(May 2, 2021 at 11:48 am)Jehanne Wrote: Imagine today, Sunday (or, for those reading this later, just pick another day), CNN issues a worldwide news flash at 4 PM EST announcing the following:
"President John F. Kennedy has been shot."
Shortly thereafter Anderson Cooper appears on live TV to describe the mayhem that occurred some 60 or so years ago.
What would you think? A joke? They are all crazy? An alien virus???
The above scenario, however, happened just under two thousand years ago, which, today, believers and skeptics refer to as The Four Gospels. The earliest Gospel, Mark, was composed around 70 of the common era with The Gospel of John being written sometime in the 90s, some 60 to 70 years after the execution of Jesus. These writings (as well as others outside of the New Testament) claim many extraordinary things that Jesus supposedly did, such as walking on liquid water and raising the clinical dead back to life.
Some living during that time appear, however, to be completely unimpressed by these stories, which were never mentioned by hundreds, if not thousands, of literate human beings who could have recorded those events. For instance, the Jewish-Roman historian, Josephus, was born in Jerusalem, the city that Jesus died in, sometime in 37 CE, but in his book on the Jewish & Roman wars, written 30 years later, Josephus never even mentions the existence of Jesus; he does mention Pilate and Ananus, the high priest. Only some 20 years later, when writing a tome on the history of the Jews does Jesus get a brief, undisputed reference as being "called the Christ".
Clearly, Josephus was unimpressed with the stories surrounding Jesus, no doubt viewing such tales as being a "dime a dozen". Knowing what scholars know today about all the other miracle workers who lived prior, during and after the time of Jesus should cause us to be even less impressed about the supposed "historical data".
one your framing of analogy is wrong. as you assume a largely illiterate society would treat written information in the same way, hold it is the same esteem and treat eye witnesses so poorly.. when in fact the opposite was true. a good man's word in that time trumped anything supposedly written. as the literate would often hide their own agenda in reading out an official document. tax collectors were notorious for this. as they would receive an official tax notice to collect X they would announce that they would need to collect x+ 10% and pocket the difference. EI the literate were not trusted as much as a solid eyewitness. like the apostles. meaning why would anyone need a book when the apostles the people who lived and worked with christ were there. not to mention they were under the idea christ's return was to take place with in a few years.
Now look at the time frame that you claim the books were written.. why 60AD+? it was because the last of the core group of apostles were coming to the end of their life, and thought if they could have their words written out, if anything happened to them God's word would live on. And this is exactly what happened.
and like it or not in the official writing of josephus, jesus is mention as well in 4 other historical documents written by period historians:
https://dowym.com/voices/5-secular-non-b...-ministry/
only the craziest flat earth type of atheist still tried to deny jesus as a historical figure. this fad went out in the late 90s. i honestly didnt think people were still serious about this arguement.