How Much Evidence For Jesus Do We Need?

It would be nice if there was a universally accepted amount of evidence for how we determine if someone mentioned in ancient literature was a historical person. Unfortunately, there is not.

My experience from talking to Jesus Mythicists is that no amount of evidence would ever be acceptable as sufficient. Even if dozens of new manuscripts were discovered, such as early Christian writings, statements by Jesus’ opponents, or even writings by Jesus himself, there would always be counterarguments for why they should be rejected as valid evidence.

What do historians look for? The truth is that historians will often accept a figure as historical as long as there is not a good reason to. Even if there are only a couple of references and even if they are a century or so after the fact, they will often give the figure the benefit of the doubt.

This is why 99.99% of professional historians accept Jesus as a historical figure even if they might doubt he was the Son of God or that he performed miracles or was raised from the dead. What we have for Jesus is an embarrassingly abundance of evidence for Jesus as historical.

My Jesus Mythicist friends might respond with: “What do you mean abundance of evidence? There’s NO evidence for Jesus!” Well, yes if you decide beforehand that all available evidence is to be discounted, by definition there is no evidence. But if you use the Gospels, Paul, and Josephus, the way historians normally look at ancient texts, there is plenty of evidence.

I do not know what the exact required amount of evidence for Jesus to be be historical is, but I do know it is less than what we have.