Exsistence Of Jesus
- Thread starter stacy
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You're truly serious? Jesus' website? Sorry, I gotta look again... just sec... LOL complete with e-cards and MIDI's and wallpapers and JAVA too! Now that's nifty. And here I've been waiting for God to speak to my "heart". I shoulda just looked on the web!
Um... let's examine your reasoning here: all evidence for Christ is "Christian" and therefore not "independent"? If people who were convinced that He was real and who he said he was became Christian, does that automatically make them conspirators? You could reduce the population of the world to a few hundred if you followed that methodology.Katazia said:
A few things you have to take into account... To those who didn't take Jesus seriously, He was just another person. How much proof do you have for the existence of the inhabitants of Nazareth? Does it follow that Nazareth never had any inhabitants? On the other hand those who believed Jesus and had reason to write about him (and could write) did eventually - otherwise we wouldn't have had a Bible. He didn't make any trouble except for the Jewish elite (who would have denied his existence if it was obvious he didn't exist, but instead in Sanhedrin 43a they say he was hanged).
If you're really interested in the historic evidence, check Kirby's review of the Historical Jesus, where the evidence is examined:
"The value of these independent extra-Christian reports on Jesus is twofold. First we must note that both opponents and neutral or sympathetic sympathetic observers of Christianity presuppose the historicity of Jesus and do not indicate a shadow of doubt about it. Furthermore the non-Christian notices allow us to check individual dates and facts in the primitive Christian tradition about Jesus."
Norman said:
That would support the fallacy that the Romans were anti-christian, but the reality was that the Romans really weren't so much "anti-christian" as they were "anti-trouble." Their actions against jews and proto-christians, and early christians were in response to civil unrest, which was, and is, problematic for any government. The alleged crucifixion of Jesus was a result of the jewish disagreement with Jesus' work and claims to be the son of god. The Romans were merely trying to keep civil law.
That having been said, I would have to agree with Medicine Woman regarding Jesus. There is no artifactual of Jesus in either Greek or Roman antiquity that has been excavated, which is surprising considering the significance of Jesus' alleged life's work. Moreover, aside from biblical account, there is more epigraphical evidence for the existence of Tom Sawyer. Many, many tablets, papyruses and vellums that have transmitted all manner of myth, story, history, inventories, annals, and accounting practices since before Jesus. Yet nothing mentions him until after his alleged death.
Two of the Laws of Canonicity that were used when codifiying the New Testament were the law of Apostolic Origin and the Law of Liturgical Use. Apostolic Origin meant that the accounts must have been eyewitness or taken from an eyewitness. They could be no more than one person removed from the event. The Law of Liturgical Use meant that materials in use from the very beginnings of Christ's church were considered the most authentic.
The writings of Barnabas circa 50 AD do indeed mention Jesus and this would have been less than twenty years after His death. It is not surprising that the Romans would have written little about Jesus since His impact was not to be felt until after His death and resurrection. Without the resurrection, there would have been no religion as no prophecy would have been fulfilled.
Flavius Josephus, the Jewish historian who died in 98 AD does mention Jesus, reports of the Resurrection, and the executions of John the Baptist and James the Just.
The Roman historian Tacitus makes reference, some fifty years after the event, to Jesus who was executed in the time of Tiberius by the "Procurator Pontius Pilate" indicating that he had obtained this information from what a non-Christian Roman would have considered a reliable source.
Pliny the Younger also makes references to the execution of Jesus in letters to Emperor Trajan. Lesser known historians of the era who write aobut the life and death of Jesus as historical fact include Seutonius, Phlegan and Celsus. These men were both secular and anti-Christian. If Jesus had been a myth, they would have capitalized on that fact.
The writings of Barnabas circa 50 AD do indeed mention Jesus and this would have been less than twenty years after His death. It is not surprising that the Romans would have written little about Jesus since His impact was not to be felt until after His death and resurrection. Without the resurrection, there would have been no religion as no prophecy would have been fulfilled.
