(February 24, 2019 at 5:56 pm)Yonadav Wrote:

(February 24, 2019 at 5:42 pm)PRJA93 Wrote: There's very little evidence for a historical Jesus.

I agree, but I wouldn't really expect for there to be.

How do you mean?

People often use the "very few scholars deny the histrocity of Jesus" line as if it means anything. That some apologists are throwing the religious a bone doesn't change how much evidence exists for a historical Jesus. At best, we can say he might've been real. Maybe.

But I don't know if that's quite good enough to just march on like we know he was real and attempt to discredit anyone who says otherwise.

(February 24, 2019 at 5:42 pm)PRJA93 Wrote:

(February 24, 2019 at 5:38 pm)Jehanne Wrote: Once again, only one or two modern scholars subscribe to the mythicist POV.

There's very little evidence for a historical Jesus.

The general consensus among scholars is that the historicity of Jesus has  essentially been proved. The view  of Jesus is myth is very much a fringe position. BUT that does not prove it is  necessarily wrong..

I choose to use Occam's razor; based on the amount of information,  it is more likely than not that Jesus existed. In discussions I usually treat the existence of Jesus as a given.  Using formal logic, all logical propositions have the caveat "IF A------" IE IF Jesus' reality is true, THEN -----

A sound logical inference is true IF AND ONLY IF the premise is true.


The historicity of Jesus is the question if Jesus of Nazareth can be regarded as a historical figure. Virtually all New Testament scholars and Near East historians, applying the standard criteria of historical-critical investigation, find that the historicity of Jesus is effectively certain,[1][2] although they differ about the beliefs and teachings of Jesus as well as the accuracy of the details of his life that have been described in the gospels.[3][4][5][note 1]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historicity_of_Jesus

(February 24, 2019 at 6:03 pm)PRJA93 Wrote:

(February 24, 2019 at 5:56 pm)Yonadav Wrote: I agree, but I wouldn't really expect for there to be.

How do you mean?

People often use the "very few scholars deny the histrocity of Jesus" line as if it means anything. That some apologists are throwing the religious a bone doesn't change how much evidence exists for a historical Jesus. At best, we can say he might've been real. Maybe.

But I don't know if that's quite good enough to just march on like we know he was real and attempt to discredit anyone who says otherwise.

I'm not arguing for his historicity. I just wouldn't expect to find mention of him in other sources. Folks in this discussion are acting like it is reasonable to expect that he would have been mentioned in one or more of the surviving pagan writings from that time. But I think that it would be a terribly long shot for him to be mentioned in any of them.

(February 24, 2019 at 5:56 pm)Yonadav Wrote:

(February 24, 2019 at 5:42 pm)PRJA93 Wrote: There's very little evidence for a historical Jesus.

I agree, but I wouldn't really expect for there to be.

Here's the list: the authentic Pauline letters, Mark, Q, M, L, Josephus, and Tacitus.

The "although they differ about the beliefs and teachings of Jesus as well as the accuracy of the details of his life that have been described in the gospels" is doing alot of work in that sentence.  

Part of the reason that it's unremarkable that noone took notice of a historical jesus is that all of the historical jesus candidates are unremarkable by design.  There's as much jesus christ in historical jesus as there is harry potter in daniel radcliffe.

(February 24, 2019 at 6:13 pm)fredd bear Wrote: The general consensus among scholars is that the historicity of Jesus has essentially been proved. The view of Jesus is myth is very much a fringe position. BUT that does not prove it is necessarily wrong..

I choose to use Occam's razor; based on the amount of information, it is more likely than not that Jesus existed. In discussions I usually treat the existence of Jesus as a given. Using formal logic, all logical propositions have the caveat "IF A------" IE IF Jesus' reality is true, THEN -----

A sound logical inference is true IF AND ONLY IF the premise is true.


