Is there any verifiable historical and/or scientific evidence that Jesus lived?

Question

Regardless of whether you believe or not...

Are there any extra-biblical validations of his existence around the time he is commonly thought to have lived? That is, are there other historically accurate documents from the time period which corroborate the biblical story? Can the claimed geneological lineage (ie: Son of Abraham and David through Joseph) be independently verified?

Is there any accepted archeological evidence to support claims in favor of his living at this time?

Again, this question does not have anything to do with anyone's personal belief or disbelief, and certainly has nothing to do with divinity. It simply asks for a consideration of available evidence regarding the historical existence of a particular person by a particular name at particular place in time.

I am aware that this may be a slippery slope, however I trust everyone will remain civil.

Answer 1

1. With respect to written historical references to Christ, here are some examples:

   The Jewish historian, Flavius Josephus 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 corss, those who loved him at the first did not forsake him, for he appeared to themn alive again the third day, as the divine prophets had foretold these and ten thousand other wonderful things concerning hiim; and the tribe of Christians, so named from him, are not extinct at this day" (Antiquities, XVIII, III)* (source)

   Tacitus, a Roman historian mentions Jesus in a passage about Nero:

   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 Pilate, and a most mischievous superstition [Christ's resurrection] thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judea, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome, where all things hideous and shameful from every part of the world find their center and become popular (link)

   Will Durant, a agnostic historian (from what I can find), wrote on historical content:

   ...the argument took the existence of Christ for granted. The denial of that existence seems never to have occurred even to the bitterest gentile or Jewish opponents of nascent Christianity

2. A couple of examples of indirect evidence from historical writing:

   • comments in Roman letter about the willingness of many Christians to be killed rather than change their beliefs; this would probably be difficult to produce on any scale for a fictional figure
   • various quotations of eyewitness accounts of Jesus in Bible sections writings; the tone, context and use of the quotations presume that Jesus existed

3. Scientific evidences would be a little more difficult for any historical figure. For example using DNA or fingerprints to prove that someone existed in history is heading toward logically impossible. It seems you would need sample of biometric information from a person for comparison; but then you would, by definition, already know they existed.

Chapter 9 of Gary Habermas' book "The Historical Jesus" addresses this question extensively.

Answer 2

The non-Christian historical references mentioned above are all significant. What we need to understand first, though, is that there is no contemporaneous or documentary evidence for the existence of most ancient figures. That's the nature of our historical sources for the ancient world. So if the question is "Do we have good historical evidence that Jesus existed, the kind of evidence that historians take as conclusive when they're doing ancient history" then the answer is a clear "yes."

One difficulty with the way the question is posed here is that it rules out any evidence coming from Jesus' followers. But that's not good historical method. For a relatively obscure figure from a backwater Roman province, the only sources you will find for the first several decades will come from the figure's own circle of followers. What we find is that within two decades of his death we have first- and second-hand accounts of Jesus' life and references to Jesus as a real person. (Paul writes in the late 40s and through the 50s AD.)[1] It is important here that Paul and the other early Christians writing within living memory of Jesus don't treat his existence as a focus of argument or as something to prove. They display no defensiveness about it. Instead, it is just taken for granted both by Jesus' followers and by his detractors.[2] This early evidence, then, seems widespread geographically (Paul in the Eastern Mediterranean, Peter and James the Just in and around Jerusalem, John perhaps in the Ephesus area of Asia Minor)[3] and is uncontested by contemporaries. I find it particularly telling that Paul doesn't need to argue for Jesus' existence when he writes to the new Christian communities in Rome around AD 58. Paul clearly didn't found the community, has never been to Rome, and (based on how much of his teaching he has to defend in the letter) is regarded with some suspicion by Roman Christ-followers. Most scholars think that teaching about Jesus was brought independently to Rome by Jews returning from pilgrimages to Jerusalem or some similar informal route.[4] Even so, Paul can take for granted their agreement that Jesus existed and was crucified [5].

