THREAD, how we know jesus is the son of God

Although the bible itself is an astoundingly accurate historical document, you can know for a fact that a certain man named Jesus who preached, had disciples, and was crucified, existed in history because there are other historical records of him (Tacitus, Suetonius, Pliny The

Younger, Josephus). The Romans kept records, the Jews kept records. There is really no evidence today that the existence of Jesus was ever denied in antiquity by those who opposed Christianity.

So there are three possibilities:

1) Jesus was a deluded lunatic who made ridiculous

claims.

2) Jesus was a lying sociopath who fooled everyone.

3) Jesus was who he claimed to be.

The bible claims (I'm not using it to prove anything, I'm just telling you what it claims) that Jesus rose from the dead after 3 days and that a lot of people saw him. This can

either be true or false. If it is false, then that means that his followers wrote that in and just made the story up. Obviously if anyone would know it's a gigantic lie, it would be them.

Explain to me then, why would they be willing to be crucified upside down, boiled in oil or

get eaten alive by lions in front of crowds cheering in order to defend what they KNOW is a lie?

A lot of people die for what they believe in. A lot of people will die for a lie that they were lead to believe in. But nobody really dies for something they know is a lie and has

no worth. When the Romans are about to throw you into a Coliseum with some hungry lions, wouldn't you at that point break down and say "ok guys, I made the whole thing up... he did not rise from the dead, we were just trying to start a rumor"? That's all it would take. You'd go

free.

C'mon, nobody would carry a lie far enough to die. Even less, when having many opportunities to just come clean. And let's say that maybe a couple crazy people would. But you're talking thousands of people here.

And also... Jesus foretold his resurrection. The jews and

the Romans knew that he had claimed that he was going to rise from the dead. That's why the Romans put guards at his tomb, because they thought his disciples would steal the body to later claim that Jesus had risen. So wouldn't it naturally follow that if you wanted to dismantle

this completely outrageous claim about Jesus rising from the dead, all you would have to do is produce his body? Neither the Romans, nor the Jews ever even attempted to deny that Jesus' body was gone. Nobody has been able to find it. There are no Roman records nor Jewish records

from anyone saying "Oh, and then we found his body here or there". If the disciples had stolen the body, don't you think at least one of them would've spilled the beans after being threatened to die just like Jesus did? And if that had happened, don't you think there would've

been a record of it? There are non-biblical historical records of Jesus' life, of his disciples, of early Christianity. Why would they leave out the most important part, which would be "oh and by the way, his disciples stole the body and it was found later". Had the Romans ever

recovered Jesus' body and recorded it, it would have made no sense for Constantine to convert to Christianity, (even if it was 300 years after the birth of Jesus) since it would have been obvious to him that this cult was based on a lie. The same goes for Philip the Arab (lesser

known Roman Emperor from 244-249). The Romans were very meticulous record keepers, yet there's no record of them ever recovering Jesus body, despite torturing all of his followers to death for centuries.

No pagans or Jews ever denied his resurrection even though this was

Christianity's central point. The enemies of Christianity discredit Jesus' or his disciples' actions, mainly on political or religious grounds; but if there ever was an opportunity to discredit this budding cult and to undermine all of its credibility, it would've been to attack

the resurrection. Yet, nobody even attempted it. Nobody went after them on those grounds.

You've heard of Thomas, the apostle who did not believe when the others had told him Jesus had risen from the dead? The bible (again, not using it to prove anything, just quoting some

things it claims) says that the resurrected Jesus appeared to Thomas and invited him to put his fingers through the wounds on his hands left from the crucifixion. You know what happened to Thomas? He left to preach the gospel and got as far away as India, where he was killed

with a spear for doing it. That last part, is not in the bible. We know it from a Syrian ecclesiastical calendars.

Why in the world would Thomas go to India and be martyred there because of some lie he and his friends cooked up? If there’s one apostle who could call B.S. on the

whole thing, it would be him.

You can speculate all you want about what things could have happened to drive hundreds if not thousands of people to die for what they knew was a total lie. But arriving at those conclusions, would require a lot more faith than just believing that

maybe, Jesus was just who he claimed to be.