Alf

Show me ONE piece of evidence that proves that Jesus was a real person.

I only ask for one.

Alf

Ubercat

Quote:
Originally Posted by RED DAVE
From Patriarch Verlch:
that borders on antisemitism.

RED DAVE

I have to agree. For PV to imply that Jews would still be killing animals, if not for some obscure and unverified biblical claim, can very EASILY construed as anti-semitic. Why else would they stop?:huh: All those OTHER cultures are still performing sacrifices, since THEIR temple veils didn't rip!

Seriously, that's got to be the stupidest fundy claim I've seen in weeks.

-Ubercat

Doug Shaver

I don't dispute that it can be so construed.

On the other hand, I'm a firm believer in "Never attribute to evil what can be blamed on stupidity."

Alf

Ahem,

Just because you don't know your own bible well enough, it doesn't lend credibility to your claims.

Let us pick an example. Many christians hold that the gospel of Luke is one of the best parts of the bible as documenting historical facts goes.

Now, in this gospel we read that the emperor Augustus had made a decree to make an empire-wide census. Now, the actual wording in the gospel is "the whole world" and that is of course wrong but we all know that romans often used "the whole world" to mean "the whole empire" so we will not quibble about that. However, even if we take it to mean "the whole empire" it is still wrong. Augustus never made any such decree - if he did we would expect that there was some extra bibilical references to it.

Augustus did proclaim a census to be made but that was local to Judea region only and not as Luke claimed - an empire wide census. Indeed, the first such empire wide census was held around 80 AD and was most likely within the time of memory of the person writing that Gospel. Thus, we can conclude that the gospel of Luke was written some time after 80 but not so long that such empire wide censuses had been forgotten.

However, "very very accurate" is not exactly the description I would use here. As in many other places (the bible is full of them) it is very very inaccurate rather than very accurate.

I trust you actually try to do some research and back up your claims rather than just sprouting assertions and hoping we buy into one of them.

Alf

Alf

It is true that many historians lend towards the idea of a historical jesus. It is also true that all christian historians of course propagate that theory but they are not really unbiased.

Also, while a historian may agree that there might have been some person walking around in palestine with a name that we today refer to as "Jesus" and which did something that some people interepreted as miracles and taught ethics etc. It is a completely different step to say that a person walking on water 100 percent human and 100 percent divine etc etc etc really lived. The problem here is that most christians cannot manage to separate these issues. If a non-christian historian accept that some "Jesus" possibly lived around the time they immediately assume that he accept that the Jesus they pray to every night was that same person. That is where it all goes wrong.

Also, as people here has stated. No matter how many historians accept some living breathing Jesus around 30 AD walked around there is in fact not a single shred of evidence to support that idea apart from the NT. You might consider the NT to be good evidence but the problem is that it has the hallmark of being useless as evidence. The authors of the gospels are anonymous writers - no they were not Mark, Luke, John and Matthew, those names were added later. The gospels themselves indicate that they are not eyewitness accounts and they also give all the signs of being religious propaganda rather than historical accurate descriptions of the life of a historical person.

As such there might have been a living Jesus but we know little about him. It is restricting your input to only be the soviet communist party writings around 1940 or so in order to find out about Stalin. If you then find that Stalin was the greatest man who ever lived then that might be a natural result given the input you had but it doesn't really say much about the actual Stalin who actually lived. Reading the gospels about Jesus is as such very much similar to reading soviet articles dated around 1940s about Stalin. This is not historical documents, this is religious propaganda written by extreme fundamentalists.

So no, there are no historical documents that can document a historical Jesus. In the case of Pontius Pilate we have roman records documenting him, we don't have any such documents concerning Jesus. We do have Tacitus and others writing about christians later on but that isn't the same thing. Nobody every disputed that christians existed around Tacitus' time. The question is, was there ever any historical Jesus? Tacitus cannot help to answer that question and that source has by some christians been hailed as the "best" evidence there is for a historical Jesus. If that evidence is the best then it really is a testament to how weak such evidence they have - "weak" as in "not at all existing".

Alf

aa5874

The Jews have stopped making sacrifices, but they still maintain, to this day, that Jesus was a heretic. The renting of the veil in the Temple have not changed the Jews opinion of Jesus, the heretic.

OldYgg

Oh, I think it is the Christian are super good people thing that makes it anti-semetic. Basically, they are saying 'The Jews learned from jesus not to sacrifice animals, but then they turned their back on him. How stupid could they be?'

I think. ?

Old Ygg

Alf

Then I assume you can tell me when was Jesus born?

The gospel of Matthew says "while Herod was king" - Herod died at 4 BC so Jesus must have been born before 4 BC then.

The gospel of Luke says "while augustus had a world wide census". Never mind he never did hold a world wide census. Let us accept that the gospel of Luke goofed and meant the judea only census at 6 AD. This puts Jesus birth around 6 AD.

So which is it? 4 BC or 6 AD?

Alf

Alf

It doesn't clear anything up. It is just another "just-so" story that if it where true would appearantly conveniently explain the discrepancy. Unfortunately, if it were true one would also expect reality to be somewhat different from what it is.

I can accept that jewish customs in the ancient times made for messy genealogies. I can also accept that they often used "X, son of Y" to mean "X, son of Y through many links" at times. However, when mentioning genealogies and when trying to make a point that the number of links in the chain has a certain specific number of mystical significance such explanations doesn't explain anything at all. They are just "just-so" stories that if they were true would be very convenient but there is no chance that they are actually true. Unfortunately.

