Historical Records of the Bible and Jesus.

[John99]

Gilgamesh. King Arthur. Several Mesoamerican figures. Even recent American figures of Daniel Boone, Davey Crockett, John Smith, and others have had their "histories" hyped & retold to the point that they are no longer the same individual. Perhaps this Jesus character is much the same -a regular guy, mortal in all respects who inspired a few people who hyped his importance and elevated him to a supernatural level. The word deified fits very well in that case.

I always thought that King Arthur is fictional, at least that is what i was taught and it was never an issue.

Daniel Boone, Davey Crockett, John Smith

So then we agree because they were actual people. Perhaps you meant Joseph Smith because i am not sure which John Smith you mean.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Davy_Crockett
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Boone

The point that i was trying to make is that Jesus has made an incredible impact, probably in the top three of influential people. This is not my opinion but it is fact and these people are impossible to make up. The reason i know this is because it has never been done before. Even your own post acknowledges that actual people were used for inspiration and i really have no reason to believe that is not the case here.

As far as Gilgamesh, it is my understanding that he was a real person also but i am not too familiar with his history.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilgamesh

Iason seems to be asking for proof like seeing a youtube video. If that is the case then i say none of the people you listed where actual people. Even though they were.

 

[S.A.M.]

I have to information to respond to you with; but I refuse.

I refuse to respond until you change "Palestine" to "Israel"; I mean seriously. Even when they had a temple in Jerusalem it was actually Palestine?

There was no Israel either, at the time. At least, it was PRESENT DAY Palestine.

 

[audible]

I read them all and it still stands to have much more documented history than many other classic historical figures that we see as real figures of history.

Where.

The top link that iasion wrote has lots of personal opinion put into the facts. basically saying "he referred to Christ, so did he, so did he, so did he, but they are liars and thats not proof".

Well of course, we are all allowed a little artistic licence. However it is still verifiable.

The fact is that by our standards of acceptance of other philosophers and figures of history, Jesus holds more documentation than some we teach as factual existing figures.

Where.

It is too much personal opinion with sayings like "It was probably a forged document, it is suspicious, it might not be true". Either they are proved to be forged or are not, many things are suspicious but we should be dealing with facts not assumptions or tainted opinions of people with agendas, if they are proven to be forged and fake then we class and write them off as false, if they are not proved to be false 100% then you should not portray them to be fakes unless they actually 100% are.

Not so, when it holds so much water. There are no such thing as absolutes, there is always a modicum of doubt in everything, we have to accept that.

 

[KennyJC]

The first writings of Jesus mention him purely as a 'heavenly' person rather than someone on Earth who did all these bizarre things. Isn't that strange? Wouldn't the "Earthly" Jesus be someone you write about first?

It's not until decades later the "Earthly" Jesus is written about in some detail. This tells me that the details were later added through years of preaching to gullible crowds.

 

[John99]

The first writings of Jesus mention him purely as a 'heavenly' person rather than someone on Earth who did all these bizarre things. Isn't that strange? Wouldn't the "Earthly" Jesus be someone you write about first?

Which writings are you referring to? The main thing is that not many things were written down during those times due to no paper or pens. My whole contention is that based purely on logic it is reasonable to conclude, as i have outlined, that at the very least the person did exist. Anything else is up to the individual to believe.

 

[Medicine*Woman]

The first writings of Jesus mention him purely as a 'heavenly' person rather than someone on Earth who did all these bizarre things. Isn't that strange? Wouldn't the "Earthly" Jesus be someone you write about first?

It's not until decades later the "Earthly" Jesus is written about in some detail. This tells me that the details were later added through years of preaching to gullible crowds.

*************
M*W: Whooda thunk it? Your post really makes sense. It was no different 2000 years ago that it is today. Two words--media hype comes to mind. Embellishing on stories about this "heavenly" guy was what the people of that day wanted to hear... and the stories (i.e. myths) of Jesus snowballed. Every age needs its heroes. Fortunately for the modern world, the hero Jesus is riding off into the sunset on a camel.

 

[Iasion]

Greetings EmptyForceOfChi,

I have been doing some research into the facts and real historical records of the holy scriptures. I always hear people saying about its severe lack of historical evidence and records so I took a look myself. I found out quite the opposite actualy where I expected to find hardly any real records I found many accounts.

