Historical Evidence for Jesus' Death and Resurrection

Jesus' existence and crucifixion are strongly supported by historical evidence from multiple sources.

### Historical Evidence for Jesus' Death and Resurrection
* 📜 Historical investigation suggests that if natural explanations fail, a **supernatural event may have occurred** surrounding Jesus' death.
* ✝ Scholars generally agree on three key facts regarding Jesus' death: he **died on the cross**, his disciples believed he **rose from the dead**, and even some of his enemies accepted this belief.
* 📚 Over 40 ancient records document Jesus' life, highlighting his **existence in the first century**, while only 10 records exist for Tiberius, the Roman emperor of that time.
* 🧑 Notable scholars, including Paula Frederickson and Bart Ehrman, affirm that **Jesus' death by crucifixion is historically certain**, with even Muslim scholars like Reza Aslan acknowledging this fact.
* 💬 "If there's anything we can know about Jesus, anything at all, it's this: that he **died on the cross under Pontius Pilate**," according to Paula Frederickson.
* 📖 The minimal facts argument, promoted by Gary Habermas and Michael Licona, asserts that the **vast majority of scholars agree** on the historical events following Jesus' death.
* 👥 The transformation of Jesus' brother James and Paul of Tarsus, who initially **opposed Jesus**, into leaders of the early Christian church supports the claim of **Jesus' resurrection**.
* 🌌 The historical records, including writings from Josephus and Tacitus, corroborate Jesus' life and crucifixion, emphasizing the **miraculous events surrounding him**, suggesting that the narrative of Jesus is both **profound and historically significant**.

if there simply is no good explanation, naturalistically speaking, we can use the historical process of investigation to conclude that quite likely maybe something supernatural happened here. What happened when Jesus died? Shortly after his death, we take a look at what happened, and those historical scholars we've already referred to in general agree with three facts. The video that you're about to watch deals with the historic facts for Jesus and his crucifixion and his resurrection. A lot of people get things very wrong when it comes to this topic, so I'm going to go ahead and play the video, let Nabil make his presentation, and then I'm gonna hop in on the back end and basically build on top of some of the claims that he makes. I'm going to give you guys quotes, I'm going to give you guys actual sources from history so that we can avoid the meme of what are your sources, trust me bro. Let's get into it. What are the sources regarding Christianity? And some of you might be even asking Nabil, why should I even believe Jesus is real?

why should I ever even believe that he's a man who existed? The first thing I'm going to start off by telling you is that it is incontrovertible, according to the historical principles of investigation, that a man named Jesus existed in the first century. How do we know this? We have over 40 records of Jesus' life from ancient times describing this man who is essentially a carpenter in Palestine. He didn't have much of anything. He wasn't a centrally important figure at the time, yet we have 40 sources that refer to him. You know who the emperor was at Jesus' time? Someone shouted out Tiberius. Good. Tiberius was the emperor of Rome at that time. Now, this is a man who obviously we should have a lot written about. We can expect tons and tons of records about this man, can't we? The historical records contain Tiberius' name by 10 different individuals. That's it, 10 for Tiberius, the emperor of Rome, 40 for Jesus. You can see we have excellent reason to

believe that this man, Jesus of Nazareth, lived and existed in the first century. That's why very, very few, in fact, I could probably count it on one hand, actually just I know of two scholars who study the historical Jesus, actually claim that Jesus never existed. And one of them is Bob Price, who most other scholars say he's just not even possible what he says, so we can dismiss just due to the reasoning and due to the lack of scholastic support that this is actually the case. So Jesus certainly exists. Okay, what can we know about him? Well, of the scholars that study him, and keep in mind there is an entire area of historical studies called historical Jesus studies, so we have scholars who've been studying this on all sides. These aren't all Christians by any means. Actually, the most influential ones wouldn't allow, wouldn't align themselves with Orthodox Christianity. You have people like Paula Frederickson, Marcus Borg, Bart Ehrman. You have people along these lines who would say like John Dominic Crossan, who would say