But we also need to look carefully at Tacitus and Josephus. Tacitus is writing in the second-century, true, but he is a meticulously careful historian. When he encounters dubious or unsubstantiated rumors, Tacitus is very clear with his readers that the evidence before him is suspect. So it is significant that Tacitus (less than a century after the events) does not signal any doubt. As for this passage being a Christian interpolation, there is no reason to say that except for prior doubts about Jesus. There is a danger here of "rigging the deck". If we dismiss evidence (without internal grounds) as fabricated, then what evidence could possibly be accepted? No, Tacitus is a very strong witness, even if he was writing two generations later.

The so-called "Testimonium Flavium" by Josephus, on the other hand, is certainly the victim of Christian editing (for the reasons discussed here in other answers). But the general consensus among historians is that there was an original, neutral reference to Jesus here in Josephus that has been expanded and made more pious by later Christian scribes. I'll leave aside the detailed arguments here about the "seams" in the passage itself.[6] More convincing to me is the fact that there are so few references to Jesus in early historians. If Christian scribes (who preserved all of these classical sources for us through late Antiquity and the early middle ages until they were "discovered" in Constantinople by Arab Muslims) did not make a habit of injecting references to Jesus everywhere, then we should be careful about assuming that this reference in Josephus is pure fabrication. What Christian scribes did do, though, is add to and elaborate on references to Jesus in "secular" sources to make them more pious. If that is what happened with Josephus, then we do have a non-Christian historian writing within living memory of the events about Jesus as a real figure.

(Despite the suggestion in one answer above, there is no evidence whatsoever that Josephus was an "Ebionite" Christian. The authority mentioned for this idea (Whiston) is a 19th century translator of Josephus who was making the assertion on the basis of the Testimonium Flavium, which he assumed was genuine in its present form.[9])

I am a biblical scholar and historian (PhD in Religious Studies from a secular public University in Canada, now tenured faculty at a Canadian Seminary). Every year I go to secular academic conferences to present and hear research papers from around the world. Arguments from consensus are dangerous, since the majority can easily be wrong. Still, it is significant that I have never met a colleague holding a faculty position in ancient history at a University who doubts Jesus' existence. This is certainly not because of public pressure (some of the same people are deeply iconoclastic) but because the evidence satisfies all the reasonable standards that we can expect for 90% of the ancient world. Anyone who spends her/his time working with ancient history comes to recognize quickly that the evidence for Jesus' existence is very good. Those who continue to question Jesus' existence are consistently people without academic training, whose work hasn't passed the peer review process that helps to maintain rigour. It tends to be journalists, documentary makers, amateurs writing a blog, or (at most) academics whose training is in an entirely different field (not in ancient history). My point is not that the historical academics couldn't (in theory) be wrong. It's that historians (even those much more skeptical than I) recognize that the existence of Jesus is as well attested as we can usually hope for in the ancient world. If we doubt Jesus' existence then certainly we must doubt, say, Pythagoras who left no writings and is only described by much later writers.[7] There is also much better historical evidence for Jesus than for Gautama the Buddha, who was not treated in "outsider" accounts for much longer than Jesus.[8]

The trick, of course, is the term "verifiable" in the question. If one is looking for the kind of evidence that gives us measurable experimental data in the physical sciences, then no we won't be satisfied with the evidence. But if that is our standard we lose most of the past. The first Skeptics (of the post-Plato Academy) understood that we live in a world where the best we can usually do is probability, but that this doesn't make evidence or the degree of probability insignificant. So maybe what we can say is that the probability of Jesus' existence is much, much higher than the probability that he did not.

