a doer of wonderful works, a teacher of such men as receive the truth with pleasure. He drew over to him both many of the Jews and many of the Gentiles. He was [the] Christ. And when Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men amongst us, had condemned him to the cross, those that loved him at the first did not forsake him; for he appeared to them alive again the third day; as the divine prophets had foretold these and ten thousand other wonderful things concerning him. And the tribe of Christians, so named from him, are not extinct at this day. (Antiquities 1)Now, one might wonder why a Jewish historian that belonged to a powerful group that was known for persecuting Christians would write such a thing. This writing not only proves the existence of Jesus, but the power of his teachings. Which brings up another question, was Jesus who He claimed to be?The New Testament Gospels claim He was the Son of God and even document the miracles that He performed. Obviously that may not be good enough for some people, but think about the following. First, Craig Blomberg said it perfectly in the book, Jesus Under Fire, when he wrote,Requiring such non-Christian corroboration, of course, immediately reintroduces the false dichotomy, for it implies that Christians cannot be trusted for the information they record about Jesus. As long as someone who saw or heard about Jesus’ ministry remains unconvinced by his claims, he or she is an objective reporter; but as soon as one becomes a disciple, nothing one says can be trusted! (Moreland and Wilkins 39)This logic simply makes no sense, Jesus himself taught moral values, one of which involved not lying, and yet that is what many people accuse the authors of the Gospels of, bold-face lying. The fact is that even if these authors were falsifying the written stories about Jesus, someone would have said something. There would have been documents refuting the Gospel writings and they simply...
