Original subtitles

Jesus Christ is the key figure in the New Testament, the son of God.

The stories of his healings,

his miracles and even his arrest and crucifixion are legendary,

but who was he?

Was he really Yeshua Ben Yosef and was he the real King of the Jews?

Or maybe just a humble carpenter?

Was he a rabbi?

Or did he have a relationship, maybe even a marriage, to Mary Magdalene?

And what really happened to Jesus?

Was he crucified here in Jerusalem?

Or as some claim, was he smuggled out of the city alive?

And above all, just what historical evidence is there

that any of this actually happened?

This historical Jesus is a complete enigma.

It's almost as if he didn't exist.

What we have is a character that was created hundreds of years later.

He was a religious leader, a preacher from 2,000 years ago,

he was the Messiah prophesized in the old Testament.

He was the son of God, who came to become the central figure

in Christianity. There are two things to realise about Jesus.

One, he really existed.

And two, he was not remotely like the Jesus of the Gospels.

Any traditions about historical Jesus were purely oral,

something Christians might have talked about.

Gospel writers also borrowed stuff from other religions.

We know for absolute certainty

that he was baptised and he was crucified.

In between those two events,

he was a Jewish religious teacher, who cultivated

an enormous following, which still continues to this day.

We all know the Jesus of the Bible, his healings, his miracles,

his trial and his crucifixion.

And you would presume that all of those events would be part of the

historical record, but the problem is, they aren't.

The historical Jesus is something of a mystery.

Jesus was a Jewish religious leader from 2,000 years ago.

The conventional story is the kings anticipated his birth.

His mother didn't have sex.

It was an immaculate conception.

He starts his mission at 30.

Quite a rebel. The Romans get a bit, you know, worried about him.

He's crucified, died and is resurrected three days later.

Well, personally, I wouldn't say that the Jesus, as written

and evoked in the Bible did exist

in that way because he did all sorts of miracles and he kind of

floated up to heaven and back down again.

I don't think any of that happened.

But I think we can say that the historical Jesus,

as in someone for whom there is an empirical evidence that he actually

existed, is true.

What we think we know from the Gospels is he was an apocalyptic

preacher from a particularly rough end of the Roman Empire, Galilee.

Got himself into trouble with the priests in Jerusalem.

Crucified by the Romans and died.

And that's all we know for certain about the historical Jesus.

So, what are the references to Jesus in the writings of the time?

What are the facts that a whole religion has been based on?

The truth is, well, not many.

Flavius Josephus, a Jewish historian from the time of Jesus,

only makes two references to him and one of these is debatable.

Josephus' writings cover a number of figures familiar to Bible readers.

He discusses John the Baptist, James, the brother of Jesus,

Pontius Pilate, the high priests, and the Pharisees.

But Jesus, the son of God, is at best only mentioned twice.

This is probably the most famous passage in Josephus and by far

the most controversial. "At this time, there was a wise man

"called Jesus and his conduct was good

"and he was known to be virtuous.

"Many people among the Jews and other nations became his disciples.

"Pilate condemned him to be crucified and to die.

"But those who had become his disciples

"did not abandon his discipleship. They reported he had appeared

"to them three days after his crucifixion and he was alive.

"Accordingly, he was perhaps the Messiah."

The great Roman Jewish historian from Jerusalem, Josephus,

he writes about everything,

every little detail about life in Judaea at this time, except Jesus.

Actually, he does mention the word Messiah, but even that

mention of the word Messiah tells scholars that's not what a

Jewish man would call the Christos.

He does not call it Christianity.

So, it is an indication that it's a fraud, that was added later.

The Jewish Messiah was supposed to be, pure and simple,

a great military leader, who would kick the Romans out.

And obviously, Jesus failed on that count, totally.

But the whole idea of being the son of God was grafted on by

himself and/or the early Christians.

In the Epistles of St Paul, written 25 years after Jesus' death,

it is claimed Jesus was executed by Pilate.

We know for a fact that Pontius Pilate did exist.

The Roman writer Tacitus wrote about a Christos being insulted by Nero

over a fire in Rome,

but it would appear that all mentions of Christ or Jesus were

actually second-hand retelling of other accounts.

Nothing at all was direct.

The Roman historian Tacitus is interesting because he uses the

right phrase, the Christos,

but the earliest copy we have of what he wrote is the 11th century.

The first reference of his work is the 15th century.

