Many skeptics of Christianity have argued that Jesus was either a myth or that he was a real person but his story was fabricated (at least in part).
With muscle testing, we can verify that the four Gospels have a very high level of truth. We can also verify Jesus’s existence, his divinity, and the Resurrection. Of course, the skeptics are unlikely to accept muscle testing as proof, so we will have to make a compelling argument if we hope to win this debate.
Regarding the notion that Jesus never existed and that he was a myth, here are the arguments for this followed by my rebuttals:
There is no mention of Jesus in any secular sources or accounts.
This is also not true. The Romans kept records, and Jesus is mentioned by several Roman writers including Pliny the Younger and Suetonius. Greek historians who also wrote of Jesus include Thallus and Phlegon. Of them all, the most notable is the Roman historian Publius Cornelius Tacitus (A.D. 55-120) who mentions Jesus and Christians in his book Annals. In book 15, chapter 44, Cornelius describes the Roman emperor Nero blaming the Christians for the great fire of Rome in A.D. 64:
Therefore, to stop the rumor, Nero substituted as culprits and punished in the utmost refinements of cruelty, a class of men, loathed for their vices, whom the crowd styled Christians. Christus, the founder of the name, had undergone the death penalty in the reign of Tiberius, by sentence of the procurator Pontius Pilatus, and the pernicious superstition was checked for a moment, only to break out once more, not merely in Judea, the home of the disease, but in the capital itself, where all things horrible or shameful in the world collect and find a vogue.
In this passage, Cornelius refers to Christus (which is the Latin word for Christ) and his execution at the hands of Pontius Pilate. Because this is a non-Christian source, it lends credibility to the existence of Jesus.
Some skeptics have argued that the passage is fraudulent, that Christians merely inserted it into the text later on, but this is doubtful. For why would Christians refer to their religion as a “pernicious superstition” and a “disease?” And wouldn’t they probably have made some kind of reference to the Resurrection?
Other skeptics have theorized that Cornelius used inaccurate sources when writing the above passage, but he was a highly-regarded historian with a reputation for doing thorough research, so it is unlikely he would have mentioned Jesus’s execution unless he had access to reliable evidence that it actually happened.
Jesus and his story are merely copies of various fertility gods, myths, and legends.
Two films, Zeitgeist (2007) and Religulous (2008), have led the charge in making this claim. They list several pagan gods that pre-date Jesus and supposedly share a lot of the same characteristics: Born of a virgin, born on December 25th, performed miracles, had 12 disciples, and was resurrected.
These films have unfortunately managed to convince a lot of people that Jesus is a myth. The problem is that many of the characteristics they claim these gods share with Jesus are simply not true. Both films rely on a single source for their claims, but it is a source that does not use any ancient sources. Therefore, it cannot be considered valid. The video linked below debunks all this in full:
With muscle testing, we can verify that the four Gospels have a very high level of truth. We can also verify Jesus’s existence, his divinity, and the Resurrection. Of course, the skeptics are unlikely to accept muscle testing as proof, so we will have to make a compelling argument if we hope to win this debate.
Regarding the notion that Jesus never existed and that he was a myth, here are the arguments for this followed by my rebuttals:
There is no mention of Jesus in any secular sources or accounts.
This is also not true. The Romans kept records, and Jesus is mentioned by several Roman writers including Pliny the Younger and Suetonius. Greek historians who also wrote of Jesus include Thallus and Phlegon. Of them all, the most notable is the Roman historian Publius Cornelius Tacitus (A.D. 55-120) who mentions Jesus and Christians in his book Annals. In book 15, chapter 44, Cornelius describes the Roman emperor Nero blaming the Christians for the great fire of Rome in A.D. 64:
Therefore, to stop the rumor, Nero substituted as culprits and punished in the utmost refinements of cruelty, a class of men, loathed for their vices, whom the crowd styled Christians. Christus, the founder of the name, had undergone the death penalty in the reign of Tiberius, by sentence of the procurator Pontius Pilatus, and the pernicious superstition was checked for a moment, only to break out once more, not merely in Judea, the home of the disease, but in the capital itself, where all things horrible or shameful in the world collect and find a vogue.
In this passage, Cornelius refers to Christus (which is the Latin word for Christ) and his execution at the hands of Pontius Pilate. Because this is a non-Christian source, it lends credibility to the existence of Jesus.
Some skeptics have argued that the passage is fraudulent, that Christians merely inserted it into the text later on, but this is doubtful. For why would Christians refer to their religion as a “pernicious superstition” and a “disease?” And wouldn’t they probably have made some kind of reference to the Resurrection?
Other skeptics have theorized that Cornelius used inaccurate sources when writing the above passage, but he was a highly-regarded historian with a reputation for doing thorough research, so it is unlikely he would have mentioned Jesus’s execution unless he had access to reliable evidence that it actually happened.
