Jesus Is God

Photo by Ilona Frey on Unsplash.

In this article I present a systematic set of historical, textual, archaeological, scientific, and testimonial evidence around the identity and divinity of Jesus Christ.

Much of the material presented here is based on the work Las evidencias de que Jesús es Dios, by José Carlos González-Hurtado, whose work stands out for its documentary rigor and its capacity for synthesis. Personally, I want to thank him for the depth and seriousness of his research.

1. Textual And Canonical Reliability Of The New Testament

The documentary foundation of Christianity has a solidity superior to any other work of antiquity.

The Bible is a library of 73 books in the Catholic canon, written by more than 40 human authors, in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek, over about 1,500 years, with more than 60,000 internal references among its texts.

Manuscript Transmission

• Chronology: Jesus was crucified around 30 AD. The New Testament was written between 48 and 95 AD. The oldest preserved manuscript dates from the last quarter of the first century, leaving a gap of barely 35 to 40 years from the originals.
• Volume of evidence: There are approximately 5,300 Greek manuscripts of the New Testament. If we include ancient translations in Syriac, Latin, Coptic, and Aramaic, the total rises to 24,633 writings.
• Consistency: This massive number of copies allows specialists to reconstruct the original text with 99.5% precision, confirming that what we read today is what was written 2,000 years ago.

Formation Of The Canon

“The books of the New Testament did not become authoritative for the Church because they were formally included in the canonical list; on the contrary, the Church included them in its canon because it already considered them divinely inspired.” - F. F. Bruce

1. Oral tradition and magisterium: The magisterium and the tradition of the apostles preceded the writings. The Church was already living the Gospel before the canon was fixed.
2. Recognition, not selection: The fourth-century councils did not “choose” which books they liked. They officially recognized the texts the universal Church had already used as inspired since the second century.
3. Nature of revelation: The Bible is considered the “Word of God” expressed in human language, with its limitations, centered on salvific truth more than on absolute scientific or historical literalness in every word.

2. Extrabiblical Historical Testimonies

Even excluding Christian sources, we have more than a dozen independent ancient sources, Roman, Jewish, and Greek, that mention Jesus and early Christianity. For example: Flavius Josephus, Tacitus, Pliny the Younger, among others.

• Macrobius (Saturnalia): Mentions the slaughter of children ordered by Herod the Great, which gives historical plausibility to Matthew’s Gospel account of the visit of the Magi from the East.
• Prophetic context: Jeremiah 31:15 had already anticipated this event.

This is what the Lord says: “A voice is heard in Ramah, mourning and bitter weeping. Rachel weeps for her children and refuses to be comforted, because they are no more.”

3. Jesus’ Self-Declaration

Jesus Christ does indeed manifest the claim to be God, repeatedly and in different ways.

I Am

In the book of Exodus 3:13-14, Moses asks God about his name.

If they ask me, “What is his name?”, what shall I answer them?

God said to Moses: “I am who I am”; this is what you shall say to the children of Israel: “‘I am’ sends me to you.”

In this way, “I am” is one of the names of the Lord, YHWH in Hebrew. It also appears in Deuteronomy 32:39 and Isaiah 43:11-12.

Jesus presents himself to his disciples with the same name when he walks on the waters of the Sea of Galilee, in Mark 6:50, Matthew 14:27, and John 6:20.

Take heart, I am; do not be afraid.

In the same way, in John 8:58:

Jesus said to them:

• Truly, truly, I say to you: before Abraham was, I am.

In Mark 14:61-64, Luke 22:66-71, and Matthew 26:59-66, Jesus is being judged before the Sanhedrin and the high priest, who seeks to condemn him. He asks him, “Are you the Messiah, the Son of the Blessed One?” Jesus answers: “I am. And you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of Power and coming with the clouds of heaven.” The high priest, tearing his garments, says: “What further need do we have of witnesses? You have heard the blasphemy. What do you think?” And they all declared him worthy of death.

In The Synagogue Of Nazareth (Luke 4:16-21)

Jesus reads the scroll of the prophet Isaiah (61:1-2):

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me. He has sent me to evangelize the poor… to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

When he finished, he declared: “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing,” identifying himself directly as the expected Messiah.

Opening The Understanding (Luke 24:44-45)

After the Resurrection, Jesus affirms the unity of the Scriptures around his person:

Everything written about me in the Law of Moses, the Prophets, and the Psalms must be fulfilled.

I And The Father Are One

In John 10:29-33 we read:

My Father, who gave them to me, is greater than all; and no one can snatch them from the Father’s hand. I and the Father are one.

The Jews again picked up stones to stone him. Jesus answered them:

• I have shown you many good works from the Father; for which of them do you want to stone me?

• We do not want to stone you for any good work, but for blasphemy, because you, being a man, make yourself God - the Jews answered him.

“One” in Greek is neuter, so it can also be translated as “I and the Father are one thing.”

