Dear Rev. Know-It-All,

I just saw a movie on U-tube that proves Jesus never existed and that religion is just a myth that some people invented just to control other people. So what are you planning on doing for a living now?

Yours Truly,

Dee Pazapuddle 

click below to see
I heard Jesus wasn't real! --- Answer Part 1

click below to see
I heard Jesus wasn't real! --- Answer Part 2

Dear Dee,

In the century immediately following the death and, dare I say it, resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth, there are many, many acknowledgments of His existence and of His resurrection.

To begin with, there is Ignatius of Antioch (about 35- 98 AD). He was born perhaps five years after Jesus’ departure from this world, and was appointed the third bishop of Antioch by St. Peter himself. He probably also knew John the Evangelist. We have seven letters that he wrote on his way to martyrdom in Rome. Ignatius was so sure that Jesus, lived, died and rose from the dead that he was anxious to offer his life for him in Rome.

Contemporary to Ignatius, we have a document called the “Teaching of the Twelve Apostles,” or "The Didache,” written anywhere from 70 AD to 110 AD. It talks about Mass and Baptism and also comes, like Ignatius from Syria, just a little ways north of Jesus’ home town. 

We have Papias, who was born around 65 AD and lived to be an old man, dying around 155 AD. He was the bishop of Izmir (Smyrna in Turkey) and had been a disciple of John. Living in a crossroads town, he met a lot of Christian travelers, and tells lots of old stories about the first Christians and their first hand relationship to Jesus. 

Among the pagans, there is a fascinating letter written around 70-75 AD by an Egyptian, Mara ben Serapion, to his son. He says that the Jews gained nothing by executing their “wise king.” That, he says, is why their kingdom was destroyed. Jesus is the only person we know who was executed by the Jewish authorities and who claimed the title “King of the Jews.” He also said that Jerusalem would be destroyed because they had not known the time of “their visitation.” 

Then we have Tacitus, born in 56 AD, who wrote about Jesus in his “Annals.”  He wrote about the great fire in Rome, (July 19th, 64 AD) which Nero blamed on the Christians. Tacitus goes on to say that Christ was condemned and executed by Pilate during the reign of Tiberius. Tacitus was a Roman government official who lived during the time of the first Christians in Rome. He had no doubts about the existence of Jesus.

It is also possible that Suetonius, about the same time as Tacitus, mentions a certain “Chrestus” causing a riot for which the Jews were expelled from Rome. “Chrestus” is easily a variant of the word “Christus,” the Greek word for Messiah. It is not hard to imagine the Jewish section of Rome rioting over whether or not Jesus was the Messiah. This seems even more plausible when you read that, in Corinth,  Paul met Aquila and Priscilla, two Jewish Christians who had been expelled from Rome by the Emperor Claudius because of the disturbance. (Acts 18:2)  

Then there is Pliny the Younger. In 110 AD (80 years after Jesus) he was the Roman governor of northern Turkey. We have letters that he and Emperor Trajan wrote to each other about the problem of Christians illegally worshiping Jesus as God.  He even describes Mass and calls it a sacrament! Turkey is a bit of a distance from Jerusalem, but within only one lifetime, albeit a long one, 80 years, the Church that worshiped Jesus as God by means of a sacramental system had been established in northern Turkey, and was large enough to cause a problem for the powerful Roman Empire! That’s a lot of trouble caused by someone who never existed.

So, in 80 AD, anti-Christian government officials tell us that  Mass was being said in Turkey and Christ was worshiped as God.

Back in the Holy land, Justin Martyr, a pagan philosopher was born in Nablus in 100 AD. Nablus is not far from Jerusalem, or what was left of Jerusalem at the time. Years later, when he was on trial for his life as a Christian, he too explains Mass, calling it the Eucharist. He clearly spells out the outrageous belief that bread and wine become flesh and blood. Not only did someone from the neighborhood believe that Jesus existed, but that He rose from the dead and that bread and wine could become His flesh and blood. Furthermore, he was crazy enough to willingly die for his belief in the death, resurrection and continuing existence of Jesus of Nazareth in the form of bread and wine. All that for someone who never existed? 