So, it just adds to the belief that this is in hindsight someone adding

some elements to his writing, talking about Christianity,

that they had learned and heard about much after the event.

It is extraordinary because religion demands certainty.

And the one thing we don't have about Jesus is certainty.

The story that you now have was manufactured decades and hundreds of

years later. The very first references we have in the Gospels

don't come until 60 years after his death and the texts go through many,

many evolutions,

so the process of making Jesus into Christ, the God, is a long one,

happening all over the Roman Empire, for centuries.

I think we have to realise about the early Christians is they thought

Jesus was coming back any moment now,

so they saw no reason to write anything down about him.

About 40, 50 years later, they are thinking, "Uh-oh, he is not coming back, is he?"

And also, you've got the Romans crushing the Jews and Christians in

Jerusalem and suddenly there was this rush to write the life of Jesus

down and there's about 40, 50 Gospels circulating, not just four.

So you get this... You get this created character

and different writers borrowing from each other.

There are common themes we can make out, but basically,

he's an apocalyptic preacher, he gets himself crucified,

and his disciples suffer a kind of post-traumatic stress

after the event.

If the Jesus Christ story in the Bible

was actually based on real people and real places,

then the so-called garden tomb in Jerusalem

is an interesting place to investigate.

Dr Eyal Miron is a leading Jewish scholar and has agreed to show me

this historical site.

So, this is the garden tomb, is that right?

Yes, indeed. This is the garden tomb.

And actually, what they have here is a tomb supposedly from the second

temple period, which was probably the tomb where Jesus was buried in.

Right. So, the tomb itself predates Jesus?

Now, in actuality,

the tomb itself belongs to the first temple period, which is much,

much earlier than the time of Jesus.

I would say about 800 years before the time of Jesus.

Right.

But it has been altered since then.

What you see in front of you at the moment are the carvings and toolings

of the bedrock done during the Crusader era, including,

for instance,

this beautiful channel which is actually a trough used

by the Crusaders for their horses, and donkeys.

There was a stable here in the 12th century.

You see, this is kind of how I had imagined Jesus's tomb to look like,

but maybe with a big... Was there a rock that was rolled in front of the

tomb? Well, you would expect to have a rock here, a rolling stone.

According to what we know about burial during the second temple

period, that was... Not a typical way of burial,

but you find it in some major sites, major burial sites.

So, the channel looks like it occupied a rolling stone.

However, as I said, this channel is much, much later.

It's 1,200 years after the time of Jesus.

And even though we do have here a nice rolling stone, this one over

here, it is not original.

It was brought here from somewhere else and it has got

nothing to do with burial here.

The garden tomb is a fascinating alternative,

a true site, potentially,

of where Jesus was buried and you go there today and it just feels right.

And it is just very understated,

the people who sort of take you around there are not pushing it down

your throat that this is the site where he was buried,

but it is the kind of place that looks like where it would have

happened and burials here go back to the fifth century or further BC,

so it really ticks a lot of boxes.

It looks rather grand.

Is that how a man of Jesus' stature would have been buried?

Well, actually, it is quite small. Ignore the facade here.

This was done much, much later than the time of the burial here.

During the burial period, that would be a rock scarp

and there would be a nice little hole here, opening into

a very small and cosy chamber for burial.

And that's exactly what I'm going to show you in a moment.

So, it was actually quite small. People like Jesus,

even though he was tried as a rebel and even though he was crucified,

they would be turned over to the families to be buried properly,

according to Jewish custom.

We do know that because we have such an example in archaeology.

In Jerusalem, in the 1970s, the skeleton of a Jew called Jehohanan,

the son of Hagkol, was discovered in the north side of Jerusalem.

And an 11 centimetre nail was actually pierced into his heel bone,

so this is the only archaeological evidence of crucifixion that we have

in the entire world.

And he was buried properly in a typical Jewish burial place.

I would expect that the same happened with Jesus.

Can we take a look inside? Yes, of course. Please, be my guest.

The garden tomb is definitely part of the Jesus tourism,

the theme park that is Jerusalem.

But it has certain elements going for it.

I mean, we just don't know whether it was Jesus' tomb or not.

It could have been. It certainly dates from before his time.

It could have been.

One major point, though, with all of these places, even if they are not

genuine, they are hallowed by belief by generations of believers,

who pour their faith and their emotion into it.

So, what we actually see here is actually the tomb following the tomb

of Jesus, in the byzantine era. That's about 300-400 years later.

