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Did Jesus exist?

Did Jesus exist?


  • Total voters
    193
  • Poll closed .
What does it matter if there are not?

Answer: it does not matter for our purposes. the discussion here is about Christians in Rome, which were 1. an identifiable sect; 2. strongly disliked by the literary elite; and that there was a connection between the sect in Rome and events that took place in Judea under Pilate

Actually it does matter because we do not know where Tacitus got his information. The only other non Christian contemporary to Tacitus to mention Christians is Suetonius and he simply says Nero "punished" them. Why is not stated and from the order Suetonius puts events in it appears this occurred long before the fire. More over neither Josephus or Pliny the Elder who were in Rome 64 CE mention Christians at all.

In fact, as related by Origen the siege of Jerusalem began during Nero's reign and one can see the Emperor wanting to stomp any idea that a Messiah (or in Greek Christ) would do a Moses and liberate the Jewish people.

As recounted by Josephus this Messiah concept had been a minor headache for Rome near on 70 years with Simon of Peraea (d 4 BCE) being the first major figure. But by 66 CE the situation had resulted in full rebellion in a part of the Empire and that was something Rome did not tolerate.

But was Nero going after Christians as we use the word (ie followers of Jesus) or was he going after various sect that believed in a Moses like liberation via a Messiah (ie Christ) given the meltdown in Jerusalem and Christians of the 2nd century later claimed these people are part of their sect? We don't know.
 
All I know is that you can get in trouble for calling him Jewish, if you use the wrong language here.
 
That is not what I wrote. Words mean things.

Further, I am astonished about the anti-History postings here. Did Tacitus have to actually see the Fire burning to write authentically and authoritatively about the Great Fire of Rome? Of course not, that is utterly absurd.

On the other hand, did have first hand knowledge that Nero was said to have blamed the Christians? Of course he did

Wait, what?
IIRC, you posted earlier that Tacitus was an eye witness to the Great Fire.
Do you still hold to that idea?



What does it matter if there are not?

Answer: it does not matter for our purposes. the discussion here is about Christians in Rome, which were 1. an identifiable sect; 2. strongly disliked by the literary elite; and that there was a connection between the sect in Rome and events that took place in Judea under Pilate

Please, not quite so fast.
1. When was that established?
2. What's your evidence for that?
3. What's your source for that?
 
What does it matter if there are not?

Answer: it does not matter for our purposes. the discussion here is about Christians in Rome, which were 1. an identifiable sect; 2. strongly disliked by the literary elite; and that there was a connection between the sect in Rome and events that took place in Judea under Pilate

Are you admitting that HJ was not an obscure preacher but was indeed the predicted Christ?

The HJ argument is completely contradictory.

At one time time HJ is a scarcely known preacher man then a next time he is the Christ the leader of sect of Christians which were getting out of control.

Please, the HJ argument does not make sense if you keep changing his identity.

You make HJ Transfigure into a chameleon.

Christus was well known in Tacitus Annals.

Obscure HJ was NOT Christus.
 
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Are you admitting that HJ was not an obscure preacher but was indeed the predicted Christ?

Is it possible that you still can't imagine a Jesus who was called "Christ", but was actually just a normal human being?

How can that be?



The HJ argument is completely contradictory.

It isn't.

At one time time HJ is a scarcely known preacher man then a next time he is the Christ the leader of sect of Christians which were getting out of control.

A generation after he was dead. We all know this.

Please, the HJ argument does not make sense if you keep changing his identity.

No one is doing that.

You make HJ Transfigure into a chameleon.

Christus was well known in Tacitus Annals.

Because of the cult in Rome 40 years after Jesus died. Hello!

Obscure HJ was NOT Christus.

What does that mean?
 
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dejudge said:
Are you admitting that HJ was not an obscure preacher but was indeed the predicted Christ?

Is it possible that you still can't imagine a Jesus who was called "Christ", but was actually just a normal human being?

