Freethought & Rationalism Archive

angelo · 08-01-2007, 04:51 AM

All these historians mentioned were writing decades after the so-called events were supposed to have taken place. How on earth can anyone take them at face value? There is not one eye witness to the Jesus fable that was able to say face to face to Josephus, Tacitus, etc, about the facts. They are only hearsays and not historical events. No one in their right mind could possibly believe Jesus must have existed because some historians writing decades later said so.

ynquirer · 08-01-2007, 04:56 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Toto

IIDB can hardly decide such a thing. Here is a thread from 2004 and you can find others if you want. I and other posters here have been impressed by the arguments of Ken Olson (Check his blog for some linkss; he is writing his PhD thesis on the question.)

Thank you, Toto. That's what I wished.

ynquirer · 08-01-2007, 05:01 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by angelo atheist

All these historians mentioned were writing decades after the so-called events were supposed to have taken place. How on earth can anyone take them at face value? There is not one eye witness to the Jesus fable that was able to say face to face to Josephus, Tacitus, etc, about the facts. They are only hearsays and not historical events. No one in their right mind could possibly believe Jesus must have existed because some historians writing decades later said so.

That isn't exact. Josephus, writing in the 90s of the 1st century, could possibly have known one or more survivors of the 30s.

What is still more important, almost all of Antiquities of the Jews must be dismissed on your grounds.

Lucretius · 08-01-2007, 05:15 AM

Out if the first 4 mentioned in the thread title Josepheus, Tacitus, Pliny, Suetonius, there is only evidence that one of them ever met Christians of any sort and that is Pliny ,it is possible, if not probable ,that Josephus could have met some but even if they all did and just did not bother to mention it ,it is impossible to say just how deeply they inquired into the beliefs.

Doug Shaver · 08-01-2007, 07:37 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Doug Shaver

Assume for the sake of discussion that:
1. Josephus did not write it.
2. It was inserted by Christian copyists.

Why is "forgery" not the right word, and what do you think would be a better word?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Roger Pearse

Things find their way into texts that are hand-copied in quite a number of ways. The usual term for a piece of text that has arrived in the text in this way is 'interpolation' or 'gloss'.

. . . .

A text about first century Judaea is quite possibly going to get a note in the margin about Jesus at some point passing down the monastic years. The rest is more or less inevitable.

OK. On its face, that's plausible enough. And I agree that an interpolated gloss should not be called a forgery.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Roger Pearse

This, indeed, is no doubt how the TF found its way into one class of manuscripts of the Jewish War. Someone copied it into the margin; the next scribe took it for part of the text.

Oh, no doubt? No doubt at all?

Is that because we have solid evidence that that is what happened? Or is it because we know for a fact that Christians during that era were too honest to commit a real forgery?

Roger Pearse · 08-01-2007, 08:04 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Doug Shaver

Quote:

Originally Posted by Roger Pearse

This, indeed, is no doubt how the TF found its way into one class of manuscripts of the Jewish War. Someone copied it into the margin; the next scribe took it for part of the text.

Oh, no doubt? No doubt at all?

Is that because we have solid evidence that that is what happened? Or is it because we know for a fact that Christians during that era were too honest to commit a real forgery?

I will leave you to work that one out for yourself.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

EarlDoherty · 08-01-2007, 09:28 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Roger

I'm not sure why your opinion as to what Origen 'must' have written should be definitive enough to make an argument from silence work. How well do you know the works of Origen, for instance?

How well do you?

From The Jesus Puzzle:

Quote:

There is so much in this “neutral” account that Christians could have ‘put a spin on’ in defense of themselves and Jesus, so much that could have provided succor, support and even ammunition for what the Christian apologists were attempting to do in their writing. Origen alone spent a quarter of a million words contending against Celsus, a pagan who had written a book against Christian beliefs some half a century earlier. Origen draws on all manner of proofs and witnesses to the arguments he makes, including referring to Josephus. In Book I, chapters 46, 67 and 68 of Contra Celsum, Origen reports that Celsus had disparaged the miracles of Jesus, accusing Jesus of having learned his wonder-working tricks from the Egyptians. Origen counters this by claiming that Jesus’ deeds were superior to anything contained in the Greek myths, and that Jesus performed his miracles in order to win people over to his commendable ethical teachings, something no Egyptian trickster could emulate. An appeal here to the declaration by Josephus, a respected Jewish historian, that Jesus had been a “wise man” who performed “wonderful works,” would have served to place Jesus and his miracles in the favorable light in which Origen is trying to cast them.

Earl Doherty

Gamera · 08-01-2007, 02:39 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lucretius

Out if the first 4 mentioned in the thread title Josepheus, Tacitus, Pliny, Suetonius, there is only evidence that one of them ever met Christians of any sort and that is Pliny ,it is possible, if not probable ,that Josephus could have met some but even if they all did and just did not bother to mention it ,it is impossible to say just how deeply they inquired into the beliefs.

I guess this begs the question of why apparently nobody in antiquity ever wrote anything about a Jesus myth movement.

Given the political and religious turmoil of the region, if such a movement with messianic overtones had existed, you would think it would have been mentioned by somebody in an unambiguous manner. But not one word.

Could it be because there was no such movement?

ynquirer · 08-01-2007, 02:54 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Roger Pearse

Mind you, as far as I am aware Josephus never speaks about whether he met Christians, so the very emphatic manner in which you speak is a little odd (unless I'm missing something?). He knows of them, and he discusses their founder in two passages, one of which seems probably damaged somehow. It was no doubt possible in Rome in the time of Domitian to do both these things without meeting any.

Roger, you have quite thoroughly studied the issue. What is evidence for you to say, "... two passages, one of which seems probably damaged somehow"? Is Origen the evidence, or is there anything else?

Roger Pearse · 08-01-2007, 11:56 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ynquirer

Roger, you have quite thoroughly studied the issue. What is evidence for you to say, "... two passages, one of which seems probably damaged somehow"? Is Origen the evidence, or is there anything else?

I was being very careful not to state any theory as fact.

The evidence is all inconclusive. Origen tells us that Josephus did not consider Jesus the messiah; on the other hand the text currently says that he was the Christ. This could be evidence of damage (particularly since the Latin and Syriac both say 'he was believed to be the Christ', suggesting the existence of a Greek variant in the 4th century). Origen's comment is not conclusive, thus.

Everyone (including me) 'feels' that there is something wrong with the TF. It contains elements that it is quite hard for us to imagine being written by a Jew, however renegade, however uninterested, in 93 AD. The problem is that this is where the consensus ends. None of the data is conclusive.

Every single line in the TF can be objected to, on weak grounds, by people who accept other lines. Thus some people say that all of it must be an interpolation. But every single line has also been upheld, by the same people who reject other bits on those grounds. Thus some people conclude that all of it must be authorial, on the same grounds.

That Josephus did write something about Jesus in Antiquities is obvious from the Ant. 20 passage (about which there is no real debate and never has been, Emil Schurer aside). Some of what the TF says does not sound like a Christian composition, to me at least.

What more can be said which is not subjective?

All the best,

Roger Pearse

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08-01-2007, 04:51 AM	#31
angelo Veteran Member Join Date: Jun 2007 Location: Australia Posts: 5,706	All these historians mentioned were writing decades after the so-called events were supposed to have taken place. How on earth can anyone take them at face value? There is not one eye witness to the Jesus fable that was able to say face to face to Josephus, Tacitus, etc, about the facts. They are only hearsays and not historical events. No one in their right mind could possibly believe Jesus must have existed because some historians writing decades later said so.

08-01-2007, 05:15 AM	#34
Lucretius Veteran Member Join Date: Oct 2004 Location: . Posts: 1,014	Out if the first 4 mentioned in the thread title Josepheus, Tacitus, Pliny, Suetonius, there is only evidence that one of them ever met Christians of any sort and that is Pliny ,it is possible, if not probable ,that Josephus could have met some but even if they all did and just did not bother to mention it ,it is impossible to say just how deeply they inquired into the beliefs.

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