Styrofoamdeity

On a thread in GRD I was contemplating the fact that we have no relics or writings from the historical Jesus. I wondered why his followers did not try to preserve his writings or his personal effects if he was such an impressive personage or if they imagined him to be a deity.

However, oddly, while Julius Caesar and the subsequent Caesars were deified in their lifetimes or soon after their deaths, I am not aware of any certified personal effects from any of them that are extant today. We have plenty of evidence that Julius Caesar existed: Unlike the case of the supposed "Jesus", Julius Caesar's words in his histories have come down to us. We have the exact words (more or less) from the Emperor Julian and Markus Aurelius as well.

But is my argument that it is odd to have no preserved personal effects from Jesus, vulnerable to attack due to the fact that we have no (that I know of) preserved personal effects from three hundred years of deified emperors as well?

I know we have statues, frescoes, writings (in later editions), coins, etc ABOUT the emperor/gods, but not personal effects. Is this a weakness? Our do we have personal effects from some of the emperors?

Riverwind

I'm not sure what you mean by "certified personal effects", but there are many busts of J. Caesar and inscriptions.

What you need to be asking about these works is how old the oldest manuscript of these works is. I believe the oldest manuscript of J. Caesar's Gallic War dates back to the 7th or 8th century, hundreds of years after the earliest manuscripts of the New Testament.

Styrofoamdeity

By certified personal effects, I mean for example, clothes, shoes, possessions, locks of hair, original writings, etc. For example, if I had been close to Jesus before he was crucified, I certainly would have tried to keep his sandals or something of his effects. (I am assuming Jesus existed in this example, though this is not a position I hold). In the case of Julius Caesar, towards the end of his life lower class citizens of Rome were mobbing him, trying to touch his robe. So why has his robe not come down to us? Why not the robe he was assassinated in? Why not an original Caesar writing of the Gallic Wars? In other words, was it impossible or extremely improbable for items from Jesus' supposed life to come down to us?

I've got letters from my great-grandfather that he wrote from the trenches of World War 1, just 90 years ago, and he was no deity (lots of letters about bad food and fist-fights). How valuable would be the possessions of a deity, be it from a deified Caesar or a deified Jesus? Why did no one hold on to these for the 40 to 70 years from the supposed death of Jesus to the general circulation of the gospels? Why did no possessions of Julius Caesar (or August, Marcus Aurelius, etc) survive?

AGAIN, I do not mean busts, statues, frescoes, coins, etc. These are not possessions, these are objects made ABOUT somebody. I mean actual personal effects.

I am trying to determine if my argument that Jesus was either unlikely to have been an historical personage, or a very unimpressive one since no effects survived, is sustainable or not.

Riverwind

I don't believe it would have been impossible for any of those things to have come down to us, but I do believe it is highly improbably that clothing artifacts and much of anything perishable would survive.

Many ancient manuscripts derive from Egypt because the dryness of that environment helps preserve perishable items. Most of the earliest New Testament manuscripts come from Egypt for this reason.

I'm not sure there are any originals of anything written around the time of Jesus, or for that matter, for a while after Jesus, not that I think we'd know even if we had an original. This would be an interesting research subject for someone, though. Of ancient authors around the time of Jesus and after, what is the first writing for which we have an original or an autograph? I have no idea.

Also, when an item is cherished and/or venerated, there is a slim likelyhood that it will survive very long in history. For modern day examples, just look at famous paintings that have been stolen over the years.

But they're yellowed, aren't they? Do they have any stains? If you had lived before electricity, there's more of a possiblity that you would lose cherished items like this in a fire. If you or your children happen to go childless, will your great-grandfathers writings survive time (I don't mean to be disrespectful here, and I hope you don't take it that way. Just proposing to you the reasons why things don't always survive "the ravages of time", as they say).

