Why did pagans not take any notice of Jesus?

[Yonadav]

I don't think that it's that weird that no one wrote anything about him that survived to our times. I imagine that he wouldn't have been written about much at all by anyone, if at all during his lifetime. What did he do? He had 12 disciples? That's not remarkable. He performed some miracles? Sure, and maybe thousands of people saw them and were very impressed. But to everyone who didn't see them they just would have been the sorts of stories that they frequently hear of. He was executed? So were a whole lot of other people. So during his life, he just wouldn't have been that big of a deal to write about. Minor scribes could have scribbled things about him sometimes if he was good a drawing crowds. But thousands and thousands of people probably had minor little stories about them scribbled by scribes, and most of those scribblings aren't around today. The chances of anything that was written about him during his lifetime surviving to this day simply aren't good.

The same could easily be said about the posthumous writings of Jesus. So, at best, we have some posthumous hearsay about a man named Jesus.

Not that convincing.

As someone else said, I forget who, we have about as much reason to believe Jesus is real as we do King Arthur.

I don't disagree with that. All I'm saying is that it is not reasonable to expect that there would be writings around about him that were written during his lifetime that would have survived to this day. Some people in this discussion seem to feel that there would be such writings sitting around here and there if he had existed.

[EgoDeath]

The same could easily be said about the posthumous writings of Jesus. So, at best, we have some posthumous hearsay about a man named Jesus.

Not that convincing.

As someone else said, I forget who, we have about as much reason to believe Jesus is real as we do King Arthur.

I don't disagree with that. All I'm saying is that it is not reasonable to expect that there would be writings around about him that were written during his lifetime that would have survived to this day. Some people in this discussion seem to feel that there would be such writings sitting around here and there if he had existed.

Then it's also not reasonable to expect writings just 100 years after his death to have survived to this day... right?

[Yonadav]

I don't disagree with that. All I'm saying is that it is not reasonable to expect that there would be writings around about him that were written during his lifetime that would have survived to this day. Some people in this discussion seem to feel that there would be such writings sitting around here and there if he had existed.

Then it's also not reasonable to expect writings just 100 years after his death to have survived to this day... right?

Some religious guy met with success writing about Jesus and his religious sect wrote a whole bunch of copies. Being a religious order, they tried to preserve all of those copies. Some rather old copies managed to survive.

By comparison, Joe Schmo saw Jesus during his lifetime and wrote about him. Joe Schmo is basically a nobody, and no one ever copies his work. Or not very many copies of his work are written. Nothing written by Joe Schmo survives to this day.

[fredd bear]

How do you mean?

People often use the "very few scholars deny the histrocity of Jesus" line as if it means anything. That some apologists are throwing the religious a bone doesn't change how much evidence exists for a historical Jesus. At best, we can say he might've been real. Maybe.

But I don't know if that's quite good enough to just march on like we know he was real and attempt to discredit anyone who says otherwise.

I'm not arguing for his historicity. I just wouldn't expect to find mention of him in other sources. Folks in this discussion are acting like it is reasonable to expect that he would have been mentioned in one or more of the surviving pagan writings from that time. But I think that it would be a terribly long shot for him to be mentioned in any of them.

Flavius Josephus wrote about Christians ,and their leader,. (that from hearsay.)  There is some doubt about authenticity. Josephus  was not a contemporary of Jesus

Origins of Christianity.[1][2] Josephus' Antiquities of the Jews, written around 93–94 AD, includes two references to the biblical Jesus Christ in Books 18 and 20 and a reference to John the Baptist in Book 18.[1][3] Scholarly opinion varies on the total or partial authenticity of the reference in Book 18, Chapter 3, 3 of the Antiquities, a passage that states that Jesus the Messiah was a wise teacher who was crucified by Pilate, usually called the Testimonium Flavianum.[4][5][1] The general scholarly view is that while the Testimonium Flavianum is most likely not authentic in its entirety, it is broadly agreed upon that it originally consisted of an authentic nucleus, which was then subject to Christian interpolation and/or alteration.[5][6][7][8][9][10] Although the exact nature and extent of the Christian redaction remains unclear,[11] broad consensus exists as to what the original text of the Testimonium by Josephus would have looked like.[9]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josephus_on_Jesus

Pretty sure that least one Roman historian wrote some scathing things about Christians as extremists, and pests. Not sure of the credibility of the link below, but worth a glance.

https://listverse.com/2015/02/27/10-anci...istianity/


I think your point about the survival of ancient writings is spot on. In context, first century Christians were just another fringe group of Jews. There was no reason for any ancient writer to waste the papyrus/vellum writing about them. They only  got written about  when they did something interesting or were used as a convenient scape goat. I suspect this was because no one knew much about them, and what they thought they knew was more likely than not to be scurrilous nonsense as it was with the Jews and ordinary Romans.

 The dead sea scrolls are an almost unheard of example of the survival of an original ancient text.  The only way texts written in the first  century ce, was for them to be copied.  This was a specialist job, which took a lot of time to produce just one copy.

Had say apostles had written anything about Jesus , the physical survival of such documents would have been highly problematic. So it's logically possible that such writing did once exist. in 2000 years, none have been found. I'm not confident that they would have been hidden, like the Dead Sea Scrolls.

An excellent example of the difficulty of original ancient writings  being preserved is the elusive 'Q document/Qsource/Q Gospel" which a goodly number of biblical scholars are convinced must have existed, and which is considered very important. So far, not so much as a few square centimetres of papyrus of the document has been found. That leaves one to conclude: (1) it never existed (2) . it was simply not copied, and was lost  (3) it was hidden so well nobody has been able to find it.

Staying with Occam's razor, my money is on number (1)

I found the article quoted below very helpful.


The Q source (also called Q document, Q Gospel, or Q from German: Quelle, meaning "source") is a hypothetical written collection of primarily Jesus' sayings (logia). Q is part of the common material found in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke but not in the Gospel of Mark. According to this hypothesis, this material was drawn from the early Church's Oral Tradition.[1][2][3]
Along with Marcan priority, Q was hypothesized by 1900, and is one of the foundations of most modern gospel scholarship.[4] B. H. Streeter formulated a widely accepted view of Q: that it was written in Koine Greek; that most of its contents appear in Matthew, in Luke, or in both; and that Luke more often preserves the text's original order than Matthew. In the two-source hypothesis, the three-source hypothesis and the Q+/Papias hypothesis Matthew and Luke both used Mark and Q as sources. Some scholars have postulated that Q is actually a plurality of sources, some written and some oral.[5] Others have attempted to determine the stages in which Q was composed.[6]
Q's existence has been questioned.[6] Omitting what should have been a highly treasured dominical document from all early Church catalogs, its lack of mention by Jerome is a conundrum of modern Biblical scholarship.[7] But copying Q might have been seen as unnecessary as it was preserved in the canonical gospels. Hence, it was preferable to copy the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, "where the sayings of Jesus from Q were rephrased to avoid misunderstandings, and to fit their own situations and their understanding of what Jesus had really meant".[8] Despite challenges, the two-source hypothesis retains wide support.[6]

[EgoDeath]

Then it's also not reasonable to expect writings just 100 years after his death to have survived to this day... right?

Some religious guy met with success writing about Jesus and his religious sect wrote a whole bunch of copies. Being a religious order, they tried to preserve all of those copies. Some rather old copies managed to survive.

By comparison, Joe Schmo saw Jesus during his lifetime and wrote about him. Joe Schmo is basically a nobody, and no one ever copies his work. Or not very many copies of his work are written. Nothing written by Joe Schmo survives to this day.

So your suggestion is that no important figures wrote about Jesus during his lifetime? But 150 years later someone important enough wrote about him? Sure - that's possible. Seems like a convenient excuse, but yea it's possible.

[Godscreated]

From a Jewish legal perspective, it seems pretty unlikely that Jesus was Jewish. It really doesn't make sense that Herod would have turned him over to the Romans otherwise. For a Jewish king to hand over a Jewish guy to be punished by gentiles makes absolutely no sense. It simply wouldn't happen. Especially when the gentile authorities send the Jewish guy to the Jewish king, thinking that the guy is a Jew. The only way that Herod sending the guy back to the Romans makes any sense is if Herod determined that the guy was not Jewish.

Herod was a coward who was also smart enough to stay out of a situation that could cause him problems with Rome.

GC

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P.S.  If there were true miracles like those in the Gospels, such news would have spread across the entire World, both discovered and that yet to be.

 Why, there were no newspapers ,TVs, radios or anything else that would cause these things to spread far and wide, they would fade as they were told because the people then did not care to believe them. They stayed in and around Jerusalem because it was a local thing and a local religion, Jesus himself said, "you have seen my miracles and still you do not believe," and He was not just speaking about himself He was also speaking about the miracles.

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According to Professor Bart Ehrman, Lecture 10, in his New Testament Great Courses series, modern scholars possess hundreds of pagan (non-Christian, non-Jewish) sources from the 1st century.  Why is it that none of these sources even mention the existence of Jesus?