• [1] This dating for Paul's writings is universally accepted among historians of the period and biblical scholars. See, e.g., Brown, Raymond E. An Introduction to the New Testament (New York: Doubleday, 1997), pp. 428-430.
• [2] Of course, a neat reference is difficult when you're saying that something does not appear in a document. But take Paul's letter to the Corinthians as an example. He talks throughout about Jesus, and in 1 Corinthians 15:1ff. he offers argumentative evidence for his claim that Jesus was raised from the dead. But nowhere in the letter does he feel the need to argue in a similar way for Jesus' mere existence. His argumentative structure presumes that everyone in the audience takes it for granted. Similarly, in Matthew's Gospel we find that his resurrection narrative is geared to counter the claim that Jesus' disciples stole his body after the crucifixion (Matthew 28:11-15). The existence of Jesus, and his crucifixion by the Romans, is taken for granted. The same thing is evident in all of the NT books and the non-canonical Christian writings from the first to early-second centuries.
• [3] Paul's geographic locations are evident from his authentic letters to churches that he founded: Galatians to various centres in Galatia (north-central Turkey), Philippians to Philippi (Macedonia), 1 Thessalonians to Thessalonica (Macedonia), Colossians to Colossae (Ionia in south-eastern Turkey--though some contest Pauline authorship of Colossians), 1 and 2 Corinthians to Corinth (at the top of the Peloponnesus of southern Greece). James is located in Jerusalem by first-hand accounts in Paul (Galatians 1) and possibly first-hand accounts in Acts (Acts 15 etc.). The Ephesian location for the disciple John is trickier and depends on second-century tradition. See the sections on each of these letters in Raymond Brown's introduction referenced above (Galatians, pp. 474-477; Philippians, pp. 483-485; 1 Thess, pp. 456-459; Colossians, pp. 599-601; Corinthian letters, pp. 511-515, 541-544; James, pp. 741-743; John in Ephesus, pp. 368-369).
• [4] See Dunn, James D. G. Romans 1-8. Word Biblical Commentary 38A (Dallas: Word, 1988), pp. xlvi-xlvii.
• [5] See, e.g., Romans 1:1-5; 3:25; and the allusions to crucifixion as the mode of Jesus' death in Romans 6.
• [6] See the good treatment in volume 1 of Meier, John P. A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus (New York: Doubleday, 1991), pp. 56-69.
• [7] See Riedweg, Christoph. "Pythagoras." Pages 276-281 in Brill's New Pauly: Encyclopedia of the Ancient World (Antiquity v. 12; Leiden: Brill, 2008).
• [8] See the section on 'The Historical Buddha' in Reynolds, Frank E. and Charles Hallisey. "Buddha" in Encyclopedia of Religion, 2nd ed. (v. 2; Detroit: Thomson Gale), pp.1061-1062.
• [9] On Josephus' clear and obvious Jewishness, with no Christian inclinations, see e.g. Altshuler, David. "Josephus Flavius" in Encyclopedia of Religion, 2nd ed. (v. 7; Detroit: Thomson Gale), pp. 4957-4958. Tessa Rajak, a major authority on Josephus, says that "Josephus was always a Jew, and, throughout his writing life, was preoccupied with Judaism..." and by "Judaism" here she does not mean Jewish Christ-believers (Rajak, Tessa. Josephus: The Historian and His Society, 2nd ed. [London: Duckworth, 2002], p. 11).

Answer 3

The infidels.org website has an article titled, "Historicity Of Jesus FAQ", which I believe is an even-handed treatment of the question.

In that article, Scott Oser uses some of the same sources that BCooksey used in an excellent response on this page. Oser provides some additional additional information regarding the authenticity of those sources.

Flavius Josephus:

1. The early Christian writer Origen claims that Josephus did NOT recognize Jesus as the Messiah, in direct contradiction to the above passage, where Josephus says, "He was the Messiah." Thus, we may conclude that this particular phrase at least was a later insertion. (The version given above was, however, known to Jerome and in the time of Eusebius. Jerome's Latin version, however, renders "He was the Messiah" by "He was believed to be the Christ.") Furthermore, other early Christian writers fail to cite this passage, even though it would have suited their purposes to do so. There is thus firm evidence that this passage was tampered with at some point, even if parts of it do date back to Josephus.
2. The passage is highly pro-Christian. It is hard to imagine that Josephus, a Pharisaic Jew, would write such a laudatory passage about a man supposedly killed for blasphemy. Indeed, the passage seems to make Josephus himself out to be a Christian, which was certainly not the case.

In objection #2, Oser claims that Josephus was a Pharisaic Jew; at least one other source, William Whiston, proposes that Josephus may have been an Ebionite Christian. Oser provides additional evidence for the theory that the references to 'Jesus' and 'The Christ' were later reconstructionist alterations by pro-Christian copyists. (Follow previous link to infidels.org to see those arguments.)

Cornelius Tacitus (55-120 CE):

Two questions arise concerning this passage [Annals 15.44 (see answer by BCooksey)]:

1. Did Tacitus really write this, or is this a later Christian interpolation?
2. Is this really an independent confirmation of Jesus's story, or is Tacitus just repeating what some Christians told him?

