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There is no extra-biblical evidence for Jesus, Paul L. Meyer.

There is more evidence for the existence of Jesus than there is for most other ancient figures whose historicity is accepted.

New Testament sources refer to numerous historical persons who all interacted with Jesus.

Early Christian sources connected to Jesus' apostles and homeland refer to Jesus as a real historical figure.

Jewish religious documents refer to Jesus as a real historical figure, although they reject him as the Messiah.

Numerous secular sources from the Roman era deal with Jesus as a real historical figure, although they opposed Christianity.

No, he didn't, some skeptics claim, thinking that this is a quick, powerful lever with which to pry people away from the fable of Christianity.

But the lever crumbles at its very first use.

In fact, there is more evidence that Jesus of Nazareth lived than there is for most famous figures of the ancient past.

This evidence is of two kinds, internal and external, or, if you will, sacred and secular.

In both cases, the total evidence is so overpowering, so absolute, that only the shallowest of intellects would dare to deny Jesus' existence.

Yet this pathetic denial is still paraded by the village atheist, windbags on the internet, or organizations such as the Freedom from Religion Foundation.

The internal evidence.

Aside from the many messianic predictions in the Old Testament, not one of the four gospels or the twenty-three other New Testament documents would make an ounce of sense if Jesus had never lived.

Did the whole cavalcade of well-known historical personalities in the first century AD who interacted with Jesus deal with a vacuum?

Did Herod the Great try to terminate an infant ghost?

Did the Jewish high priests Anus and Caiaphas interview a spirit?

Did the Roman governor punch his pilot judge a phantom on Good Friday, or did Paul and so many apostles give their lives for a myth?

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