And these alterations made the tomb look the way it looks today with

these bathtubs or troughs for the burial of the bodies.

We have one here, two there, third one over there.

But originally, the First Temple tomb would look a bit different.

There would be shelves, on which the bodies would be put on,

just like bed at home.

In your opinion, is this the tomb of Jesus?

It's very hard to tell. The tomb existed in the time

of Jesus, but according to the New Testament,

in the Gospels, it says that Jesus was buried in a new tomb.

In the time of Jesus, this tomb was already 800 years old.

So, the evidence of the New Testament suggests that this wasn't

Jesus' tomb? Indeed, indeed.

If the evidence in the New Testament does in fact rule out the garden

tomb as Jesus' burial place,

perhaps the next location will prove more promising.

Many Christians believe that the actual site of the crucifixion and

the burial of Jesus Christ can be found in the

Church of the Holy Sepulchre, right in the heart of Jerusalem.

Could Jesus' body really have been crucified and entombed

all at the same location?

This is it. Well, yes, Jamie.

Indeed, this is the Holy Sepulchre Church.

As you can see, it is indeed quite busy today.

For many Christians all over the world, this is the holiest site on

Earth. This is the place where Jesus was crucified,

this is the place of burial and it is also the place of resurrection.

Can we go and take a look? By all means.

Some people believe that at the time of Jesus,

this site would have been outside the much smaller walled city of

Jerusalem. If true, then the location is supported

by the Biblical claim that Jesus' tomb was indeed

somewhere outside the city.

What's going on here?

Well, basically, Jamie, what we see here is the Unction stone.

According to the Gospel of John,

once the body of Jesus was taken down from the cross,

it was laid down and his disciples prepared it for burial.

According to the local tradition,

this is the actual place where that took place.

And these pilgrims coming in, touching the stone,

rubbing it with all sorts of souvenirs that they would take back

home as blessed souvenirs. OK. So, they would touch this there?

You can touch it. Yes, of course.

And people would travel all around the world to do this,

to touch the stone? Absolutely.

It's the peak of the experience here in Jerusalem,

the entire Holy Sepulchre Church and of course,

touching the place where the body of Christ once lay.

And what would it mean to touch the stone or rub your souvenirs on the

stone, that it becomes blessed or...? It becomes blessed, yes.

And it is indeed one of the only places

where you can actually touch holiness.

You have to remember that the Romans raised Jerusalem.

Josephus says that anyone who went would never have known even a city

had been there. So, whatever archaeological vestiges

there were of Jesus' time were gone.

The Romans wiped them off the face of the Earth.

When we are thinking about sites

now that are the holy sites of Jerusalem,

one has to bear that in mind and realise these were recognised later.

So the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, for example,

is a Byzantine creation by the Empress Halina.

This comes along in the 300s. That's three centuries after Jesus.

The garden tomb is discovered in the 20th-century.

All of these areas have traditions that grew up around them,

but fundamentally, they are later and they are added onto a city that

had been thoroughly erased.

OK. So, what have we got here?

So, we have just entered the Chapel of Adam.

According to medieval traditions, on this rock, the rock of Golgotha,

Jesus was crucified.

And you can actually see the rock itself preserved behind this little

window. According to legend, the skull of Adam was actually

entombed right under the cross and a drop

of blood came down on the skull of Adam and he momentarily resurrected.

Hang on, I thought that Jesus was crucified on Calvary?

True. Calvary is actually the name of the site.

It comes from the word meaning skull,

but we actually talk about a rock scarp, on which his cross was

positioned, and this is the basis of that rock scarp.

In a moment, we will be on top of that at the site of Calvary.

Right. But that's also Calvary.

OK. It's a chapel at the basis of Calvary.

I think I understand. And what have we got next?

The actual site of the cross.

Shall we go and take a look? Yeah, let's go.

It seems rather convenient

and suspicious that at such a compact site,

it's almost like a kind of Disney World for people that believe in

Jesus Christ, that you can go there, get your fill, get your little

souvenirs, and then leave. And much of this dates back to the Crusades,

but that in itself was 1,000 years after the events depicted.

So I think even, you know, the most kind of well believing

Christian would be entitled to feel a little bit of doubt.

How do we know it was this exact spot?

But I guess that's not really the point.

They just want to go to Jerusalem and feel a part of it,

so whether it was this patch of grass or this one is neither here

nor there, if you are going to enjoy everlasting life.

This is quite something. So, what's this?

