Consider an art appraiser who regularly authenticates classic 16th-century oil paintings by examining the canvas weave, chemical pigments, brushstroke technique, and the artist’s known apprentice records - even if the painter never signed the front of the canvas. Every museum curator and collector trusts this method without hesitation.
Now imagine that same appraiser is handed a distinct canvas with four independent workshop records, cross-referencing letters from direct associates, and pigments that narrow its origin to within twenty years of the master's studio. But suddenly, the appraiser pushes it away and declares: "I can't accept this because I don't have a 4K digital video of the master holding his government-issued ID while painting it."
That isn’t standard authentication; it’s an arbitrary double standard. In ancient history, scholars comfortably accept the existence and core campaigns of figures like Hannibal, Spartacus, and Alexander the Great based on accounts written centuries after their deaths. Demanding an entirely different, impossible evidentiary standard exclusively for the Gospels isn't rigorous historical method - it’s moving the goalposts.
Is one justified in rejecting the historicity of the life of Jesus if there are no eyewitnesses to Him and His life, and the accounts are decades after He lived? Is this the standard that historians use? Or is it a double standard?
Hieronymus of Cardia
Hieronymus of Cardia (c. 354–250 BC) is not a household name, but among ancient historians, he is considered a towering figure. He was an eyewitness to the campaigns of Alexander the Great, a close companion to royal commanders during the bloody Wars of the Successors, a military governor in Greece, and the administrator of the Dead Sea asphalt industry. He lived to the age of 104 - long enough to witness and record the earliest military clashes between a Hellenistic kingdom and the rising power of Rome. Above all, he is universally treated as the primary, high-value source for Hellenistic history between 320 and 270 BC and a key authority behind Plutarch’s famous biographies of Eumenes, Demetrius, and Pyrrhus.
Yet, when we examine the actual documentary evidence surviving for Hieronymus, the paper trail is astonishingly thin:
Zero Surviving Texts: The original history that made him famous is entirely lost. Not a single manuscript copy survives, and there is not a single direct, verbatim quotation of his writing anywhere in ancient literature. His work exists purely in paraphrases, summaries, and name-checks by much later authors.
Massive Time Gaps:
The claim that he lived to age 104 comes from Agatharcides of Cnidus—whose own work is also lost and who lived roughly three generations after Hieronymus. We only know Agatharcides mentioned this because he was quoted by Lucian of Samosata around 150 AD, over 400 years after Hieronymus died.
The earliest surviving reference to his name is from a writer named Moschion in Sicily (over 700 miles away), whose work only survives because Athenaeus quoted a few pages of it 450 years after the fact.
His reputation as the first Greek to write about Rome is cited by Dionysius of Halicarnassus—writing 250 years later during the reign of Augustus.
Essential biographical details regarding his military career, governorship, and royal ties only surface in Plutarch, writing 350 years after Hieronymus lived.
Uncited Plagiarism: It is standard consensus among classical historians that Diodorus of Sicily (writing 200+ years later) lifted large sections of Books 18–20 almost entirely from Hieronymus because the text suddenly becomes vivid, granular, and statistically precise. Yet, Diodorus never explicitly credits or quotes him.
No Contemporary Physical Attestation: Unlike emperors who left monuments and coins, there is no contemporary inscription, archaeological artifact, or surviving official record from his own lifetime that mentions his name.
The Historiographical Implication
There is not a single surviving eyewitness or contemporary account for Hieronymus of Cardia. If historians applied the hyper-skeptical standard often demanded of the New Testament—where accounts written within 20 to 60 years of Jesus' life are dismissed as "too late" or untrustworthy—Hieronymus would have to be erased from ancient history entirely.
Yet, professional classicists have zero doubt that Hieronymus lived, governed, and authored his histories. They routinely reconstruct entire decades of the Hellenistic era based on his lost work filtered through late, third-hand sources. Treating centuries-late, derivative accounts as reliable history for secular antiquity while dismissing the far earlier, multi-attested New Testament documents is a textbook example of an arbitrary double standard.
If ancient history does not demand direct surviving eyewitness manuscripts to establish historical authenticity, why demand it exclusively for Jesus of Nazareth?
