Evidence for Jesus’ Existence
Moving logically from the evidence for a God, we then need to focus on if we should believe in the Christian God. Why not Islam? Why not one or some of the Hindu gods? Well, I do not intend to write a discourse on other religions, but suffice it to say, if Jesus lived, died, and was resurrected, then none of the other world religions are true. Again, Jesus claimed to be the Son of God and claimed to be “the way, the truth, and the life.” However, if he never existed, then we’ve only arrived at the fact that there is a God, and we would have to investigate all of the other religions of this world to see if they have any real truth in them.
So, let us continue with Christ.
First, there is virtually no dispute that Jesus existed. As New Testament Scholar Craig L. Blomberg wrote in “Who was Jesus of Nazareth?”: “An inordinate number of websites and blogs make the wholly unjustified claim that Jesus never existed. Biblical scholars and historians who have investigated this issue in detail are virtually unanimous today in rejecting this view, regardless of their theological or ideological perspectives.”(Blomberg, Craig, L. as cited in Christian Apologetics, A Comprehensive Case for Biblical Faith, Douglas Groothius, 2011, p. 438.) Even a recent article from 2026, on MSN, a network not exactly known for support of Christian values, acknowledged the same:
Contemporary scholars of antiquity broadly agree that Jesus existed, and biblical scholars and classical historians view theories of his nonexistence as effectively refuted. Even Robert M. Price, an atheist scholar who denies Jesus’s existence, acknowledges that his perspective runs against the majority view. Classicist and historian Michael Grant stated that “no serious scholar has ventured to postulate the non-historicity of Jesus, or at any rate very few have, and they have not succeeded in disposing of the much stronger, indeed very abundant, evidence to the contrary.” (Fox, Raven, June 3, 2026, “New evidence called ‘strongest ever’ for the historical existence of Jesus” available at: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/new-evidence-called-strongest-ever-for-the-historical-existence-of-jesus/)
Indeed, there is significant evidence outside of traditional Christian writings to support that Jesus lived, performed miracles, and was even seen after this death. For example, one such source is the writing of Flavius Josephus, the Romano-Jewish Scholar who lived from 37 AD to 100 AD. He recorded the history of the First Jewish-Roman War and he wrote the “Antiquities of the Jews,” which recorded world history from a Jewish perspective, writing primarily to the Greeks and Romans. In Antiquities of the Jews, regarding Jesus he wrote:
Now, there was about this time Jesus, a wise man, if it be lawful to call him a man, for he was a doer of wonderful works—a teacher of such men as receive the truth with pleasure. He drew over to him both many of the Jews, and many of the Gentiles. He was [the] Christ; and when Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men amongst us, had condemned him to the cross, those that loved him at the first did not forsake him, for he appeared to them alive again the third day, as the divine prophets had foretold these and ten thousand other wonderful things concerning him; and the tribe of Christians, so named from him, are not extinct at this day. (The Works of Josephus, translated by William Whiston, Book 18, Chapter 3, p. 480 ¶3.)
To be sure, there is controversy with this passage. Josephus was a Jew, and it seems less likely that he would have included the language that Jesus was the Christ; thus there is speculation that there may have been subsequent interpolation or changes by some Christians; however, there is scholarly consensus that most of the passage is reliable, showing that Jesus lived and even performed works, and many scholars believe such to be accurate as a whole. Indeed, the article cited earlier refers to a 2025 Oxford study that addresses that issue, making a strong case for the authenticity of the entire writing. However, such scholarly debate is beyond the scope of this article.
Further, Josephus wrote of Jesus in additional passages, which have not been contested and are deemed consistent and valid by virtually all scholars. For example, in Antiquities of the Jews, he discusses James, the brother of Jesus:
Festus was now dead, and Albinus was but upon the road; so he assembled the Sanhedrin of judges, and brought before them the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ, whose name was James, and some others, [or, some of his companions]; and when he had formed an accusation against them as breakers of the law, he delivered them to be stoned. (The Works of Josephus, translated by William Whiston, Book 20, Chapter 9, p. 583 ¶1.)