Flavius Josephus, the Jewish historian who died in 98 AD does mention Jesus, reports of the Resurrection, and the executions of John the Baptist and James the Just.
The Roman historian Tacitus makes reference, some fifty years after the event, to Jesus who was executed in the time of Tiberius by the "Procurator Pontius Pilate" indicating that he had obtained this information from what a non-Christian Roman would have considered a reliable source.
Pliny the Younger also makes references to the execution of Jesus in letters to Emperor Trajan. Lesser known historians of the era who write aobut the life and death of Jesus as historical fact include Seutonius, Phlegan and Celsus. These men were both secular and anti-Christian. If Jesus had been a myth, they would have capitalized on that fact.
Civil unrest created by their own laws: they required every Roman citizen to recognize Caesar as god. Disobedience was seen as rebellion against the empire. So you can see why sincerely faithful Jews and Christians were particularly troublesome. It wasn't because they were disruptive...
Pliny's letter to Trajan
They asserted, however, that the sum and substance of their fault or error had been that they were accustomed to meet on a fixed day before dawn and sing responsively a hymn to Christ as to a god, and to bind themselves by oath, not to some crime, but not to commit fraud, theft, or adultery, not falsify their trust, nor to refuse to return a trust when called upon to do so. When this was over, it was their custom to depart and to assemble again to partake of food--but ordinary and innocent food. Even this, they affirmed, they had ceased to do after my edict by which, in accordance with your instructions, I had forbidden political associations. Accordingly, I judged it all the more necessary to find out what the truth was by torturing two female slaves who were called deaconesses.
They asserted, however, that the sum and substance of their fault or error had been that they were accustomed to meet on a fixed day before dawn and sing responsively a hymn to Christ as to a god, and to bind themselves by oath, not to some crime, but not to commit fraud, theft, or adultery, not falsify their trust, nor to refuse to return a trust when called upon to do so. When this was over, it was their custom to depart and to assemble again to partake of food--but ordinary and innocent food. Even this, they affirmed, they had ceased to do after my edict by which, in accordance with your instructions, I had forbidden political associations. Accordingly, I judged it all the more necessary to find out what the truth was by torturing two female slaves who were called deaconesses.
Tell me, how much trace will you leave when you die? How much of you will be "excavated" after 2000 years? Jesus was a person - he lived in an inconspicuous part of and inconspicuous corner of a distant Roman provence. The only reason you even know anything about Him is because of who he was. If you reject that, there's almost nothing left to go on. His significance was only realized by those who believed Him - and they didn't understand everything from the outset either. They had no reason to keep anything about Him for posterity since it was already available in the Hebrew Bible (today's Old Testament) until it became evident He wouldn't come back within their own lifetimes. God's message took time to sink in, and sink in it has.
If his miracles made him significant to some Jewish fishermen, only his resurrection made him significant to the world. And naturally, that only happened as you say "after his death". Considering his whole ministry lasted only three years, it's a miracle in itself that He amounted to so much. What his life meant for his disciples, his death meant for the world
Jenyar said:
We have artifacts that identify a great many people of antiquity throughout the Near East and Aegean. Many of these people are spoken about by multiple proto-historians such as Herodutus, as well as in stories by those such as Homer. Moreover, many, many Near Eastern stories, legends, lore, inventories and accounting practices have divulged and corroborated many people mentioned elswhere, including in religious texts such as the bible.
Yet, practically the only accounts we have of Jesus come from the so-called gospels, which were written perhaps a full hundred years after his alleged death, each by different people but obviously from the same source of origin. That source not necessarily being factual or first-hand.
Not a cup with Jesus' name? Such practice was common. Not a potsherd with a written note? Such was also common. Not an account by a government official or lorist? Strange for one who was supposed to wander the Near East healing the blind, excorcising demons and walking on water. Feeding the multitudes alone should have warranted a tablet.
