Did Jesus really exist?

What the Bible says

Whether Jesus lived is a historical question before it is a question of faith, and a historical question should be answered by historical method. That means asking what the earliest evidence is, and who wrote it, when, and in what circumstances.

The earliest writings in the New Testament are not the Gospels but Paul’s letters. Writing to the Corinthians, Paul says:

For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that He was buried, that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that He appeared to Cephas and then to the Twelve.

1 Cor 15:3-5

Many scholars think this is not Paul’s own composition but a confession he received. He probably received it within a few years of the crucifixion. Galatians adds something worth noticing. Paul says that three years after his conversion he went up to Jerusalem to see Cephas and stayed with him fifteen days, and he adds:

But I saw none of the other apostles except James, the Lord’s brother.

Gal 1:19

Paul had met the man called “the Lord’s brother.” Some have suggested that this title means a spiritual brother within the community of believers, but most scholars think the context points to Jesus’ family. Either way, Paul knew people who were close to Jesus.

Luke says at the start what kind of writing he is doing. He is not inventing a tale. He passes on what was “handed down to us by the initial eyewitnesses and servants of the word,” and he writes after he has “carefully investigated everything from the beginning” (Luke 1:2-3). Then he fixes the events in history.

In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, while Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, Herod tetrarch of Galilee, his brother Philip tetrarch of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias tetrarch of Abilene, during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John son of Zechariah in the wilderness.

Luke 3:1-2

To list kings, governors and high priests with their dates shows confidence that the account can be checked. Historians value writing that anyone at the time could test. Pilate is known outside the Bible too. In 1961 a stone bearing his name and his title, prefect of Judea, was found at Caesarea. The Gospels are testimony of faith, and historians read them with that in mind. But a testimony that came from faith is not thereby shown to be false.

The church's witness

The church has always confessed that Jesus lived and died at a particular time and place. The Apostles’ Creed says he suffered under Pontius Pilate The Apostles’ Creed. It is no accident that a governor’s name stands in a creed. The church confesses Jesus not as a symbol of timeless truth but as the central figure of events that happened under a named governor at a set time.

Chrysostom notes that Luke does not lean on his own testimony. “The Evangelist was so far from being content with his single testimony, that he refers the whole to the Apostles, seeking from them a confirmation of his words” Chrysostom. Matthew Henry reads Luke’s purpose the same way: Luke “will not write of things about which Christians may safely differ from one another,” but “the things which are, and ought to be surely believed” Matthew Henry.

There are also records from outside the church. They are valuable because they were written by people who had little sympathy for Christians. The Roman historian Tacitus, writing about AD 116, tells how Nero blamed Christians for the fire of Rome, and says that the name came from “Christus,” who had been executed under Tiberius by the governor Pontius Pilate Tacitus, Annals 15.44. He did not like the movement. The Jewish historian Josephus wrote a passage on Jesus about AD 93 Josephus, Antiquities 18.63–64. Scholars generally judge that parts of it are later Christian additions. But elsewhere in the same work Josephus briefly mentions that a high priest had James, the brother of Jesus who was called Christ, put to death Josephus, Antiquities 20.200, and most scholars regard that line as authentic. Around AD 112 Pliny the Younger reported to the emperor Trajan that Christians gathered to sing hymns to Christ as to a god Pliny the Younger, Letters 10.96.

In the original languages

The word Luke uses for “carefully” is akribos (ἀκριβῶς). It means “accurately,” “exactly,” and it describes a checked inquiry, not gathered rumour. With it Luke says his account is the result of investigation.

The word translated “eyewitnesses” is autoptes (αὐτόπτης), literally “one who saw with his own eyes.” The Gospel’s story comes from people who saw, not from hearsay. A companion word, martys (μάρτυς), means “witness,” and from it comes “martyr,” a person who died for what he testified to.

Common objections

“Jesus never existed. He is a myth invented later.” The “Christ myth” theory is often met online, and it is raised for reasons that deserve a hearing. The Gospels were written decades after the events by believers. Non-Christian references are a few lines, and most come late. Paul says little about Jesus’ earthly life. Stories of dying and rising gods were common in the ancient world, and perhaps Jesus’ story is one of them. Part of this is fair. Evidence about ancient figures is thin, and Jesus is no exception. But most historians do not accept the theory. First, Paul says he met Jesus’ brother, which a myth does not easily explain. Second, the story is anchored in one place and time in Judea, and to Jews of the time a crucified Messiah was “a stumbling block” (1 Cor 1:23). Someone inventing a myth would hardly have made it so. Third, stories of dying and rising gods differ greatly from the story of Jesus in structure and setting, and many scholars note that the resemblances often rest on sources later than Jesus. Fourth, myths usually need a long time to grow, yet the proclamation of Jesus’ death and resurrection is already found in a confession formed within a few years. That Jesus lived is accepted by almost all scholars, including those who are not Christians. It does not follow that the resurrection happened. That is a separate question, taken up in Did Jesus really rise from the dead?

“The outside sources came decades later and depended on what believers said.” This also has force. Tacitus may have recorded what was known in Rome and not investigated it himself, and the Josephus passage has been touched up. These records alone cannot tell us what Jesus taught or did. What they establish is more modest. A man called Jesus lived, he was executed under Pilate, and afterwards a movement of his followers spread across the empire. It is notable that opponents of the church did not deny this and spoke as if it were so. Had Jesus never existed, denying it would have been an obvious reply, yet ancient critics do not make it.

Going further

To accept that Jesus lived is not an act of faith. It is a historical conclusion. But it is a beginning, not an end, because the fact that a man lived does not tell us who he was. Still, to know that faith stands on events that happened on this earth, and not above the clouds, changes the nature of the question.

You might ask yourself some questions. From whom, and in what circumstances, did I first hear about Jesus? Have I ever weighed the historical evidence for myself? If Jesus really lived, how important does it feel to ask who he was?

To read further, see Who is Jesus? and Can the Bible be trusted?. Reading Luke 1:1-4 slowly is also a good place to begin.