Existence of Jesus

[Kyuuketsuki]

As I say, I am not an expert on this subject, but my first point of reference on most things is wikipedia, which I regard as reasonably reliable. If the article in question is inaccurate to your knowledge, you are free to point out where.

It's a general comment on Wikipedia ... it's a useful starting point but I do not consider it a valid reference site.

Do you agree that in light of the information supplied in the cited article, "fake" is misleadingly strong? I think it is, because it creates the impression that the entire idea that Josephus mentioned Jesus is a bogus one.

The primary passage is regarded by many (most I am given to understand) as a later interpolation (an insertion to meet some kind of agenda), it was not written by Josephus so no, I think "fake" is an entirely apt description.

Well I have not maintained that Josephus was an eyewitness to Jesus. It remains the case that he was writing within a few decades of the supposed death of Jesus.

Do you realise how your phraseology distorts the relative time frames of Jesus Christ and Josephus? It wasn't merely that he wrote within a few decades of Jesus Christ, he was born AFTER Jesus Christ was dead!!!!!!

I also have Josephus at home, in English, but only on the Jewish War. But I see no reason to doubt that the quoted passage is in the extant edition of Josephus.

You have A Josephus text at home but the relevant text is "Antiquities".

You don't see a reason to doubt? This, despite the fact that you admit to being no expert and despite the fact that there remains to verifiable evidence to support the existence of Jesus Christ and significant amounts of missing evidence given that he was the apparent phenomenon he is claimed to have been. That, along with the evident similarities between the Christian myths and pre-existing mythologies gives me plenty of reason to doubt that the man was real.

First let me say that I have no doubt that if a passage about Jesus existed in Josephus, the above is not a fully faithful rendition of it. It is preposterous that Josephus, a non-Christian with a strong Hellenistic sensibility, would have made some of the statements here. But this does not rule out that Josephus, who was after all writing a history of the Jews and a defense of their religion, did treat Jesus in a passage moderately similar to this one.

Of course it does not rule it out but the available evidence indicates the relevant passages were interpolations ... Josephus simply did not appear to write in that way. Now I have actually read the cited quote, in context, and it is almost immediately apparent that there is a significant change of style so I'm afraid I am inclined to believe this is exactly what many historians say it was, a later interpolation (a fake).

If you read the cited article, you will see that a reasonable case can be made for that, and which it appears that many scholars accept. For example, it is widely proposed that Josephus said, "Jesus is believed to be the Christ" and the emphasized words were left out by the scribe.

Mark, let us put this to bed once and for all shall we? I am well enough read in this area to debate you on the subject ... please DO NOT tell me what to read and what not to read, debate me on what I write.

Secondly if you read the cited article, you will see that it is now commonly agreed that the passage quoted, in Greek, does indeed conform both to the style and word choice customary to Josephus. Thus if it is a complete forgery, it is not a clumsy one that violates the style and use of words of the author, but a skillful one.

No, I may see that someone claims it is so, I am not able to verify that fact and neither are you ... in addition the kind of style referred to would go beyond language translation.

Well, it is not of no matter. The point about Origen is that he, writing 160 years after Josephus, declares that Josephus did not accept the divinity of Jesus. This would be a rather strange thing to say if Origen had not read something about Jesus in Josephus.

You seem awfully intent on proving there was actually a real man at the root of the legend ... why?

Well I am no expert so I can't judge this passage. Is the Antiquities lost in the original Greek? But in any case, it would seem to require a more thoroughgoing discussion of Jesus than this to cause Origen to conclude that Josephus rejected the divinity of Jesus.

The passage from my book at home does in fact use the words, "the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ, who was called James..." and that, as earlier stated, raises again the spectre of interpolation.

Further we can't be entirely sure that the "Jesus" referred to here is Jesus of Nazareth. Joshua was a common name at the time.

It says, "who was called Christ", so I think we probably can assume that is what the passage (genuine or not) refers to.

Well I emphasize that this part of my argument is not at all about Josephus. I have a number of histories of Rome on my bookshelf, and each one of them that deals with this period and part of the world at some point discusses the historical Jesus as a charismatic man who either actually or most probably existed. No reference of mine avers that he did not exist. So I will maintain what I say in the first sentence above.

