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Getbig Misc Discussion Boards => Religious Debates & Threads => Topic started by: Deicide on October 06, 2007, 05:36:28 PM
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Christians love to spank off to Josephus because he allegedly confirms their godman's existence but let's have a closer look.
"Testimonium Flavianum"
"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 receive 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."
– Josephus (aka Joseph ben Matthias) The Antiquities of the Jews, Book 18, Chapter 3: the so called Testimonium Flavianum
Flavius Josephus is a highly respected and much-quoted Romano-Jewish historian. The early Christians were zealous readers of his work. A native of Judea, living in the 1st century AD, Josephus was actually governor of Galilee for a time (prior to the war of 70 AD) – the very province in which Jesus allegedly did his wonders. Though not born until 37 AD and therefore not a contemporary witness to any Jesus-character, Josephus at one point even lived in Cana, the very city in which Christ is said to have wrought his first miracle. Josephus' two major tomes are History of The Jewish War and The Antiquities of the Jews. In these complementary works, the former written in the 70s, the latter in the 90s AD, Josephus mentions every noted personage of Palestine and describes every important event which occurred there during the first seventy years of the Christian era.
At face value, Josephus appears to be the answer to the Christian apologist's dreams.
In a single paragraph (the so-called Testimonium Flavianum) Josephus confirms every salient aspect of the Christ-myth:
1. Jesus' existence 2. his 'more than human' status 3. his miracle working 4. his teaching 5. his ministry among the Jews and the Gentiles 6. his Messiahship 7. his condemnation by the Jewish priests 8. his sentence by Pilate 9. his death on the cross 10. the devotion of his followers 11. his resurrection on the 3rd day 12. his post-death appearance 13. his fulfillment of divine prophesy 14. the successful continuance of the Christians.
In just 127 words Josephus confirms everything – now that is a miracle!
But wait a minute here. Not a single writer before the 4th century – not Justin, Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian, Cyprian, Arnobius, etc. – in all their defences against pagan hostility, makes a single reference to Josephus’ wondrous words.
The third century Church 'Father' Origen, for example, spent half his life and a quarter of a million words contending against the pagan writer Celsus. Origen drew on all sorts of proofs and witnesses to his arguments in his fierce defence of Christianity. He quotes from Josephus extensively. Yet even he makes no reference to this 'golden paragraph' from Josephus, which would have been the ultimate rebuttal. In fact, Origen actually said that Josephus was "not believing in Jesus as the Christ."
Origen did not quote the 'golden paragraph' because this paragraph had not yet been written.
It was absent from early copies of the works of Josephus and did not appear in Origen's third century version of Josephus, referenced in his Contra Celsum.
Consider, also, the anomalies:
1. How could Josephus claim that Jesus had been the answer to his messianic hopes yet remain an orthodox Jew?
The absurdity forces some apologists to make the ridiculous claim that Josephus was a closet Christian!
2. If Josephus really thought Jesus had been 'the Christ' surely he would have added more about him than one paragraph, a casual aside in someone else's (Pilate's) story?
In fact, Josephus relates much more about John the Baptist than about Jesus! He also reports in great detail the antics of other self-proclaimed messiahs, including Judas of Galilee, Theudas the Magician, and the unnamed 'Egyptian Jew' messiah.
It is striking that though Josephus confirms everything the Christians could wish for, he adds nothing that is not in the gospel narratives, nothing that would have been unknown by Christians already.
3. The passage is out of context. Book 18 starts with the Roman taxation under Cyrenius in 6 AD, talks about various Jewish sects at the time, including the Essenes, and a sect of Judas the Galilean. He discusses Herod's building of various cities, the succession of priests and procurators, and so on.
Chapter 3 starts with a sedition against Pilate who planned to slaughter all the Jews but changed his mind. Pilate then used sacred money to supply water to Jerusalem, and the Jews protested. Pilate sent spies among the Jews with concealed weapons, and there was a great massacre.
Then comes the paragraph about Jesus, and immediately after it, Josephus continues:
'And about the same time another terrible misfortune confounded the Jews ...'
Josephus, an orthodox Jew, would not have thought the Christian story to be 'another terrible misfortune.' It is only a Christian who would have considered this to be a Jewish tragedy.
Paragraph 3 can be lifted out of the text with no damage to the chapter. It flows better without it. Outside of this tiny paragraph, in all of Josephus's voluminous works, there is not a single reference to Christianity anywhere.
4. The phrase 'to this day' confirms that this is a later interpolation. There was no 'tribe of Christians' during Josephus's time. Christianity did not get off the ground until the second century.
5. The hyperbolic language is uncharacteristic of the historian:
'... as the divine prophets had foretold these and ten thousand other wonderful things concerning him."
This is the stuff of Christian propaganda.
In fact, the Josephus paragraph about Jesus does not appear until the beginning of the fourth century, at the time of Constantine.
Bishop Eusebius, that great Church propagandist and self-confessed liar-for-god, was the first person known to have quoted this paragraph of Josephus, about the year 340 AD. This was after the Christians had become the custodians of religious correctness.
Whole libraries of antiquity were torched by the Christians. Yet unlike the works of his Jewish contemporaries, the histories of Josephus survived. They survived because the Christian censors had a use for them. They planted evidence on Josephus, turning the leading Jewish historian of his day into a witness for Jesus Christ ! Finding no references to Jesus anywhere in Josephus's genuine work, they interpolated a brief but all-embracing reference based purely on Christian belief.
Do we need to look any further to identify Eusebius himself as the forger?
Sanctioned by the imperial propagandist every Christian commentator for the next thirteen centuries accepted unquestioningly the entire Testimonium Flavianum, along with its declaration that Jesus “was the Messiah.”
And even in the twenty first century scholars who should know better trot out a truncated version of the 'golden paragraph' in a scurrilous attempt to keep Josephus 'on message.'
In a novel embellishment to the notion of an orthodox Jew giving testimony of Jesus, defenders of the faith have in recent times tossed an Arabic version of the Josephus text on to their pile of dubious evidence. The Arabic recension was brought to light in 1971 by Professor Schlomo Pines of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Pines himself remained cautious about claims of untampered authenticity but the brethren have no such reservations, such is their desperation to keep Josephus in the witness stand for Jesus.
The work in question is actually a history of the world to the year 941/942 penned by a Christian Arab bishop, Agapius of Hierapolis. His World History preserves, in Arabic translation, a version of the Testimonium minus the most obvious Christian interpolations.
But what does a 10th century copy actually prove?
Claims that the Arabic passage itself dates from the 4th century are untenable (written Arabic barely existed at such an early date). Moreover Agapius was a Melkite Christian (pro-Byzantium) at a time of intensifying Islamization of his native Syria. What he wrote was political correctness for his own times. A new Shia Hamdani dynasty had been established barely 50 miles away in Aleppo. Its first prince, Sayf ad Dawlah ("sword of the state"), began a century of persistent attacks against Byzantium. Agapius' paraphrase of a Syriac rendition of Josephus from a Greek original rather significantly mentions JC's "condemnation to die" but not the actuality of it and of JC being "alive" 3 days later – in other words, a carefully balanced compatibility with Muhammad's view of a Jesus as a prophet who did not die on the cross.
In short, the Arabic Josephus is no evidence of the Christian godman and serves only to confuse the unwary.
"Here is an historian who remembers and records in his work with staggering efficiency and in voluminous detail the events and personalities and sociopolitical subtleties of eight decades and more. Can we believe that Josephus would have been ignorant of this teaching revolutionary and the empire-wide movement he produced, or that for some unfathomable reason he chose to omit Jesus from his chronicles?"
There is no doubt that Christians existed, from the early years of the second century certainly, and – as heretical Jews and under diverse names – up to a generation earlier. Belief in a Messiah (a 'Christ' in Greek) was endemic among the Jews after all. But belief in a celestial Christ does not equate to belief in a flesh-and-blood 'Jesus of Nazareth' – and when the 'heretical' and 'gnostic' views of early Christians are examined 'Jesus of Nazareth' is noticeably absent. And to press the point, even a belief in a 'Jesus of Nazareth' does not make him a reality – it is only the belief that is a reality. None abashed, Christian apologists compound their suspect 'logic' by recruiting notable pagans as witnesses, writers who were doing their best to faithfully report on a suspect cult. And as ever in the history of Christianity, in the hands of its scribes, forgery augments what the ancient writers actually wrote, the better to bring unbelievers to the One True Faith.
Now it is time to deal with the other supposed mention of Jesus of Nazareth in Josephus.
"... when, therefore, Ananus was of this disposition, he thought he had now a proper opportunity. Festus was dead, and Albinus was but upon the road; so he assembled the Sanhedrin of judges and brought before them the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ, whose name was James, and some others; and when he had formed an accusation against them as breakers of the law, he delivered them to be stoned."
In this passage Josephus is talking about machinations to secure the high priesthood. Ananus comes from a dynasty of high priests. We have a passing, almost blasé, reference to someone called James, whom Joseph obviously considers a minor character.
Some translations, to preserve a more 'authentic' tone, have Josephus write "the brother of Jesus the so-called Christ".
But if we read on, in the same paragraph, Josephus tells us that there were appeals to the new procurator (not over the stoning of James but because of the calling of the Sanhedrin by Ananus!) and:
"... Albinus complied with what they said, and wrote in anger to Ananus, and threatened that he would bring him to punishment for what he had done; on which king Agrippa took the high priesthood from him, when he had ruled but three months, and made Jesus, the son of Damneus, high priest."
Josephus tells us precisely who James is the brother of – Jesus bar Damneus!
If you drop the spurious clause about "being called the Christ", doubtless inserted by a Christian editor, then this James would have been the brother of the guy who eventually made high priest because of James' execution! Moreover, the reference to "Christ" here relies on the thoroughly discredited "explanation" of the term inserted in chapter 18! (Testimonium Flavianum)
In Josephus' text, Jesus son of Damneus is the more important of the two, that's why he puts his name first. James may well have led a zealous faction of "law breakers", and he clearly had a brother in high places, but that's about all we learn from Josephus.
Its worth noting that Josephus does not bother mentioning the death of James in his Jewish Wars. Instead, it is Ananus who gets Josephus' sympathy:
"I should not mistake if I said that the death of Ananus was the beginning of the destruction of the city (Jerusalem), and that from this very day may be dated the overthrow of her wall, and the ruin of her affairs, whereon they saw their high priest, and the procurer of their preservation, slain in the midst of their city."
A little later, at 20.9.4 in Antiquities, Josephus explains how the "Ananus faction" regained the high priesthood but also how the two feuding sects continued their enmity:
"And now Jesus, the son of Gamaliel, became the successor of Jesus, the son of Damneus, in the high priesthood, which the king had taken from the other; on which account a sedition arose between the high priests, with regard to one another; for they got together bodies of the boldest sort of the people, and frequently came, from reproaches, to throwing of stones at each other."
Control of the high priesthood became more volatile as the clouds of war gathered.
There you have it, all that Josephus has to mention about a man who allegedly turned water into wine, drove herds of swine off of cliffs, magically created food for hundreds, healed the sick and lame, raised the dead and bodily rose from death himself. Yup, that's it. A few paltry, easily discountable Christian interpolations. No details, no nothing. It is also worth mentioning that Josephus usually loves going into excruciating detail about his characters and one is left only to wonder why he does not do the same with the radical Jesus of Nazareth who performed miracle after miracle and created such an uproar for Pontius Pilate.
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Christians love to spank off to Josephus because he allegedly confirms their godman's existence but let's have a closer look.
Flavius Josephus is a highly respected and much-quoted Romano-Jewish historian. The early Christians were zealous readers of his work. A native of Judea, living in the 1st century AD, Josephus was actually governor of Galilee for a time (prior to the war of 70 AD) – the very province in which Jesus allegedly did his wonders. Though not born until 37 AD and therefore not a contemporary witness to any Jesus-character, Josephus at one point even lived in Cana, the very city in which Christ is said to have wrought his first miracle. Josephus' two major tomes are History of The Jewish War and The Antiquities of the Jews. In these complementary works, the former written in the 70s, the latter in the 90s AD, Josephus mentions every noted personage of Palestine and describes every important event which occurred there during the first seventy years of the Christian era.
At face value, Josephus appears to be the answer to the Christian apologist's dreams.
In a single paragraph (the so-called Testimonium Flavianum) Josephus confirms every salient aspect of the Christ-myth:
1. Jesus' existence 2. his 'more than human' status 3. his miracle working 4. his teaching 5. his ministry among the Jews and the Gentiles 6. his Messiahship 7. his condemnation by the Jewish priests 8. his sentence by Pilate 9. his death on the cross 10. the devotion of his followers 11. his resurrection on the 3rd day 12. his post-death appearance 13. his fulfillment of divine prophesy 14. the successful continuance of the Christians.
In just 127 words Josephus confirms everything – now that is a miracle!
But wait a minute here. Not a single writer before the 4th century – not Justin, Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian, Cyprian, Arnobius, etc. – in all their defences against pagan hostility, makes a single reference to Josephus’ wondrous words.
The third century Church 'Father' Origen, for example, spent half his life and a quarter of a million words contending against the pagan writer Celsus. Origen drew on all sorts of proofs and witnesses to his arguments in his fierce defence of Christianity. He quotes from Josephus extensively. Yet even he makes no reference to this 'golden paragraph' from Josephus, which would have been the ultimate rebuttal. In fact, Origen actually said that Josephus was "not believing in Jesus as the Christ."
Origen did not quote the 'golden paragraph' because this paragraph had not yet been written.
It was absent from early copies of the works of Josephus and did not appear in Origen's third century version of Josephus, referenced in his Contra Celsum.
First of all, Josephus isn't the only source, outside the Bible, that cites the existence of Jesus Christ. That claim got taken apart the last time you brought it up.
Second, I specifically addressed your flapping about Origen. He does not need to quote Josephus, because he is not questioning the existence of Jesus Christ, neither are the other aforementioned Christian fathers you mentioned. There's no doubt in their mind that Jesus existed; so, your mentioning that they don't cite Josephus is pointless.
Consider, also, the anomalies:
1. How could Josephus claim that Jesus had been the answer to his messianic hopes yet remain an orthodox Jew?
The absurdity forces some apologists to make the ridiculous claim that Josephus was a closet Christian!
2. If Josephus really thought Jesus had been 'the Christ' surely he would have added more about him than one paragraph, a casual aside in someone else's (Pilate's) story?
In fact, Josephus relates much more about John the Baptist than about Jesus! He also reports in great detail the antics of other self-proclaimed messiahs, including Judas of Galilee, Theudas the Magician, and the unnamed 'Egyptian Jew' messiah.
It is striking that though Josephus confirms everything the Christians could wish for, he adds nothing that is not in the gospel narratives, nothing that would have been unknown by Christians already.
The anomalies have long been addressed. They revolve about Jesus' divinity, NOT His existence. We know what they are AND we know that there are copies of the Josephus' work that DO NOT have them.
3. The passage is out of context. Book 18 starts with the Roman taxation under Cyrenius in 6 AD, talks about various Jewish sects at the time, including the Essenes, and a sect of Judas the Galilean. He discusses Herod's building of various cities, the succession of priests and procurators, and so on.
Chapter 3 starts with a sedition against Pilate who planned to slaughter all the Jews but changed his mind. Pilate then used sacred money to supply water to Jerusalem, and the Jews protested. Pilate sent spies among the Jews with concealed weapons, and there was a great massacre.
Then comes the paragraph about Jesus, and immediately after it, Josephus continues:
'And about the same time another terrible misfortune confounded the Jews ...'
Josephus, an orthodox Jew, would not have thought the Christian story to be 'another terrible misfortune.' It is only a Christian who would have considered this to be a Jewish tragedy.
Paragraph 3 can be lifted out of the text with no damage to the chapter. It flows better without it. Outside of this tiny paragraph, in all of Josephus's voluminous works, there is not a single reference to Christianity anywhere.
4. The phrase 'to this day' confirms that this is a later interpolation. There was no 'tribe of Christians' during Josephus's time. Christianity did not get off the ground until the second century.
WRONG!!! There were Jesus' disciples, Paul, Silas, Timothy, Luke, Aquilla, Priscilla (just to name a few). Now, calling them a "tribe" is more in line with Jewish thinking; I don't think Christians would have used that term to describe their brethren. Nonetheless, there were ample number of Christians in the first century.
5. The hyperbolic language is uncharacteristic of the historian:
'... as the divine prophets had foretold these and ten thousand other wonderful things concerning him."
This is the stuff of Christian propaganda.
In fact, the Josephus paragraph about Jesus does not appear until the beginning of the fourth century, at the time of Constantine.
Bishop Eusebius, that great Church propagandist and self-confessed liar-for-god, was the first person known to have quoted this paragraph of Josephus, about the year 340 AD. This was after the Christians had become the custodians of religious correctness.
Whole libraries of antiquity were torched by the Christians. Yet unlike the works of his Jewish contemporaries, the histories of Josephus survived. They survived because the Christian censors had a use for them. They planted evidence on Josephus, turning the leading Jewish historian of his day into a witness for Jesus Christ ! Finding no references to Jesus anywhere in Josephus's genuine work, they interpolated a brief but all-embracing reference based purely on Christian belief.
Do we need to look any further to identify Eusebius himself as the forger?
Sanctioned by the imperial propagandist every Christian commentator for the next thirteen centuries accepted unquestioningly the entire Testimonium Flavianum, along with its declaration that Jesus “was the Messiah.”
And even in the twenty first century scholars who should know better trot out a truncated version of the 'golden paragraph' in a scurrilous attempt to keep Josephus 'on message.'
Again, the interpolations are identified and all the Christian fathers prior to Euseibus are not questioning the existence of Jesus Christ. You miss the mark, again.
In a novel embellishment to the notion of an orthodox Jew giving testimony of Jesus, defenders of the faith have in recent times tossed an Arabic version of the Josephus text on to their pile of dubious evidence. The Arabic recension was brought to light in 1971 by Professor Schlomo Pines of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Pines himself remained cautious about claims of untampered authenticity but the brethren have no such reservations, such is their desperation to keep Josephus in the witness stand for Jesus.
The work in question is actually a history of the world to the year 941/942 penned by a Christian Arab bishop, Agapius of Hierapolis. His World History preserves, in Arabic translation, a version of the Testimonium minus the most obvious Christian interpolations.
But what does a 10th century copy actually prove?
It proves the point of extra-Biblical evidence for the existence of Jesus Christ, something you (and whoever is the source of this cut-and-paste job) keep denying.
Claims that the Arabic passage itself dates from the 4th century are untenable (written Arabic barely existed at such an early date). Moreover Agapius was a Melkite Christian (pro-Byzantium) at a time of intensifying Islamization of his native Syria. What he wrote was political correctness for his own times. A new Shia Hamdani dynasty had been established barely 50 miles away in Aleppo. Its first prince, Sayf ad Dawlah ("sword of the state"), began a century of persistent attacks against Byzantium.
Who says that written Arabic barely existed? We've heard skeptics use that line before with ancient Hebrew, only to have that claim trampled underfoot.
Agapius' paraphrase of a Syriac rendition of Josephus from a Greek original rather significantly mentions JC's "condemnation to die" but not the actuality of it and of JC being "alive" 3 days later – in other words, a carefully balanced compatibility with Muhammad's view of a Jesus as a prophet who did not die on the cross.
In short, the Arabic Josephus is no evidence of the Christian godman and serves only to confuse the unwary.
Correction!! It only confuses skpetics, bent on conspiracy theories, to support their sinking claims. Didn't this blurb just mention that Jesus was condemned to die. You don't sentence non-existent people to death. Plus, as far as the Resurrection goes, the Arabic version only states that Jesus' disciples reported He resurrected from the dead. Whether Muhammad believes that Christ actually did do or not makes no difference. It's what was REPORTED, which is consistent with the Gospels.
Now it is time to deal with the other supposed mention of Jesus of Nazareth in Josephus.
In this passage Josephus is talking about machinations to secure the high priesthood. Ananus comes from a dynasty of high priests. We have a passing, almost blasé, reference to someone called James, whom Joseph obviously considers a minor character.
Some translations, to preserve a more 'authentic' tone, have Josephus write "the brother of Jesus the so-called Christ".
But if we read on, in the same paragraph, Josephus tells us that there were appeals to the new procurator (not over the stoning of James but because of the calling of the Sanhedrin by Ananus!) and:
Josephus tells us precisely who James is the brother of – Jesus bar Damneus!
If you drop the spurious clause about "being called the Christ", doubtless inserted by a Christian editor, then this James would have been the brother of the guy who eventually made high priest because of James' execution! Moreover, the reference to "Christ" here relies on the thoroughly discredited "explanation" of the term inserted in chapter 18! (Testimonium Flavianum)
Make up your mind here. One minute, you talk about how the first paragraph (in the Greek version) is fraudulent, because it so favorably states the divinity of Jesus; now, you claim that the second part here, which only mentions Jesus as the "who was called Christ" was a fraud.
This would leave you with the burden of explaining how and why the interpolators played up Jesus' divinity in one paragraph but not the other. For that matter, if they're so bent on showing that Josephus acknowledged Jesus' divinity, why did they not add additional paragraphs on Him?
In Josephus' text, Jesus son of Damneus is the more important of the two, that's why he puts his name first. James may well have led a zealous faction of "law breakers", and he clearly had a brother in high places, but that's about all we learn from Josephus.
Its worth noting that Josephus does not bother mentioning the death of James in his Jewish Wars. Instead, it is Ananus who gets Josephus' sympathy:
It's worth noting, because......
There you have it, all that Josephus has to mention about a man who allegedly turned water into wine, drove herds of swine off of cliffs, magically created food for hundreds, healed the sick and lame, raised the dead and bodily rose from death himself. Yup, that's it. A few paltry, easily discountable Christian interpolations. No details, no nothing. It is also worth mentioning that Josephus usually loves going into excruciating detail about his characters and one is left only to wonder why he does not do the same with the radical Jesus of Nazareth who performed miracle after miracle and created such an uproar for Pontius Pilate.
Because Jesus is NOT the subject of that work, and is mentioned only in passing. Josephus need only mentioned Jesus as he sees fit to make his point about the subject matter at hand. At the end of the day, the evidence STILL points to Jesus Christ as an existing figure in the work of Josephus.
And, once again, another cracked conspiracy take goes to pieces.
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Calling something a 'conspiracy theory' hardly amounts to a refutation of said argument and frankly I have seen none on your part. I suppose you are a biblical inerrantist, right?
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Calling something a 'conspiracy theory' hardly amounts to a refutation of said argument and frankly I have seen none on your part. I suppose you are a biblical inerrantist, right?
Are you sick in the head or something all you do is call people names instead of intelligently discussing your argument, You haven't seen any on his part, I have and believe you are clearly losing. So here is what I suggest you do so that you don't continue to make a fool out of yourself; come back in the future when you know McWay will never again be on Getbig and then you will have a chance. I have read both sides and McWay is extremely thourough in vanishing all your points.
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Are you sick in the head or something all you do is call people names instead of intelligently discussing your argument, You haven't seen any on his part, I have and believe you are clearly losing. So here is what I suggest you do so that you don't continue to make a fool out of yourself; come back in the future when you know McWay will never again be on Getbig and then you will have a chance. I have read both sides and McWay is extremely thourough in vanishing all your points.
Fundy Solidarity... ::)
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Calling something a 'conspiracy theory' hardly amounts to a refutation of said argument and frankly I have seen none on your part. I suppose you are a biblical inerrantist, right?
It is a conspiracy theory because there are many ancient copies of Josephus' works and not a single one is missing the mention of Jesus of Nazareth or the mention of "James, brother of Jesus". When a copy of his works is found that is missing these two reference to Jesus, then you can come back and start a valid argument. Right now, you sound like one of those guys who believe that we never landed on the moon.
Having said that, though there are many non-Christian, extra biblical, historical records of Jesus of Nazareth, even if there were none that still would not support that Jesus is a myth.
See, a lack of historical records on Jesus would work both ways. There are no historical records from the first Century, Roman, Greek or Jewish that attempts to deny the existence of Jesus or attempts to link Christianity to ancient Greco-Roman cults. The Romans and the Greeks were very familiar with these Greco-Roman cults of the time. Yet they said nothing, but instead many Jews, Greeks and Romans became Christians themselves. The Roman empire and the Jews were doing everything they could to stop the spread of Christianity. It is a fact that Christians were being arrested, tortured and executed. Why then do we not have a single historical record saying that this Jesus that Christians followed and worshiped was not real?
Why are skeptics so afraid of this Jesus they say never existed? Why does Jesus make them so paranoid and uncomfortable?
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It is a conspiracy theory because there are many ancient copies of Josephus' works and not a single one is missing the mention of Jesus of Nazareth or the mention of "James, brother of Jesus". When a copy of his works is found that is missing these two reference to Jesus, then you can come back and start a valid argument. Right now, you sound like one of those guys who believe that we never landed on the moon.
Having said that, though there are many non-Christian, extra biblical, historical records of Jesus of Nazareth, even if there were none that still would not support that Jesus is a myth.
See, a lack of historical records on Jesus would work both ways. There are no historical records from the first Century, Roman, Greek or Jewish that attempts deny the existence of Jesus or attempts to link Christianity to ancient Greco-Roman cults. The Romans and the Greeks were very familiar with these Greco-Roman cults of the time. Yet they said nothing, but instead many Jews, Greeks and Romans became Christians themselves. The Roman empire and the Jews were doing everything they could to stop the spread of Christianity. It is a fact that Christians were being arrested, tortured and executed. Why then do we not have a single historical record saying that this Jesus that Christians followed and worshiped was not real?
Why are skeptics so afraid of this Jesus they say never existed? Why does Jesus make them so paranoid and uncomfortable?
Is there anything outside the Bible that talks of Jesus's divinity?
Otherwise, it looks like a political struggle between the house of David, Jesus being of that family line, and the house of Herod.
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It is a conspiracy theory because there are many ancient copies of Josephus' works and not a single one is missing the mention of Jesus of Nazareth or the mention of "James, brother of Jesus". When a copy of his works is found that is missing these two reference to Jesus, then you can come back and start a valid argument. Right now, you sound like one of those guys who believe that we never landed on the moon.
Having said that, though there are many non-Christian, extra biblical, historical records of Jesus of Nazareth, even if there were none that still would not support that Jesus is a myth.
See, a lack of historical records on Jesus would work both ways. There are no historical records from the first Century, Roman, Greek or Jewish that attempts to deny the existence of Jesus or attempts to link Christianity to ancient Greco-Roman cults. The Romans and the Greeks were very familiar with these Greco-Roman cults of the time. Yet they said nothing, but instead many Jews, Greeks and Romans became Christians themselves. The Roman empire and the Jews were doing everything they could to stop the spread of Christianity. It is a fact that Christians were being arrested, tortured and executed. Why then do we not have a single historical record saying that this Jesus that Christians followed and worshiped was not real?
Why are skeptics so afraid of this Jesus they say never existed? Why does Jesus make them so paranoid and uncomfortable?
Totally ignoring how often interpolation took place, especially by sneaky Christians. The Testimonium Flavium is a forgery; it's special pleading to claim it isn't.
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Totally ignoring how often interpolation took place, especially by sneaky Christians. The Testimonium Flavium is a forgery; it's special pleading to claim it isn't.
More conspiracy theories. Explain this, if the Roman Catholic church had in their possession the entire Bible for centuries, why are there no Roman Catholic dogma or tradition inserted in the Bible? Why are there no Roman Catholic interpolations in the Bible?
Interpolations are not as common as you would like to have us believe. And none of your arguments prove anything. Unless you are holding in your hand a ancient copy of Josephus' work that does not mention Jesus, you have nothing.
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More conspiracy theories. Explain this, if the Roman Catholic church had in their possession the entire Bible for centuries, why are there no Roman Catholic dogma or tradition inserted in the Bible? Why are there no Roman Catholic interpolations in the Bible?
Interpolations are not as common as you would like to have us believe. And none of your arguments prove anything. Unless you are holding in your hand a ancient copy of Josephus' work that does not mention Jesus, you have nothing.
The mere mentioning of a Jesus with tons of added Christian bullshit is incontrovertible proof to you?
Authenticity
[edit] Origen
The Christian author Origen wrote around the year 240. His writings predate both the earliest known manuscripts of the Testimonium and the earliest quotations of the Testimonium by other writers. In his surviving works Origen fails to mention the Testimonium Flavianum, even though he was clearly familiar with the Antiquities of the Jews, since he mentions the less significant reference by Josephus to Jesus as brother of James, which occurs later in Antiquities of the Jews (xx.9), and also other passages from Antiquities such as the passage about John the Baptist. Furthermore, Origen states that Josephus was "not believing in Jesus as the Christ" [2] "he did not accept Jesus as Christ" [3], but the Testimonium declares Jesus to be Christ. Because of these arguments, some scholars believe that the version of Antiquities available to Origen did not mention Jesus at this point at all.[citation needed]
On the other hand, while this argument asserts that Josephus could not have written the Testimonium in its current form, it also demonstrates, according to some scholars, [attribution needed] that Josephus must have written something about Jesus, for otherwise Origen would have no reason to make the claim that Josephus "did not accept Jesus as Christ." (While the claim that Josephus "did not accept Jesus as Christ" can be based on the fact that he was by all accounts a traditional Jew, this fact would make his nonacceptance of Jesus go without saying; the fact that Origen said it at all suggests a context of Jesus existed in Josephus' work.) Presumably whatever he did write was sufficiently negative that Origen chose not to quote it.[citation needed]
However, there are other arguments as to why Origen would have said Josephus did not accept Jesus as the Christ and is it worth noting that no "sufficiently negative" Josephus quote has ever surfaced. It may have been Josephus’ silence on the matter as well as his Judaism that led to Origen’s comment.[citation needed] Or it could be Josephus's statement in Jewish War 6.5.4, where he declares that the Jewish messianic prophecies were really about the victorious emperor Vespasian that led him to believe Josephus did not accept anyone as a messiah. Since Origen makes no mention of negative comments by Josephus it can be argued that if Origen had read these comments he would have attempted to rebuke them and not chosen to ignore them in his writings.[citation needed] The fact that he did not do so gives credibility to the argument that no such writings existed at the time, but were a later interpolation.[citation needed]
[edit] Justin, and other early Christian writers
The Dialog With Trypho the Jew [4], written about a hundred years after the death of Jesus, is Justin the Philosopher's account of a dialog between himself and a Jewish rabbi named Trypho. In it two men debated about whether Jesus was the promised Messiah. Justin makes no mention of the Testimonium in his efforts to persuade the rabbi, even though: (1) Justin was a noteworthy scholar and was known to have pored over the works of Josephus,[citation needed] whose Antiquities had been written fewer than fifty years earlier; (2) the passage was directly relevant to their discussion.
Justin also fails to mention the passage in his Apologies. In fact, the absence of references to the Testimonium is consistent throughout the work of the Christian writers and apologists of the years 100-300 A.D. It is never mentioned by any author of those two centuries, Christian or otherwise. This passage is first quoted by Eusebius (ca. 315) in two places (Hist. Eccl., lib. i, c. xi; Demonst. Evang., lib. iii); but contextual analysis indicates that it seems to have been unknown to Justin the Philosopher (ca. 140), Clement of Alexandria (ca. 192), Tertullian (ca. 193), Arnobius (ca. 200), Cyprian (ca. 258), Irenaeus (ca. 330), and Origen (ca. 230), although each of them was acquainted with the work of Josephus. [5]
[edit] Textual continuity
The interruption of the narrative by the Testimonium Flavium also suggests that it is an interpolation. In its context, passage 3.2 runs directly into passage 3.4, and thus the thread of continuity, of "sad calamities," is interrupted by this passage. The context, without the testimonium passage, reads:
3.2 So he bid the Jews himself go away; but they boldly casting reproaches upon him, he gave the soldiers that signal which had been beforehand agreed on; who laid upon them much greater blows than Pilate had commanded them, and equally punished those that were tumultuous, and those that were not; nor did they spare them in the least: and since the people were unarmed, and were caught by men prepared for what they were about, there were a great number of them slain by this means, and others of them ran away wounded. And thus an end was put to this sedition. 3.4 About the same time also another sad calamity put the Jews into disorder, and certain shameful practices happened about the temple of Isis that was at Rome.
However, the ragged structure of Antiquities involves frequent disruptions to the narrative, not least because it was mainly composed by a number of scribal assistants, and therefore this argument is not conclusive.[6]
[edit] Vocabulary
The passage 3.3 also fails a standard test for authenticity, in that it contains vocabulary not otherwise used by Josephus.[7]
On the other hand, linguistic analysis has not proven conclusive when compared with other passages in Josephus which likewise exhibit unusual features.[citations needed]
[edit] Josephus's faith
It is argued that "He was [the] Christ" can only be read as a profession of faith. If so, this could not be right, as Josephus was not a Christian; he characterized his patron Emperor Vespasian as the foretold Messiah.
However, the supposed confession of Josephus relies on the standard text. But a recent study by Alice Whealey has argued that a variant Greek text of this sentence existed in the 4th century—"He was believed to be the Christ."[8] The standard text, then, has simply become corrupt by the loss of the main verb and a subsequent scribal "correction" of the prolative infinitive. [citation needed] In any event, the audience for the work was Roman, and Roman sources always write of "Christus", never of "Jesus", which could make this merely an identification.[citation needed]
[edit] Anachronisms
Some of the deepest concerns about the authenticity of the passage were succinctly expressed by John Dominic Crossan, in The Historical Jesus: The Life of a Mediterranean Peasant:[9] "The problem here is that Josephus' account is too good to be true, too confessional to be impartial, too Christian to be Jewish." Three passages stood out: "if it be lawful to call him a man … He was [the] Christ … 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." To some these seem directly to address Christological debates of the early 4th century. Consequently, some scholars regard at least these parts of the Testimonium as later interpolations.
Others[attribution needed] have pointed that nothing in the passage has much to do with the Christological debates of the early 4th century, since neither the Arians nor their opponents thought that Jesus was just a man.[citation needed]
[edit] Interpolations
The entire passage is also found in one manuscript of Josephus' earlier work, The Jewish War, in an Old Russian translation written c.1250.[10] Interestingly, the passage dealing with Jesus is not the only significant difference from the usual collations; Robert Eisler has suggested[11] that it was produced from one of Josephus's drafts (noting that the "Slavonic Version" has Josephus escaping his fellow Jews at Jotapata when "he counted the numbers [of the lot cast in the suicide pact] cunningly and so managed to deceive all the others", which is in striking contrast to the conventional version's account:
"Without hesitation each man in turn offered his throat for the next man to cut, in the belief that a moment later his commander would die too. Life was sweet, but not so sweet as death if Josephus died with them! But Josephus - shall we put it down to divine providence or just luck - was left with one other man....he used persuasion, they made a pact, and both remained alive."[12]
The passages in question give accounts of John the Baptist, Jesus's ministry (along with his death and resurrection), and the activities of the early church in which it resembles nothing so much as a faith healing movement; they are, however, bizarre in their inaccuracy and distortions of the matters. Lower criticism has concluded that this is an interpolation as other extant manuscripts do not contain it.