How can that be?

Your Jesus is a product of imagination.

Is it possible that you imagine "obscurity" and "normal" means the same thing?

How can it be that an obscure HJ is also the well known Christus who was the leader of a new religion which was spreading in Judea?

The HJ argument makes HJ into a normal Chameleon.


dejudge said:
At one time time HJ is a scarcely known preacher man then a next time he is the Christ the leader of sect of Christians which were getting out of control.

Braianache said:
A generation after he was dead. We all know this.

No, No, No!!! We have already exposed and smoked out the chameleon type argument.

Once you argue that there are authentic Pauline letters then Jesus was called Christ since at least 37-41 CE in the time of Aretas--NOT one generation later.

The so-called authentic Paul claimed Jesus was the Christ over 200 times.

If you argue that Tacitus Annals 15.44 with Christus is authentic then Christus was WELL KNOWN and the leader of new mischievous religion in the time of Pilate c 27-37 CE ---NOT one generation later.


2 Corinthians 11:32 KJV
In Damascus the governor under Aretas the king kept the city of the Damascenes with a garrison , desirous to apprehend me


Tacitus' Annals
.......Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus, and a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judæa, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome..

If the Pauline Corpus and Tacitus Annals are authentic then your scarcely known HJ has been smoked.

Obscure HJ the chameleon has been flushed.
 
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Your Jesus is a product of imagination.

Is it possible that you imagine "obscurity" and "normal" means the same thing?

How can it be that an obscure HJ is also the well known Christus who was the leader of a new religion which was spreading in Judea?

The HJ argument makes HJ into a normal Chameleon.






No, No, No!!! We have already exposed and smoked out the chameleon type argument.

Once you argue that there are authentic Pauline letters then Jesus was called Christ since at least 37-41 CE in the time of Aretas--NOT one generation later.

The so-called authentic Paul claimed Jesus was the Christ over 200 times.

If you argue that Tacitus Annals 15.44 with Christus is authentic then Christus was WELL KNOWN and the leader of new mischievous religion in the time of Pilate c 27-37 CE ---NOT one generation later.


2 Corinthians 11:32 KJV


Tacitus' Annals

If the Pauline Corpus and Tacitus Annals are authentic then your scarcely known HJ has been smoked.

Obscure HJ the chameleon has been flushed.

Are you saying that as soon as one person called him "Christ", everybody started worshipping him?
 
Are you saying that as soon as one person called him "Christ", everybody started worshipping him?

This is the old anti-HJ argument, isn't it? As soon as Jesus is labelled as the Christ, or the son of God, then HJ falls. Or as soon as Jesus is described as carrying out miracles, HJ falls.

It's clearly not correct, and confuses descriptions with reality. Jesus might be described as the son of God or the messiah or a miracle worker, but that doesn't mean that he was.

It baffles me how this basic error keeps resurfacing. The odd thing is that it shows the same conflation as shown by evangelicals - that is, that since Jesus is described as the Christ, therefore he was/is.
 
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Wait, what?
IIRC, you posted earlier that Tacitus was an eye witness to the Great Fire.
Do you still hold to that idea?

I answered your accusation. You have ignored it.

You also ignored my comments about the fact that your arguments are grossly inconsistent with the way historians actually practice their disciple. Go back and figure out where you went off the path.
 
... At one time time HJ is a scarcely known preacher man
In around 30 AD
then a next time he is the Christ the leader of sect of Christians which were getting out of control.
No, because he's dead. There may well have been a sect by 66 AD (that is, thirty odd years later) which venerated the dead and "risen" Jesus as a messiah, and as we know messianic movements were already causing problems among the Jews, even in Rome, as Suetonius informs us.
Please, the HJ argument does not make sense if you keep changing his identity.
It remains the same. What is changing is the size and nature of the Jesus movement, as it evolves in the ever-changing and stressful environment within which it existed.
Christus was well known in Tacitus Annals.
Eh? I thought we couldn't know what was in these Annals, according to yourself, as our only extant manuscripts are medieval or later.
 
