What contemporary references are there to Jesus outside of the Bible? [I Religion]

He lived 37-100AD. Contemporary enough to have known the facts about the early church and Jesus@Lila15

@Speedyman He was born after Jesus’ death. That’s not contemporary.

Read what I said. @Lila15

@Speedyman I did. "Contemporary" means "living at the same time and being a direct witness to events." Josephus was only "contemporary" in that he lived in roughly the same time period. It would be like Horace Greeley (born 1811) writing a news story about Thomas Jefferson (died 1826). Nobody would say Greeley was a "contemporary" of Jefferson, although 2000 years from now, they might seem to be.

Also, there are some questions about the Josephus account. Josephus was Jewish, and there's no evidence he converted to Christianity, so his statement that Jesus was the Messiah is suspect. That statement is missing from Arab records of the same writings, suggesting the passage was added by someone else. Josephus certainly didn't witness the resurrection; he was repeating what others told him. That passage mainly says that there was a Jesus and his followers were still around by the time Josephus was writing, which isn't in dispute.

By the way, I should tell you that I consider myself a Christian. But it's important not to misinterpret sources just because we like what we think they're saying.

We are talking in the context of ancient documents which are thousands of years old . There is absolutely no evidence to Josephus converted to Christianity So his evidence is actually more telling as it is a source outside of Christian circles. The missing statement may have been deleted by Arab sources because it was inconvenient for them. Of course Josephus was repeating what others told him. The fact is that the gospels are the Textually best attested ancient document. Far better than any other ancient document everyone just accepts as history. The only reason people do not accept them is because they do not want to believe@Lila15

@Speedyman Since Josephus never converted to Christianity, he would not have said Jesus was the Messiah because Jews do not believe he was. It would be like a Muslim saying Jesus was the son of God, or a Christian saying that Mohammed is the seal of the prophets. That implies the passage was an addition, not that it's missing from other sources. It's also possible that the original text was something like "Christians believe Jesus was the Messiah," which would be a true statement. Josephus wasn't talking about his own faith; he was commenting on the faith of others.

The discussion is about contemporary records of Jesus [b]besides[/b] the Gospels. Whether people "accept" them is a different story.

The sort of stuff that scholars have come up with about Josephus is of course highly subjective. It actually proves nothing at all. Some say that the references are authentic and some say not because they are too authentic! We have to realise that these men are just giving their opinion and it’s totally not factual. The fact is there are references to Jesus in Josephus’ script. But even without that Jesus is the best documented man in ancient history@Lila15