Jesus and his story are merely copies of various fertility gods, myths, and legends.
Two films, Zeitgeist (2007) and Religulous (2008), have led the charge in making this claim. They list several pagan gods that pre-date Jesus and supposedly share a lot of the same characteristics: Born of a virgin, born on December 25th, performed miracles, had 12 disciples, and was resurrected.
These films have unfortunately managed to convince a lot of people that Jesus is a myth. The problem is that many of the characteristics they claim these gods share with Jesus are simply not true. Both films rely on a single source for their claims, but it is a source that does not use any ancient sources. Therefore, it cannot be considered valid. The video linked below debunks all this in full:
Finally, if this allegation was really true, we must ask ourselves why this has only come to light in the past few decades or so. For if Christianity really did contain such a fatal flaw, this surely would have destroyed the religion a long, long time ago. It would never have grown to become the world’s most popular religion.
This may seem hard to believe, but more than a few biblical scholars are actually atheists, and thus they have a bias in that they always assume that there is a secular explanation for every supernatural occurrence in the New Testament. Jesus’s death and resurrection? Just a copy of a pagan myth. Jesus’s healings? He used hypnotism. Saul’s vision of Jesus on the road to Damascus? A case of sunstroke. One secular book even theorizes that one disciple hypnotized the other disciples into believing that Jesus was resurrected. These scholars will believe anything except the possibility of the supernatural. And this brings us to the next question that atheists bring up.
If the kind of supernatural events that occur in the New Testament are legitimate, then why do they no longer happen? Why isn’t the supernatural ever witnessed today?
But supernatural events still do occur today. They have been well-documented in cases of demonic possession in which exorcisms were performed to remove a demonic spirit. The supernatural occurrences in these cases include the following: books, furniture, and other objects moving and floating in the air, doors violently opening and slamming, levitation (the possessed person floats in the air), freezing temperatures, and an inexplicable stench. The possessed will often speak in a bizarre voice that is disturbing, even terrifying (a voice they could never have spoken on their own). Sometimes the possessed can speak Aramaic (the ancient language that Jesus spoke) and have almost superhuman strength. There is more that could be listed.
The 1973 film The Exorcist was based on an account of a real-life exorcism which is well-documented in the book Killing the Witches by Bill O’Reilly and Martin Dugard. An even better book on this subject is Hostage to the Devil: The Possession and Exorcism of Five Contemporary Americans by Malachi Martin. After reading these books, you will find it difficult to believe that the supernatural phenomena that the Bible speaks of can be written off as mere myth and superstition.
There is a great lack of biographical information about Jesus. The Gospels mostly focus on the last few years of his life. We know very little about the rest which is suspiciously odd for someone who was such a revered figure.
At first glance, this can sound like a compelling argument. But this is only because we tend to judge things by today’s modern journalistic standards of proof and the information age we live in. We must consider the primitive time in which Jesus lived and the technological limitations that the writers of the Gospels had to deal with. There was no printing press. There was no easy way to write and record information. Travel and communication were extremely slow and limited. Therefore, acquiring and distributing information was far more difficult than it is today.
When all this is taken into account, the amount of information and detail offered by the Gospels is actually quite impressive. As for the gaps the Gospels contain regarding Jesus’s life, this likely occurred for two reasons. First, only one of the four Gospels (John) was written by someone who was an eyewitness to the described events. The other three writers were using second and third-hand sources, and those sources probably focused on Jesus’s ministry and teachings but little else.
Second, the primary purpose of the Gospels was to reveal the teachings of Jesus. They were never intended to be a full biography of Jesus’s life. We must remember that Jesus’s entire ministry only lasted two and a half years. The rest of his life was probably either mostly unknown to the Gospel writers or considered for the most part to be irrelevant.
The aforementioned second and third-hand sources used by the Gospel writers and the lack of corroboration between each writer also likely explain why there are a number of contradictions in the Gospels. For example, the story of Jesus overturning the tables of the money exchangers occurs at the beginning of his ministry in John while Matthew, Mark, and Luke have it taking place near its end. But these minor discrepancies are hardly proof that Jesus was a myth and his story was fabricated. If his story was indeed fabricated, then it’s more likely that the Gospels would contain zero contradictions, and we would have been told the entire story of Jesus’s life. After all, if you were writing a fictional story about someone who you wanted to portray as a divine figure, why would you leave so many years blank? Why not write a complete story?
Another way we can make the case for Christianity’s authenticity is to simply examine the teachings offered by the four Gospels. Without question, these teachings comprise great truth and wisdom:
Love others as you would yourself.
Forgive others for their transgressions against you.
Acknowledge and correct your own flaws before you point out the flaws of others.
