Did Jesus Exist? A Doubter's Guide to Historical Evidence Outside the Bible

well thank you guys so much it is a real treat for me to be here to be back at gilroy i was actually here for the 16th annual reasons to believe so it's good for me to be back and visit with the hollister campus as well i have a question for you as we get started this morning how many of you have ever had somebody challenge your faith in such a way that it totally caught you off guard like you didn't even see it coming anybody man i remember the first time somebody challenged my faith like that i was 18 years old i was talking with another guy i just met teenager a little younger than me and we got to talking about jesus and the bible and all of a sudden somewhere in the middle of the conversation he just stops and he goes look i'm not going to base my life on a book there is not a shred of evidence outside of this bible that jesus is even real and that's where he wanted to just like drop the mic and walk away and i'm standing there like honestly i didn't know what to say i didn't know what to say maybe you've been there too where you feel like man i got to say something but i don't know what to say think about it how would you respond to something like that how would you begin to engage with somebody who wants to tune you out as soon as you reach for your bible or as soon as you start opening up the scriptures to show them what the bible has to say about jesus is there a way for us to talk about jesus with people who don't see the bible as an authority with people who aren't maybe so comfortable starting with the bible well that is what i want to talk about today answering the question did jesus exist by looking at these sources that mention jesus outside the bible and i've entitled this talk doubting jesus a doubter's guide to ancient non-christian sources now i have two goals here this morning if you're a christian here today i want to help increase your confidence in the bible by walking you through some of the evidence for jesus outside the bible so you can see how well they match up if you're not a christian here today or if you have your doubts about jesus i just want to help you get oriented to some of the ancient sources that come into play when we do historical jesus conversations so that you can get the whole story as you begin to investigate this for yourself and also so you aren't taken in by some of these sensationalistic claims that are sometimes made about jesus in the public square think about jesus of nazareth 2 billion people around the world 33 of the world actually will say that they worship him and christianity the movement that's connected to jesus name has had a major impact on western civilization in in societies around the world too think about uh great works of literature great works of art great pieces of music many things in our world would be very different today if jesus had never lived and so the question did jesus exist is a question worth thinking about because it's a real question that people have especially because for many people today the bible is not the answer in their minds for them the bible is the question and so here's what we're going to do with our time together first i want us to talk about how historians investigate what happened in the past just so we can get oriented the whole to the whole historical approach kind of different than the way we're normally thinking about jesus in church then secondly let's take a look at the greco-roman and then the jewish sources that come into play when we're asking the question did jesus exist from a historical standpoint then finally you're going to get to see how to how to respond to and how to think through this claim that jesus never existed at all and some people call that the jesus myth theory so that's where we're going today so how do historians figure out what happened in the past tell you a story i did my first graduate degree in apologetics at biola university down south and while i was there i got to take a class called legal evidence and christian apologetics and as part of the class i got to observe a whole number of court cases in southern california and one of the most memorable cases i'll tell you was this alleged vandalism case where there was this woman who came home and she found out that her house had been trashed now the defendant in the case was her ex-husband now why do they think it was him because as they started to catalog the things that were vandalized in the house it wasn't just anything only the things that she had purchased in the marriage with this guy were destroyed so the idea is how would anybody else know the things she purchased in the marriage with this guy versus the things she purchased outside right well there was an anomaly to where the vacuum cleaner was destroyed and then they made this argument that would just make the whole thing harder to clean up so this was somewhat interesting at best but then during the recess the prosecutor comes up to me asks why i'm there observing the case i tell him i'm in this class on legal evidence but also studying world religions and world views and he goes oh you're going to love this you're going to love this because i have a santerian priest in the back and i'm going to put him on the stand a santerian priest you say wow all of a sudden things got a lot more interesting santeria is like this blend of west african magic and caribbean traditions and some christian themes thrown in the mix and it wasn't just that her house had been vandalized when the guy took the stand they started talking about some weird stuff they found at the house they