[edit] Alleged fabrication by Eusebius
Ken Olson has argued that the Testimonium was fabricated by Eusebius of Caesarea, who was the first author to quote it in his Demonstratio Evangelica.[13] Olson argues that the specific wording of the Testimonium is suspiciously closely related to the argument Eusebius makes in his Demonstratio, in particular that Jesus is a "wise man" and not a "wizard", as shown by the fact that his followers did not desert him even after he was crucified.
Olson's argument is supported by some scholars, such as Marshall Gauvin[14] and Earl Doherty[15]. According to Gauvin, "Had the passage been in the works of Josephus which they knew, Justin Martyr, Tertullian, Origen and Clement of Alexandria would have been eager to hurl it at their Jewish opponents in their many controversies. But it did not exist." Furthermore, according to Gauvin, Eusebius had written in his Demonstratio Evangelica, (Book III, pg. 124), "Certainly the attestations I have already produced concerning our Savior may be sufficient. However, it may not be amiss, if, over and above, we make use of Josephus the Jew for a further witness."
One of the earliest ecclesiastical authorities to condemn the Testimonium Flavianum as a forgery was Bishop Warburton of Gloucester (circa 1770). He described it as "a rank forgery, and a very stupid one, too." [16]
[edit] Arguments in favor of partial authenticity
For centuries Christian writers took the position that Josephus wrote the Testimonium more or less in its current form; until the 16th century, in fact.
Today almost no scholar holds that position: however, many writers claim that Josephus did write something about Jesus which has been corrupted in the surviving Greek text.
[edit] Arabic version
In 1971, professor Shlomo Pines published a translation of a different version of the Testimonium, quoted in an Arabic manuscript of the tenth century. The manuscript in question appears in the Book of the Title written by Agapius Mahbub Qustanin, a 10th-century Christian Arab and Melkite bishop of Hierapolis Bambyce(Manbij). Agapius appears to be quoting from memory, for even Josephus' title is an approximation:
For he says in the treatises that he has written in the governance of the Jews: "At this time there was a wise man who was called Jesus, and his conduct was good, and he was known to be virtuous. And many people from among the Jews and the other nations became his disciples. Pilate condemned him to be crucified and to die. And those who had become his disciples did not abandon their loyalty to him. They reported that he had appeared to them three days after his crucifixion, and that he was alive. Accordingly they believed that he was the Messiah, concerning whom the Prophets have recounted wonders" - Shlomo Pines' translation, quoted by J. D. Crossan
Pines suggests that this may be a more accurate record of what Josephus wrote, lacking as it does the parts which have often been considered to have been added by Christian copyists. This would add weight to the argument that Josephus did write something about Jesus.
However, Pines' theory has not been widely accepted. The fact that even the title of Josephus's work is inaccurate suggests that Agapius is quoting from memory, which may explain the discrepancies with the Greek version. In addition, the claim that Pilate condemned Jesus to be crucified and to die has been interpreted as a reaction to the Muslim belief that Jesus did not really die on the cross. [1].
[edit] Syriac version
Pines also refers to the Syriac version cited by Michael the Syrian in his World Chronicle. It was left to Alice Whealey to point out that Michael's text in fact was identical with that of Jerome at the most contentious point ("He was the Christ" becoming "He was believed to be the Christ"), establishing the existence of a variant, since Latin and Syriac writers did not read each others' works in late antiquity.
[edit] Literary dependence on the Gospel of Luke
In 1995, G. J. Goldberg, using a digital database of ancient literature, identified a possible literary dependence between Josephus and the Gospel of Luke. He found number of coincidences in word choice and word order, though not in exact wording, between the entire Josephus passage on Jesus and a summary of the life of Jesus in Luke 24:19-21, 26-27, called the "Emmaus narrative":
And he said to them, "What things?" And they said to him, "Concerning Jesus of Nazareth, a man who was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people, and how our chief priests and rulers delivered him up to be condemned to death, and crucified him. But we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel. Yes, and besides all this, it is now the third day since these things happened. ... Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory? And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself. [17]
From these coincidences in wording, Goldberg writes that 'The conclusion that can therefore be drawn is that Josephus and Luke derived their passages from a common Christian (or Jewish-Christian) source.'
Goldberg points out that Josephus' phrases "if it be lawful to call him a man," "He was [the] Christ," "he appeared to them," and "And the tribe of Christians, so named from him, are not extinct at this day," have no parallel in Luke's passage, and takes this to support the position that the first two short phrases are Christian interpolations. Luke contains the phrases "but besides all this," four sentences on the women who witnessed the tomb, and "the Christ should suffer," which there is no counterpart in Josephus' text. [18]
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The mere mentioning of a Jesus with tons of added Christian bullshit is incontrovertible proof to you?
Blah blah blah, all extra-biblical evidence of Jesus are forgeries introduced by sneaky Christians, we never landed on the moon, 911 and Pearl Harbor were inside jobs...blah blah blah
Where is your proof of "tons of added Christian bullshit"? Flooding this board with conspiracy theory spam does not count.
Answer my question:
1. There are no historical records from the first Century, Roman, Greek or Jewish that attempts to deny the existence of Jesus or attempts to link Christianity to ancient Greco-Roman cults. The Romans and the Greeks were very familiar with these Greco-Roman cults of the time. Yet they said nothing, but instead many Jews, Greeks and Romans became Christians themselves. The Roman empire and the Jews were doing everything they could to stop the spread of Christianity. It is a fact that Christians were being arrested, tortured and executed. Why then do we not have a single historical record saying that this Jesus that Christians followed and worshiped was not real?
2. Explain this, if the Roman Catholic church had in their possession the entire Bible for centuries, why are there no Roman Catholic dogma or tradition inserted in the Bible? Why are there no Roman Catholic interpolations in the Bible?
3. Why did all the first century Christians leave family, friends, possessions, career, to be persecuted, ridiculed, arrested, tortured and executed, to die poor? Are you telling me that they did all of these for something that they knew was a lie?
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Blah blah blah, all extra-biblical evidence of Jesus are forgeries introduced by sneaky Christians, we never landed on the moon, 911 and Pearl Harbor were inside jobs...blah blah blah
Where is your proof of "tons of added Christian bullshit"? Flooding this board with conspiracy theory spam does not count.
Answer my question:
1. There are no historical records from the first Century, Roman, Greek or Jewish that attempts to deny the existence of Jesus or attempts to link Christianity to ancient Greco-Roman cults. The Romans and the Greeks were very familiar with these Greco-Roman cults of the time. Yet they said nothing, but instead many Jews, Greeks and Romans became Christians themselves. The Roman empire and the Jews were doing everything they could to stop the spread of Christianity. It is a fact that Christians were being arrested, tortured and executed. Why then do we not have a single historical record saying that this Jesus that Christians followed and worshiped was not real?
2. Explain this, if the Roman Catholic church had in their possession the entire Bible for centuries, why are there no Roman Catholic dogma or tradition inserted in the Bible? Why are there no Roman Catholic interpolations in the Bible?
3. Why did all the first century Christians leave family, friends, possessions, career, to be persecuted, ridiculed, arrested, tortured and executed, to die poor? Are you telling me that they did all of these for something that they knew was a lie?
1. There are no historical records from the first Century, Roman, Greek or Jewish that attempts to deny the existence of Jesus or attempts to link Christianity to ancient Greco-Roman cults. The Romans and the Greeks were very familiar with these Greco-Roman cults of the time. Yet they said nothing, but instead many Jews, Greeks and Romans became Christians themselves. The Roman empire and the Jews were doing everything they could to stop the spread of Christianity. It is a fact that Christians were being arrested, tortured and executed. Why then do we not have a single historical record saying that this Jesus that Christians followed and worshiped was not real?
Believe it or not people were not in the habit of fact checking back then and wishthinking and credulity abounded. You really think some Christian in ca. 100 CE had the resources much less the will to check the 'facts'. The Romans simply didn't care about the claims of the Christians, rather they cared about the consequences of the religion and its reputation as a creatot for rabble rousers.
2. Explain this, if the Roman Catholic church had in their possession the entire Bible for centuries, why are there no Roman Catholic dogma or tradition inserted in the Bible? Why are there no Roman Catholic interpolations in the Bible?
I fail to see what this has to do with anything. Look at the Bart Ehrman thread for Misquoting Jesus; people (inevitably of the RCC at the time) DID change the Bible. Listen to the podcast and read the book.
3. Why did all the first century Christians leave family, friends, possessions, career, to be persecuted, ridiculed, arrested, tortured and executed, to die poor? Are you telling me that they did all of these for something that they knew was a lie?
Why do Muslims blow themselves up in acts of martyrdom? Of course they believed what they wanted to believe. That belief however has nothing to do with its truh value, else you might as well ascribe truth to the tenets of radical Muslims.
Read this article by Historian Richard Carrier:
We all have read the tales told of Jesus in the Gospels, but few people really have a good idea of their context. Yet it is quite enlightening to examine them against the background of the time and place in which they were written, and my goal here is to help you do just that. There is abundant evidence that these were times replete with kooks and quacks of all varieties, from sincere lunatics to ingenious frauds, even innocent men mistaken for divine, and there was no end to the fools and loons who would follow and praise them. Placed in this context, the gospels no longer seem to be so remarkable, and this leads us to an important fact: when the Gospels were written, skeptics and informed or critical minds were a small minority. Although the gullible, the credulous, and those ready to believe or exaggerate stories of the supernatural are still abundant today, they were much more common in antiquity, and taken far more seriously.
If the people of that time were so gullible or credulous or superstitious, then we have to be very cautious when assessing the reliability of witnesses of Jesus. As Thomas Jefferson believed when he composed his own version of the gospels, Jesus may have been an entirely different person than the Gospels tell us, since the supernatural and other facts about him, even some of his parables or moral sayings, could easily have been added or exaggerated by unreliable witnesses or storytellers. Thus, this essay is not about whether Jesus was real or how much of what we are told about him is true. It is not even about Jesus. Rather, this essay is a warning and a standard, by which we can assess how likely or easily what we are told about Jesus may be false or exaggerated, and how little we can trust anyone who claims to be a witness of what he said and did. For if all of these other stories below could be told and believed, even by Christians themselves, it follows that the Gospels, being of entirely the same kind, can all too easily be inaccurate, tainted by the gullibility, credulity, or fondness for the spectacular which characterized most people of the time.
The Minor Evidence: Messiahs and Miracles Galore
Even in Acts, we get an idea of just how gullible people could be. Surviving a snake bite was evidently enough for the inhabitants of Malta to believe that Paul himself was a god (28:6). And Paul and his comrade Barnabas had to go to some lengths to convince the Lycaonians of Lystra that they were not deities. For the locals immediately sought to sacrifice to them as manifestations of Hermes and Zeus, simply because a man with bad feet stood up (14:8-18). These stories show how ready people were to believe that gods can take on human form and walk among them, and that a simple show was sufficient to convince them that mere men were such divine beings. And this evidence is in the bible itself.
Beyond the bible, the historian Josephus supplies some insights. Writing toward the end of the first century, himself an eye-witness of the Roman destruction of Jerusalem in 70 A.D, he tells us that the region was filled with "cheats and deceivers claiming divine inspiration" (Jewish War, 2.259-60; Jewish Antiquities, 20.167), entrancing the masses and leading them like sheep, usually to their doom. The most successful of these "tricksters" appears to be "the Egyptian" who led a flock of 30,000 believers around Palestine (Jewish War, 2.261-2; Paul is mistaken for him by a Roman officer in Acts 21:38). This fellow even claimed he could topple the walls of Jerusalem with a single word (Jewish Antiquities, 20.170), yet it took a massacre at the hands of Roman troops to finally instill doubt in his followers.
Twenty years later, a common weaver named Jonathan would attract a mob of the poor and needy, promising to show them many signs and portents (Jewish War, 7.437-8). Again, it took military intervention to disband the movement. Josephus also names a certain Theudas, another "trickster" who gathered an impressive following in Cyrene around 46 A.D., claiming he was a prophet and could part the river Jordan (Jewish Antiquities, 20.97). This could be the same Theudas mentioned in Acts 5:36. Stories like these also remind us of the faithful following that Simon was reported to have had in Acts 8:9-11, again showing how easy it was to make people believe you had "the power of god" at your disposal. Jesus was not unique in that respect.
Miracles were also a dime a dozen in this era. The biographer Plutarch, a contemporary of Josephus, engages in a lengthy digression to prove that a statue of Tyche did not really speak in the early Republic (Life of Coriolanus 37.3). He claims it must have been a hallucination inspired by the deep religious faith of the onlookers, since there were, he says, too many reliable witnesses to dismiss the story as an invention (38.1-3). He even digresses further to explain why other miracles such as weeping or bleeding--even moaning--statues could be explained as natural phenomena, showing a modest but refreshing degree of skeptical reasoning that would make the Amazing Randi proud. What is notable is not that Plutarch proves himself to have some good sense, but that he felt it was necessary to make such an argument at all. Clearly, such miracles were still reported and believed in his own time. I find this to be a particularly interesting passage, since we have thousands of believers flocking to weeping and bleeding statues even today. Certainly the pagan gods must also exist if they could make their statues weep and bleed as well!
Miraculous healings were also commonplace. Suetonius, another biographer writing a generation after Plutarch, reports that even the emperor Vespasian once cured the blind and lame (Life of Vespasian 7.13; this "power" being attributed to the god Serapis--incidentally the Egyptian counterpart to Asclepius; cf. also Tacitus, Histories 4.81). Likewise, statues with healing powers were common attractions for sick people of this era. Lucian mentions the famous healing powers of a statue of Polydamas, an athlete, at Olympia, as well as the statue of Theagenes at Thasos (Council of the Gods 12). Both are again mentioned by Pausanias, in his "tour guide" of the Roman world (6.5.4-9, 11.2-9). Lucian also mentions the curative powers of the statue of a certain General Pellichos (Philopseudes 18-20). And Athenagoras, in his Legatio pro Christianis (26), polemicizes against the commonplace belief in the healing powers of statues, mentioning, in addition to the statue of a certain Neryllinus, the statues of Proteus and Alexander, the same two men I discuss in detail below.
But above all these, the "pagans" had Asclepius, their own healing savior, centuries before, and after, the ministry of Christ. Surviving testimonies to his influence and healing power throughout the classical age are common enough to fill a two-volume book (Edelstein and Edelstein, Asclepius: A Collection and Interpretation of the Testimonies, in two volumes, 1945--entries 423-450 contain the most vivid testimonials). Of greatest interest are the inscriptions set up for those healed at his temples. These give us almost first hand testimony, more reliable evidence than anything we have for the miracles of Jesus, of the blind, the lame, the mute, even the victims of kidney stones, paralytics, and one fellow with a spearhead stuck in his jaw (see the work cited above, p. 232), all being cured by this pagan "savior." And this testimony goes on for centuries. Inscriptions span from the 4th century B.C. to the 3rd century A.D. and later, all over the Roman Empire. Clearly, the people of this time were quite ready to believe such tales. They were not remarkable tales at all.
This more general evidence of credulity in the Roman Empire shows the prevalence of belief in divine miracle working of all kinds. I will now present you with three historical individuals who truly flesh out the picture.
The Major Evidence: Apollonius, Peregrinus, and Alexander
Apollonius, Peregrinus, and Alexander are three rather interesting religious founders about whom we know even more than we do of Jesus. The first, Apollonius of Tyana, is often called the "pagan Christ," since he also lived during the first century, and performed a similar ministry of miracle-working, preaching his own brand of ascetic Pythagoreanism--he was also viewed as the son of a god, resurrected the dead, ascended to heaven, performed various miracles, and criticized the authorities with pithy wisdom much like Jesus did.
Naturally, his story is one that no doubt grew into more and more fantastic legends over time, until he becomes an even more impressive miracle-worker than Jesus in the largest surviving work on him, The Life of Apollonius of Tyana, written by Philostratus around 220 A.D. This work is available today in two volumes as part of the Loeb Classical Library, published by Harvard University Press, a set that also includes the surviving fragments of Apollonius' own writings (if only Jesus had bothered to write something!) as well as the Treatise against him by the Christian historian Eusebius. There were other books written about him immediately after his death, but none survive.
Even Eusebius, in his Treatise against Apollonius, does not question his existence, or the reality of many of his miracles--rather, he usually tries to attribute them to trickery or demons. This shows the credulity of the times, even among educated defenders of the Christian faith, but it also shows how easy it was to deceive. Since they readily believed in demons and magical powers, it should not surprise us that they believed in resurrections and transmutations of water to wine.
We also know that the cult that grew up around Apollonius survived for many centuries after his death. An inscription from as late as the 3rd century names him as a sort of pagan "absolver of sins," sent from heaven (Oxford Classical Dictionary, 3rd ed., 1996). The emperor Caracalla erected a shrine to him in Tyana around 215 A.D (Dio Cassius, 78.18; for a miraculous display of clairvoyance on the part of Apollonius, see 67.18). According to one account, the ghost of Apollonius even appeared to the emperor Aurelian to convince him to stop his siege of Tyana, whereupon he also erected a shrine to him around 274 A.D. (Historia Augusta: Vita Aureliani 24.2-6).
