Responding to Atheism vis Twitter Part 1

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Here is the introduction to this series of posts answering the common charges and challenges made against the Bible and Christianity while interacting with Atheists. I'm not going to cover these in the order I gave them in the initial post but I will get to all of them, maybe not everyday but maybe one or two a week. For this post I will discuss number five on my list

5. There is no historical evidence for Jesus outside the Bible.

I think that people say statement like this because if they can convince themselves that there is no Jesus then they can easily dismiss his claims and teachings and use their own ideas and concepts as the standard for their lives. I've made the following arguments but as of yet have received no great rebuttal or explanations.

1. No modern, recognized historian today claims that Jesus never existed. Even Bart Ehrman agrees that Jesus' life is a historical fact. The most liberal and secular scholars agree that there was a man from Jesus of Nazareth, who preached and lived in Palestine during the early part of the First century CE The agree that Jesus was put to death by Roman crucifixion around about 30 CE and afterward, the tomb Jesus was in was found empty, and Jesus' followers went around saying the Jesus was raised from the Dead and carried on the teaching. These are indisputable facts. We may disagree on Jesus' virgin birth. The miracles He is said to have performed. The teachings He taught. And even the resurrection itself. However, Jesus' existence is not up for debate.
2. Paul Maier who is an expert in 1st Century CE history believes and persuasively argues that Jesus existed. So what if Maier is a Christian. Consider just the fact of His existence for a moment and you will see that at least you must agree that Jesus did personally live. I have provided following lecture by Maier but no one interacted with it.
3. Paul Maier is so convinced that the historicity of Jesus can be so thoroughly defended the he debated noted atheist Dan Barker on the issue and trounced him. By the way, it was Maier's first debate!
4. My brother-in-Christ, Mariano, once posted an article that lists 236 citations of Jesus from the first three centuries of the common era. Historical Jesus
5. Jesus the Christ is one of the best-attested personage from the 1st century CE. I'd like to name someone better attested to than Jesus.
6. Some say that the four gospels are a liability in accessing the historical Jesus, but if you study them you really see that they are great historical documents.
a. Early dating - what other such ancient biographies can be dated within 2-3 generations of the events being written about?
b. Record eyewitness information
c. Contains embarassing information - meaning that they must have been true
i. Women finding the tomb Easter morning.
ii. Jesus' male followers initally giving up
d. We have thousands of copies of the manuscripts spanning nearly 2000 years and through textual criticim we know what the original manuscripts say - scholars agree with this. Most texual variations are spelling differences and word order which change nothing in the meaning of the text. The other major variations deal with a few large sections of the Gospels being missing from the earliest manuscripts. These missing pieces do no damage to the Gospel message itself.

These 5 points are why I believe that the Bible's testimony of Jesus is accurate and able to be trusted. If someone disagree with anything I have written here provide sources that disagree "and let us reason together".