The Evidence For Julius Caesar Is Better
Today we are comparing the evidence for Julius Caesar to the evidence for Jesus. The two are not even comparable to the evidence for Julius Caesar because it is vastly superior. Julius Caesar has eyewitness accounts of him doing things from several people. Jesus doesn’t even have one eyewitness account. Still, a myth persists that the evidence for Jesus is either better or on par with the evidence for other historical figures. This couldn’t be further from the truth.
Evidence for Julius Caesar
Normally people only privde surface level look at the evidence with selective deep dive information. Like the fact that sometimes our sources come hundreds of years later. They do this to push a narrative that sources don’t necessarily have to be contemporary. While our sources may not come from a contemporary timeframe, their sources usually are contemporary. That’s where it matters.
They won’t mention that Cicero was an eyewitness source to Julius Caesar. They also doesn’t mention several other eyewitnesses including other Cicero letters, Pompey, and Caesar’s adopted son Augustus [1].
We have no eyewitness accounts for Jesus. All we have is paul, he wasn’t an eyewitness and doesn’t mention eyewitnesses. Prior to the Gospels, there were no disciples or other eyewitnesses to Jesus.
So most of the written evidence we have of Caesar is actually eyewitness evidence. Espcially the main eyewitness being Caesar himself. We have nothing like this from Jesus. All evidence concerning the historicity of Caesar is eyewitness testimony and physical evidence in the form of sculptures and minted coins.
In the end, the evidence for Julius Caesar is vastly more superior than the evidence for Jesus Christ.
Evidence for Alexander The Great
We have some first hand accounts and some secondary sources for Alexander the Great. These secondary sources were using first hand eyewitness accounts. Arrian, the best evidence for Alexander, used primary sources. Two of his primary sources were a couple of Alexander’s generals. While we don’t have these first hand accounts now, they obviously were accessible to these historians that wrote much later than Alexander lived. This type of sourcing is common for historiography.
But also, we still have some extant eyewitness accounts for Alexander. Isocrates, Demosthenes, Aeschines, Hyperides, and Dinarchus all had speeches that referenced Alexander the Great. Theocritus wrote poetry including Alexander. Theophrastus had a book on science that mentioned Alexander. Menander wrote a play that references Alexander the Great.
Nothing like this exists for Jesus because there is no contemporary evidence of Jesus. The best we have is Paul and he never claims Jesus existed on Earth. He only had visions/hallucinations of Jesus.
He goes on to bring up socrates, which historically is problomatic, but still the fact remains that the evidence for these people is not comparable to the evidence that have for Jesus.
Early Church documented the History of the Chruch
First of all, there was no documentation other than Paul’s hallucinations and scripture interpretation. The Christians definitely had control over what texts were maintained and which texts were lost to time. They didn’t historically investigate the claims of the Gospels or Paul. They literally just read the Gospels and believed them to be true without investigation. Justin Martyr had a “The scriptures say so, therefore it is true” type of attitude. Same goes for the other early church scholars. All the early church fathers operated in that way.
The Gospel accounts were written anonymously 40 years after it supposedly happened. Even then only 1 Gospel could be considered somewhat independent and that’s mark. Mark isn’t truely independent because he used Paul to generate his theology and euhemerization of Jesus. Mark doesn’t even cite historical sources. He cites scriptures and that’s all. He also doesn’t give us his name. The names of the gospels come from Church fathers in the 2nd century.