This is the top of the rock we've seen earlier in the Chapel of Adam.

Right. We were at the foot of the bedrock,

now we are at the top of the rock scarp and according to tradition,

this is the precise location place.

This looks beautiful. Yeah.

You can actually see Jesus in the middle.

You can see Mary, his mother, and John, the apostle.

And the inscription on top of his head.

Basically, the title of his crime.

Claiming to be the king of the Jews, in Greek, Latin and Hebrew.

Identifying the place of crucifixion is completely guesswork.

It is taking scripture and then trying to basically cram real places

into the Bible and when you go to the Holy Sepulchre, you think,

this doesn't look like where Jesus was crucified.

It's not even on a hill. It's inside the city wall.

It doesn't make sense. But, you know, it was all about the faith.

OK, Jamie, we are entering the holy of holies.

Wow! This is it.

The Holy Sepulchre Church. This chamber is the Chamber of the Angel,

where the women who came to Jesus' tomb after the resurrection saw the

angel waiting for them. And this is the inner sanctum.

This is truly the holy of holies for many Christians.

This is Jesus' tomb here? This is Jesus' tomb.

Oh, wow!

That's amazing!

I know it doesn't look much of a tomb because it is now covered with

these slabs, stone slabs,

which are much, much later than the time of Jesus.

But it was taken out a couple of months ago by an archaeological team

from Athens and, yes, there is a tomb underneath.

And it is a part of a cave, in which this is just one of the benches

or one of the places where the bodies would be put on.

So, as far as the Bible is concerned and millions of Christians around

the world, this is the tomb of Christ?

Indeed. For us, as historians, archaeologists, people of the

academy, this is a genuine Jewish tomb from around the time of Jesus.

So the only evidence,

the only archaeological evidence we have of Jesus' tomb is the fact that

it was a tomb at the right time? Indeed. And it's not alone.

There are other tombs around us and they all belong to a cemetery from

the Second Temple period.

Regardless of the historical evidence,

it's still an extraordinary place. It is an amazing... It feels...

Different. You can't help but feel...

I totally agree with you. It's a special place, right? It is, indeed. Indeed.

A rational mind respectfully,

is going to question whether or not the historical site is what it says

it is. Is it really the site of the crucifixion?

And a few feet away where he was laid down after the cross and then

buried? It is uncertain when this all became a bit of a pilgrim site,

but it appears to have been a symbolic representation for the

story, which itself is allegorical.

But it's a symbolic representation of where it happened.

Historians today would tell you, no, that doesn't make any sense.

They all wouldn't have happened in the same place and it would have

been outside the city walls, not within.

The problem with the historical Jesus is, where is the evidence?

Yes, the locations,

the physical places that Jesus was said to have visited do exist.

But what proof is there that he was actually there?

Marty Friedlander is a local guide in Jerusalem who has agreed to show

me some of the key sites that Jesus is said to have visited

in Jerusalem, according to the New Testament.

So when we look at the Biblical evidence of Jesus

in the New Testament, what do the Gospels tell us?

Specifically, in terms of where we are now?

Oh, funny you should mention it.

Just over this wall, behind that building, is the Bethesda pool.

Which is mentioned in the Book of John,

where Jesus performs his first miracle here in Jerusalem.

He restores a... Well, he takes a handicapped gentleman who

has a hard time getting to the pool

in time, and apparently there's a ripple of the water.

Once a day and the first guy who was able to jump in, he'll be healed.

OK, but if we discount the more miraculous stories in the

New Testament, because I want to focus more on the history,

I want to get some proof of Jesus' existence.

What other places nearby would help us with that?

Well, just over that way is where the Temple stood.

And that, the platform on which the Dome of the Rock is built today,

it's the same platform on which Jesus and every other Jew who was

making a pilgrimage up to Jerusalem, they would have walked on.

That's legit.

Is there any archaeological evidence of Jesus' existence?

That's a tough one and I would say the answer's got to be no.

Have we scientific proof that yes,

this is the cross on which he was crucified?

No. And it boils down to, do you believe it?

And if you want to believe it,

then you'll make sure that you'll wrap your scientific mind around and

say, yes, this is proof.

Virtually everything was lost by the Romans,

the great suppression after the rebellions.

But the one thing that remains probably accurate

is the Via Dolorosa,

which is where Jesus is supposed to have carried the cross from Pilate,

to the site of the crucifixion.

