DramaQ

Has this dependence been mapped out somewhere? I'd love to read more. I know you explained the relationship of Mark to the Petrine brand of Christianity, but is there a more direct dependence on Paul?

I always thought Paul's spiritual "Christ" was as lacking in Mark as the human one is missing from Paul.

dq

bfniii

"His only writings to have survived to modern times is the Naturalis historia." this work, while voluminous, is encyclopedic in nature. it's focus is geographical, zoological and anthropological. would we expect him to have recorded the risen saints at the crucifixion in this work?

if this one fantastic claim were the only claim of this author or of the Bible, you might have a point. but given the fact that the author and the Bible as a whole have been corroborated by extra-biblical works, there is no reason to doubt it until there is hard evidence to the contrary. it may seem implausible, but the source appears to be credible.

additionally, the people who did believe were most assuredly absorbed into the movement and accepted the writings that were written at the end of the first and beginning of the second century. if you already have those works in circulation, especially at church services, what need is there for further documentation? it already exists and is being heard regularly either in print or in vox. it appears that there were others who, while they didn't become christians, don't deny that the events occurred. again, there is no reason why a doubter couldn't have very easily debunked the stories of these radicals.

it's not necessary to "accept as true without substantiation". there are reasonable explanations to such recordings as we are seeing in this thread.

i meant in the context that the jews asked the romans to do so. the romans only did so at the behest of the locals.

Jesus being an obvious example to the contrary. he was crucified for heresy. pilate washed his hands of the case so he clearly wasn't concerned with treason.

i guess the point is that until the source is discredited, why doubt it's veracity? again, some events may be implausible, but that doesn't make them untrue.

as long as we're being unspecific; many, many of these criciticisms have been answered with plausible explanations.

Amaleq13

Not necessarily but we would expect the early Church Fathers to mention the fact that Pliny talked about the claim. That he apparently did not mention it does not prove it never happened but proving something didn't happen is logically problematic. That is why the burden is on anyone claiming that a given event did occur. Noting that some other claims seem to have support does not logically constitute support for a different claim.

Whether it is isolated or one among many is ultimately irrelevant. Each claim must be considered on its own. The simple fact is that there is no support for the "risen saints" claim in Matthew.

This is a claim you have made repeatedly but have yet to support with specific evidence. That is why I suggested earlier that we focus on a specific claim.

Even if we accept your assertion above, this is flawed reasoning as has been explained to you already. You cannot, at least from a rational position, generalize support for specific details to the whole. That sort of leap requires faith.

Again, we have ample evidence that the earliest opponents of Christians felt free to dismiss them as gullible and superstitious.

A "reasonable explanation" is not substantiation. In fact, your "reasonable explanations" appear to be attempts to explain the absence of substantiation. You are, in fact, asking that the claim be accepted without substantiation.

Unfortunately for your argument, this notion is contrary to those "extrabiblical documents" you seem to consider supportive of your Bible. Everything we know about Pilate from outside the Gospels suggests he was not interested in the least in executing folks just because the local Jewish leaders asked him to do so. If the Romans executed Jesus, it was because they found him guilty according to Roman standards.

Again, this is contrary to everything we know about Pilate and the Romans from outside the Bible. Crucifixion was a Roman punishment reserved for very specific crimes.

Your source has now been discredited in that it makes a claim about the trial, conviction, and execution of Jesus that is contrary to extrabiblical documents.

Mageth

Umm, but this new faction was considered just one among many Jewish factions, all of which made various claims. Why would anyone think it important to "verify the credibility" of this particular one? Either the Jews accepted it, or tolerated it, or they opposed it; the same is true for the other various factions.

Apparently, from Acts and elsewhere, some prominent Jewish sects were strongly opposed to this new faction; others were more tolerant. But this was true of other factions as well. Acts reports several actions by certain factions of the Jews against the early Christians; scoffing, arrests, beatings, prohibitions against speaking in the name of Jesus (see Acts 5:40), even murders. The faction Saul belonged to was anti-Christian; hence, Saul's acts against Christians. The faction Gamaliel belonged to was more tolerant of Christianity.

For the Jewish sects that opposed the faction, their methods of oppression were not limited to credibility claims. They didn't think the claims were credible anyway, so why bother? A simple "this is bullshit" would suffice, along with other means of oppression. And they perhaps understood that attempts to discredit the movement through some sort of factual investigation and claims to the contrary would not stop the movement anyway - that sort of action never worked. When has that ever worked? It certainly doesn't work against most Christians today, long after the fact. And how, exactly, would they go about disproving the claim that Jesus had risen from the dead and appeared to those who claimed he had?

