No Evidence For Jesus

Have you done adequate research and involved yourself in critical thinking and come to your belief based upon scientific scrutiny, logic and common sense that Jesus Christ was a real person? Or do you just blindly accept that which you have been spoon fed your entire life? You say that you have faith, faith in what, exactly? Two and two make four and no matter how much faith you have it simply does not make five. Faith is fine and good, there’s nothing wrong with it, but if it contradicts proven facts then we have a problem. If you find your faith contradicting facts then you need to ask yourself a question: “Am I brainwashed?” because only brainwashed people blindly believe in the opposite of what the facts dictate. If Jesus Christ wasn’t a real person the entire Christian religion is null and void. The whole religion relies upon Jesus having been born, crucified and resurrected. If he was not then the whole religion is bogus, which is why so many people go into denial, refuse to look at the facts and insist upon having irrational, ignorance based faith rather than use common sense and intelligence. But the bottom line is that I can believe in the Easter Bunny and have all the faith in the world, but that does not prove that he's real. There is only one thing that could prove that, evidence, so now… let’s do a critical analysis of the “Jesus was a historical figure” theory and see what the facts and evidence tell us!

 

What evidence do you have to show that Jesus was a real person? Had Jesus Christ existed as a real person I think it’s reasonable to say that we would have massive volumes of material written by contemporary historians. Why would they not write about him? Why would a historical writer fail to address the one and only son of God? There should also be plenty of ancient artifacts and other forms of concrete, primary source evidence as well, but the fact is that there is nothing, period. There is simply no evidence of any kind to suggest that Jesus Christ was a real person who walked the face of this earth, not a shred.

 

According to the four gospels, Jesus was supposedly known “far and wide” and performed more than a handful of wonderful miracles in front of thousands of people, but for some odd reason all of the historical writers of his purported time on earth totally ignored him and failed to write one word about him! Now, why would a historical writer blatantly ignore such an amazing person? There are literally zero contemporary writings that mention Jesus Christ. For those who don't know what "contemporary" means, it means people who lived during the same time period, who could have actually SEEN Jesus and reported on the events from a firsthand eyewitness point of view. THERE ARE NONE.

Even Philo Judaeus, who unlike Jesus, was a true and verifiable person in history, who is documented and fully recognized as such, who lived in nearby Alexandria, Egypt at exactly the same time that Jesus supposedly lived failed to mention him once. The Big Round Circle. Philo wrote extensively on the Hebrew scriptures and other Jewish topics, but he never mentioned Jesus Christ once! Not a word! But he was right there on the scene at the time! This fact is a very big deal! This is a huge fact that most certainly cannot be ignored or "explained away." Had Jesus been a real person, surely Philo would have been writing lots about Jesus. But he did not write one word about him! Some Christians use the excuse that “Jesus was an obscure rabbi, not very well known” but that’s not what the four gospels say! According to what the Bible says he was very well known right from the beginning, having three wise men attend his birth bearing gifts and such, because it was a famous birth. So famous a birth that King Herod felt threatened by him and wanted him dead! Jesus supposedly walked around performing earth shaking miracles in front of “thousands of people” and even rose from the dead! But he wasn’t very well known? Nonsense! That claim is contradictory to the four gospels. How could a historical writer miss or fail to write about such miraculous events? King Herod’s massacre of the innocents received zero mention in history. Nothing surrounding the entire Jesus story received any mention in history, nothing. There is simply no excuse for that! In my mind the lack of evidence for Jesus along with the conflicting gospel reports and the mountains of evidence for plagiarism in the gospels is the best evidence for the non-existence of Jesus. And of course, there are many other famous people from the same time period (both Biblical and non-Biblical) and long before that who are easily verified utilizing historical writings, artifacts, busts of their facial features, etc. (Philo from above, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Julius Caesar, etc etc) but we don’t even know what this Jesus Christ character really looked like! Christian art works of him are never the same and they most often portray a light skinned man with blonde hair and blue eyes.

