Josephus and other contemporaries on Jesus

[Succubus]

[Rev. Rye]

One crucial point: someone who identified as Jewish, and wrote about “Judean Antiquities” would not have included those passages in the Testimonium Flaviam that allude to Jesus’ divinity. And if he was somehow secretly convinced of Jesus’ divinity, I highly doubt he would have been so off handed about mentioning it.

There are very strong indications that at least parts of the Testimonium Flaviam were fabricated after Josephus’ time.

[vorlon13]

The Bible commands "Jesus" to be referred to as Immanuel. So Josephus is false since he does not mention an Immanuel.

[RoadRunner79]

[Minimalist]

Oh, yeah. Tim O'Neil. That was that Jesus freak shithead who was here for a while acting like he knew everything. You know, RR, he wasn't very impressive in person and your regurgitated posting of his bullshit is even less so. He didn't last long.

Try again.

[Amarok]

[Aegon]

Let's just assume that they are authentic for the sake of argument. It's still entirely meaningless. Written after the first two gospels, it's not a primary source, contains scant reference to Jesus and on top of all of that a historical basis for Jesus doesn't make a single shred of supernatural events of the Bible any more true to start with.

I've always found the debate over a historical Jesus pointless. If he was or not based on a historical person, God is no more real because of it. So whether Josephus wrote about Jesus doesn't change that the central character of the whole thing yaweh, is totally made up.

If anything, it makes perfect sense that there WAS a Jesus character to have inspired it all.

[Minimalist]

RR, and all the rest of them, love apologists because they make them feel all warm and fuzzy about their bullshit. They don't care if it's true just as long as they have something silly to believe in.

[chimp3]

Since the topic came up in great detail in the Why believe the Bible? thread, I thought why not make a thread to cover this topic.

What are your opinions on Josephus' writings? Is the TF partially authentic or entirely fabricated?

What about the more elusive James reference?

And while we're at it why not go ahead and discuss others as well? Pliny, Justin, Clement, the Apostle Paul, etc.

I'm curious to hear views from both atheists and theists here on these writings as well. Let's compare and contrast our views and interpretations.

Josephus was not a contemporary of the supposed Christ. He was born 4 years after the supposed death of supposed Jesus.

[RoadRunner79]

Oh, yeah. Tim O'Neil. That was that Jesus freak shithead who was here for a while acting like he knew everything. You know, RR, he wasn't very impressive in person and your regurgitated posting of his bullshit is even less so. He didn't last long.

Try again.

Actually the author is an atheist he just doesnt like when atheist do bad history (hence he doesn’t think much of mythicists or polemical new atheiests..... Attacking the source of the claims doesn’t help your argument one bit. You need to deal with the reasoning.