"Verifying credibility" wasn't exactly in vogue at that time. Note that people of that time were much more "mystical" and "superstitious" and much less "rational" than we generally are today. There were no "rationalists" or "skeptics", there was no "scientific method", there were no "crime scene investigators"; the people believed that the "miraculous" was possible. They had the Torah and other Hebrew writings to teach them that. They believed in God, and that God could and did intervene in human affairs, and sends various judges and prophets "anointed by God" to Israel, fully capable of performing miracles in God's name. They believed in miraculous healing, in demons, even that it was possible to "raise the dead."

And note especially that the earliest Christians were Jewish Christians, not that different than some other Jewish factions, and until Paul co-opted Christianity, kept Jewish Law, were in the Temple, etc. The break from Judaism began with Paul (years after the alleged events in the Gospel) and was completed only after the fall of Jerusalem in 70 CE. Early Christianity adapted many teachings and beliefs from pre-existing Jewish factions, and indeed many of the teachings attributed to Jesus can be found in Jewish writings that predate Jesus. So many Jews saw this new sect as just another faction of Judaism, and were not that concerned about it. Either it would last, or it would die out.

In Acts 5, there is a quite interesting account. You can read the whole account if you wish; I'll start at verse 34:

Then stood there up one in the council, a Pharisee, named Gamaliel, a doctor of the law, had in reputation among all the people, and commanded to put the apostles forth a little space; And said unto them, Ye men of Israel, take heed to yourselves what ye intend to do as touching these men. For before these days rose up Theudas, boasting himself to be somebody; to whom a number of men, about four hundred, joined themselves: who was slain; and all, as many as obeyed him, were scattered, and brought to nought. After this man rose up Judas of Galilee in the days of the taxing, and drew away much people after him: he also perished; and all, [even] as many as obeyed him, were dispersed. And now I say unto you, Refrain from these men, and let them alone: for if this counsel or this work be of men, it will come to nought: But if it be of God, ye cannot overthrow it; lest haply ye be found even to fight against God. And to him they agreed: and when they had called the apostles, and beaten [them], they commanded that they should not speak in the name of Jesus, and let them go.

Now, whether this account is wholly accurate or not I do not know, but I suspect that there's some truth to it (no doubt you accept it as wholly accurate) along with some embellishment. Acts is not an unbiased, objective account of early Christianity, after all; one could expect to see some embellishments in favor of the Chrisitian faith.

But the important thing to note is that Gamaliel, a prominent Jew of the time, appears to have been at least somewhat sympathetic to the Jewish Christian sect. His opinion, accepted by the counsel, was to leave them alone. If the sect were "of God", they couldn't be defeated; if they weren't, it would come to naught.

There was little talk, if any, about "verifying their credibility"; the claims they made were impossible to verify or disprove. As Peter says in Verse 32: "And we are his witnesses of these things; and [so is] also the Holy Ghost, whom God hath given to them that obey him." All they had to go on was the word of those who claimed to have witnessed "these things"; bringing forth someone to say "I did not witness those things" would be pointless, and they knew it. There was no way to factually discredit what the Christians were claiming.

As an aside, even early on, Christianity was a "faith" religion:

John 20:29 Jesus saith unto him, Thomas, because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed: blessed [are] they that have not seen, and [yet] have believed.

But then, I suppose all religions require a certain degree of faith to believe. Christianity, however, has made an art of faith. But note that attempts to discredit the claims of such faith-based religions are futile; the believers are taught, as in the above verse, that faith is a virtue, and believing the claims of the religion is not based on evidence, but on faith. Read 1 Corinthians 1 for Paul's opinion on the Gospel - it's "foolishness" to the world, a stumbling block to the Jews, and foolishness to the Greeks (Gentiles). Only those "called" see the wisdom of it.

The early Christians were ridiculed, and many did not believe the claims. You really need to read Acts, and the Gospels, and the rest of the NT for that matter. But I'll repeat: someone coming forward and saying they did not witness the alleged events, e.g. the resurrected Christ, would have been pointless and ineffective against the new faction. Just think about it. How could one prove what one did not witness? And how does a claim that you did not witness something disprove or discredit those who say they did? All they have to say is that you were not there. How could you prove that you were there? And remember: the risen Christ allegedly appeared only to believers. There are no accounts of him making appearances to the general public. And those to whom the Gospel was preached were admonished to accept the claims through faith, faith in the testimony of the alleged witnesses and faith in God. No one was presenting "hard evidence" of Christ's resurrection.

