Why are other civilizations ignored in the Bible?

[Esquilax]

Is this a good argument. No it is not. For it assumes that in order for an account of a person's life to be reliable the account must be written while the person is alive.

That's not the argument, but let me put it this way: so, your extra-biblical source for the existence of Jesus is a piece of writing from a person who never met him, saw him, talked to him, or existed in the same time frame as him. Your great confirmation of Jesus' existence comes from a source that never actually confirmed that he existed. How can it possibly fulfill that criteria by definition, then?

You know what, I bet I can find sources that state that Zeus existed, from people that never met or saw Zeus at all, are you willing to take that as confirmation that Zeus existed? No? Why not?

I am not aware of any historian who holds this view. It would be great if we did have an account of Christ written by someone while Christ was alive but we do not. If historians made this the sole prerequisite in determining the reliabilty of an account of a person's life then a great many historical accounts of other people would also have to be deemed unreliable.

Of course, his absence, given how influential the bible claims him to be, is rather glaring. Mind you, I don't take that to be the sole prerequisite either, but as I've said to you before, when we don't have any confirmatory accounts that are particularly solid, we don't tend to accept the magic claims about them as true. I mean, there are accounts of Roman generals and such being blessed by magic omens that ensured their victory, but we tend to discard those claims as meaningless superstition. Yet, you're asking for a special exemption for Jesus, when the evidence for him is less solid as for those generals.

I'm fully willing to grant that there was a human being called Jesus that existed at that time, that the bible is based on. That doesn't prove that he was the son of god.