Archimedes Nacho

I came "out of the closet" to my closest friends as an atheist just a little over a year ago. We like to consider ourselves intellectuals (for our age/generation [All of us 20-22 years-old], anyway). At some point, during the course of conversation, the historicity of Jesus was discussed. I said that based on everything I had discerned on the subject, from scholarly works cited on this and other websites, a historical Jesus was, at the absolute best, inconclusive. A man of his alleged stature would show up in the Roman records at some point.

My friends looked at me as if I was some kind of radical. A particular friend, who is irreligious, sort of an agnostic with Christian tendencies if you can imagine that, consulted his dad, who has a history degree and is still a history enthusiast, pointed to Josephus' writings and speculation about the ossuary (now shown to be false). I replied that I read that the Josephus passage referring to Jesus had been inserted after the fact. This was news to them.

Is the consensus among historians that the Josephus passage is real or fake?

Also, I'm a fan of documentaries on the History Channel and Discovery Channel. These shows oftentimes use the phrases "during the time of Christ," "walked the Earth when Christ did," etc. Is this just an easy reference point for a largely Christian audience? Or is the consensus among historians at large that an actual Christ did walk the Earth? Any and all scholarly work citations would be greatly appreciated.

Layman

There are two references to Jesus in our versions of Josephus' Antiquities.

The first is unversally thought by critical scholars to be authentic.

Antiquities 20.9.1

According to leading Josephus scholar Louis Feldman, the authenticity of this passage "has been almost universally acknowledged." Louis H. Feldman, "Josephus," Anchor Bible Dictionary, Vol. 3, pages 990-91.

The second reference is somewhat problematic.

Antiquities 18.3.3

Most scholars think that there are some Christian additions to the text, but that the core of the passage is from Josephus.

"In Jewish Antiquities 18.63-63, Josephus gives a short summary statement on Jesus . . . . Most scholars currently incline to see the passage as basically authentic, with a few later insertions by Christian scribes." Paula Fedrickson Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews, page 249.

Thus, the original is believed to have been close to this reconstruction:

Regarding what real scholars think about the historicity of Jesus, secular historian Michael Grant has this to say:

"To sum up, modern critical methods fail to support the Christ myth theory. It has 'again and again been answered and annihilated by first rank scholars.' In recent years, 'no serous scholar has ventured to postulate the non historicity of Jesus' or at any rate very few, and they have not succeeded in disposing of the much stronger, indeed very abundant, evidence to the contrary."

You can read what respected scholars from a diversity of backgrounds have to say about whether Jesus existed here:

http://www.bede.org.uk/price1.htm

Toto

Start with this thread:

http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread.p...threadid=70678

Layman is a Christian evangelical poster here who thinks that there is a consensus that Jesus existed. Others have pointed out that whatever consensus there is, is not built on any solid evidence. There are 4 or 5 ongoing threads on the question, none of which has come to a conclusion or shows any signs of fading away.

The primary modern proponent of the idea that Jesus was a myth is Earl Doherty. You can read his arguments at www.jesuspuzzle.com .

You can also read different points of view at

Peter Kirby's Summary of Theories of the Historical Jesus.

There's a lot more if you get obsessed with the subject. I think that your original idea is correct - proof of Jesus' existence is inconclusive.

But the idea that Jesus never existed seems very upsetting to Christians so you might want to be diplomatic in how you mention it.

Toto

If you want to explore Josephus for yourself, Peter Kirby has a page here, including his link to an exhaustive examination of the references to Jesus in Josephus.

As to references on the History Channel and Discovery Channel to Jesus walking the earth, I think that is an easy reference point for a largely Christian audience, which a lot of people believe but no one can prove.

Layman

I think that the consensus of scholars is pretty well admitted by all parties. Please note that Toto failed to give you any references to any real scholars who dispute it.

If you want to see some recent criticisms of Early Doherty's radical departure from the consensus, check here:

http://www.bede.org.uk/jesusindex.htm


Please be advised that Doherty is not a professor of history or New Testament studies.

Toto, he asked for what the consensus was and I told him. If I inaccurately assessed the current state of the scholarly perspective please prove me wrong.

Toto

Saying that there is a consensus implies that experts have looked at the evidence and reached a considered opinion based on scholarly standards. I don't think that a consensus exists under that definition. While most people seem to agree that Jesus existed, there is no agreement about the evidence. There is an agreement that one phrase referring to Jesus in Josephus is not a forgery, but that is very thin evidence to prove that a particular person existed - since there is at least a possiblity that the phrase is among the additions and forgeries that were common in ancient documents of the era.

Most of the experts that Layman cites think that the gospels are evidence for Jesus. If you have read even a beginning amount of NT criticism, you know that the gospels are not regarded as reliable history by secular scholars today.

Robert Price is a PhD, New Testament scholar who thinks that the existence of the historical Jesus is unprovable, and is agnostic on the issue.

Crossan is a prominent NT scholar who thinks that the existence of Jesus could not be proven to a skeptic because the evidence could all have been forged or mistaken, but believes that he exists.

I could go on, but it is late, and this is rehashing arguments from a lot of other threads.

