Is there evidence to prove the existence of Jesus Christ?
There are many evidences. No major historian denies the existence of Jesus Christ.
Roman historians Tacitus and Suetonius wrote about Jesus. Josephus, the first century Jewish historian, describes Jesus this way: Jesus does wonderful things. Then he goes on to explain his crucifixion and resurrection claim.
So there are evidences of Jesus’ existence outside the New Testament, but most of the evidences are from the New Testament itself.
Sometimes people say that the New Testament was written many years ago, how do we know that the writings have not changed over the years? The answer to this question is under the scientific shade called textual criticism.
Textual criticism examines the number of copies of ancient texts that we have today and examines the time gap between the original document and the earliest extant versions. Basically, the more copies there are and the older they are, the less doubt we have about the authenticity of these versions.
Therefore, we want to compare the Bible with other texts in ancient history. Texts that are widely used in schools and universities. We want to take a look at the Greek historians, Herodotus and Thucydides.
They wrote books in the fifth century BC. But the oldest copies of their writings that we have date back to 900 AD.
This means a time gap of 1300 years. Even then, we only have eight copies of these manuscripts.
Or, for example, look at the Roman historian Tacitus. There is a thousand-year gap between the book he wrote and the earliest manuscripts we have, and we only have 20 copies.
Or another classic work like Caesar’s Wars in France, there is a gap of 950 years between the writing of the book and the first manuscript we have.
Even then, we only had 10 copies of these manuscripts, and in the case of Livy’s famous Roman history book, between the books
And the first manuscript we have is 900 years old and we only have 20 copies.
But when we come to the New Testament, the situation is different.
The New Testament was written between 40 and 100 AD and we have evidence based on the existence of a manuscript that dates back to 130 AD and complete manuscripts that existed until 350 AD.
We also have more than 5,300 manuscripts in Greek, 10,000 Latin translations and 930 other manuscripts.
Therefore, we can be completely sure of the accuracy, correctness and integrity of the books of the New Testament that have reached us until today.
The remarkable thing about the Bible is that there is a very short time gap between the events described and the first manuscripts.
So Bible students are in every way in a fortunate position to examine this evidence and understand that this
The copy is much more reliable than some of the other books we have.
Therefore, we know through external evidence in the New Testament that Jesus Christ existed.
Today in the article : Ali Vahidi: Who is Jesus Christ? Part II We reviewed useful information about the Bible and the way of Jesus. If you wish, you can view other articles of Ali Vahidi about Christianity