Be generous to others. Focus on serving others. Be willing to sacrifice your own happiness and put yourself last.
Pursue peace and reconciliation, not conflict.
Honesty and integrity are critical.
Love and honor your spouse and be faithful to them. Do not divorce them.
Do not be naïve. Identify unrighteous people by observing their actions.
The treasures of heaven are infinitely more valuable than the treasures of earth. Therefore, seek heaven. Avoid greed, lust, and envy.
These teachings are even more impressive when you consider the primitive era from which they originated. If it was not Jesus who came up with these teachings, it was clearly a person of high integrity who possessed great wisdom. This presents a conundrum. For how likely is it that someone of such high integrity who was capable of writing such great truths would choose to perpetuate a hoax around those truths? History has shown us that those who create false religions generally don’t imbed them with truthful teachings or great wisdom. False religions tend to be cults or something similar. They are more concerned with controlling and exploiting people than teaching them to act with honesty and integrity. False religions are distinctly different from Christianity in what they teach.
Of course, there are skeptics who argue that the Gospels are somewhat truthful until they tell of the Resurrection. They claim it was the story of the Resurrection that was fabricated. We need to be clear about the stakes here. If this claim is true, if the Resurrection did not happen, it can only mean that Christianity is a fraud. There is no way to salvage the religion if this is the case.
I find it amusing when these people argue that we should doubt the authenticity of the Resurrection due to a “lack of hard proof.” They seem to be insisting that we should require pictures or video of the event. But, of course, there were no cameras back then, so this seems to be a case of applying today’s standards of proof to an era when those standards are simply unrealistic. Although we don’t have hard proof of the Resurrection, through deductive reasoning we can still make a strong argument for why the event likely did occur.
These particular skeptics claim that the Resurrection was fabricated by Jesus’s disciples who then proceeded to create a fraudulent religion around it. However, there are serious problems with this idea. We know that the disciples believed in Jesus’s divinity. We know they believed he was a political Messiah who was destined to become king. Therefore, if Jesus had not been resurrected after he died, they almost certainly would have felt deceived and betrayed. It is hard to believe they would have maintained any loyalty to Jesus or his memory, and so the idea that they would have decided to perpetuate a hoax in his name seems highly unlikely. And the notion that they would have risked their lives, suffering great persecution and torture in the process, to spread a fraudulent religion across the world, seems even unlikelier.
It took the Resurrection to convince the disciples that Jesus was a different kind of Messiah than the one they had believed him to be. Therefore, it seems reasonable to conclude that if the Resurrection had never happened, there would never have been a religion known as Christianity. And if there wasn’t an extremely high level of truth in its teachings (which can only be the case if the Resurrection actually happened), if adopting Jesus as one’s savior did not provide real spiritual benefits (which can only be true if Jesus was divine), then it is improbable that Christianity would have been successful and that it would have grown to become the world’s most popular religion.
This may seem hard to believe, but more than a few biblical scholars are actually atheists, and thus they have a bias in that they always assume that there is a secular explanation for every supernatural occurrence in the New Testament. Jesus’s death and resurrection? Just a copy of a pagan myth. Jesus’s healings? He used hypnotism. Saul’s vision of Jesus on the road to Damascus? A case of sunstroke. One secular book even theorizes that one disciple hypnotized the other disciples into believing that Jesus was resurrected. These scholars will believe anything except the possibility of the supernatural. And this brings us to the next question that atheists bring up.
If the kind of supernatural events that occur in the New Testament are legitimate, then why do they no longer happen? Why isn’t the supernatural ever witnessed today?
But supernatural events still do occur today. They have been well-documented in cases of demonic possession in which exorcisms were performed to remove a demonic spirit. The supernatural occurrences in these cases include the following: books, furniture, and other objects moving and floating in the air, doors violently opening and slamming, levitation (the possessed person floats in the air), freezing temperatures, and an inexplicable stench. The possessed will often speak in a bizarre voice that is disturbing, even terrifying (a voice they could never have spoken on their own). Sometimes the possessed can speak Aramaic (the ancient language that Jesus spoke) and have almost superhuman strength. There is more that could be listed.
The 1973 film The Exorcist was based on an account of a real-life exorcism which is well-documented in the book Killing the Witches by Bill O’Reilly and Martin Dugard. An even better book on this subject is Hostage to the Devil: The Possession and Exorcism of Five Contemporary Americans by Malachi Martin. After reading these books, you will find it difficult to believe that the supernatural phenomena that the Bible speaks of can be written off as mere myth and superstition.
There is a great lack of biographical information about Jesus. The Gospels mostly focus on the last few years of his life. We know very little about the rest which is suspiciously odd for someone who was such a revered figure.