Layman

Please note that I provided references and quotes about what modern scholarship thinks about the issue. All Toto has given you is his own unique definition of "consensus" and his unreferenced characteriziations of what two scholars may think about the issue.

Also please note that Crossan is one of those scholars who believes that the references in Josephus are authentic (adopting partial authenticity on the Testimonium Flavianum).

Also please note, since Toto saw fit to try and pigeon hole me by my religious preference, that he is an agendized atheist moderator for a website entitled "Infidels" that is explicitly committed to combating religious ideas and evangalizing secularism, and that Toto himself occasionally entertains the notion that Paul, Peter, James, and Clement of Rome were also myths.

In other words. Yes, you are a radical.

spin

Layman has generally sown his lack of discernment as to what is historical by the old subterfuge of reliance on what is "universally thought" or generally understood.

He cites some hypothetical reconstruction of Josephus (AJ 18.3.3) based on nothing more than arbitrary editing of a text which was long preserved by xians. Would anyone accept the veracity of texts preserved by Soviets when those texts praise Soviet doctrine?

We have seen texts such as the Samaritan Pentateuch, maintained by the Samaritan community over the millennia, get touched up to gain Samaritan leanings.

We have seen biblical texts get touched up, such as John's "he who has no sin cast the first stone", or 1 John's trinitarian insertion.

When a writer like Josephus talks of Jesus doing unspecified "wonderful things", we must be wary. When he talks of Jesus gaining "a following among many Jews and among many of Gentile origin" in a context related to before his death, we know that this is not reflective of what the gospels say, but does represent the situation of an established xianity in the diaspora.

All that has happened in the passage is a removal of the minimum necessary: we know a devout Jew of a priestly family wouldn't say that Jesus was "the Christ". However, to simply cut out this offending phrase is arbitrary. It tells us that someone has been at work in this section of Josephus's AJ, but it doesn't tell us to what extent. Other circumstances (see paragraph above) reflect that it is wider than this one phrase.

Then we have Layman's cute attempt to establish the historicity of his believed central figure by citing someone who finds that the mythical central character hasn't been supported through modern critical methods, not that the central character has been supported through modern critical analysis. These are not two sides of the one coin. It is merely subterfuge.

I can understand Layman's anxiety to give modern approval to his beliefs as they don't fit well with the modern belief in science, but he needs to get on with the substantive evidence and not just bandy about a few modern ideas of ancient writings.

As to "what real scholars" think, Layman unfortunately has shown no criteria to decide.


spin

Metacrock

I'm actually a histoiran. I'll give it to you stairght. When I told my collegaue, who was deparmental chairman, that I sometimes argue with people on the net about the historical existence of Jesus this older and more established historian said "why do you want to waste your time arguing with idiots?"

I also told another older and more established historian the same thing and he said "if we accepted the criteria by which those people (meaning Jesus mythers) make decisions about hisotry we would know nothing about the anceint world at all." Most academic histoirans do not waste their time even thinking about it. Jesus is as accepted among historians as is ancient Rome or Palestine itself. Now, most of them will also say we don't know much about him, and aren't likely to either. But most histoirans treate the Jesus myther position like UFO belief.

I am a Christian, but what I say is true and the two older historians of whom I speak are an atheist an a nominal Christian who doesn't really believe the validity of the Bible.

Plebe

After reading the following as well as noting similar observations about the disputed as well as thunderingly silent conventionally accepted historical record I thought I'd submit these links and the below cut and paste that gives a summary from a scholarly Jewish perspective. Of course there's more as one studies and finds such pearls of wisdom from the mouths of the early Church Fathers such as this one from Pope Leo X "What profit has not that fable of Christ brought us!" Pope Leo X and reads materials such as these here at Infidels which have been fully uploaded for those interested in learning about what religions and their books really say:

http://www.infidels.org/library/hist...out_jesus.html Truth about Jesus

http://www.infidels.org/library/hist...ty/index.shtml
Forgery in Christianity by Joseph Wheless


http://www.tombofjesus.com [archaeological site was limited to few researchers and is now closed to further investigation.]

http://www.atheists.org/church/didjesusexist.html [Did Jesus Exist?]

http://www.atheists.org/church/jesuslife.html [How Jesus Got A Life]

http://www.atheists.org/church/ [Includes more provocative articles such as 'The Real Bible-Who's Got It?]

http://www.positiveatheism.org/hist/maccoby3.htm (paste in browser to view the related article link essay titles that precede the essay below!)
Paul's Bungling Attempt
At Sounding Pharisaic
excerpt from: The Mythmaker: Paul and the Invention of Christianity
by Hyam Maccoby

. . .
Some passages in Paul's Epistles have been thought to be typically Pharisaic simply because their argument has a legalistic air. When these passages are critically examined, however, the superficiality of the legal colouring soon appears, and it is apparent that the use of illustrations from law is merely a vague, rhetorical device, without any real legal precision, such as is found in the Pharisaic writings even when the legal style is used for homiletic biblical exegesis. . . .

{Cut and paste removed to save bandwidth - Please click on link.}