Question 1

Did Jesus exist at all?

Accepted Answer

Rome's greatest historian — no friend of the faith — records the man, the execution, the governor, and the movement. The 'myth' theory is rejected by virtually every scholar in the field, believing and unbelieving alike.

Question 2

Is the crucifixion historical?

Accepted Answer

A pagan historian, a pagan satirist, and the Talmud all concede the execution. Crucifixion under Pontius Pilate is among the most certain facts of ancient history — the witnesses who mock the faith confirm its central event.

Question 3

Was 'Jesus is God' a later invention?

Accepted Answer

Two centuries before Nicaea, a Roman governor with no stake in the question reports Christians singing 'to Christ, as to a god.' The worship came first; the council defended what the church already sang. See the Arianism exhibit for the council itself.

Question 4

Did Rome notice the movement?

Accepted Answer

Rome noticed: an expulsion of Jews from the capital under Claudius (~AD 49) over disturbances about 'Chrestus' — an event Acts independently records — and a province the governor described as thoroughly 'infected' within eighty years. For a crucified provincial, that is extraordinary visibility.

Question 5

The execution of the wise King

Accepted Answer

A Stoic prisoner, writing to his son with nothing to gain, sets the executed 'wise King' of the Jews beside Socrates and Pythagoras — judgment followed his killers, and the King lives on 'because of the new law he laid down.'

Question 6

The brother of Jesus

Accepted Answer

Josephus — born in Jerusalem within a decade of the crucifixion — names Jesus 'called Christ' in passing while recording his brother James's execution in AD 62. The reference is so brief and unadorned that scholars across the spectrum accept it as genuine; forgers do not write footnotes.

Question 7

The Testimonium: forgery or core?

Accepted Answer

The Christian touch-ups are real, and we say so plainly. Strip them and a sober core remains — a wise man, condemned by Pilate, whose followers reported him alive afterward — a core preserved independently in the Arabic tradition and defended by the leading critical scholars, Jewish and Christian alike.

Question 8

Hostile confirmation: 'hanged on Passover eve'

Accepted Answer

Hostility is the point. Opponents conceding the execution, dating it to Passover eve exactly as John records, and explaining his works as 'sorcery' rather than denying them — that is confirmation of the events from the side that disputed their meaning.

Question 9

Was Pilate even real?

Accepted Answer

His name is cut in limestone in the city where he governed — 'Pontius Pilatus, Prefect of Judaea' — and he appears in Tacitus, Josephus, and Philo. The 'stock villain' left a paper trail and a stone.

Question 10

The high priest's bones

Accepted Answer

The ornate ossuary of 'Joseph son of Caiaphas' surfaced in Jerusalem in 1990, holding the bones of a man about sixty — the very high priest Josephus dates to AD 18-36, the years of the trial. The cast is historical.

Question 11

Do crucified men get tombs?

Accepted Answer

Yehohanan was crucified under Roman rule in Jerusalem and still buried in his family ossuary, the nail yet in his heel. Josephus confirms the Jews 'took down those that were condemned and crucified, and buried them before the going down of the sun.' Joseph of Arimathea's tomb fits the evidence exactly.

Question 12

Did Nazareth exist?

Accepted Answer

The Israel Antiquities Authority unearthed a Nazareth dwelling of Jesus' own era in 2009 — pottery and all — a small village of perhaps fifty houses. Exactly the backwater Nathanael scoffed at: 'Can there any good thing come out of Nazareth?'

Question 13

How early is the resurrection claim?

Accepted Answer

The creed Paul says he 'received' goes back to within a handful of years of the crucifixion — on the dating of atheist and Christian scholars alike. There were no generations for legend to grow. The claim is as old as the church itself.

Question 14

Was the text corrupted beyond recovery?

Accepted Answer

No work of antiquity is remotely as well attested: thousands of Greek manuscripts against a literal handful for Tacitus — with a fragment of John circulating in Egypt within decades of its writing. The text that reached us is the text that was written.

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