And again, you're assuming that the events in question happened. The events in question were, are, and will remain alleged. And a general lack of recordations of factual refutations of the claims does nothing to support the veracity of the claims.

Christ allegedly "revealed" himself only to Saul. His entourage were not so priveleged. And in one account of this incident, they were struck deaf; in another, they were struck blind.

But this alleged and apparently unique event hardly contradicts my claim that the risen Christ did not appear to the general public, does it?

No, the statement does not "stand in opposition". The happenings in the Fourth Century concerning Constantine, the Council of Nicea, and various other players were part of that long, drawn-out process. However, I did oversimplify the complexity of the canonization of the Bible a bit; it seems it was much more complex than I even understood. And I was mistaken in stating that the Council of Nicea set the Canon. That Council settled on, or at least attempted to settle on, an orthodox "creed" for Christianity. That orthodox "creed" no doubt influenced what texts were accepted as canonical.

Here's a brief description of Constantine and the Church, and the Council of Nicea, that describes some of the controversies there:

http://www.columbia.edu/cu/augustine...andt/nicea.htm

Here's a long article on the long, drawn-out process that Christianity went through in coming up with a canonical Bible:

http://www.infidels.org/library/mode...r/NTcanon.html

Here's a shorter version:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Tes..._New_Testament

Why would we expect there to be any? And again, the absense of such documentation does not lend one bit of credence to the Bible.

What other historical documents "corroborate" the Bible, especially the incredible claims of the Bible? And there are many other historical documents that "refute" the Bible, or describe histories that are contradictory to the claims of the Bible, or at least call the Biblical accounts into question.

Why should I not doubt the claims of Jesus' birth, life, death and resurrection when there is little or no extrabiblical references to those claims, either to support them or refute them, and when those claims are so incredible? The only reason anyone has to accept them is faith, your assertions to the contrary.

The claim that some incredible accounts from a "historical document" should be accepted without doubt because other historical documents don't refute those accounts is ridiculous.

We can "trust" what is credible from antiquity, naturally. The Gospel accounts are not credible.

Non-miraculous content of the Bible has not really been in question here. At least some of that is credible (no one has said otherwise; no one's claiming that the Bible is entirely untrue or incredible), and is generally accepted as "possibly or probably true", though I don't think historians generally accept any historical document as "literal truth" as you claim. History doesn't work that way; we can't, and don't, even know the "literal truth" of what happened in Iraq last week, for chrissake. Accepting historical documents as "literal truth" lies more in the realm of religion than history.

Some of the content of an "historical document" being "reliable" does not make the entire document reliable. And much of the Bible is not reliable; for example, Noah's Flood, which is obviously a myth. Several other examples have been provided on this thread. Another example: how did Judas die? There are two distinctly different accounts in the Bible that describe the end of Judas.

Sure we do. Many such reasons have been provided to you in this thread.

No, but "fantastic" equals "incredible", and "incredible" claims require corroborating evidence, and lots of it. The Bible gets some names, places and events correct; therefore, everything the Bible claims should be accepted, even the incredible claims? (The Koran gets a lot of things right as well; much of the Koran is reliable. Should we accept its fantastic claims? After all, "fantastic" does not equal "false") The Bible correctly describes Jerusalem and mentions a historical figure or two, such as Pilate, therefore the resurrection accounts are "reliable"? Things just don't work that way.

How could they have stopped them? They tried, if you read your NT, but failed. And note that there are many other successful religions in the world: Hinduism, Islam, Buddhism, Mormonism, Scientology, etc etc. If the claims of those religions were untrue, why did people allow the propagation of such "falsities"? The truth or falsehood of religious claims seems to have little to do with the success of religions.

Most if not all people at the time did not see what the Christians claimed as "obvious lies", as they had no way of knowing they were "obvious lies." They just saw Christians as one more Jewish faction making messianic claims, one among many making various claims, messianic or otherwise. And, in the mindset prevalent at the time, their claims were possible. They were a generally superstitious people, open to myth, steeped in mythology, and many were open and receptive to the claims being made by this new faction.