Later Arabic sources even discuss the fame and potency of certain relics associated with him, which remained in use well into the sixth and seventh centuries, the last of them apparently destroyed by crusaders in 1204 A.D. So popular was the belief in the power of these "talismans" that the Church was forced to accept their use, even while condemning Apollonius and his shrines as demonic (see sources below). And so, we see here an independent confirmation that blind belief in the divine status and miraculous powers of mere mortals easily captivated the people of this time, a fact that even modern Christians must admit.
An even more colorful story is that of a crazy fellow called Peregrinus, nicknamed "Proteus," who set himself on fire during the Olympic games in 165 A.D. to prove his faith in reincarnation. The notion of suicide as a proof of such faith was not new. Indian Brahmans had immolated themselves before Western audiences on several occasions before, the most famous being Calanus, at Susa, in front of Alexander the Great, and Zarmarus, at Athens, in front of Augustus (Plutarch, Alexander 69.8). What is most relevant, however, is the fascinating story told about him by the skeptic Lucian in his satirical work, "The Death of Peregrinus." Lucian knew Proteus personally, and he gives us a look at what the story of Jesus might have been had a skeptic been around to give us a different account.
While Aulus Gellius had also met this man in Athens, and was impressed enough to call him a man of "dignity and fortitude" (Attic Nights 11.1-7), Lucian had another point of view. He describes the vainglorious motivations of Proteus, and the duped mobs clamoring for a miracle. He also mentions the gullibility of Christians, who, he says, were easily duped by scam artists (13). Indeed, after the death of Peregrinus, people reported that he was, like Jesus, risen from the dead, wearing white raiment, and that he ascended to heaven in the form of a vulture (40). The punch line is that this latter story may have been a deliberate invention of Lucian himself (39), told to gullible followers, and later recounted to him as if it were fact, showing the effects of the rumor mill at work. Indeed, even people who were in the same city at the time were ready to believe that an earthquake accompanied his death, reminding us of the absurd miracles surrounding the death of Jesus recounted without a blush in Matthew 27:51-54. How easy it was for such stories to be believed! Even if this tale is filled with rhetoric on the part of Lucian, his criticism of gullibility would have no weight if it did not ring true.
Peregrinus also had a small cult following after his death. His staff was treated as a religious relic (Lucian, The Ignorant Book Collector 14), his disciples preached his doctrine (Lucian, Runaways), and his statue healed the sick and gave oracles (Athenagoras, cited above). But his bid for religious glory was not as successful as another man, Alexander of Abonuteichos. Lucian dedicates an even longer and more vicious account of his personal contacts with this man, whom he calls "the quack prophet." The account alone is detailed and entertaining, but for our present purpose it illustrates how easy it was to invent a god and watch the masses scurry to worship it. His scam began around 150 A.D. and lasted well beyond his death in 170 A.D., drawing the patronage of emperors and provincial governors as well as the commons. His cult may have even lasted into the 4th century, although the evidence is unclear.
The official story was that a snake-god with a human head was born as an incarnation of Asclepius, and Alexander was his keeper and intermediary. With this arrangement Alexander gave oracles, offered intercessory prayers, and even began his own mystery religion. Lucian tells us the inside story. Glycon was in fact a trained snake with a puppet head, and all the miracles surrounding him were either tall tales or the ingenious tricks of Alexander himself. But what might we think had there been no Lucian to tell us this? So credulous was the public as well as the government, that a petition to change the name of the town where the god lived, and to strike a special coin in his honor (Lucian, Alexander 58), was heeded, and we have direct confirmation of both facts: such coins have been found, dating from the reign of Antoninus Pius and continuing up into the 3rd century, bearing the unique image of a human-headed snake god. Likewise, the town of Abonuteichos was petitioned to be renamed Ionopolis, and the town is today known as Ineboli, a clear derivation. Even statues, inscriptions, and other carvings survive, attesting to this Alexander and his god Glycon and their ensuing cult (Culture and Society in Lucian, pp. 138, 143).
As for his influence, Lucian tells us that Severianus, the governor of Cappadocia, was killed in Armenia because he believed an oracle of Alexander's (27), and Rutilianus, the governor of Moesia and Asia, was also a devout follower, and even married Alexander's daughter. Indeed, Alexander's "god" was so popular that people rushed all the way from Rome to consult him (30), and even the emperor Marcus Aurelius sought his prophecy (48). From this it is all the more apparent that religious crazes were a dime a dozen in the time and place of the Gospels, helping to explain why a new and strange religion like Christianity could become so popular, and its claims--which to us sound absurd--could be so readily believed.
The final lesson from the case of Alexander and Peregrinus is that Lucian's skeptical debunking never persuaded any believers, showing that even the rare skeptic, no matter how convincing his arguments and evidence, could have no practical effect on the credulous. The vast majority would never read or hear anything he wrote, and most of those who did would dismiss it. Indeed, believers were hostile to critical thought and would shout the skeptics down and drive off even suspected doubters in their midst, as actually happened in the case of Alexander: before every ceremony, the congregation would cry "Away with the Epicureans! Away with the Christians!" (and atheists and unbelievers in general: 38) since these two groups had a reputation for trying to debunk popular religion (this hostility could even come to slander and violence: 25). In effect, this was like clamping their hands over their ears and humming, deliberately refusing even to hear reasonable arguments, much less to consider their force.
Conclusion
From all of this one thing should be apparent: the age of Jesus was not an age of critical reflection and remarkable religious acumen. It was an era filled with con artists, gullible believers, martyrs without a cause, and reputed miracles of every variety. In light of this picture, the tales of the Gospels do not seem very remarkable. Even if they were false in every detail, there is no evidence that they would have been disbelieved or rejected as absurd by many people, who at the time had little in the way of education or critical thinking skills. They had no newspapers, telephones, photographs, or public documents to consult to check a story. If they were not a witness, all they had was a man's word. And even if they were a witness, the tales above tell us that even then their skills of critical reflection were lacking. Certainly, this age did not lack keen and educated skeptics--it is not that there were no skilled and skeptical observers. There were. Rather, the shouts of the credulous rabble overpowered their voice and seized the world from them, boldly leading them all into the darkness of a thousand years of chaos. Perhaps we should not repeat the same mistake. After all, the wise learn from history. The fool ignores it.
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Believe it or not people were not in the habit of fact checking back then and wishthinking and credulity abounded. You really think some Christian in ca. 100 CE had the resources much less the will to check the 'facts'. The Romans simply didn't care about the claims of the Christians, rather they cared about the consequences of the religion and its reputation as a creatot for rabble rousers.
So, no you do not have any historical records denying the existence of Jesus or linking Christianity to pagan cults. What you have instead is the Gospels plus extra-biblical, non-Christian evidence of Jesus.
I fail to see what this has to do with anything. Look at the Bart Ehrman thread for Misquoting Jesus; people (inevitably of the RCC at the time) DID change the Bible. Listen to the podcast and read the book.
They did not change the Bible. There is no evidence of it. And the Roman Catholic Church had the power, and it was in their best interest to change the Bible, but they did not. The Bible contradicts Roman Catholic Church traditions and dogma, time and time again.
Why do Muslims blow themselves up in acts of martyrdom? Of course they believed what they wanted to believe. That belief however has nothing to do with its truh value, else you might as well ascribe truth to the tenets of radical Muslims.
Peter, John, James, Mathew and the other first century Christians did not just wake up one day and say "Hey, let's start a myth about a guy named Jesus who died for our sins and rose again. Let's leave everything and go suffer and die for this myth. Let's die poor for the sake of this lie."
Trapezkerl,
It's not like we are making this up. The evidence is right there. If it helps you sleep better at night, keep telling yourself that sneaky Christians planted this evidence.
Josephus Jewish Antiquities (c.93 C.E.)
(later interpolations in brackets)
"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 receive the truth with pleasure. He drew over to him both many of the Jews, and many of the Gentiles. [He was the Messiah.] 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 at 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 date.1
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Pliny the Younger Letter to Trajan (c.111-117 C.E.)
"...they maintained that their fault or error amounted to nothing more than this: they were in the habit of meeting on a certain fixed day before sunrise and reciting an antiphonal hymn to Christ as God, and binding themselves with an oath not to commit any crime, but to abstain from all acts of theft, robbery and adultery, from breaches of faith, from repudiating a trust when called upon to honour it."2
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tacitus Roman Annals (c.115-117 C.E.)
"They got their name from Christ, who was executed by sentence of the procurator Pontius Pilate in the reign of Tiberius. That checked the pernicious superstition for a short time, but it broke out afresh--not only in Judea, where the plague first arose, but in Rome itself, where all the horrible and shameful things in the world collect and find a home."3
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sanhedrin 43a (200-500 C.E.)
"On the eve of the Passover Yeshu4 was hanged. For forty days before the execution took place, a herald went forth and cried, 'He is going forth to be stoned because he has practiced sorcery and enticed Israel to apostacy. Any one who can say anything in his favour, let him come forward and plead on his behalf. But since nothing was brought forward in his favour he was hanged on the eve of Passover!"5
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Endnotes
1. Antiquities xviii. 33 (early second century) from F.F. Bruce, Jesus and Christian Origins Outside the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1974), 37.
2. Pliny, Epistles x.96, from Bruce, p.26.
3. Tacitus, Annals xv, 44, from Bruce, p. 22.
4. Talmudic designation of Jesus.
5. "Sanhedrin," vol 3 of Nezikin, Babylonian Talmud, edited by Isidore Epstein, reprint (London: Soncino, 1938), 281.
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So, no you do not have any historical records denying the existence of Jesus or linking Christianity to pagan cults. What you have instead is the Gospels plus extra-biblical, non-Christian evidence of Jesus.
They did not change the Bible. There is no evidence of it. And the Roman Catholic Church had the power, and it was in their best interest to change the Bible, but they did not. The Bible contradicts Roman Catholic Church traditions and dogma, time and time again.
Peter, John, James, Mathew and the other first century Christians did not just wake up one day and say "Hey, let's start a myth about a guy named Jesus who died for our sins and rose again. Let's leave everything and go suffer and die for this myth. Let's die poor for the sake of this lie."
Trapezkerl,
It's not like we are making this up. The evidence is right there. If it helps you sleep better at night, keep telling yourself that sneaky Christians planted this evidence.
Josephus Jewish Antiquities (c.93 C.E.)
(later interpolations in brackets)
"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 receive the truth with pleasure. He drew over to him both many of the Jews, and many of the Gentiles. [He was the Messiah.] 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 at 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 date.1
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Pliny the Younger Letter to Trajan (c.111-117 C.E.)
"...they maintained that their fault or error amounted to nothing more than this: they were in the habit of meeting on a certain fixed day before sunrise and reciting an antiphonal hymn to Christ as God, and binding themselves with an oath not to commit any crime, but to abstain from all acts of theft, robbery and adultery, from breaches of faith, from repudiating a trust when called upon to honour it."2
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tacitus Roman Annals (c.115-117 C.E.)
"They got their name from Christ, who was executed by sentence of the procurator Pontius Pilate in the reign of Tiberius. That checked the pernicious superstition for a short time, but it broke out afresh--not only in Judea, where the plague first arose, but in Rome itself, where all the horrible and shameful things in the world collect and find a home."3
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sanhedrin 43a (200-500 C.E.)
"On the eve of the Passover Yeshu4 was hanged. For forty days before the execution took place, a herald went forth and cried, 'He is going forth to be stoned because he has practiced sorcery and enticed Israel to apostacy. Any one who can say anything in his favour, let him come forward and plead on his behalf. But since nothing was brought forward in his favour he was hanged on the eve of Passover!"5
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Endnotes
1. Antiquities xviii. 33 (early second century) from F.F. Bruce, Jesus and Christian Origins Outside the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1974), 37.
2. Pliny, Epistles x.96, from Bruce, p.26.
3. Tacitus, Annals xv, 44, from Bruce, p. 22.
4. Talmudic designation of Jesus.
5. "Sanhedrin," vol 3 of Nezikin, Babylonian Talmud, edited by Isidore Epstein, reprint (London: Soncino, 1938), 281.
By my count, that's four references, actually five if you count the Arabic version of the Testimonium, which does NOT have the interpolations, regarding Jesus' divinity.
At this time there was a wise man who was called Jesus. And his conduct was good, and he was known to be virtuous. And many people from among the Jews and the other nations became his disciples. Pilate condemned him to be crucified and to die. And those who had become his disciples did not abandon his discipleship. They reported that he had appeared to them after his crucifixion and that he was alive; accordingly, he was perhaps the Messiah concerning whom the prophets have recounted wonders.
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By my count, that's four references, actually five if you count the Arabic version of the Testimonium, which does NOT have the interpolations, regarding Jesus' divinity.
At this time there was a wise man who was called Jesus. And his conduct was good, and he was known to be virtuous. And many people from among the Jews and the other nations became his disciples. Pilate condemned him to be crucified and to die. And those who had become his disciples did not abandon his discipleship. They reported that he had appeared to them after his crucifixion and that he was alive; accordingly, he was perhaps the Messiah concerning whom the prophets have recounted wonders.
Josephus wrote about many rabble rousing Messiahs, but always in a negative tone with great scorn and contempt and yet you are to have us believe that in this case he changed all his habits and wrote about one of the Messiah wanna bes in such a neutral/positive light. Doubtful. He was perhaps the Messiah? Give me a break. Josephus was an Orthodox Jew and wasn't going to call anyone the Messiah, perhaps or not perhaps.
The Arabic version is too exaggerated; moreover it was composed nearly a thousand years after Josephus. Wake up, things get tampered with. Read and listen to Bart Ehrman to see how the stories of the NT were switched and changed around. Josephus wouldn't write about a would be Messiah that way. And when he did he did so in excruciating detail.
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So, no you do not have any historical records denying the existence of Jesus or linking Christianity to pagan cults. What you have instead is the Gospels plus extra-biblical, non-Christian evidence of Jesus.
They did not change the Bible. There is no evidence of it. And the Roman Catholic Church had the power, and it was in their best interest to change the Bible, but they did not. The Bible contradicts Roman Catholic Church traditions and dogma, time and time again.
Peter, John, James, Mathew and the other first century Christians did not just wake up one day and say "Hey, let's start a myth about a guy named Jesus who died for our sins and rose again. Let's leave everything and go suffer and die for this myth. Let's die poor for the sake of this lie."
Trapezkerl,
It's not like we are making this up. The evidence is right there. If it helps you sleep better at night, keep telling yourself that sneaky Christians planted this evidence.
Josephus Jewish Antiquities (c.93 C.E.)
(later interpolations in brackets)
"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 receive the truth with pleasure. He drew over to him both many of the Jews, and many of the Gentiles. [He was the Messiah.] 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 at 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 date.1
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Pliny the Younger Letter to Trajan (c.111-117 C.E.)
"...they maintained that their fault or error amounted to nothing more than this: they were in the habit of meeting on a certain fixed day before sunrise and reciting an antiphonal hymn to Christ as God, and binding themselves with an oath not to commit any crime, but to abstain from all acts of theft, robbery and adultery, from breaches of faith, from repudiating a trust when called upon to honour it."2
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tacitus Roman Annals (c.115-117 C.E.)
"They got their name from Christ, who was executed by sentence of the procurator Pontius Pilate in the reign of Tiberius. That checked the pernicious superstition for a short time, but it broke out afresh--not only in Judea, where the plague first arose, but in Rome itself, where all the horrible and shameful things in the world collect and find a home."3
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sanhedrin 43a (200-500 C.E.)
"On the eve of the Passover Yeshu4 was hanged. For forty days before the execution took place, a herald went forth and cried, 'He is going forth to be stoned because he has practiced sorcery and enticed Israel to apostacy. Any one who can say anything in his favour, let him come forward and plead on his behalf. But since nothing was brought forward in his favour he was hanged on the eve of Passover!"5
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Endnotes
1. Antiquities xviii. 33 (early second century) from F.F. Bruce, Jesus and Christian Origins Outside the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1974), 37.
2. Pliny, Epistles x.96, from Bruce, p.26.
3. Tacitus, Annals xv, 44, from Bruce, p. 22.
4. Talmudic designation of Jesus.
5. "Sanhedrin," vol 3 of Nezikin, Babylonian Talmud, edited by Isidore Epstein, reprint (London: Soncino, 1938), 281.
We have been over Josephus a million times. It is a rank interpolation, Josephus simply would not write that sort of thing as an Orthodox Jew.
Pliny? All he is doing is reporting what Christians of the 2nd century believe. This is not a confirmation of an historical Jesus.
Tacitus is also reporting what Christians believed in the 2nd century. Not a confirmation of an historical Jesus.
The Talmud, written centuries after the 'fact' is worthless; moreover it claims hanging and stoning. Worthless document.
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Josephus wrote about many rabble rousing Messiahs, but always in a negative tone with great scorn and contempt and yet you are to have us believe that in this case he changed all his habits and wrote about one of the Messiah wanna bes in such a neutral/positive light. Doubtful. He was perhaps the Messiah? Give me a break. Josephus was an Orthodox Jew and wasn't going to call anyone the Messiah, perhaps or not perhaps.
Apparently, you didn't get enough rest last night. For Josephus to paint anyone in a positive or negative light, that someone has to actually exist. As mentioned earlier, Origen simply states that Josephus does not acknowledge Christ as the Messiah or acknowledges His divinity. However, this isn't about His divinity; it's simply about His existence.
Josephus can write about as many "rabble-rousing Messiahs" as he wants. Only one fits the description of:
- Having followers named after Him
- Being executed by Pilate
- Having His disciples report that He'd ressurected from the dead
That points to one man and one man only: JESUS CHRIST.