Wasn’t Jesus supposed to have been Middle Eastern? He should have had a dark complexion, with dark hair and eyes, correct? And how come the first eight hundred years of Christian art work depicts an actual lamb on the cross, rather than a human being? It wasn’t until the ninth century that Christianity finally started depicting Jesus as a man, as opposed to a lamb. Some paintings before then actually had a lamb with a human head, holding a cross. Others had a lamb at the foot of a cross, a lamb carrying a cross, etc. So if Jesus Christ was a real person and the story of Jesus is true, why did it take eight hundred years to portray him as a man instead of a lamb? Do the research, don’t take my word for it, go and see it for yourselves. The point is that outside of the Bible we know absolutely nothing about this Jesus Christ character. There is literally no documentation for his life, no evidence of any kind, at all, period, which is mighty odd don’t you think? Every other famous person who lived back then is verifiable. It’s no problem to verify King Herod, Pontius Pilate, the ancient philosophers, etc. so why is it so difficult to verify the savior of all mankind, the most famous person in the history of the world? There shouldn’t be any problems with finding proof for his purported existence and it’s absolutely ludicrous that nothing can be found to back up the claim that he existed as a human being, don’t you agree? Why no evidence for this person, had he truly existed? That’s ridiculous! There are of course, Christian excuses for sources of proof, but these sources are all:

 

hear·say: noun 1. Unverified information heard or received from another; rumor. 2. Evidence based upon the reports of others, rather than the personal knowledge of a witness, therefore generally not admissible as testimony.

 

The dishonest, biased Christians use nothing but hearsay as so-called "evidence" as they are all non-contemporaneous, second-hand sources! Nothing concrete! I just love how Christians try to use writers who weren’t even born until many years after Jesus supposedly died, and then claim it as “proof.” I was reading a Christian book called “The Case for Christ” by Lee Strobel, which claims to be a book by a lawyer who conducted an investigation into the historical Jesus and found adequate evidence to prove him to be a real person, supposedly, but he was quoting writers from the second and third centuries, guys who weren’t even born until hundreds of years after Jesus supposedly lived and calling that “proof,” which is absolutely ridiculous. His sources would never hold up in a real court of law, and I invite all of my readers to read the book or watch the DVD of the same title to see exactly what I’m talking about. How those sources can constitute real “proof” that Jesus Christ walked the Earth is beyond me, these Christian writers are just desperate liars. I’ve read many similar books written by Christians such as Josh McDowell, I’ve listened to radio interviews, watched documentaries and things like that claiming that the proof for Jesus exists and they’re all using the same tired, old, dishonest, biased sources, including the main four that I’ll present here, plus they typically use the "proving the Bible with the Bible" manipulation and try to claim the four gospels as “proof” as well, which I will also put to rest here. They never provide anything useful and it was very disappointing to me after being raised a Christian to see how biased and dishonest these Christians are in making their claims. I am an honest person and I was conducting an honest, unbiased investigation and making an authentic attempt to find evidence for the historical existence of Jesus Christ, and all I found was a pack of rehashed lies as told by various biased, dishonest Christian apologists. But don’t take my word for it, do your own research and watch the films, read the books, find yourself some Christian apologists and analyze their sources sometime. Unless you’re completely biased yourself, you’ll see exactly what I’m talking about. And their best "source" is?

 

Josephus: Jesus supposedly left this earth sometime around 33 AD. Josephus wasn’t even born until 37 AD! Anyone with second grade math skills can figure out the problem with this source. Jesus supposedly died four years before Josephus was even born! This is proof that Jesus Christ walked the earth? And don’t forget, this is the best source that Christians have to offer. This is the earliest one. There are ZERO eyewitness accounts and ZERO concrete documentation, such as court records, etc. Considering the fact that Josephus couldn’t possibly have been an eyewitness, what was his source of information concerning Jesus? No other documented source existed at the time that this passage was supposedly written by Josephus, therefore how did Josephus learn of Jesus? Word of mouth via second-hand hearsay is the best that we can hope for, which is, of course, inadmissible evidence in all courts of law, because hearsay proves nothing. The passage, if genuine, is very odd considering that Josephus was an orthodox Jew. The passage speaks as if Jesus is the Messiah. Jews don’t believe in Jesus. As written in The “Antiquities of the Jews” the passage entitled the “Testimonium Flavianum” reads as follows:

 

“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.”

