Christian History
The Historical Authenticity of Jesus and the Early Church
Was Jesus a real person? Is the Bible the only document that supports Jesus’ existence? Are there any non-Biblical proofs of his existence?
To answer the questions above, we need to understand how history is documented for a few famous figures, so let’s talk about a few.
A few prominent figures before 500 AD are Julius Caesar, Alexander the Great, and Socrates. These people are significant and have played a major role in shaping the history of their respective regions, and much of the modern world. Ever wondered how we know what we know about them?
Historians have gathered written manuscripts, evidence, artefacts, etc. They ended up finding a preponderance of evidence and concluded that was it. We don’t have a lot about what happened exactly at that moment.
Here’s what we know about each of them,
Caesar (100BC — 44BC):
A contemporary named Cicero wrote about Caesar.
Plutarch wrote about Caesar after several decades of Caesar’s death. Suetonius, Appian, Dio Cassius, Nicholas of Damascus wrote about Caesar way after his death. Besides the written evidence, we also have currency coined by Caesar and a sculpture of his, which is a copy of a copy of the copy. But we know the most about Caesar…