Besides, Tacitus does speak about Christ in derogatory terms, citing Him as the source of the "pernicious supersition" and blaming His followers for the spreading the "plague" of Christianity. He said that it was checked for a time (indirect reference to reports of Jesus' death) but it broke out afresh (indirect reference to reports of the Resurrection). Yet, you still complain about that.
The bottom line is that, positively, negatively, or neutrally, they are making reference to the actual existence of Jesus Christ.
Josephus was an Orthodox Jew and wasn't going to call anyone the Messiah, perhaps or not perhaps.
Nicodeums, Joseph of Armithea, and Paul were orthodox Jews, too. As was Simeon, the high priest who saw Jesus as an infant, not to mention the prophetess, Anna. So, being an orthodox Jew doesn't disqualify anyone from seeing (or at least, considering) as the Messiah.
The Arabic version is too exaggerated; moreover it was composed nearly a thousand years after Josephus. Wake up, things get tampered with. Read and listen to Bart Ehrman to see how the stories of the NT were switched and changed around. Josephus wouldn't write about a would be Messiah that way. And when he did he did so in excruciating detail.
Try that again!! The earliest known copy of the Arabic version is from 10th century A.D. That does NOT mean it was composed during that time. Moreover, if it were composed that late, that leaves you (or your skeptic buddies) the tall task of explaining why it lack the interpolations, mentioning Jesus' divinity, that the Greek version has, espeically with all these sneaky Christians around and all.
We have been over Josephus a million times. It is a rank interpolation, Josephus simply would not write that sort of thing as an Orthodox Jew.
And a million times, you've spewed the same silliness, which is easily refutable by historical facts.
The Talmud, written centuries after the 'fact' is worthless; moreover it claims hanging and stoning. Worthless document.
Jesus was accused of sorcery, the normal max punishment for which was being stoned to death (Lev. 20:27), hence the "'He is going forth to be stoned because he has practiced sorcery and enticed Israel to apostacy." part. As well, Jesus was accused of blasphemy, also punishable by stoning.
However, Jesus' accusers, rather than risk facing the potential wrath of His followers, ran to Pilate to have him carry out the death sentence. For some reason, the Romans preferred crucifixion.
Let's see:
- The guy's name was Yeshua (the Hebrew word for "Jesus")
- He was accused of sorcery (i.e. references Jesus' reported miracles)
- He was "hanged", the Hebrew word for which (hiphil) can ALSO mean crucifixion, or fixed to a stake. It stems from a reference to Absalom, the rebellious son of King David, who was killed while being suspended in a tree by his long hair. The saying went, "Cursed is everyone who hangs from a tree". (Gal. 3:13). People who were crucified either hung from a literal tree or a makeshift "tree" (a wooden cross).
- The death was on the eve of the Passover, the exact time Jesus was reported to have been crucified from the Gospels.
So, unless you know of a "Yeshua" other than Jesus Christ, who reportedly died under those circumstances, you have but again rendered a feeble and pitiful argument.
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Apparently, you didn't get enough rest last night. For Josephus to paint anyone in a positive or negative light, that someone has to actually exist. As mentioned earlier, Origen simply states that Josephus does not acknowledge Christ as the Messiah or acknowledges His divinity. However, this isn't about His divinity; it's simply about His existence.
Josephus can write about as many "rabble-rousing Messiahs" as he wants. Only one fits the description of:
- Having followers named after Him
- Being executed by Pilate
- Having His disciples report that He'd ressurected from the dead
That fits one man and one man only: JESUS CHRIST.
Josephus was an Orthodox Jew and wasn't going to call anyone the Messiah, perhaps or not perhaps.
Nicodeums, Joseph of Armithea, and Paul were orthodox Jews, too. As was Simeon, the high priest who saw Jesus as an infant, not to mention the prophetess, Anna. So, being an orthodox Jew doesn't disqualify anyone from seeing (or at least, considering) as the Messiah.
Try that again!! The earliest known copy of the Arabic version is from 10th century A.D. That does NOT mean it was composed during that time. Moreover, if it were composed that late, that leaves you (or your skeptic buddies) the tall task of explaining why it lack the interpolations, mentioning Jesus' divinity, that the Greek version has, espeically with all these sneaky Christians around and all.
And a million times, you've spewed the same silliness, which is easily refutable by historical facts.
Jesus was accused of sorcery, the normal max punishment for which was being stoned to death (Lev. 20:27), hence the "'He is going forth to be stoned because he has practiced sorcery and enticed Israel to apostacy." part. As well, Jesus was accused of blasphemy, also punishable by stoning.
However, Jesus' accusers, rather than risk facing the potential wrath of His followers, ran to Pilate to have him carry out the death sentence. For some reason, the Romans preferred crucifixion.
Let's see:
- The guy's name was Yeshua (the Hebrew word for "Jesus")
- He was accused of sorcery (i.e. references Jesus' reported miracles)
- He was "hanged", the Hebrew word for which (hiphil) can ALSO mean crucifixion, or fixed to a stake. It stems from a reference to Absalom, the rebellious son of King David, who was killed while being suspended in a tree by his long hair. The saying went, "Cursed is everyone who hangs from a tree". (Gal. 3:13). People who were crucified either hung from a literal tree or a makeshift "tree" (a wooden cross).
- The death was on the eve of the Passover, the exact time Jesus was reported to have been crucified from the Gospels.
So, unless you know of a "Yeshua" other than Jesus Christ, who reportedly died under those circumstances, you have but again rendered a feeble and pitiful argument.
As a fundamentalist who believes that the Bible is the literal word of god and that the Gospels are accurate historical accounts, debating facts is rather pointless with you. 6000 year earth, entire biosphere on a boat, etc...Josephus hated the would be Messiahs and he simply wouldn't write that...next you will be pulling out the alleged (and forged) letters of Pontius Pilate... ::)
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As a fundamentalist who believes that the Bible is the literal word of god and that the Gospels are accurate historical accounts, debating facts is rather pointless with you. 6000 year earth, entire biosphere on a boat, etc...Josephus hated the would be Messiahs and he simply wouldn't write that...next you will be pulling out the alleged (and forged) letters of Pontius Pilate... ::)
Now who's waving his hands in dismissal?
When you actually start debating facts, business will pick up. Merely cutting and pasting from "Jesusneverexisted.com" (or whereever is the source of your longwinded tirades) don't cut it.
I have no problem debating the facts; that's why is so easy to pick your claims apart.
You keep backtracking, with every post. First, you said there was NO extra-biblical evidence for Jesus' existence. Then, you claimed that Josephus' was the "Christians' only hope", citing a bunch of mess that I easily refuted, using facts and historical references.
With that horse beaten dead, you turned to Tacitus and posted yet more gibberish, again refuted and picked apart with ease.
The details in each of those aforementioned accounts point to Jesus Christ and Jesus Christ alone as a historical figure.
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Now who's waving his hands in dismissal?
When you actually start debating facts, business will pick up. Merely cutting and pasting from "Jesusneverexisted.com" (or whereever is the source of your longwinded tirades) don't cut it.
I have no problem debating the facts; that's why is so easy to pick your claims apart.
You keep backtracking, with every post. First, you said there was NO extra-biblical evidence for Jesus' existence. Then, you claimed that Josephus' was the "Christians' only hope", citing a bunch of mess that I easily refuted, using facts and historical references.
With that horse beaten dead, you turned to Tacitus and posted yet more gibberish, again refuted and picked apart with ease.
The details in each of those aforementioned accounts point to Jesus Christ and Jesus Christ alone as a historical figure.
As the saying goes, you let your mouth write a check that your behind couldn't cash.
Been hanging out with James Patrick Holding from Tektonics a bit too much huh? Guy doesn't know to refute anything; just makes absolutist statements and uses a lot of ad hominems...sounds like you. He a buddy of yours?
So what's your take of Bart Ehrman's Misquoting Jesus?
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Been hanging out with James Patrick Holding from Tektonics a bit too much huh? Guy doesn't know to refute anything; just makes absolutist statements and uses a lot of ad hominems...sounds like you. He a buddy of yours?
So what's your take of Bart Ehrman's Misquoting Jesus?
:D you just got schooled nazi boy
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:D you just got schooled nazi boy
Ad hominems are not 'schooling' and proclaiming without evidence that there were no interpolations do not constitute evidence either...as for my Bart Ehrman question, it goes unanswered....
And don't call me Nazi, my father is a Holocaust survivor and it is ridiculous and without basis, but since you have decided to resort to such crude language I would kindly suggest to you that you a) get an education b) get psychiatric help and c) get your head our of your arse.
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Been hanging out with James Patrick Holding from Tektonics a bit too much huh? Guy doesn't know to refute anything; just makes absolutist statements and uses a lot of ad hominems...sounds like you. He a buddy of yours?
So what's your take of Bart Ehrman's Misquoting Jesus?
I've been to his site a few times, and I've interacted with him on different forums. That's partially how I found out where you kept getting all these long-winded tirades.
Ad hominems are not 'schooling' and proclaiming without evidence that there were no interpolations do not constitute evidence either...as for my Bart Ehrman question, it goes unanswered....
The "proclaiming without evidence" part falls on you, as you've proclaimed that certain texts with references to Jesus Christ were forgeries, with little proof to back your statement. Instead, you've relied on flimsy speculation. A prime example is your reference to the Sanhedrin account of Jesus. You called it "late" (when it's in all likelihood, it's the earliest known copy in existence); you accused it of being inaccurate, because it "mentions stoning and hanging", not knowing (or forgetting) that stoning the the normal punishment for being convicted of sorcery and the Hebbrew word for "hanging" can refer to crucifixion.
Another example is your attempt to find fault with the Tacitus account, based on the "incorrect" title for Pilate. The claim that he was a prefect, not a procurator, is weak. The term "prefect" is a more generic title than the term "procurator" is. To recap:
Prefect - any of various high officials or magistrates* of differing functions and ranks in ancient Rome.
(*magistrate - a local official excercising administrative and often judicial functions)
Procurator - an officer of the Roman empire, entrusted with management of financial affairs of a province and often having administrative powers as the agent of the emperor.[/i]
As far as interpolations go, the only extra-Biblical accounts that has been shown to have such is the Greek version of the Testimonium. But, it's been clearly shown that:
- Such only relate to Jesus' divinity, not His existence (which is the whole focus of this discussion).
- Such interpolations is only with the first reference to Jesus, not the second.
- No such interpolation occurs in the Arabic version of the Testimonium
Speaking of unanswered questions, there are plenty on your plate you might want to digest, before complaining about yours not being addressed. They include:
Loco's asking you to produce a copy of the Testimonium with no reference to Jesus Christ, whatsoever, to back your claim about all the references to Him being forgeries.
Finding a "Jesus", other than Jesus Christ who (as far as Josephus' Testimonium goes):
- Had followers named after Him
- Was executed by Pilate
- Had His disciples reporting that He'd ressurected from the dead
Finding a "Yeshua", other than Jesus Christ who (as far as the Sanhedrin account goes):
- Was accused of sorcery
- Was "hanged", aka crucified, to death
- Had the aforementioned death occur on the eve of Passover
Or, another Christus who (as far as Tacitus goes):
- Had followers named after Him
- Had the "pernicious superstition" repressed due to His death
- Had the aforementioned death carried out by Pilate
- Had the "pernicious superstition" break out afresh like a plague, shortly after His death
Loco probably has some more questions you haven't addressed. But, I'll let him refresh your memory on those. The bottom line is that your claims about there being no extra-Biblical evidence for the existence of Jesus Christ are as false today as they were the first time you posted them here and went spam-crazy.
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Great posts, MCWAY!
Yes, I have more unanswered questions/challenges:
Produce any ancient texts that deny the existence of Jesus.
Produce any ancient texts which link Christianity to any pagan cult.
If Jesus is a myth, a lie invented by the original Christians, why did they leave everything behind to live a life of persecution, ridicule, poverty, torture and horrible death? Why did they not fight back when done all these things to them, but instead showed restraint, patience, peace and love, the very things they claimed this Jesus taught them by word and by example? Nobody would ever do anything like this for a lie they just invented themselves.
As MCWAY said
As far as interpolations go, the only extra-Biblical accounts that has been shown to have such is the Greek version of the Testimonium. But, it's been clearly shown that:
- Such only relate to Jesus' divinity, not His existence (which is the whole focus of this discussion).
- Such interpolations is only with the first reference to Jesus, not the second.
- No such interpolation occurs in the Arabic version of the Testimonium
How do these alleged interpolations deny the existence of Jesus? They may deny his divinity, but not his existence. His existence/historicity is what we are discussing here.
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why dont i see nord in this thread?? ;D
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Great posts, MCWAY!
Yes, I have more unanswered questions/challenges:
Produce any ancient texts that deny the existence of Jesus.
Produce any ancient texts which link Christianity to any pagan cult.
If Jesus is a myth, a lie invented by the original Christians, why did they leave everything behind to live a life of persecution, ridicule, poverty, torture and horrible death? Why did they not fight back when done all these things to them, but instead showed restraint, patience, peace and love, the very things they claimed this Jesus taught them by word and by example? Nobody would ever do anything like this for a lie they just invented themselves.
As MCWAY said
How do these alleged interpolations deny the existence of Jesus? They may deny his divinity, but not his existence. His existence/historicity is what we are discussing here.
I have no doubt that Jesus exsisted. That much is evident.
What is in question is his divinity.
Was it established long after his death when the gospels were written?
Was it a rumor that spread acroos the land of his alleged resurection that in time developed into a religion?
Was he in a coma on the cross and did he "miraculously" come out of the coma 3 days later and consequentially was viewed by those who ignorant to comas as rising from the dead?
did the writers of the gospel embelish this rising from the dead long after Jesus died of natural causes. Were the goshpels then altered by those who could see the begginings of a new and powerful religion?
that's the problem with finding out facts fromt he past. It's difficult to be accurate unless you were there to wittness it.
Was it all really just a political struggle between the house of herod and teh house of David for the crown?
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Great posts, MCWAY!
Yes, I have more unanswered questions/challenges:
Produce any ancient texts that deny the existence of Jesus.
Produce any ancient texts which link Christianity to any pagan cult.
If Jesus is a myth, a lie invented by the original Christians, why did they leave everything behind to live a life of persecution, ridicule, poverty, torture and horrible death? Why did they not fight back when done all these things to them, but instead showed restraint, patience, peace and love, the very things they claimed this Jesus taught them by word and by example? Nobody would ever do anything like this for a lie they just invented themselves.
As MCWAY said
How do these alleged interpolations deny the existence of Jesus? They may deny his divinity, but not his existence. His existence/historicity is what we are discussing here.
Not a lie, but a saviour deity who was crucified and slain in a mythic realm. This is the standard neo-platonic view of things, much as Attis, Osiris and others were killed and raised in mythic realms. This is how St. Paul views the Christ Jesus figure as he has heard of none of the Gospel events.
Early Christians' behaviour can be sufficiently explained by sociological factors. Never mind that you are making blanket statements. When did they do and show these things? When they were burning books? Or when they killed Hypathia?
An interpolation can occur when no other information is offered or available. Apologists of later centuries (2nd and 3rd) eager to see their myths vindicated readily invented 'evidence' where there was none. Ever hear of the Donation of Constantine? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donation_of_Constantine There can be multiple motivations.
Read or reread Robert Price's Essay:
Christ a Fiction (1997)
Robert M. Price
I remember a particular Superboy comic book in which the Boy of Steel somehow discovers that in the future, he is thought to be as mythical as Peter Pan and Santa Claus. Indignant at this turn of events, he flies at faster than light speed and enters the future to set the record straight. He does a few super-deeds and vindicates himself, then comes home. So Superboy winds up having the last laugh --or does he?
Of course, it is only fiction! The people in the future were quite right! Superboy is just as mythical as Santa Claus and Peter Pan.
This seems to me a close parallel to the efforts of Christian apologists to vindicate as sober history the story of a supernatural savior who was born of a virgin, healed the sick, raised the dead, changed water into wine, walked on water, rose from the grave and ascended bodily into the sky.
I used to think, when I myself was a Christian apologist, a defender of the evangelical faith, that I had done a pretty respectable job of vindicating that story as history. I brought to bear a variety of arguments I now recognize to be fallacious, such as the supposed closeness of the gospels to the events they record, their ostensibly use of eyewitness testimony, etc. Now, in retrospect, I judge that my efforts were about as effective in the end as Superboy's! When all is said and done, he remains a fiction.
One caveat: I intend to set forth, briefly, some reasons for the views I now hold. I do not expect that the mere fact that I was once an evangelical apologist and now see things differently should itself count as evidence that I must be right. That would be the genetic fallacy. It would be just as erroneous to think that John Rankin [?] must be right in having embraced evangelical Christianity since he had once been an agnostic Unitarian and repudiated it for the Christian faith. In both cases, what matters is the reasons for the change of mind, not merely the fact of it.
Having got that straight, let me say that I think there are four senses in which Jesus Christ may be said to be a "fiction."
First (and, I warn you, this one takes by far the most explaining): It is quite likely, though certainly by no means definitively provable, that the central figure of the gospels is not based on any historical individual. Put simply, not only is the theological "Christ of faith" a synt hetic construct of theologians, a symbolic "Uncle Sam" figure. But if you could travel through time, like Superboy, and you went back to First-Century Nazareth, you would not find a Jesus living there. Why conclude this? There are three reasons, which I must oversimplify for time's sake.
1) In broad outline and in detail, the life of Jesus as portrayed in the gospels corresponds to the worldwide Mythic Hero Archetype in which a divine hero's birth is supernaturally predicted and conceived, the infant hero escapes attempts to kill him, demonstrates his precocious wisdom already as a child, receives a divine commission, defeats demons, wins acclaim, is hailed as king, then betrayed, losing popular favor, executed, often on a hilltop, and is vindicated and taken up to heaven.
These features are found world wide in heroic myths and epics. The more closely a supposed biography, say that of Hercules, Apollonius of Tyana, Padma Sambhava, of Gautama Buddha, corresponds to this plot formula, the more likely the historian is to conclude that a historical figure has been transfigured by myth.
And in the case of Jesus Christ, where virtually every detail of the story fits the mythic hero archetype, with nothing left over, no "secular," biographical data, so to speak, it becomes arbitrary to assert that there must have been a historical figure lying back of the myth. There may have been, but it can no longer be considered particularly probable, and that's all the historian can deal with: probabilities.
There may have been an original King Arthur, but there is no particular reason to think so. There may have been a historical Jesus of Nazareth, too, but, unlike most of my colleagues in the Jesus Seminar, I don't think we can simply assume there was.
2) Specifically, the passion stories of the gospels strike me as altogether too close to contemporary myths of dying and rising savior gods including Osiris, Tammuz, Baal, Attis, Adonis, Hercules, and Asclepius. Like Jesus, these figures were believed to have once lived a life upon the earth, been killed, and risen shortly thereafter. Their deaths and resurrections were in most cases ritually celebrated each spring to herald the return of the life to vegetation. In many myths, the savior's body is anointed for burial, searched out by holy women and then reappear alive a few days later.
3) Similarly, the details of the crucifixion, burial and resurrection accounts are astonishingly similar to the events of several surviving popular novels from the same period in which two lovers are separated when one seems to have died and is unwittingly entombed alive. Grave robbers discover her reviving and kidnap her. Her lover finds the tomb empty, graveclothes still in place, and first concludes she has been raised up from death and taken to heaven. Then, realizing what must have happened, he goes in search of her. During his adventures, he is sooner or later condemned to the cross or actually crucified, but manages to escape. When at length the couple is reunited, neither, having long imagined the other dead, can quite believe the lover is alive and not a ghost come to say farewell.
There have been two responses to such evidence by apologists. First, they have contended that all these myths are plagiarized from the gospels by pagan imitators, pointing out that some of the evidence is post-Christian 2E But much is in fact preChristian. And it is significant that the early Christian apologists argued that these parallels to the gospels were counterfeits in advance, by Satan, who knew the real thing would be coming along later and wanted to throw people off the track. This is like the desperate Nineteenth-Century attempts of fundamentalists to claim that Satan had created fake dinosaur bones to tempt the faithful not to believe in Genesis! At any rate, and this is my point, no one would have argued this way had the pagan myths of dead and resurrected gods been more recent than the Christian.
Second, in a variation on the theme, C.S. Lewis suggested that in Jesus' case "myth became fact." He admitted the whole business about the Mythic Hero archetype and the similarity to the pagan saviors, only he made them a kind of prophetic charade, creations of the yearning human heart, dim adumbrations of the incarnation of Christ before it actually happened. The others were myths, but this one actually happened.
In answer to this, I think of an anecdote told by my colleague Bruce Chilton, how, staying the weekend at the home of a friend, he was surprised to see that the guest bathroom was festooned with a variety of towels filched from the Hilton, the Ramada Inn, the Holiday Inn, etc. Which was more likely, he asked: that representatives from all these hotels had sneaked into his friend's bathroom and each copied one of the towel designs? Or that his friend had swiped them from their hotels?
Lewis's is an argument of desperation which no one would think of making unless he was hell-bent on believing that, though all the other superheroes (Batman, Captain Marvel, the Flash) were fictions, Superboy was in fact genuine.
3) The New Testament epistles can be read quite naturally as presupposing a period in which Christians did not yet believe their savior god had been a figure living on earth in the recent historical past. Paul, for instance, never even mentions Jesus performing healings and even as a teacher. Twice he cites what he calls "words of the Lord," but even conservative New Testament scholars admit he may as easily mean prophetic revelations from the heavenly Christ. Paul attributes the death of Jesus not to Roman or Jewish governments, but rather to the designs of evil "archon," angels who rule this fallen world. Romans and 1 Peter both warn Christians to watch their step, reminding them that the Roman authorities never punish the righteous, but only the wicked. How they have said this if they knew of the Pontius Pilate story?
The two exceptions, 1 Thessalonians and 2 Timothy, epistles that do blame Pilate or Jews for the death of Jesus, only serve to prove the rule. Both can easily be shown on other grounds to be non-Pauline and later than the gospels.
Jesus was eventually "historicized," redrawn as a human being of the past (much as Samson, Enoch, Jabal, Gad, Joshua the son of Nun, and various other ancient Israelite gods had already been). As a part of this process, there were various independent attempts to locate Jesus in recent history by laying the blame for his death on this or that likely candidate, well known tyrants including Herod Antipas, Pontius Pilate, and even Alexander Jannaeus in the first century BC! Now, if the death of Jesus were an actual historical event well known to eyewitnesses of it, there is simply no way such a variety of versions, differing on so fundamental a point, could ever have arisen!
And if early Christians had actually remembered the passion as a series of recent events, why does the earliest gospel crucifixion account spin out the whole terse narrative from quotes cribbed without acknowledgement from Psalm 22? Why does 1 Peter have nothing more detailed than Isaiah 53 to flesh out his account of the sufferings of Jesus? Why does Matthew supplement Mark's version, not with historical tradition or eyewitness memory, but with more quotes, this time from Zechariah and the Wisdom of Solomon?
Thus I find myself more and more attracted to the theory, once vigorously debated by scholars, now smothered by tacit consent, that there was no historical Jesus lying behind the stained glass of the gospel mythology. Instead, he is a fiction.
Rejoinders:
1) We deem them myths not because of a prior bias that there can be no miracles, but because of the Principle of Analogy, the only alternative to which is believing everything in The National Inquirer. If we do not use the standard of current-day experience to evaluate claims from the past, what other standard is there? And why should we believe that God or Nature used to be in the business of doing things that do not happen now? Isn't God supposed to be the same yesterday, today, and forever?
2) The apologists' claim that there was "too little time between the death of Jesus and the writing of the gospels for legends to develop" is circular, presupposing a historical Jesus living at a particular time. 40 years is easily enough time for legendary expansion anyway, but the Christ-Myth Theory does not require that the Christ figure was created in Pontius Pilate's time, only that later, Pilate's time was retrospectively chosen as a location for Jesus.
a) See Jan Vansina, Oral Tradition as History on the tendency in oral tradition to keep updating mythic foundational events, keeping them always at a short distance, a couple of generations before one's own time.
b) And even if there were a historical Jesus and we knew we had eyewitness reports, the apologists fail to take into account recent studies which show that eyewitness testimony, especially of unusual events, is the most unreliable of all, that people tend to rewrite what they saw in light of their accustomed categories and expectations. Thus Strauss was right on target suggesting that the early Christians simply imagined Jesus fulfilling the expected deeds of messiahs and prophets.
3) It is special pleading to dismiss all similar stories as myths and to insist that this case must be different. If you do this, admit it, you are a fideist, no longer an apologist (if there is any difference!).
Second, the "historical Jesus" reconstructed by New Testament scholars is always a reflection of the individual scholars who reconstruct him. Albert Schweitzer was perhaps the single exception, and he made it painfully clear that previous questers for the historical Jesus had merely drawn self-portraits. All unconsciously used the historical Jesus as a ventriloquist dummy. Jesus must have taught the truth, and their own beliefs must have been true, so Jesus must have taught those beliefs. (Of course, every biblicist does the same! "I said it! God believes it! That settles it!"). Today's Politically Correct "historical Jesuses" are no different, being mere clones of the scholars who design them.
C.S. Lewis was right about this in The Screwtape Letters: "Each 'historical Jesus' is unhistorical. The documents say what they say and cannot be added to." But, as apologists so often do, he takes fideism as the natural implication when agnosticism would seem called for. What he imagines the gospels so clearly to "say" is the mythic hero! When, in his essay, "Modern Theology and Biblical Criticism," Lewis pulls rank as a self-declared expert and denies that the gospels are anything like ancient myths, one can only wonder what it was he must have been smoking in that ever-present pipe of his!
My point here is simply that, even if there was a historical Jesus lying back of the gospel Christ, he can never be recovered. If there ever was a historical Jesus, there isn't one any more. All attempts to recover him turn out to be just modern remythologizings of Jesus. Every "historical Jesus" is a Christ of faith, of somebody's faith. So the "historical Jesus" of modern scholarship is no less a fiction.
Third, Jesus as the personal savior, with whom people claim, as I used to, to have a "personal relationship" is in the nature of the case a fiction, essentially a psychological projection, an "imaginary playmate." It is no different at all from pop-psychological "visualization" exercises, or John Bradshaw's gimmick of imagining a healing encounter with loved ones of the past, or Jean Houston leading Hillary Clinton in an admittedly imaginary dialogue with Eleanor Roosevelt.
I suppose there is nothing wrong with any of this, but one ought to recognize it, as Hillary Clinton and Jean Houston, and John Bradshaw do, as imaginative fiction. And so with the personal savior.
The alternative is something like channeling. You have "tuned in" to the spirit of an ancient guru, named Jesus, and you are receiving revelations from him, usually pretty trivial stuff, minor conscience proddings and the like. Some sort of imaginary telepathy.
In fact I don't believe most evangelical pietists mean anything by "having a personal relationship with Christ" than a fancy, overblown name for reading the Bible and saying their prayers. But if they did really refer to some kind of a "personal relationship," it would in effect be a case of channeling. I suspect this is why fundamentalists who condemn New Age channelers do not dismiss it as a fraud pure and simple (though obviously it is), but instead think that Ramtha and the others are channeling demons. If they said it was sheer delusion, they know where the other four fingers would wind up pointing!
Especially in view of the fact that the piety of "having a personal relationship with Christ" and "inviting him into your heart" is alien to the New Testament and is never intimated there as far as I can see, it is amazing to me that evangelicals elevate it to the shibboleth of salvation! Unless you have a personal relationship with Jesus, buster, one day you will be boiling in Hell. Sheesh! Talk about the fury of a personal savior scorned!
No one ever heard of this stuff till the German Pietist movement of the Eighteenth Century. To make a maudlin type of devotionalism the password to heaven is like the fringe Pentecostal who tells you can't get into heaven unless you speak in tongues. "You ask me how I know he lives?" asks the revival chorus. "He lives within my heart." Exactly! A figment.
Fourth, Christ is a fiction in that Christ functions, in an unnoticed and equivocal way, as shorthand for a vast system of beliefs and institutions on whose behalf he is invoked. Put simply, this means that when an evangelist or an apologist invites you to have faith "in Christ," they are in fact smuggling in a great number of other issues. For example, Chalcedonian Christology, the doctrine of the Trinity, the Protestant idea of faith and grace, a particular theory of biblical inspiration and literalism, habits of church attendance, etc. These are all distinct and open questions. Theologians have debated them for many centuries and still debate them. Rank and file believers still debate them, as you know if you have ever spent time talking with one of Jehovah's Witnesses or a Seventh Day Adventist. If you hear me say that and your first thought is "Oh no, those folks aren't real Christians," you're just proving my point! Who gave Protestant fundamentalists the copyright on the word Christian?
No evangelist ever invites people to accept Christ by faith and then to start examining all these other associated issues for themselves. Not one! The Trinity, biblical inerrancy, for some even anti-Darwinism, are non-negotiable. You cannot be genuinely saved if you don't tow the party line on these points. Thus, for them, "to accept Christ" means "to accept Trinitarianism, biblicism, creationism, etc." And this in turn means that "Christ" is shorthand for this whole raft of doctrines and opinions, all of which one is to accept "by faith," on someone else's say-so.
When Christ becomes a fiction in this sense he is an umbrella for an unquestioning acceptance of what some preacher or institution tells us to believe. And this is nothing new, no mutant distortion of Christianity. Paul already requires "the taking of every thought captive to Christ," already insists on "the obedience of faith." Here Christ has already become what he was to Dostoyevsky's Grand Inquisitor, a euphemism for the dogmatic party line of an institution. Dostoyevsky's point, of course, was that the "real" Jesus stands opposed to this use of his name to sanction religious oppression. But remember, though it is a noble one, Dostoyevsky's Jesus is also a piece of fiction! It is, after all, "The Parable of the Grand Inquisitor."
So, then, Christ may be said to be a fiction in the four senses that 1) it is quite possible that there was no historical Jesus. 2) Even if there was, he is lost to us, the result being that there is no historical Jesus available to us. And 3) the Jesus who "walks with me and talks with me and tells me I am his own" is an imaginative visualization and in the nature of the case can be nothing more than a fiction. And finally, 4) "Christ" as a corporate logo for this and that religious institution is a euphemistic fiction, not unlike Ronald McDonald, Mickey Mouse, or Joe Camel, the purpose of which is to get you to swallow a whole raft of beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors by an act of simple faith, short-circuiting the dangerous process of thinking the issues out to your own conclusions.[/b]
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I have no doubt that Jesus exsisted. That much is evident.
What is in question is his divinity.
Was it established long after his death when the gospels were written?
Was it a rumor that spread acroos the land of his alleged resurection that in time developed into a religion?
Was he in a coma on the cross and did he "miraculously" come out of the coma 3 days later and consequentially was viewed by those who ignorant to comas as rising from the dead?
did the writers of the gospel embelish this rising from the dead long after Jesus died of natural causes. Were the goshpels then altered by those who could see the begginings of a new and powerful religion?
that's the problem with finding out facts fromt he past. It's difficult to be accurate unless you were there to wittness it.
Was it all really just a political struggle between the house of herod and teh house of David for the crown?
Read Price's essay too!
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I've been to his site a few times, and I've interacted with him on different forums. That's partially how I found out where you kept getting all these long-winded tirades.
The "proclaiming without evidence" part falls on you, as you've proclaimed that certain texts with references to Jesus Christ were forgeries, with little proof to back your statement. Instead, you've relied on flimsy speculation. A prime example is your reference to the Sanhedrin account of Jesus. You called it "late" (when it's in all likelihood, it's the earliest known copy in existence); you accused it of being inaccurate, because it "mentions stoning and hanging", not knowing (or forgetting) that stoning the the normal punishment for being convicted of sorcery and the Hebbrew word for "hanging" can refer to crucifixion.
Another example is your attempt to find fault with the Tacitus account, based on the "incorrect" title for Pilate. The claim that he was a prefect, not a procurator, is weak. The term "prefect" is a more generic title than the term "procurator" is. To recap:
Prefect - any of various high officials or magistrates* of differing functions and ranks in ancient Rome.
(*magistrate - a local official excercising administrative and often judicial functions)
Procurator - an officer of the Roman empire, entrusted with management of financial affairs of a province and often having administrative powers as the agent of the emperor.[/i]
As far as interpolations go, the only extra-Biblical accounts that has been shown to have such is the Greek version of the Testimonium. But, it's been clearly shown that:
- Such only relate to Jesus' divinity, not His existence (which is the whole focus of this discussion).
- Such interpolations is only with the first reference to Jesus, not the second.
- No such interpolation occurs in the Arabic version of the Testimonium
Speaking of unanswered questions, there are plenty on your plate you might want to digest, before complaining about yours not being addressed. They include:
Loco's asking you to produce a copy of the Testimonium with no reference to Jesus Christ, whatsoever, to back your claim about all the references to Him being forgeries.
Finding a "Jesus", other than Jesus Christ who (as far as Josephus' Testimonium goes):
- Had followers named after Him
- Was executed by Pilate
- Had His disciples reporting that He'd ressurected from the dead
Finding a "Yeshua", other than Jesus Christ who (as far as the Sanhedrin account goes):
- Was accused of sorcery
- Was "hanged", aka crucified, to death
- Had the aforementioned death occur on the eve of Passover
Or, another Christus who (as far as Tacitus goes):
- Had followers named after Him
- Had the "pernicious superstition" repressed due to His death
- Had the aforementioned death carried out by Pilate
- Had the "pernicious superstition" break out afresh like a plague, shortly after His death
Loco probably has some more questions you haven't addressed. But, I'll let him refresh your memory on those. The bottom line is that your claims about there being no extra-Biblical evidence for the existence of Jesus Christ are as false today as they were the first time you posted them here and went spam-crazy.
I noticed the former prison guard turned expert apologist style in you. Lots of abusive language, strong assertions without connecting the dots. J.P. Holdings is a fraud. Robert Turkel (his real name):
http://www.truthbeknown.com/holding.htm
James Patrick Holding, aka Robert Turkel, was a prison librarian somewhere in Florida and has no credentials, other than a streetfighter's sharp mouth. My own credentials--meager in quantity but not in quality--are far greater than Holding's, but he is a hypocrite living in a glass house and throwing stones, and there is little one can do about it except call him on it.
Worse, he is a thug and a vulgar, unkind person:
http://the-anointed-one.com/quotes.htm
"It's quite clear that even you admit that 'honesty' works under the assumption that the recipient has a RIGHT to the truth. When they don't, the moral hierarchy shifts and it is patently absurd to call them 'lies' or 'deceptions' in a derogatory sense."
"It's an example of exactly how Western society has become sick and anemic and worthless, trying to escape the judgment and scorn that it richly deserves." 9/9/04
comment:
This comment was made in reply to a poster on TWEB. The poster asked Turkel why he was so obnoxious and insulting to people there. Holding tried to justify his behavior by referring to something called the "challenge riposte" paradigm, which is cited in this Tektonics.org article. Here is an excerpt:
"We shall see that differing rules apply in a situation in which the venue is a public forum, as this site is. Now let us consult Malina and Rohrbaugh to see why."