The Fragile Chain of Attestation
To understand just how sparse the documentation is for Hieronymus of Cardia, look at the daisy-chain of sources modern historians rely on:
Generations of Hearsay for Basic Facts: The detail that he died at age 104 comes from Agatharcides of Cnidus, an author who lived roughly three generations after Hieronymus and whose own work is completely lost. We only know Agatharcides mentioned this because he was quoted by Lucian of Samosata over 400 years after Hieronymus died.
Geographic and Temporal Isolation: The oldest surviving mention of his name comes from Moschion, writing in Sicily - more than 750 miles away - roughly 75 years after Hieronymus’ death. Yet Moschion’s text only survives because Athenaeus preserved a few scattered pages 450 years later.
Complete Latin Silence: Despite his modern reputation as one of the first Greeks to chronicle early Rome, Hieronymus is never mentioned in a single surviving Latin work. That claim comes entirely from Dionysius of Halicarnassus, writing 250 years after the fact during the reign of Augustus.
Biographical Blackout: His friendship with royal commanders, his service to the Antigonid dynasty, and his appointment as military governor surface only in Plutarch, 350 years down the road.
Second-Hand Recycling: Historians widely agree that Diodorus of Sicily (writing 200+ years later) heavily recycled Hieronymus' lost manuscripts for Books 18–20 due to their sudden shift in detail and military precision. Yet Diodorus never explicitly quotes or credits him.
Even the Sources Have No Contemporary Backing
The evidentiary gap widens when examining the secondary chroniclers themselves:
Agatharcides has zero contemporary mentions and survives only through Diodorus and Roman-era citations generations later.
Diodorus was never referenced by his own contemporaries; roughly two-thirds of his universal history is permanently lost, and the earliest explicit quote of his writing comes from Athenaeus over 200 years later.
Among the ancient figures connected to this history—Agatharcides, Moschion, Diodorus, Plutarch, Appian, Athenaeus, and Emperor Augustus—only Augustus and Plutarch possess surviving physical inscriptions, and only Augustus is attested by direct contemporary material.
Hieronymus of Cardia fails the "contemporary eyewitness" test by centuries. Yet classicists treat his life and writings as foundational historical facts.
The implication:
There is not a single surviving eyewitness account for Hieronymus of Cardia, nor a single contemporary record from his lifetime. Yet, professional historians treat his existence, his political career, and his lost historical works as established facts.
Skeptics might be tempted to dismiss Hieronymus as a fluke - an isolated anomaly or a rare historical exception. But is he? Are other universally recognized titans of ancient history actually documented with surviving eyewitnesses and contemporaneous texts, or does secular history operate on an entirely different set of rules?
Spartacus (c. 103–71 BC)
The story of the Thracian gladiator who led a massive slave rebellion that shook the Roman Republic to its core is one of the most famous epics in Western history. Yet, despite his legendary status, there is not a single surviving contemporary record of Spartacus’s life or his revolt.
Our knowledge of Spartacus relies almost entirely on secondary accounts written long after his death:
Plutarch’s Life of Crassus: Written in the early 2nd century AD—roughly 180 years after the rebellion was crushed—as part of Parallel Lives. Much of the romanticized, heroic portrait of Spartacus (including stories of prophetic omens by a Thracian priestess) comes directly from Plutarch.
Appian’s Civil Wars: Written around the mid-2nd century AD—over 200 years after the Third Servile War. Appian provides our most detailed tactical breakdown of the battles, yet he was writing centuries removed from the conflict.
Sallust & Livy: Contemporary or near-contemporary Roman historians who wrote about the war survive only in tiny, fragmentary scraps and later summaries.
Spartacus left no writings, no coins, and no surviving eyewitness testimonies. Yet, historians universally accept his existence, his gladiatorial escape, and his military campaign across Italy without hesitation.
Hannibal Barca (247–183/181 BC)
Renowned as one of military history's greatest tactical geniuses, Hannibal famously marched war elephants over the Alps and nearly brought the Roman Republic to its knees during the Second Punic War. Yet, despite his monumental footprint across the Mediterranean, there is not a single surviving firsthand or Carthaginian account of his life, his campaigns, or his thoughts.
Virtually everything we know about Hannibal comes from the pens of his Roman enemies generations after the fact:
Polybius (The Histories): Writing roughly 50 to 100 years after Hannibal’s legendary campaigns, the Greek historian Polybius provides our earliest surviving narrative. While Polybius lived during the Third Punic War and interviewed elderly survivors of the second, he never met Hannibal nor witnessed his battles.