He Forgives Sins

Only God can forgive sins. In Mark 2:1-12, Jesus forgives the sins of a paralytic and heals him.

Son Of Man, Son Of God, Son Of David

Jesus calls himself by these titles. Let us see what they mean.

• Son of Man: The Son of Man is a divine figure from the book of Daniel in the Old Testament who would come at the end of the world to judge humanity and reign forever.
• Son of God: The first Christians and the Jewish leaders understood that this title assimilated him to God. The Son receives his existence and his nature from the Father. He receives “everything” from the Father in perfect equality. That is why the Son is also God.
• Son of David: In the second book of Samuel (7:12-16), Nathan’s prophecy predicts that the Messiah would be from the house of David.

4. Fulfillment Of Messianic Prophecies

The Old Testament contains between 200 and 400 prophecies about the Messiah. Their fulfillment in a single person defies the laws of statistics.

Statistical Probability

Peter Stoner and Robert Newman calculated that the probability of one man fulfilling only 8 specific prophecies is 1 in 10^17. Other studies place the figure as high as 1 in 10^28. These eight include:

1. Being born in Bethlehem (Micah 5:2).
2. Being preceded by a messenger, John the Baptist.
3. Entering Jerusalem on a donkey.
4. Being betrayed by a friend.
5. Betrayal for 30 pieces of silver.
6. The money thrown into the Temple.
7. Suffering martyrdom in silence.
8. Being crucified (Psalm 22).

Notable Prophecies

• The Virgin and Emmanuel (Isaiah 7:14): Written 750 years before Christ. “Behold: the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call him Emmanuel, God-with-us.” Fulfilled in Matthew 1:23.
• The 70 Weeks of Daniel (Daniel 9:23-26): Written in the sixth century BC, it predicts with chronological precision the appearance and death of the Messiah. The calculation of 69 “weeks of years,” 483 lunar years or 476 solar years, from the decree to rebuild Jerusalem, Artaxerxes, c. 445-444 BC, leads exactly to the year 32-33 AD, the date of the crucifixion. It also prophesies the destruction of the city and the sanctuary, carried out by the “prince” Titus in 70 AD.

5. Archaeological Corroboration

To this day, no archaeological discovery has contradicted the Gospel accounts. On the contrary, thousands of discoveries confirm them.

• Megiddo mosaics (c. 230 AD): Inscriptions mention “Akeptous, the friend of God, who offered this altar to God Jesus Christ,” confirming that the divinity of Jesus was a central belief from the beginning.
• Inscription of Pontius Pilate: A first-century limestone stone found in Caesarea identifies Pilate as “Prefect of Judea.”
• Ossuary of Caiaphas: Found near Jerusalem with the inscription “Iosef son of Caiaphas,” containing the remains of a man around 60 years old, consistent with the High Priest.
• The Census of Quirinius: Inscriptions in Antioch (Res gestae Divi Augusti) and the “Venice tombstone” confirm the career of Publius Sulpicius Quirinius and the carrying out of censuses in the region.
• Pool of Siloam: Located exactly where the Gospel of John placed it, discovered in 2004.
• Mount Ebal: A Bronze Age tablet (1400-1200 BC) with the name of God demonstrates the early literacy of the Hebrews.

6. Eucharistic Miracles And Contemporary Science

The Church has documented 158 Eucharistic miracles in which the consecrated bread and wine are transformed into visible tissue.

Scientific Analyses (Lanciano, Buenos Aires, Legnica, Etc.)

Studies carried out by doctors and scientists, including non-believers, have produced surprising and consistent results:

• Blood type: Always AB+, matching the Shroud of Turin and the Sudarium of Oviedo.
• Tissue: Identified as myocardium, heart muscle, specifically from the left ventricle.
• State: The cells show signs of “extreme suffering” and vitality, with the presence of intact white blood cells that normally dissolve within minutes outside the body.

This agrees with John 6:53-56.

Jesus said to them:

• Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. For my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink.

7. Relics Of The Passion: The Shroud Of Turin

It is the most studied archaeological object in the world. It is a linen cloth that shows the image of a tortured man exactly as the Gospels describe.

Conclusions Of The STURP Project (1981)

1. It is not a painting: There are no pigments, dyes, or traces of brushstrokes. The image is the result of dehydration and oxidation of the most superficial fibers of the linen.
2. Three-dimensionality: The image contains encoded 3D information, something impossible for a medieval artist to recreate.
3. Perfect anatomy: It shows medical details, such as blood flow, scourge marks, and perforations in the wrists, unknown in the Middle Ages.

Recent Datings

• X-rays (WAXS, 2022): The degree of natural degradation of the cellulose places the cloth at an age of approximately 2,000 years.
• Botanical evidence: Pollen analysis identified 28 plant species exclusive to the region of Jerusalem and the Middle East, some of them extinct or rare outside that area.

Unbelief has its origin in pride… it resides in the intellect, but its cause is the will. - Saint Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae.