RE: Any Evidence For A Historical Jesus?
April 8, 2012 at 7:04 am
(This post was last modified: April 8, 2012 at 7:13 am by Justtristo.)
The whole biblical studies profession is so infected with people with an inherent bias towards trying to prove that Jesus Christ was at least based on a historical character, that anybody who argues that Jesus Christ is a mythical character like Hercules is dismissed as a crackpot. It is like if creationists dominated the ranks of scientists in the biological sciences. So I have little respect for a lot of biblical scholars, because of that bias which leads them to desperate tactics such as special pleading and cheating.
In reality outside the new testament there is nil credible evidence for the existence of Jesus in the first decades after his supposed death. All we have is one disputed very short paragraph in the Jewish historian Josephus. Even Roman sources such as Pliny the Younger, Tacitus and are just relaying what Christians were saying about the origins of their religion at the time.
Also there is no evidence in the letters of the New Testament for an actual Jesus either. Because epistles portray a Jesus who never came down to earth in the first place. Rather he was a heavenly being who was killed by the demonic forces in some sphere of the heavens. That would account for the lack of quotes of something Jesus said or at least putting words into his mouth in order give authority to their arguments, which otherwise would be seen as quite odd. For instance in 1 Corinthians 7 why did not the writer quote the words attributed to Jesus in Matthew 19 to support the argument the writer is making.
Since the epistles were written before the Gospels, the gospels can be seen as an attempt to historicist a mythological character. So the writers of the gospels created a life story for Jesus using elements from Hellenistic literature such as the Iliad, Midrash of various Old Testament verses and not to mention the works of Josephus. Also if the Gospels are actually rehashes of other works, that makes them not reliable at all when they come to historical records.
In reality outside the new testament there is nil credible evidence for the existence of Jesus in the first decades after his supposed death. All we have is one disputed very short paragraph in the Jewish historian Josephus. Even Roman sources such as Pliny the Younger, Tacitus and are just relaying what Christians were saying about the origins of their religion at the time.
Also there is no evidence in the letters of the New Testament for an actual Jesus either. Because epistles portray a Jesus who never came down to earth in the first place. Rather he was a heavenly being who was killed by the demonic forces in some sphere of the heavens. That would account for the lack of quotes of something Jesus said or at least putting words into his mouth in order give authority to their arguments, which otherwise would be seen as quite odd. For instance in 1 Corinthians 7 why did not the writer quote the words attributed to Jesus in Matthew 19 to support the argument the writer is making.
Since the epistles were written before the Gospels, the gospels can be seen as an attempt to historicist a mythological character. So the writers of the gospels created a life story for Jesus using elements from Hellenistic literature such as the Iliad, Midrash of various Old Testament verses and not to mention the works of Josephus. Also if the Gospels are actually rehashes of other works, that makes them not reliable at all when they come to historical records.
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