Any Evidence For A Historical Jesus?

[King_Charles]

Simply: To blaspheme against the holy spirit is to refuse to believe in Jesus. Therefore there is no contradiction between saying that "all that believe are justified " and that to blaspheme against the holy spirit is unforgivable. Clear now?

I would point out that not having such a belief (in Jesus or whatever else is used to fill in the blank) is not the same as a refusal to believe. My car could refuse to start for me because of some fault inherent in its operation or function, or sheer bloodymindedness. If I don't even own a car - which I don't - the reason for its refusal to start becomes blindingly obvious.

Yep. Good analogy, that's how I've always seen it. I was oversimilifying there too, I actually see it as applying to those who pervert the course of the spirit through their own pride as well. (i.e. unrepentent religious bigots etc...)

[darkment0r]

Many Christians point to the shroud of Turin as "evidence." Although it has been carbon dated to be actually have been painted and created in the 14th century C.E. (Common Era.) Most likely created for pilgrimage purposes and manipulation by the church or some other religious group associated with worshiping the character jesus.

Here's the link:

Shroud of Turin

[Phil]

Excuse me but there's no need to get personal, it is hard to convey meaning via text, and you were not explicit enough in your phrasing to avoid that confusion.

What I wrote was clear to anyone that isn't blinded by Christianity. You may not be a fundamentalist but you are certainly acting like one. You made a mistake because you didn't read the whole post. Be a man (or woman) and admit it. Trying to justify it makes it worse.

In any case... I'm not here to defend every OT prophecy or would I try, but clan/town/city, at the level of society we're talking about are kinda interchangeable.

No it isn't. Clan is not a geographic location but a family group.

As to the Nazerene, thing I think you should stop reading terrible biblical analysis written by people who think the world was created in six days as your basis for your disagreements with the bible. It is made explicit in John that Nazerenes were looked down on, ""Nazareth!" exclaimed Nathanael. "Can anything good come from Nazareth?" "Come and see for yourself," Philip replied.". All there is to it is that. Though I won't deny the authors of the synoptic gospels were sometimes over-eager to fit the OT prohecies to the story they were telling, what you're citing is a load of proverbial poop made up by Christian Fundamentalists to justify their reading of the bible in modern times.

I'm reading YEC stuff? You know what? Shove your fucking deadbeat daddy god who raped his own mother up your ass. In case that wasn't clear enough for you, I want nothing to do with you.

[King_Charles]

So nothing. Are you posting in the right topic? I thought we were debating on whether or not there was a historical Jesus?

I've said before and I'll post again, someone needs to define for me what "historical Jesus" means before I can comment on whether or not I think it's likely he existed.

To me, it's like saying "historical Superman". Superman without the super powers? What's left? The powers are so interwoven into every part of his story that there's nothing left once you hollow out and remove all the super feats. Same is true with the "historical Jesus". So many of the episodes of his story are either punctuated by or revolve around the performance of some miracle. Take away the supernatural and many of these stories simply must be removed because there's nothing left.

So what do we have left? The ministry that spread far and wide to different provinces, that attracted followers from all over, that had even notables sitting up and paying attention? Yet there's nothing from either Roman or Jewish sources in the 1st century, barring the controversial TF by Josephus. This too must be discarded as exaggeration.

How about his teachings? What were they? We have nothing from him. There is no "book of Jesus" in the Bible. All we have are the Gospel accounts, and these are the same accounts we'd have to regard as questionable because we've agreed to reject the supernatural claims. Or should we accept their testimony of what Jesus said but reject the same testimony when it makes claims of what he did?

What do we have left? Some guy named Yeshua (common name) who was a doom crier (commonly found) of the early 1st century, regarded as the messiah (frequent claim) by his small group of followers? There were probably several.

This is a fair point. I would point to examples of people know to have lived who are said to have had "superpowers" mohammed for one, he deffo existed, doesn't mean that an angel came to him or anything like that, nessecarily. Constantine won the battle of Milvian Bridge, but I doubt there was a shining cross in the sky.

I'd respectfully disagree that all the sources are exaggeration, the fact Christians are mentioned at all in the first century A.D. is evidence that they were growing remarkably rapidly(There is the Tacitus, Pliny and Josephus sources, which together are generally regarded as good evidence.) Perhaps not unlike the growth of Scientology since the 70's. (Not a flattering comparision for a Christian to make I know, but it serves its purpose here.)

I would certainly agree that there were, a lot of "messiahs" in Judea, I would go further and say there still are, as a matter of fact: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerusalem_syndrome. But that doesn't bother me, its just I studied early Christianity for my Degree, and all my lecturers seemed to agree that somebody called Jesus existed, even if he was just a wilderness profit. I was actually told to ignore anyone who thought it to be purely mythic because they generally weren't applying the correct methodology for dealing with aincent sources.

The idea of a COMPOSITE Christ, however, made up of several Jesus' was an interesting idea to play around with, and seems to fit in with your ideas somewhat...

[Phil]

These are the silent 40.

1. Josephus
2. Philo
3. Seneca
4. Pliny the Elder
5. Suetonius
6. Juvenal
7. Martial
8. Persius
9. Plutarch
10. Justus of Tiberias
11. Apollonius
12. Pliny the Younger
13. Tacitus
14. Quintilian
15. Lucanus
16. Epictetus
17. Silius Italicus
18. Statius
19. Ptolemy
20. Valerius Maximus
21. Arrian
22. Petronius
23. Dion Pruseus
24. Paterculus
25. Appian
26. Theon of Smyrna
27. Phlegon
28. Pomponius Mela
29. Quintius Curtius
30. Lucian
31. Pausanias
32. Valerius Flaccus
33. Florus Lucius
34. Favorinius
35. Phaedrus
36. Damis
37. Aulus Gellius
38. Columella
39. Dio Chrysostom
40. Appion of Alexandria

Suetonius and Pliny the Younger do mention Jesus (if they are authentic and not Christian interpolations) but fact is they are both much to late to distinguish between Christ and Christianity.

