Historical Jesus

[dejudge]

In one ear, out the other. Jesus son of Damneus and Jesus called Christ are not the same person, you matter how many times you parrot that line.

In Antiquities of the Jews 20.9.1 Jesus called Christ, the brother of James, is documented as a High Priest of the Jews c 63-64 CE.

Bible Jesus called Christ was the son of a Ghost.

 

[Tassman]

The link does state that it was conclusively proven that the word "Christians" was manipulated.

But, as I said, your sole quote is contradicted by numerous scholars in your very same link arguing that “The scholarly consensus is that Tacitus' reference to the execution of Jesus by Pontius Pilate is both authentic, and of historical value as an independent Roman source.”

Tacitus' Annals did not even mention Jesus of Nazareth.

You very well know Tacitus' Annals was written c 115-120 CE long after the stories of Jesus were already known and circulated in the Roman Empire.

It is virtually impossible to show that Tacitus was not merely repeating stories that were circulating in the 2nd century.

See above.

It is simply not true that a known man was a catalyst for the origins of the Jesus story.

I didn’t say “it was true that a known man was a catalyst for the origins of the Jesus story”. I said that “there is no better explanation for the sudden appearance of the Jesus movement from out of nowhere”. See the difference between the two statements?

It is documented by Christian writers themselves who admitted their belief originated with a story that God came down from heaven and lived in a daughter of man.

No, this is not the argument. What is documented by “Christian writers” was the highly embellished Jesus story which had grown beyond recognition with such enhancements as a virgin-born miracle worker and resurrecting god/man. This sort of thing was commonplace with the evolution of myths and legends.

 

[IanS]

So what? Now they are not believers. Now you think only atheists who were never Christians are reliable? You guys are just making up the rules as you go along.

How long does this take for it to sink in? I mean, really you must be a committed Christian arguing from a faith position. That has to be the conclusion here.

Look;- almost all bible studies teachers are Christians. They have to believe Jesus was real, otherwise their faith would be in ruins.

But we have been through the evidence offered by these people before, thousands of times! It's really all stated in Bart Ehrman's book Did Jesus Exist ... but what he offers there as all the evidence which he says makes Jesus a certainty, and where he also says that practically every trained scholar on the planet agrees with him, that evidence that he offers is absurd to the point of being laughable, and really it just shows what an academically weak profession that is ...

... Ehrman's best evidence is that single half-sentence of just 10 words in one of Paul's letters where it says "other apostles saw I none, save James the Lord brother" ...

... that probably is by far the best evidence to support belief in a HJ. But it's pathetically weak. And I've explained here in some detail why it's so weak, and many others have explained it both here and in virtually every sceptic book written in recent decades.

We are not going to go through all the problems with that half-sentence all over again for the 2000th time in these HJ threads.

If you believe those few words are proof of Jesus (which Ehrman and his tens of thousands of colleagues apparently do believe), or even if you just believe it to be reliable evidence of a HJ, then you have no comprehension of what good reliable and credible evidence is. And that being the case you, and all others who believe there is good evidence in the bible, are in dire need of a far more objective more scientific education.




And by the way ; I think that earlier you criticised me for saying those words were just a “half-sentence” … well actually that's being generous to it! … it's just 10 short words that do not even occupy one single short line on A4 paper!

 

[IanS]

And it's also good for mythicists on this board to keep in mind that mythicists like Dr Richard Carrier and Earl Doherty have no problems with the overwhelming majority of peer-reviewed conclusions by modern scholars, including Christian ones. Mythicists generally agree on dates, provenance and authorship of early texts. Disagreements exist around a few key passages.

That's not like the divide between Creationists and modern biological sciences, where Creationists disagreement with fundamental aspects of evolution. Carrier and Doherty tend to have no problems with the vast bulk of Biblical academic scholarship, including those by Christian scholars within academia.

Apart from dejudge - who are the mythicists in this thread?

I don't think there are any (apart from dejudge).

I'm not sure its fair even to call Carrier a mythicist ... he thinks that on the basis of the evidence that he produced in writing On The Historicity of Jesus, that Jesus was probably mythical (he puts the odds at around 3-to-1, though he also says that's being generous) ... but he stops short of saying that Jesus was definitely a myth ... his conclusion is only that he thinks it more likely than not that Jesus was mythical.

 

[IanS]

Just re. Josephus (or Tacitus) being claimed as evidence of Jesus (or evidence via reports about the death of James) – afaik, even Bart Ehrman accepts in his book (Did Jesus Exist) that Josephus is not reliable as a source to claim evidence for Jesus.

We have been though this before (again, many hundreds of times!), but -

1 Writing that we have which actually dates from 1000 years after the events, is not remotely credible as evidence of what the named authors originally wrote. That vast gap in time is far too big to ignore the obviously potential for alterations by a long string of copyists.


2 Afaik, even Christian bible scholars now agree that key passages in that writing are probably “interpolations”, ie they are later copyist changes to what was originally written.

3 There is zero reason to think that well-known upper-class historical writers of the day such as Josephus and Tacitus would have mixed with people such as “James” in the 60's AD. And they certainly would not have known Jesus if he died around 33AD. The only credible conclusion is that whatever Josephus or Tacitus believed about Jesus or James would been whatever they had heard from people repeating what Christians on the streets had been preaching as their religious faith at the time. In fact – that Christian preaching is the only known source from which later writers such as Josephus and Tacitus could ever have got such ideas.

4 Neither Josephus or Tacitus names any person or source as informants for where they got any ideas about what Jesus or James did. At very best, those authors were just reporting hearsay from anonymous unknown informants. Hearsay like that is rarely admitted as credible in democratic courts, and never admitted when the source is completely anonymous … yes, we are not in a court of law here, but biblical scholars and HJ posters here are treating those authors as credible witnesses, and what legal cases have shown is that such witnesses claiming anonymous hearsay are not remotely credible or valid at all.

 

[Brainache]

Just re. Josephus (or Tacitus) being claimed as evidence of Jesus (or evidence via reports about the death of James) – afaik, even Bart Ehrman accepts in his book (Did Jesus Exist) that Josephus is not reliable as a source to claim evidence for Jesus.

We have been though this before (again, many hundreds of times!), but -

1 Writing that we have which actually dates from 1000 years after the events, is not remotely credible as evidence of what the named authors originally wrote. That vast gap in time is far too big to ignore the obviously potential for alterations by a long string of copyists.


2 Afaik, even Christian bible scholars now agree that key passages in that writing are probably “interpolations”, ie they are later copyist changes to what was originally written.

3 There is zero reason to think that well-known upper-class historical writers of the day such as Josephus and Tacitus would have mixed with people such as “James” in the 60's AD. And they certainly would not have known Jesus if he died around 33AD. The only credible conclusion is that whatever Josephus or Tacitus believed about Jesus or James would been whatever they had heard from people repeating what Christians on the streets had been preaching as their religious faith at the time. In fact – that Christian preaching is the only known source from which later writers such as Josephus and Tacitus could ever have got such ideas.

4 Neither Josephus or Tacitus names any person or source as informants for where they got any ideas about what Jesus or James did. At very best, those authors were just reporting hearsay from anonymous unknown informants. Hearsay like that is rarely admitted as credible in democratic courts, and never admitted when the source is completely anonymous … yes, we are not in a court of law here, but biblical scholars and HJ posters here are treating those authors as credible witnesses, and what legal cases have shown is that such witnesses claiming anonymous hearsay are not remotely credible or valid at all.

I think you should read up a bit more about Josephus before you tell us any more about what he might or might not have witnessed...

 

[Jerrymander]

How long does this take for it to sink in? I mean, really you must be a committed Christian arguing from a faith position. That has to be the conclusion here.

You really are obsessed with this aren't you? Of course you have a binary view of the world.

But we have been through the evidence offered by these people before, thousands of times! It's really all stated in Bart Ehrman's book Did Jesus Exist ... but what he offers there as all the evidence which he says makes Jesus a certainty, and where he also says that practically every trained scholar on the planet agrees with him, that evidence that he offers is absurd to the point of being laughable, and really it just shows what an academically weak profession that is ...

... Ehrman's best evidence is that single half-sentence of just 10 words in one of Paul's letters where it says "other apostles saw I none, save James the Lord brother" ...

... that probably is by far the best evidence to support belief in a HJ. But it's pathetically weak. And I've explained here in some detail why it's so weak, and many others have explained it both here and in virtually every sceptic book written in recent decades.

We are not going to go through all the problems with that half-sentence all over again for the 2000th time in these HJ threads.
[/I]

I already refuted your "points". You miserably failed at explaining away. Clearly you don't know much about ancient history, otherwise you would have known that causal statements are highly valued by ancient historians. And no, the James sentence isn't the strongest evidence. The strongest evidence is the sudden appearance of the Jesus movement which you have ZERO explanation for.

 

[Jerrymander]

2 Afaik, even Christian bible scholars now agree that key passages in that writing are probably “interpolations”, ie they are later copyist changes to what was originally written.

WRONG. Most scholars agree that the Testimonium Flavianum is partially authentic and the James passage is totally authentic.

 

[Jerrymander]

Josephus was living in Jerusalem at the same time as James was there. He would have been a first-hand witness for many of the things he describes.

Not to mention his father was a Jewish aristocrat and priest in Jerusalem who would have been a contemporary of Jesus.

 

[IanS]

So what? Now they are not believers. Now you think only atheists who were never Christians are reliable? You guys are just making up the rules as you go along.

Well I only named two people amongst a profession of tens of thousands of believing Christians! And even those two say themselves that in their earlier years they were not merely believing Christians, but absolute fanatics who were out on the streets stopping strangers in public & imploring them to accept Jesus Christ into their hearts etc.

But even with all that said (which you apparently prefer to ignore), Ehrman has written at length in various books to explain that what he once believed to be excellent evidence of Jesus, he now realises to be highly flawed if it even counts as any kind of evidence at all.

And as far as Hector Avalos is concerned, from the way he talks about the absurdity of regarding 11th century copies of Josephus and/or Tacitus as credible evidence of Jesus, I would not be surprised if his view is similar to most of the HJ-sceptics here, i.e. that whilst Jesus might have been a real person, the claimed evidence for Jesus is shockingly poor if it is even fair to call it evidence at all.

 

[IanS]

You really are obsessed with this aren't you? Of course you have a binary view of the world.

I already refuted your "points". You miserably failed at explaining away. Clearly you don't know much about ancient history, otherwise you would have known that causal statements are highly valued by ancient historians. And no, the James sentence isn't the strongest evidence. The strongest evidence is the sudden appearance of the Jesus movement which you have ZERO explanation for.

WRONG. Most scholars agree that the Testimonium Flavianum is partially authentic and the James passage is totally authentic.

You have never "refuted" anything here. And you keep asking people to answer the same things they have already answered here numerous times. We cannot keep spending our time on utterly ridiculous posts and claims like that from you.

OK, so you are clearly a committed Christian who cannot accept clear evidence against your holy beliefs. So there's absolutely no point in anyone trying to have an intelligent objective conversation with you.

You have precisely zero evidence of Jesus.

If ever you do find some genuine honest evidence, then by all means post it. But in the meantime please stop wasting everyone's time by pointlessly posting the same untrue claims over & over again.

 

[Jerrymander]

OK, so you are clearly a committed Christian who cannot accept clear evidence against your holy beliefs. So there's absolutely no point in anyone trying to have an intelligent objective conversation with you.

Would a committed Christian say this?

There was nothing in the OT that predicts that the messiah will be killed and no Jew believed it before Christians. Its clearly ad hoc reasoning by early Christians.

It is you who are clearly blinded by your prejudice.

]You have never "refuted" anything here. And you keep asking people to answer the same things they have already answered here numerous times. We cannot keep spending our time on utterly ridiculous posts and claims like that from you.

I'll post these here which you failed to refute.

Paul wants to be seen as an independent and equal apostle and not inferior to people like Peter and James so of course he stresses he got the news from Jesus directly. Paul has an inferiority complex about not knowing Jesus when he was alive. The fact that he mentions James as an afterthought is actually evidence that he did meet him, since he does not stress that point. He states this just after claiming how independent he is and he didn't meet with the other apostles but begrudging admits it he meet James. That's also a reason why he wouldn't ask James about Jesus. But if he did, he certainly wouldn't tell the Galatians that since it ruins his claim of independence. As for the interpolation, there's no reason why a later Christian would add such an unremarkable statement that serves no apologetic purpose.

You try to argue he was made up from OT prophecies. So according to you, sometime in the 30s-50s, some Jew decided to look into Isiah and other random verses (which have never before been interpreted as Messianic predictions) and made up whole-cloth a new messiah. All this for....fun I guess?

 

[IanS]

Would a committed Christian say this?



It is you who are clearly blinded by your prejudice.



I'll post these here which you failed to refute.

We have discussed all of that right here in this very thread, several times.

Stop wasting everyone's time & goodwill - do you have any actual evidence of Jesus, yes or no?

Just produce the evidence.

 

[Jerrymander]

We have discussed all of that right here in this very thread, several times.

Stop wasting everyone's time & goodwill - do you have any actual evidence of Jesus, yes or no?

Just produce the evidence.

Yes, I have his birth and death certificate.

but seriously, you're wasting everyone's time by asking that question and refusing to hear the answers.

 

[IanS]

Yes, I have his birth and death certificate.

but seriously, you're wasting everyone's time by asking that question and refusing to hear the answers.

I have heard what you have said. So has everyone else here. What all sceptics here are saying to you is that you are claiming all sorts of things to be evidence of a human Jesus, when they are clearly not evidence of a human Jesus that was ever known to anyone who ever wrote anything about him.

If the people who wrote about him had never known any human Jesus, then (apart from searching the OT to create stories of Jesus, which we know they were doing), the only way that they could have got such beliefs was from other anonymous people who told them the stories ... but (a) none of those anonymous story tellers ever confirmed that they had ever said anything about Jesus, and (b) the stories have turned out to be unarguably religious fiction.

Do you have any evidence of Jesus as a human person ever known to anyone? Yes or No? Where is it?

 

[Jerrymander]

I have heard what you have said. So has everyone else here. What all sceptics here are saying to you is that you are claiming all sorts of things to be evidence of a human Jesus, when they are clearly not evidence of a human Jesus that was ever known to anyone who ever wrote anything about him.

If the people who wrote about him had never known any human Jesus, then (apart from searching the OT to create stories of Jesus, which we know they were doing), the only way that they could have got such beliefs was from other anonymous people who told them the stories ... but (a) none of those anonymous story tellers ever confirmed that they had ever said anything about Jesus, and (b) the stories have turned out to be unarguably religious fiction.

Do you have any evidence of Jesus as a human person ever known to anyone? Yes or No? Where is it?

Your point is irrelevant. The case for HJ isn't dependent on the gospel writers meeting him. The burden of proof is on you to show an alternative explanation for the sudden appearance of the Jesus movement.

If you want to argue that they just made him up from OT prophecies, then you have to show precedent. Why are their no pre-Jesus traditions of interpreting the Isaiah verses as referring to the messiah? Where are the 'proto-Jesus' stories were the Jesus tradition could have evolved from? And what drove someone or some group to suddenly make up a messiah from the OT tradition? What was the purpose?