As I said in the other thread, they were not interested because they had their own religious beliefs. The Jewish priest never wrote about Him and He faced them many times even at their behesting. They knew He was a real person, they feared Him and rightly so. After what seemed to be His end they were not going to cause this problem they had to live on, yet He has for 2000 years. Also, not many people could read or write in those days and those who could had something to prove or motivate and those outside of Jesus circle of people wanted this man's reputation to die as they though He had died. Here was their attitude see not, hear not, know not, the end, but the story was just beginning. Jesus surrounded himself with literate men that could pass along His story after He was gone from this world, it was no accident and now we have the rest of the story.

GC

[Yonadav]

From a Jewish legal perspective, it seems pretty unlikely that Jesus was Jewish. It really doesn't make sense that Herod would have turned him over to the Romans otherwise. For a Jewish king to hand over a Jewish guy to be punished by gentiles makes absolutely no sense. It simply wouldn't happen. Especially when the gentile authorities send the Jewish guy to the Jewish king, thinking that the guy is a Jew. The only way that Herod sending the guy back to the Romans makes any sense is if Herod determined that the guy was not Jewish.

Herod was a coward who was also smart enough to stay out of a situation that could cause him problems with Rome.

 

Sorry, dude. The only way that Herod sending that guy back to the Romans makes any sense is if your guy wasn't Jewish.

[Jehanne]

From a Jewish legal perspective, it seems pretty unlikely that Jesus was Jewish. It really doesn't make sense that Herod would have turned him over to the Romans otherwise. For a Jewish king to hand over a Jewish guy to be punished by gentiles makes absolutely no sense. It simply wouldn't happen. Especially when the gentile authorities send the Jewish guy to the Jewish king, thinking that the guy is a Jew. The only way that Herod sending the guy back to the Romans makes any sense is if Herod determined that the guy was not Jewish.

Herod was a coward who was also smart enough to stay out of a situation that could cause him problems with Rome.

GC

---

P.S.  If there were true miracles like those in the Gospels, such news would have spread across the entire World, both discovered and that yet to be.

 Why, there were no newspapers ,TVs, radios or anything else that would cause these things to spread far and wide, they would fade as they were told because the people then did not care to believe them. They stayed in and around Jerusalem because it was a local thing and a local religion, Jesus himself said, "you have seen my miracles and still you do not believe," and He was not just speaking about himself He was also speaking about the miracles.

---

According to Professor Bart Ehrman, Lecture 10, in his New Testament Great Courses series, modern scholars possess hundreds of pagan (non-Christian, non-Jewish) sources from the 1st century.  Why is it that none of these sources even mention the existence of Jesus?

As I said in the other thread, they were not interested because they had their own religious beliefs. The Jewish priest never wrote about Him and He faced them many times even at their behesting. They knew He was a real person, they feared Him and rightly so. After what seemed to be His end they were not going to cause this problem they had to live on, yet He has for 2000 years. Also, not many people could read or write in those days and those who could had something to prove or motivate and those outside of Jesus circle of people wanted this man's reputation to die as they though He had died. Here was their attitude see not, hear not, know not, the end, but the story was just beginning. Jesus surrounded himself with literate men that could pass along His story after He was gone from this world, it was no accident and now we have the rest of the story.

GC

That's not what the Gospels claim:

24 News about him spread all over Syria, and people brought to him all who were ill with various diseases, those suffering severe pain, the demon-possessed, those having seizures, and the paralyzed; and he healed them. (Matthew 4:24, NIV)

[The Grand Nudger]

None of that is part of the historical jesus candidates.  Historicists and mythicists agree that these portions of the narrative are fiction and not at all informative as to the life of an actual man.
(to assert otherwise, you see, is to wholly abandon the pretense of "doing history", lol)

Their only historical value is in the description of the beliefs of a religious movement, in the case of matthew, a specific community within a broader religious movement, itself removed in time and ideology from it's typifying source material, mark. This was something that came to be believed as we see it* sometime between 70 and 110 ad.

*caveat emptor

[Jehanne]

None of that is part of the historical jesus candidates.  Historicists and mythicists agree that these portions of the narrative are fiction and not at all informative as to the life of an actual man.
(to assert otherwise, you see, is to wholly abandon the pretense of "doing history", lol)

Their only historical value is in the description of the beliefs of a religious movement, in the case of matthew, a specific community within a broader religious movement, itself removed in time and ideology from it's typifying source material, mark.  This was something that came to be believed as we see it* sometime between 70 and 110 ad.

*caveat emptor

Matthew's claim made sense, though, at least to the author of Matthew.  If Jesus truly performed miracles, then, yes, news of that would spread like wildfire.  All scholars agree (well, nearly all) that the authors of Matthew and Luke used Mark and Q, but in the process, both Matthew and Luke changed Mark's narrative to suit each of their theological bents.  And, Matthew no doubt felt that a "secret Jesus", as described by Mark, was not the true, public Jesus whom he and his community believed existed.