Jesus existed. the bible is not the only piece of evidence.

to put to rest the notion that there is no historic and scientific proof of Jesus outside the Bible, we may look to Jewish historian Flavius Josephus and to Roman historian Carius Cornelius Tacitus - both well known and accepted.

Josephus, in the book Jewish Antiquities" wrote:

"At that time lived Jesus, a wise man, if he may be called a man; for he performed many wonderful works. He was a teacher of such men as received the truth with pleasure. . . .And when Pilate, at the instigation of the chief men among us, had condemned him to the cross, they who before had conceived an affection for him did not cease to adhere to him. For on the third day he appeared to them alive again, the divine prophets having foretold these and many other wonderful things concerning him. And the sect of the Christians, so called from him, subsists at this time" (Antiquities, Book 18, Chapter 3, Section 1).

Tacitus, in writing about accusations that Nero burned the city of Rome and blamed it on Christians, said the following:

". . .Nero procured others to be accused, and inflicted exquisite punishment upon those people, who were in abhorrence for their crimes, and were commonly known by the name of Christians. They had their denomination from Christus (Christ, dm.), who in the reign of Tibertius was put to death as a criminal by the procurator Pontius Pilate. . . .At first they were only apprehended who confessed themselves of that sect; afterwards a vast multitude discovered by them, all of which were condemned, not so much for the crime of burning the city, as for their enmity to mankind. . . ." (Tacitus, Annals, 15, 44).

the word spread too fast for a myth to interupt the message because at the time there were too many eye whitness accounts of the man's existence.

we have holocaust deniers today... but most dont accept that because their are still men alive today that experienced and saw it. they can quickly dismiss things they never saw, etc... in 100 years those men will all be dead and forgotten... if 1 man says "this building was never used for that, its a lie" who's there to deny?

doesnt mean its any less valid.. if you think it is less valid, you should just give up reading anything about world history; most of what we know is from historical accounts written at the time and personal journals.

i am not arguing that jesus is messiah... that requires faith to believe. but to call him "fictional" is ignorant.