Julius and Jesus
I came across a claim made by John C. Wright in a larger piece he wrote about scepticism. Looking around, I found other people online making a similar claim:
โThere is more and firmer historical evidence for the resurrection of Christ than there is for the assassination of Caesar.โ
https://scifiwright.com/2026/10/blind-faith-in-skepticism/
He also claimed directly afterwards that there is more evidence for the miracles at Lourdes than for the Big Bang, but that comparison is of two things so unlike each other in terms of phenomenon and what counts as evidence that it makes for an unwieldy discussion.
The resurrection-v-assassination does feel more tractable. We have two events and two historical figures. Jesus died (or left) in about 33 CE, and Julius Caesar died in 44 BCE, both within the extent of Roman civilisation, so while the two events are separated by several decades, they arenโt from vastly different eras.
Before we go further, we need to consider what evidence is. There are multiple competing models of evidence in the philosophy of logic, but in general, evidence lends support to the belief that a proposition is true. Evidence doesnโt guarantee truth; it can be of varying quality. We expect it to be cumulative (more is better), but in some cases evidence may be contradictory (i.e. two pieces of evidence may support a claim when looked at separately, but when looked at together, the two pieces are in conflict).
For historical evidence, we also need to consider how detailed the claim is. For example, the assassination of Julius Caesar is believed to have occurred on 15 March, but imagine we found an eyewitness account of the event that dated it as 10 March? Is this positive or negative evidence? It supports that the assassination took place but contradicts the date. Put another way, it supports the claim โJulius Caesar was assassinatedโ but undermines the claim that โJulius Caesar was assassinated on March 15โ.
The issue of the nature of the claim is of particular import given one of the claims is โthe resurrection of Christโ. There is scant physical evidence of people returning to life after being dead for many hours, but thatโs holding the claim to an unachievable standard. In terms of the kind of evidence that might exist, by the โresurrectionโ we should judge by a set of events that there could have been human eyewitnesses to: i.e. Jesus died, his body was placed somewhere, and then, sometime afterwards, he was seen alive. This is not being overly generous to Wrightโs claim.
Imagine if tomorrow, a historical dig found documents that could be accurately dated (somehow) to Jerusalem 33 CE written by an impartial observer stating that a man known to have been executed by the Roman authorities was seen by the observer alive the following day. Such a document would be incredibly exciting for Christians around the world, even if it didnโt mention Jesus by name and contradicted a notable detail (alive the next day, rather than on the third day). We would clearly regard such a document as evidence of the event known as โthe resurrection of Christโ. So, letโs be generous and skip over the โhowโ and count anything in which Jesus appears to have died but was later seen alive. This way we can stick to evidence rather than articles of faith.
However, even by this standard, the kind of event we are discussing is not a well-attested one. It is not impossible for somebody to have appeared to have died but later to have been seen alive, but it is an unusual set of circumstances. Political assassinations of notable political leaders are a kind of event that we have many historical and contemporary examples of. If we include political killings in general (e.g. examples where the state kills somebody for political reasons but using a judicial process), then the killing of Jesus counts as an example. So, to start with, we have more reason to regard an assassination as plausible than a resurrection (even with generous parameters).
We then have the two people concerned. I wonโt detail the substantial evidence for the existence of Julius Caesar. Itโs a lot, but it is also part of the historical context for the resurrection of Jesus, as that claim includes his execution by agents of the Roman Empire. Jesus is more than likely a historical figure (aside from anything else, the existence of Christianity implies his existence). The nearest contemporary evidence for his existence is the writings of Paul, but other later Christian writings imply earlier sources as well. However, the weight of evidence for Julius Caesar far outweighs that of Jesus. Thatโs hardly a surprise, given the relative standing of the two figures during their own lifetimes. Julius Caesar was a major player in the powerful Roman Republic. The relative lack of contemporary evidence for Jesus is what we would expect if he actually existed.
