Matthew, Mark, Luke and John provide first hand accounts of the time Jesus was purported to have existed as you put it. They spent 3 years with Jesus.
The consensus of many biblical historians put the dating of the earliest Gospel, that of Mark, at sometime after 70 C.E., and the last Gospel, John after 90 C.E. [Pagels, 1995; Helms]. This would make it some 40 years after the alleged crucifixion of Jesus that we have any Gospel writings that mention him! Elaine Pagels writes that "the first Christian gospel was probably written during the last year of the war, or the year it ended. Where it was written and by whom we do not know; the work is anonymous, although tradition attributes it to Mark..." [Pagels, 1995]
The traditional Church has portrayed the authors as the apostles Mark, Luke, Matthew, & John, but scholars know from critical textural research that there simply occurs no evidence that the gospel authors could have served as the apostles described in the Gospel stories.
This is the third time in this thread I've posted this link for your benefit.
http://www.nobeliefs.com/exist.htm
There are Roman records, I will try and find some sources for you. (and the guy above you) There are Jewish records as well, which I will find for you.
Be my guest.
I wonder what would constitute 'proof' of Jesus' existence
Effects of mythology are hardly relevant to a court case.
A priest in Italy is going to have to come up with proof of the existence of Jesus and it's simply a fact there is nothing that will stand up under the scrutiny of a court of law.
I'm not mocking your faith - I want to be clear on that - but that's what you require here . . . . faith. Because there's no proof that Jesus existed that stands under scrutiny and that's what is going to make this court case explosive on a global scale.
I have National Geographics from the 1960's which get into detail about the meanderings of Jesus. We saw through the last few months on American television some really extraordinary things that really shot my eyebrows higher, programs on network tv in prime time following the trail of Jesus, a simple acceptance on faith, rather than evidence, that these events happened.
Yet . . . . they probably didn't. If they had, I'd be on your side. Unlike Cheese, I don't want it to be so . . . . I wouldn't care one way or the other.
Cowperson