At first glance, this can sound like a compelling argument. But this is only because we tend to judge things by today’s modern journalistic standards of proof and the information age we live in. We must consider the primitive time in which Jesus lived and the technological limitations that the writers of the Gospels had to deal with. There was no printing press. There was no easy way to write and record information. Travel and communication were extremely slow and limited. Therefore, acquiring and distributing information was far more difficult than it is today.
When all this is taken into account, the amount of information and detail offered by the Gospels is actually quite impressive. As for the gaps the Gospels contain regarding Jesus’s life, this likely occurred for two reasons. First, only one of the four Gospels (John) was written by someone who was an eyewitness to the described events. The other three writers were using second and third-hand sources, and those sources probably focused on Jesus’s ministry and teachings but little else.
Second, the primary purpose of the Gospels was to reveal the teachings of Jesus. They were never intended to be a full biography of Jesus’s life. We must remember that Jesus’s entire ministry only lasted two and a half years. The rest of his life was probably either mostly unknown to the Gospel writers or considered for the most part to be irrelevant.
The aforementioned second and third-hand sources used by the Gospel writers and the lack of corroboration between each writer also likely explain why there are a number of contradictions in the Gospels. For example, the story of Jesus overturning the tables of the money exchangers occurs at the beginning of his ministry in John while Matthew, Mark, and Luke have it taking place near its end. But these minor discrepancies are hardly proof that Jesus was a myth and his story was fabricated. If his story was indeed fabricated, then it’s more likely that the Gospels would contain zero contradictions, and we would have been told the entire story of Jesus’s life. After all, if you were writing a fictional story about someone who you wanted to portray as a divine figure, why would you leave so many years blank? Why not write a complete story?
Another way we can make the case for Christianity’s authenticity is to simply examine the teachings offered by the four Gospels. Without question, these teachings comprise great truth and wisdom:
Love others as you would yourself.
Forgive others for their transgressions against you.
Acknowledge and correct your own flaws before you point out the flaws of others.
Be generous to others. Focus on serving others. Be willing to sacrifice your own happiness and put yourself last.
Pursue peace and reconciliation, not conflict.
Honesty and integrity are critical.
Love and honor your spouse and be faithful to them. Do not divorce them.
Do not be naïve. Identify unrighteous people by observing their actions.
The treasures of heaven are infinitely more valuable than the treasures of earth. Therefore, seek heaven. Avoid greed, lust, and envy.
These teachings are even more impressive when you consider the primitive era from which they originated. If it was not Jesus who came up with these teachings, it was clearly a person of high integrity who possessed great wisdom. This presents a conundrum. For how likely is it that someone of such high integrity who was capable of writing such great truths would choose to perpetuate a hoax around those truths? History has shown us that those who create false religions generally don’t imbed them with truthful teachings or great wisdom. False religions tend to be cults or something similar. They are more concerned with controlling and exploiting people than teaching them to act with honesty and integrity. False religions are distinctly different from Christianity in what they teach.
Of course, there are skeptics who argue that the Gospels are somewhat truthful until they tell of the Resurrection. They claim it was the story of the Resurrection that was fabricated. We need to be clear about the stakes here. If this claim is true, if the Resurrection did not happen, it can only mean that Christianity is a fraud. There is no way to salvage the religion if this is the case.
I find it amusing when these people argue that we should doubt the authenticity of the Resurrection due to a “lack of hard proof.” They seem to be insisting that we should require pictures or video of the event. But, of course, there were no cameras back then, so this seems to be a case of applying today’s standards of proof to an era when those standards are simply unrealistic. Although we don’t have hard proof of the Resurrection, through deductive reasoning we can still make a strong argument for why the event likely did occur.
These particular skeptics claim that the Resurrection was fabricated by Jesus’s disciples who then proceeded to create a fraudulent religion around it. However, there are serious problems with this idea. We know that the disciples believed in Jesus’s divinity. We know they believed he was a political Messiah who was destined to become king. Therefore, if Jesus had not been resurrected after he died, they almost certainly would have felt deceived and betrayed. It is hard to believe they would have maintained any loyalty to Jesus or his memory, and so the idea that they would have decided to perpetuate a hoax in his name seems highly unlikely. And the notion that they would have risked their lives, suffering great persecution and torture in the process, to spread a fraudulent religion across the world, seems even unlikelier.
It took the Resurrection to convince the disciples that Jesus was a different kind of Messiah than the one they had believed him to be. Therefore, it seems reasonable to conclude that if the Resurrection had never happened, there would never have been a religion known as Christianity. And if there wasn’t an extremely high level of truth in its teachings (which can only be the case if the Resurrection actually happened), if adopting Jesus as one’s savior did not provide real spiritual benefits (which can only be true if Jesus was divine), then it is improbable that Christianity would have been successful and that it would have grown to become the world’s most popular religion.