Livy (The History of Rome): Written during the reign of Augustus in the late 1st century BC and early 1st century AD—roughly 200 years after Hannibal’s death. While Livy drew on earlier, now-lost Roman sources, only a fraction of his massive 142-book work survives, and it is heavily colored by Roman patriotic bias.
Appian & Cornelius Nepos: Biographies and campaign narratives from these authors date from the 1st century BC to the 2nd century AD—hundreds of years removed from the events.
Total Carthaginian Silence: Rome burned Carthage to the ground in 146 BC, obliterating its libraries and archives. Not a single page of Carthaginian military records, letters, or domestic histories survives.
Hannibal left behind no personal writings, no surviving eyewitness logs, and no contemporary biographies. Yet, military academies and classical historians worldwide treat his life, his crossing of the Alps, and his crushing victory at Cannae as undisputed historical facts.
Alexander the Great (356–323 BC)
At its peak, Alexander’s empire stretched from the Balkans across Egypt to the Indus River, fundamentally transforming the ancient world. Countless volumes have chronicled his conquests, tactical brilliance, and sudden death in Babylon. Yet, despite being the most famous conqueror of antiquity, not a single contemporary biography or firsthand historical narrative survives from his lifetime.
Our modern understanding of Alexander relies entirely on secondary sources written centuries after his death:
Arrian (The Anabasis of Alexander): Universally regarded by classical scholars as our most reliable and thorough narrative of Alexander's campaigns, Arrian wrote in the 2nd century AD—roughly 450 to 500 years after Alexander died.
Plutarch (Life of Alexander): Written in the late 1st to early 2nd century AD—over 400 years removed from the events. Plutarch offers rich biographical and psychological detail, but acknowledges the challenge of sorting history from legend.
Diodorus Siculus & Quintus Curtius Rufus: Their campaign accounts date from the 1st century BC to the 1st century AD—spanning 300 to 400 years after Alexander’s passing.
Lost Eyewitness Accounts: Contemporary memoirs penned by Alexander’s generals, engineers, and court historians (such as Ptolemy, Aristobulus, Callisthenes, and Nearchus) vanished completely. We only know their names and basic claims because much later Roman-era writers quoted and summarized them.
Sparse Contemporary Records: One of the exceedingly rare surviving written artifacts strictly contemporary to Alexander's death is a few lines on a fragmentary Babylonian clay astronomical tablet noting that the king died on the 29th of Iyyar.
Despite a massive 300- to 500-year evidentiary gap between the primary events and our surviving narrative biographies, classical historians have zero doubt about Alexander’s life, campaigns, and empire.
William Wallace (c. 1270–1305 AD)
Immortalized in popular culture as the iconic hero of Scottish independence, William Wallace's rebellion against King Edward I is treated as bedrock medieval history. Yet, when evaluated from a documentary standpoint, surviving contemporary evidence for his life is remarkably scarce and overwhelmingly hostile:
Blind Harry’s The Wallace: The primary narrative source behind modern legends—and the direct basis for the 1995 film Braveheart—was penned by the minstrel Blind Harry around 1477 AD, roughly 170 years after Wallace’s execution. Filled with romanticized folklore, impossible timelines, and chivalric embellishments, Harry’s epic poem cannot be classified as a reliable historical biography.
Hostile English Chronicles: Contemporary references to Wallace come almost exclusively from biased English chroniclers, such as the Chronicle of Walter of Guisborough and the Flores Historiarum, which routinely vilified him:
"...a certain Scot, by name William Wallace, an outcast from pity, a robber, a sacrilegious man, an incendiary and a homicide, a man more cruel than the cruelty of Herod, and more insane than the fury of Nero..."
Scant Contemporary Documents: Only two surviving official documents directly bear Wallace's name from his lifetime:
The Lübeck Letter (1297): A trade communication informing German merchants that Scottish ports were open for business following the Battle of Stirling Bridge.
The King Philip IV Letter (1300): A diplomatic letter from the French king recommending Wallace to papal agents in Rome while Wallace sought European support.
Wallace left behind no personal journals, memoirs, or Scottish narrative biographies from his lifetime. Despite a paper trail consisting almost entirely of late folklore and hostile enemy propaganda, historians have zero doubt that Wallace lived, led the rebellion at Stirling Bridge, and was executed at Smithfield.
