The debate as to whether Jesus actually existed is not a particuarly headed one because most secularists would either say Jesus probably did exist or say there isn’t much evidence pointing either way, at least, few would refute the claim, or at least not push the point as much as they would push other points about religion, that he did indeed exist.
Personally I hadn’t really given it much thought. My view was that someone named Jesus probably did exist, saying that in no way indicates that the claims of him being the son of God should be given any more creedence because there will have been lots of people called Jesus around at that time.
I almost took it as a given that there was evidence outside of the Bible to support his existence which would be hard to dispute. After all, most Christians I had debated with would push that idea. However I recently Googled Jesus outside the Bible and I was quite interested to find that none of the first page of results could actually provide any source that could really offer any reliable account.
The earliest source outside the Bible to mention Jesus, a man named Josephus, wasn’t even born until 4 years after Jesus had been crucified. He never bet Jesus, he isn’t an eyewitness to anything that happened and only talks about a man named Jesus in a historical sense.
Indeed, there appears to be no first hand accounts of Jesus, no writings by eye witnesses to any of his deeds nor Roman records of his existence. While I don’t think this disproves the existence of Jesus, I think it certainly does significant damage to the claims that he was able to perform miracles, raise from the dead or indeed do anything that someone who is not the son of God could not.
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This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 19th, 2006 at 12:28 pm and is filed under Life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.