"Many ancient societies (and we shall see below, certain modern social groups) engage in a process known as challenge-riposte. The scene of such processes is public venues in which two persons or groups have competing honor claims: '...the game of challenge-riposte is a central phenomenon, and one that must be played out in public.' [42] The purpose is for each party to try to undermine the honor, or social status, of the other in an exchange that 'answers in equal measures or ups the ante (and thereby challenges in return).' In the Gospels, Jesus 'evidences considerable skill at riposte and thereby reveals himself to be an honorable and authoritative prophet.'"
The TWEB poster contacted the author-Dr. Malina-whose work Turkel cited in his essay. Here is what the poster wrote to Dr. Malina:
"I'm hopeful I'm not being too presumptuous in contacting you here on such a trivial matter. It's a peeve, really, but I don't like bullies, esp those who claim a divine right to be such."
"There is an apologist(internet and some articles for Christian Research Journal) who cites your writing as justification for what reasonably appears to be abusive comportment with opponents. The only thing he actually cites is the last line in the following paragraph, taken from a short article."
"'Many ancient societies (and we shall see below, certain modern social groups) engage in a process known as challenge-riposte. The scene of such processes is public venues in which two persons or groups have competing honor claims: "...the game of challenge-riposte is a central phenomenon, and one that must be played out in public.[42]"'"
"He's educated, thorough, and really very clever at times but something wrong is lurking there. I can accept a little Schadenfreude but there is too much cruel-intent. The intellectual honesty of his apologetics is another point...but one I haven't the acumen to make."
...
"FYI: I am now an agnostic but I retain a fondness for Christianity. My wife is a sweetly devout voice, and with her, I don't wish to see it go away but rather become more noble."
This is what Dr. Malina wrote in reply:
"It sounds as though the person you refer to is using my description of behavior in the Mediterranean world of antiquity to sanction his behavior in the 21st century. If that is the case, then he is being silly. We live neither in the 1st century nor in the Mediterranean."
"People have been citing the bible for centuries in the name of some 'My Will Be Done' project (or religion). That some are doing this with my writings is no surprise."
In response to this embarrassing criticism, Turkel attacked Dr. Malina's statement, attacked the poster's comments and promptly closed the discussion thread-apparently in the hope that it would fade into obscurity.
A true scholar ::):
"In your arrogance you missed it; you were so busy waving your giant pee-pee around that you bonked yourself on the head with it and didn’t even notice."
And a gentleman:
"Darn right I am. Responding, rebutting, lashing, destroying, making them cry and whine and get frustrated. You're victim #2,456, Bilbo...Sure has you running for cover, coward. Sure has you in denial. Sure has you refusing to enter the ring. Stay under your rock, burying beetle, the stench of dead meat becomes you."
comment:
The following few quotes are from e-mail exchanges Turkel had with fellow Christians.
Once again the that part of the Talmud was composed in the 3rd or 4th centuries and is so far from being contemporaneous as to be worthless. Documents written centuries later have little bearing on the matter at hand.
Obviously all the copies we have of the Testimonium (much like the Donation of Constantine) have this passage. Josephus would not write favourably about 'Jesus' You out and out claim that interpolation is impossible. What is the point is arguing about interpolation if you do not even concede its possibility? I have quoted Christians who call the Testimonium a outright fraud and yet you ignored them. Believe at any price has its merits I suppose. Speaking of Price, read Price's Essay.
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Which calender do u use trapezekerl?
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I have no doubt that Jesus exsisted. That much is evident.
What is in question is his divinity.
Was it established long after his death when the gospels were written?
Well, according to traditional Biblical scholars, the Gospels were written shortly after Jesus' death, the latest being the gospel of John in the 90s A.D.
Was it a rumor that spread across the land of his alleged resurection that in time developed into a religion?
Had it been, it could have been easily squashed.
If it had just been a spiritual resurrection, the enemies of the New Testament church would have put the body of Jesus on a cart, walked it right down the streets of Jerusalem and killed Christianity, not just in the cradle but in the womb. There would have been no New Testament church, if they had the body. - Josh McDowell, Evidence that Demands a Verdict, also from the "Who is This Jesus? Is He Risen" special.
I would suggest that, even without Jesus' body, had Jesus not resurrected, all the Romans would have had to do was find the disciples and torture them, until they confessed that the whole thing was a fraud. The disciples did NOT come to the tomb to get His body. According to the gospel of Matthew, the guards at the tomb went to the Pharisees for help, because Jesus was gone and they faced the death penalty for letting that seal on the tomb get broken.
All they had to do was make sure that Jesus' body stayed in the tomb until Monday (or whatever the corresponding day was back then); then, both they and the Pharisees' could have simply stated that His body was stolen.
Plus, Paul states that Jesus appears to the disciples and to 500 witnesses, over the span of about six weeks.
Was he in a coma on the cross and did he "miraculously" come out of the coma 3 days later and consequentially was viewed by those who ignorant to comas as rising from the dead?
Here's what Dr. Gary Habermas from the special, Who Is This Jesus? Is He Risen, and author of the book The Historical Jesus, had to say on the claim that Jesus may not have actually died on the cross (aka the “Swoon Theory”):
The Swoon Theory is held by virtually no reputable scholars today. Death by crucifixion is essentially death by asphyxiation; you don’t get down off the cross alive. Plus, there’s the nature of the spear, which enters the chest cavity through the rib cage and penetrates the heart. In short, it would have killed Him, if He weren’t already dead.
In the Gospels, Joseph of Arimithea asks Pilate for the body of Jesus. When Pilate hears of Jesus’ death, he is surprised that He died so, relatively speaking, quickly (remember that crucifixion was designed to maximize suffering). So, Pilate sent someone to confirm that Jesus was indeed dead, before releasing custody of His body to Joseph. I'd hardly classify Joseph or Pilate as "ignorant".
And, you will recall that, when the women go to the tomb, they go with spices with the intent of finishing the burial process. All the while, they are contemplating how they are going to move the stone, which has since been sealed with a Roman seal and had guards there, due to the Pharisees’ fear that the disciples would steal Jesus’ body and then claim that He’d risen from the grave, as Jesus said He would.
did the writers of the gospel embelish this rising from the dead long after Jesus died of natural causes. Were the goshpels then altered by those who could see the begginings of a new and powerful religion?
The power of Christianity and the foundation of it is the Resurrection. Remember the disciples saw Jesus die firsthand and were scared to death. They didn't believe it, when the women reported that He'd risen. Some disciples didn't believe it, even when the other disciples saw the risen Christ (the most famous of which is Thomas).
that's the problem with finding out facts fromt he past. It's difficult to be accurate unless you were there to wittness it.
That's why the closer ancient manuscripts are to the events they describe, the more likely they are to be authentic. No other ancient documents can match the Gospels in that category.
Was it all really just a political struggle between the house of herod and teh house of David for the crown?
Nope! Jesus made it clear, that He did NOT come to establish an earthly kingdom. Despite that, some of His disciples didn't get it. The mother of two disciples was politicking to get her sons cushy positions in what she perceived to be Jesus' new earthly kingdom. Some believe that the motive behind Judas' betrayal of Jesus was forcing His hand, so that He would start a crusade to crush Rome and set up shop (with Judas having a nice desk job as treasurer; he was, after all, the one who held the bag).
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I noticed the former prison guard turned expert apologist style in you. Lots of abusive language, strong assertions without connecting the dots. J.P. Holdings is a fraud. Robert Turkel (his real name):
http://www.truthbeknown.com/holding.htm
Worse, he is a thug and a vulgar, unkind person:
http://the-anointed-one.com/quotes.htm
A true scholar ::):
And a gentleman:
And this information about Holding/Turkel vindicates your not addressing the aforementioned questions poised to you how?
Once again the that part of the Talmud was composed in the 3rd or 4th centuries and is so far from being contemporaneous as to be worthless. Documents written centuries later have little bearing on the matter at hand.
Then, you should be able to provide the information that shows that the known 200 A.D. Talmud document is the original, instead of a copy. Otherwise, it's yet more flimsy speculation on your part. Plus, you have yet to back your assertion that any of the information about "Yeshua" (Jesus) is incorrect. Again, show me a "Yeshua", other than Jesus Christ, who died on Passover Eve, by crucifixion, after being accused of sorcery.
Talking about Holding's background doesn't help your case one bit, yet alone address the topic of the historicity of Jesus Christ.
Obviously all the copies we have of the Testimonium (much like the Donation of Constantine) have this passage. Josephus would not write favourably about 'Jesus' You out and out claim that interpolation is impossible. What is the point is arguing about interpolation if you do not even concede its possibility? I have quoted Christians who call the Testimonium a outright fraud and yet you ignored them. Believe at any price has its merits I suppose. Speaking of Price, read Price's Essay.
Say what? I pointed out that, of the copies of the Testimonium known to us, the interpolation is only on the Greek version (and, only with regards to Jesus' divinity, NOT His existence). And, to top it all off, it's only on one of the two references to Jesus Christ. The Arabic version doesn't have such interpolation on either one.
Lest you use your "orthodox Jew" argument to bolster your claim about Josephus, not mentioning Jesus, remember that orthodox Jews penned the Old Testament that foretold Jesus' appearance. And, I already listed a number of orthodox Jews who believed that Jesus was the Messiah (or at least, has some divine power).
I have quoted Christians who have stated, specifically where the Testimonium was interpolated and which version had such interpolations (the Greek). You've ignored them. I guess denial at any price has its merits. Loco and I (independently of each other) have asked YOU to point out, specifically, where the alleged interpolations of Jesus' existence are, other than the known ones in the Greek version. You have not done so. All you've done is speculate that Josephus would or would not have said about Jesus Christ, an argument I addressed some time ago.
We pointed out where the divinity interpolations are. You claim that the whole thing was an interpolation: Bring your example of the Testimonium that does NOT have the name of Jesus Christ in it. Or at the very least, show where the Arabic version was altered.
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And this information about Holding/Turkel vindicates your not addressing the aforementioned questions poised to you how?
Then, you should be able to provide the information that shows that the known 200 A.D. Talmud document is the original, and not a copy. Otherwise, it's yet more flimsy speculation on your part. Plus, you have yet to refute that any of the information about "Yeshua" (Jesus) is incorrect. Again, show me a "Yeshua", other than Jesus Christ, who died on Passover Eve, by crucifixion, after being accused of sorcery.
Yapping about Holding's background doesn't help your case one bit, yet alone address the topic of the historicity of Jesus Christ.
Say what? I pointed out that, of the copies of the Testimonium known to us, the interpolation is only on the Greek version (and, only with regards to Jesus' divinity, NOT His existence). And, to top it all off, it's only on one of the two references to Jesus Christ. The Arabic version doesn't have such interpolation on either one.
I have quoted Christians who have stated, specifically where the Testimonium (Greek) was interpolated. You've ignored them. I guess denial at any price has its merits. Loco and I (independently of each other) have asked YOU to point out, specifically, where the alleged interpolations of Jesus' existence are. You have not done so. All you've done is speculate that Josephus would or would not have said about Jesus Christ, an argument I addressed some time ago.
We pointed out where the divinity interpolations are. You claim that the whole thing was an interpolation: Bring your evidence that the entire reference to Jesus was inserted.
Unfortunately in historical enquiry, particularly in ancient history all we can speak of are probabilities. We cannot speak in absolutes concerning ancient history. However I remind you that Josephus was an extremely strict orthodox Jew, thus the divine content can be thrown out right away. As for the the Arabic version we can readily see from the Bible how often manuscripts are altered and changed to suit the needs and wishes of those copying them. The Arabic version dates to the 10th century, why assume that the content of a 10th century manuscript is more original than that of a 4th century manuscript (the oldest we have of Josephus). The passage itself stems from a history of the world written by an Arab Christian bishop. He was a Christian writing in a Muslim dominated Syria. If you look at the passage:
"At this time there was a wise man who was called Jesus, and his conduct was good, and he was known to be virtuous. And many people from among the Jews and the other nations became his disciples. Pilate condemned him to be crucified and to die. And those who had become his disciples did not abandon their loyalty to him. They reported that he had appeared to them three days after his crucifixion, and that he was alive. Accordingly they believed that he was the Messiah, concerning whom the Prophets have recounted wonders"
This version still paints a would be Messiah and rabble rouser in too favourable a light. Josephus would never call one of the many Messianic nutcases running around at the time a 'wise man' whose conduct was 'good'. You should read what he writes about similar such characters. This account, as I have already alluded to, corresponds well with the Muslim view of Joesphus. Again, all we can speak of are probabilities. Is is likely that Josephus would write these things about this Jesus? No, for he never writes them about all the other Messianic nuts he documents.
A document written in 200 CE is far to late to contain accurate information about a human Jesus/Yeshua. By then everyone knew what Christians believed and thought their founder was.
From all of this one thing should be apparent: the age of Jesus was not an age of critical reflection and remarkable religious acumen. It was an era filled with con artists, gullible believers, martyrs without a cause, and reputed miracles of every variety. In light of this picture, the tales of the Gospels do not seem very remarkable. Even if they were false in every detail, there is no evidence that they would have been disbelieved or rejected as absurd by many people, who at the time had little in the way of education or critical thinking skills. They had no newspapers, telephones, photographs, or public documents to consult to check a story. If they were not a witness, all they had was a man's word. And even if they were a witness, the tales above tell us that even then their skills of critical reflection were lacking. Certainly, this age did not lack keen and educated skeptics--it is not that there were no skilled and skeptical observers. There were. Rather, the shouts of the credulous rabble overpowered their voice and seized the world from them, boldly leading them all into the darkness of a thousand years of chaos. Perhaps we should not repeat the same mistake. After all, the wise learn from history. The fool ignores it.
Not in the habit of fact checking back then; 200 CE is too late to be considered of any value for relevance to events that purportedly happened in 30 CE. That is a fact. BTW, why is Paul not familiar with any of the events in the Gospel with the exception of the crucifixion and resurrection? Would not have he mentioned the Gospel story to strengthen his position? Ever think about that....?
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Not a lie, but a saviour deity who was crucified and slain in a mythic realm. This is the standard neo-platonic view of things, much as Attis, Osiris and others were killed and raised in mythic realms. This is how St. Paul views the Christ Jesus figure as he has heard of none of the Gospel events.
That is simply incorrect. Once again, you forget that Paul personally interacted with at least two of Jesus' disciples (Peter and John). Therefore, he indeed heard of the Gospel events.
Early Christians' behaviour can be sufficiently explained by sociological factors. Never mind that you are making blanket statements. When did they do and show these things? When they were burning books? Or when they killed Hypathia?
What sociological factors would these be, especially when they were in an environment where it was in their best interestes sociologically NOT to be Christians?
An interpolation can occur when no other information is offered or available. Apologists of later centuries (2nd and 3rd) eager to see their myths vindicated readily invented 'evidence' where there was none. Ever hear of the Donation of Constantine? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donation_of_Constantine There can be multiple motivations.
An interpolation can indeed occur. Your problem is that you have yet to show one that actually DOES occur (and don't bother counting the larger passage in the Greek version of the Testimonium; Loco and I pointed that out, when we posted it on this thread).
Where's the interpolation in the Arabic version of the Testimonium, or Tacitus' Annals, or the Talmud?
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That is simply incorrect. Once again, you forget that Paul personally interacted with at least two of Jesus' disciples (Peter and John). Therefore, he indeed heard of the Gospel events.
What sociological factors would these be, especially when they were in an environment where it was in their best interestes sociologically NOT to be Christians?
An interpolation can indeed occur. Your problem is that you have yet to show one that actually DOES occur (and don't bother counting the larger passage in the Greek version of the Testimonium; Loco and I pointed that out, when we posted it on this thread).
Where's the interpolation in the Arabic version of the Testimonium, or Tacitus' Annals, or the Talmud?
I addressed the issue of interpolation just prior. I spoke of probabilities. There is seldom absolute proof in issues of ancient history. Probabilites, get it? Some Muslims blow themsleves up and sacrifice themselves for a cause they believe in. Does that make their credo true?
Paul mentions ZERO of the events of the Gospels, save crucifixtion and resurrection. You know that. Why is this the case?
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Unfortunately in historical enquiry, particularly in ancient history all we can speak of are probabilities. We cannot speak in absolutes concerning ancient history. However I remind you that Josephus was an extremely strict orthodox Jew, thus the divine content can be thrown out right away. As for the the Arabic version we can readily see from the Bible how often manuscripts are altered and changed to suit the needs and wishes of those copying them. The Arabic version dates to the 10th century, why assume that the content of a 10th century manuscript is more original than that of a 4th century manuscript (the oldest we have of Josephus). The passage itself stems from a history of the world written by an Arab Christian bishop. He was a Christian writing in a Muslim dominated Syria. If you look at the passage:
Unfortunately for whom?
I remind you, again, that orthodox Jews penned the Old Testament, which foretold of Jesus' appearance. And, at least one orthodox Jew, Simeon, saw Jesus as an infant.
I've looked at the passage. Quit the speculating and produce something solid.
This version still paints a would be Messiah and rabble rouser in too favourable a light. Josephus would never call one of the many Messianic nutcases running around at the time a 'wise man' whose conduct was 'good'. You should read what he writes about similar such characters. This account, as I have already alluded to, corresponds well with the Muslim view of Joesphus. Again, all we can speak of are probabilities. Is is likely that Josephus would write these things about this Jesus? No, for he never writes them about all the other Messianic nuts he documents.
