Objective evidence for the existence of Jesus Christ?

[Brometheus]

I think we may not be understanding one another.

It is a fallacy to accept something is true purely because an expert says so. Even experts are required to produce evidence. I'm not talking about dismissing evidence presented by experts. It's only a fallacy if we must accept their opinion simply on their say-so. 

Nonsense. You don't nor can evaluate everything thing scientists claim.  You go with expert majority and not on what a few experts on the fringes say.

Except that the majority of 'experts' used to believe in leeching, flat earth and a host of other things.

[Mudhammam]

I think you may be missing the point.  No one here has said Jesus absolutely didn't exist on some level, I believe what most are saying is that there is not sufficient evidence to make the claim that you are trying to make.

Actually that point is quite obvious and clearly I'm saying that I disagree.

Clearly, you want desperately for Jesus to have existed and are unwilling to concede even the smallest of his mythical attributes.  

You must be either delusional or dishonest, neither of which really deserve much of a response. Go back and reread my posts so that you can see how completely wrong you are. I did say there is mythology in the narratives, and I'll qualify that further: there's a lot.

You seem utterly determined to accept any and all ancient scribblings on the grounds that some unnamed person(s) of scholarly education may have found some circumstantial evidence that even he or she cannot prove.

If Jesus rode into the crowded city of Jerusalem while hundreds, if not thousands of people laid palm branches at his feet, why pray tell is there absolutely no record of this?  I'd say that's a pretty significant event.  The list goes on and on.

The records we have don't disappear simply because you choose to ignore them. And saying that any given testimonial to an event is probably unreliable is not the same as saying all of them are, or that Jesus ceases to be historical because most of what is said about him may not be.

You seem more caught up in the religious significance of Jesus' back story rather than actual events.

Is it your reading comprehension, or your basic use of logic here, that utterly sucks? What does "the religious significance of Jesus" have to do with ANYTHING? That's a rhetorical question by the way.

Prove those events took place on any historical level and I'll subliminally accept that jewish zombie right now (just kidding, I won't).

That's logical.

[Cephus]

When you look at what constitutes our historical understanding of other figures based on written testimony, Josephus, Tacitus and dozens of various Christian works, all within 100 years of the supposed events, some within 20 years, it doesn't look that bad to me.

Except we know that Josephus never wrote what theists claim he wrote, it was an early Christian attempt at forgery.  Not a single copy of Jewish Antiquities that existed from the time of Josephus contained that passage.  Josephus wasn't a Christian work, he was a Jew and remained that way until his death.  You'd think that if he had written what is recorded in Jewish Antiquities, he'd have converted but there's no reason to think he ever did.  Tacitus never even wrote about Jesus, at best he wrote about people who followed the teachings of Jesus.  That's why these accounts are so laughable, they're just reporting about popular mythology of the day, repeating things they heard, which is not evidence of anything.  Tacitus wasn't a Christian either, he was writing a letter to Nero, complaining about the terrible things that  Christians were doing in the name of their leader.

That's the problem, all of these supposed "accounts" have been thoroughly debunked.  Clearly you have never bothered to examine any of them, instead just pulling them off some apologist website, because if you had spent 10 seconds examining them, there's no way you'd find any of them credible.

---

Spot on. People can lie for any number of reasons. It falls under the "die for a lie" fallacy, yet even more so.

Especially if they never intended the book to be non-fiction in the first place. How do we know they weren't just writing a story? It sounds way more like a story than a serious account. Richard Carrier commented that the style of writing in the gospels is what you would expect from myth making; story telling.

It isn't that people can lie, it's that people can be honestly mistaken.  We know that people of that era were not operating skeptically as we do today.  There are all kinds of "historical" writings that include accounts of sea serpents and magic and gods.  Jesus wasn't the only messiah people believed in back then.  There were "saviors" on every street corner in Jerusalem, many of which became popular.  We actually do know that early Christians went back and destroyed accounts of other religious leaders so they wouldn't compete with their version.

The whole of the Bible is written in largely mythic language, Joseph Campbell was pointing this out back in the 70s and 80s.  This is nothing new, there are just a lot of people with a strong emotional desire to believe that it's true at any cost.

[Mudhammam]

Except we know that Josephus never wrote what theists claim he wrote, it was an early Christian attempt at forgery.  Not a single copy of Jewish Antiquities that existed from the time of Josephus contained that passage.  Josephus wasn't a Christian work, he was a Jew and remained that way until his death.  You'd think that if he had written what is recorded in Jewish Antiquities, he'd have converted but there's no reason to think he ever did.  Tacitus never even wrote about Jesus, at best he wrote about people who followed the teachings of Jesus.  That's why these accounts are so laughable, they're just reporting about popular mythology of the day, repeating things they heard, which is not evidence of anything.  Tacitus wasn't a Christian either, he was writing a letter to Nero, complaining about the terrible things that  Christians were doing in the name of their leader.