found things like powder blown on one side of her bed they found things like certain substances that were smeared on her clothing and the century and priests testified under oath that these actually were parts of specific spells in the santeria religion and part of the reason that the woman divorced this person is because of his practice of santeria that freaked her out quite a bit and so this is another one of these pieces of evidence you know we kept adding more and more evidence to show that this person was guilty and this led to a guilty verdict in this case now listen is it possible that it wasn't him yeah i mean anything's possible right but the jury weighed all of the evidence and they decided it's more likely than not that this person was guilty and so this is how historians try to figure out what happened in the past as well when we're dealing with history and we're investigating history having proof doesn't mean it's impossible to be wrong it doesn't mean that you have to have 100 certainty that's just not how things go when we're dealing with history and did somebody exist did somebody do a certain thing and so when we think about the historical jesus historians turn to what are called we talk about degrees of certainty in historical inquiry it's not like when you're evaluating testimony that you have to say oh we can't ever be sure that somebody existed or we can't ever be sure that anything ever happened in the past no it's more like taking a look at the sources that we do have we have surviving traces of past events we take a look at those things and we ask how sure can we be that this thing happened just like that say you're reading a particular document say you're reading about a traffic accident you're reading the police report right how sure can we be it happened just like that so in a court of law you deal with something called plausibility you look at the evidence you ask is it more likely than not that this thing happened or is it more likely than not that this thing didn't happen is it more likely than not that this is true or that it's not true so that's what we mean by degrees of certainty how sure can we be that this thing happened that this person existed take the vandalism case i told you about even though it's possible that the eyewitnesses were lying who say they saw this guy leaving the house after the crime happened or even though it's possible that this guy had an evil twin who also knew these santorin spells well what's more likely right it's more likely than not that this person in fact committed the crime that's what the jury found in this case so think of historians like detectives they study the evidence for a certain event a certain person doing a certain thing and some evidence will tip the scale one way some evidence will tip the scale another way but this is like the preponderance of evidence in court this is how historians work and it's the approach we're taking today with the ancient sources that we're looking at and when it comes to the historical jesus conversation we deal with what's called the criteria of authenticity there are a number of these things that historians consider when looking at data but let me just share a couple of them with you today the first is called multiple attestation and the second one is called enemy attestation what's multiple attestation the idea of multiple attestation is that historians love to find a variety of reports about a certain thing even if they're coming from different sources why because if more than one independent source tells you that something happened that's a good sign that it probably happened right like let's say what if after church today five of you saw a car accident happen right out here on the street even if you guys couldn't agree on whose fault it was the police won't think that the accident itself didn't happen right nobody will say that the drivers never existed because their cars are right there in the middle of the street and so this is what historians look for as well we already know that the new testament documents tell us about jesus even historians who don't see the bible as the word of god will spend most of their time in historical jesus conversations talking about jesus as we read about him in the gospels jesus as we read about him in the writings of paul but i find that many skeptics tend to perk up and get kind of more interested when i start talking about the non-christian ancient evidence for jesus and these non-christian sources we're going to look at today so that's multiple attestation another thing that historians consider when looking at data is something called enemy attestation and here's why this tends to grab the attention of historians if a writer tells us that something happened to somebody and they something say something positive let's say about an enemy somebody they don't even like and they don't gain anything by lying that's a good sign that it probably happened for example what if you opened up your favorite news app and you saw that there's a video there of this say a republican candidate saying about the democratic candidate that she was running against that that person is a brave person that would be quite a thing right why would you say something positive about the person you're running against she could say you know i disagree with every single last one of her political views and policies but i have to give this to her if she stood up to an intruder who broke into her house broke into her daughter's bedroom window at night that lady's brave well guess what she's probably brave right because why would you say that and so that's the kind of