Existence of Jesus

[Mark]

I didn't see this, sorry.

Well actually if you read here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josephus_on_Jesus , you will see that while what is today in Josephus almost certainly is an emendation by later scribes, it is considered likely that Josephus did say something about Jesus, which was probably the basis of this emendation.

Wikipedia? A useful starting point sure but hardly a real reference.

As I say, I am not an expert on this subject, but my first point of reference on most things is wikipedia, which I regard as reasonably reliable. If the article in question is inaccurate to your knowledge, you are free to point out where.

All this is debatable, I readily concede. But it is misleading to say that the text in Josephus is "fake."

Indeed it is debatable

Do you agree that in light of the information supplied in the cited article, "fake" is misleadingly strong? I think it is, because it creates the impression that the entire idea that Josephus mentioned Jesus is a bogus one.

Those who believe in the existence of Jesus Christ like to quote him as being a first century direct witness but there's a problem (apart from the fact that he was born AFTER Jesus Christ is supposed to have died)

Well I have not maintained that Josephus was an eyewitness to Jesus. It remains the case that he was writing within a few decades of the supposed death of Jesus.

... the part specifically is this (and I stress I had to get this off the web, I can check it later in my copy of "Antiquities of the Jews"):

"Now, there was about this time, Jesus, a wise man, if it be lawful to call him a man, for he was a doer of wonderful works; a teacher of such men as received the truth with pleasure. He drew over to him both many of the Jews and many of the Gentiles. He was the Christ; and when Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men amongst us, had condemned him to the cross, those that loved him at the first did not forsake him; for he appeared to them alive again the third day, as the divine prophets had foretold these and ten thousand other wonderful things concerning him; and the tribe of Christians, so named from him, are not extinct at this day."

I also have Josephus at home, in English, but only on the Jewish War. But I see no reason to doubt that the quoted passage is in the extant edition of Josephus.

Now, men like Herodotus and Josephus wrote extremely well in terms of style & content (a huge part of the reason why they are considered so credible) but the writings of Josephus that refer to Jesus Christ are considered by many historians to be false (a later interpolation). They simply do not fit with the known style & normal kind of content of the writer and they are introduced in places in his work where they simply should not be. According to one historian Josephus' writings are like reading "War & Peace" by Tolstoy and then all of a sudden it starts talking about Jesus Christ like something out of a "Wish You Were Here" TV holiday guide!

First let me say that I have no doubt that if a passage about Jesus existed in Josephus, the above is not a fully faithful rendition of it. It is preposterous that Josephus, a non-Christian with a strong Hellenistic sensibility, would have made some of the statements here. But this does not rule out that Josephus, who was after all writing a history of the Jews and a defense of their religion, did treat Jesus in a passage moderately similar to this one.

If you read the cited article, you will see that a reasonable case can be made for that, and which it appears that many scholars accept. For example, it is widely proposed that Josephus said, "Jesus is believed to be the Christ" and the emphasized words were left out by the scribe.

Secondly if you read the cited article, you will see that it is now commonly agreed that the passage quoted, in Greek, does indeed conform both to the style and word choice customary to Josephus. Thus if it is a complete forgery, it is not a clumsy one that violates the style and use of words of the author, but a skillful one.

I am not sure that this is the part Origen refers to but no matter,

Well, it is not of no matter. The point about Origen is that he, writing 160 years after Josephus, declares that Josephus did not accept the divinity of Jesus. This would be a rather strange thing to say if Origen had not read something about Jesus in Josephus.

there is a second reference in Book 18 of "Antiquities Of The Jews" which says:

"But the younger Ananus who, as we said, received the high priesthood, was of a bold disposition and exceptionally daring; he followed the party of the Sadducees, who are severe in judgment above all the Jews, as we have already shown. As therefore Ananus was of such a disposition, he thought he had now a good opportunity, as Festus was now dead, and Albinus was still on the road; so he assembled a council of judges, and brought it before the brother of Jesus the so-called Christ, whose name was James, together with some others, and having accused them as law-breakers, he delivered them over to be stoned."

In favour of it being genuine is the fact that it doesn't go overboard as the other strongly suspected interpolation did, that Origen mentions this passage (which allows over a century for the passage to have been interpolated) and the claim that the words reflect Jewish rather than Christian usage are inconclusive. Another objection to this passage is that the Greek does not contain the concept of "so-called" so the actual phrase would be "Him called Christ" which then raises the interpolation spectre again.

