I guess you guys would probably face-palm me but as someone who is a european raised without religion, I have always been quite sceptical of whether Jesus actually existed or not. I would not say that he did not exist but I do think it is not something which can be taken for granted.
Back when I used to go on r/atheism this topic seemed to come up a lot and many but not all appeared to believe Jesus may never have existed. From my recollection, apparently there are only 3 or 4 accounts of someone resembling Jesus within a hundred years of his death?
On the flip side any time I have mentioned that I think Jesus existence may be questionable, people generally disagree, most people would say they believed Jesus existed but he wasn't the son of god etc. I also did live with a History undergrad who claims we have the orginal Roman documents ordering his arrest though. I call bullshit on that.
Anyway historians, can you set me straight? What is our evidence for Jesus?
I also did live with a History undergrad who claims we have the orginal Roman documents ordering his arrest though.
As /u/searocksandtrees said, please have a look through the FAQ. My answer is in there too. I just wanted to respond directly to this claim and say that it is unequivocally false, we do not have "original Roman documents ordering his arrest", we have nothing of the sort. We have nothing even close to the sort.
hi! not discouraging other experts from contributing here, but do check out this section of the FAQ (link on sidebar):