(January 13, 2012 at 10:19 am)DeistPaladin Wrote:

Quote:1John 4:1-3
1 Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world. 2 This is how you can recognize the Spirit of God: Every spirit that acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, 3 but every spirit that does not acknowledge Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you have heard is coming and even now is already in the world. [My italics.]

2John 1:7
I say this because many deceivers, who do not acknowledge Jesus Christ as coming in the flesh, have gone out into the world. Any such person is the deceiver and the antichrist.

The fact that there were many Christians who thought of Jesus as a spiritual apparition rather than as a real flesh-and-blood person is attested by the fact that refuting this position required not just one canonical letter but two.

What I find really interesting about these passages is they implore the reader to believe that Jesus was a flesh and blood person not based on recent history but on faith.

You interpret these passages as if they were written to Docetists in order to persuade them to believe that Jesus "came in the flesh". But rather the context makes clear that John is giving instructions to those who already believe this (cf. 1 John 4:1 and 2 John 1-3). He is not arguing that Jesus came in the flesh at all (either "by faith" or historically) because his readers already believe it. Indeed, if this John is the same John who wrote John's gospel, then he has written a whole book against Docetism by appealing to eyewitnesses. Whether or not John's gospel was written down before these letters, John 1:1-3 is direct evidence that John testified publicly on the basis of what he had heard, seen, looked at and touched with his hands.

So, all these references attest to is the existence of Docetism in the first (?) century. But Docetism is the belief Jesus appeared to be a material person, while he was actually an "immaterial" one. Now, what best accounts for this belief, even considered alone: the existence or the non-existence of Jesus? A non-existent Jesus can't appear to anyone. But the existence of Jesus, combined with the well-known existence of Gnosticism perfectly and simply explains Docetism as a historical phenomenon.

A favorite website of mine:

http://jesusneverexisted.com/

(January 13, 2012 at 10:56 am)Rhythm Wrote: The Iliad presupposes the existence of Athena, so what? What a long winded way to say "I have no evidence".

The question in the OP is about whether there are any ancient sources that claim Jesus didn't exist as an argument against Christianity. I explained that there isn't, at that those who argued against Christianity presupposed that Jesus was a historical person

The evidence for Jesus is obvious: four biographies of his life, references in Acts and the New Testament epistles and other references in both Christian and non-Christian sources (most notably Josephus and Tacitus, two excellent and reliable historians). It doesn't simply outweigh evidence against Jesus' existence: there simply is no positive evidence against the existence of Jesus full stop.

(January 13, 2012 at 11:36 am)Zavdiel Wrote: You interpret these passages as if they were written to Docetists in order to persuade them to believe that Jesus "came in the flesh". But rather the context makes clear that John is giving instructions to those who already believe this

Well aware but that doesn't take away the strangeness of admonishing believers to think that Jesus was a flesh-and-blood being on the basis of faith. If this is the same "John" who was supposedly a disciple of Jesus, I might expect him to caution believers not to be persuaded by these Docetics on the basis of what he had seen and recent history. I would expect him to denounce the Docetics as crazy, not as blasphemers.

Quote:A non-existent Jesus can't appear to anyone.

But it does fit with an alternate scenario, where Jesus got his start as a Celestial King (ala Revelation, the first book of the NT), came down to earth in some vague time and place (ala Paul's epistles), the story was fleshed out in parables (possibly Mark's intent) and the parables were later thought to be true stories.

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(January 13, 2012 at 11:50 am)Zavdiel Wrote: The evidence for Jesus is obvious: four biographies of his life,

Play the theme to Galaxy Quest. Someone just referred to the Gospels as biographies. Seriously, dude, they're mythology, not historical documents. Even taking the Christian claims about the authorship of each Book at face value, these are not eye-witness accounts.

Mark: Companion of Paul. Not an eye-witness.
Matthew: A discredited account, seeing as how he lies his ass off about supposed OT prophecies.
Luke: Not an eye-witness and even says so in his intro.
John: The advanced theology indicates a very late date of authorship.

All four accounts contradict each other so badly there's no way to put Jesus' life into a coherent timeline.

Quote:references in Acts

A fanciful book containing all manner of miracles and magic. Do you believe that those of the faith can speak foreign languages, cast out demons and heal the sick? If yes, you're nuts. If no, how do you take the accounts in Acts seriously?

Quote:and the New Testament epistles

...which offer vague references to a Jesus at best. Paul flatly denies that Jesus had lived within his lifetime (1Cor 15:8). Additionally, the epistles are dubious sources. Half of Paul's epistles are of questionable authorship. Pseudo-epigraphy and interpolation were common problems for religious scripture of the time.

Quote:and other references in both Christian and non-Christian sources (most notably Josephus and Tacitus, two excellent and reliable historians).

Josephus: TF is a glaring forgery. Jamesian references names "Jesus Bar Damneus".
Tacitus: Late (2nd century), oblique (doesn't mention Jesus by name), odd reference to Pilate as "procurator" (term used in later years of Rome's empire), and 2nd hand (relating what he was told about or by the Christians).

