SECTION 1 THE HISTORICAL EVIDENCE FOR JESUS

When I (Josh) researched for the first edition of Evidence That Demands a Verdict in 1972, I did not include a chapter on the existence of Jesus. Why not? As far as I could tell, there was little doubt Jesus existed. I certainly had no problem concluding Jesus was real. The primary question was not if Jesus existed but whether he claimed to be God and rose from the dead.

The vast majority of scholars today—across a wide range of perspectives and disciplines— collectively believe Jesus was at least a historical figure who lived and died in the first century AD. Even the agnostic New Testament scholar Bart Ehrman has written a book defending the existence of Jesus: Did

Jesus Exist? The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth.

Yet on a popular level, largely because of the ubiquity of the internet and social media, many people have come to question Jesus’s existence. So let’s look at the evidence that Jesus was real.