Question:

My question is this, Is there technically the same and/or more evidence for Jesus/resurrection and his existing than there is for guys like Abe Lincoln and George Washington exosting (historical figures that everyone accepts as real men even though we’ve never seen them)? Abe and George are in school textbooks with a few anecdotes of their life/war stories that checks out. A perfectly written Bible, manuscripts, and scrolls are found about Jesus existence and yet some say it is insufficient. I ask this in the spirit of just seeing all these influencers and YouTubers denying Jesus on the basis of what they say is no, or weak evidence but it seems like we have ALL the evidence that any historian, scientist, or common person could ask for. What is your view?

Answer:

A good question.  Some believers claim that the evidence for the life of Jesus is on the same order of magnitude as our evidence for the life of Abraham Lincoln or George Washington. Opponents of Christianity, of course, say that this is an absurd comparison.  I would break this issue down in two ways.  First is the amount and believability of the evidence, and second, is a bottom-line credibility of these men as historical figures.

On the first question, I would say that the “evidence” for the life of an Abraham Lincoln or George Washington is orders-of-magnitude greater than that for someone like Emperor Tiberius or Jesus of Nazareth.  For Lincoln, we have hundreds of photographs, and literally hundreds of eye-witnesses who wrote about him while Lincoln was still alive and soon thereafter. We have actual physical letters written by Lincoln.  Even today, people are alive who knew people who were alive when Lincoln was alive.  We know thousands of detailed things about what Lincoln did, when he did it, what he said and more.  With George Washington, the information we have is less, but still massive.  To say that we know as much about Tiberius or Jesus is to speak falsely, as it is with any figure from history two thousand years ago. I cannot supply real numbers, but for the sake of argument, let me say that our information and “proof” for details about their lives is three orders of magnitude less. To compare what we know about Jesus to what we know about Lincoln–saying they are similar–is simply not true. There are entire years for which we know essentially nothing about Tiberius and Lincoln.  We have no photographs, and only a rather small number (by comparison, that is) of contemporaneous eye-witness accounts.

But, let me get to the second question.  For Lincoln, Washington, Tiberius and Jesus, do we have sufficient evidence to assure that they are real people, and that we know at least a bare-bones outline of their biography.  The answer for all four is a resounding yes.  Those who claim that Jesus is a fictional person, or that he may have been an actual person, but that we know virtually nothing about what he did and said are wrong.  End of story.  The same with Emperor Tiberius (who I have chosen because he is a contemporary of Jesus).  Our sources on Tiberius from his lifetime and within a generation of his death are about a dozen, which is approximately the same as with Jesus.  Our ability to fact-check is limited, so our confidence of the reliability of some of the details for both historical figures is somewhat limited. But for both, we can be extremely well assured about the basic outline. We know when and where both were born. We know, more or less, what they did with the most important part of their lives.  We know enough about their character that we can make some fairly good judgments about what kind of persons they were. We know the names of dozens of their acquaintances, and we know the timing and nature of their deaths.  Those who say that we know almost nothing about the actual person Jesus of Nazareth, to the point that it is possible that he is literally a mythical person are wrong–way wrong!  They are not even in the ballpark of being correct in this assertion.  These people completely discount a-priori the witness of Christian believers, which is absurd on the face of it.  They make weak attempts (which amount to character aspersions) to deny the reliability of non-Christian sources as well.  These are clearly extremely biased attempts to undermine the common-sense conclusions about Jesus of Nazareth, and these attempts are made because of an agenda, not out of any sort of attempt to establish an unbiased historical analysis. These folks should be treated as what they are, which is irresponsible advocates for a world view, rather than helpful partners for discussion of truth.
Of course, some believers have done somewhat similar things in the opposite direction. Believers can be subject to circular reasoning and can be unwilling to even discuss the distinction between things which we know to be true from things which might reasonably be subject to discussion, such as who were the actual authors of the gospels, when they were written, and how carefully authors such as Luke checked their sources.  What is good for people on one side of the divide is good for those on the other, and believers need to be aware of their presuppositions and how those presuppositions affect their beliefs.
Having said that, and hoping that believers, on the whole, will behave more responsibly, on the question at hand, the conclusion is very clear. These people who say Jesus is either fully mythical, or that we know virtually nothing about him are wrong. Full stop.
John Oakes

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