Socrates taught for 40 years, Plato for 50, Aristotle for 40, and Jesus for only 3. Yet the influence of Christ’s 3-year ministry infinitely transcends the impact left by the combined 130 years of teaching from these men who were among the greatest philosophers of all antiquity
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Jesus As Real Person Of History
The historical result of [Jesus Christ’s] activities was more momentous even from a strictly secular standpoint, than the deeds of any other character of history. A new era, recognized by the chief civilizations of the world, dates from his birth.
The Historian’s History Of The World
An ancient historian has no problem seeing the phenomenon of Jesus as an historical one. His many surprising aspects only help anchor him in history. Myth and legend would have created a more predictable figure. The writings that sprang up about Jesus also reveal to us a movement of thought and an experience of life so unusual that something much more substantial than the imagination is needed to explain it.
Emeritus Professor Edwin Judge, Ancient History Research Centre, Macquarie University, Sydney, in the Foreword to The truth about Jesus by P Barnett
Some judgments are so probable as to be certain; for example, Jesus really existed, and he really was crucified, just as Julius Caesar really existed and was assassinated. …. We can in fact know as much about Jesus as we can about any figure in the ancient world.
Marcus Borg, Professor of Religion and Culture at Oregon State University, in The Meaning of Jesus: Two Visions
There are those who argue that Jesus is a figment of the Church’s imagination, that there never was a Jesus at all. I have to say that I do not know any respectable critical scholar who says that any more.
Richard A. Burridge, Professor of Biblical Interpretation, Kings College, London, in Jesus Now and Then
Jesus did exist; and we know more about him than about almost any Palestinian Jew before 70 C.E
Prof James Charlesworth, Princeton Theological Seminary, in Jesus Within Judaism
The information about Jesus which can be gleaned from sources other than the gospels – a few references in Josephus, one in Tacitus, and the information implicit in Paul’s letters, for example – does little more than confirm the historical reality of Jesus and the general time and place of his activity. …. He was a Galilean, and it is likely that his principal teaching and healing activity was in Galilee, but he was executed in Jerusalem. …. There are other facts about Jesus which are equally certain ….
WD Davies & EP Sanders, Jesus: from the Jewish Point of View, in The Cambridge History of Judaism Vol 3, pp 621-626.
we can no more reject Jesus’ existence than we can reject the existence of a mass of pagan personages whose reality as historical figures is never questioned. ….. In recent years, ‘no serious scholar has ventured to postulate the non historicity of Jesus’ or at any rate very few, and they have not succeeded in disposing of the much stronger, indeed very abundant, evidence to the contrary.
The late Michael Grant, eminent historian of the Roman Empire, in Jesus: an historian’s review of the gospels
The following is beyond reasonable doubt from everyone’s point of view:]
A.E. Harvey, formerly at Oxford University, in Jesus and the constraints of historythat Jesus was known in both Galilee and Jerusalem, that he was a teacher, that he carried out cures of various illnesses, particularly demon-possession and that these were widely regarded as miraculous; that he was involved in controversy with fellow Jews over questions of the law of Moses; and that he was crucified in the governorship of Pontius Pilate.
So in one sense I think I’m not alone in feeling that to show the ill-informed and illogical nature of the current wave of “mythicist” proponents is a bit like having to demonstrate that the earth isn’t flat, or that the sun doesn’t revolve around the earth, or that the moon-landings weren’t done on a movie lot.
Larry Hurtado, Emeritus Professor, Edinburgh University
there is a consensus of sorts on the basic outline of Jesus’ life. Most scholars agree that Jesus was baptised by John, debated with fellow Jews on how best to live according to God’s will, engaged in healings and exorcisms, taught in parables, gathered male and female followers in Galilee, went to Jerusalem, and was crucified by Roman soldiers during the governorship of Pontius Pilate (26-36 CE).
Amy-Jill Devine, Professor of New Testament Studies at Vanderbilt University, quoted in Wikipedia.
…. a growing conviction among many scholars that the Gospels tell us more about Jesus and his aims than we had previously thought ….. subsequent Christianity may be in greater continuity with Jesus than was previously thought.
J Paget, Cambridge University, in The Cambridge Companion to Jesus
Historical reconstruction is never absolutely certain, and in the case of Jesus it is sometimes highly uncertain. Despite this, we have a good idea of the main lines of his ministry and his message. We know who he was, what he did, what he taught, and why he died. ….. the dominant view [among scholars] today seems to be that we can know pretty well what Jesus was out to accomplish, that we can know a lot about what he said, and that those two things make sense within the world of first-century Judaism.
EP Sanders, Oxford & Duke Universities, in The Historical Figure of Jesus
I am an historian, I am not a believer, but I must confess as a historian that this penniless preacher from Nazareth is irrevocably the very center of history. Jesus Christ is easily the most dominant figure in all history
HG Wells
Today, nearly all historians, whether Christians or not, accept that Jesus existed and that the gospels contain plenty of valuable evidence which has to be weighed and assessed critically.
The late Graham Stanton, Cambridge University, in The Gospels and Jesus
[In answer to the question, did Jesus exist?] I would say it is much more likely that he did than he didn’t. To believe that he had been imagined or invented is a much harder task than to rely on the available evidence, which is obviously not as clear-cut as one would like, but is sufficiently good to say that somebody by the name of Jesus existed around the time when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea in the first century AD.
Geza Vermes, Oxford University, in A new church is born, History magazine
As the centuries pass, the evidence is accumulating that, measured by His effect on history, Jesus is the most influential life ever lived on this planet.
