We continue to steer away from any attempt to show any evidence of Jesus (see footnote).
Where is the evidence of a human Jesus ever known to anyone?
If neither Paul nor any gospel writers ever met Jesus, and if nobody in the gospels or letters ever wrote to make a credible claim of meeting Jesus, then at very best all you can possibly be left with are fanatical religious beliefs in as spiritual heavenly messiah.
So where is the evidence of Jesus?
Footnote - for the last 20 pages or so, this thread seems to have abandoned all further attempts at ever producing any evidence of a human Jesus known to anyone in the 1st century (or at any time). And that’s what this thread and it’s parent threads were supposed to be about ... HJ posters were supposed to be producing evidence of Jesus. Now all the HJ posts have descended into a talking shop for every conceivable topic in Christian biblical belief, except for any attempt at all to produce evidence of Jesus.
Well this is a
merged thread but as I pointed out is the "evidence" is the effectively the same 'usual suspects' it has nearly always been: Paul; canonal Gospels, Josephus, Pliny the Younger, Tacitus, Suetonius, and on particularly bad days Talmud and Thallus
Sure some times you get Irenaeus throw in the mix but all he really brings to the table is evidence of Paul and the Gospels sometime before 180 and a lot of propaganda. Sometimes the DSS come up but there are no agreed to reference to Jesus there (some parts are said to be Gospels but that is debated) Everything else is so late as not to even be worth mentioning.
Scott Oser's
Historicity Of Jesus FAQ (1994) went over the standard non-Christian evidence and the basic arguments against them that the HJ crowd seems to ignore again and again. Carrier and Price added a few more elements but more or less the counters are the same ones Remsburg brought up over 100 years ago.
Josephus - the Testimonium Flavian has a clear Christian hand and baed on several factors it seems safe to assume the whole paragraph was inserted later. The efforts to salvage something out of the Testimonium Flavian all ignore the thing breaks the narrative flow. The James brother of Christ is iffier but all early Christian works has James the Just dying c 69 not the 62 CE presented here so odds are that is likely tinkered with.
Pliny the Younger - The old existed of movement proves existence of Creator nonsense. Things like Ned Ludd and the Luddites and the various Melanesian Cargo cult kick that in the head.
Suetonius at best shows the existence of Christians in Rome in the time of Nero and given neither Josephus of Pliny the Elder (at least what the Christians bothered to preserve) who were in Rome at the right time say anything so that is iffy.
Tacitus - oldest copy has been tampered with and based on what we know even if entirely genuine he seems to just be repeating what Christians believed. The HJ crowd also like to ignore the fact that the the period of middle 29 to middle 31 has been cut from the Annals in a manner too precise to assume this is just a chance coincidence
The Talmud is so late it is hard to understand why it is even used as evidence. Never mind that the person most commonly identified as Jesus in it is a century too early.
Thallus is the biggest joke in terms of evidence. Supposedly the work ends with the 167th Olympiad (ie 109 BC). And the supposed reference comes from George Syncellus (d 810) referencing Sextus Julius Africanus (c. 160 – c. 240). The gyrations to get this to qualify as evidence are
with some good old
throw in as some icing. How any scholar can present this as evidence is beyond me.
This leaves us Paul with his visionary Jesus and the Gospels written by who knows who sometime between 70 and 140 CE and do history as well as a one legged man in a butt kicking contest.
And Ehrman says those challenge this weak evidence are on par with "people out there who don’t think the Holocaust happened, there wasn’t a lone JFK assassin and Obama wasn’t born in the U.S"?! SAY WHAT?!?
