Notes

I believe in the deity of Christ actually happened for three reasons : The historical record substantiates the Resurrection and documents the beliefs of early christians who saw his miracles like turning water into wine, walking on water, feeding thousands by bread and fish, etc, The steadfastness of the apostles and eyewitness testimony.

The historical record about first century in Jerusalem documents the historical Resurrection of Christ:

- Testimonium Flavium

Taken from Jewish Josephus Flavius in his book antiquities of the Jews :

"About this time there lived Jesus, a wise man, if indeed one ought to call him a man. For he was one who performed surprising deeds and was a teacher of such people as accept the truth gladly. He won over many Jews and many of the Greeks. He was the Christ. And when, upon the accusation of the principal men among us, Pilate had condemned him to a cross, those who had first come to love him did not cease. He appeared to them spending a third day restored to life, for the prophets of God had foretold these things and a thousand other marvels about him. And the tribe of the Christians, so called after him, has still to this day not disappeared."

Flavius Josephus: Antiquities of the Jews, Book 18, Chapter 3, 3

-Tacitus and annals

Consequently, to get rid of the report, Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace. Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus, and a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judæa, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome, where all things hideous and shameful from every part of the world find their centre and become popular. Accordingly, an arrest was first made of all who pleaded guilty; then, upon their information, an immense multitude was convicted, not so much of the crime of firing the city, as of hatred against mankind."

Here it is acknowledged that Jesus was a historical being and suffered the extreme penalty under pontius pilate.

Eyewitness testimony :

The bible and the new testament act as a historical record which documents the experiences of the author with the historical Jesus. They all document the same event that Jesus was ressurected, empty tomb, mass appearances of the resurrected christ to many people up to 500 at a time. These are mass appearances to the masses.

The new testament is very reliable due to manuscript evidence especially codex sinaiticus which shows the bible has changed very little in non-critical components over the past 1,700 years. Therefore, we should trust what the bible historically records.

https://carm.org/manuscript-evidence


Steadfastness of the early christians and willingness to die for seeing the ressurected Christ.

apostles :

The apostles were all willing to die rather than deny the ressurected Christ. Most of them could spare their lives from atrocious executions (peter being crucified upside down) if they just admitted they made the jesus story up. Why would the apostles be willing to die and suffer atrocious executions for a story they made up? Why would they just not give in to the pressure before being hanged or crucified or beheaded and spare their lives? Why would all of them (except John) be willing to die for something they saw? It is more reasonable to think that they all witnessed the ressurected Christ than not and were willing to risk their lives.

This is all taken from the historical gospels and the book of acts.

Early christians :

Remember how Jesus did mass miracles and revealed himself to hundreds of people at a time? Those people became the early christians and they were willing to die for what they saw Jesus do. Thousands were persecuted and killed as recorded by Mara Serapion's historical letters and by Pliny the Younger's records. Why would these early christians be willing to die for something that did not happen? Why would the witness of christ's miracles value their belief over their lives?