There is far more evidence that a man called Jesus of Nazareth lived and died in Palestine – dying in 30 or 33AD – than there is of Julius Caesar coming to Britain 100 years before Rome annexed Britain. Caesar wrote the only report of his invasion himself. In contrast there are several independent accounts of the ministry of Jesus and of his enduring following by Roman writers such as Josephus as well by his committed followers.
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Ignoring the fact of whether Jesus of Nazareth was resurrected after his death the evidence for his existence, his death and the movement which survived him is incontrovertible. One has to plead desperation and ignore the clear evidence which remains to deny his existence. Sixty years after Jesus’ death the Roman-Jewish writer Josephus makes reference to “the brother of Jesus who was called the Christ” and also to the death of John the Baptist. The further point has been made by C S Lewis that to suggest that the gospels on their own were fiction was to invent the concept of the novel over a thousand years before we accept it to have first been seen. Fragments of early copies of the gospels have been found including a small part of John’s gospels in the Dead Sea Scrolls dated to before 90AD. It takes imaginative contortions of imagination to deny the existence of a man known as Jesus of Nazareth who had SOME form of dramatic effect on the world around him. There are those who do perform such mental gymnastics which is why the clearest facts only have been presented; and no mention has been made of the gigantic movement spawned by the life, death & ‘alleged’ resurrection – which to any serious historian would indicate that SOMETHING significant happened.