Jesus Christ - The Overwhelming evidence He existed

Proof Jesus existed outside the Bible - 2 first century historians - Tacitus : Annals of Rome
Flavius Josephus : Antiquities of the Jews - Both secular sources ...and he is mentioned in hundreds, hundreds of ancient letters, epistles, treatises and apologies, which without doubt date to the 2nd and 3rd centuries AD .. Tertullian, Irenaeus, Justin Martyr, Clement .... there is an entire history of Christian attestation passed down through the centuries that people are entirely ignorant of

Socrates, for example, exists nowhere other than in the writings of his students … there is not a single document in existence that contains his original works ........... If we apply the same logic with Socrates .. as is applied to determine Jesus's historicity , we must assume that Socrates was a figment of the imagination of his students .... But, if we are to accept Socrates as an historical figure based on four secondary accounts ... we must also accept Jesus as an historical figure whose life was life was documented by his disciples , historians ... and those who rejected him and his divine claims ...

Some secular accounts of the life of Jesus Christ

Lucian of Samosata - (2nd century Greek Satirist) ..
Flavius Josephus - (previously mentioned)
Pliny The Younger - (61 AD - 113 AD)
Celsius - (2nd-century Greek philosopher and opponent of Early Christianity -A discourse against the christians - concludes Jesus was a Man)
Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus (69 - *120* , or , 130 AD)
Thallus - (unknown) - died 52 AD
Phlegon Van Talles - (a Greek writer and freedman of the emperor Hadrian, who lived in the 2nd century AD)
Julius Africanus - (160 - 240 AD)
Mara bar Serapion - (a Syriac Stoic philosopher in the Roman province of Syria)

The Babylonian Talmud -- confirms Jesus was ‘hanged’ - an idiom for Crucifixion - on the eve of the passover - not referring to a rumour surrounding a myth - the passage in the Talmud talks about Jesus's ability to perform miracles , but tries to dismiss it as sorcery -- ".. He (Jesus) has practised sorcery and enticed Israel into apostasy .." .... If the writers were simply refuting 'myth' , they would most likely have dismissed the tale as a 'rumour' ... Not assign alternate theories to defend their position ... (Tractate Sanhedrin (43a) )

The Hittites , from the Bible, were said not have existed, until they were discovered in the 19th century .. Today, we know a lot about the Hittites ... over 250,000 Hittite and Assyrian Clay Tablets are sitting in various museums all over the world .... The Bible mentions The Pool of Bethesda, the place where Jesus healed a paralytic ... no such location was known to have existed until it was discovered in Jerusalem AS a place were the sick gather to seek healing .. Just because an artifact has not been discovered, .. does not mean that it does not exist ...

Cornelius Tacitus (55AD - 120AD) .. 1st and 2nd century historian who lived throughout the rains of over half a dozen Emperors , considered one of the greatest historians of Rome verifies the Biblical account of the Crucifixion of Jesus at the hands of Pontius Pilate , the Governor of Judea from 26 AD - 36 AD... Tacitus writes the following : -
' ... The Christus , the founder of the Christian name was put to death by Pontius Pilate procurator of Judea in the reign of Tiberius , but the pernicious superstition , repressed for a time, broke out again, not only in Judea where the mischief originated, but through the city of Rome also ...' ...........
This passage confirms ; Jesus did exist ; He was the founder of Christianity ; Jesus was put to death by Pilate ; Christianity originated in Judea ; Christianity later spread to Rome....
Could Tacitus have taken his information from Christian sources ...? ... Given Tacitus's position as Official Historian of Rome , and Not as a commentator , it is more likely that Tacitus referenced Official Government Documents over Christian testimony ... AND , it is always possible that Tacitus received some of his information from his friend and fellow Secular historian , Pliny The Younger ... yet, even if Tacitus references some of Pliny's sources , it would have been out of his character to have done so without critical investigation ...An example of Tacitus criticising testimony given to him even by his dear friend Pliny, is found in 'Annals 55' .... - I'm sure a PDF is available on line ... Tacitus distinguishes between 'confirmed' and 'hearsay' accounts almost 70 times his history .. If he felt that this account of Jesus was only a rumour or felt it as folklore, he would have issued his usually disclaimer that this account was unverified ... But, he did not ....
Could this passage have been Christian interpolation or forgery ...?
Judging by the critical undertones of the aforementioned passage , it is highly unlikely .... Tacitus refers to Christianity as a 'superstition' and an 'irrepressible mischief' ... furthermore ... there is Not a surviving copy of Tacitus's Annals that does not contain this passage ... There is no verifiable evidence of any tampering of this passage...
Why is this passage not mentioned by any of the early Church fathers ..? ... due to the condescending nature of Tacitus's testimony early Christian authors would likely not to have quoted such a source, assuming that Tacitus's writings were even available to them .. However, our actual answer comes from the context of the passage itself .. nothing in Tacitus's statements contradicts what was already common knowledge among Christians ... it simply provides evidence of Jesus's existence .. which, was a topic not debated about at that time in history ... This relatively new idea that Jesus never existed - relative to the Enlightenment .. is just that ... a new idea .. What better way to get rid of a religion, other than to say that its founder never existed ... there is far less verifiable proof for the existence of the false prophet Muhammad .. but lest we question his existence , huh ... do doing with Jesus is very safe , very PC , and always guaranteed to draw support ... less for Muhammad ...a

