Skeptical

I'd be interested in this as well, as I suppose there are probably none.

But, I'd be more interested to learn of any other supernatural belief systems that rely on such a scant historical record yet translate into comparable irrational and anti-social behaviors on such a grand scale.

I doubt the contemporaneous historical record is any better for Appollonius or Pythagoras, but then again there are no Appollonians and Pythagoreans contributing to the spread of aids in Africa, trying to force religious teaching in public schools or attempting to impede the progress of medical science to treat horrendous diseases either.

Islam is one. No others come immediately to mind, but there may be some I ma not aware of.

jakejonesiv

Comparing Jewish Messianic claimant vs. Jewish Messianic claimant,

We have Letters written by Simon bar Kochba


Coins struck contemporary with Simon bar Kotchba

For Jesus we have zip.

Jake Jones IV

P.S.
We also have brothel pictures From Pompeii. :redface: :blush: :redface:

Roger Pearse

None whatever. We can only compare like with like.

I'm not sure, tho, how this is different from saying that any system invented a long time ago (relative to whenever we happen to live) must be untrue because human beings don't have means to preserve records very well.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

Roger Pearse

Coins are irrelevant, surely, unless we only believe in people for whom ancient moneyers minted coins.

I am most interested to learn that we have letters by Bar Kochba. How very interesting! But again, do we deny the existence of everyone who didn't happen to leave a letter?

All this wanders somewhat from the point made: that the demand for copies of literary texts shortly after composition can be fulfilled by no ancient text. (Fragments of autograph non-literary texts retrieved from excavations are not the same kind of thing, of course).

All the best,

Roger Pearse

haight

Why would the apostles lie? Well for me to think that,it would mean I actually believe the apostles existed to begin with,and i don't.
I don't think any of us believe all these "magical" people ever existed but if they did they were certainly only people like the rest of us.

So there goes your Christian "reasoning".

spin

Not irrelevant, just a different sort of evidence for historicity which comes from the period, different, better.

This is an interesting sudden tack. You were getting ready to trumpet the quality of witness for christian documents, but you now have to hold that back.

One could also add of course that we have the burnt library of Philodemus from Herculaneum, which have been reclamed. In the same dumps where a lot of christian documents were found, even more non-christian documents many of a literary nature were found. We don't here about them because people aren't interested enough, so one gets a warped opinion of the state of literary preservation of texts.

I agree that the desire for such texts is one thing that quite often cannot be satisfied. Such texts are however, better historical currency -- wouldn't you agree?

What, you mean that they are not more relevant historical evidence than anonymous undated unprovenanced texts??


spin

EarlOfLade

Only of those who claim to be son of god or similar.

Whether Ahmed Al-Bar herded goats or sheep is pretty irrelevant. Whether someone is a god or not, isn't.