Exploring the Historical Jesus: Evidence and Insights

It is popular in some accounts to claim that Jesus was a Jewish leader but he never thought of himself as being divine.  Later his believers added this and it helped to unify them as they formed a new religion.  Judaism in the first century was not looking for God to become human.  What do the earliest documents from the New Testament tell us?   If the earliest reports about Jesus considered Jesus to be God, then it would be difficult to find time for such a major change in the followers beliefs to have occurred.  Many eyewitnesses were still alive.

Some suggest that people in the 1st century were susceptible to deceit and eager to believing superstitions that they really did not question or care about eyewitnesses. Sometimes we think of the ancients as being simple and gullible, but evidence suggests that many looked carefully to test this new religion.  They wanted to know that the events of Jesus’ life were real and accurately transmitted. 

Claims of Jesus resurrection can be documented as being firmly claimed within a short period after the event itself.  We can compare this to other historical events.  In most cases, our earliest reports of well-known historical events were written long after the event.  Here we compare the earliest reports of the death of Julius Caesar to the crucifixition and resurrection of Jesus Christ.   Testing the testimony includes considering was the source written by someone in a position to know if it was true.  Then for ancient events, the question must be asked: how well has the original writing been preserved through time.  We rarely have original copies but must rely on copies of copies of copies.  The New Testament gospels are orders of magnitude better in both respects when compared to reports of most ancient events.