that of Jesus, we can know for a fact that he died on the cross. Now, keep in mind that's one of our three points that we're proving for Christianity, or attempting to show to determine its reliability. Did Jesus die on the cross? The scholars who study his life, regardless of whether they're atheist, Buddhist, agnostic, Hindu, Christian, it doesn't matter, they all conclude that Jesus died on the cross. Now, if I left it there, it would be an appeal to authority, and we're trying to be academically rigorous tonight, so I'm not going to do that. I'm going to give you some of their reasons why they believe Jesus died on the cross, but we're going to keep it brief because scholars are unanimous on this issue. By the way, it's not just them; even Muslim scholars will argue that Jesus did die on the cross. How many of you heard of Reza Aslan's book recently, Zealots, that came out this year? A few of you raised Reza Aslan's a scholar who has

studied the historical Jesus, and as a Muslim, he says, Yes, Islam denies Jesus' death on the cross, and I am a Muslim, but I confirm that Jesus' death on the cross is historically certain. In fact, he builds his whole book off the fact that Jesus died. So even as a Muslim, he says Jesus died on the cross. So why do they say this? Well, because first off, all the evidence that we have, all the records of Jesus' life which talk about his death, indicate that he did die. If they say anything, it says that he did die on the cross under Pontius Pilate, which is why Paula Frederickson says, If there's anything we can know about Jesus, anything at all, it's this: that he died on the cross under Pontius Pilate. If you go away from Christian records, you go to Jewish records like Josephus, we can also see in the first century that non-Christians are saying Jesus died on the cross. We go to Gentile scholars, they are also agreeing that Jesus died on the cross. In fact, we also

have some of them saying that these people believe he's risen from the dead. We'll get to that in just a moment. So we have excellent reason to believe Jesus died on the cross because all the records point to that. Plus, if you study the historical process of crucifixion, nobody ever in the hearing, in the entire history of the Roman process of crucifixion, no one ever survived a full Roman crucifixion. So we have excellent reason to believe Jesus died on the cross. Did he rise from the dead? This is an important matter, and lots of historians say we cannot investigate the resurrection because that's not a historical matter, that's a supernatural matter, and you can't study supernatural matters. Well, that's jumping the gun just a bit. If every explanation that is naturalistic falls short and falls very short of explaining what happened, and we have reason to believe that something supernatural may have happened, if there simply is no good explanation, naturalistically speaking, we can use the

historical process of investigation to conclude that quite likely maybe something supernatural happened here. So, what happened when Jesus died? Shortly after his death, we take a look at what happened, and those historical scholars we've already referred to in general agree with three facts that are considered relatively incontrovertible. And I'm giving you what's called the minimal facts argument. If you want to look into this, it's called the minimal facts argument, primarily promoted by a man named Gary Habermas, who has written a book called The Historical Jesus. Also by his protégé, Michael Licona, who's written a book called The Case for the Resurrection of Jesus. He wrote alongside Gary Habermas, and he's also written his manifesto, a rather large book that serves well for curing insomnia. Um, he's written that as well. Sorry, Mike. We're actually going to have Mike on the channel here in the upcoming months, and he also is in the documentary. So, um, great guy. It's funny that nipple is taking a shot at him here. He's written

that as well. And if you want to look at a very thorough investigation of the Historical Method on whether or not Jesus died, I suggest you take a look at this book published by Erdman's. Michael Lacona is the author. The argument runs as follows: pretty much all, every scholar who studies this, at least a vast majority, if not virtually all scholars, conclude three things happened after Jesus died. Well, number one, the first one is that Jesus did die on the cross, which we just looked at. Number two, that the disciples, Jesus' disciples, all believed he had risen from the dead. So, the disciples truly believed that Jesus had risen from the dead. And according to most historical Jesus scholarship, Christianity wouldn't have gotten off the ground if it weren't for that fact. Fact number three: fact number one was Jesus died on the cross, fact number two, the disciples truly believed he had risen from the dead, fact number three: people who were enemies of Jesus or not his disciples also believed he had risen from the dead. Now, who are we

talking about we're talking specifically about two people: James, the brother of Jesus, and Paul, or Saul of Tarsus, as it were. James, the brother of Jesus, did not follow Jesus during his lifetime. We see in The Book of Mark that Jesus' family comes up and says to people around Jesus that he is out of his mind, basically that he's crazy, which is what leads Jesus to say, Who is my mother and brother and sister? It's those who do the will of God. So, Jesus' family is not on his side. It wasn't until after the resurrection, or supposedly the resurrection, when all of a sudden the disciple James becomes a, I'm sorry, the brother of Jesus, James, becomes a leader of the Christian church. And also Saul of Tarsus. Who is this Saul guy? Saul was the student of Gamaliel, one of the chief leaders of the Jews in the time. This man was primed and groomed to be a leader of Jews, a leader of Pharisees. He was going to have all kinds