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Did_Jesus_Exist%3F_(Ehrman)
https://www.bartdehrman.com/books-published/
Bart Ehrman
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hnybQxIgfPw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pSY0f9-ZBxI&t=2s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jtOq-o-5Y6I&t=10s

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historicity_of_Jesus
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biblical_criticism#Embarrassment

Historians:

Josephus Flavius:
Josephus’ passage regarding Jesus is part of his historical document entitled ‘Antiquities of the Jews[sic Judeans]’ which he wrote in 93AD (over fifty years from the time of the supposed life of Jesus). From this document is derived the famous passage, known as Testimonium Flavianum. It reads:
About this time came Jesus, a wise man, if indeed it is appropriate to call him a man. For he was a performer of paradoxical feats, a teacher of people who accept the unusual with pleasure, and he won over many of the Jews and also many Greeks. He was the Christ. When Pilate, upon the accusation of the first men amongst us, condemned him to be crucified, those who had formerly loved him did not cease [to follow him], for he appeared to them on the third day, living again, as the divine prophets foretold, along with a myriad of other marvelous things concerning him. And the tribe of the Christians, so named after him, has not disappeared to this day.
(Josephus Antiquities 18.3.3)
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/2848/2848-h/2848-h.htm#link182H_4_0001

Tacitus:
Tacitus writing c. 116, included in his Annals a mention of Christianity and Christ. In describing Nero’s persecution of Christians following the Great Fire of Rome, he wrote:
Nero fastened the guilt [of starting the blaze] 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 [14-37] 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 Judaea, 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.
Tacitus, The Annals , passage (15.44)
http://www.gutenberg.us/articles/eng/Annals_(Tacitus)
Pliny the Younger:
In a letter to Emperor Trajan (who ruled the Roman Empire from the year 98 to 117), Roman lawyer, magistrate, and author Pliny wrote:
Those who denied that they were or had been Christians, when they invoked the gods in words dictated by me, offered prayer with incense and wine to your image, which I had ordered to be brought for this purpose together with statues of the gods, and moreover cursed Christ — none of which those who are really Christians, it is said, can be forced to do — these I thought should be discharged. Others named by the informer declared that they were Christians, but then denied it, asserting that they had been but had ceased to be, some three years before, others many years, some as much as twenty-five years. They all worshiped your image and the statues of the gods, and cursed Christ.
Pliny, Letters 10.96-97
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/2811/2811-h/2811-h.htm
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The non-Christian historical references mentioned above are all significant. What we need to understand first, though, is that there is no contemporaneous or documentary evidence for the existence of most ancient figures. That's the nature of our historical sources for the ancient world. So if the question is "Do we have good historical evidence that Jesus existed, the kind of evidence that historians take as conclusive when they're doing ancient history" then the answer is a clear "yes."