 

First of all, this passage breaks the narrative and had nothing to do with anything in the passages before it or after it. It is also far too brief to have been written by Josephus, giving tons of information in one short passage, which was not the style of Josephus who wrote in a long handed style. This passage was never quoted by anybody, not even the early church fathers, until the fourth century, which is oddly suspicious. Had the passage existed before then the church fathers surely would have quoted it during the defense of their faith, but they did not. This is a list of Church fathers who studied Josephus but never mentioned the Jesus passage:

 

Justin Martyr (100 CE - 165 CE) mentioned Josephus all the time, no mention of “Jesus” passage.

 

Theophilus (180 AD)

 

Irenaeus (120/140 CE - 200/203 CE)

 

Clement of Alexandria (150 CE - 211/215 CE)

 

Origen (185 CE - 254 CE)

 

Hippolytus (170 CE - 235 CE)

 

Minucius Felix (250 AD)

 

Anatolius (230 CE - 270/280 CE)

 

Chrysostom (347 CE - 407 CE)

 

The first Christian defender to mention the passage was Eusebius, known as the “Father of Church History,” who is commonly believed to be the one who wrote the passage and inserted it into Josephus’ work. The passage is written in his style not to mention that he is notorious for his dishonesty, and can be quoted as such:

 

► “I have repeated whatever may rebound to the glory, and suppressed all that could tend to the disgrace of our religion.”

 

► “It will sometimes be necessary to use falsehood for the benefit of those who need such a treatment.”

 

► “We shall introduce into this history in general only those events which may be useful first to ourselves and afterwards to posterity.”

 

This passage is admitted to be a forgery and a fourth century interpolation by many early, as well as modern, Christian church fathers and even the Catholic Encyclopedia states that “the passage seems to suffer from repeated interpolations” but unfortunately many Christians still attempt to pass this nonsense off as “proof for Jesus” which is very dishonest of them and illustrates how desperate they are. If Jesus was a real person, why are we trying to pass off such flimsy evidence? This isn't just flimsy evidence, it's fake entirely, it doesn't hold up at all. Why must we be so dishonest, Christians? Deep down you know that the Josephus source is a worthless excuse that proves nothing! I’ll repeat: Even if it’s an authentic Josephus passage, it remains a secondhand, hearsay source from a non-contemporary, which doesn’t prove anything in the first place.

 

Tacitus: Tacitus wasn’t even born until 23 years after Jesus supposedly died (56 CE), and this passage, if genuinely written by Tacitus, wasn’t even written until 74 years after Jesus supposedly died (107 CE), therefore this also constitutes a non-eyewitness secondhand hearsay source which is inadmissible evidence in a court of law and once again proves nothing. This passage was supposedly written in the early second century, but for some odd reason not a single person makes historical mention of this passage until the fifteenth century! What are the chances of that happening? None of the early church fathers ever mentioned this passage in the defense of their faith as they surely would have, had the passage existed back then. Not even Eusebius, the “Father of Church History” (see Josephus section) mentions it. And Tertullian, who read and quoted Tacitus quite frequently, never mentioned it either, which he surely would have had he known of it. Pretty much the only explanation for the 1300 to 1400 years of absolute silence concerning this passage is that it simply didn’t exist during that period. In his Annals, which are suspicious even within themselves, also having never been mentioned by any contemporary or early writers, Tacitus supposedly wrote:

 

“Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace. Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilate.”

