In your linked page no evidence of any kind is given for any of the extravagant statements contained in Osman's book. No argument, no evidence whatever. If you are convinced by these seemingly ridiculous ideas, you must have some reason for accepting them. What is that reason?
The Historical Jesus III
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True but in the case of Tacitus there are is huge gap in the Annuals covering 29-31 CE "That the cut is so precise and covers precisely those two is too improbable to posit as a chance coincidence.” - Drews cited by Carrier.
And it not just Tacitus. As I have said before there is this really disturbing pattern about the records of this period:
* Philo's Embassy to Gaius (c40 CE) is known to have covered at least five volumes including one entire volume that covered Pontius Pilate's rule of Judea in detail which was NOT the two works the Christians preserved and if Philo did mention Jesus the Christian copyists didn't preserve it. This became such a problem that Eusebius in his The History of the Church created the elaborate fiction that Philo not only knew the apostles but met Peter himself in Rome.
* Pliny the Elder's History of Rome from 31 to then present day (sometime before his death in 79) with a volume for each year which the Christians didn't preserve.
* Seneca the Younger's On Superstition (c40 - c62) which covered every cult in Rome was not preserved. The only reason we know it did NOT talk about Christianity at all is Augustine in the 4th century complained about it. But if the book could have been as early as 40 CE that would have made perfect sense so Augustine's issue only makes sense if the work was near the 62 CE date. Seneca's lack of mention was sufficiently troublesome to some early Christians that they forged correspondence between Seneca and Paul of Tarsus. Jerome, in de Viris Illustribus 12, and Augustine, in Epistle 153.4 ad Macedonium, both refer to the forged communication.
* Cassius Dio's Roman History has the sections covering 6 to 2 BC and 30 CE missing.
* Clovius Rufus' detailed history of Nero which would have documented the active persecution of Christians by Nero was not preserved.
And we keep seeing this.
As they say 'the fix was in'
Porpoise of Life
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It strikes me as odd that several posters use the lack of contemporary documentation about a non-miraculous Jesus as evidence for the position that there never was one, yet are much less stringent when it comes to their side.
Then all of a sudden, conjecture about mystery cults, secret plots to erase the 'real' history of a religion, and inference that 1st century writers were 'really' referring to a mythical ancestor, are deemed admissible.
Then all of a sudden, conjecture about mystery cults, secret plots to erase the 'real' history of a religion, and inference that 1st century writers were 'really' referring to a mythical ancestor, are deemed admissible.
Belz...
Fiend God
You noticed ?
If someone is trying to sell you something say like a plot of land... don't you consider the fact that this salesman has no title deed to the land is significant?
Now you get additional information that the salesman above who does not have the title deed to the land he is trying to sell has been suspected on numerous occasions of being a fraudulent huckster.
Do you wait for him to actually get convicted for the above suspicions of fraud before you are convinced he is a fraud?
Do you also tell yourself the fact that he does not have a title deed could be because he lost it?
Do you then go ahead and still buy the land from him anyway and accept the freshly printed title deed?
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Belz...
Fiend God
That's a very interesting analogy, except that people with lands _must_ legally have titles _right now_, whereas existing 2000 years ago doesn't require documentation 2000 years later.
It's not Jesus coming to us today and us requiring a (longform) birth certificate, here. It's trying to see where the scarce, millenia-old evidence mixed with myth leads us. It's not as simple as some here would like to believe.
Porpoise of Life
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I am neither looking to buy or sell anthing.
But if someone claims that evidence for claim A should be discounted because it is circumstantial, non-contemporaneous, conjecture, or of dubious provenance, I at least expect them to apply the same rigor to claim B.
Belz...
Fiend God
Well, what if you dislike claim A and like claim B ?
You seem to have forgotten that you have already declared that the case for the historical Jesus is weak.
We have been through the evidence a "million" times.
There is ZERO mention of a character called Jesus of Nazareth and the supposed disciples in ALL manuscripts attributed to contemporary non-apologetic writers.
Jesus of Nazareth and the disciples had ZERO influence on the Dead Sea Scrolls, writings attributed to Philo, Josephus, Pliny the Elder, Tacitus, Suetonius and Pliny the younger.
The case for an historical Jesus is weaker than weak.
The case for an historical Jesus is completely unsupported by non-apologetic writings.