One difficulty with the way the question is posed here is that it rules out any evidence coming from Jesus' followers. But that's not good historical method. For a relatively obscure figure from a backwater Roman province, the only sources you will find for the first several decades will come from the figure's own circle of followers. What we find is that within two decades of his death we have first- and second-hand accounts of Jesus' life and references to Jesus as a real person. (Paul writes in the late 40s and through the 50s AD.)[1] It is important here that Paul and the other early Christians writing within living memory of Jesus don't treat his existence as a focus of argument or as something to prove. They display no defensiveness about it. Instead, it is just taken for granted both by Jesus' followers and by his detractors.[2] This early evidence, then, seems widespread geographically (Paul in the Eastern Mediterranean, Peter and James the Just in and around Jerusalem, John perhaps in the Ephesus area of Asia Minor)[3] and is uncontested by contemporaries. I find it particularly telling that Paul doesn't need to argue for Jesus' existence when he writes to the new Christian communities in Rome around AD 58. Paul clearly didn't found the community, has never been to Rome, and (based on how much of his teaching he has to defend in the letter) is regarded with some suspicion by Roman Christ-followers. Most scholars think that teaching about Jesus was brought independently to Rome by Jews returning from pilgrimages to Jerusalem or some similar informal route.[4] Even so, Paul can take for granted their agreement that Jesus existed and was crucified [5].

But we also need to look carefully at Tacitus and Josephus. Tacitus is writing in the second-century, true, but he is a meticulously careful historian. When he encounters dubious or unsubstantiated rumors, Tacitus is very clear with his readers that the evidence before him is suspect. So it is significant that Tacitus (less than a century after the events) does not signal any doubt. As for this passage being a Christian interpolation, there is no reason to say that except for prior doubts about Jesus. There is a danger here of "rigging the deck". If we dismiss evidence (without internal grounds) as fabricated, then what evidence could possibly be accepted? No, Tacitus is a very strong witness, even if he was writing two generations later.

The so-called "Testimonium Flavium" by Josephus, on the other hand, is certainly the victim of Christian editing (for the reasons discussed here in other answers). But the general consensus among historians is that there was an original, neutral reference to Jesus here in Josephus that has been expanded and made more pious by later Christian scribes. I'll leave aside the detailed arguments here about the "seams" in the passage itself.[6] More convincing to me is the fact that there are so few references to Jesus in early historians. If Christian scribes (who preserved all of these classical sources for us through late Antiquity and the early middle ages until they were "discovered" in Constantinople by Arab Muslims) did not make a habit of injecting references to Jesus everywhere, then we should be careful about assuming that this reference in Josephus is pure fabrication. What Christian scribes did do, though, is add to and elaborate on references to Jesus in "secular" sources to make them more pious. If that is what happened with Josephus, then we do have a non-Christian historian writing within living memory of the events about Jesus as a real figure.

(Despite the suggestion in one answer above, there is no evidence whatsoever that Josephus was an "Ebionite" Christian. The authority mentioned for this idea (Whiston) is a 19th century translator of Josephus who was making the assertion on the basis of the Testimonium Flavium, which he assumed was genuine in its present form.[9])

I am a biblical scholar and historian (PhD in Religious Studies from a secular public University in Canada, now tenured faculty at a Canadian Seminary). Every year I go to secular academic conferences to present and hear research papers from around the world. Arguments from consensus are dangerous, since the majority can easily be wrong. Still, it is significant that I have never met a colleague holding a faculty position in ancient history at a University who doubts Jesus' existence. This is certainly not because of public pressure (some of the same people are deeply iconoclastic) but because the evidence satisfies all the reasonable standards that we can expect for 90% of the ancient world. Anyone who spends her/his time working with ancient history comes to recognize quickly that the evidence for Jesus' existence is very good. Those who continue to question Jesus' existence are consistently people without academic training, whose work hasn't passed the peer review process that helps to maintain rigour. It tends to be journalists, documentary makers, amateurs writing a blog, or (at most) academics whose training is in an entirely different field (not in ancient history). My point is not that the historical academics couldn't (in theory) be wrong. It's that historians (even those much more skeptical than I) recognize that the existence of Jesus is as well attested as we can usually hope for in the ancient world. If we doubt Jesus' existence then certainly we must doubt, say, Pythagoras who left no writings and is only described by much later writers.[7] There is also much better historical evidence for Jesus than for Gautama the Buddha, who was not treated in "outsider" accounts for much longer than Jesus.[8]

The trick, of course, is the term "verifiable" in the question. If one is looking for the kind of evidence that gives us measurable experimental data in the physical sciences, then no we won't be satisfied with the evidence. But if that is our standard we lose most of the past. The first Skeptics (of the post-Plato Academy) understood that we live in a world where the best we can usually do is probability, but that this doesn't make evidence or the degree of probability insignificant. So maybe what we can say is that the probability of Jesus' existence is much, much higher than the probability that he did not.

