Even people who are not Christian or even religious are influenced in big and small ways by Christ. They divide history into the time before and after his birth, BC and AD. Sunday is a worldwide holiday, not, as many believe, because it is the day of the Sabbath (which is Saturday) but because it was traditionally held to be the day of Christ’s resurrection. The history of the West, indeed of the world, is incomprehensible without Christ, and would be unimaginably different had he not lived.
The Christ we encounter in the New Testament is so extraordinary that it’s hard to imagine the Gospel writers inventing such a person. C. S. Lewis once noted that, along with Socrates and Samuel Johnson, Christ is one of the few historical figures we would recognize instantly if he walked into the room. Yet we know Christ, as we know Socrates, through the reports of others. Neither ever wrote a single word. The Bible gives a single instance where Christ wrote with his finger on the ground, but we don’t know what he wrote. But when we hear Christ’s voice in the four Gospels, it is unmistakable.
Shakespeare is our greatest dramatist, but there is no single character in Shakespeare who can match Christ’s eloquence. “By their fruits you shall know them.” “For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also:’ “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” “Turn the other cheek.” “Man does not live by bread alone.” “Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.” “Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.”
While there is much about his early life that we don’t know, we do know that Christ existed. This is the second reason Christ is such a big deal. He’s a historical figure, and the great events that defined his life really happened. Historians debate whether some other figures of ancient times, like Homer, existed at all, but there is general unanimity among historians that Christ was a real person. Do you believe in the existence of Socrates? Alexander the Great? Julius Caesar? If historicity is established by written records in multiple copies that date originally from near contemporaneous sources, there is far more proof for Christ’s existence than for any of theirs. The historicity of Christ is attested not only by Christian but also by Greek, Roman, and Jewish sources. Apart from the Gospels, we find references to him in Suetonius, Pliny the Younger, and Josephus. Tacitus in his Annals deplores “the detestable superstition” of “Christus,” the founder of a new sect called Christianity. These sources testify not only that Christ lived but also that he had a big following, that he alienated the Jewish and Roman authorities, and that he died by crucifixion.
While the Gospel accounts individually provide different angles and emphases, together they offer a remarkably coherent account of Christ’s life. The earliest Gospels were composed only thirty or so years after Christ’s death, and the last was written before 100 AD. Moreover, historians have innumerable early manuscripts of scripture, a vastly greater body of material than they possess of many ancient and classical texts, and so they are in a good position to confirm that the biblical writings are authentic. Finally, in recent decades archaeologists have been compelled to reconsider people and events long regarded as legendary. They have located the tomb of Caiaphas, the high priest who interrogated Jesus, and have unearthed an ancient plaque honoring Pilate, the Roman prefect who decreed Christ’s crucifixion. Skeletal remains exist showing that Roman crucifixions were performed in precisely the manner outlined in the Bible. Summarizing the evidence, writer Jeff Sheler notes that “the picture that has emerged overall closely matches the historical backdrop of the Gospels.”
Let us now consider the historicity of Christ’s resurrection. “If Christ had not been raised,” Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 15:17, “our preaching is useless and so is your faith:’ The resurrection is the most important event in Christianity. Since the nineteenth century, some biblical scholars have refused to accept the biblical account of the resurrection because it was produced by people obviously biased in Christ’s favor. Interestingly, Christ’s followers, by their own admission, did not expect his resurrection. Arriving three days after his death, some of them brought spices to the tomb to anoint his body. Only then did they observe that the stone had been rolled away and the tomb was empty. The fact of the empty tomb was admitted by the Roman guards and also by the Jewish magistrates, who told the Roman authorities that Christ’s followers must have stolen the body.