The historicity of Jesus is the question if Jesus of Nazareth can be regarded as a historical figure. Virtually all New Testament scholars and Near East historians, applying the standard criteria of historical-critical investigation, find that the historicity of Jesus is effectively certain,[1][2] although they differ about the beliefs and teachings of Jesus as well as the accuracy of the details of his life that have been described in the gospels.[3][4][5][note 1]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historicity_of_Jesus

That doesn't change the fact that there is very little evidence for Jesus' existence. That historians throw religion a bone and say, "Yea, sure he was real" doesn't mean much to me. You're trying to use the argument from authority as if it changes how much we know about the evidence for Jesus. There's not very much of it and none of it was written while he was supposedly alive, some of which don't even mention him by name. The "evidence" is shaky, at best. I'm not 100% convinced he wasn't real, I'm just saying I'm not convinced the other way, either. I'm agnostic about it. I don't know and don't pretend to know. It's pretty unlikely, in my opinion, but yea, maybe he was real. Even if he was, so what?

(February 24, 2019 at 6:16 pm)Yonadav Wrote: I'm not arguing for his historicity. I just wouldn't expect to find mention of him in other sources. Folks in this discussion are acting like it is reasonable to expect that he would have been mentioned in one or more of the surviving pagan writings from that time. But I think that it would be a terribly long shot for him to be mentioned in any of them.

I don't know that he would be found in Pagan writings, either. I do think we would see some contemporary writings about him though if he was such an influential, controversial figure. I think the writing that's closest to the life of Jesus was written something like 150+ years after his death. Just seems weird that no one would write about the man during his lifetime.

Weird if you imagine the stories in magic book to be true.  Not at all weird when you realize that they aren't, and that no one is discussing the guy in magic book when they propose a historical jesus.

(February 24, 2019 at 6:26 pm)PRJA93 Wrote:

(February 24, 2019 at 6:16 pm)Yonadav Wrote: I'm not arguing for his historicity. I just wouldn't expect to find mention of him in other sources. Folks in this discussion are acting like it is reasonable to expect that he would have been mentioned in one or more of the surviving pagan writings from that time. But I think that it would be a terribly long shot for him to be mentioned in any of them.

I don't know that he would be found in Pagan writings, either. I do think we would see some contemporary writings about him though if he was such an influential, controversial figure. I think the writing that's closest to the life of Jesus was written something like 150+ years after his death. Just seems weird that no one would write about the man during his lifetime.

I don't think that it's that weird that no one wrote anything about him that survived to our times. I imagine that he wouldn't have been written about much at all by anyone, if at all during his lifetime. What did he do? He had 12 disciples? That's not remarkable. He performed some miracles? Sure, and maybe thousands of people saw them and were very impressed. But to everyone who didn't see them they just would have been the sorts of stories that they frequently hear of. He was executed? So were a whole lot of other people. So during his life, he just wouldn't have been that big of a deal to write about. Minor scribes could have scribbled things about him sometimes if he was good a drawing crowds. But thousands and thousands of people probably had minor little stories about them scribbled by scribes, and most of those scribblings aren't around today. The chances of anything that was written about him during his lifetime surviving to this day simply aren't good.

Discussing the historical jesus is not a question of miracles worked or witnessed or how likely it would be for a miracle worker to get noticed.  Miracle working is wholly discarded.

Yes, a miracle man would have been noticed. Plenty were at the time and magic books have always been full of them.

(February 24, 2019 at 6:52 pm)Yonadav Wrote: I don't think that it's that weird that no one wrote anything about him that survived to our times. I imagine that he wouldn't have been written about much at all by anyone, if at all during his lifetime. What did he do? He had 12 disciples? That's not remarkable. He performed some miracles? Sure, and maybe thousands of people saw them and were very impressed. But to everyone who didn't see them they just would have been the sorts of stories that they frequently hear of. He was executed? So were a whole lot of other people. So during his life, he just wouldn't have been that big of a deal to write about. Minor scribes could have scribbled things about him sometimes if he was good a drawing crowds. But thousands and thousands of people probably had minor little stories about them scribbled by scribes, and most of those scribblings aren't around today. The chances of anything that was written about him during his lifetime surviving to this day simply aren't good.

The same could easily be said about the posthumous writings of Jesus. So, at best, we have some posthumous hearsay about a man named Jesus.

Not that convincing.

As someone else said, I forget who, we have about as much reason to believe Jesus is real as we do King Arthur.