What Do We Know About Jesus?
Jesus Christ has shifted the history of our planet as no other man ever has. He emerged from the riverbed of human history and changed its flow forever. He is not a philosophy, an ideal or a myth; those who lived with him are adamant that he walked, ate, died and rose at their side. Even today he still offers an extraordinary model of integrity and wholeness.
Walking away from wealth and power, he reached out to the rejected of his society: lepers (Mk 1.40-42), criminals (Lk 23.39-43) and tax collectors (Mt 9.9-13).
He questioned the ability of wealth to bring lasting happiness ((Lk 12.16-21).
He also stood against the power and hypocrisy of the Jewish religious leaders, even though he could see that it would lead to a frightful death (Jn 12.23-33).
In word and action he showed himself to be fair, incorruptible and courageous, yet at the same time profoundly humble, attributing all that shone out of him as the gifts of his heavenly Father.
Many critics have attempted to question the authenticity of this story, seeing it as a much later creation of a crafty Church. Yet as an historical record it is rock solid.
There is witness to Jesus in contemporary writers like Pliny and Josephus, and in later rabbinical denunciations of Jesus from the early second century.
Archeology has verified the sites, and fragments of ancient papyrus manuscripts tell the same story. Early letters make appeal to eye-witnesses (cf. 2 Pt 1.16, 1 Thess 2.2-6).
We know more about Jesus Christ than Julius Caesar or Cleopatra.
Source: Catholic Discovery