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Muslims believe that Jesus was not crucified but someone instead replaced Jesus Christ during the crucifixion, Surah An-Nisa - 157-167 states that:

and for boasting, “We killed the Messiah, Jesus, son of Mary, the messenger of Allah.” But they neither killed nor crucified him—it was only made to appear so.1 Even those who argue for this ˹crucifixion˺ are in doubt. They have no knowledge whatsoever—only making assumptions. They certainly did not kill him.

Rather, Allah raised him up to Himself. And Allah is Almighty All-Wise.

Is there any historical evidence outside of the bible that i could use to prove to Muslims that Jesus Christ was crucified?

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  • Do you mean outside of Christian sources? Lots of historical, non-Biblical Christian writings that attest to it.
    – Only True God
    Commented Sep 22, 2022 at 23:24
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    This is probably not the most productive angle from which to confront Islam. You could provide extra-Biblical evidence, but a Muslim will simply claim that those sources were also fooled. I would instead focus on the ways in which Islam denies the teachings of the Bible. (answering-islam.org may be helpful.)
    – Matthew
    Commented Sep 23, 2022 at 14:03

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The article Ancient Evidence for Jesus from Non-Christian Sources lists various historical accounts. In particular,

"Tacitus, Josephus, the Talmud, and Lucian all mention that He was crucified."

The Roman historian Tacitus:

"Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of ... Pontius Pilatus"

Josephus the ancient historian wrote (there is debate about its authenticity)

"When Pilate ... condemned him to be crucified, those who had ... come to love him did not give up their affection for him."

The Babylonian Talmud has

"On the eve of the Passover Yeshu was hanged."

Lucian writes

"The Christians ... worship the crucified sage"

I don't think any of this evidence would be overwhelming to a Muslim.

Similarly, there is a large amount of historical, non-Biblical Christian writings which claim Jesus was crucified.

I think a better line of argument is that the early Christian community believed this. Read Paul's letters. Paul knew Peter, James, John, and so on. Did Paul believe this? If not, why did he risk stoning, beating, whipping, and imprisonment for it? The same argument applies to Christians more generally.

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  • Good answer, +1. I agree that Josephus mentions Jesus twice, even if the exact wording of one of the two mentions has been lost. But FYI you pasted in the Tacitus quote twice instead of the Josephus quote
    – Hold To The Rod
    Commented Sep 23, 2022 at 1:00
  • @HoldToTheRod Thx, fixed.
    – Only True God
    Commented Sep 23, 2022 at 3:21
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    "Debate about its authenticity" is giving the Testimonium Flavianum too much credit. The mainstream view is that the Testimonium is a later interpolation, and the debate is over what was originally there (the mainstream view is that Josephus did write something about the crucifixion of Jesus).
    – Mark
    Commented Sep 27, 2022 at 0:20
  • @Mark, Yes, we Biblical Unitarians are well aware of later interpolations to texts. ;)
    – Only True God
    Commented Sep 27, 2022 at 3:19

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