Please be careful to distinguish between history OF the scriptures versus history IN the scriptures.

Here are some interesting quotes and records to Start the thread off.
Dr. Ravi Zacharias, a visiting professor at Oxford University, also comments: "In real terms, the New Testament is easily the best attested ancient writing in terms of the sheer number of documents, the time span between the events and the documents, and the variety of documents available to sustain or contradict it. There is nothing in ancient manuscript evidence to match such textual availability and integrity."6

Let's not confuse confuse two UN-related issues -
* reliability of the text,
* truthfulness of the contents.

Firstly, it is not true that the NT is "the best-attested document in all of antiquity" because there are some documents even older than the NT for which we have the ORIGINAL literally carved in stone (e.g. Behistun inscription, Egyptian tomb inscriptions, the Rosetta Stone, the Moabite Stone) - making them absolutely 100% accurately attested from the original because they ARE the original, and thus much better attested than the NT.
http://visopsys.org/andy/essays/darius-bisitun.html

It's true the NT is fairly well-attested (in terms of quantity) compared to SOME ancient writings - in the sense that we have many old copies (24,000 or more in total). However the vast majority of these copies are from the middle-ages. The number of NT manuscripts from before the dark ages is about a hundred.
http://faculty.bbc.edu/RDecker/documents/nmbr_manuscripts.pdf


But more importantly, this argument implies that because we have so many copies - this proves the contents true. Well, this is obviously not so - the number of copies has nothing to do with the truth of the contents. Consider -

* the Iliad - over 600 manuscripts, more than the NT until after 1000AD - does this mean that the Iliad was more true than the NT until about 1000AD, but from the middle ages on, the NT became MORE TRUE than the Iliad?
* the works of 10thC. Yen-Shou of Hangchow - about 400,000 copies exist, about 4000 times as many copies as NT copies at that time - does this make the work over 4000 times MORE TRUE than the NT?
* the Book of Mormon - there are millions of copies of this work, many dating maybe a FEW YEARS after the original - would this make the Book of Mormon much MORE TRUE than the NT?
* the Lord of the Rings - there are many millions of copies of this work, (including the original manuscript AFAIK), dating from very soon after its writing - does this makes the Lord of the Rings of vastly more true than the NT?

No.
It should be obvious that the NUMBER of copies attesting to a work gives no support to the truth of the contents.


Hmmm..
Reading ahead, I see my work on this has already been cited.
Thanks all
I appreciate your comments.

I'll consider if any further responses are needed.


Iasion

 

[Iasion]

Hi all,

It is just a cut and paste with personal opinion thrown in.

I beg your pardon?
I wrote that essay myself, and posted it here myself.
What exactly does "just a cut and paste" mean please?
Sure, I copied and pasted it from my editor to this screen.
So what?
Please withdraw your insulting implication of plagiarism.

One thing to consider is that no historical figure has ever been made up and passed off as as an actual person.

You must be joking?

What about -
Adam and Eve, Abraham, Moses, David etc.
John Frum (cargo cult)
Molly Pitcher (civil war)
Don Juan (from Carlos Castaneda)
Ebion (mythical founder of the Ebionites)
Odysseus, Hercules, Ajax
Krishna
Zoroaster
Hermes
etc. etc.


Iasion

 

[Iasion]

Hiya,

I read them all and it still stands to have much more documented histopry than many other classic historical figures that we see as real figures of history.

Really?
I showed nearly all of the alleged "evidences" for Jesus do not stand up to scrutiny.
WHICH of these do you now still consider good evidence for Jesus?
Please be specific.

We hold many ancient philosophers as real people even though they don't have real evidence of existing other than a few recorded documentations from outside sources refering to thier lives.

We examine each case for evidence. Some of the ancient philophers may not have existed.
But here - we are discussing the evidence for Jesus. A god-man with supernatural powers. But who left no contemporary historical evidence of any kind.

The top link that Liason wrote has lots of personal opinion put into the facts. basically saying "he reffered to christ, so did he, so did he, so did he, but they are liars and thats not proof".

The inablity to read properly that is all too typical in believers.
My name is Iasion. Not Liason.

Furthermore, I did NOT say they are liars.
In fact I did NOT ONCE use the word "liar".

Yes, some of the writings mentioned ARE known forgeries. Others are late beliefs, others are simply not about Jesus.

But EmptyForceOfChi simply ignores my arguments and pretends I call them all liars. How sad.

The fact is that by our standards of acceptance of other philosophers and figures of history, jesus holds more documentation than some we teach as factual existing figures.

This is not a fact at all.
Just a favourite belief of apologists.
How about an example, EmptyForce?

It is too much personal opinion with sayings like "It was probabl;y a forged document, it is suspicious, it might not be true". Either they are proved to be forged or are not, many things are suspicious but we should be dealing with facts not assumptions or tainted opinions of people with agendas, if they are proven to be forged and fake then we class and write them off as false, if they are not proved to be false 100% then you should not portray them to be fakes unless they actualy 100% are.

I cited facts which can be checked.
The documents I called forgeries are considered to be so by mainstream scholarship.

Why have you still not argued for which of these you still believe as evidence for Jesus?

Please present your modified case - in the face of my analysis, which references do you still argue are historical evidence for Jesus?


Iasion

 

[Iasion]

Hi all,

Didn't Plutarch write the life of alexanfer 350-400 yeaars after the death of the king?, I know there is 3-4 other sources for alexanders existence but they all came hundreds of years later.

We have direct contemporary historical evidence for Alexander, including :
* the Esagila diary
* coins showing his face
* cities founded by him

Nothing like that for Jesus.

but it seems jesus has left a far greater impact that could be held at the same level of evidence?.

Jesus, himself,
had NO IMPACT at all on anyone or anything.

We have NO evidence of anyone who ever met Jesus.
We have no contemporary evidence of his existance.
We have no historical evidence of the Gospel events.

What we DO have is BELIEF about Jesus LATER having a huge impact.

Believers can't seem to see the difference.

what about Plato?.

What about him?
Plato is a completely plausible figure for whom we have contemporary evidence and writings from his own hand.
We have nothing like that for the god-man Jesus with supernatural powers.


Iasion

 

[John99]

You are just throwing names out for the sake of throwing names out. The only way to do this is to discuss each on their own.

Don Juan - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don_Juan

Don Juan (Spanish) and Don Giovanni (Italian) is a legendary, fictional libertine whose story has been told many times by many writers.

I will add to this in a little while but feel free to go into more detail on one person you listed.

You cannot be serious with including Adam and Eve in your list.

 

[John99]

We have direct contemporary historical evidence for Alexander, including :
* the Esagila diary
* coins showing his face
* cities founded by him

Nothing like that for Jesus.

Why would Jesus have a coin bearing his image or any of those things you mentioned. He was not a ruler or an emperor.

What about him?
Plato is a completely plausible figure for whom we have contemporary evidence and writings from his own hand.
We have nothing like that for the god-man Jesus with supernatural powers.

First of all, no one mentioned supernatural powers except for you. We are only debating the existence of the man himself. We can include the crucifixion or capital punishment in this but not your logical fallacies.

So you accept Plato because someone signed a paper somewhere with his name on it? From your point of view and skepticism on past historical figures i dont think that you should. You do history an injustice with ever post you make.

I also believe Muhammad (the founder of Islam) existed. Do you?

 

[John99]

I see no reason to doubt that Krishna existed and certainly see no reason to doubt that Mary Hays McCauly existed either.

 

[John99]

Why dont you just tell everyone who existed and who did not, depending on how you feel, and we will make the revisions according to Iason.

 

[John99]

You realize that if you do not come up with one historical figure who was said to be an actual person and turned out to not be an actual person then you will need to either withdraw your essay or add a disclaimer with my name attached. And i will write the disclaimer.

 

[Mr. Hamtastic]

Robin Hood

 

[EmptyForceOfChi]

Where.

Firstly the collection of eye witness accounts written down by the disciples of jesus which form the gospels and new testament. Which remain largely untampered from old greek translations over this amount of time many scholars back this claim. I understand that king james and many people have tmpered with the translations and corrupted it in alot of places but the basic point stands about the referal of jesus as a real historical figure.

Ontop of that there is both secular and non secular documentation, from even those who opposed christians. If you refer to the OP I suggested accounts and gave sources of documentations of jesus as a living person recorded by individuals of that era and time period. I am digging up more now over the days to come.

