pharoah

If we can flatly proclaim that Jesus existed despite all of the embellishments, then on what grounds do we rule out the existence of Achilles, Hercules, Perseus, Odysseus, Jason, Theseus and any other amount of heroes and demi-gods whose stories may have been merely "embellished"?

jgibson000

The claim is about Greek texts produced by Greco Roman authors commenting on Greek stories of Greek demigods. So no, this does not qualify

Besides that, not only is the Mahabharata not the genre of literature that "Biff the unclean" (yeah, I bet the use of that moniiker in social gatherings wows the ladies and reduces them to putty) was making claims about. There's no evidence of the influence of Hinduism or Hindu texts on Hellenistic authors, is there?

Sparky the Antiseptic

er, I mean

Jeffrey Gibson

jakejonesiv

Woa up there fire pup. No disrespect intended for Jeffrey Jay Lowder or any other poster at IIDB, but there is no privedged position for Historical Jesus.

The gospels are religous tracts, not historical documents.

They were written generations later, and according to one of my favorite posters at IIDB, the gospels didn't gain their own reputation until around the end of the second century. Holy ---, Batman! That is 170 years after the alleged events!

Can you give us some historical sources contemporary to the first third of the first century CE which mention a man named Jesus whom we can identify with the Jesus of the gospels?

Do you think the pled for viginity of Mary is prima facia evidence for the Virgin birth? Do you think that the account of the empty tomb is prima facia evidence of the Auferstehung or even an empty tomb? The gospels are not reliable, and are not prima facia evidence for any thing except perhaps religous gulibilty.

As it stands, it seems you have no contemporary evidence at all for your case. Yet we do have the negative evidence of the Pauline epistles, which didn't know of a Jesus with any historical anchors. A large handicap to the „Gospels as History" case. Instead, moving from Paul to Mark we see a process of reverse-Euhemerism.

There are other early documents, Rabbinical works, that apparently place Jesus during a different time period. Do these get the free pass "prima facia" designation also? Why not? And if not, aren't you engaging in special pleading for the NT canonical writings?

The only independent Christian source that places Jesus in the time of Pilatus is GMark. Other Christian works are derivitive of Mark. (Yes GJohn too, as the intercalations in the Petrine denials proves). There are no undisputed pagan or Jewish sources that can attest to Jesus' place or time in history. The TF is an interpolation. Apologists admit that it is as sloppy as all hell, but want to get partial credit for the part they like. So the HJ case is reduced to grading on a curve.

The traditional theory of Christian origins lacks primary evidence. That is not necessarily fatal, but does leave the question justifiably open to alternative theories.

And please spare me from the examples of the historical illustrations (like Julius Caesar) who left behind contemporary archaeological evidence, artifacts, coins or inscriptions; evidence which is missing for Jesus Christ.

Jake Jones IV

Julian

The fact that the issue is irrelevant is easily demonstrated by the the following observations. We know that most of the gospel material can be discarded as being inventions taking place up to, and including, the writing of the gospels. We are left with a variety of material which may, or may not, be historical. Maybe it is all historical, maybe none of it. Since we cannot determine historicity it logically follows that the historicity of any given event has no bearing on the development of the religion. The important issue is that most believers ascribe some amount of historicity to the writings. But it is their infusion of historicity into enough of the gospel material that shapes their belief and the religious trajectory of christianity and not the factual historicity of the events. We can therefore conclude that it is the belief in the historicity, and its subsequent belief system elements, that is the engine of the religion.

It probably mattered to the first christians whether or not Jesus was an actual person, it certainly matters a great deal vis-a-vis christian origins, but once the ball was set in motion it became a moot point since belief became the driving force as opposed to a physical charismatic impetus in the form of a historical person.

The question of historicity matters to someone who wants to know how it started but to me that is akin to studying the Big Bang, we simply do not have the necessary information and we are unlikely to ever possess it. It simply boils down to probabilities, probabilities that show very little decisive divergence, hence my lack of interest.