(January 13, 2012 at 2:53 am)Xavier Wrote:

(January 13, 2012 at 2:43 am)Minimalist Wrote: No.

Roman sources do not even begin to notice xtians until the 2d century.

I know that but but you'd think some non Christian writers would have written evaluating the historicity of Jesus in the 4th and 5th century when it became the main religion of the empire.

Oh, my. You do understand that in the 4th and 5th centuries non-christians were being persecuted by the jesus freaks, right? As noted above, anything they did write would be destroyed and they themselves killed by the followers of the prince of "peace."

The point at which they were so successful in these persecutions that they had no one left to to eat except their own ranks up there as one of the greatest strokes of luck that has ever befallen humanity (if not the single greatest).

(January 13, 2012 at 12:06 pm)DeistPaladin Wrote:

(January 13, 2012 at 11:36 am)Zavdiel Wrote: You interpret these passages as if they were written to Docetists in order to persuade them to believe that Jesus "came in the flesh". But rather the context makes clear that John is giving instructions to those who already believe this

Well aware but that doesn't take away the strangeness of admonishing believers to think that Jesus was a flesh-and-blood being on the basis of faith. If this is the same "John" who was supposedly a disciple of Jesus, I might expect him to caution believers not to be persuaded by these Docetics on the basis of what he had seen and recent history. I would expect him to denounce the Docetics as crazy, not as blasphemers.

John isn't admonishing believers into believing anything; he is giving instructions about how to test whether someone is a true or a false prophet. That test is whether the person accepts the central tenet of his reader's Christian faith: the incarnation. (Thus he does not just have Docetism in view (or whatever form of proto-Gnosticism that was going round at the time) but also those who deny the divinity of Jesus.

Quote:

Quote:A non-existent Jesus can't appear to anyone.

But it does fit with an alternate scenario, where Jesus got his start as a Celestial King (ala Revelation, the first book of the NT), came down to earth in some vague time and place (ala Paul's epistles), the story was fleshed out in parables (possibly Mark's intent) and the parables were later thought to be true stories.

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This elaborate - and to my mind, very historically confused - scenario, which I look forward to seeing explained in fuller form, still does not explain why the Docetics believed that Jesus appeared in human form at all. You require a theory as to why these Gnostic people came to believe in this "Celestial King".

Quote:

(January 13, 2012 at 11:50 am)Zavdiel Wrote: The evidence for Jesus is obvious: four biographies of his life,

Play the theme to Galaxy Quest. Someone just referred to the Gospels as biographies. Seriously, dude, they're mythology, not historical documents. Even taking the Christian claims about the authorship of each Book at face value, these are not eye-witness accounts.

Mark: Companion of Paul. Not an eye-witness.
Matthew: A discredited account, seeing as how he lies his ass off about supposed OT prophecies.
Luke: Not an eye-witness and even says so in his intro.
John: The advanced theology indicates a very late date of authorship.

All four accounts contradict each other so badly there's no way to put Jesus' life into a coherent timeline.

It is a basic historical fact that the genre four gospels is that of ancient biography (Greek:bioi). This has been thoroughly demonstrated by New Testament scholarship in the last thirty years by comparing the gospels to other bioi of the period (such as Philo's Moses and Tacitus' Agricola). It is not necessary for ancient biography that it be written by an eye-witness, though it would be expected that if such people existed they or any sources deriving from them would be consulted (Luke's introduction explains precisely this methodology). Later on in your post when you talk about Acts you basically state that the mere inclusion of miracles is enough to discredit an ancient source as historical: but this simply won't do by way of historical method. When it comes to New Testament studies, that is simply a question-begging criterion for reliability. I await hearing your reasons to believe that the gospels fall under the category of "mythology" by way of comparison to other literature of the time.

(As for Matthew "lying his ass off", much has been written about Matthew's use of the Old Testament too in the last thirty years, and I think it can be demonstrated that Matthew is using a consistent and reasonable method of interpretation which centres around his implicit claim throughout the whole gospel that Jesus constitutes and represents a New Israel by being the fulfilment of the Old Testament story. But that is for another time.)

Quote:

Quote:and the New Testament epistles

...which offer vague references to a Jesus at best. Paul flatly denies that Jesus had lived within his lifetime (1Cor 15:8). Additionally, the epistles are dubious sources. Half of Paul's epistles are of questionable authorship. Pseudo-epigraphy and interpolation were common problems for religious scripture of the time.

On the contrary, Paul demonstrates a great level of knowledge about Jesus considering the purposes for which he wrote. Just consider 1 Corinthians:

• Paul knows Jesus' command about divorce in 1 Cor 7:10-11 (cf. Mark 10:10-12 and parallels in Matthew and Luke)
  
• He knows Jesus' brothers and Peter and that they had wives in 1 Cor 9:3-6
  
• He knows that Jesus taught that evangelists have a right to financial remuneration in 1 Cor 9:14 (cf. Matt 10:9-10)
  
• He knows the Lord's Supper tradition in 1 Cor 11:23-26 (cf. Mark 14:17-24 and parallels), demonstrating awareness that Jesus was betrayed on the same night.
  
