Page 56 - Apologetics Student Textbook (3 Credits)

In addition to that there are extra-biblical sources that confirm the Biblical account of Jesus. We don't
need these sources, since we know already that the Bible is true, but it helps people who doubt to look
at these as well - even if you already established the reliability of the Bible.

Jesus: Man and God?
Let’s answer these questions: Did the promised Messiah already appear or do we still have to wait for
God to come down to earth and save us, as the Jews believe? Is Jesus the promised Messiah, the Son of
God, God and man at the same time? Or was he just an ordinary person - exceptionally gifted, but still
just a human being? Did he exist at all or is he just myth, invented centuries after the fact, as some
theologians want to make us believe today?

Was Jesus a Historical Person?
For us as Christians the question is not so much whether Jesus really existed - we have no doubt about
that - but what evidence we have for our belief. Well, there is plenty of evidence from a variety of
different sources:

The Bible gives clear evidence for Jesus' existence.
The gospels describe his birth and date it at the time of the Roman census decreed by Caesar Augustus
(Luke 2:1-7) and in the last years of Herod the Great (Matthew 2:1, 19). They describe his life, acts, and
teachings at great length. Luke points out (Luke 3:23) that he was about 30 years old, when he began his
public ministry. John tells us (John 2:20) that this was in the 46th year of the construction of the temple
(roughly AD 26). The events of his public ministry span about three and a half years, maybe four. The
gospel of John describes his death on the cross at the beginning of the Jewish High Passover, while Pilate
was the Roman governor. All four gospels clearly describe that he rose on the third day.

Since the Bible is totally reliable, then the historicity of Jesus Christ presented in the Gospel is reliable.

Secular historians make especially good witnesses for the fact that Jesus was a historical
person.

Many of the early Roman historians refer to him as a real person.

Thallus was an early historian who wrote in Koine Greek. He wrote a three-volume history of
the Mediterranean world from before the Trojan War to the 167th Olympiad, c. 112-109 BC.
The works are considered important by some Christians because they believe them to confirm
the historicity of Jesus and provide non-Christian validation of the Gospel accounts: a reference to a
historical eclipse, attributed to Thallus, has been taken as a mention of the darkness described in
the Synoptic gospels account of the death of Jesus, although an eclipse could not have taken place
during Passover when this took place. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thallus_(historian))

Cornelius Tacitus (A.D. 55-120) is generally viewed as the greatest historian of ancient Rome, known for
his integrity and accuracy. His Annals, one of his two most acclaimed works, cover the period from
Augustus' death in AD 14 to the time of Nero (AD 68). They mention the existence of Christians in Rome
and allude to the death of Christ under Pontius Pilate to explain who they are. Here is a quote from his
Annals 15:44:
“Christus (Christ), the founder of the name, was Put to death by Pontius Pilate, procurator of Judea in
the reign Of Tiberius:…”

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