It's a shame that the available Roman records don't reflect your confidence isn't it? Histories are written later, not at the time and I'd guess that the history books you have were written much, much later.

Yes exactly, others maintain that it was altered. There is indeed a paraphrase of Josephus in the classical literature, which I quoted in English from the wikipedia article, which sounds very much like the disputed passage but which is free of Christian belief. There is a fair degree of supposition that paraphrase was based on an early edition of Josephus in which the disputed passage had not yet been modified.

Selective much? The simple fact is that we CANNOT be sure there was ever a real person at the root of the Christian myth and other available evidence implies strongly that there was no such person.

But in any case, while I think it likely that Josephus did mention Jesus in something pretty well resembling the paraphrase, I don't consider this to be the main basis of the historicity of Jesus. You have in the first place the Gospels, which purport to be accounts of this man's life. They are sufficiently consistent to suggest that such a person may have existed, and they appear to be based on prior written accounts. Granted they report absurd miracles, but that is not ground for dismissing the report of a man's existence and the broad outlines of his conduct.

And I think you WANT Josephus to support your view and have based your interpretation with that in mind.

Ignoring the fact that the gospels were only named Mathew, Mark, Luke & John in the latter half of the second century & that the gospels of Luke and Matthew conflict in such key areas as genealogy it appears that the gospels of Luke & Matthew are largely copies of Mark and that Mark (the earliest of the 4) came largely to be between 70 & 90CE. It is also interesting that much of the important stuff for Christians (appearances of Jesus after his supposed resurrection) were added later.

More importantly, the formation of a religious movement around a charismatic preacher is hardly an uncommon occurrence in history. Amy Temple McPherson; Joseph Smith; and many others are modern examples. On the other hand, you will search modern history in vain where any such a movement, ostensibly inspired by a charismatic preacher, arose without the actual existence of the preacher in question.

Modern History? So what? We're talking about the time of the classical mystery religions here where god-like creatures, resurrections, virgin births and crucifixions were common place and the primary figures were accepted to be spiritual and not real.

chatpilot rather strangely said that many ancient religions were based on imaginary human beings. There is of course very little evidence that Budda, for example, ever existed, but there is very scant reason to assert that he did not. Confucious is rather certain to have existed, I believe. This is not to assert that every mythical human being taken up as a demi-god by any religion necessarily existed; only that chatpilot's case that ancient religion is typically founded on the preaching of a non-existent preacher is quite weak.

And Chatpilot was right ... it was that kind of time and the only way I can really responds to your "scant reason" assertion is say that there is scant reason to believe there is a teapot orbiting the sun between Earth and Mars; Would you believe such a claim that it is real?

At the end of the day, we do not know for certain whether the actual Joshua bar Joseph, mortal and charismatic preacher of something-or-other in Judea around 40 C.E. existed or not. But the preponderance of likelihood, which is really all that historians have to work with in such cases, is that he did. I concede that there is some possibility that he did not.

Whilst conceding the actual existence of Jesus Christ as a possibility, I simply do not believe it to be anywhere near as likely as you do and recognise that a myth does not require a literal central character to grow.

You know if you look at chatpilot's posts along this entire thread, and I have, they really reek with anti-Christian animus. Now as atheists I think it is quite fine if we debate Christians and even try to convert them to our point of view. Nor is it necessary that we respect their religion, which is an absurdity. But I think we drift off into la-la land when we allow our disputes with Christianty to cloud our judgement on questions of historical fact. My atheism has a lot to do with my desire to look directly at the world and see it for what it is. That includes human history.

I don't agree with your assessment of Chatpilot's posts, I think he was absolutely on the mark and that it is you that has lost objectivity.

Oh and lastly, there is not "an incredible lack of hard confirmatory evidence" of Jesus' existence. There is a lack, but it is hardly incredible given that Jesus was a rather unimportant person to the only people at the time who were keeping systematic records, and further given that almost all the records that they kept have been lost to history anyway. How much "hard confirmatory evidence" exists of anyone in the First Century?

Then why believe he existed at all?

Kyu