Good man? Myth? Teacher? Prophet? Fraud? Almighty God?
Evidence for Jesus Life & Death
There is general agreement among Jews, Christians and atheists that Jesus of Nazareth, upon whom the Christian faith is built, lived and died.
For example, the Roman historians Tacitus (directly) and Suetonius (indirectly) both write about him. The Jewish historian Josephus, born in AD 37, describes Jesus and his followers thus:
“Now there was about this time, Jesus, a wise man, if it be lawful to call him a man, for he was a doer of wonderful works - a teacher of such men as receive the truth with pleasure. He drew over to him both many of the Jews, and many of the Gentiles. He was the Christ; and when Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men amongst us, had condemned him to the cross, those that loved him at first did not forsake him, for he appeared to them alive again the third day, as the divine prophets had foretold these and then thousand other wonderful things concerning him; and the tribe of Christians so named after him, are not extinct at this day.”
So there is evidence outside the Bible for the existence of Jesus. But since the Bible was written so long ago, how do we know that what was first written has not be changed over the years? That's a fair question.
The answer is found in a science called textural criticism. Basically, when scholars examine ancient texts there is...
(1) a general rule that the more texts (manuscripts) you have, the less doubts there are about the original. (2) Another rule is that the authenticity and integrity of these texts is established by how close the copies were written after the original. The closer they were written to the original, the more reliable.
By these two rules aline, the evidence for the life of Jesus, written about in the New Testament of the Bible, is phenomenal!
There is in fact about 2,500 times more evidence for the existence of Jesus, than then there is for the famous emperor Caesar!