Evidence: The Gathering

[TheRocketSurgeon]

Does this forum exist to DISCUSS these questions? Or is it simply the soapbox from which you mock believers?

Why do you bother to ask, when your opinion on the matter is already clear?

You could look at an example from today, do a little "compare and contrast".

[Randy Carson]

Tacitus. AD 116.

Thanks for actually making an argument for the skeptic position. It's pretty rare than anyone here actually does that, so I appreciate your time and effort.

A) 116CE is not contemporary with c.33CE. It is 80 years past, nearly three whole generations later. So again you are wrong.

Publius Cornelius Tacitus (AD 56-117) was a senator and historian of the Roman Empire known to us through the surviving portions of his two major works: Annals and Histories. Considered one of the greatest Roman historians, Tacitus referred to Christ, his execution by Pontius Pilate and to the existence of Jesus’ followers. More on that last bit below.

Notice the date of Tacitus' birth; he would have been about 39 years old at the time that the last living apostle John wrote his gospel in AD 95. The immediate successors of the apostles - people like Clement of Rome, Polycarp of Smyrna, Ignatius of Antioch - were all still alive at the time that Tacitus was in Rome and gathering the data that later formed his two works of history. Clement of Rome, for example, was a disciple of Peter and Paul, and he was in Rome (and pope) until his death in AD 99. So, that's not "three whole generations" from Jesus to Tacitus. Peter taught Clement, and Tacitus was in Rome at the same time that Clement was head of the Church in that city.

Jesus --> Peter --> Clement

IOW, Tacitus was a contemporary of the first generation of disciples of the original apostles. It wasn't "three whole generations" later.

B) Tacitus doesn't actually speak about Jesus. He speaks about a man named Chrestus. Now the thing about the Latin name Chrestus is that at the time it was so common both as a given name and a title that there are literally thousands of references to different people with the name in the surviving fragments of Roman records and books. So the very best you get from Tacitus is that there was a group in Rome at c.65CE who followed an unidentified Chrestus who was killed under the orders of Pilate.

Oh, sure. Pilate killed lots of people who were called "Chrestus" and who had followers who proclaimed that their particular version was God.

Seriously, only one "Chrestus" had a group of followers who became so "notorius" that Nero blamed them for the burning of Rome. Tacitus wrote:

“Therefore, to put down the rumor, Nero substituted as culprits and punished in the most unusual ways those hated for their shameful acts, whom the crowd called 'Chrestians.' The founder of this name, Christ, had been executed in the reign of Tiberius by the procurator Pontius Pilate. Suppressed for a time, the deadly superstition erupted again not only in Judea, the origin of this evil, but also in the city [Rome], where all things horrible and shameful from everywhere come together and become popular. Therefore, first those who admitted to it were arrested, then on their information a very large multitude was convicted, not so much for the crime of arson as for hatred of the human race. Derision was added to their end: they were covered with the skins of wild animals and torn to death by dogs; or they were crucified and when the day ended they were burned as torches. Nero provided his gardens for the spectacle and gave a show in his circus, mixing with the people in charioteer's clothing, or standing on his racing chariot.” (Annals of Imperial Rome, 15:44)

C) The authenticity of the passage, or it's sources are heavily in doubt, because there is no shred of evidence that Nero persecuted any group calling themselves 'Chrestians' or 'Christians' after the burning of Rome. The fact of the matter is that the church itself invented the 'persecutions', along with most other supposed persecutions by the Roman state in the 4th century.

Atheist (and AF forum member) Tim O'Neill notes:

"This clear reference to Jesus, complete with the details of his execution by Pilate, is a major problem for the Mythicists.  They sometimes try to deal with it using their old standby argument: a claim that it is a later interpolation.  But this passage is distinctively Tacitean in its language and style and it is hard to see how a later Christian scribe could have managed to affect perfect second century Latin grammar and an authentic Tacitean style and fool about 400 years worth of Tacitus scholars, who all regard this passage and clearly genuine."