thing that grabs the attention of historians pieces of data that fall under these two categories multiple attestation and enemy attestation and so we're going to take a look at sources that fall under those categories today we're going to look at things that were written by people who aren't trying to make christianity look good in fact many of these sources were written by people who are outright enemies of the christian faith and so when we have data that falls under these two categories multiple attestation and enemy attestation it helps increase the probability that these things really happened now hear me it's not like just because you don't have multiple independent sources testifying to a certain thing that that thing didn't happen or that person didn't exist or just because you don't have an enemy saying something positive about this person it doesn't mean that that person didn't exist but what you do have is when you have data that falls under those two categories it helps to increase the probability that these things really happened and so that's how historians take a look at these um two kinds of criteria of authenticity in historical jesus conversation but as we turn to the greco-roman sources let us set our investigation in the context of ancient history you know jesus seems to be the most popular person in world religion today if you ask somebody to reel off just the top three four or five religious figures in world religious literature you're probably gonna get jesus somewhere in there in the top five right but in the first century a.d jesus was actually not that popular of a figure in the grand scheme of things in terms of this vast roman empire think about where jesus lived he spent most of his life tucked away in this obscure part of the roman empire and very few people actually knew about what was going on in that area think about this if you grab the usa today today like the actual newspaper big thick newspaper and you went looking in that paper for a story about one of my friends who's doing ministry in guam what are the chances you're going to find something in usa today about that person very little right now think about that guam is a territory of the united states yet how many of us know what's going on in guam right now unless you have a personal connection to somebody there well in that same way there were millions of people who lived in the ancient world that we know absolutely nothing about today because nobody wrote anything about them they just weren't that much of a thing to rome to write about and so it's amazing there's any mention about jesus at all outside the bible so what do the greco-roman sources tell us about jesus well there are three sources that mention the effect that jesus had on society and then there are three sources that mention jesus directly this is just a good place to start where in terms of examining the sources is let's start with these three sources to talk about the effect jesus had on society first up is a guy named suetonius tsutonius was a roman historian and he wrote about the lives of roman emperors and one of his books was a biography of the emperor claudius the roman emperor claudius he started ruling in 41 a.d and there's a part where he talks about how claudius kicked the jews out of rome he says this because the jews at rome caused continuous disturbances at the instigation of crestus he that's claudius expelled them from the sea now interesting this detail about claudius kicking jews out of rome actually shows up in the bible it shows up in acts chapter 18. you see in 1849 there was apparently a huge public uproar about this person named jesus who was believed to be the jewish messiah and so this kind of caught the attention of the roman government many historians think that crestus here is just a different spelling of the title christ and he's really talking about jesus now crestus was a common gentile name but it wasn't a common jewish name so it wasn't very likely that jews were causing a ruckus because of a jewish person named crestus no this is probably talking about christ but suetonius spelled christus with an e because that's the way he was used to spelling this common gentile name like my name is mikael and it's spelled m-i-k-e-l but at dallas theological seminary there was a person who used to work there in the same department that i worked now whose name was also mikael but she spelled her name with an e at the end and so of course when i started working at dallas seminary i started getting these emails from somebody who remembers this person and she would always spell my name with an e at the end it wasn't just one time so eventually i asked her about it and i said why do you always spell my name with an e at the end and she said oh yeah that's right i'm sorry there was this girl who actually used to work in your exact department and that's why so that is very understandable that when you come across a similar sounding name that you would spell the name the way you're used to spelling it so that is i think what's going on with suetonius here but the point is suetonius is not a christian and in fact he kind of paints jesus as a troublemaker here like these jews were causing a ruckus because of this person they were troublemakers and jesus was a troublemaker too but it's connected he's he's showing this evidence for a jewish movement that's connected to jesus that had become enough of a thing by 8049 to grab the attention of the roman government second up is a roman writer known as pliny the younger and from 111 to 113 a.d he was the governor of a place called bithynia which is where turkey is now