The Historical Records of Jesus
- Timothy Harolds
- May 25
- 7 min read
Updated: Oct 19
Quick Overview
This piece surveys non‑Christian sources that attest to Jesus’ existence and crucifixion. It notes that Jewish historian Josephus briefly mentions Jesus and that Roman historians Tacitus and Suetonius confirm His execution under Pontius Pilate and the early persecution of Christians. The Babylonian Talmud acknowledges a man named Jesus who was hanged, and modern scholars like Bart Ehrman agree that He lived. The article also highlights how Jesus’ claims of divinity and resurrection were believed by His followers. Together, these records show that the historical Jesus was more than a myth; He is a figure of history who was worshipped as God.
When Jesus had received the sour wine, He said, “It is finished!” Then bowing His head, He gave up His spirit. John 19:30
Ever since the first century, the Name of Jesus has evoked many different responses from all kinds of people. Nearly every worldview accepts the fact that we cannot get around the person of Jesus Christ, Who revealed Himself in the first-century, Middle Eastern world. Still, contemporary beliefs about this man vary among many different perspectives. To the Muslim, He is a prophet; to the New Age, He might be a teacher; to the Jew, a heretic and a blasphemer, and to the atheist, He could just be a man in history who is greatly misunderstood by all of the above. According to atheist scholar Bart Ehrman, there is one thing we can be sure of: “Whether we like it or not, Jesus certainly existed.”¹ Whether someone accepts the Christian narrative or not, there is no denying that the Jesus spoken of in the Bible walked the earth in first-century Judea. So what do we know about this influential man from a historical perspective, and who did He say He was?
Testimonies of Jesus
That nearly every historian confirms the existence of the historical Jesus has several reasons. One of them is the writings available in our New Testament Bible. Ehrman points out that “with respect to Jesus, we have numerous, independent accounts of his life in the sources lying behind the Gospels (and the writings of Paul) -- sources that originated in Jesus' native tongue Aramaic and that can be dated to within just a year or two of his life.”² Although the non-Christian might not accept the legitimacy of the doctrine presented in the Bible, it is hard to deny that this collection of books and letters provides an extensive amount of detail about the life of one particular man who goes by the name of Jesus of Nazareth, even more than nearly any other historical figure. In fact, it would be more justified to question the existence of a figure like Alexander the Great, whose earliest surviving testimony dates back approximately 300 years after his death. “More than twenty contemporaries wrote books on Alexander and not one of them survives.”³ Not only do we have a great amount of testimonies about Jesus’ life, but we also see that after His death, He leaves a significant number of followers who claim to have seen Him risen from the dead and worship Him as God. This impact goes even beyond the writings of the Bible. In his Antiquities of the Jews (~AD 93), Josephus, a Jewish historian for the Romans, writes the following:
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. Josephus, Ant. 18.3.3
It is worth addressing that this testimony of Jesus sounds notably more Christian than Jewish. Because of this and the fact that we know from Origen that Josephus “…did not accept Jesus as Christ…”,⁴ many believe that phrases affirming Christian doctrine like:
…if it be lawful to call him a man;
He was [the] Christ;
...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.
...were added to the text by Jesus’ followers at a later point in time. Other reasons many scholars believe this is because no Church Fathers quote this passage and because it simply seems to disrupt the flow of the narrative.
A more believable testimony from a Jewish source that stems from early Jewish tradition is from the Babylonian Talmud, where it says that:
Jesus of Nazareth was hanged on Passover Eve. A herald went out for forty days [prior to the execution, proclaiming:] Jesus of Nazareth is to be executed by stoning for witchcraft and for leading Israel astray [to idolatry]. Will anyone who knows anything in his favour come forward and plead for him! They found nothing in his favour, so he was hanged on Passover Eve. Babylonian Talmud, Sanh. 43a
The impact of the ‘Jesus Movement’ is also evident in Roman sources such as the works of Roman historian Suetonius, speaking of emperors like Nero. “He likewise inflicted punishments on the Christians, a sort of people who held a new and impious superstition.”⁵ Tacitus in his Annals (110/120 AD) goes into even more detail when he writes that “Christus…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 Judæa, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome…”⁶ At the time, the movement was framed by Romans as a superstitio, meaning an ‘irrational religious awe.’ This awe or following temporarily stopped, which could be explained by Jesus’ death, and soon again broke out (most likely after Jesus’ resurrection), not only in Judea, but also in the rest of Rome. According to Tacitus, all who pleaded guilty to following this superstitio “…were torn by dogs and perished, or were nailed to crosses, or were doomed to the flames and burnt, to serve as a nightly illumination, when daylight had expired.“ In the period that followed, various accounts of martyrdom appeared, such as the Martyrdom of Polycarp dated to AD 155/156.
The Identity of Jesus
The identity of Jesus is where the proponents of the theological and philosophical positions previously mentioned cannot seem to find common ground. Although one would assume the Christian gets a clear picture of Christ’s identity in the Gospels, Jewish scholar Geza Vermes states that “the Jesus figure of the Fourth Gospel greatly differs from the portrait drawn by the Synoptic evangelists.”⁷ His perspective after reading the New Testament is that “it is more reasonable to conclude that the Johannine characterization of Jesus is the work of the fourth evangelist…”⁸ According to him, Jesus never intended to be worshipped as God. Christian apologist William Lane Craig counters this claim by saying that “those who deny that Jesus made any personal claims implying divinity face the very severe problem of explaining how it is that the worship of Jesus as Lord and God came about at all in the early church.”⁹ He goes on by saying that “studies by New Testament scholars…have proved that within twenty years of the crucifixion a full-blown Christology proclaiming Jesus as God incarnate existed.”¹⁰
The Jesus of History
Although many more arguments can be made for Jesus’ divinity, in this article, we are not arguing whether contemporary Christian doctrine is correct. The goal of this article is rather to explore the historical records available to us. What is evident from these records is that there was a man named Jesus who stirred up the region of Judea, claiming to be (equal to) God, Who was crucified by the hand of Pontius Piltate, left a large amount of followers claiming to have seen Him risen from the dead and worshipping Him as God and they were willing to die for this belief.
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 a 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. - C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity.
For more about Jesus' claims of divinity, read "Jesus Christ: Son of Man."
Recommended readings (affiliates)
Footnotes
Bart D. Ehrman, “Did Jesus Exist?,” HuffPost, 20 March 2012, https://www.huffpost.com/entry/did-jesus-exist_b_1349544.
Ibid.
Robin Lane Fox, Alexander the Great (London: Penguin Books, 2004), preface
Origen, Commentary on Matthew 10.17, in The Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 9, ed. Allan Menzies, trans. John Patrick (New York: Christian Literature Company, 1897), 424.
Suetonius, The Twelve Caesars, trans. Alexander Thomson (New York: Barnes & Noble Classics, 2005), Nero 16.
Tacitus, Annals 15.44, trans. Alfred John Church and William Jackson Brodribb, in Perseus Digital Library, ed. Gregory R. Crane, Tufts University, https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.02.0078%3Abook%3D15%3Achapter%3D44.
Geza Vermes, Christian Beginnings: From Nazareth to Nicaea, AD 30–325 (London: Penguin Books, 2012), 115.
Ibid. 120
William Lane Craig, Reasonable Faith: Christian Truth and Apologetics, 3rd ed. (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2008), 300.
Ibid.
Bible translation: The Holy Bible: Holman Christian Standard Version. (Nashville: Holman Bible Publishers, 2009).