That must be accurate, for the simple reason it's the only direct

route from the two points.

And the Romans used it.

So, is this the Via Dolorosa we're on now?

Yeah, we're about to strut officially the Via Dolorosa at the

first station of the cross. OK,

and what does that mean when you're talking about stations of the cross?

It means the stations along the way of the suffering

of Jesus, from station one would be, when he's being sentenced to death,

culminating in station 13 and 14, when he is already being placed in

the tomb at the end of the line. So, what have we got through here?

Entering the second station of the cross. OK. What does that mean?

It means, first station, Jesus is being sentenced.

Yeah. In this case,

literally right across the street, according to the current geography,

and then he's being handed over to the Roman police, who were going

to be executing the sentence.

And that's here? This is going to be here.

It's really easy for us to forget that there were dozens and probably

dozens of messiahs that came into Jerusalem,

knowing that the Old Testament had prophesied that a Messiah would come

and rescue the Jews.

So time and time again, here comes a Messiah, he's got a cross,

he's on a donkey, there's palm trees,

he's got a cult of followers and the Jewish elders must've been

just rolling their eyes. Not another one! Really?

Jesus Christ? That's what your name is? OK. Next!

If he was the person the Bible says he was,

then he was a political agitator. As a political agitator,

he would have been crucified by the Romans and his body would have been

either left to rot on a cross,

or thrown on the rubbish heaps to the dogs.

If there were various Christians that wrote this story and it was a

myth, do you not think they would have come up with a different method of having their Messiah die?

Because it's a pretty brutal, horrible way of dying?

No. Because it's grounded in fact that the Romans did in fact,

crucify people in public.

There was an ossuary,

a little bone box found here in Jerusalem in a construction site,

that found a heel bone with a nail still stuck in it.

So, he wasn't the only person crucified. So we know crucifixions happened. That's a historical fact.

We know that how they used to kill prisoners. Correct.

The Romans believed in upholding the most stringent,

rigorous form of discipline.

They hated anyone that represented a threat to law and order,

and Jesus created disturbances in the temple.

And he was seen to be generating a kind of, an independent power base,

because people were loyal to him and him only.

Like above and beyond the Roman empire.

So, they treated him as they treated such people who tended to

challenge the status quo, brutally.

And, that led to his arrest and eventually his savage execution.

I don't think that the Jewish establishment had such an issue with him. I think he was one of the many

agitators, from the sticks or from the cities,

but they certainly weren't going to say,

we must put this fellow to death.

That was not the Jewish character. Right.

It was certainly in character was for the Romans...

The Roman Empire keeps itself in business by being incredibly violent

and murderous and putting out any sort of

spark of rebellion at the get go.

And that's what he represented to them.

What people don't really get is that Jesus wasn't important in his own

day. He was barely known.

And to put him in context,

in the year that he's commonly thought to have died, AD 33,

Pontius Pilate executed by crucifixion

300 would-be messiahs in Jerusalem.

Jesus was just one of them.

I'm curious to unravel the mystery of the crucifixion.

According to some,

it took place with the Church of the Holy Sepulchre stands today,

but others argued that they always took place outside of the city

walls. And some believe that they know the spot, near the Mount of

Olives, a very remote place at the time.

Doctor Eyal Miron knows the site well, and has agreed

to show me the possible location where Jesus was crucified.

So, what's this site?

Well, this bustling bus park would have been, according to some,

the actual crucifixion site in the Second Temple period.

Amazingly as it looks. Really? Yes.

The New Testament doesn't actually specify the location of the crucifixion. It just...

The Gospels say that it was done in a place called Golgotha,

meaning the Skull Hill, or just the skull actually.

And in 1883, an Englishman called Charles Gordon

who visited Jerusalem and stated right

up there at the top of the wall,

was watching this area and he saw something that...

It can hardly be seen today, but if you look at this picture,

taken from the beginning of the 20th century,

you can see what he was actually seeing.

This is the hill, and you can see that there are two caves here,

looking like eyes.

And then you have the mouth and maybe a nose over here.

So it does look like a skull. And this is in this rock face here?

The skull? And that's exactly it.

So he said maybe this is the Skull Hill.

And if he is right, then the crucifixion might have taken place

right here. And there would have been crosses all the way...

Well, either all the way up here, or down here for people to see.

You'd like it to be closer to the public.

So, would you say Jesus' crime fits the punishment at the time?

Most scholars would agree that he was considered to be a rebel,

because he... When Pilate asks him, are you the king of Jews?