Please tell what you just know was in Josephus' REAL account. You do realize that he makes two separate references to Jesus, and the one that is believed to have been tampered with exists in some manuscripts without the interpolated parts? OF COURSE Tacitus and Josephus were writing what they had heard... which goes to show that from the first century of Christianity, nobody who apparently knew about Jesus cared to mention a purely mythical Christ, only one recognized to have been an actual person.

That's the problem, all of these supposed "accounts" have been thoroughly debunked.  Clearly you have never bothered to examine any of them, instead just pulling them off some apologist website, because if you had spent 10 seconds examining them, there's no way you'd find any of them credible.

You provide two sources of early, non-Christian references to a physical man, Jesus, and that's supposed to give credit to your conspiracy theory? That's a joke, right? Some people are so desperate to dismiss Christianity they'll come up with the worst reasons, at all costs, in doing so.

[watchamadoodle]

This is what I would propose as criteria for a "historical Jesus":

A demonstration that there is enough independently verified information and criteria about "jesus" that it is reasonable to conclude it would be likely only to apply to a single historical person.

If the information we have about jesus could reasonably be expected to apply to, say, 500 people alive at that time, then we don't have a historical jesus, in my opinion. We're pinning a story on any one of a bunch of random guys, or more likely, a combination of many characters. If it can be so easily shifted like this, then personally I say historical Jesus has not met its burden of proof. If it's fair to assume jesus is a mixture of more than one person, then this is not good enough.

Rob, I agree with your definition of a historical Jesus. Here is a quote from wikipedia:

Virtually all scholars who write on the subject accept that Jesus existed, although scholars differ about the beliefs and teachings of Jesus as well as the accuracy of the accounts of his life, and the only two events subject to "almost universal assent" are that Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist and was crucified by the order of the Roman Prefect Pontius Pilate.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_Jesus

I would add a third implicit belief that scholars would accept about Jesus - he was a leader in the group that became the early Christians in Jerusalem.

That is enough detail to meet your criteria for a historical person IMO.

[DeistPaladin]

But that information which convinces the experts is available on request. That's the point. 

When defending evolution, biologists don't say "shut up, we're the experts and we say so". They bring evidence to the table to show why they are convinced. 

That's what historians do and you just hand wave it away because the evidence isn't ideal. Reliability of evidence isn't all or nothing, even propaganda like the Bible and liars can tell us something about the past figures. That's just the way of the real world. You are not going to get 100% reliable sources. No one is claiming that we have to swallow every claim made without asking questions and doubting. To use your isolated island thought experiment: If Fox News said Obama is the presidentof USA, I wouldn't say I guess Obama doesn't exist. 

The point I was making is that saying "all the scholars say..." is not an argument. Furthermore, if you make a point of relying heavily upon it in a debate, it indirectly shows a weakness in your position. 


Just consider how we debate evolution with a Creationist. Do we say, "you know, Mr. Creationist, all the biology scholars agree that evolution best explains how the diversity of life came into existence." and keep hammering that point home? No. You technically could if you wanted to but it wouldn't be a good argument. Maybe that point might be mentioned briefly but any skeptic or science advocate who keeps coming back to it over and over the way Historists do on The Historical Jesus is not debating very effectively. 

A better approach to supporting evolution in a debate, and one I've seen used every time I can recall, is "Here's some evidence for evolution. And here's some more evidence. And here's some more evidence. And here's why your objections are crap. And here's some more reasons why your objections are crap." 


In debates on Global Warming, I have seen appeals to scholarly concensus but only as the conclusion and not the body of the case. As in, "Here's some evidence for global warming. And here's some more evidence for global warming. And here's some more evidence. And here's why the so-called skeptics are wrong about this and that. And this is why the majority of climatologists are convinced that global warming is real." 

In debates on whether or not homosexuality is innate, you could keep hammering the bigots on the consensus of psychologists but this is not a good argument by itself. A better approach is to present the evidence and case studies and then, same with global warming, use that as the conclusion. "...and this is why psychologists agree that homosexuality is an innate trait." 

Yes, we rely on experts to tell us what is what because we don't have the time or energy to research everything for ourselves. However, in a debate on a topic, evidence needs to be brought to the table and examined. If one side has only, "All the scholars agree with me. Case closed. *walks away* " that's a pitiful excuse for an argument and it should rightly be called out as a fallacy. 