Attila the Hun (c. 406–453 AD)
Known to history as the "Scourge of God," Attila united the nomadic Hunnic tribes and carved out an empire that terrorized both the Eastern and Western Roman Empires. Yet, from a primary-source perspective, surviving documentary evidence for Attila and the Huns is remarkably sparse, heavily fragmented, and written entirely by his bitter Roman enemies:
Zero Hunnic Records: The Huns possessed no written language and left behind no written records, royal archives, inscriptions, or personal memoirs. Everything recorded about Attila comes through an external, hostile Roman filter.
Scattered Eyewitness Fragments (Priscus of Panium): The only detailed firsthand account comes from the Roman diplomat Priscus, who traveled to Attila's court in 449 AD. However, Priscus’s full multi-volume history is permanently lost—surviving only as scattered excerpts copied into later Byzantine compilations centuries down the road.
Secondary Roman Compilations: The standard historical narrative of Attila's reign relies heavily on Jordanes’ Getica, written in the mid-6th century AD—roughly a century after Attila's death. Jordanes drew from Priscus and a lost history by Cassiodorus, blending secondhand recollections with legendary folklore.
Hostile Stereotyping: Earlier accounts of the Huns, such as those by Ammianus Marcellinus, were written before Attila's rise by authors who had never met him, portraying his people in cartoonishly barbaric terms as subhuman savages.
Attila left no personal writings, no surviving primary histories from his own people, and only fragmentary secondhand accounts in the Mediterranean world. Yet, historians universally accept his existence, his military campaigns across Gaul and Italy, and his leadership of the Hunnic Empire as bedrock historical facts.
What Really Authenticates the Past
Across ancient and medieval history, these examples show that professional historians do not require direct, surviving eyewitness manuscripts or immediate contemporary biographies to validate a historical figure. Instead, historiography evaluates authenticity through a distinct set of foundational criteria:
Multiple Independent Lines of Transmission: Historians look for independent streams of tradition across different authors, regions, and decades. When figures like Alexander, Hannibal, or Jesus are attested across separate, disconnected sources that could not have colluded, the core historical core is considered solid.
Proximity Over Perfection: In the ancient world, accounts written within 20 to 60 years of an event are considered remarkably close. For figures like Alexander (300–500 years), Hannibal (50–200 years), and Spartacus (180–200 years), centuries-long gaps are standard and routinely accepted.
Underlying Source Traces: Historians trace whether later secondary texts rely on older, identifiable oral traditions, lost memoirs, or linguistic fingerprints (such as the early Aramaic idioms underlying Greek Gospel passages).
Explanatory Necessity: A historical figure is validated when their existence and impact are the only viable explanation for the rapid emergence of a massive movement, military clash, or cultural shift that followed.
Criterion of Embarrassment & Hostile Attestation: Details preserved by hostile enemies (such as English records of William Wallace or Roman accounts of Attila and Hannibal) or details that were culturally awkward for early movements carry high historical weight.
In short, ancient history operates on the preponderance of cumulative evidence and source criticism, never on the unrealistic demand for surviving, original-signature eyewitness paperwork.
- [He is a New Testament scholar focusing on textual criticism of the New Testament, the historical Jesus, and the origins and development of early Christianity - he is an atheist/agnostic
Jesus existed.
Source for the quotes below]
Jesus is the best attested Palestinian Jew of the first century if we look only at external evidence. Josephus is better attested because we have his own writings. I am also not including Paul because I’m talking only about Jews from Palestine; he was from the Diaspora.We have four narrative accounts of Jesus’ life and death, written by different people at different times and in different places, based on numerous sources that no longer survive. Jesus was not invented by Mark. He was also known to Matthew, Luke, and John, and to the sources which they used (Q, M, L, and the
various sources of John). All of this was within the first century.
This is not to mention sources from outside the New Testament that know that Jesus was a historical figure – for example,
1 Clement and the documents that make up
the Didache. Or — need I say it? – every other author of the New Testament (there are sixteen NT authors altogether, so twelve who did not write Gospels), none of whom knew any of the Gospels (except for the author of 1, 2, and 3 John who may have known the fourth Gospel).
