This argument was not persuasive before. It still isn't.
You need better arguments, because you won't convince educated people by revealing your ignorance to them; It doesn't work.
This argument was not persuasive before. It still isn't.
You need better arguments, because you won't convince educated people by revealing your ignorance to them; It doesn't work.
Craig, if look at the complete quote of my post above replying to 16.5, it clearly says that iirc 16.5 was trying to claim Tacitus as an eye witness to Jesus (see the highlight in the above).
Is that your way of apologising for deliberately misrepresenting your opponent's position?
Are you ever going to address the actual HJ position?
OK, well below I have listed the consecutive posts where we discussed this earlier in the thread. You will se that I am repeatedly asking you if you are claiming Tacitus as an eye witness to Jesus, and you are repeatedly evasive about that (but see the final pair of exchanged posts below on that point), and you keep calling Tacitus an actual eye witness even though I was stressing to you you that the threads and the poll are about the evidence for Jesus and not any evidence of a fire … we were not talking about any fire … we are talking about evidence for Jesus and you started in by saying that Tacitus was a relevant eye-witness to something ….
…. See the exchanges below, and then note particular the final two posts with their highlights -
In the above exchanges I put it to you repeatedly that when you began by saying Tacitus was an eye-witness to things, that he was not any eye witness to anything that ever happened to Jesus. And if you look at the above exchanges you are constantly trying to claim that Tacitus was an eye witness to things which somehow was as good as him being an eye- witness to Jesus ... such that it ended up with me putting it to you (yet again) that Tacitus could not have known what happened to Jesus except from hearsay stories ... and your reply to that was to say "he lived it" and that he knew it because of "His knowledge on Pilate: numerous sources from his life as a Roman official" ...
... well none of that makes Tacitus an eye-witness to anything ever happened to Jesus, does it! And that IS what we are talking about in this poll thread insn't it... JESUS ! .... not some fire somewhere! … whether or not Tacitus was a witness to a fire, that does not in way at all make him any kind of actual witness to Jesus does it!?
Well whether you think it's crazy or not, the fact the matter is that as far as anyone can honestly tell, although extant 11th century copies of Tacitus talk in one ultra brief passage about the execution of a figure he called “Christus“, Tacitus was not himself even born at the time and could only really have been reporting hearsay.
So contrary to what 16.5 is trying to claim by introducing Tacitus as evidence of Jesus, and repeatedly talking about Tacitus as an eye-witness, he was not an eye witness to Jesus, was he?
In which respect, apart from the list of highly evasive double-speak replies from 16.5 that I just quoted above, please note also the quote below (which is what I was actually finally asking him to clarify) where he says Tacitus did not need to see things in order to be an eye-witness to those things! -
In any event, the well known Christus in Tacitus Annals is not the assumed HJ.
The presumed HJ was a scarcely known character who was crucified after he caused a disturbance at the Temple according to HJers
There is no evidence at all that Christus in Annals caused a disturbance at the Jewish Temple and no evidence that he was crucified.
In the NT itself there more was another person called Christ when Jesus was called John the Baptist or one of the prophets.
There is NO corroborative evidence that the assumed obscure HJ was a preacher.
Tacitus Annals with Christus is found in an 11 century copy which shows evidence of manipulation and was unknown up to at least the 5th century based on Sulpitius Severus' Sacred History 2.29.
The presumed HJ was a scarcely known character who was crucified after he caused a disturbance at the Temple according to HJers
There is no evidence at all that Christus in Annals caused a disturbance at the Jewish Temple and no evidence that he was crucified.
In the NT itself there more was another person called Christ when Jesus was called John the Baptist or one of the prophets.
There is NO corroborative evidence that the assumed obscure HJ was a preacher.
Tacitus Annals with Christus is found in an 11 century copy which shows evidence of manipulation and was unknown up to at least the 5th century based on Sulpitius Severus' Sacred History 2.29.
I need evidence for an historical Jesus. At the present moment there is no evidence that there was ever an historical Jesus.
