About — The Jesus Website

Many have undertaken to draw up an account of the things that have been fulfilled among us, just as they were handed down to us by those who from the first were eyewitnesses and servants of the word. (Luke 1:1–3, ESV) This website is intended to be a useful resource for thinking about the historical evidence for Jesus. Each ‘record’ is intended to catalogue the available information about that particular person, place, event, theme or object while the essays are intended to provide context for the available data.

Methodology

History: When thinking about the history of Jesus, I think a ‘logic of history’ approach is best. For me that means that individuals interact with an independent objective reality. We can then determine what occurred in the past by making logical inferences based on available evidence.

AI-Assistance: AI agents have been used to build the website code, find evidence, verify sources, and organise information. Wherever possible, I have included references to both the primary and secondary sources, allowing you, the reader, to verify the evidence for yourself or to make it easy for an AI agent to verify the veracity of the information. You will also notice that I’ve used AI-generated reconstructions and illustrations, along with historical art. These are purely rhetorical aids to help you understand and imagine what the evidence is describing. The distinction between illustrations and photographs is strictly adhered to throughout the website. Apart from spell-checking, all the writing is my own, and I am responsible for the collection, organisation, and presentation of all data and interpretation.

Theology: I’m a Protestant pastor, so my theological view of Jesus is shaped by the Nicene and Chalcedonian view of Jesus: the Son of God, one person with both a human and a divine nature. The Incarnation was described by C.S. Lewis as the central miracle of Christianity; God outside of creation, entering into the story of the cosmos as a human, as the Messiah, the King of the Jews. This makes Jesus’ human existence and context important, both for the message of Jesus and the historical reality of Jesus.

Tech Stack

The Jesus Website is built as a Multi-Page Application (MPA) using a minimalist, archival-style design system. I used vanilla HTML, CSS, and JavaScript on the frontend, with a Node/Express/SQLite backend (uvicorn) serving a SQLite database. My vibe-coding process was structured around detailed markdown guides that controlled the code design, creation, debugging and revision. You can view the GitHub repository here.

Contributions and Donations

Contributions: I welcome feedback, input, contributions and correction. If you identify a discrepancy or have data, essays, illustrations or other content to contribute please email me at [email protected]. I’m the pastor of Balaclava Presbyterian Church in Melbourne, Australia.

Donations: Domain name registration is $16.76 AUD per year, and VPS hosting is $91.60 AUD per year, plus about $12.00 AUD per year for backups, making a total of approximately $120.00 AUD per year. If you would like to contribute to the costs of running the website, donations are welcome. A donation portal will be available here soon.

I’ll turn the donation portal off once I’ve reached $120 AUD for the year, and then turn it back on again in the new year.

ESV API-Key Copyright Notice

Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved. The ESV text may not be quoted in any publication made available to the public by a Creative Commons license. The ESV may not be translated into any other language.

Cookies & Privacy Notice

So that users in the United Kingdom and Europe (per the UK's PECR and the EU's ePrivacy Directive cookie legislation) can freely access the website, a cookie notification toast is shown to all first-time visitors (it is common practice to show the cookie acceptance notice regardless of the user's geographic origin). The website uses local cookies to track page view analytics, but beyond raw page view statistics, no individual data is collected or stored. Donations can be made anonymously via a third-party provider.