 

First of all, Pontius Pilate was not a procurator he was a prefect and Tacitus would have known that. Also, if this passage proves anything at all it only proves the existence of Christians in the early second century, not a historical Jesus Christ in the early first century, not to mention the remaining body of work by Tacitus is huge yet it lacks all mention of Jesus (or anyone similar) and Christians. If Christus was Jesus, and had suffered the extreme penalty under Pilate, then how did Tacitus know this and what was his source? Considering that the Josephus passage hadn’t been forged yet, how did Tacitus get this information? If Tacitus got the information from Josephus, where did Josephus get his information? Clearly we can see the problem, and that is that there is no verifiable source of eye-witness to Jesus Christ to be relied upon. This is all secondhand hearsay, nothing more. It is very dishonest and deceptive to try to use these sources as proof Christians! These prove nothing!

 

Pliny the Younger: This writer wasn’t even born until 29 years after Jesus supposedly died (62 CE), and this source consists of a letter than was supposedly written by him 77 years after Jesus supposedly died (110 CE), to the Emperor Trajan asking him what the proper punishment was for a group of “Christiani” who were causing trouble and refused to renounce “Christo” as their God. And that is supposedly proof for a historical Jesus Christ according to Christians. Can we get any cheesier than this? Yes, we can, let’s take a look at…

 

Suetonius: He wasn’t even born until 36 years after Jesus supposedly died (69 CE) and these writings weren’t even written until 77 years after Jesus supposedly died (110 CE). They consist of only two very brief passages, one in which he mentions “Christiani” calling their beliefs “superstition.” If he thought Jesus was a real person why did he call it a superstition? The other passage merely mentions the word “Chrestos” which was a widely used epithet meaning “good,” “virtuous,” “useful” or “easy.” This includes no mention of a physical existence of a Jesus Christ at all, and nothing else that could even remotely be considered evidence or proof for a historical Jesus Christ yet Christians pathetically attempt to use this in their list of standard “proofs” for Jesus! Are you beginning to see why I am calling these Christian apologists dishonest now? Their claims are bogus, misleading, deceptive, dishonest and ridiculous at the very best. Why must we be such liars, Christians? There are other Christian sources of so-called proof for a historical Jesus besides the main four I’ve mentioned such as the Talmud, Thallus, Phlegon, Mara Bar-Serapion, etc. but they’re so blatantly idiotic that there’s no use in even mentioning them, any second grader could recognize that they prove nothing. Research them you’ll see!

 

The Shroud of Turin: is pretty simple to debunk; with no actual sample to compare to, such as a hair follicle or DNA, how do we know it really belonged to Jesus? You can make any claim you want with a pair of used underwear. I have a pair here that used to belong to Elvis Presley. Not really, but at least we'd be able to possibly compare with some actual DNA from Elvis' time on Earth, which is impossible to do for Jesus. There may actually be some DNA somewhere for the King of Rock and Roll but definitely not for the Prince of Peace. There's no evidence of any kind that proves that the Shroud of Turin actually belonged to Jesus because there's not even any evidence for Jesus himself.

 

The Four Gospels: Trying to use the four gospels as “proof” for Jesus is also a ridiculous notion which is equivalent to trying to prove that Harry Potter is a real person by using a Harry Potter book, trying to prove that Superman is a real person by using a Superman comic book or trying to prove that Santa Claus is a real person by using a Christmas book. You simply cannot “prove” the Bible with the Bible. That is an idiotic idea at the very best. The main point here is that the Bible isn’t true. If you want to prove the Bible to be true then we need outside sources for verification. Too bad there are none! Even if it was acceptable to claim the Bible as “proof” for Jesus being a real person, the four gospels are so riddled with contradictions, impossibilities and proven to be plagiarized from ancient Egypt and other various myths of the ancient world that there is simply no way that they have any credibility at all. Here is a small/partial list of contradictions in the four gospels:

 

► Matthew says there were forty-one generations from Abraham to Jesus while Luke says there were fifty-six.

 

► The genealogies in Matthew and Mark disagree on every name except for two.

 

► Matthew says Christ was born when Herod was King of Judea. Luke says he was born when Cyrenius was governor of Syria. But Herod died in 4 BC and Cyrenius didn’t become governor until ten years later.

 

► Matthew, Mark and Luke state that the public career of Jesus lasted about a year mainly in the city of Galilee and that he went to Jerusalem only once, while John asserts that his public career lasted for three years mainly in Judea, and that he was in Jerusalem many times.