So no, that explanation does not explain anything at all. Try another link.

Alf

Alf

Yes, they are not biblical.
Yes, they are proofs that there were christians around 300 AD who were debating and discussing among themselves what was to be accepted as "true christianity" (TM) and what was to be not accepted as such.
Yes, it proves that there were people living around 300 AD who believed that Jesus was real.

No, it does not prove that Jesus ever existed.

The nicean creed proves that there were people around 300 AD who believed that Jesus was real. It does not prove that Jesus was real.

Yes, Constantine was a real person. We have several independent sources to confirm that. If only we had the same type of evidence for Jesus!

Ditto. This council took place. I don't know of anyone who disputes that. However, it does not prove that Jesus was a historical person.

Our current system of numbering years was developed in the 6th century and the AD and BC was established as part of that. It does not prove that Jesus was a historical person.

We do, we do. We wish you would do the same.

Wrong. All it required was that there were people who believed Jesus was a real person. So what? There are people today also who believe he was a real person. Yet neither then nor now does that prove that he really was a real person.

You are joking, right? I guess you have just proven that Juno exists as a real god. The month "June" would never be called "June" unless Juno was a real god, right?

Or perhaps Venus is more your taste? April would be impossible without Venus.

Or what about Mars, the god of war? The mere existence of the month of march proves that Mars is a true god, right?

Following your logic we can just start worshipping a host of gods. What about Thor, the god of thunder? The weekday known as thursday wouldn't be possible unless Thor was a real god, right?

So, you must worship Mars, Venus, Maia, Juno, Tyr, Odin, Thor and Freya as a minimum.

Surely the months of march, april, may, june and the weekdays of tuesday, wednesday, thursday and friday are proofs that these gods are all real, right?

Nobody denies that the nicean creed was decided upon at that council. Nobody denies that people then believed that there was a real Jesus 300 years before them. There are people today who also believe that Jesus was real, so what?

Is there anywhere any evidence that people living when Jesus was supposedly alive who told about this guy running around Judea performing miracles and what not? For example according to the gospels he really had it in with the Pharisees. One would expect that some of those would write a letter to someone else saying "This Jesus guy is really annoying, now he humiliated us again...." yet no such letter is found anywhere.

Jesus himself appear to have been illiterate - he never bothered to write anything - at least not anything that god considered important enough to keep until now. Not even a "Dear mom, I am now waiting to be taken to trial. They threaten to crucify me. Say hi to dad from me" is found anywhere.

It is this complete lack of contemporary evidence for Jesus that is striking. Your non-seqiteurs do not help, it just announces how completely hopeless your position is.

Actually, the put up or shut up is quite in place. You have been talking as if you had tons of evidence in your favor and you have been talking as if you had a sure case. It is time that you do present the evidence you claim to have. If you do not have said evidence it is time you humble yourself a bit and stop talking as if you had all that evidence you don't have.

The question of interest here is: Did the members of that council have records of Jesus other than the gospels and heresay? As far as we know they did not. Also, we know that people back then accepted things on heresay much easier than we do today. If you had gone some place back then and in all seriousness told a story about a dragon with 7 heads etc, people might think you haven't really seen it for yourself or they might think the dragon wasn't purple but was perhaps some other color but it would in general never occur to them that there was no dragon, that someone could be just making stuff up like that was unthinkable to them. Especially if nobody deliberately made it up, they just changed a bit on the story they heard and as the story of the 5 feathers that became 5 chicken a story tended to change a lot as it went from one person to another. Especially when it circulated among the uneducated. The earliest christians was the uneducated, the gullible, the feeble minded. These were the people that the christians recruited from in the earliest days.

That intellectuals and people in power were christians or sympathetic to christanity is something you only see later in the 2nd and 3rd century and in particular in the 4th century when the tables has turned and it was those in power who were christians and if you wanted to have a share of that power you had to convert to christianity too.

However, the earliest christians were the poor, those not in power, those not so intellectual and those gullible. Those superstitious.

Here it comes...

The problem is that there is no evidence that there at all existed any Jesus. However, the claim that there existed a guy who we today call "Jesus" and who roamed around palestine around 30 AD teaching some ethics etc and had a small group of followers and even appearantly performed some miracles or the followers claimed he was a miracle worker. Such a claim is not that extraordinary. There were lots of "miracle workers" back in those days, people were on the whole very superstitious and they saw "miracles" everywhere. There were also people who other people believed were Messiah. Again, not a fantastic claim and quite mundane.

Thus, even though there is no evidence outside of the gospels that such a person has existed, many people are in general willing to accept that such a person might have existed because the claim is not that extraordinary. An ordinary man with a group of followers and who were perceived as a miracle worker by some gullible people who taught some simple and banal ethics isn't really that fantastic. Indeed, when it comes to the specifics of the ethical teaching in the gospels they say on the whole very little about it and what they say are things that are generally uncontroversial. Alexander the great got the middle east in contact with India and so various indian ethics were known to people back then. Including the "Do unto others..." etc which is central in buddhism among others. These are ideas that people back then quickly saw made sense and so it was a "common concensus" among people across all the religions that was flourishing around the middle east that such an ethical principle was a good idea.

The christians then claimed that their Jesus said it in the sermon on the mount. Maybe he did, maybe he did not, maybe there was no sermon on the mount and maybe there was no Jesus at all. Either way, the ethical principle is sound on its own terms regardless of who said it and when and where.

It is a lost cause. Because you claim to have evidence when you don't have any. It is your time to put up or shut up but you don't have anything to put up. What are you going to do?

Alf