You wrote that Christians:

follow an entirely fictional character, without having the
scholarship to find out.
You seem to be extraoridnarily bereft of any real facts about the
history of your cult.
Do some study and get back to us.
You "Jesus" never existed.
You have absolutley no evidence whatsoever to suggest that he did.

Thanks for the invitation to get back to you.

In addition to the Bible, which is certainly evidence that some people
considered there to be a man named Jesus whom they considered to be
God,

there are also non-biblical sources.

You may or may not accept
this evidence as showing that Jesus is God but I suggest to you that it
would be intellectually dishonest to summarily dismiss all of this
evidence and categorically deny that Jesus existed.

Here is just some of the evidence indicating that Jesus did, in fact,
exist and that He was - and is - the Son of God, the Second Person of
the Trinity.

Enjoy!

James

Early Non-Christian
References To Jesus Christ

(Adapted from Consider Christianity: Evidence for the Christian Faith
by
Elgin L. Hushbeck, Jr.)

The earliest references to Jesus by a non-Christian writer that
we
have were made by the Jewish historian, Josephus. In his book,
Antiquities
of the Jews, which he finished in the year A.D. 93 or 94, Josephus
refers
to Jesus twice. The first reference is also one of the most disputed
passages concerning Jesus, for it seems to have been altered at some
time
by Christians. The first passage as we now have it, states:

Now, there was about this time Jesus, a wise man, if it be
lawful
to call him a man, for he was a doer of wonderful works - a teacher of
such men as receive the truth with pleasure. He drew over to him both
many
of the Jews, and many of the Gentiles. He was [the] Christ; and when
Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men amongst us, had
condemned
him to the cross, those that loved him at the first did not forsake
him,
for he appeared to them alive again on the third day, as the divine
prophets had foretold these and ten
thousand other wonderful things concerning him; and the tribe of
Christians, so named from him, are not extinct at this day.([1]
Footnote)

Many scholars have pointed out that for Josephus to have
written
such an account, he would had to have been a Christian. An orthodox Jew

would not have written things like "if it be lawful to call him a man"
and
"He was [the] Christ." Since there is no other indication that
Josephus
was a Christian, it would seem clear that the passage has been
altered. The real question is: Did Josephus write any of it, or is the
entire passage a forgery?

Research on a recently discovered Arabic manuscript of Josephus

supports the notion that he is responsible for the majority of the
passage. Schlomo Pines, a professor at Hebrew University in Jerusalem,
found that the Arabic version did not contain the questionable
phrases. The Arabic version reads as follows:

At this time there was a wise man who was called Jesus. And his

conduct was good and (he) was known to be virtuous. And many people
from
among the Jews and other nations became his disciples. Pilate condemned

him to be crucified and to die. And those who had become his disciples
did
not abandon his discipleship. They reported that he had appeared to
them
three days after his crucifixion and that he was alive; accordingly he
was
perhaps the messiah concerning whom the prophets have recounted
wonders.([2] Footnote)

In this version, Josephus does not say that Jesus is the
Christ,
but only that "perhaps" He was. He does not say that Christ had risen
from
the dead, but only that His disciples "reported" that they had seen
Jesus. There is nothing in this passage that could not have been
written
by Josephus.

In the only other passage in which Jesus is mentioned, Josephus

simply refers to Him as the brother of James.

Festus was now dead, and Albinus was but upon the road; so he
assembled the sanhedrim of judges, and brought before them the brother
of
Jesus, who was called Christ, whose name was James.([3] Footnote)

This passage does not call Jesus the Christ. In fact, the way
Josephus refers to Jesus in this passage as the so-called Christ is
derogatory. Because of this, just as most scholars believe the first
passage could not have been written by a Jew, they do not believe this
passge could have been written by a Christian. Therefore, the second
passage is generally accepted as authentic.

In the second passage, Josephus mentions Jesus as a way of
introducing the reader to Jesus' brother James. This implies that Jesus

has already been introduced to the reader. Because of this, and the
fact
that it is unlikely that Christians would have been able to alter the
Arabic version of Josephus, most scholars now accept that the first
passage was not added, but has only been altered. These two passages
provide a non-Christian witness to the fact that Jesus did at least
exist,
and that the major events recorded in the Gospels (that he was
crucified
by Pilate and was reported to have risen three days later) are
basically
correct.

The Jewish Talmud, compiled near the end of the first century
and
during the second, also makes references to Jesus. In one passage we
read
that:

On the eve of the Passover Yeshu was hanged. For forty days
before
the execution took place, a herald went forth and cried, "He is going
forth to be stoned because he has practiced sorcery and enticed Israel
to
apostasy. Any one who can say anything in his favour, let him come
forward
and plead on his behalf." But since nothing was brought forward in his
favour he was hanged on the eve of the Passover.([4] Footnote)

The word for hanged used here was sometimes used to refer to
someone who hung on a cross. From this passage we learn that Jesus
(Yeshu) was a religious leader who practiced what the Jews referred to
as
sorcery (miracles?). We see that Jesus had a large following, that he
"enticed Israel to apostasy," and that he was crucified on the eve of
the
Passover.

There are other references in Jewish writings that reflect on
Christian teachings. For example, we can see that some Jews felt a need
to
respond to the stories of the virgin birth from the fact that Jesus is
sometimes referred to as "Jesus son of Pandera." Pandera was supposedly
a
Roman soldier.([5] Footnote)

The Roman historian Thallus, who wrote a history of the world
around A.D. 52, seems to have included in this history a discussion of
the
events concerning Jesus' death. While we do not have the writings of
Thallus himself, we know of the existence of this work because it is
quoted in other works from the period. One of the works that mentions
Thallus is a work by the early Christian historian, Julius Africanus.

