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 'a hymn to Christ as to a god.' The worship came first; the council defended what the church already sang. See the Council of Nicaea examination 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, within about eighty years of the cross, a governor reporting that 'the contagion of this superstition has spread not only to the cities but also to the villages and farms.' For a crucified provincial, that is extraordinary visibility.

Question 5

The execution of the wise King

Accepted Answer

A prisoner, most likely a pagan, writing to his son with nothing to gain, sets the murdered 'Wise King' of the Jews beside Socrates and Pythagoras — judgment followed his killers, and the Wise King lives on 'because of the new laws which he enacted.'

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 and doer of startling deeds, condemned to the cross by Pilate, whose followers did not cease to love him — defended by leading critical scholars, Jewish and Christian alike. The 10th-century Arabic version preserved by Agapius reflects the same core, and adds that his followers reported he had appeared to them alive three days after his crucifixion.

Question 8

Hostile confirmation: 'hanged on the eve of the Passover'

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 and title — Pontius Pilate, prefect of Judaea — are cut in limestone in the city where he governed, 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 inscribed 'Joseph, son of Caiaphas' surfaced in Jerusalem in 1990, holding the bones of a man about sixty — the high priest Josephus names, who held office from AD 18 to 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 given an ossuary burial in a family tomb, 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 — in what the AP, reporting the dig, called 'an out-of-the-way hamlet of around 50 houses.' Exactly the backwater Nathanael scoffed at: 'Can 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 other work of antiquity comes close: more than five thousand catalogued Greek manuscripts, against two independent medieval manuscripts for the surviving Annals of Tacitus — and a fragment of John already copied in Egypt in the second century, the earliest surviving piece of any New Testament book. The original is not lost: with so many copies to check against one another, every difference can be seen and weighed.

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