Is there any evidence that Jesus Christ existed? – Yes, there is:
Evidence Outside of the New Testament
No serious historian would deny that Jesus existed. The Roman historians Tacitus(1) and Suetonius(2) wrote about Jesus out of the first century historian Josephus(3). He described him as Jesus a doer of wonderful works and then he goes onto describe his crucifixion and alleged resurrection.
Evidence within the New Testament
So, there’s evidence outside of the new Testament for the existence of Jesus but most of the evidence comes from within inside the New Testament and sometimes people say well the New Testament was written such a long time ago, how do we know what was written down hasn’t been changed over the years?
The answer is that we do know because of a science called Textural Criticism
Textural Criticism
Textual Criticism examines the:
• Number of copies of early texts (manuscripts) that we have available to us today.
• Time gap between the original document and the earliest copy that we have
Basically, the more manuscripts we have and the earlier they are the less doubt there’s going to be about the original.
| Manuscript | Earliest Copy | Time Lapse: Event to Manuscript | Number of copies |
| Herodotus & Thucydides | AD 900 | 1300 years | 8 |
| Tacitus | 1000 | 20 | |
| Caesar’s Gallic War | 950 | 10 | |
| Livy’s Roman History | 900 | 20 | |
| New Testament | 130AD Early 350AD Full | 130 years | 5,300 Greek 10,000 Latin 9.300 Others |
No student of Literature would doubt the authenticity of the Great Works of Literature detailed above. Therefore it cannot be doubted, based on the overwhelming case identified above by Textural Criticism, that the content of the New Testament is TRUE.
This presents to some a very challenging situation; Jesus Christ DID exist and walked this earth over 2,000 years ago (as documented in the New Testament).
The argument is not so much did He exist but was He the Son of God. The Alpha Course invites you to address this issue and other aspects:
