(posted by todangst)
Christian historians have been bothered by the lack of historical evidence for jesus for centuries. John E. Remsburg, in his classic book The Christ: A Critical Review and Analysis of the Evidence of His Existence (The Truth Seeker Company, NY, no date, pp. 24-25), lists the following writers who lived during the time, or within a century after the time, that Jesus is supposed to have lived"
Caius Suetonius
Josephus
Philo-Judæus (see my entry on him)
Seneca
Pliny Elder
Arrian
Petronius
Dion Pruseus
Pliny Younger
Paterculus
Juvenal
Martial
Persius
Plutarch
Tacitus
Justus of Tiberius
Apollonius
Quintilian
Lucanus
Epictetus (see my entry on him)
Hermogones
Silius Italicus
Statius
Ptolemy
Appian
Phlegon
Phædrus
Valerius Maximus
Lucian
Pausanias
Florus Lucius
Quintius Curtius
Aulus Gellius
Dio Chrysostom
Columella
Valerius Flaccus
Damis
Favorinus
Lysias
Pomponius Mela
Appion of Alexandria
Theon of Smyrna
Justus of Tiberias
And, according to Remsburg, "(While) Enough of the writings of the authors named in the foregoing list remains to form a library, (no where)... in this mass of Jewish and Pagan literature, aside from two forged brief passages in the works of a Jewish author, and two disputed passages in the works of Roman writers, there is to be found no mention of Jesus Christ." Nor, we may add, do any of these authors make note of the Disciples or Apostles - increasing the embarrassment from the silence of history concerning the foundation of Christianity.
None of the gospels are contemporary accounts, they all were written by the end of the first century, and into the second.
They are all also anonymous.
So we have no first hand accounts.
And all that we do have (outside of paul's writings) is anonymous.
No one alive when Jesus supposedly lived ever mentions seeing Jesus or hearing Jesus -- or even hearing about Jesus!
They don't mention the star that heralded his birth.
They don't mention Herod's slaughter of boy babies.
They don't mention crowds gathered to hear him preach.
They don't mention his trial.
They don't mention his crucifixion.
They don't mention his resurrection.
They don't mention that his resurrection was supposedly followed by many unnamed saints who rose from graves....
They never mention anything he said, or anywhere he went, or anything
he thought, or anything he did.
No one alive when Jesus lived ever mentions him at all.
The philosopher Philo, who lived until about 50 CE and wrote of unusual sects like the Essenes, has nothing to say about Jesus.
Pliny the Elder (died 79 CE) collected data on all manner of natural and astronomical phenomena, even those which were legendary and which he himself did not necessarily regard as factual, but he records no prodigies associated with the beliefs of Christians, such as an earthquake or darkening of the skies at a crucifixion, or any star of Bethlehem.
Epictetus, the great Stoic philosopher who preached universal brotherhood to the poor and humble masses, records not a word about jesus.
Nor does Seneca, the empire's leading ethicist during the reign of Nero, make reference to such a figure.
Or other historians of the time, like Plutarch and Quintilian.
No one alive when Jesus lived ever mentions him at all.
There is NO information for later historians to draw upon. Nothing. Not a word.
All that has evolved, that could have evolved, comes from legend.
Please also see:
http://www.humanists.net/jesuspuzzle/home.htm
The astute dohtuns writes:
It is a major problem for the historicity of the popular Christian Jesus that neither he, nor any of his disciples, are ever mentioned once by any of the known contemporary historians who resided in the area where Jesus and his disciples are purported to have preached and performed miracles. That we have the work of 40 of such historians makes the Jesus claim much more shaky.
Of course, it becomes quite easy to dismiss the biblical Jesus when we try to account for the social and political upheaval purported to have been brought about by his presence and preaching. There are no governmental accounts of such events, and had such events occurred anyway, it would have been that much more likely that some of the 40 aforementioned historians would have written about the man at the center of such events. The idea of the fictional Jesus is further reinforced by the plainly contradictory accounts of his life recorded in the gospels, and that there is no mention even in the gospels of the life of the man, from his infancy to the days just prior to his death (save one suspiciously apocryphal tale from Luke) who would have been the most important individual ever to have walked the face of the earth.
The most parsimonious explanation, therefore, of the biblical account of Jesus is that he was created out of the popular political sentiments of the underclass Jewry, who were subjugated not only by Rome, but by their own people.
The wise raze writes:
Hello everyone. Its good to see so many thinkers involved in this debate over Jesus of Nazareth's existence.
I want to concentrate a little on the aforementioned "apocolyptic preachers." As I understand it from my historical research on the subject, their did exist a tribe of Jews that lived in the Cumran Valley in Palestine, slightly post of the alleged "Jesus of Nazareth" character's existence. And, this sect of Jews were opposed to traditional Judaism, as it stood in their day. They seperated themselves from the general population, and built themselves a small community in the Valley. They were exceptionally focused on Jewsih Apocalypticism, or End times. Some modern historians link them to the Essenes(but their is no definitive evidence of this). I think it may have been possible that the "Jesus" myth could have possibly evolved form a setting such as this. Such evidence to support this claim lies in a document called "Q." "Q" is a document which NT scholars think may be the original text in which the gospel of Mark was contrived, and subsequently changed and morphed into the "Jesus" tale through a Jewish method or reworking old legends called Midrashing. As I understand it, their is no literal document "Q", this conclusion was come about because of the language of the Markan gospel, and other literary constructions within its texts. It is popualrly known that the Markan gospel was the first out of the Synoptics, and the following gospels are merely "versions" of the Markan tale with various additions and reworkings(which ended up being contradictions among all of them). (For more information on this "Q" document and the Cumran residents see also The Jesus Puzzle website by Earl Dougherty, Westar Institute website, "The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Christain Myth" by Dr. Paul Allegro, and Acharya S. "The Christ Conspiracy" site for further details).
I just wanted to bring this little piece of information to the table for those of you who may or may not know about the "Q" document and the Cumran Valley Jews. These points were fascinating to me, and helped lend further insight into the Jesus Myth. Thanks everyone, Raze.
Check out this link for more...
infidelguy.com