Additionally, in Book 18, Chapter 5 his recount of John the Baptist is quite similar to that in the Gospels:
Now some of the Jews thought that the destruction of Herod’s army came from God, and that very justly, as a punishment of what he did against John, that was called the Baptist: for Herod slew him, who was a good man, and commanded the Jews to exercise virtue, both as to righteousness towards one another, and piety towards God, and so to come to baptism; for that the washing [with water] would be acceptable to him, if they made use of it, not in order to the putting away [or the remission] of some sins [only], but for the purification of the body; supposing still that the soul was thoroughly purified beforehand by righteousness. (Id. At Book 18, Chapter 5, p. 484, ¶2.)
Additionally, we have the writings of Cornelius Tacitus, who was a senator and historian of Rome from 56-120 AD. In his Annals, he wrote of Christ. During the time of Nero, the Christians had been getting persecuted for their faith, and were blamed by Emperor Nero for Great Fire of Rome. Tacitus wrote:
But all human efforts, all the lavish gifts of the emperor, and the propitiations of the gods, did not banish the sinister belief that the conflagration was the result of an order. Consequently, to get rid of the report, Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace. Christus, (Christ) from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus, and a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judaea, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome, where all things hideous and shameful from every part of the world find their centre and become popular. (Annals 15.44.)
We also have the letter from Pliny the Younger, who was the Roman governor of Bithynia et Pontus (now Turkey) and he wrote a letter around 112 AD requesting guidance on dealing with Christians. The letter is quite lengthy, but one of the relevant portions is:
They were in the habit of meeting on a certain fixed day before it was light, when they sang in alternate verses a hymn to Christ, as to a god, and bound themselves by a solemn oath, not to any wicked deeds, but never to commit any fraud, theft or adultery, never to falsify their word, nor deny a trust when they should be called upon to deliver it up; after which it was their custom to separate, and then reassemble to partake of food – but food of an ordinary and innocent kind. (Pliny, Letters, transl. by William Melmoth, rev. by W.M.L. Hutchinson (Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1935), vol. II, X:96, cited in Habermas, The Historical Jesus, 199.)
This is just a sample of the non-religious, external, historical evidence for the existence of Jesus. Frankly, it would be foolish to even consider the argument that Jesus never existed. One simply only need to look at the impact that he had globally, the martyrs of the early Christian faith, and the abundance of internal and external written documents about him to easily acknowledge that he existed.
This, then, brings you to the bigger question: even if he existed, is he who he claimed to be?
Evidence: Jesus as the Christ
So even if Jesus existed, how can we know what was true? Maybe he was just a man, a moral teacher who started a religion. We could argue the same for Mohamed, Joseph Smith, or other religious leaders in the past.
Except Jesus is different.
Jesus did not say he was a prophet for a god of some sort. He did not claim he saw a vision and was sent to reveal some truths. He said that he was the Son of God and one with God, thus equal to God himself!
Mic drop.
Thus, Jesus is quite different from any other person in history, regardless of religion. This brings us to the famous quote from C.S. Lewis in Mere Christianity:
I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic—on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg—or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronising nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to. . . . Now it seems to me obvious that He was neither a lunatic nor a fiend: and consequently, however strange or terrifying or unlikely it may seem, I have to accept the view that He was and is God. (C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, 55-56.)
In other words, Jesus cannot be just some leader; he claimed to be much, much more than that. Thus, he was either a liar, a lunatic, or he was the very person he claimed to be. If he was a lunatic, then one would have expected his fame to have died out very quickly if it ever started at all. If he was a liar, then he was not a “great moral teacher” or even a good person; indeed, he would be evil if he were claiming to be the Son of God and was not. If you do not believe he was evil or a lunatic, then he must be who he said he was.
Smart Liars
I believe continuing the previous comparison to other faiths is appropriate. Unlike Islam, Mormonism, and other religions, the origin story for Christ and the New Testament, is quite different. Jesus never went out into the wilderness and then claimed to have received some divine revelation from God that he must reveal to all people. The people who did that are asking you to blindly follow them, to trust that their unwitnessed narrative is true. In other words, there is no external proof of anything they say. Mohamed went to a cave; Joseph Smith went to a thicket of woods. Neither had any witnesses. Unlike Mohamed or Joseph Smith, Jesus never claimed to have had an individual revelation from God; indeed, he claimed to be God. He never asked you to blindly follow what he said, as demonstrated in the earlier chapters, he demonstrated everything by proofs. Indeed, the evidence and proof came before his declaration as to who he was and is.