Historian Kenneth Scott Latourette
The historical evidence for Jesus himself is extraordinarily good. …. From time to time people try to suggest that Jesus of Nazareth never existed, but virtually all historians of whatever background now agree that he did
NT Wright, Oxford & St Andrews Universities, in the Guardian
It is evidence of His importance, of the effect that He has had upon history and presumably, of the baffling mystery of His being that no other life ever lived on this planet has evoked so huge a volume of literature among so many people and languages, and that, far from ebbing, the flood continues to mount.
As the centuries pass by, the evidence is accumulating that measured by its effect on history, Jesus is the most influential life ever lived on this planet. The influence appears to be mounting.
No other life lived on this planet has so widely and deeply affected mankind.
Kenneth Scott Latourette, former President of American Historic Society
By any secular standard, Jesus is also the dominant figure of Western culture. Like the millennium itself, much of what we now think of as Western ideas, inventions, and values finds its source or inspiration in the religion that worships God in his name. Art and science, the self and society, politics and economics, marriage and the family, right and wrong, body and soul – all have been touched and often radically transformed by the Christian influence.
Kenneth L Woodward, Newsweek Editor
I find the name of Jesus Christ written on the top of every page of modern history.
George Bancroft, Historian
The name of Jesus is not so much written as ploughed into the history of the world
Ralph Waldo Emerson
It would require much exotic calculation…to deny that the single most powerful figure – not merely in these two millennium but in all human history – has been Jesus of Nazareth.
Reynolds Price , Writer
That this man of poor and uncultivated stock should remake the basis of philosophy and open out to the world of the future an unknown territory of thought; that this simple son of a declining people, born in an obscure district in a small Roman province, this nameless Jew like all those others despised by the procurators of Caesar, should speak with a voice that was to sound above those of the Emperor’s themselves, these are the most surprising facts of history.
Daniel Rops French Writer, and Historian: (Jesus and His Times pp. 11-13)
…Hence forward he is the measure of everything that happens. The life of Christ is contained in history and contains it. It is not merely the vindication of some nameless tragic humility, it is the supreme explanation and the final standard by which everything is measured, from which history itself takes meaning and justification.”
Jesus As Savior Not Just A Teacher
A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic – on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg – or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God; or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to
C.S. Lewis Author Of Chronicles Of Narnia and other books; translated into 30 languages
A man who was completely innocent, offered himself as a sacrifice for the good of others, including his enemies, and became the ransom of the world. It was a perfect act
Mahatma Gandhi
I know men and I tell you that Jesus Christ is no mere man. Between Him and every other person in the world there is no possible term of comparison. Alexander, Caesar, Charlemagne, and I have founded empires. But on what did we rest the creation of our genius? Upon force. Jesus Christ founded His empire upon love; and at this hour millions of men would die for Him
Napoleon Bonaparte
No one else holds or has held the place in the heart of the world which Jesus holds. Other gods have been as devoutly worshipped; no other man has been so devoutly loved
John Knox
Even those who have renounced Christianity and attack it, in their inmost being still follow the Christian ideal, for hitherto neither their subtlety nor the ardour of their hearts has been able to create a higher ideal of man and of virtue than the ideal given by Christ
Fyodor Dostoyevsky Russian Novelist, Philosopher
I have read in Plato and Cicero sayings that are very wise and very beautiful; but I never read in either of them: “Come unto me all ye that labour and are heavy laden
Augustine: Philosopher, Theologian
As a child I received instruction both in the Bible and in the Talmud. I am a Jew, but I am enthralled by the luminous figure of the Nazarene….No one can read the Gospels without feeling the actual presence of Jesus. His personality pulsates in every word. No myth is filled with such life
Albert Einstein
It is a very good thing that you read the Bible… The Bible is Christ, for the Old Testament leads up to this culminating point… Christ alone… has affirmed as a principal certainty, eternal life, the infinity of time, the nothingness of death, the necessity and the raison d’être of serenity and devotion. He lived serenely, as a greater artist than all other artists, despising marble and clay as well as color, working in living flesh. That is to say, this matchless artist… made neither statues nor pictures nor books; he loudly proclaimed that he made… living men, immortals
Vincent Van Gogh
Jesus Christ is to me the outstanding personality of all time, all history, both as Son of God and as Son of Man. Everything he ever said or did has value for us today and that is something you can say of no other man, dead or alive. There is no easy middle ground to stroll upon. You either accept Jesus or reject him.
Sholem Asch Novelist, Dramatist, Essayist
The character of Jesus has not only been the highest pattern of virtue, but the strongest incentive in its practice, and has exerted so deep an influence, that it may be truly said that the simple record of three years of active life has done more to regenerate and to soften mankind that all the disquisitions of philosophers and all the exhortations of moralists.
W.E.H. Lecky Historian, Political Theorist
All that is best in the civilization of today, is the fruit of Christ’s appearance among men.
Daniel Webster, US Secretary of State
Jesus is not one of the group of world’s great. Talk about Alexander the Great and Charles the Great and Napoleon the Great if you will…Jesus is apart. He is not the Great – He is the only.
Carnegie Simpson, Historian
If ever the Divine appeared on earth, it was in the Person of Christ…the human mind no matter how far it may advance in every other department, will never transcend the height and moral culture of Christianity as it shines and glows in the Gospels.
Goethe
Will Jesus ever be surpassed? Nineteen hundred years have passed, and his equal has not risen. This is not true of the world’s other great ones. Every generation produces geniuses worthy to be compared with those who have gone before. It can be said of no one man, ‘He stands alone; he has no rival; no equal; no superior.’ But this is true of Jesus. Nineteen hundred years, instead of diminishing His greatness, have accentuated it.
Editor, Los Angeles Times
Socrates died like a philosopher; Jesus Christ died like a God
Jean-Jacques Rousseau Philosopher, Writer and Composer