The Shroud analysisĪs for the Shroud of Turin, the burial shroud that the body of Jesus was said to have been wrapped in, it has been revealed to be a medieval counterfeit. A similar phenomenon has happened with the nails, which number up to thirty. The alleged fragments of the cross scattered around the churches of Europe are so numerous that, according to what the Protestant theologian John Calvin wrote in 1543, there are enough of them to fill a ship. Leaving aside the archaeology referring to episodes in the life of Jesus, the veracity of which is questioned, there are various physical artefacts associated with the crucifixion. Non-textual evidence begins around the year AD 200,” says Gathercole. “There is no archaeological evidence directly for Jesus. With the weight of all this evidence, for Meyers “ those who deny the existence of Jesus are like the deniers of climate change.”Īnd all this despite the fact that physical remains are virtually non-existent. “I do not know, nor have I heard of, any trained historian or archaeologist who has doubts about his existence,” he adds. In short, the abundance of historical texts converts the real existence of Jesus into what McCane defines as a “broad and deep consensus among scholars,” regardless of their religious beliefs. Reliquary of the Holy Nail in the Trier Cathedral, Germany. For example, around the year 93, the Pharisee historian Flavius Josephus left in his work Jewish Antiquities at least one indisputable reference to the “brother of Jesus, who was called Christ.” Two decades later, the Romans Pliny and Tacitus also wrote about Jesus the latter explained that the founder of the sect of Christians was executed during the mandate of Emperor Tiberius, when Pontius Pilate was governing in Judea. “Jesus is also mentioned in ancient Jewish and Roman texts,” says McCane. “The baptism shows Jesus to be a disciple of (and therefore inferior to) John the Baptist, and the crucifixion was a humiliating punishment reserved for criminals.” A broad consensus among scholarsīut the ancient references to Jesus are not just found in works by Christian authors, an argument that supports the historical authenticity of the character. However, for Byron McCane, archaeologist and historian of religions and Judaism at the Atlantic University of Florida (USA), both the baptism and the crucifixion are stories that the first Christians are unlikely to have invented, since neither of them “supports their interests in any way,” he asserts to OpenMind. The crucifixion of Jesus is one of the episodes generally accepted by historians. “ The crucifixion is safe, but the baptism is hard to support or locate,” the archaeologist and biblical researcher Eric Meyers, professor emeritus of Jewish studies at Duke University (USA) tells OpenMind. In particular, the baptism of Jesus by John the Baptist and his crucifixion are the only two episodes generally accepted, but not by all.
Yet despite this, according to the experts very few of them can be considered rigorously historical. Saint Paul never knew Jesus, although according to what Simon Gathercole, the New Testament studies specialist from the University of Cambridge (United Kingdom) explains to OpenMind, he knew “not only Jesus’ disciples but also his brothers,” (in reference particularly to James the Just, whose kinship with Jesus is one of the points of disagreement between different Christian sects).Ī couple of decades later, the New Testament Gospels were written, which do appear to contain first-hand testimonies.
He appears for the first time in the letters of Saint Paul, written between 20 and 30 years after the crucifixion.
The oldest written references mentioning Jesus date from after his death. However, beyond the private preserve of belief, what extends outward is a vast territory for research, which must unearth the historical and scientific evidence to try to answer a reasonable question: did Jesus of Nazareth actually exist? Or is his story a tradition built on a legend, like those of Robin Hood or King Arthur?
Almost a third of humanity doesn’t need proof that two thousand years ago a man named Yeshua, Jesus in other languages, known by his followers as Christ, the Messiah, walked on Earth. For more than two billion people it’s a matter of faith.
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