 

► John says that the driving of the money changers from the temple occurred early in Christ’s ministry, while Matthew, Mark and Luke declare that it happened at the end of his ministry.

 

► What time did the resurrection story begin? Matthew says dawn, Mark and Luke say very early in the morning, and John says when it was dark.

 

► Who witnessed the resurrection? John says only Mary Magdalene, Matthew says both Mother Mary and Mary Magdalene, Mark says the two Marys as well as one other lady and Luke says there was a flock of many women.

 

…and like the energizer bunny, the contradictions continue on and on.

 

Christians claim that the four gospels are eyewitness accounts written by four of Jesus’ apostles, but every major Christian scholar since Erasmus has said that they were originally written in Greek and not translated from any other language. Matthew, Mark, Luke and John were Greek? Or at the least WROTE in Greek then? Or what? Jesus and his apostles were supposedly Jews. Jews and Palestinians back then spoke Aramaic, not Greek! Shouldn’t those original manuscripts be in Aramaic? Also, the first New Testament, which was published in 145 AD by Marcion of Pontus, well over a full century after Jesus supposedly left this earth, did not contain Matthew, Mark, Luke or John, it contained only “The Gospel of the Lord.” The first historical mention of any of the four gospels was in the year 180 AD by Theopholis of Antioch, who mentioned only the gospel of John, he did not mention Matthew, Mark, or Luke. The other three weren’t ever mentioned historically until ten years later by the Christian Father, St. Irenaeus. And so, here we have a period of over 150 years after the purported events took place, nobody has heard of the four gospels, and when they finally do show up in history they are written in Greek, not Aramaic. Hmm and nobody knows for sure who really authored the four books, there is certainly no way to prove who wrote them and surely no way to find out. The four apostles who they are named after were no doubt long dead before their first historical mentions (if they were even real people in the first place), and the books didn’t exist when the first New Testament was published, obviously because they are not in the first New Testament, therefore the four gospels are definitely not concrete evidence and certainly not acceptable! Who wrote them? Even Christians will admit that nobody knows for sure. Furthermore, those gospels, which were originally written in the second century, have been lost or destroyed and the oldest ones that we have now are copies of copies of copies that were made from the lost originals. Nobody knows who copied them or if they preserved what was in the originals, and the oldest surviving documents are over 300 years newer than the originals. Let’s briefly look at this again:

 

► Nobody knows who wrote the four gospels.

 

► All we have left is copies of copies of copies and nobody knows who copied them or if they copied them accurately.

 

► If the four apostles who supposedly authored the gospels were real people, they spoke Aramaic, yet the books were originally written in Greek.

 

► The first New Testament was published over one hundred years after Jesus supposedly died, yet it does not contain any of the four gospels.

 

► There is no historical evidence for Jesus, Matthew, Mark, Luke or John.

 

► The books, even if genuine, are overflowing with inconsistencies and contradictions.

 

Are we beginning to get the point yet folks? We are supposed to rely on these for historical accuracy? I beg to differ! I refuse to lower my standards just because we’re talking about Jesus! I will be fair and impartial, thanks! The four gospels doesn’t cut it folks! Not even close!

 

There are also many phony (non-canonical) gospels that didn’t make it into the Bible, which include the “Gospel of Paul”, the “Gospel of Bartholomew”, the “Gospel of Judas Iscariot”, the “Gospel of the Egyptians”, the “Gospel or Recollections of Peter”, the “Oracles or Sayings of Christ”, and many others, all of which contradict each other and all of which can still be read in “The Apocryphal New Testament”. We can’t even be sure if the ones that made it into the Bible are genuine. The logical answer is no, certainly not. The four gospels are worthless “sources of proof” for a historical Jesus Christ.