[Cinjin]

damn I must've hit a nerve.
Nestor's response was riddled with insults and no content.  Typical.


He's got the Drich the argument down pat ...

[DeistPaladin]

Oh, trust me, I do know full well the can of worms that is opened up by the claim that 1Cor 15 was written "within 5 years of Jesus' death" and that it proves the existence of a creed and what that creed was. When I can do it justice, it will include a full discussion on:

1. When was the death of Jesus again? We'll have to take the Gospels seriously enough to try to pinpoint that date on a timeline which we'd have to do if we're seriously going to assert a narrow five year window. 
2. What did the early Christians believe again, taking in full consideration that there was no orthodox belief about Jesus.
3. A full verse-by-verse reading of 1 Cor 15 to show what a truckload of crap it is and even if we do take it seriously, it actually undermines the Historist's case. 
4. And who was Paul again? There's a can of worms in and of itself. He was originally discovered by Marcion as the poster child of his denomination of Christianity. Half his epistles are considered "inauthentic". He received a complete rewrite by the triumphant Orthodox Christians as evident by the stark contrast between Acts and his epistles. And taking him seriously enough to consider that he was a historical character and that he actually wrote what we have, he was apparently a schizophrenic who had hallucinations and heard voices. 

For right now, I'll just say that anyone who holds up the Bible and says "historical documents" should just be laughed out of the room. 

[Mudhammam]

damn I must've hit a nerve.
Nestor's response was riddled with insults and no content.  Typical.


He's got the Drich the argument down pat ...

That's only funny because yours was nothing but a rant about my apparent religious devotion and need to believe in Jesus' historicity. Your inability to form cogent remarks relevant to the topic only goes to demonstrate the vacuous nature of your reasoning. Please keep using memes because you're not very good at engaging in thoughtful discussion.

---

Oh, trust me, I do know full well the can of worms that is opened up by the claim that 1Cor 15 was written "within 5 years of Jesus' death" and that it proves the existence of a creed and what that creed was. When I can do it justice, it will include a full discussion on:

1. When was the death of Jesus again? We'll have to take the Gospels seriously enough to try to pinpoint that date on a timeline which we'd have to do if we're seriously going to assert a narrow five year window. 
2. What did the early Christians believe again, taking in full consideration that there was no orthodox belief about Jesus.
3. A full verse-by-verse reading of 1 Cor 15 to show what a truckload of crap it is and even if we do take it seriously, it actually undermines the Historist's case. 
4. And who was Paul again? There's a can of worms in and of itself. He was originally discovered by Marcion as the poster child of his denomination of Christianity. Half his epistles are considered "inauthentic". He received a complete rewrite by the triumphant Orthodox Christians as evident by the stark contrast between Acts and his epistles. And taking him seriously enough to consider that he was a historical character and that he actually wrote what we have, he was apparently a schizophrenic who had hallucinations and heard voices. 

For right now, I'll just say that anyone who holds up the Bible and says "historical documents" should just be laughed out of the room. 

Laughing people out of the room won't get your ideas more attention in academic circles, and let's be honest, if there's more to them than pseudo-skepticism and elaborate conspiracies, that's desperately what they need.
1) Multiple sources attest to Jesus' crucifixion under Pilate. You'll find ways to dismiss them, and I might grant you one or two of those arguments, but just to say, "Nope, sorry, not enough," is basically just standard conspiracy theorist fare.
2) Really not a question that lacks adequate documentation to survey.
3) How so?
4) Oh, are we on to the "Paul was probably a made-up character too" bit? He wasn't originally discovered by Marcion. If half of Paul's epistles are fraudulent, and I'd grant that they are, you have multiple persons who believed Paul was a well-known enough figure in Christian circles to invoke his name as more authoritative and credible. Then you have Clement, who mentions Paul, the author of Acts, and perhaps others, though those are what I know off the top of my head. Maybe Paul was a typical mystic who suffered mental illness, but much of his writing is rather lucid and eloquent.

[Pizza]

Why are you all just asserting without evidence that, If Jesus existed, we would have contemporary accounts of him. 
Is it so unlikely a claim that a person should exist and after his death people started telling big fish stories about him, like they do about most historical figures?

I'm surprised you all don't argue Socrates was made up by Plato and others. The whole case against Jesus is based on selective hairsplitting. Expert consensus is evidence for a claims likelihood. We go along with expert consensus all the time, because we don't have the time, resources, and expertise to do it all. The double standards at play are absurd.

---

Nonsense. You don't nor can evaluate everything thing scientists claim.  You go with expert majority and not on what a few experts on the fringes say.

Except that the majority of 'experts' used to believe in leeching, flat earth and a host of other things.

 I guess we can't believe scientists then.