I conclude based on the existing evidence that there was NEVER an historical Jesus as proposed by HJers until new evidence surfaces.
It is implausible that a known dead crucified criminal was worshiped as a God and God Creator by Jews and Romans since at least c 37-41 CE and highly illogical that a Pharisee, a Jew, would even attempt to evangelise the Roman Empire preaching and documented his teaching that the same crucified criminal was raised from the dead and was God's Own Son.
Based on the existing evidence, the Entire NT Canon including all the so-called authentic Pauline letters were fabricated by Anonymous authors AFTER c 70 CE and AFTER the Fall of the Jewish Temple.
ALL the Pauline letters were composed AFTER Revelation or the Apocalypse of John and played NO role at all in the early development of the Jesus story and cult.
Now, out of curiosity do you have any evidence that there was ever an historical Jesus as proposed by HJers?
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pakeha
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dejudge, I suspect the whole story is so close to being fiction as to make no difference even if there were a kernel of historic truth to the tale.
Any evidence for an HJ?
I'll be bold enough to say there is.
Weak, but there you are.
As Belz... says, there's the undoubted fact Christianity exists and it had to start somehow and an HJ is a plausible likelihood.
Craig B points out one detail that I ponder, that of the mocking inscription of the notice posted up on the stauros.
Stone's advocacy of the core sayings as proof of an individual is worth considering, too.
What I, personally find off-putting is that where ever the gospel writers can get an historical detail dead wrong, they do.
Unless we're talking about details along the lines of historical accuracy in Harry Potter.
The Big Dog
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I am kind of surprised that you still do not understand what I said. Let me make it simple:
despite not being a eyewitness to the events in Judea that took place 25 years before he was born, Tacitus is widely accepted as authentic and authoritative by virtually all historians. Further, if being alive during the events one writes about is a prerequisite to writing history (which is of course ludicrous) then remember he was alive during the period he writes about and which we have been discussing.
Simple.
I am kind of surprised that you still do not understand what I said. Let me make it simple:
despite not being a eyewitness to the events in Judea that took place 25 years before he was born, Tacitus is widely accepted as authentic and authoritative by virtually all historians. Further, if being alive during the events one writes about is a prerequisite to writing history (which is of course ludicrous) then remember he was alive during the period he writes about and which we have been discussing.
Simple.
The period we are discussing in these HJ threads is the period in which Jesus supposedly lived - we are talking specifically about the existence or otherwise of Jesus, and about what if any evidence there is of Jesus as a living person ... that's why the poll here is about the existence of Jesus (not about any fire).
And Tacitus is not a source of himself actually knowing any evidence about anything Jesus ever did, is he?
So why did you introduce Tacitus, talking about him as an eye-witness and denying that he was writing hearsay, unless you were trying to claim Tacitus as evidence of Jesus?
The fact of the matter about the writing of Tacitus on "Christus", is that as far as we can tell Tacitus could only really be writing hearsay about Jesus, from what he thought other unknown unnamed people had once said about the execution of "Chistus" ...
… Tacitus himself could not personally have known about that execution, because he was not even born at the time. He was not an eye-witness to any such execution, and afaik he gives no indication of where he got that Jesus belief from. And in fact the only known earlier source of claims to the execution of Jesus is the biblical writing itself ... so that is the only known source from which Tacitus could have got his belief that this "Christus" was executed ... ie, as far as we can tell, all later brief mention of Jesus in writing such as Tacitus, Josephus and the rest, comes as far as we can honestly tell from the bible as the only known original source for all those stories of Jesus.
Tacitus does not give any of his own evidence for Jesus. He cannot, because he never personally knew any evidence of Jesus. What Tacitus gives, is mention of peoples later beliefs about what earlier Christians said had happened to their messiah according to the earliest biblical writing. In every case, the stories of Jesus always go back each time to that same biblical writing.
