This post by Dr. David E. Lee originally appeared at Real Truth About Religion.
The Fact Is… there is no extra-biblical evidence that Jesus existed, not one iota of evidence anywhere at all. Although there were over 40 major contemporary historians that produced a voluminous amount of literature in one of the most well documented periods of history, as well as the Romans who recorded everything, there is no mention whatsoever of the New Testament Jesus other than the New Testament Bible.
The following verses from the New Testament were devised to deceive us into believing that Jesus was a very famous and important person of the time, as he surely would have been had he actually lived and the things attributed to him were true.
Matthew 4:24 News about him spread all over Syria, and people brought to him all who were ill with various diseases, those suffering severe pain, the demon-possessed, those having seizures, and the paralyzed; and he healed them.
Matthew 9:26 News of this spread through all that region
Matthew 14:1 At that time Herod the tetrarch heard the reports about Jesus.
Matthew 28:15 So the soldiers took the money and did as they were instructed. And this story has been widely circulated among the Jews to this very day.
Mark 1:28 News about him spread quickly over the whole region of Galilee.
Mark 1:45 Instead he went out and began to talk freely, spreading the news. As a result, Jesus could no longer enter a town openly but stayed outside in lonely places. Yet the people still came to him from everywhere.
Luke 4:14 Jesus returned to Galilee in the power of the Spirit, and news about him spread through the whole countryside.
Luke 4:37 And the news about him spread throughout the surrounding area.
Luke 5:15 Yet the news about him spread all the more, so that crowds of people came to hear him and to be healed of their sicknesses.
Luke 7:17 This news about Jesus spread throughout Judea and the surrounding country.
Jerusalem was a major trade route at that time, so if what the bible says about Jesus was true, his miracles would have certainly come to the attention of foreign travelers and been recorded somewhere. It was also under Roman control and the Romans documented everything of even minute importance that took place within their empire. It was also under the scrutiny of the governor Herod, who was in charge of tax collection for Rome, of which one of the above text claims Herod had received reports about Jesus. Yet no one recorded a single word about him.
It is true that the Romans later suppressed and destroyed practically every religious and philosophical writing in existence that opposed their sanctioned christian doctrines, but they would have had no cause to suppress information about the Jesus figure. They were the ones who invented the “Jesus is God in the flesh” fraud in the first place. For info on this please refer to the video “Caesar’s Messiah” on my blog post Who Invented Christianity. Irregardless, they certainly chronicled other Jewish rabble rousers of the time.
Christian apologist can only point to these four sources in their desperate attempt to manufacture extra-biblical literary evidence for Jesus (and hope to retain a hint of credibility) and these writers were not even alive during his supposed lifetime. They are Josephus, Pliny, Tacitus and Suetonius. Yet, these sources are nothing more than pious fraud. They are either forgeries or are tortured to misrepresent the truth.
Why there are no records of Jesus Christ
It is not possible to find in any legitimate religious or historical writings compiled between the beginning of the first century and well into the fourth century any reference to Jesus Christ and the spectacular events that the Church says accompanied his life.
This confirmation comes from Frederic Farrar (1831-1903) of Trinity College, Cambridge:
“It is amazing that history has not embalmed for us even one certain or definite saying or circumstance in the life of the Saviour of mankind … there is no statement in all history that says anyone saw Jesus or talked with him. Nothing in history is more astonishing than the silence of contemporary writers about events relayed in the four Gospels.” (The Life of Christ, Frederic W. Farrar, Cassell, London, 1874)
This situation arises from a conflict between history and New Testament narratives.
Dr Tischendorf made this comment:
“We must frankly admit that we have no source of information with respect to the life of Jesus Christ other than ecclesiastic writings assembled during the fourth century.” (Codex Sinaiticus, Dr Constantin von Tischendorf, British Library, London)
There is an explanation for those hundreds of years of silence: the construct of Christianity did not begin until after the first quarter of the fourth century, and that is why Pope Leo X (d. 1521) called Christ a “fable” (Cardinal Bembo: His Letters…, op. cit.).
Reprinted with permission from the author.
The ‘Jesus of history’ – Memory or Myth?
The True Core Of The Jesus Myth
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I like to compare "historical evidence" Of Jesus' existence to the tales of Parson Weem's, who wrote a popular biography of Washington while people who knew Washington were still alive. He propagated the myths of Washington and Cherry Tree and Washington's Prayer at Valley Forge.
This was during a time when the majority of Americans were literate, reliable witnesses were alive and there was mass media: newspapers, magazines and books.
Those myths were taught to me when I was a kid as truth. Now, consider the yarns about Jesus, none of which were written while he was alive, written in a language that living eyewitnesses, if there were any, couldn't understand.
Really, Xtians?
i am definitely an atheist, and i too have seen from many non-christian sources that Jesus was proved to be real
No you haven't.
Jesus was as real as Paul Bunyan. Foolish Christians need to get educated and face facts.
Do you beleive that all the christians killed by the Roman empire died because of a fable?
I hope you don’t beleive that the earth is flat!
That NEVER happened in the real world.
All those stories about Christians being fed to lions are fiction, propaganda, used to invent non-existent “martyrs” so the church could make money from idiots.
Unlike Christians, the Romans were tolerant of other religions – which is why every Roman city had temples to foreign gods – for example there’s a temple of Isis in Pompeii and a temple of Sulis in Bath.
It was actually the Christians who murdered people for their religious beliefs – even other Christians.
The mass murderer “Saint” Dominic massacred the Cathars in France even though they were Christian – they did because didn’t accept official church doctrine.
The church invented lurid tales of Christians being persecuted by the Romans that never happened.
Try reading any compendium of the “martyrs” with a straight face. They are hilarious because the fanatical Christians who invented these stories, especially the Bollandists, considered average people to be so stupid that they would be awed and brainwashed by miraculous stories of heroic bravery so they kept inventing ever more ridiculous stores – like the guy who walked a hundred miles after being decapitated.
The Church invented stories of persecution as propaganda and to make money from “relics of the saints”, which ironically is a form of idolatry.
Candida Moss wrote a brilliant book exposing the truth about the bogus persecutions.
Must be really hard to post a comment from an intellectual who actually knows what he is talking about because he has studied this stuff all of his life. I state that simply because you have consistently refused to post my former comments which show that the research utilized here is greatly flawed. Too bad, for your readers, who might actually like to be informed rather than propagandized.