For People Who Think There Was No Historical Jesus

[Confused Ape]

Are you suggesting that there was a real "Osiris?" Or "Zeus?" Or "Odin?" Or "Marduk?" Or "Quetzlcoatl?" Or "Shiva?"

The whole point of this topic is that everyone is supposed to be taking the attitude there was no historical Jesus. This means no man behind the myths and legends who could be classed as an historical Jesus. I'm asking people to come up with ideas about how a weird cult in Judea about someone who didn't exist got started and how it spread to Greek speaking gentiles and then Rome.

I wish people would read my opening post properly instead of assuming I'm saying that Tacitus's report proves that Jesus exists.

was not writing in 64 AD....he was 8 years old. At best, Tacitus reflects a second century viewpoint but the fact remains that this passage in the Annales was unknown to any other ancient writer which leads strongly to the idea that it was a (much) later xtian interpolation.

See end of this post for what various scholars have said about Tacitus's report of what Christians believed. This doesn't mean that the Christians believed something which was actually true.

All four Gospels mention the crucifixion which means that some Christians believed it had happened when the Gospels were written. None of the Gospels were eye witness accounts and the contradictions in the accounts show that it's all hearsay, not history. It's what Christians had come to believe, though, and the estimated dates for when the original Gospels were written are as follows -

Gospels Dating

Estimates for the dates when the canonical gospel accounts were written vary significantly; and the evidence for any of the dates is scanty. Because the earliest surviving complete copies of the gospels date to the 4th century and because only fragments and quotations exist before that, scholars use higher criticism to propose likely ranges of dates for the original gospel autographs. Scholars variously assess the majority (though not the consensus [29]) view as follows:

Mark: c. 68–73,[30] c. 65–70[31]
Matthew: c. 70–100.[30] c. 80–85.[31]
Luke: c. 80–100, with most arguing for somewhere around 85,[30] c. 80–85[31]
John: c. 90–100,[31] c. 90–110,[32] The majority view is that it was written in stages, so there was no one date of composition.

Tacitus wrote the Annals in 116 AD so it doesn't look as if the early Christians waited until his book was published before deciding to believe that somebody had been crucified.

I'm now going to a modern cult as a way of illustrating what this topic is supposed to be about - Raëlism

Raëlism, or the Raëlian Movement, is a UFO religion that was founded in 1974 by Claude Vorilhon, now known as Raël.

The Raëlian Movement teaches that life on Earth was scientifically created by a species of extraterrestrials, which they call the Elohim. Members of this species appeared human and when having personal contacts with the descendants of the humans they made, they previously misinformed (on purpose) early humanity that they were angels, cherubim or gods. Raëlians believe messengers, or prophets, of the Elohim include Buddha, Jesus, and others[3][4][5] who informed humans of each era.[6] The founder of Raëlism, members claim, received the final message of the Elohim and that its purpose is to inform the world about Elohim and that if humans become aware and peaceful enough, they wish to be welcomed by them.

The beliefs make as much sense as Jesus's miracles but we can see where the beliefs come from - existing religions and the idea that the gods came from outer space. (Erich von Däniken's Chariots Of The Gods was pusblished in 1968.) We also know the name of the man who founded Raëlism and the date that he founded it.

So back to this weird cult in Judea which had spread to Rome during Tacitus's lifetime. Somebody must have started it sometime. Could it have been around for a long time before somebody told non-Jews in other countries about it? Gullible people outside Judea wouldn't have checked if Pilate really had crucified a man called Yeshua - they'd have accepted what they were told.

Anyway, here's what various scholars have concluded about Tacitus's report concerning what Christians believed.

Tacitus Historical Value

Andreas Köstenberger states that the tone of the passage towards Christians is far too negative to have been authored by a Christian scribe.[46] Van Voorst also states that the passage is unlikely to be a Christian forgery because of the pejorative language used to describe Christianity.[40] John P. Meier states that there is no historical or archaeological evidence to support the argument that a scribe may have introduced the passage into the text.[47]

There's still argument going on about whether Tacitus's report proves an historical Jesus but we're not talking about an historical Jesus in this topic. We're talking about what early Christians believed.

Scholars generally consider Tacitus's reference to be genuine and of historical value as an independent Roman source about early Christianity that is in unison with other historical records.[5][6][7][41]

James D. G. Dunn considers the passage as useful in establishing facts about early Christians, e.g. that there was a sizable number of Christians in Rome around AD 60.[10] Dunn states that Tacitus seems to be under the impression that Christians were some form of Judaism, although distinguished from them.[10] Raymond E. Brown and John P. Meier state that in addition to establishing that there was a large body of Christians in Rome, the Tacitus passage provides two other important pieces of historical information, namely that by around AD 60 it was possible to distinguish between Christians and Jews in Rome and that even pagans made a connection between Christianity in Rome and its origin in Judea.[11]