[1] This dating for Paul's writings is universally accepted among historians of the period and biblical scholars. See, e.g., Brown, Raymond E. An Introduction to the New Testament (New York: Doubleday, 1997), pp. 428-430.
[2] Of course, a neat reference is difficult when you're saying that something does not appear in a document. But take Paul's letter to the Corinthians as an example. He talks throughout about Jesus, and in 1 Corinthians 15:1ff. he offers argumentative evidence for his claim that Jesus was raised from the dead. But nowhere in the letter does he feel the need to argue in a similar way for Jesus' mere existence. His argumentative structure presumes that everyone in the audience takes it for granted. Similarly, in Matthew's Gospel we find that his resurrection narrative is geared to counter the claim that Jesus' disciples stole his body after the crucifixion (Matthew 28:11-15). The existence of Jesus, and his crucifixion by the Romans, is taken for granted. The same thing is evident in all of the NT books and the non-canonical Christian writings from the first to early-second centuries.
[3] Paul's geographic locations are evident from his authentic letters to churches that he founded: Galatians to various centres in Galatia (north-central Turkey), Philippians to Philippi (Macedonia), 1 Thessalonians to Thessalonica (Macedonia), Colossians to Colossae (Ionia in south-eastern Turkey--though some contest Pauline authorship of Colossians), 1 and 2 Corinthians to Corinth (at the top of the Peloponnesus of southern Greece). James is located in Jerusalem by first-hand accounts in Paul (Galatians 1) and possibly first-hand accounts in Acts (Acts 15 etc.). The Ephesian location for the disciple John is trickier and depends on second-century tradition. See the sections on each of these letters in Raymond Brown's introduction referenced above (Galatians, pp. 474-477; Philippians, pp. 483-485; 1 Thess, pp. 456-459; Colossians, pp. 599-601; Corinthian letters, pp. 511-515, 541-544; James, pp. 741-743; John in Ephesus, pp. 368-369).
[4] See Dunn, James D. G. Romans 1-8. Word Biblical Commentary 38A (Dallas: Word, 1988), pp. xlvi-xlvii.
[5] See, e.g., Romans 1:1-5; 3:25; and the allusions to crucifixion as the mode of Jesus' death in Romans 6.
[6] See the good treatment in volume 1 of Meier, John P. A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus (New York: Doubleday, 1991), pp. 56-69.
[7] See Riedweg, Christoph. "Pythagoras." Pages 276-281 in Brill's New Pauly: Encyclopedia of the Ancient World (Antiquity v. 12; Leiden: Brill, 2008).
[8] See the section on 'The Historical Buddha' in Reynolds, Frank E. and Charles Hallisey. "Buddha" in Encyclopedia of Religion, 2nd ed. (v. 2; Detroit: Thomson Gale), pp.1061-1062.
[9] On Josephus' clear and obvious Jewishness, with no Christian inclinations, see e.g. Altshuler, David. "Josephus Flavius" in Encyclopedia of Religion, 2nd ed. (v. 7; Detroit: Thomson Gale), pp. 4957-4958. Tessa Rajak, a major authority on Josephus, says that "Josephus was always a Jew, and, throughout his writing life, was preoccupied with Judaism..." and by "Judaism" here she does not mean Jewish Christ-believers (Rajak, Tessa. Josephus: The Historian and His Society, 2nd ed. [London: Duckworth, 2002], p. 11).

-- Ian W. Scott
Associate Professor of New Testament Studies at Tyndale Seminary in Toronto, Canada.
PhD from the department of Religious Studies at McMaster University in Hamilton, Canada.

(from - https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/1624/did-jesus-live )

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Almost all reputable historians believe that Jesus did exist. Why they believe this I will explain below.

