The Case for Christ: A Journalist's Personal Investigation of the Evidence for Jesus

by Lee Strobel

Josephus, a first-century historian who’s well known among scholars but whose name is unfamiliar to most people today.

“Josephus was a very important Jewish historian of the first century. He was born in A.D. 37, and he wrote most of his four works toward the end of the first century.

the Jewish-Roman War, which took place from A.D. 66 to 74.

Jerusalem was destroyed in A.D. 70 And the siege at Masada occurred between A.D. 72 and 73

“He was a priest, a Pharisee, and he was somewhat egotistical.

he became very popular among Christians, because in his writings he refers to James, the brother of Jesus, and to Jesus himself.”

“In The Antiquities he describes how a high priest named Ananias took advantage of the death of the Roman governor Festus—who is also mentioned in the New Testament—in order to have James killed.”

“ ‘He convened a meeting of the Sanhedrin and brought before them a man named James, the brother of Jesus, who was called the Christ, and certain others. He accused them of having transgressed the law and delivered them up to be stoned.’4

So here you have a reference to the brother of Jesus—who had apparently been converted by the appearance of the risen Christ, if you compare John 7:5 and 1 Corinthians 15:7—and corroboration of the fact that some people considered Jesus to be the Christ, which means ‘the Anointed One’ or ‘Messiah.’ ”

Josephus had written an even lengthier section about Jesus, which is called the Testimonium Flavianum.

“You agreed this was controversial—what have scholars concluded about this passage?” I asked.

the early Christians thought it was a wonderful and thoroughly authentic attestation of Jesus and his resurrection. They loved it.

Then the entire passage was questioned by at least some scholars during the Enlightenment.

“But today there’s a remarkable consensus among both Jewish and Christian scholars that the passage as a whole is authentic, althou...

the passage in Josephus probably was originally written about Jesus, although without those three points I mentioned. But even so, Josephus corroborates important information about Jesus: that he was the martyred leader of the church in Jerusalem and that he was a wise teacher who had established a wide and lasting following, despite the fact that he had been crucified under Pilate at the instigation of some of the Jewish leaders.”

While these references did offer some important independent verification about Jesus, I wondered why a historian like Josephus wouldn’t have said more about such an important figure of the first century.

Josephus was interested in political matters and the struggle against Rome, so for him John the Baptist was more important because he seemed to pose a greater political threat than did Jesus.”

because Jesus and his followers didn’t pose an immediate political threat, it’s certainly understandable that Josephus isn’t more interested in this sect—even though in hindsight it turned out to be very important indeed.”

his accounts of the Jewish War have proved to be very accurate; for example, they’ve been corroborated through archaeological excavations at Masada as well as by historians like Tacitus.

what Tacitus had to say about Jesus and Christianity.

“Tacitus recorded what is probably the most important reference to Jesus outside the New Testament,” he said. “In A.D. 115 he explicitly states that Nero persecuted the Christians as scapegoats to divert suspicion away from himself for the great fire that had devastated Rome in A.D. 64.”

Is this what inspired the Jews to revolt in A.D. 66?

Tacitus’s writings concerning Jesus.

is an important testimony by an unsympathetic witness to the success and spread of Christianity, based on a historical figure—Jesus—who was crucified under Pontius Pilate,”

“And it’s significant that Tacitus reported that an ‘immense multitude’ held so strongly to their beliefs that they were ...

Pliny the Younger, had also referred to Christianity in his writings.

the eruption of Vesuvius in A.D. 79.

Pliny the Younger became governor of Bithynia in northwestern Turkey. Much of his correspondence with his friend, Emperor Trajan, has been preserved to the present time.”

“In book 10 of these letters he specifically refers to the Christians he has arrested.”

“How important is this reference?”

“Very important. It was probably written about A.D. 111, and it attests to the rapid spread of Christianity, both in the city and in the rural area, among every class of persons, slave women as well as Roman citizens, since he also says that he sends Christians who are Roman citizens to Rome for trial.

“And it talks about the worship of Jesus as God, that Christians maintained high ethical standards, and that they were not...

historian named Thallus who in A.D. 52 wrote a history of the eastern Mediterranean world since the Trojan War. Although Thallus’s work has been lost, it was quoted by Julius Africanus in about A.D. 221—and it made reference to the darkness that the gospels had written about!9

“In this passage Julius Africanus says, ‘Thallus, in the third book of his histories, explains away the darkness as an eclipse of the sun—unreasonably, as it seems to me.’

“So Thallus apparently was saying yes, there had been darkness at the time of the Crucifixion, and he speculated it had been caused by an eclipse. Africanus then argues that it couldn’t have been an eclipse, given when the Crucifixion occurred.”

what scholar Paul Maier said about the darkness in a footnote in his 1968 book Pontius Pilate,” he said, reading these words:

This phenomenon, evidently, was visible in Rome, Athens, and other Mediterranean cities. According to Tertullian . . . it was a “cosmic” or “world event.” Phlegon, a Greek author from Caria writing a chronology soon after 137 A.D., reported that in the fourth year of the 202nd Olympiad (i.e., 33 A.D.) there was “the greatest eclipse of the sun” and that “it became night in the sixth hour of the day [i.e., noon] so that stars even appeared in the heavens. There was a great earthquake in Bithynia, and many things were overturned in Nicaea.”10

Although we were finding quite a few references to Jesus outside the gospels, I was wondering why there were not even more of them. While I knew that few historical documents from the first century have survived, I asked, “Overall, shouldn’t we have expected to find more about Jesus in ancient writings outside the Bible?”

the fact is that we have better historical documentation for Jesus than for the founder of any other ancient religion.”

The most popular Parsi biography of Zoroaster was written in A.D. 1278.

the first biography of Buddha was written in the first century A.D.

Muhammad,

biography was not written until 767—more than a full centu...

“So the situation with Jesus is unique—and quite impressive in terms of how much we can learn about him ...

what would we be able to conclude about Jesus from ancient non-Christian sources, such as Josephus, the Talmud, Tacitus, Pliny the Younger, and others?”

“We would still have a considerable amount of important historical evidence; in fact, it would provide a kind of outline for the life of Jesus,” he said.

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