True enough the possibility exists that there is as yet uncovered, unexcavated artifacts. I just find the negative evidence a bit telling in light of the fact that we have found so many of the places and sites mentioned in the bible and have excavated them.
Jenyar said:
On the contrary... I believe his life was very conspicuous if he did actually do the things mentioned in the gospels. Moreover, the Near East was a small world. Much trade and movement occurred. Word would have spread fast if anyone were able to do what so many were alleged to have witnessed.
Jenyar said:
I don't reject him. I simply don't accept him. Not at face value anyway.
Jenyar said:
The pentateuch said nothing about jesus. He didn't exist yet (assuming he did at all). Of course there were prophesies... there almost always are in religions that get past the pre-axial stage. But it's likely that early christian apologists used Jesus as a vehicle for their cause.
Jenyar said:
The power of mythology never ceases to amaze me.
Dare to compare? It would help greatly if you substantiated these claims, and could provide any conclusive evidence for an ordinary person of antiquity that is more trustworthy than the gospels. Jesus as a person was a lot less extraordinary than any of the Roman human-gods or Greek philosophers. You already admitted that many names and places in the Bible were found to be historical. What criterium do you apply to the Bible that you don't apply to all those other forms of evidence?SkinWalker said:
People were judged according to their family's curriculum vitae and ancestry. Jesus came from nowhere ("can anything good come from Nazareth?") and was nobody ("isn't his father Joseph the carpenter?"). Nobody but the Jews had any reason to think he was special. The people he fed, healed and preached to were either too poor to even afford a piece of paper (a simple book cost the equivalent of a year's wages for a Roman citizen, where does that leave a Jewish invalid) or had no idea who He was other than maybe the Jewish messiah (which, as I've said, was already present in Scripture).
The people in power had every opportunity to suppress any writing or honouring of Jesus. If Christians had to practice their religion underground, I sincerely doubt they would have been able to keep whatever possessions they wanted to inscribe with his name. Publishing something that amounts to treason isn't the best way to keep yourself out of trouble. Merely associating with him was enough to be condemned to death. If people hadn't become convinced of his resurrection, they would never have had the courage to preach it under those conditions - yet Paul did exactly that, as did the rest of the disciples - and they were martyred because of it.
When you have such a message to deliver, you don't go inscribing pots and chairs with it - they can't be saved. But people can, and they survived, and so did their writings. Today you call them Christians and those writings were published in the New Testament.
Wasn't the New Testament written hundreds of years after Christ?
And you might find this table helpful when you gather your supportive evidence:
Can we trust the New Testament as a historical document? (a comparison between the NT and other extant ancient texts).
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Skinwalker,
I gave you examples for the express purpose of showing you that people who did not believe in Christ were aware of the events surrounding his execution and reported it in a factual manner which means they were referencing documents which must have existed at that time.
I gave you examples for the express purpose of showing you that people who did not believe in Christ were aware of the events surrounding his execution and reported it in a factual manner which means they were referencing documents which must have existed at that time.
Paula said:
Jenyar said:
I think you're confusing "trust" with "faith." Those are two different concepts. I can provide you with names of both ordinary and extraordinary people of antiquity that are verified in the archaeological record, but this doesn't seem to be what you're asking. I can trust that these people existed since they are mentioned in tablets for accounting or as architects of buildings or as simply the owners of a cup. Their epigraphical accounts weren't intended to survive to modernity, so the motive of the existence of these people is innocent. However, when dealing with religious texts, the motives are decidedly biased: promote the religion and provide reason for the person to remain epigraphically immortal. That, alone, is reason to distrust the "gospels."
Jenyar said:
None. I apply the same criteria. The bible is a wonderful source of information and one can easily learn much of Near Eastern life in antiquity. I can also learn much about the gilded age from reading the many works of Mark Twain (see my references above). Many names and places in the collected works of twain are found to be historical. Yet, I've no doubt that Injun Joe probably was a fictional character, along with the hero Tom Sawyer.