Atheist author and NT scholar Bart Ehrman agrees: Tacitus provides solid support for the existence of the historical Jesus.

So again you fail Randy. Tell me, how do you put up with such constant and unremitting failure?

When it happens, I'll let you know.

[Randy Carson]

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A) 116CE is not contemporary with c.33CE. It is 80 years past, nearly three whole generations later. So again you are wrong.
B) Tacitus doesn't actually speak about Jesus. He speaks about a man named Chrestus. Now the thing about the Latin name Chrestus is that at the time it was so common both as a given name and a title that there are literally thousands of references to different people with the name in the surviving fragments of Roman records and books. So the very best you get from Tacitus is that there was a group in Rome at c.65CE who followed an unidentified Chrestus who was killed under the orders of Pilate.
C) The authenticity of the passage, or it's sources are heavily in doubt, because there is no shred of evidence that Nero persecuted any group calling themselves 'Chrestians' or 'Christians' after the burning of Rome. The fact of the matter is that the church itself invented the 'persecutions', along with most other supposed persecutions by the Roman state in the 4th century.

---

So again you fail Randy. Tell me, how do you put up with such constant and unremitting failure?

He uses a psychological trick called "denial."

Notice that Constable actually MADE AN ARGUMENT FOR HIS POSITION.

Care to give that a try, Pyrrho?

[Cyberman]

What is Pyrrho's position?

[Randy Carson]

What is Pyrrho's position?

I'm waiting for him to lay that out with a well-reasoned argument.

[Cyberman]

Maybe; but you're trying to jump the gun by presupposing he has a position for which to argue. Instead of, you know, first asking if he has one and then inviting him to argue for it.

[Pyrrho]

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A) 116CE is not contemporary with c.33CE. It is 80 years past, nearly three whole generations later. So again you are wrong.
B) Tacitus doesn't actually speak about Jesus. He speaks about a man named Chrestus. Now the thing about the Latin name Chrestus is that at the time it was so common both as a given name and a title that there are literally thousands of references to different people with the name in the surviving fragments of Roman records and books. So the very best you get from Tacitus is that there was a group in Rome at c.65CE who followed an unidentified Chrestus who was killed under the orders of Pilate.
C) The authenticity of the passage, or it's sources are heavily in doubt, because there is no shred of evidence that Nero persecuted any group calling themselves 'Chrestians' or 'Christians' after the burning of Rome. The fact of the matter is that the church itself invented the 'persecutions', along with most other supposed persecutions by the Roman state in the 4th century.

---

So again you fail Randy. Tell me, how do you put up with such constant and unremitting failure?

He uses a psychological trick called "denial."

He uses a psychological trick called "denial."

Notice that Constable actually MADE AN ARGUMENT FOR HIS POSITION.

Care to give that a try, Pyrrho?

You have provided the proof of my claim:

...

So again you fail Randy. Tell me, how do you put up with such constant and unremitting failure?

When it happens, I'll let you know.

[pocaracas]

Notice the date of Tacitus' birth; he would have been about 39 years old at the time that the last living apostle John wrote his gospel in AD 95. The immediate successors of the apostles - people like Clement of Rome, Polycarp of Smyrna, Ignatius of Antioch - were all still alive at the time that Tacitus was in Rome and gathering the data that later formed his two works of history. Clement of Rome, for example, was a disciple of Peter and Paul, and he was in Rome (and pope) until his death in AD 99. So, that's not "three whole generations" from Jesus to Tacitus. Peter taught Clement, and Tacitus was in Rome at the same time that Clement was head of the Church in that city.

Jesus --> Peter --> Clement

Randy, Randy... Do you know how many people, at that time, claimed to have been disciples of the original disciples?
Do you know how many texts were in circulation claiming to have been written by one of those original apostles?
Do you know why they didn't all survive the biblical editing?