certainly no friend of christianity in fact he called christianity an evil superstition he had no problem killing christians but then he wrote an emperor or he wrote a letter to the emperor trajan and in his letter to the emperor trajan he says that christians would meet up super early in the morning and they would sing responsibly a hymn to christ as to a god now this is evidence not only of the early worship of jesus but this idea that jesus was believed to be divine very early and in a monotheistic jewish context that's quite a thing and so here we have this mention of what christians would do but pliny thought that this was bizarre because he knew full well that jesus was a human person who was put on the cross and was publicly executed by the roman government and now you're singing songs to him like he's a god that's weird now pliny tried to force christians to reject jesus to renounce their faith and he did that by trying to make them curse jesus but in pliny's mind you didn't curse gods you only cursed people and so this is evidence that plenty believed that jesus was a real human person third one is a second century greek writer by the name of lucian of samasata and he was not a stand-up comedian but he actually liked to make fun of people and he liked to make fun of christians and so he says that christians worshiped a crucified man and that was kind of the the joke in this particular case but he says the christians you know worship a man to this day that distinguished personage who introduced their novel rights and was crucified on that account there's actually a piece of roman graffiti that shows a person worshiping a man on a cross and they they add like a a horse head like a donkey head there and that was kind of the joke that these romans were making um it's an interesting graphic it's not one i would show in church but it's really a interesting piece of historical evidence well when you talk about lucian of samusata he used a different word for crucifixion here than this the word that's in the bible and so some people think he's citing an independent source an independent tradition but the main point is that he never argued that jesus didn't exist all these people who are enemies of the christian faith nobody argued that jesus was totally made up that he was a myth that jesus was never even born so these three sources at least give us a glimpse into the effect that jesus had they tell us about an early jewish movement based on the idea that jesus was the messiah and that jesus uh was being worshipped as a deity shortly after his public execution on the cross but beyond just the effect that jesus had on people we also have sources that mention jesus directly so we want to turn to those right now there's a greek philosopher by the name of celsius and celsius wrote around 175 a.d he was a pretty strong opponent of the christian faith he said jesus get this he says jesus used egyptian magic to do his miracles so he was trying to kind of slam jesus here by saying that jesus was hired out to go to egypt while there he acquired magical powers to razzle dazzle his friends back in israel now listen even in trying to make jesus look bad he won doesn't say jesus didn't exist and two admits jesus did miracles he's just trying to explain where he got the power so he's making up this stuff trying to make jesus look bad and yet it's testimony to jesus as a real person who is really known as a miracle worker even today historians who don't believe that miracles are even possible will say the idea that jesus was known as a miracle worker is a historical fact because people who saw him perceived what he was doing as miracles jesus did things that both he and his followers and even those enemies perceived as actual miracles there's another philosopher by the name of mara bar serapion from syria and he wrote a letter to his son shortly after jerusalem was destroyed in 1780 and he wrote this what advantage came to the jews by the murder of their wise king he called jesus a wise king of the jews he also called jesus a martyr and a teacher and then he started comparing jesus to other human figures like socrates he said socrates was a wise man he was a teacher he was martyred jesus was a wise man jesus was a teacher and he was martyred too and so he kind of compares jesus to these other figures who are also human persons now if you remember any of these sources that we've mentioned today as far as the greco-roman sources remember this one this one the most important of the greco-roman sources is a man named tacitus tacitus is a roman senator he was a historian and he's probably the best historian that ancient rome ever had but he called christianity a disease and he hated christians now let me give you the back story to an important quote that you need to see in 1864 there was a huge fire that broke out in rome some of you know about the fire that broke out in rome more than half the city went up in flames a lot of people think nero was actually behind the fire but tacitus tells us that nero tried to pin it on the christians here's what nero wrote i'm sorry uh here's what tacitus wrote about nero in the annals of imperial rome he says nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations called christians by the populace then he says christus from whom the name had its origin suffered the extreme penalty that's crucifixion during the reign of tiberius at the hands of one of our pro-curators pontius pilate and the most mischievous superstition again broke out not only in judea but even in rome that's a roman historian talking about a roman governor and he says that pontius pilate had