So, the Bible, then. Can it offer us some evidence?
Yes, some - but not much.
The Gospels
We don't know who wrote the gospels, the writers remain anonymous. They didn't sign the manuscripts, don't name themselves or even allude to who they are within it. All four are written in the third person, and never suggest, or even hint, that they personally witnessed any of the events they describe or reference anyone that they claim did. They don't tell us where they got their information or how they know it's true. The only thing that can be known for certain about the authors is that they weren't Matthew, Mark, Luke or John - or indeed any person who met a living Jesus.
Luke, for example, at the very beginning of his gospel is at great pains to tell Theophilus that he's producing his work having spent a long time investigating the claims "handed down to us" by those who were the first eyewitnesses and servants of the Lord. He never says what he's investigated or who the eyewitnesses are, but it's clear that a) he is not one of them, b) he's consulting material rather than speaking to people and c) is distanced from the original tellers by a substantial amount of time.
All four are written in Greek, so not the language native to Jesus & his disciples. They were also written, almost certainly, outside of Palestine (due to their ignorance about Palestinian geography and Jewish customs). So foreign accounts, written by foreigners in a foreign language.
Whoever wrote them, we can see that they were very highly educated - that they could write at all demonstrates this - and they were Christians. So, their accounts cannot be regarded as either unbiased or impartial.
All of this, if nothing else, demonstrates that they weren't written by the disciples who were meant to be humble, working men.
Regarding literacy in the Roman Empire at the time, Bart Ehrman (Professor of Religious Studies & NT scholar) says: "Illiteracy was widespread throughout the Roman Empire. At the best of times maybe 10% of the population was roughly literate. And that 10% would be the leisured classes - upper class people who had the time and money to get an education".
It would be ridiculous indeed to even try to suggest that a Galilean fisherman, for example, could read and write in his own language, let alone a foreign one. They probably knew a few Greek Koine words (as well as Latin), as it was becoming the lingua franca of the region, but Aramaic was their native language.
Dating them is very difficult indeed because there are no outside sources to reference. We can only go by what the gospels themselves tell us. Carbon dating and so on is useless because no original copy survives - the earliest fragment we have is the P25 (a scrap, nothing more) that was produced in the middle of the 2nd century.
It's believed that Mark is the first gospel written and since he directly references the destruction of the Temple at Jerusalem we know it can't have been written any earlier than AD70, which is when that happened. Traditionally, Christians (who would prefer to be able to prove it was produced earlier) have tried to suggest that the reference to the Temple was "prophetic". Supernatural claims like that have no place in sensible discussion, so that's all I'll say.
Matthew is believed to have been written next, a generation or so later, followed by Luke & then John. The writers did not know each other personally.
It's really important to stress that the ONLY clues available for the dating of these is what is said within the gospels themselves, and they don't even hint as to when they were written. There exists no historical or archaeological evidence that proves these gospels even existed at the time, let alone when they were written. So the reality must be that they could have been written much, much later. We just don't know.
The first reliable mention the gospels get from an external source is towards the end of the second century. The earliest church fathers don't mention them before this.
It's possible that Justin Martyr might mention them half way through the 2nd century, but this is not altogether clear. He quotes from the "Memoirs of the Apostles" but no one knows what that is. It might be the gospels, but it's an odd thing to refer to them as and the quotes he uses only vaguely correspond to something written in Matthew. The "Memoirs of the Apostles" could equally be a shared source that is now lost - as lots and lots have been.
Lee Strobel, a lawyer and journalist, claims that he found over 200 direct quotations from the gospels within Justin Martyr's work. He fails to say that most of them are repetitions (it's the same very few quotations over and over again) and there's nothing "direct" about them. An actual scholar and expert in these matters, Constantin von Tischendorf (who found one of the most important NT copies) could only find two - and, as I said, they are only tenuously similar to anything in Matthew.
So, we can only reliably say that the gospels are known to have existed in the late 2nd century.
I am NOT saying this is when they were written, just that we don't really know & have no way of finding out with any certainty.
So, what we have is four accounts written, at the very least, a generation after the events they describe by people who weren't there to see it, and didn't personally speak to anyone who was. They rely heavily on each other for their information (Matthew & Luke use Mark, for example) and other sources now lost to us (in particular the hypothetical Q source). We have no external data of any kind at all to try and assess whether what they say is true, so we have to take their words for it.
This would be easier to do if they managed to be consistent in the stories they tell - but they don't. At all. We'll come to that, I expect.
This is good, solid evidence that Jesus existed? In what universe?
Paul
Paul is useless when trying to establish historicity for Jesus since, if we go by the letters that are known to have been written by him, he never mentions any aspect of Jesus's life on Earth. He appears not to have known anything about it - and this is meant to be the father of Christianity, the founder of the church!
He only mentions the death & resurrection of Jesus and gives every appearance of believing that these events took place in a spiritual way & in some other realm. If Jesus lived as and died as a human being on this planet, the fact seems to have passed Paul by.
Christians tend to say that a) he knew this stuff but didn't talk about it because it wasn't in his remit and b) there's a lot of material where he does, but it's lost.
I would think the single most important "fact" about Jesus is that he lived on Earth as a man, and not all that long before Paul himself lived. If I was him it's the very first thing I would tell people.
We can't hypothesise documents then try to use them for evidence. Of course Paul MAY have written about this in other letters (we know that lots have been lost), but he equally may not have done. We can only go by what we physically have - and when it comes to Paul, that is precious little.
Go to it, people 