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Who is Jesus? Was He just a man? Was He just a prophet as Muslims claim? Is He God as Christians claim? Who is He? Well first we must look at Jesus historically.
First off lets look at sources we have of Jesus outside the Bible ,Historian Flavius Josephus, Tacitus, and, Suetonius they all confirm Jesus’ life. Josephus thought to be born 2-3 years after Jesus’ crucifixion (37 A.D.) was an aristocrat and military leader with many connections within Palestine. Josephus was never a follower of Jesus but being around while the early church was starting of course knew people who had seen Jesus and were followers. Josephus in Jewish Antiquities chronicles an “unlawful execution” and goes on to mention the (a) victim James who is the half brother of Jesus “brother of Jesus-who-is-called-Messiah” as written. Virtually no scholars distrust this short account as he is accurate in other writings with no mention of Jesus or religion so there is no reason to disbelieve the former (only scholars who have to for religious or political reasons distrust with various reasoning with no working theory.) There is another mention of Jesus by Josephus where it here tends to get controversial, in Testimonium Flavianum It describes a man “who did surprising deeds” and also says He was condemned and crucified by Pilate. There is speculation towards this as well in that Christian scribes may have added into this but it was not wholesale put into the text, among other historical reasons there is also the problem of coherence with some of Josephus’ other writings if the text in question was removed. The problem with the theory that Christian scribes added to Josephus’ manuscripts is that there is no evidence beyond the circumstantial level, and because most neutral scholars agree with this account, a belief otherwise is considered radical. Furthermore, most of the criticisms applied attempting to disprove the authenticity of the passage can be applied to Josephus’ other writings and similarly you come to the conclusion that it is fabricated, based on the number of available manuscripts or how long ago the manuscript was copied. In fact, anything written over 300 years ago could be regarded as untrue because of minor inconsistencies or unclear problems meanings of writings. You probably see the problem, that is why to get to the truth scholars focus on what is more likely, and to address the philosophical elephant in the room “how could miracles as described in the Bible and by Josephus here be more likely than natural events” well again described by the Bible there is a God who created natural event and is outside of it and can work miracles, that is the only plausible explanation that coincides with what we know to be historical science (because it is confirmed in multiple reliable sources) if in contrast, you would have to hold a radical belief insight of the presented historical facts.
As I mentioned there are other sources of Jesus outside of the Bible that is Tacitus, and, Suetonius If you so please go ahead and read up on them, all of the accounts mentioned here of Jesus are shorter for the reason being none of them were Christ followers and they were just reporting like normal and Christ of course came up as His resurrection was the talk of the town. This in it of itself also strengthens their testimony as they were non Christ followers in fact they all hated Christ but reported the truth. So with, that we look at the source that has the most accounts for Jesus, what He said, and what He did, but first let’s look at what we know without a doubt from non-Biblical sources.
- Jesus existed: No Scholars debate this.
- Jesus died at the hands of Pontius Pilot and Roman persecutors because He was hated and thought to be Blasphemous towards God: Most scholars agree with this, the only ones who disagree with this are the ones who have to because of political or religious reasons but it is considered historical fact.
Now that we have that I must mention I wrote an article on how we can know the Bible is true using historical science I encourage you to read it first if you’re not aware of the facts. Nonetheless, let’s look at what the Bible says about who Jesus is. The Bible says Jesus was born of a virgin named Mary and nearly 1,000 years before His birth In Isaiah 7:14 this was prophesied. Jesus’ ministry on earth was about 3 years, and Jesus preached forgiveness of sins, and the only way to be forgiven is through penal substitution. Throughout the Old Testament when you wanted your sin to be forgiven you would have to make a sacrifice to God but God promised a savior from sin who will be perfectly sinless and will take all of God’s Holy and Just wrath so that those who believe in Him will have everlasting Life John 3:16, that is Jesus that is who He is, the One who took the wrath of God upon Himself. And for those who are unbelievers you may question, “why is God angry why does He have wrath?” The Bible says God created us in His Image, God is Holy, Just, Perfect, Sinless, and Eternal, through Adam and Eve came sin suffering and death our issue here is that we being created in God’s image have gravely misrepresented it, remember God is Holy and Sinless and sin severely tarnishes those attributes and God is Eternal so the only way to pay for our sin against God is eternal punishment hell and mind you if this wasn’t the case and this punishment was not required then there is a problem, the problem is God isn’t fully Just, God isn’t fully Holy, and this philosophically presents itself problematic because God lacks nothing. God cannot have 50% of one attribute but 100% of the other and if he does then that “he” is not God. So the only way for us to spend eternity with God is if God’s wrath on us is fully satisfied, that is how we can be forgiven, and God’s wrath was fully satisfied on Jesus instead of us the perpetrators because God is also merciful, the Man who knew no sin was punished for sin on our behalf because God loves us 2 Corinthians 5:21 and if you repent of your sin meaning understand what sin is and trust in Jesus as your savior you will be saved if you come to God with a genuine heart of repentance and ask Him to reveal Himself to you He will in one way or another find a local pastor to guide you. So our question is who is Jesus? Jesus is the Son of God who came to take the wrath of God on our behalf so that we may have eternal life John 3:16.
All text was written was written by Kwabena Duku source: God’s expressed word The Bible, I recommend you read resources like answersingenisis.org Gotquestions.org and RZIM.org
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Bible Answers by Bra Kwabena 
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