jesus crucified during the reign of tiberius caesar exactly where the bible says it happened you can read in luke luke 1 verse 3 where luke puts it during the reign of tiberius caesar when pontius pilate was governor of judea this is the time that jesus lived it's not during the reign of caesar augustus it's not during the reign of claudius luke puts the gospel squarely in history with these markers and it lines up very well with what we see with sources outside of the bible let's transition now from the greco-roman sources to the jewish evidence for jesus there is an important jewish historian named josephus and we're going to spend some time talking about his contribution to historical jesus conversation well who was josephus well he was actually a general who fought against the romans and in 1867 he was defeated at gamla a couple weeks ago craig evans showed you a picture of some ruins at gamla if you remember that well shortly after he was defeated he started to write to explain judaism to the romans he produced this massive work called the antiquities of the jews it's a 20 volume set and it's basically his take on jewish history starting in genesis 1 all the way up to his present time well if you read book 18 in units 63 and 64 you can read a first century non-christian jewish testimony to jesus and i want to walk through this text together with you josephus writes there was about this time jesus a wise man now let me explain the brackets in the brackets are things that josephus probably did not write because josephus was a jew he was not a follower of jesus he was not a messianic jew and so there are certain things in here that don't sound like things jewish people would write even though he was a jew the existing copies of his work were written by christian scribes and it seems like they added a few things maybe they didn't feel comfortable writing only what josephus wrote about jesus maybe they wanted to fill out some of the detail with what they believed about jesus but the point is that these things are very easy to spot and so we can put them in the brackets here the text goes on if it be lawful to call him a man well that kind of makes it sound like he's more than a man right but if you're jewish like josephus you're not going to write that and so most historians recognize this bit about if it'd be lawful to call him a man actually doesn't go back to josephus but a lot of the other parts of this passage actually do take a look at the next section for he was a doer of wonderful works a teacher of such man as received the truth with pleasure he drew over to him both many of the jews and many of the gentiles he was the christ now that's another addition that we put in the brackets there because again as a jewish person he's not going to say jesus was the jewish messiah but he probably wrote something like he was called the christ he was called the christ now keep that in mind because we're going to come back to that in just a minute and pilate he goes on and when pilate at the suggestion of the principal men amongst us had condemned him to the cross those that loved him at the first did not forsake him now don't miss this this is a first century jewish historian writing about the jewish role in jesus death and he says it's the the some of the jewish leaders had a hand in this some of our own people he says are the ones who put pilate up to this and this is exactly what we read in the gospels you can look at mark 14 for example and read about jesus jewish examination at his trial before he was publicly executed then there's another bracketed section for he appeared to them alive again the third day as the divine prophets had foretold these and ten thousand other wonderful things concerning him that's not josephus and the tribe of christians look at the last part the tribe of christians so named for him are not extinct at this day well that's not a problem josephus knew about the movement that was linked to jesus name and it actually seems like he's kind of surprised here that they're even still around and so what you get here in this passage that we've read is the core of what josephus wrote with some annotations from a christian scribe now check this out he was a doer of wonderful works remember that part josephus wrote in greek first time i ever opened up joseph's antiquities i'm like wow it's in greek i thought josephus was a jew i thought he would write a hebrew right but he's writing in greek remember he's writing for the romans to help them understand judaism and when he talks about jesus is doing wonderful works that word wonderful there is the greek word paradox on and it's kind of like we get it sounds like the english word paradox right but this meant amazing things unusual things strange things jesus was known for the kinds of unusual and surprising things that he did now some people know about the discussion surrounding this text and and the brackets and all that some people don't though and many people have gotten this idea that the whole passage in josephus about jesus was forged and none of it goes back to josephus so let me make a suggestion if you're sharing this with somebody and they tell you that you can't use josephus as a source because that part where he mentions jesus is a total forgery ask him this question which one which one because besides the mention of jesus in book 18 josephus mentions jesus again in book 20. remember this is a 20 volume work and he has another opportunity to mention jesus when he talks about jesus brother james and how he was killed take a look at this he says a man named jesus i'm sorry a man named james the brother of