He replies, "You said it."

Meaning, he doesn't deny that.

So, if someone claims that he is the king of the Jews,

when there's an emperor in the Roman empire, that means

that he's a rebel. In that case, he will be crucified.

Many of the sites associated with Jesus Christ today,

particularly the ones that draw in so many visitors,

are of quite a spurious fabrication.

It'd have sense of, a site of pilgrimage.

So, people coming in coaches to see where Christ was crucified,

where he was buried.

I question how they could possibly know what precise spot all these

epochal events took place on.

When you're at the side of the crucifixion, there's these benches.

And you sit down at the benches and you think, OK, I'm going

to feast my eyes on something profound and something really

moving, perhaps a recreation of the three crosses.

And perhaps, you know, a recreation of Mary Magdalene

and all of the Mary and Joseph of Arimathea...

No! All you see is buses!

It's the crudest, unsanctified thing you can imagine!

The New Testament is a full narrative of the stories of Jesus in

and around Jerusalem, leading up to his crucifixion.

In the garden of Gethsemane,

in the Last Supper room and walking down the Via Dolorosa.

But in recent years,

a different site has interested scholars and experts.

It's a place located in the suburbs of Jerusalem

and is called the Talpiot Tomb.

Now, I've been told that on the third floor of this, I have to say,

unassuming apartment block, there is

an outdoor terrace.

And it's on this terrace that this remarkable discovery was made.

Well, it wasn't quite what I was expecting, but beneath this stone

slab, here in this Jerusalem suburb, is the Talpiot Tomb.

Now, it contains ten ossuaries, six inscribed with epigraphs,

including one interpreted as Jesus, son of Joseph.

Not this inscription was partially legible, and its

translation and interpretation has been widely disputed.

There are so many tourist sites in Jerusalem that when you approach

this tomb, you expect it to be decorated like all the rest.

But it's not. There's cats crawling on top of it,

it's open to the elements, those railings,

there's nothing about it that says, we value this.

We think that this is authentic. Not at all what you'd expect

from somebody who has buried the son of God here.

A controversial documentary film,

The Lost Tomb of Jesus was produced in 2007 by director James Cameron

and investigative archaeologist Simcha-Jacobovici

and it grabbed the world's attention.

They claimed that this was the Jesus family tomb.

And that one of the ossuaries

contained the remains of Jesus of Nazareth.

And that he hadn't risen from the dead.

The controversy was huge, making headlines around the world.

Had the tomb of Jesus been found at last?

Amid all the hullabaloo surrounding the documentary,

a whole host of historians,

archaeologists and scholars came forward to pouring gallons of water

on top of Cameron and Jacobovici's claims.

Apparently, this tomb had been discovered years earlier and largely

dismissed as unimportant.

The result was, the discovery never showed the documentary again and the

whole thing, and the space of just over a week,

went from headline news to a widely discredited theory.

This could have been the greatest discovery of all time.

The tomb of Jesus Christ,

with James Cameron and all his credibility behind it.

But no, it ends up being a fraud.

And can you imagine the disappointment,

because the whole world kind of went, wow, now this is...

Oh, it's a fraud. Never mind.

You only have to Google Jesus to realise that he's one of the largest

industries and businesses on the planet.

And we live in an age when people require proof of things.

There's so many elements competing for attention,

that proof is now the gold standard.

So it's not surprising that people have come up with all sorts of bogus

archaeology that proves Jesus.

Examples of that are the Talpiot Tomb, or the James ossuary,

both of these in the 1980s and in the 2000s,

turned out to be fraudulent attempts by people to put in front of the

public, artefacts they say come from the time of Jesus.

In this case, burial ossuaries.

But all of them, ultimately, fake.

The whole Talpiot Tomb phenomenon really, shows how

desperate people are to puncture the story of the son of God.

To literally bring him down to Earth, because the idea Christians

have, of course, is that Jesus was taken bodily into Heaven.

Therefore there would be no body left, no bones, nothing.

And to find a tomb, or an ossuary, which has bits of bone in it,

belonging to Jesus,

well, that shows you how wrong the Church has been, doesn't it?

The curious thing for me is that a number of academics across the

world can find no hard evidence for the existence of Jesus.

Beyond faith, are there even any facts that can help to uncover the

mystery and corroborate the stories?

I got in touch with self-proclaimed agnostic, and Australian author,

Raphael Lataster.