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This is the old anti-HJ argument, isn't it? As soon as Jesus is labelled as the Christ, or the son of God, then HJ falls. Or as soon as Jesus is described as carrying out miracles, HJ falls.
It's clearly not correct, and confuses descriptions with reality. Jesus might be described as the son of God or the messiah or a miracle worker, but that doesn't mean that he was.

It baffles me how this basic error keeps resurfacing. The odd thing is that it shows the same conflation as shown by evangelicals - that is, that since Jesus is described as the Christ, therefore he was/is.



Re. the highlight, the point is this -

- your only known primary source of any mention of Jesus, is the bible. But what the bible describes is not a figure who on one or two occasions did things which a few people might have mistakenly interpreted as miracles. On the contrary, the whole basis of the biblical writing was to portray Jesus as overtly miraculous in almost every significant sentence it ever wrote about him. He was constantly and repeatedly miraculous in front of countless eye-witnesses ... or so the bible account goes.

That however is not remotely an account of anything called a HJ. That is the very opposite of a human HJ.

So in all honesty you should then ask, “well where did any mention of a HJ come from then?". And the answer to that appears to be that it is simply an invention created by Christian church hierarchy in relatively recent times (say c.1800 onwards) after they could no longer maintain what they had previously insisted upon as the literal and absolutely certain truth of the bible with it's overtly superhuman Jesus.

But that should immediately make you ask "what then is the evidence of anyone every claiming to know, witness, or otherwise have evidence of this so-called HJ?". And that the answer to that appears to be that there is absolutely not one microscopic spec of any such external independent non-biblical evidence of this notional HJ. Nobody every claimed see or know any such person.

Instead, you are straight back in the same concentric circular reasoning to the biblical writing again, and left claiming that is the evidence of a HJ!

Well that is simply not credible for all the many dozens of reasons all ready spelt out in detail in all these recent HJ threads. I.e. not least because that biblical writing describes the very opposite of a HJ, and because the only "evidence" it provides is evidence of peoples 1st century ignorant superstitious beliefs, not any actual evidence for anyone who ever claimed to know or witness Jesus in any way at all ... its' also a chain of completely anonymous hearsay from unknown people who themselves never knew a single thing about anyone named Jesus, but where they all swore the certainty of God-given belief that there had once lived a messiah of ancient OT legend who was described as impossibly superhuman in virtually every sentence they wrote about him.

That is not reliable or credible evidential writing about Jesus. And it is certainly not writing about a HJ at all.
 
And that the answer to that appears to be that there is absolutely not one microscopic spec of any such external independent non-biblical evidence of this notional HJ. Nobody every claimed see or know any such person.

Instead, you are straight back in the same concentric circular reasoning to the biblical writing again, and left claiming that is the evidence of a HJ!

talk about your circular reasoning: "there is no evidence of writings about 'HJ' other than the anthology collecting the writings about HJ!"
 
Wait, what?
IIRC, you posted earlier that Tacitus was an eye witness to the Great Fire.
Do you still hold to that idea?


I answered your accusation. You have ignored it.

What accusation? I'd understood you to have written that Tacitus was an eyewitness to the Great Fire. How is that an accusation?



You also ignored my comments about the fact that your arguments are grossly inconsistent with the way historians actually practice their disciple. Go back and figure out where you went off the path.

Could you link the post where you comment about the fact that my arguments are grossly inconsistent with the way historians actually practice their disciple*, please?


* I think you probably meant discipline there.
 
What accusation? I'd understood you to have written that Tacitus was an eyewitness to the Great Fire. How is that an accusation?


* I think you probably meant discipline there.

I responded.

I did mean discipline. I blame *********** autofill on the ipad which i hate so much.
 
I responded.

I did mean discipline. I blame *********** autofill on the ipad which i hate so much.

