What you have heard is a bit overstated. The best example of such a testimony is Josephus. The problem is that in the Greek text we have today, Josephus calls Jesus “the Christ,” and nearly everyone (including conservative Christian scholars such as F. F. Bruce) agrees that Christians have tampered with the text (early Christians writing before the fourth century did not cite this testimony). There is a tenth-century Arabic text citing a somewhat different version of the passage which sounds more like what a non-Christian might say–however, the idea that this is the authentic, original version of the passage has been challenged. The wikipedia article on this seems pretty fair to me. There’s another passage, dealing with John the Baptist, in which Josephus mentions Jesus briefly. So I think Josephus is evidence that Jesus really lived (something very few scholars doubt, by the way), but there are difficulties involved in citing the passage as we have it.I remember reading that there were quite a few non-Christian figures during and after Jesus’ time that spoke of “A man named Jesus who was performing miracles” but I can’t remember where I saw/read it. I know that a few of them were high profile people/important of the time and there writings were found showing that they wrote of Jesus. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks in advance!
Thanks so much, I was thinking of Flavius Josephus. I had just found it in my book when I saw your reply. I read it in I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist by Geisler and Turek. I have never read that Josephus’ writings were tampered with. Where did you read that it was tampered with by Christians?What you have heard is a bit overstated. The best example of such a testimony is Josephus. The problem is that in the Greek text we have today, Josephus calls Jesus “the Christ,” and nearly everyone (including conservative Christian scholars such as F. F. Bruce) agrees that Christians have tampered with the text (early Christians writing before the fourth century did not cite this testimony). There is a tenth-century Arabic text citing a somewhat different version of the passage which sounds more like what a non-Christian might say–however, the idea that this is the authentic, original version of the passage has been challenged. The wikipedia article on this seems pretty fair to me. There’s another passage, dealing with John the Baptist, in which Josephus mentions Jesus briefly. So I think Josephus is evidence that Jesus really lived (something very few scholars doubt, by the way), but there are difficulties involved in citing the passage as we have it.
There really aren’t any other testimonies quite like this. Tacitus and Suetonius, Roman historians who wrote in the late first and early second centuries, refer to Christians and to their origin as followers of Jesus (as does Pliny the Younger in the early 2nd century, asking Trajan for advice on how to deal with Christians). However, this doesn’t necessarily reflect independent knowledge on their part–it appears to be what was commonly known about Christians, probably based on what Christians themselves claimed.
Some medieval Byzantine sources include fragments from early Christians citing ancient historians who allegedly wrote about the eclipse of the sun at the time of Jesus’ death. However, given the form in which we have these testimonies, it’s not clear whether the pagan writers themselves associated this event with Jesus or whether they simply wrote about an eclipse which the Christian writers identified with the death of Jesus.
I may have missed something, but these are the principal early non-Christian references to Jesus I can think of.
Edwin
Edwin, I was under the impression that Josephus’s reference to Christ was most likely a forgery, and that therefore there is no independent historical evidence (i.e. independent of Christian scripture) that Jesus was a real person. That is, from the point of view of the disinterested historian, he may well have been a fictional person, like William Tell. Is this not true? If it is then why do scholars not doubt that he really lived, as you say?What you have heard is a bit overstated. The best example of such a testimony is Josephus. The problem is that in the Greek text we have today, Josephus calls Jesus “the Christ,” and nearly everyone (including conservative Christian scholars such as F. F. Bruce) agrees that Christians have tampered with the text (early Christians writing before the fourth century did not cite this testimony). There is a tenth-century Arabic text citing a somewhat different version of the passage which sounds more like what a non-Christian might say–however, the idea that this is the authentic, original version of the passage has been challenged. The wikipedia article on this seems pretty fair to me. There’s another passage, dealing with John the Baptist, in which Josephus mentions Jesus briefly. So I think Josephus is evidence that Jesus really lived (something very few scholars doubt, by the way), but there are difficulties involved in citing the passage as we have it.
Josephus is a partial interpolation. It is almost certainly not a full forgery. SeeEdwin, I was under the impression that Josephus’s reference to Christ was most likely a forgery, and that therefore there is no independent historical evidence (i.e. independent of Christian scripture) that Jesus was a real person.
Did you even read the link? It actually addresses your points.You are quite wrong. The first part is obviously an insertion. I’m sure that the early Christians were quite embarrassed that the most prominent historian of that era wrote nothing of Christ.
The second part is also an interpolation. Jesus was a very, very common name back then. You make the obvious mistake of assuming that the Jesus spoken of is Jesus Christ. He wasn’ t. There were actually many Jesus end times type preachers back then.
The culprit, most likely Eusebius inserted “Christ” into the 2nd part of that text.