Any Evidence For A Historical Jesus?

[chi pan]

Another of your gems that I missed, chippy.

Try this and see if you can understand it ( which I doubt.) People LIE. They lie for a lot of reasons. When they are not deliberately lying they are frequently wrong. If they are wrong sometimes it is because they are misled by sources and sometimes they simply do not know WTF they are talking about. Sometimes, they just made shit up to advance the story.

Julius Caesar, in his Commentarii de Bello Gallico (Commentaries on the Gallic War) claims that 250,000 Gauls came as a reinforcement to relieve the siege of Alesia. According to you, chippy, the simple fact that Caesar wrote this down makes it true. We should not question it. The number is fucking absurd. But it makes great propaganda which is what The Gallic War was all about. Caesar wasn't writing for his own troops. Most of them were illiterate. He wasn't writing for the Gauls who did not speak Latin. Caesar was writing to energize his supporters in Rome and scare the shit out of the senatorial party.

sorry it took me so long to respond, i have a life. and oh that's a great arguement. people lie. that's great... except for a few other fundamental truths. people lie, but not about the same thing. not about things they disagree with. there are believers and non believers alike who are writting about him during his time. not one of them claim he didn't exist, they actually claimed the opposite. they just deny his miricles and his resurection. even the jews who all hated him at the time claim he existed. this is the difference. if this was in fact a lie, it would be the biggest scam in history. i don't think anyone could make a scam for people to believe for thousands of years. i don't thing people could completely make a person up and make up events that happened to them including interactions with very important people and make people believe it then yet alone for centuries later.

So here we have examples of lying for propaganda. With Herodotus we also have the story of how 100,000 slaves labored for 20 years to build the pyramids. This story was told by his Egyptian guide who had no idea how the pyramids were built. Herodotus was simply misled.

Livy recounts the tale of Trojans escaping Troy and fleeing to Italy. Is that true because Livy wrote it? He also wrote about Romulus and Remus being shoved in a basket and put into a river( sound familiar????) and saved by a wolf. I guess you believe that too because, WTF, its written down?

I'm hoping by this point you have gotten the hint. Virtually everything written by ancient historians must be taken cum grano salis. As the noted British scholar, Philip Davies has noted, literacy in the ancient world was so rare that one must not only consider the agenda of the author but also the point of view of the intended audience. I fully expect that someone like you who is so invested in a book of fairy tales will be unable to grasp the significance of what Davies is talking about.

look, yes there are things people can write about that are completely made up because no one was there to see it. but, these were very famous events that took place that had quite a few witnesses. there are many that confirm these events and none who deny them. the Jews deny his works but not the existance of the man himself. you can't bring one person who did but i bet you could bring many who wrote about him during his time who hated him.

And its far more likely that he is talking about Jesus bar Damneus, anyway

oh yes because he's the father of christianity isn't he? ok...

it seams that my debate was overtaken so i'll leave whatever Fpvpilot is talking about to him. i'm staying out of that one.