Technically it was a response but maybe you could address what was asked in the next one? and answer the questions about your sources to, I'd be interested in those.
 
Technically it was a response but maybe you could address what was asked in the next one? and answer the questions about your sources to, I'd be interested in those.

Sure, he misunderstood what I wrote. i told him that several times.

Sources? besides Tacitus himself you mean? take a gander at Beginning from Jerusalem by James D. G. Dunn
 
But that should immediately make you ask "what then is the evidence of anyone every claiming to know, witness, or otherwise have evidence of this so-called HJ?". And that the answer to that appears to be that there is absolutely not one microscopic spec of any such external independent non-biblical evidence of this notional HJ. Nobody every claimed see or know any such person.

Instead, you are straight back in the same concentric circular reasoning to the biblical writing again, and left claiming that is the evidence of a HJ!


talk about your circular reasoning: "there is no evidence of writings about 'HJ' other than the anthology collecting the writings about HJ!"



Oh, there is plenty of writing about a HJ. If all you are claiming is that people like Bart Ehrman and all his thousands of bible scholar colleagues have "written" to say what & why they believe in a HJ, then we can all agree on that much - they have indeed written what they believe about a HJ.

But what is completely lacking is any actual evidence of anyone in the 1st century (or at any other time) ever credibly claiming to have personally met or otherwise themselves ever known any human HJ.

The HJ of modern Christians, believed by bible scholars like Bart Ehrman, appears to be nothing more than an invention which has been created as a response to the fact that by about 1800 (or whatever date you prefer) it became widely realised that the biblical Jesus could only ever have been a fictional figure.

But outside of that biblical writing which very clearly describes a fictional figure drawn from ancient OT religious legend, and written about by completely ignorant 1st century religious fanatics who were both anonymous and who had never met any such person as Jesus anyway, outside of that utterly hopeless “evidence”, where is there any evidence of anyone ever reliably writing to say they had known a very different non-supernatural HJ??
 
This is the old anti-HJ argument, isn't it? As soon as Jesus is labelled as the Christ, or the son of God, then HJ falls. Or as soon as Jesus is described as carrying out miracles, HJ falls.

It's clearly not correct, and confuses descriptions with reality. Jesus might be described as the son of God or the messiah or a miracle worker, but that doesn't mean that he was.

Well, if the authors wanted to state that Jesus was a Son of a God what would be written?

The authors would write exactly what is found written in the NT.

It is written that Jesus was the Son of God. Only Jesus is called the ONLY begotten Son of God in the NT.

There is an on-going quest for a human being called Jesus for hundreds of years--no-one and no evidence has been found--only assumptions and speculation.

Mark 5:7 KJV
And cried with a loud voice, and said , What have I to do with thee, Jesus, thou Son of the most high God? I adjure thee by God, that thou torment me not.

John 1:18 KJV
No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him.

John 3:16 KJV
For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish , but have everlasting life.
Romans 8:3 KJV
For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh
 
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Sure, he misunderstood what I wrote. i told him that several times.

Sources? besides Tacitus himself you mean? take a gander at Beginning from Jerusalem by James D. G. Dunn


Beginning from Jerusalem (Christianity in the Making, vol. 2) Hardcover
by James D. G. Dunn (Author)
2 customer reviews

Hardcover
$50.60


It would be nice if you could post what you think instead of hiding behind $50 books.
 
Beginning from Jerusalem (Christianity in the Making, vol. 2) Hardcover
by James D. G. Dunn (Author)
2 customer reviews

Hardcover
$50.60


It would be nice if you could post what you think instead of hiding behind $50 books.

Thanks for your input TSIG! AWESOME! I put what i think in a post, and someone asked me for a source that supports what I wrote and I gave it to them, and then you came along and said I should post what I think instead of "hiding" behind a source!

Fantastic! That is what I call heads you win, tails I lose.

:rolleyes:
 

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