Jenyar said:
Which is why potsherds were popular for writing on. Moreover, the temples where he overturned the tables were administered by the well-to-do who could afford vellum. Many things were documented in the region that Jesus was alleged to have traveled. Except Jesus. Many mundane things were documented on ostraca, the plural for ostracon, which is a broken piece of pottery (potsherd) that was written upon. http://www.usc.edu/dept/LAS/wsrp/educational_site/ancient_texts/ostraca.shtml
Jenyar said:
Again, there is little in the archaeological and epigraphical record to cooborate that christians were an oppressed religion that had to meet "underground." The fact is that Rome really didn't care about the many religions that existed. Christians who were persecuted were probably done so because of other reasons, such as perceived civil disobediance. The "persecution" fallacy exists even today when people don't get their way. As a group, the christians may have eventually found themselves persecuted, but it was likely due to their counter-social actions.
i sometimes think everyone on this forum is too in love with the look of their own text (with a few exceptions)
dont ask be to be specific, but they have found evidence that a geezer named jesus lived about 2000 years ago. if thats what one of you have said, sorry, but you all lose me with your big words and things.
of course, whether this person was actually the son of god (methinks not) is not confirmed...lol
dont ask be to be specific, but they have found evidence that a geezer named jesus lived about 2000 years ago. if thats what one of you have said, sorry, but you all lose me with your big words and things.
of course, whether this person was actually the son of god (methinks not) is not confirmed...lol
In other words, you distrust the intentions with which Jesus is mentioned and his words reported.SkinWalker said:
Maybe you should state your own belief first: do you believe Jesus was a historical figure that really existed or not? Because what you seem to be saying is that he didn't 'exist enough'.
Since his follwers believed the second coming was very close, they also didn't initially intend any accounts to survive beyond them (the "elect"), even less beyond their present time into modernity. They shunned individual ownership and material possessions, which makes it even less likely that these would be preserved.
Once again, please provide examples so that we can discuss them intelligently. I'm also sorry the historical record doesn't provide more information than we already have, but that doesn't make the information that we do have irrelevant or spurious.
During the first three centuries Christians, like their Jewish counterparts, were ambivalent about expressing their faith with images. The norm was to consider art to be against the second commandment (Exodus 20:4)
Another element that affected Christian art, particularly in the third century up until the Edict of Milan in 313, had to do with the persecution and/or outlawing of Christianity. Christian art therefore often used images already in secular society.
Other art literally went underground, such as that in the catacombs of Rome. The drawing above is a sketch of the type of art found in the catacombs.
Early Christian Art
Another element that affected Christian art, particularly in the third century up until the Edict of Milan in 313, had to do with the persecution and/or outlawing of Christianity. Christian art therefore often used images already in secular society.
Other art literally went underground, such as that in the catacombs of Rome. The drawing above is a sketch of the type of art found in the catacombs.
Early Christian Art
The information on ostraca report mostly secular information, in which case we can't reasonably expect it to report some secular information more than others, i.e. relating to Jesus more than relating to anybody else. There were more important people than Jesus around, and also less important people. Politically speaking he was just another Jewish dissident, and religiously speaking he was a heretic like any other... until his death and resurrection, that is. And when he did draw attention to himself, Jesus' ministry didn't provoke the kind of objective distance from observers that you expect modern historians to exhibit.
Those people he did touch during his three year ministry either dismissed him as an infidel or accepted him as the messiah. In either case you don't expect more in the historical record than that which we have. What might have been of religious significance would have been destroyed with the libraries in the Temple and synagogues, when Jerusalem was sacked by the Romans under Titus. Other religious artifacts would also have been destroyed in the process. Christians pulled at the shortest end, being persecuted by the Jews and Romans alike.
