gnosis92

as i explained to another poster in my gospel of thomas thread, the arguments you provide are what suits secular historians of early xianity,

the embarassing details are examples of satisfying a historical critera of dissimilarity,
and jesus acting like a conman and first century movements are examples of contextual credibility.


he did not accept as valid the argument that the gospels were clearly written with a historical intent (on the argument you can write fiction and claim it was written with a historical intent) nor the fact that jesus was set in the context with other figures we know from history (i.e john the baptist, pilate, cephus, james) on the grounds you can write historical fiction like moby dick with historical characters, but did not respond in any detail of any examples of such literature in first century palestine, nor did he explain whether, given what we know about first century palestine, whether they distinguished between evangelism as opposed to journalism, or whether the fact matthew and luke wrote independently of one another, and both apparently used mark and q as sources, which implies they accepted it as historically reliable, and there is no evidence that there was anyone reading mark and saying "obviously this is fiction" in the first century palestine, but we do have evidence that there were xians as early as 40AD (according to doherty perhaps alluding to the pauline corpus) by 60AD definitely (under nero) who were burned alive for being xians, and we have documents produced by these xians on what they believe, and we have secular roman historians reporting what xians believed, 20-40 years after the fact, none disputing it,

it didn't satisfy the other poster in the GOT thread so I'll just leave it at that.

Josephus did write of pharisees and sadducees and essenes and zealots and common folk, but he makes no mention of a group of jews whose beliefs resemble the christ-mythicist hypothesis, so far as i know.

I personally like the celsus argument, that if the jesus-mythicist belief was widespread in antiquity, i would have imagined celsus would have used this as an argument against HJ, which he does not. celsus accepted HJ even as he despised it.

Roger Pearse

Well, I'm afraid that it will take more than an assertion by a teacher of religion at a US university to put this idea on the table.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

ynquirer

I’m afraid your syllogism is a failure.

You propose, as premises, some facts and related information as might have flown, say, from 1865 to 1936, and your conclusion purports to say something about the Roman empire. Don’t you find anything funny in the argument?

What is the implied assumption, as being fully applicable in 1865-1936 and not so in 64-109 CE?

It’s an easy question, isn’t it?

Malachi151

Wrong. Very little NON-CHRISTIAN works survive. We know, FOR A FACT, that the Christians, when they came into power, rounded up literally tons of books and either destroyed them outright, or held them libraries where they were neglected, kept out of public hands, never translated and eventually lost.

But, they only did this to works that were oppositional to Christian beliefs. Any works that supported their views or were a part of Christian theology were prized and given first class treatment. We also know that the early Christians explicitly looked for works that supported the existance of Jesus and tried to find every reference possible to their savior.

So, we should excpect that if such refernces did exist at that time, that #1 we would probably have a copy of those works, or at least #2 the critical passages would have been quoted in other Christian works, whcih themselves would have at least either been saved or #3 referenced in yet OTHER works.

You have to understand these texts and how they are analyzed and how we know what we know about them. It is very common to only know about books or the content of books from quotes and references. We have lots and lots of references to book that no longer exist, and which we cannot read, but we at least know that these books did exist and what topics were covered in them and why they meritted mention. We have lists of thousands of books and records from ancient times that no longer exist, that we don't have one single quote from, but we know of the book and a summary of what they were about.

At the very least we would expect to have these references to sources for an HJ, but we don't even have this, and we have every reason to believe that any works that discussed "Jesus" woul dhave been preserved at a very high rate.

ynquirer

The first news agency was created in 1835 by Charles Havas, a Frenchman. He offered a service that would revolutionize the world of information. He had news from papers throughout Europe collected, sent by pigeon to Paris, and then translated for delivery to French newspapers using the service. Julius Reuter, a former Havas employee, copied the idea and took profit from the new telegraphic cable lines in Germany to create Reuter’s, an agency still working nowadays. It was, however, the London Times that first conceived of producing news of itself abroad rather than only collecting news published elsewhere; it sent reporters to the Crimean War (1853-1856). More than 150 war correspondents reported on the U.S. Civil War.