Well of course, we are all allowed a little artistic licence. However it is still verifiable.

Well yes but im trying to deal with historical facts in the same manner as historians and scholars, to try and determine if he was a real historical figure. Opinions are great and I have many myself but Im trying to atleast aim for educated and well imformed theory and detective work rather than agenda fueled stabs from one side of the debate or another. I realise as this is a religious sourced historical base of events that may or may not have took place, it's going to be tainted with many people using one sided opinion based assumptions.

Where.

Well for example if you look at plato, you will find he has less impact, documentation, referal and intact records of existence than jesus actualy does. Im comparing realistic status of how we view figures of the past in comparison with non acceptence of jesus and such people of religious backgrounds. I never question platos existence but I do with jesus, I think it is due to the feats people claim jesus performed like miracles and the likes of that sort of thing. So we take it less seriously obviously because seeing is believing. History is exagerated all the time, changed and reformed to suit the winners.

Not so, when it holds so much water. There are no such thing as absolutes, there is always a modicum of doubt in everything, we have to accept that.

Absolutes are not things I like dealing with in many debates in particular subjects, but im saying that suspicion is not the same as proof of forgery. It is true known fact that the bible and its scriptures have been tampered with and corrupted. If you look at all of the intact new testament writtings it still is a very solid documentation of a persons life with variable sources of eye witness account and secular and non secular references to back them up, along with places and findings of acheological discovery that match dates and names, for example king solomons reign and empire has been partialy uncovered and experts in the field matched dates references and the sorts nearly perfectly to old testament sources. Also the findings in 1975 by a team that uncovered the 16,000/17,000 tablets of the ancient city , with the names of the people written about in the bible, with there fathers names and there fathers names, the dates, locations and periods all check out accurately, more findings will maybe be uncovered to shed better light on things, but my point is that it's actualy got pretty decent findings and documentation not just a mere myth in the ranks of other mythical stories that we tell as stories.

peace

 

[CheskiChips]

I agree with all of you! Yay tenitis.

 

[EmptyForceOfChi]

Greetings EmptyForceOfChi,

Hey greetings to you too ,

Please be careful to distinguish between history OF the scriptures versus history IN the scriptures.

I wasn't confusing the two, I understand the key differenes. I think the scriptures also should be used as historical documentation due to the fact that they are texts documenting the life of a man from n eye witness acount.

Let's not confuse confuse two UN-related issues -
* reliability of the text,
* truthfulness of the contents.

Firstly, it is not true that the NT is "the best-attested document in all of antiquity" because there are some documents even older than the NT for which we have the ORIGINAL literally carved in stone (e.g. Behistun inscription, Egyptian tomb inscriptions, the Rosetta Stone, the Moabite Stone) - making them absolutely 100% accurately attested from the original because they ARE the original, and thus much better attested than the NT.
http://visopsys.org/andy/essays/darius-bisitun.html

The truthfulness of the scriptures is suspect and I doubt can ever be counted as proof of anything, I do agree with you that they are not the best in original antiquity, although scraps of remains of the original stone tablets are held in england. The amount of the original scrips are a poor quantity but they do exist and were whole at some point, so that is in favour of them not being entirely fabricated later on in history.

It's true the NT is fairly well-attested (in terms of quantity) compared to SOME ancient writings - in the sense that we have many old copies (24,000 or more in total). However the vast majority of these copies are from the middle-ages. The number of NT manuscripts from before the dark ages is about a hundred.
http://faculty.bbc.edu/RDecker/documents/nmbr_manuscripts.pdf

Yes I was reading up on this yesteday afternoon, Do you know the date of the oldest known copy fully intact?.

But more importantly, this argument implies that because we have so many copies - this proves the contents true. Well, this is obviously not so - the number of copies has nothing to do with the truth of the contents. Consider

I don't believe the Dr, at Oxford was implying it must be true because we have so many copies, more leaning towards saying its impact was huge and has a very widespread number of copies which for the time was amazing and a one off nearly. I don't see it as proof of anything in terms of the contents but I thought the best place to start looking was in the scriptures itself, then linking it with outside sources.

