eheffa

I don't want to overstate the case, but to read the early chapters of Acts, following the Pentecost, believers scattered throughout the Roman Empire. If you accept the Acts version of events...the Christian movement was attracting a lot attention from the authorities. Saul before he became Paul was commissioned to go ferret out the sect from Damascus. He later encountered Churches throughout Asia Minor that required teaching & correction. All these pockets of believers and no other evidence from Jewish or Roman sources to corroborate the existence of this annoying splinter sect. Granted: It's an argument from silence but a strange silence IMHO when the claims of these Christians clearly would have rankled the secular & Jewish authorities & should have prompted some sort of documentation. Josephus makes note of some of the most trivial details around the time of Pilate & fails to notice this strange new sect. Philo was very interested in the Logos cults of the time but failed to notice the Logos of the Gospel of John or his dynamic followers such as Simon Peter winning over 3 thousand souls in a single day. No-one else noticed the crowds of people coming from the towns & villages around Jerusalem to be healed (Acts 5:12-15)

I agree that we don't know but the orthodox version of what happened doesn't add up. The relative silence by any secular or even Judaic sources to corroborate the existence of the Gospel Jesus believers in the 1st C CE is surprising. Hypotheses that propose that an ethereal or gnostic Logos Cult type of Christianity (with a mystical Christ) predated the more orthodox version of Christianity would be supported by what we find.

-evan

aa5874

Well, do you know all the languages that were originally used in the compilation of all the versions of Bibles?

Don't you depend on English translators?

And show me the Latin for "old Roman rites", the passage in the Pliny letter when translated to English is " established religious rites," NOT "old Roman rites."

What was the "established religious rites" of a Jew living in Bithynia?

Now how did a Jew or a person who followed Mosaic laws, who believed and expected Christ, that lived in Bithynia, over 1100 kilometers from Jerusalem, manage to perform a sacrifice of two pigeons or turtledoves on the eight day of their firstborn son ?

eheffa

This is nonsense. 35 out of 36 astronomical texts prior to Galileo supported the Teracentric universe therefore the heliocentric hypothesis is false...

Having a host of Bible school scholars crossing their fingers & hoping to tease some sort of value out of the TF is not a valid process. This is not an issue subject to polls. If it were, you could go back 50 -100 years & find that most Biblical & secular scholars of antiquity rejected this passage as a blatant interpolation.

The fact that this clearly confessional passage is not referenced by any other authors prior to the 4th C CE when it would have been very useful to their theses is very suspicious. There is clear evidence of tampering.

One can take it or leave it but these is no way that this solitary mention of the Christian Jesus under these doubtful circumstances can be considered good evidence for an historical Jesus. The early church has a very long history of fabrication & falsification. (Just look at all the incompatible accounts of this Jesus prior to the Council of Nicea) With this sort of willingness to mess with the evidence why would it surprise anyone that a passage about JC would be inserted into Josephus' history?

I can't imagine that Eusebius & company would have been too pleased to find that the eminent Josephus failed to notice their hero when he wastes so much ink on many other much more trivial Jesus' of the time. How galling for one's hero to be invisible.

The TF doesn't hold up to scrutiny.

-evan

aa5874

So I hope you now understand the difference between "proof" and "position".

It is my position that there was no character called Jesus Christ, real or imagined, before the writings of Tacitus and Pliny based on all the information that I have seen so far.

Kapyong

Gday,

Um, no it's not.

Let's make sure we are on the same page - I am focussing on two issues :
* Jesus being from the 1st century
* Jesus being a teacher