Obscure HJ is unknown or modern fiction.
Belz...
Fiend God
We've had this conversation before and you know exactly what I meant by it.
Get off this thread or say something useful.
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Lack of contemporary documentation is only one of very many problems with the Jesus stories. And it's probably been the least mentioned of all the problems raised in this thread. But the reason that lack of contemporary documentation is mentioned as a problem, is that in any historical study one of the first things that historians would like to find is contemporary evidence ... if they do not find that, then the case is significantly weakened. So that's the entirely general reason why it's often pointed out that there is no such contemporary evidence of Jesus.
Then as far as your subsequent comment about sceptics relying upon quote "conjecture about mystery cults, secret plots to erase the 'real' history of a religion, and inference that 1st century writers were 'really' referring to a mythical ancestor" ...2 and saying those things are "deemed admissible", I don't think that sceptics here have argued that as the main problem with the Jesus stories at all.
What sceptics have argued as the main evidence against a real Jesus are factual things such as the following -
1. Most of the stories about Jesus involved miracles which were believed literally true until as late as about 1850. But since then, modern science has shown that all those miracle claims are almost certainly untrue.
2. None of extant biblical writing is anywhere near as "contemporary" as the church had tried to claim for most of the past 2000 years. It is not for example within a few decades of the supposed death of Jesus. The first more-or-less properly readable copies providing the detail of what was said about Jesus are P46 circa 200 AD, which actually says nothing about it's author or anyone else knowing a human Jesus, and then 4th to 6th century and later from the four canonical gospels.
3. None of the people who wrote any letters or gospels describing Jesus, had ever met or known any such person as Jesus. He was just a prophesised messianic scion of God who was believed in by those various anonymous writers as a matter of their fanatical 1st century religious faith.
4. Similarly, for most of the past 2000 years the church had always claimed that Josephus and Tacitus provided independent evidence of Jesus that was written within about 70 years of the death of Jesus. But that again has turned out to be completely untrue, and in fact the first extant copies of any such writing were apparently produced not circa.100 AD, but c.1000 AD!
5. The credibility of all that biblical and non-biblical writing has been seriously undermined by the discovery that the Christian copyists who actually wrote all of the extant texts (there are no originals), were in the frequent habit of altering any passages about Jesus whenever they thought the passage should say something different to what was originally written.
6. As authors like Randel Helms have shown, the writers of all 4 gospels were certainly using the OT as a source for their Jesus stories.
7. There is no genuinely independent writing about Jesus, except for the bible. E.g., there are no independent Roman official records naming Jesus in any court proceedings or any census or any records like that. And there is no physical evidence of any kind either ... although Christians and the church have tried very many times to produce fake physical evidence such as the Turin Shroud, the Bone Box of James, and various bits of the wooden cross and it’s old nails etc.
8. The biblical stories of Jesus have clear similarities to the fictional stories of other dying-&-rising gods that were believed from an earlier time in that same region.
9. Although the Jesus story is said to have taken place in Judea, all the extant biblical writing has been found in Egypt.
Those are the sort of reasons presented by most sceptics. Not just sceptical claims of saying that none of the writing is actually contemporary with the supposed lifetime of Jesus, or that there is actually nothing written by Jesus himself, or even anything written by anyone who ever claimed to have met Jesus ... but rather, the above sort of reasons (1 to 9) are the sort problems pointed out most often by sceptics.
Belz...
Fiend God
Yeah but that's only because Dejudge keeps repeating the same stuff over and over.
Shut up, Belz....
We have heard your baseless opinion before.
I am OBLIGATED to expose your REPETITIVE fallacies and illogical absurdities so I will not get off until I expose them.
You have nothing to contribute to this discussion.
You have already admitted the case for the historical Jesus is weak.
You have ZERO historical evidence for a character called Jesus of Nazareth.
Jesus of Nazareth was admitted to be the Transfiguring Water walking Son of a Ghost and the Lord God Creator from heaven.
Now the HJ argument is a farce--the very worst argument known to mankind.
If Jesus was an actual known human being then the ENTIRE NT stories of Jesus is fiction.
Not just fiction but complete IDIOTIC Madness about a False prophet who claimed he would come back to life [resurrect] three days AFTER he was killed.
Who could have worshiped such a KNOWN IDIOTIC False prophet and LIAR as a God after he was KILLED?
It should be obvious that Jesus of Nazareth never had any real existence and that stories of Jesus in the ENTIRE NT are not contemporary or history.
The Jesus character and disciples were invented at least AFTER c 115 CE or AFTER the writings of Pliny the younger.
c 115 CE, Pliny the younger showed ZERO knowledge of the Gospels, the Epistles, bishops of the Church, the belief or martyrdom of Christians .
Pliny the younger had to TORTURE deaconesses to find out what Christians believe and they still did NOT mention Jesus of Nazareth.
HJ is just modern fiction derived from myth/fiction forgeries and false attribution called the New Testament.
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Claim A is that myths are historic and that protagonists in fairy tales are real people.
Claim B is that the people who are making claim A have time and again been shown to have been charlatans and mountebanks and hucksters and liars and forgers and prone to deploying all sorts of skullduggery and chicanery and shenanigans to bamboozle people.
The people who fabricated the Christian fraudulent fairy tales were never any different from the list of the flimflammers below.
Imagine if anyone of the con artists in the list below had managed to get enough IMPERIAL might and power behind him and armies so as to wipe out any opposition or critique or analysis of his fakery?
Now imagine being able to wipe out all literature and history proving his fakery.
Now imagine being able to fabricate literature and forge history saying his fakery is truths.
Now imagine doing all the above for centuries upon centuries with total impunity and with any raised objections burnt right out of existence.
What would be the state of those places and regions under the influence of such long established fakery being thought to be God sent truths? Can you imagine such places or cultures? Can you?
It is an old and long cherished Christian Tradition to lie for Jesus' sake
Paul dissimulated and huckstered for Jesus's sake
Eusebius, Emperor Constantine's bishop, legalized deception for Jesus' sake
And Martin Luther the founder of Protestantism sanctified lying for Jesus' sake
- 1 Corinthians 9:20-23 To the Jews I became like a Jew, to win the Jews. To those under the law I became like one under the law (though I myself am not under the law), so as to win those under the law. To those not having the law I became like one not having the law (though I am not free from God's law but am under Christ's law), so as to win those not having the law. To the weak I became weak, to win the weak. I have become all things to all people so that by all possible means I might save some. I do all this for the sake of the gospel, that I may share in its blessings."
Eusebius, Emperor Constantine's bishop, legalized deception for Jesus' sake
- How it may be lawful and fitting to use falsehood as a medicine, and for the benefit of those who want to be deceived.
And Martin Luther the founder of Protestantism sanctified lying for Jesus' sake
- What harm would it do, if a man told a good strong lie for the sake of the good and for the Christian church ... a lie out of necessity, a useful lie, a helpful lie, such lies would not be against God, he would accept them.
- Muhammad
- Joseph Smith
- Brigham Young
- Charles Taze Russell
- Harold Camping
- Margaret Rowen
- L. Ron Hubbard
- Bahá'u'lláh
- Baba Buta Singh
- Swami Vivekananda
- David Koresh
- Joseph Hibbert
- Jim Jones
- Charles Manson
- Sathya Sai Baba
- Gerald Gardner
- Claude Vorilhon
- Pat Robertson
- Kenneth Copeland
- Joel Osteen
- Paula White
- Robert Tilton
- Benny Hinn
- William M. Branham
- Louis Farrakhan
- David Berg
- Chen Tao
- Jerry Falwell
- David Horowitz
- etc.
- etc.
- etc.
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Belz...
Fiend God
One of those two things is not like the other. Stop lying. Everybody who reads this thread can look back and read what I've posted. You're just making yourself look like a fool, here.
You don't know what evidence is, or what history entails.
Ians said:
That is not so at all. The miracles are virtually impossible and the resurrection would have been known to be false within 72 hrs [3 days] after Jesus was dead if he did live.
Since at least the 4th century it was acknowledge that the Jesus story was a pack of lies.
Against the Galileans
The Jesus cult Christians SLAUGHTERED other Christians [Heretics] who REJECTED their story.
Against the Galileans
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Belz...
Fiend God
It is actually worse than that.
We cannot identify a single actual author of the NT.
All the NT authors are FAKE.
Belz...
Fiend God
What does that even mean ? That the NT wrote itself ?
Who here has even suggested that these people ever knew Jeebus ?
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