Was he a real person?
Outside sourcesNew Testament · as historical sources
Ring 1Jesus was a real man who lived in first-century Judea.
Scholarly consensusNearly all scholars
It is not only Christian writings. Writers who did not follow Jesus mention him too.
- AD 93–94Josephus, Antiquities 20.200 · 18.63 (Josephus, Jewish Antiquities). A Jewish historian. He mentions "the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ, whose name was James". The settled view is that the passage in book 18 has later additions mixed into it, but many scholars hold that its core mention of Jesus was there from the start.
- c. AD 112Pliny, Letters 10.96 (Pliny the Younger, Letters). A Roman governor reports to the emperor that Christians sing hymns to Christ as to a god.
- c. AD 116Tacitus, Annals 15.44 (Tacitus, Annals). A Roman historian. He writes that Christ was executed in the reign of Tiberius by the governor Pontius Pilate.
Bart Ehrman, an agnostic New Testament scholar, also argues against the view that Jesus never existed, in Did Jesus Exist? (2012).
ObjectionWasn’t Jesus a figure made up by myth?
This view (the myth theory) is held by very few scholars. Paul writes that he met Jesus’ brother James in person (Galatians 1:19), and non-Christian sources also treat Jesus as a real person.