One skeptic who thought Jesus was a myth was British journalist
Malcolm Muggeridge. But on a television assignment to Israel,
Muggeridge was faced with evidence about Jesus Christ that he
didn’t know existed. As he checked out historical places—Jesus’
birthplace of Bethlehem, the town of Nazareth, the crucifixion site, and the empty tomb—a
sense of Jesus’ reality began to emerge.
Later he stated
“It was while I was in the Holy Land for the purpose of making three B.B.C. television programmes on the New Testament that a … certainty seized me about Jesus’ birth, ministry and Crucifixion. … I became aware that there really had been a man, Jesus, who was also God.”14
Some German higher-critical scholars in the 18th and 19th centuries
had questioned Jesus’ existence, pointing out that such
key figures as Pontius Pilate and the chief priest Joseph Caiaphas
in the Gospel accounts had never been confirmed as real. No rebuttal
was possible until the mid-20th century.
Archaeologists in 1962 confirmed Pilate’s existence when
they discovered his name included in an inscription on an excavated
stone. Likewise, the existence of Caiaphas was uncertain until
1990, when an ossuary (bone box) was discovered bearing his inscription.
Archaeologists have also discovered what they believe to be Simon
Peter’s house and a cave where John the Baptist did his
baptizing.
Finally, perhaps the most convincing historical evidence that
Jesus existed was the rapid rise of Christianity. How can it be
explained without Christ? How could this group of fishermen and
other workingmen invent Jesus in a scant few years? Durant answered
his own introductory question—did Christ exist?—with
the following conclusion:
That a few simple men should in one generation have invented so powerful and appealing a personality, so lofty an ethic and so inspiring a vision of human brotherhood, would be a miracle far more incredible than any recorded in the Gospels. After two centuries of Higher Criticism the outlines of the life, character, and teaching of Christ, remain reasonably clear, and constitute the most fascinating feature in the history of Western man.
Click here to read page 10 of 10 about "Was Jesus a real person?"