jesus who was called the christ was put on trial in jerusalem now there's no controversy about this one this is in book 20 section 200. there's no controversy about this one historians love to find things like this where he is just um mentioning jesus to explain who james is he's just explaining who james is by connecting him to his more famous brother and it's interesting this is really kind of different than the way that christians would refer to james as the brother of the lord here he says james the brother of jesus who was called the christ remember in book 18 he was called the christ it's like he was saying remember how i wrote about this guy this jesus back in book 18 the one who did all those amazing wonderful works strange unusual things the jesus who was called the christ that guy that guy and so when it comes to josephus most historians recognize that when you take away the edits that got into the text sometime in the 8th century or earlier that we have this historical core that's evidence of jesus outside the bible and this from a jewish historian writing about the jewish role in jesus death you also see this in the jewish talmud it's a later source but you still see this idea that jesus was crucified it says on the eve of the passover yeshua was hanged and this is a euphemism for crucifixion something else that we know about jesus from the jewish talmud and from jewish tradition is that he was believed to have done miracles jewish people had called him a sorcerer had called him a magician because they did not deny the fact that jesus did miracles again there's no ancient source that says we don't know if jesus did miracles or not there is no source that says he faked his miracles you know what the question of the day was where did the power come from the question was where did the power come from there were only two options in the minds of ancient people the power either came from above or came from below nobody questioned if jesus did any miracles they debated over where the power came from and so this is evidence that jesus was in fact known for the surprising things that he did these were the options on the table some people thought that jesus was from god other people thought he wasn't but either way there's no ancient evidence that people who oppose christianity said he never lived he never existed everybody knew that jesus was for real now when you take this data that we've looked at from the greco-roman sources from the jewish sources you put them together you can kind of build an outline sketch of the life of jesus that we read inside the bible you'd know about a man if all you looked at was sources outside the bible you'd read about a real person named jesus but look at what else you'd see you'd learn about the place of his ministry in galilee in judea you'd read about the timing of his ministry during pontius pilate's time and you can put that solidly between 80 26 and 36 when pontius pilate was the governor of judea we all even know the name of his brother james right we read about james and josephus also his reputation as a wise man his reputation as a teacher and his reputation as a miracle worker isn't that amazing even before we get to the bible just taking a look at the sources outside the bible we can find out more than just there was a person named jesus but all this but there's more because we also know about his reputation as the christ right the jewish messiah also his kingly status in the eyes of some people also we know about his death by crucifixion the involvement of the roman government in his death the involvement of some jewish leaders in his death and the movement that worshiped him as a deity after he was publicly executed on the cross so the sources outside the bible they line up very well with key facts that we know about jesus from inside the bible for example one of the bedrock facts about the historical jesus that virtually every critical historian can't agree upon is that jesus was really crucified jesus was a real person who was publicly crucified by the roman government even a skeptical scholar for example by the name of john dominic crosston who is somebody who believes that we can't really trust most of what the gospels tell us about jesus he says jesus is definitely definitely for real he was a real person and he was really crucified john dominic crossan says that he was crucified is as sure as anything historical can ever be another uh late uh scholar who has a similar quote quote is marcus borg he's another one who was part of the skeptical jesus seminar and so what we see here is that the greco-roman sources and the jewish sources they go hand in hand they go hand in hand to help us build a case for a real historical jesus even before getting to the bible now a lot of people have not heard about these sources but they have heard about something called the jesus myth theory they've heard people say that jesus never existed at all that somehow jesus story was made up by the early church that he was copied or patterned after some pagan myths and so they begin to get interested in this jesus myth theory but the idea that jesus never existed at all isn't taken very very seriously by historians today i mean it's kind of like saying that the holocaust never happened or that 9 11 never happened uh we never put a man on the moon this is conspiracy theory stuff and yet there are many people who really like this idea that jesus was made up and that his story was copied and patterned after these stories of pagan gods and you'll see them on youtube you'll see them on tv around christmas and easter time in popular magazines too so let