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There
is no contemporary record that Jesus
ever existed. Not
one. There is no
Christian record. There
are
no
non-Christian records.
This is an undisputed fact!
What about the Bible - the Christian record written by people who knew Jesus? The Gospels were written late in the first century, maybe 40 or 50 years after Jesus was supposed to have lived. We know this because Matthew and Luke quote from Mark, and Mark mentions the Jewish-Roman war of 70 AD, and also because the gospels are not mentioned in any other Christian writings—Clement, Polycarp, Ignatius, for example—until about 150 AD. It is clear that the gospels were written decades after Jesus' death—by people who never met him! The second part of the New Testament—Acts and letters atributed to Paul and other apostles -- was of course written after Jesus died, by people who didn't know Him. They say so themselves. \
No non-Christian alive when Jesus was supposed to have lived
ever mentions seeing Jesus or hearing Jesus—or even hearing
about him!
With one exception!! In 75 AD Josephus wrote this about a pursecuted prophet named Jesus:
But a further portent was even more alarming. Four years before the war, when the city was enjoying profound peace and prosperity, there came to the feast at which it is the custom of all Jews to erect tabernacles to God, one Jesus, son of Ananias, a rude peasant, who suddenly began to cry out, "A voice from the east, a voice from the west, a voice from the four winds, a voice against Jerusalem and the sanctuary, a voice against the bridegroom and the bride, a voice against all the people."
Day and night he went about all the alleys with this cry on his lips. Some of the leading citizens, incensed at these ill-omened words, arrested the fellow and severely chastised him. But he, without a word on his own behalf or for the private ear of those who smote him, only continued his cries as before. Thereupon, the magistrates, supposing, as was indeed the case, that the man was under some supernatural impulse, brought him before the Roman governor; where, although flayed to the bone with scourges, he neither sued for mercy nor shed a tear, but, merely introducing the most mournful of variations into his utterances, responded to each lashing with "Woe to Jerusalem!"
When Albinus, the governor of Judea from 62 until 64 AD, asked him who and whence he was and why he uttered these cries, he answered him never a word, but unceasingly reiterated his dirge over the city, until Albinus pronounced him a maniac and let him go.
During the whole period up to the outbreak of war he neither approached nor was seen talking to any of the citizens, but daily, like a prayer that he had conned, repeated his lament, "Woe to Jerusalem!" He neither cursed any of those who beat him from day to day, nor blessed those who offered him food: to all men that melancholy presage was his one reply. His cries were loudest at the festivals.
So for seven years and five months (73 AD) he continued his wail, his voice never flagging nor his strength exhausted, until in the siege, having seen his presage verified, he found his rest. For, while going his round and shouting in piercing tones from the wall, "Woe once more to the city and to the people and to the temple," as he added a last word, "and woe to me also," a stone hurled from the ballista struck and killed him on the spot. So with those ominous words still upon his lips he passed away. – Flavius Josephus' The Wars of the Jews Book 6, Chapter 5, Section 3 |
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