Well I am no expert so I can't judge this passage. Is the Antiquities lost in the original Greek? But in any case, it would seem to require a more thoroughgoing discussion of Jesus than this to cause Origen to conclude that Josephus rejected the divinity of Jesus.

Further it is worth noting that the historicity of Jesus is not widely doubted among historians of the classical period. Why would it be? There is some presumption that he lived; there is on the other side mere doubt that he did not. But how much evidence could possibly come down from A.D. 40 clearly demonstrating the existence of any particular non-patrician Roman, indeed a non-Italian and non-citizen? It's worth noting that to Romans, Jesus would have been a nonentity during his life; only much later, as Christianity spread, did he become a figure of any significance to Rome (by then a historical one, of course).

Sorry but I don't accept that to be true ...

Well I emphasize that this part of my argument is not at all about Josephus. I have a number of histories of Rome on my bookshelf, and each one of them that deals with this period and part of the world at some point discusses the historical Jesus as a charismatic man who either actually or most probably existed. No reference of mine avers that he did not exist. So I will maintain what I say in the first sentence above.

...my understanding is that many historians reject the first passage entirely as a later interpolation where others maintain the passage was altered not inserted and whilst not pro-Christian did refer to Jesus Christ. The second passage is fairly weak even if it was genuine. If either of these passages could be demonstrated to be genuine then they would, I suppose, constitute possible evidence for the existence of a literal Jesus but claims to his existence are far from certain and the incredible lack of hard confirmatory evidence weighs heavily against him ever being real.

Yes exactly, others maintain that it was altered. There is indeed a paraphrase of Josephus in the classical literature, which I quoted in English from the wikipedia article, which sounds very much like the disputed passage but which is free of Christian belief. There is a fair degree of supposition that paraphrase was based on an early edition of Josephus in which the disputed passage had not yet been modified.

But in any case, while I think it likely that Josephus did mention Jesus in something pretty well resembling the paraphrase, I don't consider this to be the main basis of the historicity of Jesus. You have in the first place the Gospels, which purport to be accounts of this man's life. They are sufficiently consistent to suggest that such a person may have existed, and they appear to be based on prior written accounts. Granted they report absurd miracles, but that is not ground for dismissing the report of a man's existence and the broad outlines of his conduct.

More importantly, the formation of a religious movement around a charismatic preacher is hardly an uncommon occurrence in history. Amy Temple McPherson; Joseph Smith; and many others are modern examples. On the other hand, you will search modern history (e.g., since 1500) in vain to discover where any such a movement, ostensibly inspired by a charismatic preacher, arose without the actual existence of the preacher in question.

chatpilot rather strangely said that many ancient religions were based on imaginary human beings. There is of course very little evidence that Budda, for example, ever existed, but there is very scant reason to assert that he did not. Confucious is rather certain to have existed, I believe. This is not to assert that every mythical human being taken up as a demi-god by any religion necessarily existed; only that chatpilot's case that ancient religion is typically founded on the preaching of a non-existent preacher is quite weak.

At the end of the day, we do not know for certain whether the actual Joshua bar Joseph, mortal and charismatic preacher of something-or-other in Judea around 40 C.E. existed or not. But the preponderance of likelihood, which is really all that historians have to work with in such cases, is that he did. I concede that there is some possibility that he did not.

You know if you look at chatpilot's posts along this entire thread, and I have, they really reek with anti-Christian animus. Now as atheists I think it is quite fine if we debate Christians and even try to convert them to our point of view. Nor is it necessary that we respect their religion, which is an absurdity. But I think we drift off into la-la land when we allow our disputes with Christianty to cloud our judgement on questions of historical fact. My atheism has a lot to do with my desire to look directly at the world and see it for what it is. That includes human history.

Oh and lastly, there is not "an incredible lack of hard confirmatory evidence" of Jesus' existence. There is a lack, but it is hardly incredible given that Jesus was a rather unimportant person to the only people at the time who were keeping systematic records, and further given that almost all the records that they kept have been lost to history anyway. How much "hard confirmatory evidence" exists of anyone in the First Century?