CHAPTER 16
For Christ is of those who are humble-minded, and not of those who exalt themselves over His flock. Our Lord Jesus Christ, the Sceptre of the majesty of God, did not come in the pomp of pride or arrogance, although He might have done so, but in a lowly condition, as the Holy Spirit had declared regarding Him. For He says, "Lord, who has believed our report, and to whom is the arm of the Lord revealed? We have declared [our message] in His presence: He is, as it were, a child, and like a root in thirsty ground; He has no form nor glory, yea, we saw Him, and He had no form nor comeliness; but His form was without eminence, yea, deficient in comparison with the [ordinary] form of men. He is a man exposed to stripes and suffering, and acquainted with the endurance of grief: for His countenance was turned away; He was despised, and not esteemed. He bears our iniquities, and is in sorrow for our sakes; yet we supposed that [on His own account] He was exposed to labour, and stripes, and affliction. But He was wounded for our transgressions, and bruised for our iniquities. The chastisement of our peace was upon Him, and by His stripes we were healed. All we, like sheep, have gone astray; [every] man has wandered in his own way; and the Lord has delivered Him up for our sins, while He in the midst of His sufferings opens not His mouth. He was brought as a sheep to the slaughter, and as a lamb before her shearer is dumb, so He opens not His mouth. In His humiliation His judgment was taken away; who shall declare His generation? For His life is taken from the earth. For the transgressions of my people was He brought down to death. And I will give the wicked for His sepulchre, and the rich for His death, because He did no iniquity, nor was guile found in His mouth. And the Lord is pleased to purify Him by stripes. If you make an offering for sin, your soul shall see a long-lived seed. And the Lord is pleased to relieve Him of the affliction of His soul, to show Him light, and to form Him with understanding, to justify the Just One who ministers well to many; and He Himself shall carry their sins. On this account He shall inherit many, and shall divide the spoil of the strong; because His soul was delivered to death, and He was reckoned among the transgressors, and He bare the sins of many, and for their sins was He delivered." And again He says, "I am a worm, and no man; a reproach of men, and despised of the people. All who see Me have derided Me; they have spoken with their lips; they have wagged their head, [saying] He hoped in God, let Him deliver Him, let Him save Him, since He delights in Him." You see, beloved, what is the example which has been given us; for if the Lord thus humbled Himself, what shall we do who have through Him come under the yoke of His grace?

I don't see any signs Jesus was a teacher - there is talk of trangressions, suffering, sins, there is talk of Jesus coming in 'a lowly condition' and being despised etc. We hear what the Holy Spirit says about Jesus - but we never hear he was a 'teacher' or that he 'taught'.

Can you please explain exactly what words here you think show Jesus was a teacher?

Yes, you are correct - Polycarp refers to the 'Lord in his teaching'.
My mistake.


It's a bit of a stretch from there to being 'teacher' I reckon.


Are you claiming they DID?
Where?
I can't see anything in Clement, Polycarp or the Didakhe which places Jesus in the 1st century.


K.

judge

I would not agree that we have evidence in Acts of a lot of attention. We have a few scattered instances

Yes the jewsih fundies were apparently upset.


Yes, his letters and Acts talk of some in these areas who had heard about (another) meissiah. But we still cant conclude that the numbers were that big.

Im not sure we would expect much if the numbers were not big. And from what I can see we cant conclude they were supposed to have been.

What exactly should have been documented? I still dont see it?

Certainly at Pilates time the numbers would have been small. 3000 were "saved" in a day but how many of these alleged new believers might have followed through? (as many as from a Billy Graeme crusade?)

Well that was Johns interpretation of the gospel, but we dont have any evidence that this interpretation existed seperately as this logos type gospel, just that it existed (at some point) happily alongside the synoptics.


We dont know whether no one noticed this or that. All we know is that no records we have mention it. But Im just not sure what we can conclude from that.


Maybe.


I would probably agree, up to a point. It may be (actually certainly was) that early on it was very different from the institutionalised versions that became dominant later on.
The institutionalised versions naturally attracted far greater attention, but even then though numbers were quite large the dicumentation is still not over whelming.
In fact there are those right here on this forum who belive chistianity was invented by Constatine!

Toto

But not based on the Testamonium. Peter Kirby, along with Steve Mason, relies on the short reference to "James the brother of Jesus called Christ." Read the conclusion:

I am not sure why you think that a single paragraph from the beginning is "the main point." Is that where you stopped reading?

andrewcriddle

Chapter 13 of 1 Clement has
Andrew Criddle

Tristan Scott

Sorry. I'll have to break out my Lightfoot and look it up again, that's not the passage I was thinking of.


I was being facetious. Of course it would stand that he came before them, neh? They speak of him in the past tense do they not? Did you expect them to say "He lived in the first Century CE."?

On Edit: I read on down the thread and noted that Andrew fond the passage I was seeking, it was 13, not 16.

ynquirer

And what difference does it make for the OP? The position is that there is no historical source mentioning Jesus the Christ prior to Pliny and Tacitus, while Josephus is at any rate such a source.

The main point – let me insist – is that everything about the TF is, at the very best for you, highly controversial. This is a point that Kirby summarizes rather well in that single paragraph.