TomboyMom

A question of which I am ignorant:
Are the events recorded in the New Testament concerning the birth, life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ corroborated by non-biblical historical sources or are they not? I thought not, but am not knowledgeable on the subject. O_F frequently states that they are. Which is correct? Thank you.

Julian

They are not.

There are later non-christian sources but they are far too late to be helpful. They also do not mention Jesus but merely christians, whose existence we do not question.

Josephus is often mentioned but his entry about Jesus is a blatant forgery and can be disregarded. Of course, he was a late source, as well.

Julian

ETA: A brief overview: http://www.infidels.org/library/mode...er/hojfaq.html

RPS

According to Fredriksen (who is not a Christian by the way) in this book, the forgery view is a minority position among scholars; the majority view is that the reference is authentic but tampered with. Moreover, Josephus makes another reference to Jesus ("brother of James") which scholars deem to be entirely authentic.

TomboyMom

Orthodox: Can you refute this? Are there any roughly contemporary non-Christian historical documents that verify Jesus's birth, life, death and resurrection?

Julian

I was under the impression that Frederiksen was a christian, but I could be wrong.

I see no reason that the entire TF shouldn't just be discarded. I have heard the tampering arguments before but I see no reason for them other than tendentious religious bias.

The other reference to christ is also disputed. Someone on this board pointed me to a Photius codex which mentions the passage but does not include the christ reference.

I would need to see a very early copy that includes the two references before I become convinced. Either way, however, it is still a late source and Josephus is not always reliable, like Alexander being shown the book of Daniel and so on.

Julian

ETA: This is a bit old but: http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/testimonium.html and the other reference does not appear here http://www.tertullian.org/fathers/ph...ibliotheca.htm in Photius Codex 238.

RPS

She is a convert to Judaism (Vermes too -- his story is interesting and complicated).

It can't be bias when the position isn't held by a Christian. Besides, if the reference were entirely invented, I think the forger would have done a much better and smarter job.

The "brother of James" reference simply says that he "was called Christ." It makes no messianic claim.

Pre-conceived notions are hard to overcome.

True enough, but sifting through such evidence is what historians do and there's no current academic support, even among non-Christians, that I've been able to find (though internet support and popular works abound on the subject) for the idea that Jesus didn't exist. Why do you think that's so if the no-Jesus argument is at all plausible?

Mageth

Whatever Paula Fredriksen considers herself (and only she could say for sure), her work is certainly interesting:

http://www.bu.edu/religion/faculty/bios/fredriksen.html

Julian

Okay, interesting.
It could be but you are probably correct.
Here I must disagree. Notice how clumsily many christian forgeries are sometimes done. Like when Paul talks nicely about a prominent women in the church and the a bit later talks against women speaking out in church.

I don't see the difference between a clumsy alteration and a clumsy insertion. If it is an alteration and it sucks why do you suppose that he would have done a better job had he written it from scratch. Why wouldn't he just have written it from scratch?

Besides, in my mind the best argument against any reference to Jesus is the silence from Origen, who uses Josephus again and again for historical backing for his views, yet does not use the only section that talks directly about him. Simply not plausible.
Depends on how you define messiah. Christ means annointed which means messiah, right? Why would Josephus use a term which his Roman readers would not understand? Why does he only use it those two times? It is just awfully suspicious.
My notions are not pre-conceived. I do, however, have some bias here, I will admit. Christianity is so rife with forgeries that they no longer get the benefit of the doubt.
I suspect a cultural bias, possibly incredulity that such a phenomenon could arise out of a group mentality or movement, I don't know.

Why does christianity, as far back as we can see, start as a widespread movement with views representing many different and conflicting christologies and worldviews? Shouldn't it start with a coherent movement and then fragment down the road? Yet it doesn't. It starts out in a thousand pieces. That points away from a historical Jesus, I guess most scholars don't have the balls to admit what is the simplest explanation.

Just my $0.02, of course...

Julian

Diogenes the Cynic

No there isn't.
No there isn't.

I'm familiar with the apologia for both of these claims. It's completely fallacious on both counts. The Quirinius claim, in particular, is nonsense. It's based on a nameless inscription which refers to someone (unnamed) who was "Governor again in Syria." It doesn't give his name and it doesn't even say he was governor the first time in Syria. It was not unusual at all for a person to serve as governor in two different places, but it was (if I recall correctly) pretty much unheard of for a person to serve as governor twice in the same place. Not only that, but we know who was governor of syria in 4 BCE and it wasn't Quirinius.

The real beauty of this argument is that it's completely moot. Judea did not become a Roman province until 6 CE. Before that it was a client kingdom and was not subject to census. It doesn't matter who was governor in Syria. While Herod the Great was king (and for a decade after his death) the Governor of Syria had no authority over Judea and no ability to impose a census. The whole reason for Quirinius' cenus in 7 CE was that Judea had just become a province and was subject for the first time to census and taxation.
There is no way that an infant born to Galileean peasants could have posed a threat to Herod's authority.

Diogenes the Cynic

There is no real evidence that any of the apostles ever claimed or believed that Jesus had physically risen from the dead. There is no first hand testimony from any apostle of any kind. All we have is claims made about the apostles made mostly by people who never knew them. Paul's letters are too ambigous as to both the identity of "Jesus Christ" and to the nature of the appearances to be able to say that they represent a definite early belief by the direct followers of a historical Jesus that HJ had physically risen from the dead.

The evidence that any such followers actually died for such a belief is, of course, non-existent, not to mention irrelevant. It wasn't that long ago that a bunch of people cut off their johnsons and drank barbituate cocktails to go join a spaceship behind the Hale-Bopp comet. Who would go to such extremes for a lie?

Incidentally, there is no Hebrew scripture which predicts that the Messiah will die and be resurrected, so even if such an event were to happen (something for which I grant exactly zero possibility), it still would not represent a "fulfillment of Scripture."