Johnny Skeptic

Do you have any first century, non-biblical, non-Christian, eyewitness evidence that Jesus performed miracles? If the Gospels are true, you should since if Jesus performed many miracles in many places, he would have easily become the biggest celebrity in the entire Middle East.

Kapyong

Nah,
but the NT is about as historical as the LOTR.
:-)


K.

arnoldo

Buenos Dias.

Polycarp (who wrote in the early second century A.D.) does mention that the people he wrote to never saw Jesus in the following passage.

Polycarp then goes on to remind the people of the words of Jesus in the following passage;


Obviously, by the second century many of the alleged original eyewitnesses of Jesus had died by natural causes or during the Roman destruction of Jerusalem in 70 A.D. By the second century apparently many came to believe that Jesus never existed as a real person and was merely a phantom of some kind. Polycarp writes rather harshly of those in the following passage.


At the very least Polycarp shows us that there was a schism already developing in the early second century between those who believed in a HJ and those who believed in a MJ.

arnoldo

Tolkein never existed either

neilgodfrey

Diodorus, Curtius, Plutarch, Arrian, Justin are our literary sources for Alexander and they all attempt to establish the credibility of their histories with their audiences by identifying themselves, and very often also by identifying the sources they use. It is reasonable to expect the same of the gospel authors if they also are claimed to be histories.

So why nothing comparable with the earliest gospels? I think we might come close to understanding why by comparing the study of Bernard Levinson in Deuteronomy and the Hermeneutics of Legal Innovation. He writes:

If this was how things were when the gospels were first being introduced, the situation that required their anonymity did not last.

I suggest that we only find authorial names being attached to them for the first time in the later second century by Irenaeus who is also interested in creating a genealogy of teachers to define "truth" and another genealogy of teachers to define "error". By this time we have multiple gospels claiming apostolic authorship and it was thought advisable to fight fire with fire and find a new way to establish the credibility of the 4 gospels selected for use by "orthodoxy".


Neil

Tactics of religious innovation
An explanation for the gospels being anonymous

neilgodfrey

I don't think Polycarp is addressing a rift between HJ and MJ proponents. The argument then was over the nature of Jesus: flesh or spirit or some other permutation of these. The argument was to be settled over whether Jesus could feel pain or what form of existence he had before his appearance in the flesh, etc. If it were over his historicity they would have been digging out the "original TF" in Josephus or identifying other eyewitnesses and sources of "traditions" etc.

mountainman

Your thought experiment may be improved and refined. The first official "historical research" concerning the "nation of Christians" was actually conducted in the 4th century by the 1st official Christian archivalist, a man possibly of Jewish descent, called Eusebius of Caesarea. Your thought experiment would need to take place in the year 2263 CE. The new testament was not made popular until its widespread publication in the 4th century, when it was enforced as the emperor's "preferred religion" by means of the emperor's sword.

I dont buy Constantine's propaganda at all. He is backing a three century old event which is either historical or fabricated. The gospels and Paul are presented within the Eusebian packaging as some sort of "historical documents".

But Constantine stands up at the Council of Antioch and flatly states that the birth of Jesus Henry was prophecised by Roman poets in the 1st century BCE, and cites them to the Greek audience at Antioch. Later we learn that people from Antioch --- of the academic classes and philosophers - were subject to to torture at the commands of Constantine. I do not automatically buy the authenticity of anything published in the rule of Constantine, and I reserve the right to be critically skeptical that there were any 300 year old "eyewitnesses".

Cege

Ask him what evidence he relies on that the authors of the Gospels were eyewitnesses. I'm a Christian, myself, and I'm curious to know.

I personally don't know of any evidence that the authors of the Gospels were eyewitnesses.

Is he aware that the authors of most of the letters included in the NT are in question?

neilgodfrey

I've heard that Mark's gospel was written by an eyewitness, Mark himself, who (presumably compelled by the criterion of embarrassment to record it) was the one who fled naked at the arrest of Jesus. We further read that the observation in the same Gospel that the grass 5000 people sat on was "green" is also evidence of eyewitness reportage. And the fact that Matthew repeats so much of Mark surely demonstrates he trusted his words as solid eyewitness testimony too, yes?

Neil

spamandham

You are wasting your time trying to have a rational discussion with someone who thinks that 2000 year old books written by a half dozen people is sufficient evidence of some dude walking on water and rising from the dead.

No-doubt, your adversary would dismiss out of hand similar modern nonsense claims. Your friend's beliefs are not founded on reason, they are the result of conditioning, emotional appeals, and social pressure.

These same tools are what you must use.