The historical Jesus

Jesus of Nazareth was a real person, and nearly all historians, whether Christian, Jewish, or nonreligious, agree that he lived and was crucified under Pontius Pilate. If you are asking because someone has told you that Jesus never existed, or because you are searching and want to know whether the story stands on solid ground, you can take heart, because the evidence for his life is strong.

What is the earliest evidence that Jesus existed?

The oldest Christian writings are the letters of Paul. Seven of them are accepted by nearly all scholars as Paul’s own, and they were written in the 50s CE, about twenty to twenty-five years after Jesus’ death. Paul was not a disciple during Jesus’ lifetime; by his own account he first persecuted the church and then became an apostle.

Paul personally knew the people closest to Jesus. Describing his early years as an apostle, he writes:

Then after three years I did go up to Jerusalem to visit Cephas and stayed with him fifteen days, but I did not see any other apostle except James the Lord’s brother.

Galatians 1:18–19, NRSVUE

Cephas is the Aramaic name of Peter, Jesus’ leading disciple. James was Jesus’ brother. The historian Bart Ehrman, who is not a Christian, sums it up in one sentence: “If Jesus did not exist, you would think his brother would know it.”

Paul also passes on traditions about Jesus that he received from others. He reminds the Corinthians that “the Lord Jesus on the night in which he was betrayed took bread” (1 Corinthians 11:23), and he quotes an early summary of the faith: “that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried” (1 Corinthians 15:3–4). Scholars widely agree that the summary in 1 Corinthians 15 is older than the letter itself.

What do the Gospels contribute?

The four Gospels were written later than Paul’s letters. Most scholars date Mark around 70 CE, Matthew and Luke around 80 to 90 CE, and John around 90 to 100 CE. All four are written by believers who wanted to proclaim Jesus. Historians use sources with a point of view all the time, and they weigh them carefully.

Luke tells his readers that he drew on older accounts and on what had been passed down by eyewitnesses:

Since many have undertaken to compile a narrative about the events that have been fulfilled among us, just as they were handed on to us by those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and servants of the word…

Luke 1:1–2, NRSVUE

The Gospels place Jesus among real people and places: Pontius Pilate, the high priest Caiaphas, Herod Antipas, Capernaum, Nazareth, and Jerusalem. Luke dates the start of John the Baptist’s ministry to “the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, Pontius Pilate being governor of Judea” (Luke 3:1). For more on the Gospels’ origins, see Who wrote the Gospels?

What did Josephus write about Jesus?

Flavius Josephus was a Jewish historian who wrote in Greek for Roman readers. His Antiquities of the Jews, finished around 93 CE, mentions Jesus twice.

The briefer passage, in book 20, reports that the high priest Ananus had James stoned. Josephus identifies James as “the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ, whose name was James.” Nearly all scholars accept the passage as written by Josephus, because a Christian forger would hardly have mentioned Jesus so briefly and so neutrally.

The longer passage, in book 18 (often called the Testimonium Flavianum), describes Jesus as “a wise man” and “a doer of wonderful works” whom Pilate “condemned … to the cross.” In the form that has come down to us, it also says “He was [the] Christ” and that “he appeared to them alive again the third day.” A Jew who never became a Christian would not have written those lines. Most scholars today conclude that Josephus wrote a shorter, neutral notice about Jesus and that Christian copyists later added the confessional phrases.

What did Tacitus write about Jesus?

Tacitus was a Roman historian and politician with no sympathy for Christians. In his Annals, written around 116 CE, he describes how the Emperor Nero blamed Christians for the great fire of Rome in 64 CE. Explaining who the Christians were, Tacitus writes:

Christus, 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.

Tacitus, Annals 15.44

Tacitus calls the Christian faith “a most mischievous superstition,” so he had no reason to invent its founder. His note agrees with the Gospels on three points: Jesus was executed, the execution happened under Tiberius, and Pilate gave the order.

Do historians agree that Jesus existed?

Yes. Bart Ehrman wrote Did Jesus Exist? (HarperOne, 2012) to answer people who claim that Jesus was invented. In a 2012 essay introducing the book, he noted that not one person who holds that view teaches New Testament, early Christianity, or classics at an accredited college or university in the Western world. The Encyclopaedia Britannica dates Jesus’ birth to around 6 to 4 BCE and his death to around 30 CE.

Historians also agree on a few core facts about his life. John the Baptist baptized him, he taught in Galilee, he gathered disciples, and he was crucified on the orders of Pontius Pilate. Christians can welcome the careful work of historians. The Apostles’ Creed itself anchors the faith in public history with the words “suffered under Pontius Pilate.”

Why do some people say Jesus never existed?

A small number of writers, sometimes called mythicists, argue that early Christians created Jesus out of older stories about pagan gods who died and rose. Ehrman answers that the alleged parallels “in most instances reside in the modern imagination.”

The strongest reason to think the first Christians did not invent Jesus is the cross. Many Jews of the time hoped for a Messiah who would defeat Israel’s enemies, and no one expected a crucified one. Paul admits that preaching “Christ crucified” was “a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Greeks” (1 Corinthians 1:23). People inventing a savior would not have chosen crucifixion, the shameful public death Rome used for slaves and rebels.

Does history prove what Christians believe about Jesus?

History can show that Jesus lived, taught, and died. It cannot by itself show that he is the Son of God or that God raised him from the dead; those are confessions of faith, made by people who have come to trust him. The church holds history and faith together, and it invites you to meet the real man of Nazareth in the Gospels and to consider who he is. When Nathanael doubted that anything good could come out of Nazareth, Philip answered him in three words: “Come and see” (John 1:46). See Who is Jesus?, Is Jesus God?, and Did Jesus really rise from the dead?

Anselm of Canterbury, a monk and archbishop of the eleventh century, opened his Proslogium, a short work of reasoning about God, with a prayer. Anyone who is searching, believer or not, can pray it:

Teach me to seek thee, and reveal thyself to me, when I seek thee, for I cannot seek thee, except thou teach me, nor find thee, except thou reveal thyself. Let me seek thee in longing, let me long for thee in seeking; let me find thee in love, and love thee in finding.

Anselm, Proslogium 1, translated by Sidney Norton Deane