of power in the temple. He already had all kinds of power because he was able to deliver people to prison. He was given special permission to hunt Christians down. Yet, this man was willing to go to his death over and over and over again for something, for what he claims. It was because he has seen the Risen Jesus. The earliest records of Jesus' resurrection say that 500 people saw him risen at the same time. I know that many people watch this and they think, Sure, so Jesus lived in history. There was a guy by that name, sure, whatever. And some people think that he raised because people like superstition, whatever. But I don't believe in the supernatural as a default. I've predetermined that that is impossible, and so I won't even think through or entertain any version of history that includes a supernatural element. I just have to say that itself is a worldview. It's a predetermined way of viewing reality that is itself unscientific. What do I mean by that? You cannot arrive at this place where you believe that the only form of evidence

that is viable is the type of evidence that can be placed under a microscope. Scientifically, you cannot place that claim under a microscope and measure it according to the level of scrutiny that you ask. That claim, that belief itself is unscientific. That belief itself is philosophical in nature. You've simply predetermined that something must be physically measurable in order to be considered knowable or true, and that claim is not able to be measured in that way. I now want to go to the Talmud, so I'm going to give you this as a source that he mentioned, and I'm actually going to read for you three examples in the Talmud where they write about this Jesus character in the first century. So here's the first one, forgive any mispronunciations. Shabbat 104b, quote, Jesus was a magician and a fool. Next, Sanhedrin 107b of the Babylonian Talmud, Jesus performed magic and incited the people of Israel and led them astray. Sanhedrin 43a, quote, On Passover Eve, they

hanged Jesus of Nazareth. He practiced sorcery and cited and led Israel astray, end quote. They call it black magic, they call it sorcery, but the point is that they're implicitly acknowledging the miraculous even in their record, even as haters of what he did. That's very significant. Tacitus was a Roman historian, not just a dude who wrote some things down, a person who is dedicated to recording the historical events that happened during his lifetime, a Roman historian. And here's what Tacitus wrote: Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of Pontius Pilate and at a most mischievous superstition. So, there you have an official Roman historian conceding both the life and the death of Jesus in history, which perfectly corroborates what the scriptures, meaning the Christian historic accounts, uh, also say. Let's continue. So, Josephus, a Jewish historian, again not a believer, but a person dedicated to recording the history that

happened, and here's what he said. At about this time, there lived Jesus, a wise man, if indeed one ought to call him a man, for he wrought surprising feats. He was the Christ. When Pilate condemned him to be crucified, those who had come to love him did not give up their affection for him. On the third day, he appeared, restored to life, and the tribe of Christians has not disappeared. That's Josephus, a Jewish historian. You have Lucian, who was actually a Greek, a second-century Greek satirist, and this is something that Lucian said. He said, The Christians worship a man to this day, the distinguished personage who introduced their novel rights and was crucified on that account. It was impressed on them by their original lawgiver that they are all brothers from the moment that they are converted and deny the gods of Greece and worship the crucified Sage and live after his laws. So you have it, and there's many more. I'm just giving

kind of cherry-picking a few out just for the sake of trying to make this video short, but the point is the historic record of Jesus and of a crucified Jesus is absolutely incontrovertible, and really no one denies this. Then you also have, like I said, the Talmud acknowledging the supernatural. They're calling it sorcery, they're calling it black magic, but they're acknowledging the supernatural works done by Jesus, just framing it in a negative light. Then you have Paul, a person who persecuted Christians, coming around to being willing to die for these claims. It's not just Paul, it's also this 500, it's also all of the people whose lives were transformed by their belief in this message. The first-century Church believed in this crucified and risen Jesus. Please consider that it is far more likely that this complicated, beautiful, vast universe is the product of an uncreated, perfect, spaceless, timeless, immaterial intelligence that we call God, that that is far more likely than that all of this simply came from nothing.

