Italy to decide whether Jesus Lived

I was going to come home from work tonight and write a simple, non-biblioblog… something. But, all that changed as I was scanning the news today. I could not believe my eyes….

An Italian, Luigi Cascioli is suing another gentleman (a Catholic priest) in Italy. Mr. Cascioli is accusing the priest of swindling or conning folks about the historical existance of Jesus.

In the news article Mr. Cascioli says, “In my book, The Fable of Christ, I present proof Jesus did not exist as a historic figure…”

Let’s stop here for just a second… he claims to present proof???? Isn’t it a bit pompous of Mr. Cascioli to claim he has proof? First of all, it is extremely difficult to prove a negative. Secondly, exactly what kind of so-called proof can he have 2000 years later? I do not believe there is a document from the time of Christ that says, “Oh… Jesus does not live.”

It would be hard to prove that George Washington never existed and he died only in 1799, 206 years ago. You say, “Well, of course he’s not going to prove that… after all George Washington DID exist.” But, how do you know? Did you see him? Do you have his birth certificiate?

FYI: Birth records are a modern record and do not exist prior to the first half of the 1800s. That’s it… nothing before that.

So I would guess the only way to prove George Washington didn’t exist would be to refute eye witness accounts. You say, “But wait there are paintings…” Now, do you really want me to go there? OK, probably not What about someone like Caesar? Or, what about Constantine the Great? We cannot prove these people did not exist, not because they did, but because we cannot refute all that we have that says they did. We must rely on the historical records; it’s all we have.

Back to the Jesus…. you may think the only record of Christ is in the Bible (even though the New Testament is comprised of 27 different documents that say He did live)… Scripture isn’t all, but even if it were… Did you know that on a historical basis the Bible has never been disproved in one single item. In fact, to date, archaeology has only verified the historical accuracy of the Bible.

There are several other sources though. A notable non-Christian source is Josephus a Jewish historian who in the 1st century also wrote about Jesus and he wasn’t alone. There were several people who wrote about Jesus within 20 years of his death.

There are other reasons for believing that the historical record is accurate, but I don’t want to write a book here. And, I’m sorry but it just doesn’t make sense to me that anyone who unbiasedly (is that a word) reviewed the early documents can declare that Christ did not live. No one has to believe He is God, but to say He never lived at all… well, there’s no factual basis for that.
I would love to get an English text of this book. It’s not out on Amazon yet… I checked.