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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 James, the brother of Jesus & leader of the Jerusalem church along with the closest disciples of Jesus in his ministry such as Peter (Cephas) and the apostle John going back to at least 35 or 36 AD.<ref name="be1">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 (see [https://www.conservapedia.com/Historicity_of_Jesus#Paul.27s_direct_knowledge_of_the_life_and_teachings_of_Jesus Table 1] below).<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 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 James, the brother of Jesus and leader of the Jerusalem church along with the closest disciples of Jesus in his ministry such as Peter (Cephas) and the apostle John going back to at least 35 or 36 AD.<ref name="be1">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 (see [https://www.conservapedia.com/Historicity_of_Jesus#Paul.27s_direct_knowledge_of_the_life_and_teachings_of_Jesus Table 1] below).<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>