Enough reasons to accept the existence of Jesus

No Christmas would be complete without somebody raising the possibility that Jesus never existed. Of course, the primary evidence is controversial and scant throughout ancient history. An 18th-century historian put the matter simply, “We would gladly exchange what we know of the Roman empire for what we do not know”.

As a freethinker, I have no personal axe to grind. But one of the best reasons for accepting the historical existence of Jesus is that no pagans or Jews (including rabbis) who opposed Christianity in the ancient world ever denied Jesus had actually lived. Also, the whole idea that so many Christians died under torture in the early Roman empire for their beliefs, thanks to a mythical guy, is too big a pill for me to swallow. All this leaves open the question whether the real Jesus was the son of God or a magician or a healer or even a rabble-rouser.

Claiming that the contemporary evidence is poor is a well-known ruse by revisionist historians of all periods. In a different context, Holocaust-deniers say you can’t trust the written testimony of Rudolf Hoess, the Auschwitz commandant, because he was beaten up by his British captors to force him to confess to Nazi crimes. If 6 million Jews were murdered in World War II were murdered, why were so many still living at the end of the war? I am not accusing anyone of being pro-Nazi. Rather, I am suggesting that denying the historicity of Jesus is yet another case of not seeing the wood for the trees.

Barry Kenyon