Further, if you ever visit holy sites, many times you will notice that the walls are blackened. This is usually due to the many fires started by candles that have caught fine tapestries and other materials on fire and destroyed things (which is both sad and funny to me at the same time. Earthquakes, volcanos, floods. Time and chance happeneth to all...even ancient artifacts that we'd like to see.

This is an interesting question, though. I don't know of any possessions such as what you intend that have survived. Perhaps someone here does.

I personally find it to be a rather weak argument.

mens_sana

There is a serious question about whether his original followers, all Jews, thought he was a deity. We don't know whether he could write. Literacy was under 10% in major cities, much lower in the boonies among peasant farmers and tradesmen. He had very few followers early on, far more well after his death, though still in the "1st generation." The chances that personal possessions would survive — pretty low, I think. With the exception of the True Cross. At one time there were enough pieces of it floating around to reforest Europe.

Styrofoamdeity

Undoubtedly a weak argument, but not an uninteresting one. I suppose the proper follow-on question is "Why are there not even rumors of such things in the decades after Jesus?". And the parallel question, did anyone mention keeping relics of Caesar either?

You are correct that perhaps clothing and papers might have a difficult time surviving for these two millennia. But we do not even have confirmation of such relics in the decades soon after Jesus' death. Certainly a robe or sandals would have survived to the time when the gospels were written. Why not mention where Jesus' sandals are? Or the cross? And why did no one preserve Caesar's robe or why is such relic gathering not mentioned in the decades after Caesar's death in the many histories that were written?

It seems it took hundreds of years until people got the idea of inventing miraculous relics. For some reason no one kept relics from the Caesars either, or at least nothing that got even a short mention in a history.

I am hoping to hear from somebody that we have Caesar's whatever, as it would make the argument against a historical Jesus very slightly stronger (not much, I admit, but slightly).

mountainman

The chronology of the search for "personal effects" coincides
with the chronolgy of "christian pilgrimage". It does not auger
well for mainstream propaganda, but is quite consistent with
a fourth century origination for "christianity".

The first two "christian pilgrims" were Constantine's mother-
in-law, and Constantine's mother. The former was the first
pilgrim, while the latter covered the ground with a search
and retrieve mission for the ONE HOLY CROSS. (In the end,
a scientific process was used to determine one of three
possible candidate crosses)

It is notable that Helena also found the actual nails by which
the omnipresent god of the observable quantum universe was
affixed to the cross, and that Constantine used these to create
a bridle for his horse. (Constantine had a fond regard for horses
as is indicated by his epic journey from the east to the west
of the empire c.305 CE.)

So, we have "personal effects" of Jesus being vouchsafed for
by fourth century imperially-sponsored ecclesiatical historians.
Is this the sort of stuff you're looking for?

Styrofoamdeity

Not really, but terribly fascinating nonetheless! Clearly the claims of "finding" some item three hundred years after the fact is not one that anyone with any sort of skepticism would place much credence in. Unless you'd like to buy the genuine trousers of Louis XIV of France from me, since I found them during my trip to Paris last year...

Gregg

Nah, I would drop that argument. It's very weak.

Styrofoamdeity

True, but I would still like to discuss more about the topic for two reasons:

1. It could (potentially) be thrown back at those of us who do not believe in a historical Jesus: HA! There aren't any relics from the "devine" Julius Caesar either! Therefore Jesus could be just as historical as Caesar!. A numbskull argument to be sure, since we do have Julius Caesar's words, statues, coins, etc preserved from his life and nothing from Jesus, but still we are usually dealing with some less than logical opponents. So again, why no relics from Julius Caesar? No one is really answering this question.

2. It's a rather interesting point to ponder. Why did no one attempt to preserve Caesar's robe or his other personal effects? Did this simply not occur to people in those days (including the potential case of Jesus?).

For example, in Japan there ARE preserved writings from Buddhist saints of the 8th Century. They were renowned in their time, considered enlightened, and a great effort was made to preserve their personal effects. We have their original words and texts in the original. Why do we have nothing from Caesar, from Jesus, or Saint Augustine for that matter?