By my count that’s something like twenty-five authors, not counting the authors of the sources (another six or seven) on which the Gospels were based (and the sources on which the book of Acts was based, which were different again).
If there had been one source of Christian antiquity that mentioned a historical Jesus (e.g., Mark) and everyone else was based on what that source had to say, then possibly you could argue that this person made Jesus up and everyone else simply took the ball and ran with it.
But how can you make a convincing case if we’re talking about thirty or so independent sources that know there was a man Jesus? These sources are not all living in the same village someplace so they are egging each other on. They didn’t compare notes.
They are independent of one another and are scattered throughout the Mediterranean. They each have heard about the man Jesus from their own sources of information, which heard about him from their own sources of information.
That must mean that there were hundreds of people at the least who were talking about the man Jesus. One of them was the apostle Paul, who was talking about Jesus by
at least the year 32 CE, that is, two years after the date of Jesus’ death.
Paul, as I will point out, actually knew, personally, Jesus’ own brother James and his closest disciples Peter and John.
That’s more or less a death knell for the Mythicist position, as some of them admit. .... Here I am simply stressing that
the Gospel traditions themselves provide clear evidence that Jesus was being talked about just a few years after his life in Roman Palestine.There is more.
Good evidence shows that some of the Gospel accounts clearly go back to traditions about Jesus in circulation, originally, in Aramaic, the language of Roman Palestine, where Jesus himself lived. One piece of evidence is that Aramaic words occasionally appear in stories about Jesus, often at the climactic moment. This happens in a variety of stories from a variety of sources. For example, In Mark 5 Jesus raises the daughter of a man named Jairus from the dead. When he comes into her room and raises her, he says to her “Talitha cumi.” The author of Mark translates for us: “Little girl, arise.”
Why would the author leave the key sentence in Aramaic? If you have ever had bi-lingual friends who assume you too know their second language and have heard them tell a joke about something that happened in the other country, you will know that sometimes they give the punch line in the other language, even though the lead up to the line is in English. That’s because often the punch line packs a better punch than the original.
This story about Jairus’s daughter, then, was originally told in Aramaic and was later translated into Greek, with the key line left in the original. So too with several stories in a completely different Gospel, the Gospel of John. It happens three times in just 1:35-42. This is a story that circulated in Aramaic-speaking Palestine, the homeland of Jesus and his disciples.
The other reason for knowing that a tradition was originally in Aramaic is because
it makes better sense when translated *back* into Aramaic than it does in Greek.My favorite illustration of this is Jesus’ famous saying: “Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath; therefore the Son of Man is the Lord of the Sabbath” (
Mark 2:27-28). The context: Jesus’ disciples have been eating grain from a field on the Sabbath day;
the Pharisees object, and Jesus explains that it is permissible to meet human needs on the Sabbath. Then his clever one-liner.
But the one-liner doesn’t make sense. Why would the Son of Man (Jesus) be Lord of the Sabbath BECAUSE Sabbath was made for humans, not the other way around? In other words, when he says “therefore” the Son of Man is the Lord of the Sabbath, what is the “therefore” there for?
The logic doesn’t work in Greek (or English). But it would work in Aramaic. That’s because in Aramaic the word for “man” and the word for “son of man” are the same word: “Bar enash” (could be translated either way). And so what Jesus said was: “Sabbath was made for bar enash, not bar enash for the Sabbath; therefore bar enash is lord of the Sabbath.”
Now it makes sense. The saying was originally transmitted in Aramaic, and when translated into Greek, the translator decided to make the final statement about Jesus, not about humans.Christianity did not make a big impact on Aramaic-speaking Palestine. The vast majority of Jews in the homeland did not accept Christianity or want anything to do with it. There were not thousands of storytellers there passing on Christian traditions. There were some, of course, especially in Jerusalem.
But the fact that these stories based on Aramaic are scattered throughout our sources suggests that they were in circulation relatively early in the tradition. Most of these are thought to go back to the early decade or two (probably the earliest decade) of transmission. You cannot argue that Jesus was made up by some Greek-speaking Christian after Paul’s letters, Short story: we are not talking about a Bart Ehrman Jesus figure invented in the year 60.
There was widespread information about Jesus from the years after his death. Otherwise, you can’t explain all the literary evidence (dozens of independent sources), some of it based on Aramaic traditions of Jesus’ homeland.