While discussing the death of Jesus and the darkness that
preceded
it, Julius Africanus wrote the following:

Thallus, in the third book of his history, calls this darkness
an
eclipse of the sun, but in my opinion he is wrong.([6] Footnote)

It would seem that the debate concerning Christ and the events
surrounding his death was already in progress by the middle of the
first
century. Cornelius Tacitus, who was one of the greatest of the Roman
historians, also mentioned Christ in his Annals, written about
A.D. 110. During his description of the burning of Rome, Tacitus wrote
that rumors were spreading that Nero had set the fire himself. Tacitus
wrote of Nero:

Consequently, to get rid of the report, Nero fastened the guilt

and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their
abominations, called Christians by the populace. Christus, from whom
the
name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of
Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilate, and a
deadly superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not
only
in Judaea, the first source of the evil, but also in the City [Rome],
where all things hideous and shameful from every part of the world meet

and become popular.([7] Footnote)

We see that only a short time after the death of Jesus,
Christianity had already spread, and had encountered great opposition.

What do these non-Christian sources reveal about Jesus? Most
important is what they do not say. These writers did not agree with
what
the Christians were saying about Christ. Tacitus called Christianity a
"deadly superstition" and "hideous." These authors could be expected to

make the strongest arguments against Jesus and Christianity possible.
If
Jesus had simply been a creation of Paul, and had not really existed,
would not at least one of these early critics have pointed this out?

Sometimes it is argued that these writers lived too long after
the
events to have known what had taken place. This ignores the fact that
the
controversy concerning Jesus was not something that began during the
second century. As shown by these critics, it started much earlier. The

opposition to Jesus started while He was still alive. It can be seen in

the Gospels and in the earliest letters of Paul, which even liberal
scholars accept as having been written around the middle of the first
century. Surely the early opponents of Christianity would have known of

the events that surrounded the life of Jesus. Yet the opponents of
Christianity who were alive during the time of Christ, or who lived
close
enough to the events to have talked to those who did, never argued that

Jesus did not exist.

What we see with many of these non-Christian sources is an
acceptance of the claims of Christianity, with attempts to provide
alternative explanations. Take for example the Virgin Birth. The Talmud

does not dispute the biblical claim that Joseph was not Jesus' natural
father. Instead, the writers of the Talmud claim what would be the only

other natural explanation: that another man was Jesus' father. More
specifically, that Jesus' father had been a Roman soldier named
Pandera. Christian scholars have long pointed out the similarity of
this
name to the Greek word Parthenos (virgin), and have concluded that the
name chosen for Jesus' father is simply a derogatory corruption of the
Greek word for virgin. Interestingly, making Jesus' father a Roman
soldier
would also preclude another claim that Christ made: that he was a
descendant of King David.

As for the miracles recorded in the Gospels, those who lived at

the time of Jesus' ministry, or shortly thereafter, made no attempt to
claim that they did not occur. They tried to explain them away. Jesus
claimed that the miracles were a sign from God to prove that He was
the Son of God. The Talmud, however, does not refer to miracles done
by
the power of God, but to "sorcery," the acts of a magician.

Implicit in this explanation is that some miraculously
appearing
events did occur. The explanation for these events was disputed, but
their
occurrence was not.

This tacit acceptance of Christian claims can also be seen in
the
argument of Thallus concerning the darkening of the sun just before the

death of Jesus. Thallus apparently accepted that there was a period of
darkness at the time Jesus died. Rather than trying to dispute the
darkness, he attempted to provide a natural explanation for it, one
that
did not require Jesus to be who He claimed to be. Thallus provides us
with
evidence to support the biblical claims for darkness at the time of
Christ's death. Since Jesus was crucified during the Passover, and the
Passover occurs fourteen days after the new moon, we now know that this

darkness could not have been caused by an eclipse.

From the writings of the early critics we learn that there was
a
religious teacher named Jesus. We are told that His birth was not a
normal
birth. During His ministry Jesus did many miracles. He had a large
following, and the religious leaders of the time opposed Him. We learn
that while in Jerusalem for the Passover, Jesus was arrested. He was
condemned to death by the Roman governor Pontius Pilate. His death was
by
crucifixion. During the crucifixion there was an unexplained darkening
of
the sky. Finally, His followers claimed that three days later Jesus
rose
from the dead and still lives. Admittedly, this may not be proof that
Jesus is the Son of God. But when you consider that these conclusions
are
based on the statements of the early critics of Christianity (not
usually
considered to be a rich source of supportive material), the support
they
provide is truly amazing.

Referenced Footnotes:


(1) Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews, XVIII.III.3

(2) Quoted by Gary R Habermas, The Verdict of History (Nashville,
Tennessee: Thomas Nelson, 1988) pp. 91-92

(3) Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews XX.IX.I

(4) Quoted in Habermas, The Verdict p. 98

(5) Craig Blomberg, The Historical Reliability of the Gospels (Dowers
Grove, Ill: Inter-Varsity, 1987) pp. 198-9

(6) Quoted in Habermas, The Verdict p. 93

(7) Tactius, Annals 15:44 quoted in Paul Barnett, Is the New
Testament
History? (Ann Arbor, MI: Vine Books, 1986) p. 20