of a women on Earth under the law which only applies to humans (Galatians 4:4), he tells us that Jesus was killed by crucifixion (1 Corinthians 1:23), that He was executed by earthly rulers (1 Corinthians 2:8), that He was buried (1 Corinthians 15:4). Paul also quotes Messianic prophecies he believes apply to Jesus (e.g. Romans 10:16-Isaiah 53:1, Romans 15:21-Isaiah 52:15), and the Jewish belief in the Messiah was in a specifically earthly being, not celestial by any concept or exaggeration. All of these, and many other aspects that Paul applies to Jesus are only known in context of earthly humans and events, and therefore applying some sort of celestial belief to the Pauline epistles is entirely unwarranted and without any validation.

Some mythicists have proposed that Paul refers to Jesus as a celestial, rather than earthly being, which is another concept that is universally rejected by modern historians. Nevertheless, such a hypothesis can be discarded, because all of the information given to us from Paul about Jesus during His earthly ministry refer to specific, earthly events, that are unknown in ancient Judaic literature to have any precedence in celestial or supernatural regions. For example, throughout Paul's letters see that he was aware of numerous things about the teachings and life of Jesus:<ref name="cb" />

 

|  Jesus was born of a women on Earth under the Jewish law || Galatians 4:4

|  Jesus' teaching on paying taxes (Mark 12:17) || Romans 13:7

|  Jesus' teaching on marriage and divorce (Matthew 19:1-12) || 1 Corinthians 7:10,  

|  Jesus was killed by crucifixion || 1 Corinthians 1:23

|  Jesus was executed by earthly rulers || 1 Corinthians 2:8

|  He was buried and resurrected || 1 Corinthians 15:4-8

 

Paul also quotes Messianic prophecies he believes apply to Jesus (e.g. Romans 10:16-Isaiah 53:1, Romans 15:21-Isaiah 52:15), and the Jewish belief in the Messiah was in a specifically earthly being, not celestial by any concept or exaggeration. All of these, and many other aspects that Paul applies to Jesus are only known in context of earthly humans and events, and therefore applying some sort of celestial belief to the Pauline epistles is entirely unwarranted and without any validation.

=== Holy Gospels ===

=== Holy Gospels ===