me just mention three problems with this way of approaching the historical jesus conversation so you can see why historians don't take this very seriously first the jesus myth idea commits a kind of logical fallacy called post talk for short and that is to say that just because something comes after something else it doesn't automatically mean that the older thing caused the newer thing like if you actually found a pagan myth that kind of sounds like the story of jesus where there's parallels and there really aren't any it doesn't mean that the older pagan stories automatically influenced the jesus story or that the jesus story was entirely made up patterned after these myths i really like how mike lycona illustrates this he says i'm thinking of a plane that took off around nine o'clock in the morning just after nine o'clock in the morning from massachusetts and shortly after 10 o'clock in the morning this plane slammed into one of the tallest buildings in the world in new york and it hit between the 78th and 80th floors and everyone on the plane died but i'm not talking about the 767 that flew into the south tower on 9 11. now i'm talking about a b-52 that hit the empire state building on june 28 1945. imagine that both planes even hit the same floors of these different buildings now how crazy would it be to say oh 911 obviously didn't happen that whole south tower plane thing was just a ripoff of this older story who does history like that nobody and yet this is the kind of thing that the jesus myth theory people want us to take seriously but nobody takes this kind of thing seriously in historical research so that's the first problem assuming that an older story automatically influenced a newer story the second problem is this when you take a look at these alleged parallels they're nothing at all like jesus sometimes people will say hey michelle there are these stories i've read about pagan gods and they kind of sound like jesus because i read about them in this book or i saw this on youtube and if you go to actually look at the real stories the the original sources there is no comparison at all to jesus for example there's a popular conspiracy video on youtube called zeitgeist by a by a guy named peter joseph and it's been out for over a decade it still gets a lot of attention well in this video part of it says that the story of jesus virgin birth his virginal conception was copied from a variety of other gods and that many other gods were also said to have been born of a virgin he gives an example of horus for example from egyptian mythology so i looked into this if you bother to even just read and track down the actual story you won't find any pagan parallels to jesus virginal conception at all take horus for example in egyptian mythology horus looks like a guy with a falcon head now his mother was a goddess named isis she kind of shows up as a bird sometimes but she was already married to this green god by the name of osiris before she gave birth to horus and in fact the best testimony to this myth it's called the great hymn of osiris tells us that horus was not born of a virgin it actually says that isis on osiris had sex this is the total opposite of a virginal conception the whole story is very weird actually it's quite it's quite remarkable it's quite a thing very weird but it is the total opposite of a virginal conception has nothing to do with the story of jesus looks nothing at all there is no parallel there at all so that whole alleged parallel thing was just a total lie but doing this kind of thing just making up total lies about other religions to kind of make this conspiracy theory about jesus work is not a new thing i'll give you another example about a hundred years ago there was a guy named kirsty graves who wrote a book called the world 16 crucified saviors that's quite a title huh but he sold a lot of books just on the title well on page 140 he said that the hindu god krishna was crucified between two thieves like really wow that'd be quite a thing right if it was actually true so i went and i tracked down the original indian poem and do you want to know how krishna died he got shot in a hunting accident really a hunter thought he was a deer and shot him in the foot with an arrow but the way i've heard this thing posed to me is like michael there's uncanny similarities here like i mean jesus was pierced and then he died and then krishna was pierced and then he died like well okay one that's kind of vague and two if you actually read the story right somebody shot him in the foot with an arrow but these are the kinds of things these are kind of the vague ways that people have to describe these parallels to have them even make sense or have them you know catch your attention you know what i like to say is that all things are similar all things are similar if you ignore the differences you can tweet that if you want so that's the second problem these alleged parallels so many of them are just outright lies or you have to cherry-pick and just start taking things from different religions and saying okay when you put them all together it's kind of a conglomeration right of the jesus story but these things are outright lies third think about who these jewish believers actually were they were pious jews and pious jews rejected paganism these pious jews were the earliest christians and they cared an awful lot about jewish laws think about this they sat around really contemplating can you as a good as a christian in good conscience eat meat that had been sacrificed to idols of these pagan gods now if that's the kind of thing that you're thinking about could you imagine