Introduction
When people ask about historical evidence of Jesus Christ, they usually follow the question with “outside of the Bible.” However, as historians it is our job to take the Bible into account as well as secular sources in order to make a declaration about the physical presence of a man named Jesus. Jesus is claimed to be a Jewish man, a preacher and a teacher. As the proclaimed founder of the religion Christianity, he is believed by many to have been crucified in Jerusalem during the reign of the Roman emperor Tiberius, when Pontius Pilate was the governor of Judea. A number of people claim that the accounts of Jesus as recorded in the New Testament are simply myths borrowed from pagan folklore, such of Osiris, Dionysus, Adonis, Attis and Mithras. Bart Ehrman, in his book, Did Jesus Exist? aims to prove that a human Jesus existed using pagan and religious texts around his time, but ends up mainly discrediting the arguments against his existence that are based on these
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It is said that a Christian forged the Testimonium Flavianum in the name of Josephus. Other than that, Josephus only shows indication of a Jesus once in reference to his brother, James. Even early Christians were unsure of when and where Jesus was bon and buried. No authors discuss the unbelievable happenings that allegedly followed during Jesus' resurrection, and, there are no records of Jesus being crucified in the first place. This is despite there being multiple historians of the time who kept extensive records of events in that era, especially of unusual events and the errors of rulers. The only records we have are those written by Christians themselves, the Gospels. And within each of those gospels nearly all details of the crucifixion and resurrection are different. People have suspected his existence since the very first century. Even though Christianity is wildly popular, there are more and more people who disbelieve in the existence of Jesus