Read the evidence

Four lines of evidence, examined honestly

Each brief sets out what the evidence is, what it establishes, what it does not establish, and the strongest objection a fair critic makes. A student who only ever meets the case for a claim has not been taught to reason. No account is needed to read any of this.

Read them in order — documents, corroboration, witnesses, verdict — or open the one a student is asking about. Each ends with two “Check yourself” questions.

1. 📜Brief 1 · The documentsManuscripts: how the text reached usEvery copy of the New Testament was written out by hand for roughly fourteen centuries before printing reached Europe. The question a historian asks is not whether copying introduced differences — it certainly did — but whether the differences can be traced and the earliest wording recovered.2 sections · what it establishes and does not · the objection · 2 check-yourself questions
2. 🏺Brief 2 · The corroborationOutside witnesses: what non-Christians reportedA witness with nothing to gain is worth more than a witness with everything to gain. Within roughly a century of the events, several Greek and Roman writers — none of them Christians, several of them hostile — mention Jesus and the movement that followed him.2 sections · what it establishes and does not · the objection · 2 check-yourself questions
3. 🗣️Brief 3 · The witnessesGospel testimony: reading four accounts honestlyThe Gospels are the central evidence and the most contested. Reading them as a historian does means asking what kind of documents they are, how they relate to one another, and what their agreements and differences can and cannot show.2 sections · what it establishes and does not · the objection · 2 check-yourself questions
4. ⚖️Brief 4 · The verdictThe Resurrection: building and testing the caseThis is the claim everything else turns on, and it is the one where the reasoning must be shown rather than asserted. The usual method is to start from what is broadly granted even by sceptical historians, then ask which explanation accounts for it best.2 sections · what it establishes and does not · the objection · 2 check-yourself questions