What happened to the news produced by those 150+ war correspondents, including news on Lincoln’s assassination? Was it wasted paper? Of course, it wasn’t. As a matter of fact, both newspapers and agencies sending those reporters to the American Civil War opened their own records and stored them in safe place as if they were gold metal. And what happened, say, in November 1936, when the first troops of the Lincoln Brigade arrived in Madrid to relieve weary republican troops, fiercely assailed by the much better armed and trained Franco’s army? A journalist writing about the fact, say, in Sidney or Toronto asked his colleague the other side of the aisle, “What was the name of Lincoln’s damned killer?” And their colleague said, “Anything like John Wilkinson Bears, or perhaps Johnny Walker Boot?” “Not sure. It’s a mess, but I rather go downstairs to check the records in the basement.”

I’m afraid you call “common knowledge” what would be sounder to call quick, safe access to records.

ynquirer

This is what Wikipedia has to say in reference to Suetonius, Tacitus’ contemporary and colleague:

• He was the son of Suetonius Laetus, who probably came from Hippo Regius (Annaba, Algeria). Laetus was an equestrian who served as a regular colonel and took part in the first Battle of Bedriacum for the Emperor Otho and against the future Emperor Vitellius in 69.
  
  Suetonius was a close friend to Senator and historian Pliny the Younger. Pliny describes him as quiet and studious, a man dedicated to writing. Pliny helped him buy a small property in Italy and interceded with the Emperor Trajan to grant Suetonius immunities usually granted to a father of three, the jus trium liberorum, even though Suetonius never married or had any children. Through Pliny, Suetonius came into favor with Trajan and Hadrian. (Wikipedia’s emphases.)

A careless reader would perhaps think that it was very important for Suetonius to be into favor with the emperor because of the advantage of being an imperial pensioner. However, favor with the emperor was even more important than that because of opportunities of access to imperial facilities of the utmost significance for a historian, namely, records:

• Suetonius served on Pliny’s staff when Pliny was Proconsul of Bithynia Pontus (northern Asia Minor) between 110 and 112. Under Trajan he served as secretary of studies (precise functions are uncertain) and director of Imperial archives. Under Hadrian, he became the Emperor's secretary. (My emphasis.)

There is no evidence that Tacitus ever was either an imperial pensioner or an imperial employee - actually very little is known of him. But he was also a friend to Pliny the Younger, a friendship very useful - one may surmise - for Tacitus to enjoy a free pass into the imperial archives.

Source: Suetonius in Wikipedia.

Johann_Kaspar

I am following you.

it is quite reasonable to come to the conclusion that the only incomplete copy of the Annals left was the one with the mention of "Christ" and that all others copies were destroyed because they were no use while missing the "name".

The missing books of the Annals represent key dates for the history of Israel...

Now let assume that Tacitus wrote those few words about "Christ". It means nothing but hearsay and in any case, Tacitus is far from reliable when he wrote about one "John Bargioras" (sic)...

Johann_Kaspar

And where are those archives now? Destoyed by the xians of course, so that they can re-write their "history".

As you did not go away from this thread, will you be so kind as to answer my questions about your "evidence" that Annals 15:44 is authentic?

ynquirer

And your evidence is?

Tell me of your "evidence" and I, with pleasure, will tell you of mine.

Johann_Kaspar

What an hypocritical statement. :rolling: :rolling: :rolling: :rolling: :rolling: :rolling: :rolling: You had ample time to present your evidence [why had I to ask you twice], but you will never do it, because you trapped yourself and now are trying to find a way out of it. But let's see.

"My" evidence is that the xians had the control of the texts for more than a millenium. Only they had the choice what to copy, what to burn, what to put on index, make autodafe...

"My" evidence... here it is: "Die Kriminalgeschichte des Christentum", by Karlheinz Deschner, 8 volumes, about 700 pages each.

Now, please, answer my question "with pleasure".