The Evidence Shows Jesus Historically Existed

Before I address my opponents responses to the three main arguments I presented for Jesus' historicity, being that of Paul, early secular references, and Matthew, I will quickly address his quotations from Bart Ehrman's book and explain why this is complete quote mining. If anyone reads the book of Bart Ehrman, 'Did Jesus Exist', it conclusively states that Jesus did, for a fact exist. Bart Ehrman believes Jesus was a historical figure, and the book even deals with and repudiates countless arguments from people who believe Jesus did not exist [1]. In fact, if you take a look at his main reason why he accepts Jesus existence which is simply incontestable, it is because of Paul, and the fact that Paul knew the very family of Jesus [2]. Now, onto my defense of my arguments. Paul If you recall (or just scroll up), I mentioned that exact argument, that Paul actually knew the family of Jesus (I referenced him not only knowing James, who is the brother of Jesus [3], but he was even on the same council as James [4] and had James attest to Jesus [4]. There is no question among Historians about this, and this is my (and Bart's) main argument for Jesus' historicity. Bart Ehrman, who he repeatedly quotes as his sole authority from the Historian community, even says "Whatever you might want to say about Jesus, he certainly existed" [5]. Thus, if my opponent wants to solely rely on the beliefs of a single Historian instead of putting out evidence, then we might as well end this. Once again, my opponent failed to address the argument from Paul knowing Jesus' family. In fact, he even knew the disciples of Jesus who had been in His ministry for its entire three years [6]. This means that there simply could exist no mistake when Paul testifies of Jesus, as he even records the people who grew up and lived with Jesus (such as James) clearly reference him. Now, in response to the very early testimony of Paul (within 4-5 years of the Resurrection) on Jesus that I cited, my opponent claims Resurrection's were commonplace. Now, of course, this does not refute nor respond to the argument at all that Paul's testimony is incredibly early, but what's worse is that he cites Matthew 27:51-53, which does not show Resurrection's were commonplace among 1st century Palestine, it only shows that Resurrection is commonplace in Christianity, the rest of Rome completely rejected Resurrections until the literal apocalypse had finished. Then, my opponent claims that James' being Jesus brother is disputed, but this is ridiculous. His source is Wikipedia (I will not pick on this), but the only "dispute" is that some Christians believe that Mary never lost her virginity after Jesus. Now, obviously the beliefs of some Christian do not qualify, in any way, shape or form, as a rebuttal. He has provided no evidence in the slightest to support this claim, and in fact, it is outright rejected by even the Bible, which tells us that Joseph (her husband) DID consummate the marriage, only after Jesus was born. My opponent has given no reason to believe Jesus has no brothers, as his beliefs do not qualify as evidence. Secondly, he says Paul's earliest copy of his writing dates to 300 years after it was written. All Historians know that the earliest copy of a document of ancient antiquity is the most irrelevant thing as to when it was written. The earliest copies of Aristotle, Sophocles, Caesar, Aristophanes, Euripides, Thucydides, Suetonius, Herodotus, Demosthenes, Plato, and many others come a staggering 800 years after the original [8], and yet this is not contested. Outside the New Testament, there exists not one writing of ancient antiquity closer to its original than Paul. In fact, Historians agree Paul died 67 AD [9], and so it could not possibly be after 67 AD, and most of his writings date within the 50's AD [10]. My opponent has no case here, his sources are flawed and the facts are stacked against him. Secular Records My opponent claims that there is an interpolation in Josephus, and this is true, but textual criticism has already deduced what the original document like says and it still references Jesus [11], and Josephus has a second reference to Jesus anyways [12] which is not thought to be an interpolation or a forgery. My opponent claims that Tacitus' reference to Jesus is disputed, which is ridiculous. "I"ve never come across any dispute about the authenticity of Ann. 15.44; as far as I"m aware, it"s always been accepted as genuine" -James Rives, world-class Roman Historian [13] He then tries to reject the authenticity of Tacitus' Jesus reference by claiming that it is not quoted by early Church Historians, but this is merely an Argument from Silence fallacy [14]. On Clement of Rome, he claims internal evidence suggest that it does not date to the 90's AD, but to the second century. I went through his source. The first thing to point out is that it was not written by any credible Historian, this hardly qualifies as quality evidence. It accuses evidence of early dating to 95 AD of being vague, when the evidence is very good. Clement references a major persecution of the Church, and this persecution happened after Nero. The only possible answer is the persecution under the reign of Domitian, and Domitian died 95-96 AD, which makes it abundantly clear that the maximum dating is 95-96 AD [15]. Rather, the evidence posed for it being written in the second century from his source is vague, as it is entirely based on the fact that Clement references the Churh of Rome as "ancient". This gives us no methodology, whatsoever, of dating this passage, it is extremely spurious and in fact could easily be referencing the ministry of Jesus from 30-33 AD, but the writer seems to think it must be the ministries of some of the Apostle and gives us no reason why. No Historian uses such erroneous and flawed dating methods. Matthew The first argument my opponent makes is yet again, the earliest copy of Matthew goes 300 years after the original. Now, I have already rebuked that this is at all relevant, and the fact is no Historian or peer-reviewed historical paper in the world dates documents by their earliest copy, but there is another major error here. The fact is, the earliest copy of Matthew could literally date as early as 60-65 AD, dated by Carsten Peter Thiede using papryology and state-of-the-art technology [16]. Even the latest critical dating puts this fragment between 150-200 AD [17], so my opponent has simply errored here, but this is hardly relevant, as I must repeat, because the earliest fragment is meaningless in respect to its dating. Using such methodology could literally tear apart all our records of ancient history, no Historian does or takes such a dating seriously. Now, let's take a look at this quotation by my opponent; "most scholars appear to agree that it was written between AD 80 and AD 90, and was not written by the disciple Matthew" Firstly, he does not give a source for this because Scholars actually put it between 65-70 AD [18]. Secondly, I presented overwhelming evidence to suggest that the Gospel of Matthew was written from by Matthew himself, taking into account both massive internal and external records. My opponent has not responded to any of this, and his entire position is based upon what authorities have told him. This does not qualify as a viable argument, as the sources clearly indicate Matthew as the author, and thus we have undeniable eyewitness testimony of Jesus from one of His very Apostles. Now, lastly, I'd like to deal with his argument that Paul, Josephus, Tacitus, and Clement of Rome are not eyewitnesses of Jesus and thus somehow do not qualify as evidence to testify of His existence. The idea that someone needs to be an eyewitness to validate a historical event is simply incorrect. The earliest biography of Alexander the Great was written 400 years after his death, and is still accepted as reliable by Historians [19]. Tacitus and Pliny writes of events as early as 17 AD [20], much after Jesus and events they certainly were not alive to see, yet again, no Historians question the reliability of these things. If Tacitus can accurately document events from 17 AD writing from 107 AD, then he can document Jesus in 33 AD, and Josephus writing in the 90's AD certainly can as well. 1. http://www.bartdehrman.com... 2. 3. http://biblehub.com... 4.https://www.biblegateway.com... 5. 6. http://biblehub.com... 7. http://biblehub.com... 8.https://carm.org... 9. http://www.biblestudy.org... 10. https://www.gty.org... 11. 12. http://www.bede.org.uk... 13. http://ehrmanblog.org... 14. 15. https://books.google.ca... 16. http://www.equip.org... 17. http://www.tyndale.cam.ac.uk... 18. http://www.bc.edu... 19. http://www.reasonablefaith.org... 20. https://en.wikipedia.org...