Jesus Christ was a Historical Person

When it comes to the existence of Jesus, there is a growing trend to deny His very existence, or at least most of His life. In this, I hope to lay out evidence for His existence and basic impact points of His life.In this round, I am only using the Bible itself, and noncanonical sources like Thomas Background Information:First, you and I need to differentiate between supernatural, historical, and composition claims on the Gospels and Jesus. Saying the Gospels were written before the turn of the 2nd century does nothing to directly prove anything historical about Jesus, including theological claims. To begin, then, we need to look at the composition as the groundwork for the arguments. There are four canonical Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, as well as noncanonical Gospels of interest such as the Gospel of Peter and the Gospel of Thomas. We also have a great deal of undisputed Pauline literature as well. The Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke can be clumped together into what are called the “Synoptic Gospels.” The word synoptic comes from the Greek word meaning “Seeing Together.” While about 90% of John is unique from other Gospels, the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke share large amounts of material. Mark has been the Gospel most often depicted as the first written Gospel, and for good reason. Its Greek is atrocious, with misalignments in Subject-Verb-Adjective agreement in number, gender, and tense. It also is the simplest of the Gospels, with less detail and much quicker. The Greek word εP16;θ^1;ως being used often, which means immediately or at that moment. Luke and Matthew appear to have used Mark as a source. About 40% of Luke and 50% of Matthew is, in fact, Mark restated. It contains Greek parallels so verbatim to Mark that it seems impossible to say otherwise. Matthew and Luke also improve Mark’s grammar and add details, something that would not make sense for Mark to undo if he used Matthew or Luke as a source. There is also a further large amount of verbatim agreement between Matthew and Luke that is NOT in Mark. This is Q, a Gospel written parallel, but separate from Mark. Luke and Matthew used this source in their Gospels. At the end of the day, 80-90% of Luke and Matthew are just copies of Mark and Q. Thomas is a noncanonical sayings Gospel from the Nag Hammadi Library that was also separate from the Synoptics (Unlike the Secret Gospel of James from the same collection, which acknowledges reliance on them in its use of parables). Peter is perhaps, although it is not as certain as Thomas, separate from all the Gospels and written by a highly Gentile, antisemitic community in Syrian or Egyptian Docetic community. Now, this means that separate works without knowledge or use of each other are as follows Q, Mark, John, Thomas, M (Matthew’s unique material), L (Luke’s unique material), and perhaps Peter. We also have large amounts of early Pauline literature that mention Christ’s death and resurrection explicitly (1 Thessalonians 4:14, Galatians 1:1) This means we have 4-6 known communities of religious people who spoke of a man named Jesus… all independent of each other. Now, these communities have vast differences. Thomas if Protognostic, Paul is Gentile, Mark and Q are apocalyptic and oriented towards the Son of Man and 2nd Temple Judaism, John could be considered protognostic as well, and Peter seems to be docetic in nature (This can be seen in Jesus’ talk of “power’ and the Christ “leaving Him.”) Now that we have the groundwork of the written works out of the way, we can talk about the system used to establish historicity. The two primary modes of this system are independent attestation embarrassment. For the purposes of this argument, we will be using the crucifixion and mustard seed saying of Jesus as case examples. 1. Independent Attestation Independent attestation is very simple. It is NOT saying “the Bible says so, so it’s true.” Separate that idea in your mind. Each of these Gospels was a separate work, and it was written by different people and for different reasons. These people had no knowledge of each other. If these people had no knowledge of each other, how then did they get similar examples of Jesus? To begin with, how did they individually come up with this Jesus character at the same time? Seems unlikely to be certain that six groups of people would sit down at the same time, try to come up with a new religion, and then come up with extremely similar premises to their religion! Taking the “mustard seed saying” as an example, it is found in both Q and Thomas, not verbatim and from different traditions, further solidifying that they did not use each other, but the saying is still used. What are the odds that two people making up a religion would happen to make up the same saying? Quite slim. This also goes with the crucifixion. Mark, Peter, AND Paul talk about the crucifixion. If THREE people are making up a religion separately at the same time, what are the odds they’ll come up with the same story? Extremely small. 2. Criteria of EmbarrassmentThis then moves us into “embarrassment.” This argument is simply that if you’re making up a religion, you’d want to make it look as good as possible, free from embarrassing moments and events that would put off the people you’re trying to convert. Take the crucifixion then. Crucifixion was not a normal execution. It was for the lowest of the low. Thieves. Rebels. Rapists. You were hung naked on a cross, mocked, and left to slowly asphyxiate. If you were making up a religion that was aimed at Jews or Gentiles, would you want to make it up so that your leader was executed naked and humiliated?In the same token, Baptism was an event that symbolized that the baptizer was above the baptized. If you were making up a religion, would you want it to say that your leader was submitting himself to a wilderness baptizer who was beheaded? I doubt it. Along those same lines, Judas is said to have betrayed Jesus. If you were making up a religion story, would you want it to be make it so that the leader of your religion couldn’t even keep control of his closest followers? To sum it up, we can say that Jesus existed, and pinpoint parts of His life as historical. What are the odds that multiple different religious communities would make up stories in which their leader was named Jesus, humbled in baptism to a homeless man, betrayed by His own follower, and executed like the lowest of the lowest criminal? It’s not a possibility. There must then have been a common source for this religion, but not a common teaching. All the books claim that common source as the man Jesus Christ Himself.