Some scholars believe the passage may be a Christian interpolation into the text. However, this is not at all certain, and unlike Josephus's Testimonium Flavianum, no clear evidence of textual tampering exists.

The second objection is much more serious. Conceivably, Tacitus may just be repeating what he was told by Christians about Jesus. If so, then this passage merely confirms that there were Christians in Tacitus' time, and that they believed that Pilate killed Jesus during the reign of Tiberius. This would not be independent confirmation of Jesus's existence. If, on the other hand, Tacitus found this information in Roman imperial records (to which he had access) then that could constitute independent confirmation. There are good reasons to doubt that Tacitus is working from Roman records here, however. For one, he refers to Pilate by the wrong title (Pilate was a prefect, not a procurator). Secondly, he refers to Jesus by the religious title "Christos". Roman records would not have referred to Jesus by a Christian title, but presumably by his given name. Thus, there is excellent reason to suppose that Tacitus is merely repeating what Christians said about Jesus, and so can tell us nothing new about Jesus's historicity.

There seems to be little or no argument that Tacitus was the original author of the passage and that it survives with no evidence of tampering. As Oser point out in his rebuttal to the second argument, we have no way of knowing how Tacitus got the information he wrote. It was obviously not first hand; Tacitus was born in 55 CE, and Jesus is believed to have left this earth around 27 CE, almost 30 years before Tacitus was born. It is believed that The Annals were written about year 117 CE, roughly 90 year after the death of Jesus, so it is highly doubtful that Tacitus would even have had access to anyone with first-hand knowledge of Jesus. For the sake of this argument, it is important to note that Tacitus does not name 'Jesus' as 'The Christ', and almost equally important, Tacitus does not mention Paul, Peter, or any other Christian leaders who would have been influential figures to Christians in Rome.

Suetonius, Thallus, and Pliny the Younger:

Oser also provides arguments against the references to 'Jesus' or 'Christians' in the writings of Suetonius, Thallus, and Pliny the Younger. For sake of brevity they are not included here; you can follow the link to the infidels.org page to see those arguments.

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Just to add additional muck to this already muddy problem...

In personal discussions about the historicity of Jesus with other amateur scholars the theory has been posited that, like so many other hero myths, the figure we know as Jesus is based on deeds of more than one person and embellished to add greater credence to the claims made by proponents. This bit of trivia adds nothing to support or oppose the historicity of Jesus, it is, as I mentioned, only provided to obfuscate an already highly-debated subject. You can read part of a conversation between a believer and a skeptic, at www.christiananswers.net in an articled titled "Was Jesus Christ only a legend?", that implies that some skeptics subscribe to the hero-myth theory about the historicity of Jesus.

Answer 4

Probably not. None of the historical accounts cited in the BCooksey's answers are contemporaneous with the life of Christ. The earliest known, non-biblical reference is from Tacitus: "the earliest non-Christian who mentions a Jesus" (Did a Historical Jesus Exist?"), and he was born in 37 CE.

To answer your question to the positive (as I interpret it) would require an account from someone with first-hand experience with the individual, or an original administrative record of some kind documenting the existence of an individual by that name at that time and at least tangentially linking the named figure to the legend of Christ, like a contemporaneous Roman leader writing about the problems of "that Jesus figure riling things up over in jerusalem... what do we do about him?" I am not aware of any such accounts.

Answer 5

There is no contemporaneous mention of Jesus, no. There is a mistranslated Josephus quote, as already mentioned by many others. Most believe the mention of Jesus is genuine, but that Josephus, as a Jew, would have never called him the "Messiah" or anything of that nature. Furthermore, Josephus never claimed to known anyone who had met Jesus in person; he was merely describing Christian beliefs.

There's also a mention, by Pliny the Younger, of Christians who were worshiping in the morning, but nothing indicating that Pliny had met or even "knew a guy" who had met Jesus in person.

(It would've been impossible for either Josephus or Pliny to meet Jesus themselves, as they were born long after Jesus' death, unless Preterism is true, which, although it is backed by scripture [ Matt 10:23, Matt 16:28, Matt 24:34, Mark 13:30, etc. -- some Protestants might complain about the use of the NIV here, but the KJV says essentially the same thing on this matter], it is not backed by popular opinion.)