Still, the issue is the comparable weight of evidence. With historical evidence, we can think about the comparison in terms of how big a conspiracy theory we would need to have for the person NOT to have existed, but for there still to be the same amount of evidence. For Jesus not to have existed, we need Saint Paul to have been extraordinarily convincing, and there is some evidence of Christian groups around Jesusโs brother James as well; it would be a stretch. Stillโฆthe bulk of the evidence is the existence of Christian belief around the time after the apparent death of Jesus.
For Julius Caesar not to have existed requires a whole set of contemporary accounts of his existence not to be fiction, as well as the Roman Republic to have dissolved itself and reconstituted as an empire with an emperor within living memory of his death based on a popular fictional character. People do get heated up about fictional characters, but they donโt typically start civil wars about them.
So in terms of [event]-[person], we have:
EventPersonAssassination: well-defined type of event with many historical precedentsJulius Caesar: well-documented figure during his lifetime and in the immediate aftermath of his death.Resurrection: loosely defined type of event with limited historical precedentsJesus: probably a historical figure but no documents from his lifetime, and some documents within a couple of decades of his death.
We could stop there, as the comparison is already stacked in favour of one side. We have a not-unusual event occurring to a well-attested figure versus an unusual event occurring to a less well-attested figure.
So why would John C. Wright make such an odd claim?
We do have a lot of details about the assassination of Julius Caesar, but in terms of historical narratives, that complete story is best laid out in the works of later Roman historians. For example, if you look at the Wikipedia article on the assassination, it cites works by Cassius Dio, who was born 165 CE and Suetonius, who was born 69 CE. If you are generous in dating the Gospels, maybe the extant complete narratives of the resurrection of Jesus predate the extant complete narratives of the assassination of Caesar. We donโt know when, say, the Gospel of Mark was written, but 70 CE is an estimate which would put it earlier than, say, Suetoniusโs De vita Caesarum (112 CE).
Thatโs not what Wrightโs claim states, though, and when I look at similar claims online, you get the same switching around i.e. the idea of the resurrection being better attested is a claim that looks for the earliest written accounts of the resurrection with later accounts of the assassination. For example, Paulโs First Letter to the Corinthians is cited as historical evidence of the resurrection, and it is indeed direct evidence of belief in the resurrection of Jesus as an important article of Christian faith:
โ3 For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures;4 And that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures: 5 And that he was seen of Cephas, then of the twelve: 6 After that, he was seen of above five hundred brethren at once; of whom the greater part remain unto this present, but some are fallen asleep. 7 After that, he was seen of James; then of all the apostles.8 And last of all he was seen of me also, as of one born out of due time.โ
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Bible_(King_James)/1_Corinthians#Chapter_15
The letter is commonly dated to 53-57 CE, so reasonably close to Jesusโs lifetime and within the lifetime of people who would have known him. Paul is also writing as if this is something the people he is addressing already know about and that is a common belief within the community.
However, with the assassination of Julius Caesar, we have references to it from much closer in time to the event. Itโs not just documentuary evidence, there is, for example, a coin minted during the conflict following Caesarโs death that features Brutus one side and a reference to the Ides of March on the other, along with two knives (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ides_of_March_coin ). The Res Gestae Divi Augusti is a inscription from 14 CE describing the life of Emperor Augustus, written in the first person (i.e. the original text was possibly written by Augustus himself prior to his death ). It doesnโt give the details of Juliusโs death but is clear that he was murdered:
โThose who butchered my father I drove into exile, avenging their crime by legal judgements, and afterward, when they made war upon the republic, I defeated them twice in battle.โ
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Translation:The_Achievements_of_the_Deified_Augustus
What makes the claim particularly absurd is that if we take Christian beliefs about the life of Jesus at face value we should expect this difference in evidence. On the one side, the life of a man with a small but significant following beyond the core of a major empire, versus a famous general, a ruler of that predominant power in that region. More relevantly, confirmation of a biographical fact about Jesus, adds no more weight to the spiritual or moral claims of Christianity.
#bible #christianity #faith #god #jesus