 

Question: If Jesus Christ was a real person, then why did all of contemporary history ignore him, why was he depicted in Christian art as a sheep, not a man for the first eight hundred years of Christianity, and why were so many people in the business of forging gospels? Obviously they are forgeries because they all contradict each other. Has anyone ever forged a life story for a real person? So why do it for Jesus then? If he was a real person we’d have genuine, mostly non-conflicting accounts, or at the very least, similar stories from various perspectives, but as it is we have phonies galore. We don’t have phony life stories for Josephus, Philo, Socrates, Plato, Julius Caesar, King Herod, Pontius Pilate or any other authentic historical figure from that time in history but we have an overflowing library of extra-Biblical gospels floating around all of which are obviously phony because they all tell different stories of Jesus. Repeat, there is no need to make up phony life stories for real people, only mythic characters need to have their life stories invented! It seems to me that they had a gospel writing contest, and there were four lucky winners who had the best fictitious stories. And furthermore, as far as the fictitious “Greatest Story Ever Told” is concerned, along with the unverifiable Jesus Christ, there are many tall tales in those books, which are also historically unverifiable:

 

► There is no historical evidence for Joseph, Mother Mary or Mary Magdalene.

 

► There is no historical evidence for the King Herod Massacre of the Innocents tale. Herod is a verified real person, but the massacre is a tall tale invented by the same people who invented Jesus Christ. And by the way, King Herod died in the year 4 BC, which means that he was dead when Jesus was supposedly born, which makes this whole story impossible.

 

► There is no historical evidence for King David, which is ludicrous. Had he been a real King then there should be more than adequate evidence to verify his existence like there is for Julius Caesar, King Herod and Pontius Pilate. Kings don’t just disappear from history or fail to get mentioned. If historians don’t document political rulers then who do they document? Why would they skip right over King David and fail to mention him?

 

► They called Jesus “Jesus of Nazareth” but there is no historical verification for a town or a city named Nazareth during the same time period that Jesus Christ supposedly lived. The first historical/geographical mention of that place is in the early 4th century.

 

► There is no historical evidence for the Apostle Paul or any of Jesus’ other apostles and the Thirteen Epistles of Paul contradicts all four of the gospels. He doesn’t even mention a single aspect of the Jesus story that is common knowledge today. No virgin birth, no miracles, no sayings, no teachings, no trial, no crucifixion, no resurrection, no nothing. Paul doesn’t seem to know who Jesus Christ was, yet he was the one who should have known the most!

 

► There is no evidence or historical documentation for all of those dead zombies supposedly rising out of their graves, as written in Matthew 27:52-53:“and the graves were opened; and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised; and coming out of the graves after his resurrection, they went into the holy city and appeared to many.” Appeared to many? Why is there no source outside of the Bible to verify it then?

 

► There is no historical mention of two thousand pigs drowning as mentioned in Mark 5:13: “And forthwith Jesus gave them leave. And the unclean spirits went out, and entered into the swine: and the herd ran violently down a steep place into the sea, (they were about two thousand;) and were choked in the sea.” Surely, this story would have made the press had it been a real event.

 

► No evidence for a trial, crucifixion or resurrection of Jesus Christ, or anyone similar to that, and of course there’s not because there’s no evidence for Jesus himself. But there is historical documentation for Pontius Pilate, he’s a verified historical figure, no question about that.

 

The four gospels is full of tall tales, myths and legends which only exist in the Bible itself, not in real history. Had they been real people and real events there would be evidence, especially for Jesus Christ, but there’s not. The four gospels is history” theory is so full of gaping holes that it clearly disqualifies itself as a “source of proof” for a historical Jesus Christ. There is simply nothing solid to prove the historical existence of the super hero of the planet Earth, the most famous man of all time. Don’t you find that a bit odd considering the fact that this is one of the best documented periods in history? There are hundreds of people from the same time period and long before, both Biblical and non-Biblical, that are perfectly verifiable with no problem whatsoever: Socrates, Plato, Julius Caesar, King Herod, Pontius Pilate, the list goes on and on like the energizer bunny, but nothing for Jesus Christ! Don’t just shine that on like it doesn’t mean anything, that’s very significant! Surely God could have made sure we had verifiable facts and concrete evidence, yet there is nothing to verify the existence of his “only begotten son.”