My take on the Bible is that it is nonsense, but the morals of Jesus represent a monumental jump forward from the Old Testament (to say the least -- most of the nastiness that is said to be in the Bible or the Quran actually comes from the Old Testament [See, for examples, Deuteronomy 13 or the dozens of rules that require people to be stoned to death, such as premarital sex],) and Christianity is worth taking seriously in the realm of morality, but not historicity. (I would separate "Christianity," however, from the "actions of Christians," as I do not think that Christians are very good at all at following the religion that they claim to follow. In fact, most ideas held by modern Christians are the exact opposite of what Jesus is claimed to have taught.)

Moving on, however; here's a question for you! If it could be proven that Jesus didn't exist, would it necessarily mean that the things that he taught are wrong? Also, if he didn't exist, would that, in your mind, be proof that the Old Testament is also false?

Answer 6

Here is an interview (LANG=DE) with the German Theologian Hermann Detering, who wrote the book „Falsche Zeugen. Außerchristliche Jesuszeugnisse auf dem Prüfstand“ (False witnesses, exochristian Jesus witnesses on trial).

My abstract:

You can't take the bible for granted, because it isn't a historic book, but a statement of faith. It's hard to tell, when it was written and by whom. Most author names, mentioned, are wrong. Some parts of it are first mentioned in the beginning of the 2nd century, but from witnesses, who are themselves faked.

There are 6 main witnesses outside of Christianity:

• the Jewish historian Josephus
• the Roman historian an authors
  • Tacitus
  • Plinius
  • Sueton
• a purported mail from a father to his son
• another document from 3rd hand

The central statements of these witnesses about Jesus would fit on a postcard. These witnesses have been massively overestimated in the past. They where treated as if they were independent source. However, in reality, they where redacted by Christians, which is of little surprise, since copying at that time took place by handwriting.

In younger times, there were 3 new texts discovered:

• the Judasgospel
• the post 1945 discovered handwritings in
  • Qumran and
  • Nag Hammadi

They didn't help much in the finding, whether Jesus was a historic person. In the Qumran text, he doesn't take place at all, and in the gnostic literature of Nag Hammadi, he is mostly a mythologic figure.

The whole question of historic Jesus isn't new, and was debated before WWII in Germany, but abandoned afterwards. But today, there are new methods to analyse scriptures. With modern databases, it is possible to find favourite words for different authors. So were words and phrases found in texts, which weren't used in the time, the document supposedly origins. This shows, that the texts were redacted.

An example is the „Testimonium Flavianum“ from Josephus. He mentions Jesus as a wise man. But early, Christian literature from that time doesn't mention that witness, as one would expect. The christian historian Eusebius is the first to mention the witness of Josephus. Unfortunately, his wording and phrases are very similar to the wording and phrases of Josesphus.

The roman historian Sueton mentions a man called 'Chrestos', who shall, under imperator Claudius (reg.: 41-54) , agitated the Jews of Rome to furor. Then Claudius displaced the Jews from Rome. But Jesus is said to died under imperator Tiberius (reg.: 14-37), and Christus is not Chrestos, which was a common name for slaves in Rome.

Then there is the Roman historian Tacitus, who wrote about the burning of Rome under Nero, as filmed in Hollywood. Isn't this a witness of early prosecution of Christs? Well - early Christian scriptures don't talk about this important event. Only later writings from about 300-400 BC talk about it, and again, the words and phrases of the reporting Tacitus, and his 'source', Sulpicius Severus are very similar.

Today, historians doubt, that Nero burned Rome.

So the conclusion is not only, that the existence of Jesus is questionable, but the existence of an early Christianity in the first century too. First witnesses are from the mid of the second century, namely imperator Marc Aurel.

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More to be read:

Hermann Detering: Falsche Zeugen. Außerchristliche Jesuszeugnisse auf dem Prüfstand. Aschaffenburg: Alibri 2011. 243 Seiten, kartoniert, Euro 19.-, ISBN 978-3-86569-070-8

Answer 7

According to Mt 2,1 and Lk 1,5 (KJV): Mt 2,1

1 Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judaea in the days of Herod the king, behold, there came wise men from the east to Jerusalem,

Lk 1,5

There was in the days of Herod, the king of Judaea, a certain priest named Zacharias, of the course of Abia: and his wife was of the daughters of Aaron, and her name was Elisabeth.