As you know, I can go on and on and on. I have only begun to list the ancient sources, but even I, the Rev. Know-it-all, am getting bored by all the names and dates.  

There is however one near contemporary anti Christian who needs mentioning: an intensely anti Christian Jew from a Greek speaking city in Turkey. He was assigned by the Jerusalem authorities to eliminate the early Christian Church in southern Syria. You may have heard of him; Shaul, better known by his Latin alias: Paul of Tarsus.

He was a contemporary of Jesus who hated the new Messiah and His followers. He knew that the claim of resurrection was nonsense. Being a government official, he would most certainly have know the facts of the case, including that ridiculous claim that Jesus rose from the dead. Everybody knew that His body had been stolen by his followers trying to pull a fast one. 

But then he met Jesus on the road to Syria some seven years after He had been publically put to death back in Jerusalem. The experience  changed everything. Shaul became a follower of Jesus for the rest of his life. He is the first author to clearly mention Jesus. 

People think that the Gospels are the oldest Christian literature. They are not. The first Christian text is Paul’s “First Letter to the Thessalonians,” written in 55 AD, less than 25 year after Jesus. Thessaloniki, though a Greek city, had a very large Jewish population. If Jesus had been a myth, it wouldn’t have played in Thessalonika. 

Paul wrote extensively over the course of 11 years until he was executed in Rome around  64 AD for being a follower of Jesus. One of the things he wrote was that, “we are the sorriest of people if we have hoped (in Jesus) for this life alone.” (1Cor.15:19) He staked his own life, not only on the fact of Jesus’ existence, but on the fact of His resurrection.

So let me recap. 

We have Matthew, Peter, James, Jude, and John, all people who knew Jesus during His earthly ministry. Then we have contemporary accounts from Luke, Mark, and Paul. Then we have near contemporary non-Christian testimonies, certainly from Josephus, Tacitus and Pliny, and probably from the sages of the Mishnah, Mara ben Serapion, and Suetonius. Then we have the next generation of Christians, the author of the Didache, Ignatius of Antioch, Papias and Justin Martyr. 

I have just listed 18 sources from the era and there are many more to go.

Who do you want to believe? 

Some disgruntled anti-Christians from 2,000 years after the fact or people who were there and saw with their own eyes? It’s almost like the weirdos who try to deny the holocaust. I know people who went through the holocaust. Believe me. It happened.

Well, one question? You still haven’t explained how the story of Jesus is exactly the same as the story of Osiris. Okay. I’ give you the answer. 

The story of Osiris isn’t a thing like the story of Jesus. Osiris doesn’t die on a cross and rise from the dead. He is sealed into a coffin, drowned in the Nile, a fish steals a certain part of his body, very important to his wife. She puts his body back together with an appropriate golden prosthesis, bringing him back to life with magic incantations, enabling her to conceive her son Horus. 

Doesn’t sound like the crucified carpenter to me. A good web site on the topic can be found by googling “Jesus and Horus Parallels- a Christian Response.”

It may surprise you to find out that early Christians didn’t believe that the pagans had gotten it all wrong. The yearning for truth was scattered through everything human. The very changing of winter to spring was regarded as prophetic of the nature of God. The myth of the dying and rising god was regarded as a sign of the truth of the Gospel.  

The big problem for the ancients wasn’t the myth of the dying and rising god, but that Jesus had willingly gone to His death on a CROSS!!!! The cross was the most shameful possible death in the ancient world. No god would condescend to such a death. The myth kept no one from believing the Gospel. It was the reality that frightened them. Jesus was a real person in living memory going to a real death on a CROSS who then turned out to be God. For more on this read Martin Hengel’s book “Crucifixion.” It was no myth. It was a real affront to everything the ancient world held to be true. It was unthinkable that a god could be humble, and apparently it still is unthinkable.

Those in the Greco-Roman world who KNEW ABOUT Jesus dismissed Him or despised Him. 

Those who KNEW Him were willing to die for Him. 

It is still true. Those who know about Him often hate Him. Those who know Him want to live for Him and will even die for Him. He is not a dead philosopher, He is the living God, the Word through whom all things were made, alive then and alive now. 

That means that if you want to know Him here and now, you can.

Rev. Know-It-All