Occam's razor says a HJ is the best explanation for the origin of Christianity.

 

[dejudge]

But, as I said, your sole quote is contradicted by numemrous scholars in your very same link arguing that “The scholarly consensus is that Tacitus' reference to the execution of Jesus by Pontius Pilate is both authentic, and of historical value as an independent Roman source.”

Your supposed Scholarly consensus does not change the fact that it was proven that the existing copy of Annals' Tacitus 15.44 was manipulated.

The existing copy of Tacitus' Annals does not mention Jesus or Christians any where.

I am dealing with actual existing writings of antiquity not with the opinion of the whole world [Scholar or not].

I didn’t say “it was true that a known man was a catalyst for the origins of the Jesus story”. I said that “there is no better explanation for the sudden appearance of the Jesus movement from out of nowhere”. See the difference between the two statements?

Existing Christian writings of antiquity state that the Christian cult originated with the belief that their Jesus was God came down from heaven and born of a Virgin.

Your explanation is worthless.

….. What is documented by “Christian writers” was the highly embellished Jesus story which had grown beyond recognition with such enhancements as a virgin-born miracle worker and resurrecting god/man. This sort of thing was commonplace with the evolution of myths and legends.

Your HJ is historically worthless because you have no historical evidence - none whatsoever to support your so-called un-embellished imagined HJ.

Your HJ is no different to those of the Bible story writers who simply made up a plausible believable character.

The fact that multiple Christian writings of antiquity state that their Jesus was born of a Ghost and a Virgin without a human father must mean that such a character was extremely plausible in antiquity and even today.

 

[IanS]

Your point is irrelevant. The case for HJ isn't dependent on the gospel writers meeting him. The burden of proof is on you to show an alternative explanation for the sudden appearance of the Jesus movement.

If you want to argue that they just made him up from OT prophecies, then you have to show precedent. Why are their no pre-Jesus traditions of interpreting the Isaiah verses as referring to the messiah? Where are the 'proto-Jesus' stories were the Jesus tradition could have evolved from? And what drove someone or some group to suddenly make up a messiah from the OT tradition? What was the purpose?

Occam's razor says a HJ is the best explanation for the origin of Christianity.

Well this is yet more of the same old nonsense from you all over again, where you insist that we offer explanations for how Christianity may have begun, but where several of us have already given quite detailed explanations here for how and why it started around that time ...

Right, so OK, you have no answer and no evidence. Well, that's the end of any credibility to your HJ claims then.

 

[dejudge]

WRONG. Most scholars agree that the Testimonium Flavianum is partially authentic and the James passage is totally authentic.

The Testimonium Flavianum is partially authentic???

Only the part which supports the HJ argument is authentic.

How convenient!!!

How smart!!!

The HJ argument is simply the very worst argument known to mankind.

Now, the character Jesus called Christ [the anointed], the brother of James, is documented as a High Priest in the writings of Josephus' Antiquities of the Jews 20.9.1.

Jesus called Christ [anointed] was made High Priest after Ananus was deposed.

Jesus called the Christ could have not referred to Jesus of Nazareth when there was no previous mention of such a character [Jesus of Nazareth] anywhere in all of the works of Josephus.

It is a fact that a character called Jesus the Christ [the anointed] was High Priest when Albinus was governor of Judea c 62-64 CE.

 

[Brainache]

Well this is yet more of the same old nonsense from you all over again, where you insist that we offer explanations for how Christianity may have begun, but where several of us have already given quite detailed explanations here for how and why it started around that time ...

Right, so OK, you have no answer and no evidence. Well, that's the end of any credibility to your HJ claims then.

(re the bold) I must have missed this...

I think I'm on his ignore list, but does anyone have a link to any of these "detailed explanations" from any of the MJ posters here? (dejudge excluded: "It was all forged in the 2nd century" doesn't count)

I'd like to see how they stack up against the various HJ books I've read.