...So what evidence is there for Jesus as a historical person?
We have no first-hand or contemporary sources to the life of Jesus and we have no archaeological remains to prove his existence. And this is not surprising - this is the case for the vast majority of pre-modern historical figures, including people who was much more famous in their own time than Jesus. Take someone Alexander the Great again, one of the most important figures in History. We have no first-hand sources and no remains. The best sources we have are written hundreds of years after his death. Even then, given the available historical evidence we assume Alexander existed, since a lot history is impossible to explain otherwise (and his invention would have required a vast conspiracy among historians in antiquity).
...Now lets examine the alternative hypothesis, that Jesus is a purely fictional or mythological figure. Even if that is the case, someone wrote (or composed, since it was initially an oral tradition) the sermon on the mount, the parables and so on, and created the narrative of his ministry, followers, crucifixion etc. This theory is really hard to believe, since the story about Jesus simply do not make sense as constructed fiction.
There are some urban legends circulating in dark corners of the internet about parallels between Jesus and the Horus myth or the Bacchus myth or some other myths which is supposed to the be "true origin" of the Jesus myth. Forget about this. Sure, there a few parallels across religion (ie. resurrection is a recurring theme, miracles surrounding the birth of demigods etc), but the vast majority or the religious content of the gospels are very specific Jewish culture. There are numerous references to mosaic law and the OT prophets, discussions about interpretations of the laws and tradition, references to temple cult, references to groups like Pharisees and Sadukees and references to the roman occupation. If Jesus is fictional, the author was without a doubt a first century Jew.
However if we look at it as a work of fiction it has some strange strange choices. If the purpose of the narrative is to show that Jesus was the Messiah / the Son of God, then why invent the story that he was crucified? Why don't say that he killed a thousand Romans with a flaming sword and then was lifted into the heavens by the hand of God or something like that?
This is the criterion of embarrassment. It states that if some account in the gospels is embarrassing to the Christians, they probably didn't make it up themselves! The crucifixion is the clearest example of this principle because this was absolutely not supposed to happen, and it did in no way help the Christians convince others that Jesus was the Messiah. (Note that the Messiah at this time was supposed to literally be a triumphant king beating the enemies and restoring the kingdom to its former glory. It was only after Christianity re-interpreted the prophecies we got the idea of the "spiritual messiah".)
-- Jacques B

Bart D. Ehrman; Did Jesus Exist?: The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth
https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/1624/did-jesus-live

http://www.garyhabermas.com/books/historicaljesus/historicaljesus.htm#ch9

The Roman historian and senator Tacitus referred to Christ, his execution by Pontius Pilate and the existence of early Christians in Rome in his final work, Annals (written ca. AD 116), book 15, chapter 44.[1]
The context of the passage is the six-day Great Fire of Rome that burned much of the city in AD 64 during the reign of Roman Emperor Nero.[2] The passage is one of the earliest non-Christian references to the origins of Christianity, the execution of Christ described in the Canonical gospels, and the presence and persecution of Christians in 1st-century Rome.[3][4]
Scholars generally consider Tacitus's reference to the execution of Jesus by Pontius Pilate to be both authentic, and of historical value as an independent Roman source.[5][6][7] Eddy and Boyd state that it is now "firmly established" that Tacitus provides a non-Christian confirmation of the crucifixion of Jesus.

THE PASSAGE AND ITS CONTEXT
The Annals passage (15.44), which has been subjected to much scholarly analysis, follows a description of the six-day Great Fire of Rome that burned much of Rome in July 64 AD.[3]
The key part of the passage reads as follows (translation from Latin by A. J. Church and W. J. Brodribb, 1876):
"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". 

http://www.gutenberg.us/articles/eng/Tacitus_on_Christ#cite_note-EddyB127-7
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tacitus_on_Christ

The Roman historian Suetonius (c. AD 69 – c. AD 122) mentions early Christians and may refer to Jesus Christ in his work Lives of the Twelve Caesars.[1][2][3]

In Claudius 25 Suetonius refers to the expulsion of Jews by Claudius and states (in Edwards' translation):[1]
"Since the Jews constantly made disturbances at the instigation of Chrestus, he expelled them from Rome."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suetonius_on_Christians

Slideshow
http://slideplayer.com/slide/3580905/

http://reasonsforjesus.com/jesus-exist-scholars-agree-certainly-existed/