When sharing the historical evidence for Jesus’ life, death and resurrection from the Gospel narratives with my friends or curious acquaintances, I am at times challenged with, “That’s all very interesting, but is there any extra-biblical evidence, evidence outside the Bible for Jesus’ life, or that he even existed?” When a person raises this objection, they are basically saying, “I don’t believe that the New Testament documents are historically reliable because they were written by Christians, which means they were written by people with a bias, an ulterior motive.” [As the focus of this article is the evidence for Jesus outside the Bible, I won’t cover the historical reliability of the Gospels here. However, I have included equipping resources on this topic at the end of this article which address that issue.]
In reply to my friend’s question regarding whether there is any extra-biblical evidence of Jesus’ life and existence, I generally respond along the lines of, “That’s a good question and one that I hear from time to time. And the answer to your question is a resounding, YES, there certainly is evidence outside the Bible for Jesus life.” I have found that most people who raise this challenge are simply ‘parroting’ the sound bites they’ve picked up from agnostics or skeptics which have been bantered around message boards on the internet. I am then in a position to present the historical extra-biblical sources that they are inquiring about, but don’t think exist. Most people are somewhat taken aback (and at times dumbfounded) when I list just a few of the ancient extra-biblical sources which include the Roman historians, Tacitus and Suetonius, Greek satirist Lucian of Samosata, Jewish historian Josephus, the Jewish Talmud, etc., all of which include information regarding Jesus’ life, His death by crucifixion by Pontius Pilate, His teachings, His power to perform miracles, His disciples worship of Him as God, etc.
In his book, Ancient Evidence for the Life of Jesus-Historical Records of His Death and Resurrection, New Testament scholar and author, Gary Habermas, offers the following summary regarding extra-biblical sources as they relate to the death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth:
In his article, Is There Any Evidence for Jesus Outside the Bible, author and Christian apologist J. Warner Wallace outlines the specific points of Jesus’ life that are included in the data from the extra-biblical historical sources. The list is quite extensive, which makes the case for the historical Jesus based only on extra-biblical sources even more impressive:
“Let’s review what we’ve learned from hostile pagan and Jewish sources describing Jesus. We’ll do our best to discount the anti-Christian bias we see in the sources, just as we discounted the pro-Christian bias we think might exist in some versions of the writing of Josephus. Many elements of the Biblical record are confirmed by these hostile accounts, in spite of the fact they deny the supernatural power of Jesus:
Not bad, given this information is coming from ancient accounts hostile to the Biblical record. While these non-Christian sources interpret the claims of Christianity differently, they affirm the initial, evidential claims of the Biblical authors…[and] the basic facts of the historical events. Is there any evidence for Jesus outside the Bible? Yes, and the ancient non-Christian interpretations (and critical commentaries) of the Gospel accounts serve to strengthen the core claims of the New Testament.”
(For complete article by J. Warner Wallace, Is There Any Evidence for Jesus Outside the Bible?, here)
Is there any evidence for Jesus outside the Bible?-J. Warner Wallace
Is there any evidence for Jesus outside the Bible-Peter Williams-The Veritas Forum
Did Jesus exist?-Sean McDowell
Resources
Ancient Evidence for the Life of Jesus-Historical Records of His Death and Resurrection-by Gary Habermas-found on Amazon, here
Eyewitness testimony in the New Testament, untrustworthy or reliable?-by Lane, here
The Case for the Early dating of the Gospels-countering scholarly laziness and blindness-by Lane, here
Ancient Evidence for Jesus from Non-Christian Sources, Michael Gleghorn, Probe Ministries, 2001, here
