aa5874

So rotting papers are the evidence for Jesus? This is incredibly fascinating.

I think you may be mistaken. Jesus is described as the offspring of the Holy Ghost and Creator of everything in heaven and earth who was with God and was God in the NT Canon.

When did this entity call Jesus REALLY die?

You sound like a christian.

Jesus could not have died when he did not live as described in the Canon.

But, the TF, Antiquities of the Jews 18.3.3, is considered a forgery. Now, the author of the TF claimed he was not certain if it was lawful to call Jesus a man and that Jesus was seen alive after he was dead and buried.

I do not know of special human beings that can resurrect.

But, you don't seem to understand that the word christian may have nothing whatsoever to do with those who were supposed to be followers of Jesus.

People who worshiped Simon Magus the Holy one of God were called Christians and almost the whole of Samaria worshiped Simon Magus the magician since the days of Claudius c 41-54 CE..

Nero could BOT persecute non-existing Jesus believers.

mountainman

We do not know the bulk of what most Roman Emperors said or did. The Neronian persecution is probably an entirely fictional "public relations" exercise of the 4th century, or later. See for example the case presented in "Witnesses to the Historicity of Jesus" by Arthur Drews (1912).


The terms Chrestos and Christos were purposefully obscured.

I think you have it all wrong. The Roman Emperor Julius Caesar for example slaughtered about one million Gallic Celts and imported another million into the Roman Empire as slaves. The brutality on this scale cannot be subservient to some backwoods literary fabrication.


YES. The authority of the lineage of the "Pontifex Maximus" was highly regarded in the epoch of Julius Caesar, so much that he thought it would be a good idea that he bribed his way to secure that role in Rome. The official head of all the Sacred Colleges of the "Pontifices" - Graeco-Roman priesthood. All Roman Emperors held that ancient authority with that title until the 4th century, when Pope Damasius fought and won the right to assume it for the "Fourth Century Christian Church".

Rick Van Vliet

No, some people are ignorant that there is no existing paper from the time and place of Jesus. (Or Socrates, etc.) They foolishly ask for pieces of paper from the time and place of Jesus

Glad to help clarify that.

And the majority of secular agnostic Biblical Scholars say part of the Jesus/James stuff in Josephus is genuine.

At any rate, Jesus is in everthing from that time and place.

Rick Van Vliet

Yep, I definitely think Christians are Christians. And Simon Magnus is a fictional character, invented in Acts of the Apostles, as a stand-in for Paul.

show_no_mercy

The only thing that means is that certain religious people thought Jesus existed. We have no primary evidence (like writings from Jesus himself) for the existence of Jesus. The evidence for the existence of Jesus is less than the evidence for Socrates. 2nd, 3rd, or 10th hands removed heresey isn't very good evidence.

The TF is a forgery since it breaks the flow of the surrounding verses talking negatively about Pilate and the misfortunes that happened to the Jews. The passage about James in Ant 20 the way it's written right now depends on the existence of the TF in Ant 18. If one is a forgery, then both are forgeries.

The most obvious marker is that Josephus never once writes the word "christ" except the two times that he just so happens to be describing the Jesus of Christianity.

Theophilus c. 180 CE called himself a Christian, yet doesn't seem to know who Jesus was. People called themselves "Christians" for various reasons; Justin Martyr c. 150 CE said that some people called themselves Christians for following the god Simon Magus - not Jesus.

None of this means that Jesus the Nazarene did not exist, but overly confident rhetoric like "Jesus most certainly existed" is misplaced due to how terrible the evidence is.

Rick Van Vliet

We have no writings from Socrates himself either. Perhaps it would save time if you pointed out any evidence for Socrates (or any comparable historical character) we don't have for Jesus.

I'm not saying you personally, but a lot of people are ignorant of the fact that paper rots and expect some to still exist from the time and place of Jesus or Socrates, when there is absolutely none.

Rick Van Vliet

...And you think Josephus' mentions of Jesus and James are totally fabricated, but that's not what the majority of secular agnostic scholars think.

And the fact remains, Jesus is mentioned in everything we have from the time and place of Jesus.

show_no_mercy

So? I'm going by evidence, not appeals to authority. I have yet to read of any "secular agnostic scholars" address the un-Josephan usage of the word "christ".

I think you might want to rephrase this assertion, since it's false. We have no one who was a contemporary of Jesus writing about Jesus. The first century Christian epistles write about Jesus, but they all talk about the post-resurrection, heavenly [i.e. fictional] Jesus. We have no way of knowing whether they were contemporaries of an earthly Jesus unless we inject knowledge from the later written gospel narratives, whose verisimilitude is unknown.

All Roman accounts of "Jesus" refer to him as Chrestus (the Latinized version of the god of the Marcionites) and are from the 2nd century. And there's no way to determine whether they are independent or if they are just parroting the claims made by Christians they interviewed.

Also telling is Photius' claim about the writings of the Jews from this time period:

Photius was aware of Josephus' writings, so how could he have made that sort of statement above, if Josephus' two instances of "christ" were in his copy of Josephus?

Toto

Everyone here knows that there are no pieces of paper (or papyrus) dating to the first century. But there are works written in the first century that have been preserved through scribal copies. None of these mention Jesus.

That's not how we decide things.

Please stop making these assertions that are just wrong. Jesus is missing from the first century. It is possible to write a history of the first century without mentioning Jesus that is a coherent narrative.

Jayrok

Do what now?:constern01: