aa5874

Total confusion. You cannot determine fact from fiction. Tell me what in the NT with respect to Jesus is historiography and what is fiction.

Civil1z@tion

Most historical figures have more evidence for their existence than Jesus. For instance, with Pericles we have contemporary records of him (mainly the wonderfully precise Thucydides) as well as surviving ruins of his acheivements (the Parthenon). Socrates might be a bit more doubtful except that Plato, who is our main source on that man, was a) a contemporary and b) had to have gotten Socrates' philosophy from somewhere. No way did he just make it up himself as had he done so he would have credited himself (just as Plato does not credit his own philosophy to anyone else). For most major historical figures we have either contemporary texts and/or archelogical evidence for their existence. With Jesus, the closest text we have to his life is decades after his death and no archelogical evidence really exists for him (unless you want to believe that the "Jesus tomb" proves his existence, which runs into the problem that Jesus and his family member's names were rather common during Jesus's lifetime).

Personally, I think a preacher named Jesus existed because it seems to me to be the simplest answer to the evidence we have. We know from contemporary sources like Josephus that apocalyptic preachers were a dime a dozen in 1st century Judea. We know that some guys wrote stories about one of these dudes a few decades later. And we know that attaching claims of miracles to a cult's prophet was nothing new and is even common today. Taken together, it seems likely that Jesus existed. On the other hand, his level of historiocity is not to be compared to that of Alexander the Great or Socrates. The evidence for their existence is far more overwhelming and convincing than that for Jesus.

aa5874

But, the main problem with Jesus of Nazareth, is that his existence has been challenged from since the 2nd century, quite unlike Alexander the Great or any other figure of antiquity.


But, you have no corroborative evidence whatsoever that there was even a person named Jesus, son of Mary, who was a preacher. What you think might be is not equivalent to having credible evidence to support your thoughts.

It is likely that there were apocalyptic preachers, but there is no non-apologetic evidence that Jesus of Nazareth was one of them in the 1st century or any century at all.

Steven Carr

Why did you claim p52 mentioned Jesus?

Roger Pearse

This is not so. Go through one of the prosopographies (i.e. lists of people known from ancient times), and look at the evidence for each. Most are known by a single sliver of evidence.

It is useless to compare a Galilean peasant with people living at the centre of events in the centre of the civilised world. We have to compare marginal figures with our evidence for other marginal figures, to get a standard of what we can reasonably expect (although why our expectations are evidence I have yet to learn).

All the best,

Roger Pearse

Steven Carr

The Son of God is a marginal figure in history.

We know, because Christians tell us so.

aa5874

It is patently erroneous to claim that Jesus of Nazareth was a marginal figure from Galillee.

The internal information from the NT and "Church History" by Eusebius do not depict Jesus of Nazareth as a marginal figure at all. Jesus, according to apologetic sources, was well known "among all men."

Church History 1.13 Makr 1.28 However, no non-apologetic writer, inside or outside Judea, of the 1st century have accounted for this Jesus who "attracted countless numbers."

andrewcriddle

What are the 2nd century, 3rd century etc works that you regard as questioning the existence of Jesus ?

Andrew Criddle

Gamera

Because it is clearly a passage from a known text that does. What explanation do you give to p52 that would suggest otherwise?

Gamera

The earliest ms we have of Thucydides is from about 1000 CE: 1400 years after the event. We don't really know if Thucydides even existed, since evidence of this person in history is virtually nonexistence, so his contemporaneous status is not well supported.

In contrast the actual mss that refer to Jesus are extant starting from around the 2nd century onward (though only in fragments), barley 100 years after the purported event. So we can say with some certainty that somebody was writing about Jesus not very long after his purported life. We can't say that same about Pericles, since it's possible (though I admit unlikely) that Thucydides' works as we have them are late imitations which tried to use the authority of his name.

Now, I have no problem with Pericles -- I think Thucydides was a more or less real person who wrote a more or less contemporaneous account that got copied and altered and revised over a millennium. I think the same happened with Jesus. So it seems we have reached the same conclusion, even if we weigh the evidence differently.