In my line of work, I deal with a lot of work-related injuries; people who have been hurt at work and may be entitled to workers’ compensation benefits. Sometimes, the cases I’m involved in surround an employee who had a legitimate injury, but there may be a difficulty with the provisioning of disability benefits. In other cases, the work-related injury is disputed entirely. In other words, the employer denies that it even happened and doesn’t believe the claims of the employee that he or she got hurt at work; the employer believes the employee is perpetuating a fraud. In general, the claims that are clearly legitimate are not fought and no attorney is needed. I tend to get involved when there is a problem with the claim or when the claim is questioned entirely. In many of the cases that I deal with, there are no witnesses and the employees tend to be fairly questionable people.
The bad employees who are smarter and trying to fake a work-related injury claim they suffered the accident when no one else was around. If there are no witnesses, it is harder to contradict the claims of the employee. For example, a man may allege that he had to go to the back room and that’s when he tripped and fell. The individual employee asks you to trust his set of events. In those cases, if I suspect the claim is fraudulent, I have to dig up other evidence to test out my suspicion that he may be lying. I would have to depose the employee, see if he would contradict himself or if I could catch him in a lie to discredit him. I would research his past, see if he has had similar claims previously. I would research his medical records and see if there is any information about pre-existing problems. If I could not come up with something, he would probably end up getting disability benefits and the claim would be deemed compensable.
A few years ago, I had a case involving someone who claimed to have slipped in a stairwell at work and injured her knee. She knew the facility she worked at had security cameras everywhere, so she went to the one place, she believed, had no cameras. She wanted to obtain disability (money) benefits and be taken off of work while she “recovered.” As indicated, generally, it is difficult to refute these allegations. Indeed, in such cases there are no witnesses to say otherwise. In that specific case, however, there happened to be a hidden security camera that captured the whole incident. The video revealed that the employee walked into the stairwell, waited for the door to close behind her, pulled out a plastic cup out of her bag, and she then banged it repeatedly against her own knee in order to cause abrasions and signs as though she had fallen down the staircase and injured her knee. She then put away the cup and laid on the ground and begin to cry out as though she had fallen. Needless to say, she did not get any disability benefits and was terminated immediately. I suspect she was criminally prosecuted as well, but I did not follow the case beyond that.
Unlike most religious founders, Jesus never went into the metaphorical stairwell, had an incident, and demanded that you believe him. Such belief would amount to blind faith, something that the Bible does not require and even teaches against. Jesus came out and performed miracles, healed the sick, raised the dead, and then declared that he was the Christ. Jesus never asked you to take his word for it, stating, “[i]f I am not doing the works of my Father, then do not believe me; but if I do them, even though you do not believe me, believe the works, that you may know and understand that the Father is in me and I am in the Father.” (John 10:37-38 (ESV)) As discussed, the smart false prophets and leaders of religion received their alleged revelations from God in isolation, and they were never foolish enough to make such a bold statement to be God, only to have received revelation from him. Historically, the false leaders who claim to be someone divine fizzle out quickly because their divinity can be directly challenged and proven to be false. The false leaders who claim isolated divine revelation are harder to challenge and they often succeed in leading many blindly along.
Jesus’s bold claim to be the Son of God should have been easily refuted if there were not clear evidence to support it. The Jews did not dispute that the miracles happened, they simply disputed the source or power for those miracles. He claimed to have died and been resurrected; if there was no empty tomb, there should be no Christianity. Interestingly, historically, there has never been a dispute that the tomb was empty. Frankly, if the tomb was not empty, this would have been the easiest way to disprove the claims of Christ. All the Jews would have had to do when the apostles claimed he was resurrected, would be to go to the tomb, roll back the stone, and show his body. However, instead, they came up with excuses for the lack of his body. Indeed, as it is difficult to dispute the existence of Jesus, it is similarly difficult to dispute the fact of the empty tomb. If you research those antagonistic towards the resurrection, the vast majority of arguments they come up with involve allegations of hallucinations or that Jesus didn’t die; they don’t claim that the tomb had a body in it; the evidence is not there to support that. In the words of D.H. Van Daalen, “It is extremely difficult to object to the empty tomb on historical grounds; those who deny it do so on the basis of theological or philosophical assumptions.” (DH Van Daalen, The Real Resurrection, Collins, 1972, p. 41).
There is so much more evidence, but because this is an online article, part three will be coming shortly.
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