Your argument rests heavily on the assumption that even those people who didn't accept or believe in Jesus would have taken greater notice of his miraculous works and peripheral information (i.e. information of "historical significance") even if they ignored him as a person. And if there were any time travellers from the 20th century who realized his significance, they might have. But Jesus lived in an extremely superstitious and distinctly eastern environment. To them, history was more important than future. Miracles were indicative of status, not significance - and Jesus resisted making it a matter of far-reaching significance, at least to those whom it didn't concern. The Romans hardly gave Jews a second glance unless they became disruptive. Jesus wasn't particularly disruptive - his disruption of the temple couldn't have been more of Jewish and less of Roman concern, in fact the Romans probably delighted in the scene.
I respectfully disagree. Maybe you were confused by the fact that nobody could tell the difference between a Jew and a Christian until Nero blamed them for the fire in Rome (64 AD). It was during this time that Paul began writing his epistles to the first churches, where he speaks of perseverance in the face of persecution (cf. 1 Thessalonians 2:14 and 1 Peter 4:12). Apart from persecution by the Jews themselves (What Paul was doing before he converted, cf. Acts 11:19) there are the accounts of non-christians themselves to take into account:
... since the Jews were continually making disturbances at the instigation of Chrestus, he [Emperor Claudius] expelled them from Rome [49 AD].
Suetonius, Life of Claudius xxv 4 (cf. Acts 18:2)
Suetonius, Life of Claudius xxv 4 (cf. Acts 18:2)
In his [Nero's] reign many abuses were severely punished and repressed, and as many new laws were instituted; a limit was set upon spending; public banquets were reduced; the sale of cooked food in taverns was forbidden, except for vegetables and greens, while formerly every kind of food was available; punishment was inflicted on the Christians, a set of men adhering to a novel and mischievous superstition; he put a stop to the wild activities of the charioteers, who for a long time had assumed the right of ranging at large and cheating and robbing for amusement; the actors and their companies were banished.
Suetonius, Life of Nero xvi
Suetonius, Life of Nero xvi
But all human efforts, all the emperor's gifts and propitiations of the gods, were not enough to remove the scandal or banish the belief that the fire [summer, 64 C.E.] had been ordered. And so, to get rid of this rumor Nero set up as culprits and punished with the utmost cruelty a class hated for their abominations, who are commonly called Christians. Christus, from whom their name is derived, was executed at the hands of the procurator Pontius Pilate in the reign of Tiberius. Checked for the moment this pernicious superstition broke out again, not only in Judea, the source of the evil, but even in Rome, the place where everything that is sordid and degrading from every quarter of the globe finds a following. Thus those who confessed (i.e.. to being Christians) were first arrested, then on evidence from them a large multitude was convicted, not so much for the charge of arson as for their hatred of the human race. Besides being put to death they were made objects of amusement; they were clothed in hides of beasts and torn to death by dogs; others were crucified, others were set on fire to illuminate the night after sunset. Nero threw open his grounds for the display and put on a show at the circus where he mingled with the people dressed like a charioteer and driving about in his chariot. All this gave rise to a feeling of pity, evens towards these men who deserved the most exemplary punishment since it was felt they were being killed, not for the public good but to gratify the cruelty of an individual.
Tacitus, Annales, xv. 44
Tacitus, Annales, xv. 44
You might also want to have a look at this timeline, The History of Judeo-Christian Relations, to get an idea of the persecutions Jews and Christians suffered collectively and separately.
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Skinwalker,
The whole point of my statement (and I never got into anyone being called Christian or when that started happening, simply that people had made reference to the execution under Pilate) was that an execution during Pilate's administration most likely took place and was significant enough to be discussed and written about just a very short time later. This is in direct response to someone who stated no one from the Roman time period had written about Jesus when the Romans had written about so many others.
Obviously it isn't the case, you can dismiss the references any way you like.
The whole point of my statement (and I never got into anyone being called Christian or when that started happening, simply that people had made reference to the execution under Pilate) was that an execution during Pilate's administration most likely took place and was significant enough to be discussed and written about just a very short time later. This is in direct response to someone who stated no one from the Roman time period had written about Jesus when the Romans had written about so many others.
Obviously it isn't the case, you can dismiss the references any way you like.