And if someone claimed to have seen the resurrected Jesus, and you were not there, how would you know what they were claiming was an "obvious lie"? How could you discredit what they were claiming? And why would you bother? As Gamaliel said in Acts 5, it's best just to leave them alone, with the occasional beating and admonition to cease-and-desist making their claims; the movement will die out on its own if there's nothing to it.

newtype_alpha

I think I posted this before, but nobody saw it obviously so I'll post it again.

There's a supposed reference to Jesus in the Babylonian Talmud and mentions a certain heretical would-be prophet who was stoned to death for heresy. It mentions him by the name of "Yeshu" and mentions several of his followers. There is also an account in Rabbinical literature that is thought by some to be fictional (personally I'm undecided) that says that after Jesus was crucified and burried, a gardner named Juda caught wind of a plot by his disciples to steal his body and then claim he had risen from the dead and gone into hiding. Juda and two of his men broke into the tomb before they could succeed and burried the body in his garden. The chief priests heard about the resurrection, but were relieved to hear that Juda had actually hidden the body from the desciples; he sold them Jesus' corpse for thirty pieces of silver, and the chief priests dragged his body through the streets of Jerusalem, mocking the desciples who claimed he had risen.

This is one example of an extra-biblical account that suggests the existence of Jesus.



Tacitus also makes direct reference to Jesus:

But, despite kindly influence, despite the leader's generous handouts, despite appeasing the gods, the scandal did not subside, rather the blaze came to be believed to be an official act. So, in order to quash the rumour, Nero blamed it on, and applied the cruellest punishments to, those sinners, whom ordinary people call Christians, hating them for their shameful behaviour. (15.44.2) The originator of this name, Christus, was sent to execution by Procurator Pontius Pilate, during the reign of Tiberius, but although checked for a moment, the deadly cult erupted again, not just in Judaea, the source of its evil, but even in Rome, where all the sins and scandals of the world gather and are glorified. (15.44.3)

That's two examples of extra-biblical account that suggests the existence of Jesus.

Following from this, however, we can say that we know for sure only three things:
1) Christianity was founded by a single person, who was a man
2) The founder of Christianity was executed by Pilate
3) The disciples of the man who founded Christianity claim that their executed leader actually rose from the dead (while their opponents maintain that the disciples stole his body, as alluded to both in the Talmud and in Mathew)

These are the only things we can make any reasonable case for; indeed, at this point we cannot even confirm that his name really was Jesus -- Aramaic Yeshua. The other claims, namely the accouns of "Jesus" walking on water, feeding 5000 people, healing the sick, etc, are not corroborated by any other source at all, so they cannot be confirmed or denied.

Put this in perspective: does the Gospel have any more or less credibility than the Epic of Gilgamesh? How about The Iliad or the Odyssy? How about the Ballad of Baachus? (which, by the way, was a fairly popular play before Jesus arrived on the scene. If you don't remember Baachus, he is the first western deity who was ever "resurrected" after being killed. Incidentally he was also the son of Zeus, born of a virgin, and persecuted by his opponents who believed his religion and followers were problematic :wave: ).

Boro Nut

You have hit the nutshell right on the head. I've been making this point for ages. Chipendale was nowhere near as famous as Jesus, but Sothebys is full of his furniture. If there really was a Jesus his stuff would be selling for millions by now. And given his infinite knowledge, he would have made video cabinets and CD racks and invented Ikea to sell them in.

Boro Nut

Mageth

Well, he did give us the Cross, though it appears his design is derivative. And have you ever tried sitting on a cross? Damn uncomfortable, and always ripping your trousers on those nails getting up and down...

Boro Nut

You know that's not true. But there, you see, is another telling story. The devil is in the detail you see, and that's where the bible authors mucked up. If he had truly been a carpenter he wouldn't have said stuff like "Forgive them father" blah blah. He would be going "Oh the shame. Sniff. What will the guild think of me. Sob. Look at it. Sniff. Those dovetails are absolutely shocking".

And they want us to believe that he was a carpenter, who was killed by being nailed to a lump of wood? No. Much more likely he was a plumber, and was killed by having his head pushed down a toilet. But that wouldn't sell nearly as many bibles. The irony would be a lot clearer that way though, which I'm sure was the whole point of the excercise from the Roman's perspective.

Boro Nut

Mageth

:notworthy

Damn good thing for him he wasn't a proctologist, eh? But, thinking about it, Christians often act as if that were the case...

bfniii

is his credibility and following growing or waning?