trexmaster

<satire>Yes, there is no evidence for Hercules's existence, but then again there is no contemporaneous evidence for Hannibal of Carthage, either! Hannibal existed, so therefore Hercules existed! The myth of Hercules should be taken as historical documents, just as Christians think that the Gospels should be taken as historical documents.</satire>

achristianbeliever

How about instead of being sarcastic you tell us the minimal requirement needed for any person anytime in history to be considered historical. That way we can compare Jesus to any other historical figure we like and find out why they are historical and Jesus isn't. The catch of course is every person who we generally considered historical must comply to these requirements and anyone we consider mythical doesn't.

Ojuice5001

No contemporary sources that mention Hannibal? Of course there are! Polybius was both a famous historian and a military advisor in the Third Punic War. I don't think he would have made that big a mistake about who was involved in the Second Punic War! What would you call him, chopped liver?

And speaking of chopped liver, Hannibal was the best strategist ever to make war on Rome. His invasion of Italy was, in military terms, a complete victory. He was a legend in his own time, so it's quite absurd to use him as an example of someone who was only a legend after his own time.

Alf

I think you put the cart before the horse.

It is not a case "A is mythical and B is historical, so we make up some criteria C(x) and C(A) is false while C(B) is true and then we try to apply C on Jesus or Herkules and see what we get".

It is more a case of we make a set of criteria which does indicate when someone is clearly historical and when someone is clearly mythical and then there is a grey area where we cannot be sure and we possibly fine tune these critera as we get to learn more.

Then we apply it on A, B and Jesus and Herkules and see what we get.

For example a person is clearly historical if there are contemporaries of him who treat him as an actual living person - in particular if these contemporaries include people who oppose the individual and it is not in there interest to promote him as an actual person unless he indeed was an actual person.

Jesus does not meet this criteria. Caesar does. Hitler does.etc etc. There are no contemporary sources of Jesus.

If we have works produced by the person in question and there is nothing that indicate forgery or that it was actually made by someone else and later attributed to this person, then the person was very likely historical.

Again, Caesar wrote several works. Jesus never wrote a word that we have available to us today. In fact, it is not possible to assert that Jesus was not illiterate even given the facts we know. If someone asserted that Jesus could not read and write, how would you go about trying to refute the claim? There is no way to disprove such a claim. We have absolutely no letter from Jesus himself. Now, if archeologists would have found some letter along the lines of:

Judea, 30 AD.

Hi mom,

Tomorrow will be a big day for me. I am going to hold a speech on a mountain here in front of many people. I plan to tell them that there is one commandment that sums up all the commandments. Do unto others as you want others to do them. What do you think? Would this be a great line to say to them? Anyway, I am doing fine and I hope you are well to.

Your son, Jesus son of Joseph.

Ok, so they didn't count the year as 30 AD at that time but then he wouldn't write it in english either but rather in arameic or some such. The point is, if we had anything like that it would count a long way towards proving that Jesus is a historical person. In particular if the letter could be carbon dated and found to be from that period and not some cheap forgery made in 2005. The problem is that we don't have anything even remotely like the above.

The first written account mentioning Jesus or Christ comes from much later sources - sources that have to be at best second, third or fourth hand.

You might also try some other approach and acknowledge that there are some criteria for when something is legend. The person in question might still be a historical person but the facts around these events is most likely not. For example, although Buddha was most likely a histortical person, some of the more fantastic stories around his life appear to be myth and legends and not historical.

We recognize tons of these around Jesus. True, this does not prove that Jesus did not exist but if just about everything of him can be reduced to elements listed below then there is very little left that can be said to be historical.

Fantastic birth story - virgin birth, angels from heaven, 3 wise men coming from afar to pay tribute to the "new king", mass slaughter of all children in Nazareth, flight to Egypt.
In particular the escape to Egypt and threat of murder was a favorite jewish theme and is also used in OT about Moses. The virgin birth was a popular theme around the middle east region around 2000 years ago and just about all demi-gods or gods that was anything worth believing in in those days was born by a virgin or was the father of a child born by a virgin.

Elements of his life that can be seen as taken directly from old testament. I.e. rather than Jesus fulfilling the OT sayings, it indicates that people have read the OT and want their hero Jesus to fullfill these sayings so they make up stories where Jesus play the part of fulfilling these elements.

When you thus remove all those mythical and legendary elements and also remove those parts where parts of OT has been made into plays with Jesus as the hero (not very unlike the way some modern Hollywood films make the an american become the hero of historical events where non-americans actually did the heroic deeds).

Removing these and there is very little left. What little is left is too little to be useful to make any positive claim about a historical Jesus.

Now, this does not mean it is proven that Jesus did not exist. However, it does prove the following things:

1. It is by no means proven that Jesus did in fact exist. People who claim that we have more proof that Jesus existed than Caesar or whatever simply don't know what they are talking about. One suspect that their argument is based on faith and not on historical facts.

2. Even if you did somehow managed to extract a Jesus from all this, it is nowhere clear what this Jesus would be like. He could be a conglomerate of several actual people. If person A did one thing and B did something else and then someone cook up a story that Jesus did the first thing and then afterwards did the second thing then yes, both things were possibly done but they were not done by one and the same person and which one of them would you then refer to as Jesus?

So yeah, it is not proven that Jesus did not exist but that is besides the point. The point is that it is not proven that he DID exist and even if you could somehow manage to prove that it still was not clear what exactly this Jesus was and how he relate to the Jesus character described in the gospels.

The point is that it is pointless for apologists to argue this case. Even if we did grant them that there was some individual walking around 2000 years ago who had the name Jesus and who had a father named Joseph and a mother named Mary it STILL doesn't prove anything near what they want it to prove.

Alf

achristianbeliever

Really? Why are you so certain about Buddha? I was told by Edwin Yamauchi
in a book that we have better historical documentation for Jesus than Buddha. Buddha lived about 600 BC but our main historical documentation comes to us centuries afterwards. I'm talking about stuff like Mahayana Sanskrit sutras stuff written like hundreds of years after Buddha died. Even the Pali suttas were not written for 2 to 3 centuries after Buddha. Acharya S even complains about Buddha being historical. So I'm just curious what historical records is your conclusion based on so I compare his historical records to Jesus?

CJD

It seems to me if the collected works now known as the canon were never "canonized," then many skeptics would have a lot less to bitch about. We'd have all these ancient documents floating around (including all those that were left out of the canon), all (possibly) independently attesting that this Jesus guy walked around Palestine healing the sick and teaching about YHWH's kingdom…

Knife

We do have all these ancient documents floating around (besides the ones that made it in the canon). Each document is judged on its own. But the ones that are in the canon, made it into the canon because they were judged the most...relatively reliable...the best (amongst other qualifications).

So relatively speaking the ones that are in the canon are the top of the line.

Ojuice5001

I don't think we can be confident that the canonical Gospels really are more reliable than the so-called apocryphal Gospels. Most of the apocryphal Gospels are from the Gnostic sects of early Christianity. The Catholic/Pauline branch and the Gnostic branch were contemporary with each other in the second and third centuries, and the canon was selected by groups of Catholics during that period. So we can be sure that any Gospel that presented Jesus' teachings from a Gnostic point of view would have been rejected as apocryphal. Even if it were, in reality, a more accurate portrayal of what Jesus said and did.

Knife

Absolutley. I meant the best, most reliable from the Catholic perspective.

trexmaster

Thanks , I didn't know that. I got the misconception of Hannibal's elusiveness by reading an article from a Christian apologist named Bede who wanted to show the "erroneous" logic of "Jesus Mythers". :angry: I am so pissed off <edit>!