On Tacitus:

1. There are no quotes of this passage by any of the church fathers.
2. Tertullian was familar with all the writings of Tactius and if this passage existed it would have been cited as an answer to his arguments (Chapter 5 of Tertullian's Apology and Chapter 21 of the same).
3. In the beginning of the 3rd century Clement of Alexandria compiled a list of all references from Pagan writers to Jesus and Tactius is missing from it.
4. Origen in his arguments with Celsus would have referred to it had it existed.
5. Eusibius in the 4th century did the same as Clement of Alexandria and once again, no mention of Tactius.
6. The first quotation of it by a Christian writer was in the 15th century.
7. At the time of the quotation it was said only one copy of the Annals existed and it was made 600 years after Tactius died.
8. Conveniently, this single existing copy was in the possession of a Christian so insertion of a forged passage would have been extremely easy.
9. The story about the orgies of Nero do not read anything like the writing of Tactius.
10. This story is almost word for word in the writing of Sulpicus Severus who was a Christian in the 5th century but there were no references to Jesus.
11. Suetonius, a Roman historian, who condemned Nero heavily even tells us Nero took care not to sacrifice a human life, not even of a convicted criminal.
12. Tactius even claims at the time of the fire that Nero was not in Rome but in Antium.

These are just a few reasons that scholars see this passage from Annals as nothing to be reckoned with as it most probably is a forgery in the same vein as Josephus' Testimonium and at best it is nothing more than heresay.

On Josephus:

The Testimonium was not written by Josephus and there are many reasons in the text itself. One example is that in the text Jesus is called the messiah yet Josephus remained an observant Jew and never became a Christian therefore he could not have called Jesus the messiah. Secondly, there are 3 different manuscript of the Testimonium and as expected, the later manuscripts have more details than the earlier ones as if the story evolved with time. Third and EXTREMELY DAMNING is that there were no references to it nor was it even mentioned in any writing until the 4th century when Constantine appointed Eueibius official church historian (Eusebius is the suspected author of the Testimonium) Fourth and a final nail in the Testimonium's coffin is textual analysis of the text with Josephus known writing shows certain phrase and words that were not used by Josephus but were found in the writing of only one church historian by the name of Eusebius.

[DeistPaladin]

Suetonius and Pliny the Younger do mention Jesus (if they are authentic and not Christian interpolations) but fact is they are both much to late to distinguish between Christ and Christianity

Seutonius mentions a "Chrestus", not "Christus", in Rome around 49 CE. Not even close. Even apologists are divided on whether or not to even try to put it forward.

Pliny does not mention "Christ" but Christians.

---

This is a fair point. I would point to examples of people know to have lived who are said to have had "superpowers" mohammed for one, he deffo existed, doesn't mean that an angel came to him or anything like that, nessecarily. Constantine won the battle of Milvian Bridge, but I doubt there was a shining cross in the sky.

I was thinking about some recent examples. There was a "Davy" Crocket but it's unlikely he "killed him a bear when he was only three" as the song goes. Washington existed but the cherry tree story was fiction. It's not hard to see how a real character can be embellished with folklore, and these examples aren't even religious icons.

The Bible is also filled with hyperbole and exaggeration. King David supposedly had a vast empire that stretched from the Sinai to the Euphrates. He commanded an army that was roughly five times the size of the combined Roman legions at their height. No evidence for such an empire exists. The Jewish population in Egypt at the time of Moses had supposedly grown from 70 to 1.6 million in just four generations, a figure which only makes sense if every one of their females was constantly pregnant with twins. No evidence for them or their trek through the desert. It would be no surprise to me if the same source had a tiny splinter faction of Judaism as a famous and controversial ministry.

[ThomM]

WE have not a single document that can be dated to the supposed time of the christ - that mentions his name. NONE at all.

WE have no remains and no remains of his supposed family.

THERE is no historical evidence for the christ as a real person or being.

THERE is evidence (the bible) of a religious fairy tale that includes the christ. Since large portions of the bible have already been determined to be of dubious origin - lacking reality - or actually contradicting known facts - it is only of use to establish the christ as the Iliad can establish that Hercules lived.

[Minimalist]

Now you've done it.

Any moment now one of the dickheads will start blabbering about all the "eye-witnesses" in their fucking bible.

Get out your umbrellas, boys. Shitstorm coming.

[Cato]

Now you've done it.

Any moment now one of the dickheads will start blabbering about all the "eye-witnesses" in their fucking bible.

Get out your umbrellas, boys. Shitstorm coming.

[ThomM]

Now you've done it.

Any moment now one of the dickheads will start blabbering about all the "eye-witnesses" in their fucking bible.

Get out your umbrellas, boys. Shitstorm coming.

WHOOOOPEEEE

THe bible is a group of religious myths and legends - and HAS no provable basis in fact. While there are real places and things in the bible - the fact that there is a Kansas in no way proves that the Wizard of OZ is a real person - or even that Glinda is a good witch.

Sorry - but there is NO proof that any of the bible was written by anyone who could have been an eye witness to the christ - any more than we have proof that a person could be witness to Harry Potter killing Voldemort.

People who make that argument have NOTHING to support their statements - since we have NO proof of authorship of most of the bible.
Textual criticism has established - for instance that the book of John was clearly written by THREE different people - and they are not named