* the Iliad - over 600 manuscripts, more than the NT until after 1000AD - does this mean that the Iliad was more true than the NT until about 1000AD, but from the middle ages on, the NT became MORE TRUE than the Iliad?
* the works of 10thC. Yen-Shou of Hangchow - about 400,000 copies exist, about 4000 times as many copies as NT copies at that time - does this make the work over 4000 times MORE TRUE than the NT?
* the Book of Mormon - there are millions of copies of this work, many dating maybe a FEW YEARS after the original - would this make the Book of Mormon much MORE TRUE than the NT?
* the Lord of the Rings - there are many millions of copies of this work, (including the original manuscript AFAIK), dating from very soon after its writing - does this makes the Lord of the Rings of vastly more true than the NT?

No.
It should be obvious that the NUMBER of copies attesting to a work gives no support to the truth of the contents.

I don't support that it gives support to the truthfulness of its contents.

Hmmm..
Reading ahead, I see my work on this has already been cited.
Thanks all
I appreciate your comments.

I'll consider if any further responses are needed.


Iasion

Thanks for the well layed out reply.


peace.

 

[EmptyForceOfChi]

Hiya,

Wasup.

Really?
I showed nearly all of the alleged "evidences" for Jesus do not stand up to scrutiny.
WHICH of these do you now still consider good evidence for Jesus?
Please be specific.

Yes I read through your points, I don't class many things as real evidence reality is one matter (for another thread), I'm trying to find evidence for his life I have not concluded anything yet its a new project of mine. After reading your points I still don't see a difference in my views in favour or not in favour.

So far it appears many individuals have faintly suggested a person of a jesus type figure causing trouble, but did not refer to him as jesus of nazereth. Some of the biblical locations, kingdoms and certain individuals have been discovered in dig's which gives some truth to stories atleast in geographical terms.

I'm still early on in my research, further behind than you obviously maybe we could help each other or something.

We examine each case for evidence. Some of the ancient philophers may not have existed.
But here - we are discussing the evidence for Jesus. A god-man with supernatural powers. But who left no contemporary historical evidence of any kind.

Thats the point, and im trying to find out the truth.

The inablity to read properly that is all too typical in believers.
My name is Iasion. Not Liason.

Furthermore, I did NOT say they are liars.
In fact I did NOT ONCE use the word "liar".

I'm not sure if I said you said they are liars, maybe I did. If you didn't and I did I take it back. Liason is better, you are Liason now and im not a believer Im a Daoist that kind of believs in a god but kind of does not sometimes. Sometimes I don't like God sometimes he is my friend sometimes Im an agnostic atheist, depends on my mood and the fung shui.

Yes, some of the writings mentioned ARE known forgeries. Others are late beliefs, others are simply not about Jesus.

I am looking into the forgery claims currently, I will get back to you on that. The ones you say are not about jesus might or might not be, the christians being tourtured sound very like jesus and his followers to me, time period matches up and names are very simular sounding. The ones that are late beliefs are people claiming they knew people who were close to jesus and wrote the words of the friends of jesus down.

But EmptyForceOfChi simply ignores my arguments and pretends I call them all liars. How sad.

Hey Im not ignoring them, im actualy reading up on your arguments because I need information before I can post. Lets debate on good terms without hostility or it will not flow good.

This is not a fact at all.
Just a favourite belief of apologists.

Maybe.

How about an example, EmptyForce?

Do you want an example of Empty Force? wave your hand infront of your face and describe what you are moving your hand through in detail. If not then I will give exmples of stuff in this debate thats to do with this subject.

I cited facts which can be checked.

I know im checking them.

The documents I called forgeries are considered to be so by mainstream scholarship.

I am also looking into this, See Above

Why have you still not argued for which of these you still believe as evidence for Jesus?

Im trying to it's hard when your not motivated by your own opinion and agenda, (im seriously not implying anything) Im just looking for the truth I don't posess evidence or proof but im looking for it or atleast a conclusion to it of some sort.

Please present your modified case - in the face of my analysis, which references do you still argue are historical evidence for Jesus?

I would say that the original scripts written by his disciples as eye witness accounts, combined with geographical correctness and economical references of the accounts in the regions, with references aimed at jesus and his followers by nuetral figures amounts to some form of loose basis to form some evidence maybe.

It's going better than I thought it would, I didnt expect any type of references or evidence atall or documentations.

Lasion

Peace.