• He knows that Jesus died (on a cross: 1 Cor 1:17-18), was buried and rose again on the third day, appearing to Peter and the "Twelve" (another tradition Paul is aware of, cf. Mark 4:10 and throughout four gospels) in 1 Cor 15:3-8.
  

These are hardly "vague references": they are explicit references to Jesus tradition assumed to be known to his readers to ground his own teaching. I find it very difficult to see how this data fits with your Revelation-Paul-Gospels theory: again, I await with anticipation.

(By the way, as for 1 Cor 15:8 and Paul not living in Jesus' lifetime:

1. Surely this is attestation to Jesus actually having a lifetime..
   
2. Even if "untimely born" is a good translation of the passage (I'm unconvinced it is, see 3), it does not imply whatsoever that Jesus' and Paul's lives did not temporally overlap.
   
3. The Greek word translated "untimely born" or "abnormally born" is ektroma, which is a graphic term for an aborted foetus. This image makes sense in light of Paul's defense of his apostolic ministry in 1 Corinthians, as one whose authority has been rejected.
   

Quote:

Quote:and other references in both Christian and non-Christian sources (most notably Josephus and Tacitus, two excellent and reliable historians).

Josephus: TF is a glaring forgery. Jamesian references names "Jesus Bar Damneus".

The Testimonium Flavianum certainly contains interpolation, but it is highly unlikely that the whole passage was inserted into the text in light of the manuscript evidence (particularly Arabic and Syriac versions of the text) and considerations about the wording. This is why the "partially authentic" view has found consensus in the scholarly world.

The Jamesian reference says nothing of Jesus bar Damneus, and introduces this Jesus as the "so-called Christ":

Quote:As therefore Ananus was of such a [bold and daring] disposition, he thought he had now a good opportunity, as Festus was now dead, and Albinus was still on the road; so he assembled a council of judges, and brought before it the brother of Jesus the so-called Christ, whose name was James, together with some others, and having accused them as law-breakers, he delivered them over to be stoned.

Quote:Tacitus: Late (2nd century), oblique (doesn't mention Jesus by name), odd reference to Pilate as "procurator" (term used in later years of Rome's empire), and 2nd hand (relating what he was told about or by the Christians).

None of these are relevant objections.

• That Tacitus wrote at the beginning of the second century casts no doubt on the matter whatsoever. We do not distrust his work elsewhere when he writes on events in the beginning of the first century; to apply such a criterion would effectively knock out most of ancient history. Tacitius is well-known to be a reliable historian who carefully assesses his sources.
  
• That Tacitus doesn't use the word "Jesus" is irrelevant, as Jesus is even referred to as "Christ" even in the earliest Christian documents we have. Moreover, there is no other group of "Christians" well-known enough to be deserving of being mentioned, let alone a group whose founder was executed by Pontius Pilate.
  
• That Tacitus refers to Pontius Pilate as "procurator" casts no doubt on his reliability as a historian in this passage or elsewhere. Josephus also refers to Pilate as a procurator, so whether he held the two posts of procurator and prefect simultaneously or in temporal sequence is of a little consequence: Tacitus is well within his historical rights to choose between the two titles.
  
• We simply don't know what sources Tacitus used for this information. Most likely, it was simply well-known and universally accepted as historical fact about the Christians and their founder. The idea that his only sources were Christians who had somehow come to believe this strange historical detail about a mythical figure is confused fantasy.

The "well known and accepted historical facts" of antiquity are a very poor source of factually accurate information in and of themselves. Unless you'd like to concede that Wotan existed. After all, writers knew specific details about him. Such as his musings on marriage, his wives (and the wives of his peers), the rights he afforded his subjects, a very...very...very long "supper" tradition, and that he hung himself on the tree to gain the runes and become the All-Father (fulfilling a prophecy that culminates, or has already culminated in Ragnarok...the end of the world..and subsequent rebirth of the world as a paradise for the faithful). This was all common knowledge, you see. Do you have any evidence to suggest that any of this is untrue?

Yes, invoking miracles does immediately disqualify any given text as a "historical document". Magic is fantasy-land bullshit.

The jesus-as-myth camp is being perfectly reasonable in classifying jesus as such. He's a demi-god that placed curses, performed miracles, and rose from the dead. That's myth, not history. Remove the myth, nothing remains. A human jesus, with a decent command of a crowd, who espoused borrowed doctrines whilst traveling the backwaters of the world is not the jesus of scriptures...and there still isn't any evidence for this jesus. Pretty please, stop referring to scripture to establish scripture as an authority. Try reality for a change.

(Would you like me to repeat these statements with some other cultures "well known and accepted historical facts"?)

Quote:That Tacitus wrote at the beginning of the second century casts no doubt on the matter whatsoever.

But did Tacitus write this passage or is it a much later forgery. Not a single writer, xtian or otherwise, cites Tacitus and this passage. Further, none of them seem to know anything about Nero persecuting xtians for the fire.

The first might be an oversight or the typical failure of ancient writers to name sources but the second is inexcusable for xtians trying to establish a record of persecution by Roman emperors.