What made Jesus a "rabble rouser"? He didn't encite riots or cause a rebellion against Roman authority. He did get under the Pharisees' skin by pointing out their wicked and hypocritical ways. In fact, Jesus was often criticized for being compassionate to the social outcasts of that day. Furthermore all the other "Messianic nuts", as you called them, had their own earthly agenda. Jesus did not.
A document written in 200 CE is far to late to contain accurate information about a human Jesus/Yeshua. By then everyone knew what Christians believed and thought their founder was.
Again, who says that this document was written in 200 A.D.? Where is your support that this is the date the document was composed?
Furthermore, the information, regardless of when it was written, is accurate.
Was Jesus accused of sorcery? YES!!
Was the punishment for conviction of practicing sorcery death by stoning? YES!! (Lev. 20:27)
Was Jesus "hanged" (aka crucified) YES!!!
Did this occur during the eve of Passover? YES!!!
So, where oh where are these alleged inaccuracies of which you speak?
Not in the habit of fact checking back then; 200 CE is too late to be considered of any value for relevance to events that purportedly happened in 30 CE. That is a fact. BTW, why is Paul not familiar with any of the events in the Gospel with the exception of the crucifixion and resurrection? Would not have he mentioned the Gospel story to strengthen his position? Ever think about that....?
So, Paul's not mentioning the Gospel accounts, outside the crucifixion and Resurrection, means he's not familiar with them? That's a stretch, a supreme one at that, especially considering he interacted with the disciples of Jesus firsthand.
Also is a stretch is your pitiful claim that the Talmud was written too late to be of any revelance. As mentioned earlier, you haven't even shown that it was written in 200 A.D., in the first place. Even if you could, you also stated that its supposed late date means the information about Jesus is inaccurate. Yet, you cannot point out a single inaccuracy there.
Luke 1:1-4
Forasmuch as many have taken in hand to set forth in order a declaration of those things which are most surely believed among us, even as they delivered them unto us, which from the beginning were eyewitnesses, and ministers of the word. It seemed good to me also, having had perfect understanding of all things from the very first, to write unto thee in order, most excellent Theophilus that thou mightest know the certainty of those things, wherein thou hast been instructed.
So much for folks not fact-checking back then!! Luke did his homework.
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Unfortunately for whom?
I remind you, again, that orthodox Jews penned the Old Testament, which foretold of Jesus' appearance. And, at least one orthodox Jew, Simeon, saw Jesus as an infant.
I've looked at the passage. Quit the speculating and produce something solid.
What made Jesus a "rabble rouser"? He didn't encite riots or cause a rebellion against Roman authority. He did get under the Pharisees' skin by pointing out their wicked and hypocritical ways. In fact, Jesus was often criticized for being compassionate to the social outcasts of that day. Furthermore all the other "Messianic nuts", as you called them, had their own earthly agenda. Jesus did not.
Again, who says that this document was written in 200 A.D.? Where is your support that this is the date the document was composed?
Furthermore, the information, regardless of when it was written, is accurate.
Was Jesus accused of sorcery? YES!!
Was the punishment for conviction of practicing sorcery death by stoning? YES!! (Lev. 20:27)
Was Jesus "hanged" (aka crucified) YES!!!
Did this occur during the eve of Passover? YES!!!
So, where oh where are these alleged inaccuracies of which you speak?
So, Paul's not mentioning the Gospel accounts, outside the crucifixion and Resurrection, means he's not familiar with them? That's a stretch, a supreme one at that, especially considering he interacted with the disciples of Jesus firsthand.
Also is a stretch is your pitiful claim that the Talmud was written too late to be of any revelance. As mentioned earlier, you haven't even shown that it was written in 200 A.D., in the first place. Even if you could, you also stated that its supposed late date means the information about Jesus is inaccurate. Yet, you cannot point out a single inaccuracy there.
Luke 1:1-4
Forasmuch as many have taken in hand to set forth in order a declaration of those things which are most surely believed among us, even as they delivered them unto us, which from the beginning were eyewitnesses, and ministers of the word. It seemed good to me also, having had perfect understanding of all things from the very first, to write unto thee in order, most excellent Theophilus that thou mightest know the certainty of those things, wherein thou hast been instructed.
So much for folks not fact-checking back then!! Luke did his homework.
Unfortunately for whom?
I remind you, again, that orthodox Jews penned the Old Testament, which foretold of Jesus' appearance. And, at least one orthodox Jew, Simeon, saw Jesus as an infant.
I've looked at the passage. Quit the speculating and produce something solid.
Talking about something like prophecy in a serious discussion about history invalidates whatever is being said. The OT did not predict Jesus' appearance in any event.
Again, who says that this document was written in 200 A.D.? Where is your support that this is the date the document was composed?
Furthermore, the information, regardless of when it was written, is accurate.
Was Jesus accused of sorcery? YES!!
Was the punishment for conviction of practicing sorcery death by stoning? YES!! (Lev. 20:27)
Was Jesus "hanged" (aka crucified) YES!!!
Did this occur during the eve of Passover? YES!!!
I was being overly generous with the dating. My point, which you continually miss, is that the Talmud (much like Tacitus) is simply repeating what Christians believed at the time. If it were a contemporaneous doument it would be different but it is not.
Luke 1:1-4
Forasmuch as many have taken in hand to set forth in order a declaration of those things which are most surely believed among us, even as they delivered them unto us, which from the beginning were eyewitnesses, and ministers of the word. It seemed good to me also, having had perfect understanding of all things from the very first, to write unto thee in order, most excellent Theophilus that thou mightest know the certainty of those things, wherein thou hast been instructed.
So much for folks not fact-checking back then!! Luke did his homework.
Yes indeed, Luke did his homework! by plagiarising from Josephus... ::)
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/richard_carrier/lukeandjosephus.html
Conclusion
Luke almost certainly knew and drew upon the works of Josephus (or else an amazing series of coincidences remains in want of an explanation), and therefore Luke and Acts were written at the end of the 1st century, or perhaps the beginning of the 2nd. This also results in the realization that almost every famous person, institution, place or event mentioned in L that can be checked against other sources is also found in Josephus, so that efforts to prove the veracity of L by appealing to these checks is cut short by the fact that he appears to have gotten all this information from Josephus, and simply cut-and-pasted it into his own "history" in order to give his story an air of authenticity and realism. He could thus, for all we know, have been writing historical fiction--using real characters and places, and putting them in fictional situations, all dressed up as history--history with a message, and an apologetic purpose. We thus cannot really know what in L is true or false with regard to the origins of Christianity or the actions of early Christians, since these particular details are the most prone to manipulation for didactic, symbolic, politico-ecclesiastical and apologetic reasons, and have very little if any external corroboration (and no external corroboration from a non-Christian).
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I addressed the issue of interpolation just prior. I spoke of probabilities. There is seldom absolute proof in issues of ancient history. Probabilites, get it? Some Muslims blow themsleves up and sacrifice themselves for a cause they believe in. Does that make their credo true?
Paul mentions ZERO of the events of the Gospels, save crucifixtion and resurrection. You know that. Why is this the case?
Muslims have nothing to do with the subject at hand, the existence of Jesus Christ.
As for Paul, I'd love to know what your point is, regarding not mentioning the events of the Gospels. That means zip, when it comes to the existence of Jesus Christ. Furthermore, his not mentioning them certainly does not mean that he knew nothing about them, given his encounters with the disciples (Probabilities, get it?).
Plus, Paul knows that Jesus is of the seed of David (Romans 1:3), he knows Jesus' brother, James (Gal. 1), which means he likely knows who the rest of Jesus' earthly family is. The Gospels refers to Jesus as the son of David. So, it's safe to say that, at the very least, he had a cursory knowledge of the Gospel events.
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Talking about something like prophecy in a serious discussion about history invalidates whatever is being said. The OT did not predict Jesus' appearance in any event.
I was being overly generous with the dating. My point, which you continually miss, is that the Talmud (much like Tacitus) is simply repeating what Christians believed at the time. If it were a contemporaneous doument it would be different but it is not.
Since you can't show that the Talmud was indeed written in 200 A.D., instead of such being the date of the earliest known copy, your point is woefully moot.
Nor, by the way, have you shown that (regardless of when it was written) that the data about Jesus Christ was inaccurate, which was part of your initial claim concerning the Talmud, in the first place.
Yes indeed, Luke did his homework! by plagiarising from Josephus... ::)
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/richard_carrier/lukeandjosephus.html
That all hinges, of course, from your skeptical assumptions that the gospel of Luke was written late. Of course, holding to the dates that traditional Biblical scholars use, Luke penned his gospel around the 50s-60s A.D., which means he gathered his info independently of Josephus.
Plus, if Luke plagrarized from Josephus' work, that would mean that he used, in his Gospel about Jesus, a source that ALREADY MENTIONED this same existing Jesus, something you keep claiming that Josephus never did.
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Muslims have nothing to do with the subject at hand, the existence of Jesus Christ.
As for Paul, I'd love to know what your point is, regarding not mentioning the events of the Gospels. That means zip, when it comes to the existence of Jesus Christ. Furthermore, his not mentioning them certainly does not mean that he knew nothing about them, given his encounters with the disciples (Probabilities, get it?).
Plus, Paul knows that Jesus is of the seed of David (Romans 1:3), he knows Jesus' brother, James (Gal. 1), which means he likely knows who the rest of Jesus' earthly family is. The Gospels refers to Jesus as the son of David. So, it's safe to say that, at the very least, he had a cursory knowledge of the Gospel events.
Of course. The Gospels and Paul's letters are crafted from the OT. The David figure is used to legitimate the origin of the Jesus figure. Look up Midrash. Not mentioning the Gospels hardly means zip. The Gospels are so integral to the Jesus figure that if Paul had knowledge of them and consequently of an earthly Jesus then he surely would have mentioned them.
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Since you can't show that the Talmud was indeed written in 200 A.D., instead of such being the date of the earliest known copy, your point is woefully moot.
Nor, by the way, have you shown that (regardless of when it was written) that the data about Jesus Christ was inaccurate, which was part of your initial claim concerning the Talmud, in the first place.
That all hinges, of course, from your skeptical assumptions that the gospel of Luke was written late. Of course, holding to the dates that traditional Biblical scholars use, Luke penned his gospel around the 50s-60s A.D., which means he gathered his info independently of Josephus.
Fundamentalist Biblical scholars who believe that Mark writes about the destruction of the temple based on prophesy... ::) rather than a 70 CE or post 70 CE date...
Remember probability...?
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Fundamentalist Biblical scholars who believe that Mark writes about the destruction of the temple based on prophesy... ::) rather than a 70 CE or post 70 CE date...
Remember probability...?
Loco covered this earlier; none of the gospels (not even that of John, dated in the 90s A.D.) mention the destruction of the Temple. So, claims of the Gospels being written late don't quite wash. Probablility, indeed!!!
Again, if Luke plagiarized from Josephus, it would hold that Josephus' work already had references to Jesus Christ, which pretty much kaboshes your entire stance.
Of course. The Gospels and Paul's letters are crafted from the OT. The David figure is used to legitimate the origin of the Jesus figure. Look up Midrash. Not mentioning the Gospels hardly means zip. The Gospels are so integral to the Jesus figure that if Paul had knowledge of them and consequently of an earthly Jesus then he surely would have mentioned them.
He would have mentioned them, because...........
Why wouldn't Paul have knowledge about an earthly Jesus from the disciples AND from Jesus' own brother, James? That, plus his own Damascus experience would be sufficient for him to undergo his ministry.
Edit - Plus, there's this little matter: Acts 19:4,
Then said Paul, John verily baptized with the baptism of repentance, saying unto the people, that they should believe on him which should come after him, that is, on Christ Jesus.
Paul knew about John the Baptist and that he baptized people, that they would believe in Jesus, who would come after Jesus' earthly cousin. That's part of the Gospels as well. So, Paul knew of Jesus' lineage, where He lived, His family, and the other forementioned items.
And, BTW, you've STILL yet to show that the Talmud was originally composed in 200 A.D. and/or the information about Jesus in that document is inaccurate.
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....And to further refute your claims that Paul knew nothing about the Gospels:
Acts 13:16-32:
Then Paul stood up, and beckoning with his hand said, "Men of Israel, and ye that fear God, give audience.
The God of this people of Israel chose our fathers, and exalted the people when they dwelt as strangers in the land of Egypt, and with an high arm brought he them out of it. And about the time of forty years suffered he their manners in the wilderness. And when he had destroyed seven nations in the land of Chanaan, he divided their land to them by lot.
And after that he gave unto them judges about the space of four hundred and fifty years, until Samuel the prophet. And afterward they desired a king: and God gave unto them Saul the son of Cis, a man of the tribe of Benjamin, by the space of forty years. And when he had removed him, he raised up unto them David to be their king; to whom also he gave testimony, and said, I have found David the son of Jesse, a man after mine own heart, which shall fulfil all my will.
Now, here's the part, displaying Paul's knowledge of the Gospels:
Knowledge of Jesus' lineage and the work of John the Baptist (Jesus' earthly cousin):
Of this man's seed hath God according to His promise raised unto Israel a Saviour, Jesus: When John had first preached before his coming the baptism of repentance to all the people of Israel. And as John fulfilled his course, he said, 'Whom think ye that I am? I am not he. But, behold, there cometh one after me, whose shoes of his feet I am not worthy to loose.'
Paul's statement that the religious rulers ignore the prophecies concerning Jesus:
Men and brethren, children of the stock of Abraham, and whosoever among you feareth God, to you is the word of this salvation sent.
For they that dwell at Jerusalem, and their rulers, because they knew him not, nor yet the voices of the prophets which are read every sabbath day, they have fulfilled them in condemning him.
Paul's stating that Jesus was innocent of the charges brougth on Him; but the leaders called for His death
And though they found no cause of death in him, yet desired they Pilate that he should be slain. And when they had fulfilled all that was written of him, they took him down from the tree, and laid him in a sepulchre.
Paul's statement that Jesus rose and that such was a fulfillment of prophecy
But God raised him from the dead: And he was seen many days of them which came up with him from Galilee to Jerusalem, who are his witnesses unto the people. And we declare unto you glad tidings, how that the promise which was made unto the fathers."
So, Paul indeed knew of the events of the Gospels. Again, how could he not know, given his interactions with the disciples and with Jesus' brother?
Once again, another claim of yours is weighed in the scales and found wanting.
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Paul did not write acts:
[b]It is almost universally agreed that the author of Acts also wrote the Gospel of Luke. The traditional view is that both books were written c. 60, though most scholars, believing the Gospel to be dependent (at least) on Mark's gospel, view the book(s) as having been written at a later date, sometime between 70 and 100[/b]
Considering this I fail to see how adducing Acts as an example is valid.
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Paul did not write acts:
Tell me something I don't know; Luke wrote that book.
Considering this I fail to see how adducing Acts as an example is valid.
Luke and Paul interacted with each other, as Paul went about his preaching. The bottom line is Luke recorded Paul's statements at events. And this shows that, contrary to your assertion, Paul had knowledge of the events in the Gospels.
So, that leave you with yet ANOTHER claim that you can't back, to go along with the Talmud stuff (again, anytime you're ready, please show that the Talmud originated in 200 A.D. and that the information about Jesus is wrong).
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Tell me something I don't know; Luke wrote that book.
Luke and Paul interacted with each other, as Paul went about his preaching. The bottom line is Luke recorded Paul's statements at events. And this shows that, contrary to your assertion, Paul had knowledge of the events in the Gospels.
So, that leave you with yet ANOTHER claim that you can't back, to go along with the Talmud stuff (again, anytime you're ready, please show that the Talmud originated in 200 A.D. and that the information about Jesus is wrong).
I never claimed that the Babylonian Talmud was dated at 200 CE, I merely proposed it as a date. It could be significantly later.
We don't have any evidence that the statements Luke makes in Acts are legitimate, accurate and attributable to Paul. It is a leap of faith, much like everything else in your invented religion.
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I never claimed that the Babylonian Talmud was dated at 200 CE, I merely proposed it as a date. It could be significantly later.
OR......it could be signficantly earlier.
We don't have any evidence that the statements Luke makes in Acts are legitimate, accurate and attributable to Paul. It is a leap of faith, much like everything else in your invented religion.
I get it now; when you think the historical documents back your points, they are accurate and legitimate. But, when you're asked to support your claims and assertions and you can't do it, you resort to this pitiful excuse.
You are the one, who made the claim that the Talmud was written in 200 A.D. When I suggested that this may be the date of the earliest-known copy, you again insisted that it was composed then. But, when asked to support your claims, you bailed and started making excuses, even trying to sidestep the issue by bringing up the backgrould of J.P. Holding.
You also insisted that the information, concerning Jesus was inaccurate because it mentioned "stoning and hanging". When the explanation for that was given and you were again asked to show exactly what about the data on Jesus was wrong, you ducked the issue.
Now, you've come with another wild claim that Paul knew nothing about the information, provided in the Gospels. But, we have Biblical evidence that he did, as he's quoted by Luke in the book of Acts. One more time, Paul knows (at the very least) about:
- Jesus' lineage from David
- Jesus' immediate earthly family
- The prophecies, foretelling His arrival
- The work done by John the Baptist (another earthly relative of Christ)
- Jesus being convicted to die, despite being falsely accused
- Jesus' death and Resurrection, fulfilling prophecy foretold by the fathers of Israel
All of that information is in the Gospels and of all that information Paul is aware, according to Luke.
That leaves you with two options: 1) Come up with some solid legitimate information to support your assertions about Paul (or the Talmud, or Josephus, for that matter); 2) Dredge up some more atheist/skeptic conspiracy theories from Lord-knows-where.