for no reason. If you accept the first miracle, which is creation, wouldn't it be amazing if that Creator God did enter into the human story, did write himself into it like Shakespeare entering into Hamlet, God becoming a man, the word becoming flesh, Christ with us? And for what reason? To positively change the world. Christ for all nations, Christ the hope of glory, Christ the myth made real. If you don't want Christianity to be true, you don't understand it rightly. If you understand it rightly, you'll see that Jesus is not only the image of the invisible God, but he's the hero that we've always longed for as a species at the deepest level of our heart. That being said, I hope you guys enjoyed this video, and I'll see you in the next one. Thanks. Hey, what's up, you guys? I'm here in the edit, and I just want to make one other really quick note. This video is in no way exhaustive, meaning there's a lot more that could be said about the death and the burial and the

resurrection of Jesus. So, if you feel like, Is that it? the answer is no, that's not it. In fact, I'm going to put a video in the description, a link in the description to my documentary, which gives a lot more detail on this. I'm also going to put a link here or somewhere you'll see it on the screen for a video that focuses a little bit more on this minimal facts approach, so that you can see that this that we're doing here is almost just like a whetting of the appetite, an introduction to the conversation. There's a lot more beneath the surface here. That being said, all right, I'm gonna get back to the rest of the video. Okay, peace, bye, foreign [Music].

Jesus Was NOT A Myth (15 minutes Of Evidence)

Hello there! My name is Brandon McGuire & I started this channel because I want people to have the relationship with God that I now enjoy. If that sounds wild or ridiculous to you then you are just the kind of person I'd love to connect with. I genuinely think that we've all faced doubt (or even anger towards God that we have insisted is unbelief) at one level or another.

But here's my story: Jesus has answered my questions, healed my wounds, calmed my storms, saved my soul, and changed absolutely everything for me. I want to help people to know Him too… so that He can do the same for them. 

So, I'm interacting with content from across the internet and engaging in conversations that I think are important, from a Jesus perspective.

Skeptics and seekers are welcome. 
Conversations are Good. 
Questions are Good. 

No Hate.
Just Love.

The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom. 

Enjoy!

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Jesus' existence in the first century is supported by over 40 ancient records, outnumbering the 10 records for Tiberius, the Roman emperor at the time.

The consensus among historical scholars is that Jesus lived and had a significant impact, with very few disputing his existence.

The field of historical Jesus studies includes a diverse range of scholars, not all of whom align with Orthodox Christianity, further validating the investigation into his life.

The Historical Certainty of Jesus' Death on the Cross

Jesus' death on the cross is universally accepted by scholars from various backgrounds, including atheists and Muslims.

The historical records consistently indicate that Jesus died under Pontius Pilate, with no one ever surviving a full Roman crucifixion.

The overwhelming evidence and unanimous agreement among scholars provide strong reason to believe in the historical certainty of Jesus' death on the cross.

The Minimal Facts Argument for the Resurrection of Jesus

Scholars generally agree on three key facts following Jesus' death: he died on the cross, his disciples believed he had risen from the dead, and his enemies, notably James and Paul, also believed in his resurrection.

Gary Habermas and Michael Licona have prominently promoted the minimal facts argument, which suggests that these beliefs were crucial for the emergence of Christianity.

James, Jesus' brother, and Paul, a former persecutor of Christians, both experienced transformative beliefs after Jesus' death, contributing to the growth of the early Christian church.

Historical Accounts of Jesus' Resurrection

The speaker discusses a powerful figure who persecuted Christians but was willing to die for his belief in the Risen Jesus, claiming that 500 people witnessed the resurrection.

They challenge the worldview that dismisses the supernatural, arguing that it is unscientific and philosophical in nature.

The Talmud and Roman historian Tacitus provide historical accounts of Jesus, acknowledging his miraculous actions and confirming his life and death, which aligns with Christian historic accounts.

Josephus, a Jewish historian, and Lucian, a Greek satirist, both provide evidence of Jesus' existence and crucifixion, highlighting the impact he had on his followers.

The Talmud acknowledges Jesus' supernatural works, framing them in a negative light.

The transformation of Paul and others, along with the belief in a crucified and risen Jesus, played a significant role in the establishment of the first-century Church.

The idea of a Creator God entering human history is presented as a transformative miracle, with Christ's incarnation seen as the ultimate expression of God's love and purpose.

Jesus is portrayed as the hero humanity has always longed for, offering hope and change for all nations.

The video serves as an introduction to the topic, with additional resources provided for those seeking more in-depth information on Jesus' death, burial, and resurrection.