A recent survey of religious belief in England concluded that 40% of adults do not believe that Jesus was a historical figure.
During the Christmas period it is worth reflecting on the significance of this increasingly extreme form of scepticism in our culture.
Overwhelming evidence
The evidence for the historicity of Jesus and many of the details about his life are overwhelming by any normal standards of enquiry. The early documents that record his existence are not only the Gospels and letters collected in the New Testament but other less sympathetic sources. Hostile pagan historians of the first century who refer to Jesus include Tacitus, Thallus, Mara Bar-Serapion, Pliny, Suetonius and Josephus. The Jewish Talmud, a body of traditions collected from around the time of Jesus, also make reference to him. They do so in order to deny and reject his claim to divinity but never doubt his existence.