Julian

aa5874

The New Testament is not credible. The New Testamant contains contradictory, inconsistent, incoherent and false statements. The birth of Jesus Christ, for example, is false in Matthew ,and, or Luke. The statements regarded as prophecies in Matthew are clearly false, there are no prophecies in the OT of Jesus Christ. There is a long list of verifiable falsehood in the NT.

It is outrageously absurd to claim no independent confirmation of the New Testament's claim, that Jesus Christ existed, is required. Only a person without basic reading skills can make such a statement.

The NT is not trustworthy, the authors are unknown, no-one can verify if the words purported to be from Jesus Christ are actually his words. The immediate family of Jesus Christ is questionable, his genealogy going back to David cannot be resolved. Events surrounding his birth are not known to have occured outside the Bible. In the NT, Jesus Christ did improble acts witnessed by multitudes, which now appear to be false. The time of his death, and those he died with, is uncertain.

Matthew and Luke shows clearly that at least 2 different persons were called Jesus. Were these two persons crucified on the same day?. Are you saying that all persons named Jesus who were crucified, any or all qualify to be called Jesus Christ?

If no criteria is needed to confirm the credibility of the NT, then the NT is inerrant.

dongiovanni1976x

If the archaeological evidence for Pilate prior to 1961 was NOTHING, and the literary evidence was limited to the New Testament, Josephus and Philo, then why would there not be a single dissenting voice that Pilate maybe Mythical?
What is so overwhelming about a few verses in Josephus (Antiquities 18.35, 55-64, 85-89, 177;
Jewish War 2.169-177) and one in Philo (Embassy to Gaius, 38) that makes this figure from antiquity indisputable when (minus Philo) the same amount of literary evidence can be conjured up for an historical Jesus when he is linked via Josephus (Antiquities 20.9.1), Paul (Galatians 1:19) and GMark (6:3) through his brother James that he (Jesus) was an actual person who lived?

Toto

It's a matter of triangulation. All of the evidence for Jesus comes from ideological Christian sources (given that the Josephan passage appears to be a Christian interpolation.) There are obvious motives to present a picture of a historical Jesus in conformity with Christian doctrine. We have no picture of this first century Jesus from his detractors or enemies or neutral sources.

But there is no motive to invent a historical Pilate. Josephus and Philo present him as a villain, the gospels as a quasi-hero.

All this aside, as a matter of fact, no one questioned the historicity of Pilate. It's a Christian urban myth, made up for ideological reasons.

dongiovanni1976x

When Paul was writing, it is safe to assume as an historian that he believed that he would live to see the return of Christ (see Fredriksen quote below). As such I seriously doubt that he thought that his letters of encouragement and castigation sent to various Christian communities would later be collected and lumped into what we call teh New Testament. Since even Earl Doherty admits that Mark and Paul sprang from independent communities then Mark, Paul and Josephus are a perfect triagulation to use to support that James had a brother that was recognized as Jesus.
The burden is upon the mythicist to support the desired claim to call Antiquities 20.9.1 an interpolation. It seems rather convenient to dismiss it as such in order to strengthen the Mythicist position.

jakejonesiv

Hi Toto,

Good points. Like many other details in the alleged life of Jesus, perhaps Pontius Pilate was plucked from Josephus and acretted into the life of Christ. Flavius Josephus, Jewish Antiquities 18.85-89.

So what happens here? About 36 CE, a troublesome Samaritan Moses wanna-be gets executed by PP. So if executing messianic claimants was PP's "signature move," he could well have been imagined to have done the same for the alleged Nazarene too.

ymmv

Jake Jones IV

Toto

Realize that Jeffrey Jay Lowder wrote this as (I believe) an undergraduate philosophy student; that his main interest is debate; that for the purposes of debate he accepts the standard secular historical paradigm, which sees Jesus as a historical person overlaid with mythology.

His point there was that since the existence of a human Jesus, not born of a virgin, not rising from the dead, is not an extraordinay claim, there is no requirement of an extraordinay level of proof, so the gospels are sufficient evidence, even if 95% myth. He has also said, in his seminars on debate, that the Jesus Myth hypothesis is not necessary for atheism, and is too complicated to bring into most debates.

This is basically Julian's position - the question of the historicity of Jesus is beyond our current knowledge, if you require any significant level of proof.