Jesus

Historical Evidence for the Jesus Christ of the Bible

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Bottom-Line Guide to Jesus
This series of eight articles by Robert M. Bowman Jr. answers crucial questions about Jesus to which skeptics and people of other religions give different answers from those found in the Bible and historic Christianity. Topics covered include Jesus’ existence, sources of historical information about Jesus, whether he visited other parts of the world, whether he was ever married, and his virgin birth, miracles, death, and resurrection.

Myths, Miracles, and the Historical Jesus
Why doubts about Jesus’ miracles do not justify the extreme skeptical claim that he never existed.
Tacitus, Suetonius, and the Historical Jesus
Tacitus and Suetonius were two pagan Roman historians in the early second century who made references to Christ. This article focuses on the evidence that both authors really did refer to Christ and that Tacitus in particular gave historically reliable information about him.
Krishna and Christ: Debunking the Parallels between Jesus and Krishna
Ronald V. Huggins explains why the figure of Jesus Christ was not modeled on the mythical Hindu figure of Krishna.

Jesus, Zoroaster, Buddha, Socrates & Muhammad
A classic article by Edwin M. Yamauchi, a Japanese-American historian, on the uniqueness of Jesus in comparison to other famous religious and philosophical teachers.
The Incarnation: What the Bible Says about the Deity and Humanity of Jesus Christ
The Bottom-Line Guide to Christian Doctrine, Part 5: An overview of the biblical basis and significance of the incarnation—the Christian doctrine that Jesus Christ is God the Son who became truly human.

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How Do You Know It Was Jesus? Knowing the Truth about the Resurrection of Jesus
In this video, Rob Bowman presents the historical evidence for the resurrection of Jesus, drawing on Luke 24.
The Resurrection of Jesus Christ: What the Bible Says about Jesus Rising from the Dead
The Bottom-Line Guide to Christian Doctrine, Part 3: A basic overview of the facts supporting the Christian belief that God raised Jesus bodily from the dead.

The following articles address the claims in the documentary The Lost Tomb of Jesus and the companion book The Jesus Family Tomb, both of which claimed to have found the tomb of Jesus and his family members in Talpiot, a suburb of Jerusalem.
Bayes' Theorem and The Jesus Family Tomb
Randy Ingermanson, both a scientist (his field is computational physicist) and an award-winning novelist, explains why the “Jesus family tomb” theory is fiction.
Statistics and The Jesus Family Tomb
Another article by Randy Ingermanson, explaining how the producers of the “lost tomb of Jesus” documentary misused statistics to defend their claim that the Talpiot tomb was the family tomb of Jesus
The Devil's In The Details
Ronald V. Huggins, a scholar of the Bible and Christian history, reviews The Jesus Family Tomb and The Lost Tomb of Jesus.

Cracks in The Da Vinci Code
Ronald V. Huggins explains why Dan Brown’s claim that his novel The Da Vinci Code is based on accurate scholarship don’t hold up to scrutiny.
Peter Jennings, Jesus and Paul

In this article written before joining the staff of IRR, Robert M. Bowman Jr. explains why viewers should take the 2004 ABC documentary about Jesus and Paul with a grain of salt.
Can the New Jesus Save Us?
C. Stephen Evans, a leading New Testament scholar, wrote this early evaluation of the work of the much-publicized “Jesus Seminar.”

The Virgin Birth of Christ: What the Bible Says about the Conception of Jesus
The Bottom-Line Guide to Christian Doctrine, Part 2: A basic overview of what the virgin birth of Christ does and does not mean, as well as the main facts supporting this Christian belief.
The Birth of Jesus: Hype or History?
Scholar and pastor Mark D. Roberts gives an excellent presentation of the historical reliability of the Gospel accounts of Jesus’ virgin conception and birth, commenting also on secular media stories about recent scholarship on the issue.