GakuseiDon

I'm not aware that this is true. Jesus, Bar Kochba and Vespasian were all declared to be Messiahs, but that is about all. Who were the others?

IIUC, "Messiah" and "Christ" both mean "anointed". I know there was "Chrestus", but I've never heard that someone could be called "Christ" to indicate that they were pious. Who was called "Christ" as a description of their piousness?

Josephus was writing in Rome around 90 CE. IF the Tacitus passage is not a forgery, "Christ" would have been known as the originator of a "strange, new religion" by Romans from the 60s CE.

There isn't much literature surviving from those times, so others may have written about Jesus but the materials didn't survive. Short of pointing out that God should have kept those materials extant, how would we know?

So, IYO how many people should have written about him? What is your bench-mark for correlating "fame" and "written references" from the First Century?

No Robots

But Arthur Drews didn't even publish until 1909. In 1911 an article was published saying that mythicism was causing a storm in Germany.

Solo

This sounds reasonable. G.A. Wells quipped in a paper he delivered at Ann Arbour, that just because the mythicist case was poorly argued in the past (meaning 1880-1910), does not mean it could not be argued well in 1985.

But Andrew, is there anyone or any book from that era that you recall which demonstrated the problems with the mythicist approach ?

Fair enough. Thanks.

BTW, how well was Gerald Massey known in Britain in his own time ?

Jiri

Malachi151

Well that's the problem. We are here discussing approached from the 19th century basically. N some ways the "movement" was premature, and their premature arguments got beaten down and opponents gladly slammed the door shut and called ti a closed case, but its not a closed case.

Yes, the old arguments don't hold up, we know that. I myself disagree with many of the old arguments.

A lot of the old arguments relied on comparing the story of Jesus to other mythical pagan characters, and they emphasized a "pagan" twist on Christianity.

Yes, there is a "pagan" twist, but it is minor, Christianity is a primarily Jewish phenomenon. A lot of the paganism came in from later cultural influences, but it has little impact on the gospels. It has some, but very minor.

So, this whole line of Jesus vs. Dionysus or Jesus vs. Osiris (which was popular in the 19h century) is wholly insufficient to make the case, and mostly just brings up interesting, but uncritical parallels.

The real case against a historical Jesus has, IMO, been made in the past 20 years, and relies a lot on the work of the Jesus Seminar.

Here, IMO, and the best "pieces of evidence" against a historical Jesus, in order of importance:

1) All of the story gospels rely on Mark, and virtually every detail of Mark is pulled from Old Testament scriptures.

2) Some of the critical uses of OT scriptures from the Septuagint in the gospels are based on mistranslations.

3) There is not one single would-be contemporary writing about Jesus, either from the Bible or otherwise.

4) Philo, who we know for a fact wrote about events in Judea during the reign of Pontious Pilate, never wrote about Jesus, though he clearly shows an interest in the ideas that are later purported to be of Jesus in the gospels.

5) None of the non-Christian references to "Jesus" are either legitimate or show that they are not themselves based on the claims of Christians, i.e. there are no independent references (and here I am reliant on the arguments that dismiss the quotes by Josephus).

6) Josephus (assuming that the two attributions about Jesus are false) never wrote anything about Jesus or even Christians.

7) The gospels make many claims that are not supported by other historical sources or facts.

8) Many aspects of the gospels are much better explained as allegory or allusion than they are as history.

9) Paul, the first person to write about Jesus, provides no details of his life and in many cases says things that lead one to believe he does not believe that Jesus Christ had ever been on this earth.

10) There were many conflicting ideas about who Jesus was among early Christians from the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd centuries, including ideas that he never exited "in the flesh" and that he never came to earth.

11) The Catholics made a purely THEOLOGICAL argument for why Jesus had to have been human and "in the flesh"

12) There are other non-Christian examples of "fictional" people being written about as if they existed, and with similar powers, from the same period.

13) There was never any unbroken tradition that acknowledged the death of Jesus and either his burial or his empty tomb. Either way, if he had any significant followers at all, whether he was simply buried or there really was an empty tomb, someone would have been worshiping it, some groups of people would have sanctified it, some group of people would have written about it, and honored it, and known where it was, etc.

Malachi151

That's why I added the note. Messiah and Christos are different.


http://www.sacred-texts.com/chr/ecf/002/0020095.htm

All the more strange why Josephus didn't write about it. We don't actually know from the Tacitus quote, assuming it is authentic (which I assume it is), what was known about the Christians in 64, we only know what Tacitus knew about them in 109. Tacitus is providing a 109 description of who Christians are.

Yes and no. Even if the "originals" (copies of the original texts) didn't make it, we should still expect to find quotes and references by others. Even still, you are just speculating about non-evidence here. We are talking about evidence, what is the EVIDENCE for his existence.

Number is unimportant. Authenticity and independence are what it important. There only needs to be one clear objective reference to put this baby to rest, but there isn't such a reference now.

For example, we do have a such a reference to Muhammad, so I think we can safely assume that there is *some* historical basis to the Muhammad story, though from the non-Muslim reference we can't confirm any of the Muslim story, we can confirm that there was some warlord of note in the right place and the right time. Whether this guy had anything to do with the Koran is another story, but someone was there that seems to have been the basis for the Muhammad of legend.

We can't say the same for Jesus.

Amaleq13

I don't know. Why not ask Richard Carrier why he is writing a book arguing for a mythical Jesus rather than attempting to publish an article in a journal?

Bodhi

So you expect personal notes written by common people mentioning Jesus to have survived this long, or to have been found and documented by historians back then? Now that's ridiculous.

Malachi151

That's beside the point. We are looking for EVIDENCE. What EVIDENCE exists?

If there is no evidence, then what is the basis for your claim?

And again, see my earlier post, we also have a lot of evidence against his existence.

Her pinkness saves

there's always government records; i hear the Romans were quite good at keeping track of those things. >.>

aa5874

Yes, I expect the common people to know Jesus Christ, and write about him. Even today the common people take note of popular people, get their autographs, pay large sums of money to see them, write letters to them, sometimes even stalk them, dress like them and impersonate them.
A person's popularity generally involves the common people and lots of them. hence the word 'popular'.

There appears to be no solid evidence, outside of the Bible, to confirm that a person under the name Jesus Christ was popular, was known by the common people. In the interpolated passage of Josephus, it is claimed that Jesus Christ did ten thousand wonderful things, but for some reason the common people could not remember.