So Raphael, do you think the man known as Jesus in the New Testament

actually existed?

I am actually a Jesus agnostic, but I do favour the atheist view.

I think that Jesus probably did not exist.

Because the sources for Jesus,

I think there's a lot of problems with that.

And an alternative theory about

Christian origins I think is much more plausible.

Because presumably, someone had to start Christianity, right?

Yes, and I think that someone is someone like Paul.

Not necessarily Paul the apostle, but someone like Paul.

Paul, who gives us the earliest

Christian sources, he speaks of the Celestial Son of Man,

who some Jews at the time already believed in.

And this person, in my view, became... Evolved to become

the Jesus we know and love. And I think someone just like Paul,

basically started Christianity, they thought they had visions of the

Celestial Son of Man, just like Paul did.

I think it'll be fair to say that Yeshua Ben Yosef was a real living,

breathing human being. Probably not a God.

Not the son of God, as far as we know.

However, about 100 or 150 years later,

when people came to compile the sort of definitive versions of the

scriptures of the New Testament, they had this urgent demand.

This sort of urgent impulse to transform the man into a sort of

divine superhero and craft a story,

a series of stories that were completely unforgettable and would

have such a transformative impact on people's life.

So, it was the later writers, mythologizing the real sort of,

human being from 150 years earlier.

Some of the more miraculous events in the Gospels,

turning water into wine,

I think we can kind of discount those, but it seems to me,

feasible that a man existed and was causing problems for the Romans.

That doesn't seem that unlikely to me.

And regarding miracles and claims about gods,

yes, these things almost certainly didn't happen with our current

naturalistic understandings of science and how the world works.

But, you're right, the idea of a historical Jesus.

It shouldn't seem that implausible.

However, when you really look at the evidence and you see that there's a

lot of problems in the writings of Paul, who is one of the...

Who actually is the earliest Christian author,

and you see him not talking about historical Jesus,

and you see the best sources that we have are the Gospels.

And there's plenty of questions about the reliability of those

sources, you start thinking, OK, there's problems here.

I obviously think that it is more probable than not that he didn't

even exist, but even if he did, we're dealing with ancient history

and you're dealing with religious biases.

You've got religious biases coming from all around you.

You've got the Jews and the Christians and the Muslims.

You've got thousands of years separating us.

I think it's going to be very difficult for you to find some solid

evidence that Jesus existed.

I mean, you can find the manuscript, you could find a statue.

I might believe in my tour guide's claims,

how do we know this really does go back to Jesus?

We just... We don't know.

You have to be... When it comes to history, when it comes to life in

general, but especially when it comes to history, you have to have a

certain level of Agnosticism. You can't know for sure.

And with ancient history, it's even worse.

Jerusalem and its relationship with Jesus Christ is clearly important

to many Christians.

The masses flock to see the Biblical sites

where their Messiah once stood, believing without doubt he did

preach here, did aggravate the Romans,

and was indeed crucified somewhere in this city.

Throughout history, we've had one Jesus.

Fascinatingly, now we have two.

People look at Jesus, the religious figure.

And Jesus, the historical figure.

And that's now ingrained and accepted.

Christians can't have it both ways. They say, I know in my heart

that Jesus is the son of God and he loves me etc.

But look, if you look in the Bible,

he went there and he did this at this time and look who was emperor

at the time and you can pin it down it down historically, can't you?

But actually, most of the time, you can't.

And, they're confusing their emotions with the facts.

But the man who lived was just a man.

It sounds a bit harsh to say we have been hoodwinked.

But we have.

There was a character that they wanted to make out to be very,

very special, that we could look up to.

A character that was a conduit to God.

But that character never existed.

In a court of law, no jury would say, yes,

the historical evidence proves it. On the contrary.

And over time, the institutions kind of said, hm,

people believe this happened, we can use that.

People forgot it was allegory.

It was sacred. But it wasn't historical.

They are two of the great questions today.

Did Jesus Christ really exist?

And was his incredible story actually true?

It's the basis of the New Testament and fundamental to Christianity.

And whilst the city of Jerusalem and all it's sites are there for

everyone to see, there is so little tangible physical evidence

that a man known as Yeshua Ben Yosef was ever here.

There are a few historical references to him,

but most written reports start at least a century after his death.

And as a result, the questions remain.

So perhaps we should add a third question?

Does actually proving his existence, his life and his deeds,

really matter? Or is faith enough?

I'll see you next time.