Jesus Christ: An Historical Fact

Jesus Christ is a fact of history. Even most secular historians admit that, regardless of what they believe about Him, Jesus lived! They can not explain Him away. There are countless authors and historians, thousands of manuscripts, mountainous evidence, providing a multitude of human experience on earth.

So far, there are more than 24,000 partial and complete manuscripts of the New Testament that have been discovered. Plus around 900 Old Testament documents. Of ancient writings, the closest one to approach this is "The Illiad" by Homer, with only 643 surviving manuscripts. We accept as historical fact that Julius Caesar fought the Gallic War even though only 10 surviving copies of his original writings exist. Only 5 manuscripts of Aristotle remain, Homer has 5 and Caesar Claudius', who reigned less than ten years after Jesus death, has only 10. We certainly don't deny these men lived. It would seem far more reasonable to challenge the legitimacy of these individuals ever existing.

Bottom line: the New Testament has an overwhelming amount of original documents. Secular historians--including Josephus (before A.D. 100), the Roman Tacitus (around A.D. 120), the Roman Suetonius ( A.D. 110), and the Roman governor Pliny the Younger ( A.D. 110)--confirm the many events, people, places, and customs chronicled in the New Testament. Early church leaders such as Irenaeus, Tertullian, Julius Africanus, and Clement of Rome-all writing before A.D. 250-also shed light on the New Testament's historical accuracy.

Why would nearly 100 ancient Historians include Christ in their writings if they knew he didn't exist? Josephus, Tacitus, Gibbons, and others (all of which are highly respected) would not have written about someone that was only a myth. They wrote with certainty when speaking of Jesus. Even skeptical historians agree that the New Testament is a remarkable historical document. So we can say with authority that the Bible has stronger manuscript support than any other work of classical literature, including Homer, Plato, Aristotle, Caesar, and Tacitus, who all pale in evidential comparison.

The roughly 24,000 manuscripts of the New Testament date from as early as the 1st and 2nd century (55AD - 160AD). The manuscripts written in Coptic, Syrian and Latin agree with each other in text and context. Only slight and insignificant (grammatical) differences were found, but nearly 98% of the text's had the same writing's.

The Old Testament (which also testify of Jesus) is well represented too with over 900 documents representing as many as 350 separate works in multiple copies. One cave alone (4 of the Qumran) contained 520 full texts in 15,000 fragments. The Greek translation of the Old Testament is called the Septuagint. Septuagint is Latin for "seventy", representing the seventy scholars that meticulously translated the scriptures during the third century B. C.

It is no accident that Jesus is the most widely recognized, well known and written about Person that has ever existed. You can not ignore the enormous number of original documents that make up the Canonized books of the Bible. These are the most valued of all sources to Historians (a primary source) in validating past events. The Word of God (the Bible) was inspired by the Word of God (Jesus) and therefore His testimony is true. That Jesus lived, was buried and then resurrected. He lives today and has lived for eternity. There is an absolute avalanche of evidence for His resurrection, including hundreds who were eye-witnesses of seeing Him after His death and burial. This is not a blind faith but a proven fact.

The Bible is the greatest Primary Source about Jesus. They are His words and His words are of the highest reliability there is. He can not lie. He has sworn by His Own Name, for there is none higher than the name of Jesus. Evidence continues to build with recent discoveries (2006) like the bones and remains of Caiaphas, the high priest, a written reference of King David, and a stone tablet bearing Pontius Pilate's name. The list continues to grow. The Bible is the most comprehensively documented (manuscripts), supported (archeologically), preserved (nearly 30,000 manuscripts) compilation of historical records and events ever assembled in human history. In all of human history's ancient antiquities, none approaches the validity of the Bible. A book that says that Jesus Christ is the Messiah: That He was and still Is and always will Be. You can believe it.