(February 23, 2013 at 5:16 pm)traveller Wrote: There are many references to both Jesus and Christianity in ancient texts, not just religious ones, the problem being is that they are two hundred years earlier than the current Gregorian calendar i.e 200 BC.
I am not certain which works that you may be referring to. If you are speaking of the Talmudic texts, they were written long after the year 200CE. Any reference seems to either be a later polemic insert, or and edit, and not from anyone who would have met him. It was either a modified quote from someone who died before he would have lived, or from someone who was born after he would have died. Changing "talmid" (student of...) to "Yeshu" (which really is an acronym for "yimach shemo vezichro" - may his name be obliterated does not mean that there wass a belief in a historical Jesus - just that such a character deserved to be ridiculed. (For more fun, I refer you to Toldot Yeshu, a Spanish document of about 100CE or later, but is the one that most folks like to quote)
But the Church also saw any reference to Bilaam or Gechazi as also being Jesus, having special powers and deserved of death, but that wasn't him either. If you love a god, you get to see him everywhere.
There really are only 8 places in the Talmud where there is an inferred or inserted reference, which historically was done much, much later, by so many centuries, and certainly not by anyone who know of actual history. And there is only one reference which certainly was designed specifically for him to explain why such a person deserved to die, rather than just inserting "Yeshu". But is a play on the Aramaic terms and requires a lot of understanding. (I wrote a tretise on the lack of a historical Jesus in the Talmud many years ago, and I am typing from that memory).
So, no, had there been any real Jewish source for a Jesus. And as far as I know, had there been any true source, you know, like the Letter to Esubius where Jesus wrote a response. But then, they sort of lost that.
How irresponsible of them!
“I've done everything the Bible says — even the stuff that contradicts the other stuff!"— Ned Flanders