For all we know, Clement merely claimed to have gathered info from Peter to boost his credibility with his audience.
Of course, even then, it is relevant in the fact that there were people who were followers of the christ figure all the way in Rome, so that this Clement could have someone to whom pass that message.
The existence of followers of the christian cult in Rome is quite odd at such an early stage of the cult... either there was a sort of mass migration from the middle-east to Europe , or those few christians that did go to Rome on business or leisure had a great rhetoric that convinced the pagans.
Still, it's not much evidence for the existence of the Jesus fellow... just evidence for the existence of followers of the message allegedly brought forth by him.

Now, you may claim that John was still around, but you'll quickly find that the account in the bible attributed to John is widely agreed by the experts to not have been written by the apostle John.... just another phony... which makes one wonder at the accuracy of its contents.

[TheRocketSurgeon]

Notice the date of Tacitus' birth; he would have been about 39 years old at the time that the last living apostle John wrote his gospel in AD 95. The immediate successors of the apostles - people like Clement of Rome, Polycarp of Smyrna, Ignatius of Antioch - were all still alive at the time that Tacitus was in Rome and gathering the data that later formed his two works of history. Clement of Rome, for example, was a disciple of Peter and Paul, and he was in Rome (and pope) until his death in AD 99. So, that's not "three whole generations" from Jesus to Tacitus. Peter taught Clement, and Tacitus was in Rome at the same time that Clement was head of the Church in that city.

Jesus --> Peter --> Clement

Randy, Randy... Do you know how many people, at that time, claimed to have been disciples of the original disciples?
Do you know how many texts were in circulation claiming to have been written by one of those original apostles?
Do you know why they didn't all survive the biblical editing?

For all we know, Clement merely claimed to have gathered info from Peter to boost his credibility with his audience.
Of course, even then, it is relevant in the fact that there were people who were followers of the christ figure all the way in Rome, so that this Clement could have someone to whom pass that message.
The existence of followers of the christian cult in Rome is quite odd at such an early stage of the cult... either there was a sort of mass migration from the middle-east to Europe , or those few christians that did go to Rome on business or leisure had a great rhetoric that convinced the pagans.
Still, it's not much evidence for the existence of the Jesus fellow... just evidence for the existence of followers of the message allegedly brought forth by him.

Now, you may claim that John was still around, but you'll quickly find that the account in the bible attributed to John is widely agreed by the experts to not have been written by the apostle John.... just another phony... which makes one wonder at the accuracy of its contents.

I think it's pretty clear from the writings of Tacitus that the people he was interviewing for his report were Christians about to be martyred in Rome. That doesn't necessarily mean they lived in Rome. It does mean that their testimonies given at trial (which Tacitus mentions) are likely to include the full mythology of their young religion-- from the Crucifixion to the trial by Pilate. 

Several of the historians who look at those writings fail to account for the simple expedient of interviewing the condemned and/or reading from transcripts of the trials (which Senator Tacitus, especially, as a member of a council that kept track of heretical cults, would have had access to in both cases), and instead presume without evidence that Tacitus was operating from official Roman records about Pilate, since it was Tacitus' usual method to use documentation when available. But he gives no evidence in that chapter that such is the basis for his writings about the Christians; the only documents he references in that passage are the accounts given by "both" sides as to why Nero was burning the city, since some said Nero did it to distract from other problems and tried to blame the Christians in Rome for it... even Tacitus writes as though that idea is silly, however.

But at no point does Tacitus give a clear indication of an historical Jesus, only of secondhand accounts which are as likely to come from the Christians themselves as from any sort of records (which, given Tacitus' tendency to mention his records, when in use, seems to be less likely).

[GrandizerII]

Atheist author and NT scholar Bart Ehrman agrees: Tacitus provides solid support for the existence of the historical Jesus.

Ok, and please don't ignore this request at all, because otherwise it means you're not interested in an honest discussion. In which book and page does Ehrman say Tacitus' remark about the Christians is solid support for Jesus' existence?