The Big Dog
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wrong
I am kind of surprised that you still do not understand what I said. Let me make it simple:
despite not being a eyewitness to the events in Judea that took place 25 years before he was born, Tacitus is widely accepted as authentic and authoritative by virtually all historians. Further, if being alive during the events one writes about is a prerequisite to writing history (which is of course ludicrous) then remember he was alive during the period he writes about and which we have been discussing.
Simple.
Your claim of wide acceptance is really worthless [ludicrous] because you are using an 11th century copy which was manipulated and have no actual data to show that it is widely accepted.
The same 11th century copy does not mention Jesus and does not claim that Christus was crucified.
There is no evidence at all of a story of Jesus in Tacitus Annals
1. Please supply the source for your claims.
2. How many Christians took part in the poll?
3. How many historians in the poll worship Jesus?
4. How many historians in the poll are active theologians?
5. How many historians took part in the poll?
6. In which country was the survey conducted?
Please, if you cannot provide any data for your claims then it makes no sense whatsoever to continue to make them.
The HJ argument is a known Dead End argument.
I asked for evidence not for boldness.
Are you bold enough to show the actual evidence that you claim is weak?
Which book of antiquity? Which author from antiquity mentioned evidence that a known actual crucified criminal was worshiped as a God and Savior of all mankind by Jews and Romans since at least 37-41 CE.
pakeha said:
You must have forgotten that Belz did scream out in extremely large bolded RED LETTERS that he never claimed to have had evidence for HJ
pakeha said:
You must have forgotten that the Gospels in the Canon are forgeries and not eyewitness accounts. When did anything about Jesus really happen when the authors specifically wrote fiction?
Why does Craig B accept known unreliable sources as history when it was the Son of a Ghost that was crucified in the Gospel?
Stone is also using the same sources of core fiction as core sayings when it is known that the authors copied one another using the same non-historical accounts of Jesus.
The Sermon on the Mount is not even corroborated in the NT and no gospel of sayings have ever been recovered and dated pre 70 CE.
pakeha said:
What and where is the weak evidence of antiquity for an historical Jesus?
What else could the authors have written to show that they were writing fiction?
1. The author of gMark claimed his Jesus walked on the sea, transfigured and resurrected.
2. The author of gMatthew claimed his Jesus was the Son of a Holy Ghost and a Virgin using virtually all of gMark.
3. The author of gLuke also claimed his Jesus was the product of a Ghost and ascended in a cloud using gMatthew and gMark.
4.The author of gJohn claimed his Jesus was God Creator, the Logos.
5. The Pauline writers claimed they got their Gospel from Jesus AFTER he was dead.
There is no evidence for an historical Jesus that is why it is a Dead End argument after hundreds of YEARS of a Quest for HJ.
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Tacitus writes about the existence of Christians in Rome in Nero's day. He doesn't say that he personally witnessed their existence, let alone that he was a physical eye witness to the existence of Jesus. Now my question is simple. Where does 16.5 express a belief that Tacitus personally witnessed Jesus with his own eyes?
So, you have been really wasting time with Tacitus Annals.
1. Tacitus did not mention Jesus.
2. Tacitus did not mention followers of Jesus.
3. Tacitus did not mention that Chritus was crucified.
4. Tacitus was not an eyewitness.
5. Tacitus Annals is an 11th century copy.
6. Tacitus Annals shows signs of tampering with the word ChrEstians.
7. Tacitus mentioned nothing about a character who was crucified AFTER he caused a disturbance at the Jewish Temple.
8. Tacitus Annals with Christus was NOT used by Apologetics for hundreds of years.
9. Tacitus Annals with Christus was NOT used by Non-Apologetics for hundreds of years.
10. Tacitus Annals with Christus is a forgery carried out no earlier than the 5th century.
Please, you have got to move on. You have got to go on your QUEST--keep searching for evidence.
Tacitus Annals has nothing at all to support the HJ argument for an obscure known criminal who was crucified because of his disturbance at the Temple.
Please, do look in Genesis for HJ--REMEMBER it was believed he existed as the Logos, God Creator.
There may be some physical mundane evidence for your HJ somewhere out there.
Don't give up!!
What I asked was
If you can help with that, good and well.