these exact same christians borrowing from pagan myths in order to form the foundation of their own religion not likely the jesus story was not made up or manufactured to be attractive to jews or gentiles it wasn't like they said hey you guys i know it would make people want to sign up for the jewish this uh this new jewish movement called christianity if we make jesus sound a bunch like a bunch of those pagan gods no that's not going to work look at what the apostle paul writes in first corinthians 1 23 he says this we preach christ crucified a stumbling block to jews and folly to gentiles this jesus story was not made up to make it more attractive to jews to make it more attractive to gentiles the only reason you would say jesus was crucified is if he actually was now i want you to take a look at this take a look at the cross the cross is one of the most recognized symbols in the world it's kind of like the logo of christianity and yet in the first century a.d the word for cross was not a word you would bring up in polite company it's not something you would just start talking about in front of your young kids or your grandma the whole thing was just way too brutal it would bring up images of these tortured bloodied corpses hanging there in public the whole thing was just way too extreme and yet it is a historical fact that early christians made the cross their symbol from the beginning why because for them the cross was a symbol of jesus love for them a real person who really loved them and really died for them without a real historical jesus how can you explain that there is an agnostic historian by the name of bart ehrman he has atheist leanings he's probably the most popular of the skeptical new testament scholars some of you who are in college will probably read his his books in your new testament classes but listen to what he said in an interview to the huffington post he said this the earliest followers of jesus declared that he was a crucified messiah because they believed specifically that jesus was the messiah and they knew full well that he was crucified then i love this part one may well choose to resonate with the concerns of our modern and post-modern cultural despisers of established religion or not but surely the best way to promote such an agenda is not to deny what virtually every sane historian on the planet christian jewish muslim pagan agnostic atheist what have you has come to conclude based on a range of compelling historical evidence then he says whether we like it or not jesus certainly existed this is an agnostic historian with atheist leanings who could care less if there was a real jesus or not it'd make no difference to him but the existence of jesus is a historical fact jesus is definitely for real we remember that conversation that i had with the guy i met in high school he told me there is not a shred of evidence outside this bible that jesus is even real you see for him the bible wasn't the answer in his mind for him the bible was the question and that's where a lot of our skeptical friends our skeptical family members and co-workers that's where a lot of them are today and so maybe instead of telling people it's true because it's in the bible we should consider switching it up and making a little move to tell to say maybe we can help them consider that it's in the bible because it's actually true it's in the bible because it's actually true when it comes to the historical evidence jesus of nazareth is one of the best attested jews of the entire first century we can be quite certain that jesus existed and that jesus impacted the world and interestingly the source is outside the bible give us a nice outline sketch of the life of jesus that we read inside the bible and so if you're here today and you have your doubts about jesus my challenge to you is to take the next step to read the new testament gospels to see where the portrait of jesus actually comes from to see how he impacted lives to see how he impacted people who had their doubts about him people like thomas who had their doubts about him one of his own followers people like saul of tarsus the skeptic the critic so get to know these sources look into the evidence for yourself so you can have the whole story and so you can get to know the man behind the sources thanks i'm going to call the worship team back up and as the worship team is coming right back up i want to give you a website to check out if you're interested you can download the notes from this particular presentation at apologeticsguy.com doubting jesus you can get the notes from this presentation you can also get the five books that i recommend for you to begin your particular search for the historical jesus and do your own study whether you're looking for sources anybody can get or whether you're looking into some more academic sources including the atheist who wrote the book did jesus exist bart ehrman so you can check that out thanks again so much god bless you guys

Channel: Apologetics Guy - Mikel Del Rosario

Views: 2,792

Rating: 4.5999999 out of 5

Keywords: Historicity of Jesus, history of Jesus, Bart Ehrman, did jesus exist, did Jesus really exist, did Jesus Christ exist, did Jesus actually exist, atheist did Jesus exist, did jesus really exist debate, jesus myth, jesus mythology, proving Jesus existed, historical Jesus, jesus christ, proof Jesus existed, proof of Jesus, Jesus proof, evidence of Jesus, proof of the Bible, Bible proofs, Jesus is real, historical evidence of Jesus, Jesus evidence, Jesus existed

Id: ZXePxjPgF9Y

Length: 44min 40sec (2680 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 16 2021