The man himself

The order, and why it is this one

Join anywhere. Each stop carries the route with it, so the foot of every question here offers the next one and the way back to this page.

1. 01What did the ancient world write about Jesus?Jesus is mentioned by Roman and Jewish writers within a century of his death, and by Christians within about twenty-five years. What those texts establish, and what they cannot, are two different questions.Deepdepth, meaning: Major unanswered questions.Uncertain. Meaningful scientific, historical or philosophical disagreement remains.Read
2. 02Did Jesus say he was God?Christians were singing to Christ as to a god by about 112, and Paul, decades earlier, seems to quote an existing hymn about him. What the man himself said, in Aramaic, before others wrote it down in Greek decades later, is a harder question.Deepdepth, meaning: Major unanswered questions.Uncertain. Meaningful scientific, historical or philosophical disagreement remains.Read
3. 03Why was Jesus executed?That he was crucified under Pontius Pilate is told by all four Gospels, and a hostile Roman source records the execution under Pilate too. What he did to arrive there is argued, and the accounts that describe it were written by people with an interest in where the blame fell.Shallowsdepth, meaning: Interesting questions with substantial evidence and real uncertainty remaining.Uncertain. Meaningful scientific, historical or philosophical disagreement remains.Read
4. 04What happened after the crucifixion?By the time Paul joined the movement, people who had known Jesus were saying he had been raised, and Paul later met two of them in Jerusalem. That the claim was made early is documented. Whether the claim is true is not the kind of thing a document settles.Abyssdepth, meaning: Fundamental questions where our understanding is extremely limited.Unknown. Humanity does not currently have a satisfactory answer.Read
5. 05What happened to the people who knew him?The claim that the apostles all died rather than recant is used as an argument, and the oldest texts cited here record deaths one at a time. What the earliest sources say is thinner and stranger than either the popular version or the dismissal of it.Deepdepth, meaning: Major unanswered questions.Uncertain. Meaningful scientific, historical or philosophical disagreement remains.Read