... the birth of Jesus happened during the kingdom of Herodes.

And according to Lk 2,2, Cyrenius was governor of Syria at that time:

And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus, that all the world should be taxed. And this taxing was first made when Cyrenius was governor of Syria.

According to our today knowledge, the census in Syria took place at 6 or 7 AD. From the writings of Flavius Josephus, a second census seems impossible, since the census was unknown to the Jews. More: Their province didn't belong to Syria before 6 or 7 AD.

But Herodes died 4 BCE so there is a 10 to 11 year gap between both possibilities. Some authors have speculated, that Luke might have confused Herod the Great with another Herod, Herod Antipas, but the gospel of Mathew clearly speaks about Herod the Great.

So the story of the birth is inconsistent with other historically more reliable material.

Some Original sources:

• Emil Schürer, A History of the Jewish People in the Time of Jesus Christ, 5 vols. New York, Scribner’s, 1896.
• Gerd Theißen, Annette Merz, Der historische Jesus: ein Lehrbuch, (Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2001), 149-50.
• Flavius Josephus Ant. XVI 5,3 und Bell. Jud. I,21,12

Answer 8

I have to add something new.

Does this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_Gospels count? Some are written on 50 AD. That's written by jews in hebrew but censored by christian church.

Also what about James the just, brother of Jesus, can we start from that? killed by sanhedrin. Somehow the leader of sanhedrin got fired from his job because of that scandal.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_the_Just#Death

According to a passage in Josephus's Antiquities of the Jews, (xx.9) "the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ, whose name was James" met his death after the death of the procurator Porcius Festus, yet before Lucceius Albinus took office (Antiquities 20,9) — which has thus been dated to 62. The High Priest Ananus ben Ananus took advantage of this lack of imperial oversight to assemble a Sanhedrin (although the correct translation of the Greek 'synhedion kriton' is 'a council of judges') who condemned James "on the charge of breaking the law," then had him executed by stoning. Josephus reports that Ananus' act was widely viewed as little more than judicial murder, and offended a number of "those who were considered the most fair-minded people in the City, and strict in their observance of the Law," who went as far as meeting Albinus as he entered the province to petition him about the matter. In response, King Agrippa replaced Ananus with Jesus, the son of Damneus.

so James the Just, one of Jesus' followers or brothers, is real. I guess maybe Jesus is real too.

Accordingly, the scribes and Pharisees

...threw down the just man... [and] began to stone him: for he was not killed by the fall; but he turned, and kneeled down, and said: "I beseech Thee, Lord God our Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do."

And, while they were thus stoning him to death, one of the priests, the sons of Rechab, the son of Rechabim, to whom testimony is borne by Jeremiah the prophet, began to cry aloud, saying: "Cease, what do ye? The just man is praying for us." But one among them, one of the fullers, took the staff with which he was accustomed to wring out the garments he dyed, and hurled it at the head of the just man. And so he suffered martyrdom; and they buried him on the spot, and the pillar erected to his memory still remains, close by the temple. This man was a true witness to both Jews and Greeks that Jesus is the Christ. —Fragments from the Acts of the Church; Concerning the Martyrdom of James, the Brother of the Lord, from Book 5.[42]

Vespasian's siege and capture of Jerusalem delayed the selection of Simeon of Jerusalem to succeed James.

According to Schaff in 1904 this account by "Hegesippus has been cited over and over again by historians as assigning the date of the martyrdom to 69 AD" though he challenged the assumption that Hegesippus gives anything to denote such a date.[43]

Answer 9

From the Theologian, Heinz-Werner Kubitza, "Der Jesuswahn: Wie die Christen sich ihren Gott erschufen" (LANG=DE, The Jesus-delusion, how the Christians build their God) I listened a podcast 50MB, 1h, LANG=DE few days ago. One topic is the question about historical evidence. One point is, that in the beginning Jesus was a scholar, of John the Baptist, not the other way round.