Originally Posted by Littlejohn

There is no need to disturb the ancient Egypt to make such comparisons. We can take as an example the figures of Julius Caesar and of 'Yeshua bar Yuseph'.

The reason why there are excessive suspicions about the genuineness of the information we have about Julius Caesar - on the contrary instead of what happens with the documentation concerning the historical figure of Jesus of Nazareth - depends on the mere fact that around Julius Caesar was NOT built a religion such as the one 'catho-christian', which forced the founders to upset not only historical evidences, but also the same course of historical events, involving in this hallucinating and vast operation of historical mystification, even many archaeological evidences! (think of Nazareth, Bethlehem, Capernaum, Qana, Magdala/Dalmanutha, Kefar Gamala/Bet Jemal, Lydda/Mount of Olives, etc.)


Littlejohn S

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Originally Posted by Toto

Are you saying that Egyptologists do not need to worry about the veracity of their evidence? This might be because they have well preserved physical artifacts. In contrast, there are no existing 2nd century Roman documents, only unreliable copies of copies. Trying to pin down the actual content of the second century document is a difficult forensic question, when we know that the documents were at times altered for theological reasons.

If you do not consider the possibilities that the copies of documents that we have are unreliable, you might end up naively accepting some 4th century theologian's biased fiction as history.

John Dominick Crossan has charged that a lot of historical Jesus studies are actually theology that is labeled as history. Take that for what it's worth.

Originally Posted by anethema

I could not agree more, with Crossan or you Spin. That's why I started the other thread. The problem seems to me to be one of methodology, wow Im not the only one. In my opinion we all need to grow up a little bit. The saying "it is what is is " is superflous and quaint but it actually applies in this circumstance.

Originally Posted by aa5874

There is a vast amount of recovered ancient manuscripts but none about Jesus, the disciples and Paul in the 1st century.

We have the DSS and many more writings that have been dated to the 1st century.

What is most remarkable is that whenever NT manuscripts are found and dated outside of and later than the 1st century it is ALWAYS assumed that the manuscripts are copies of 1st century or earlier writings.

If manuscripts of the Paul/Seneca letters were found and dated to the 4th century when should we assume they were written??? One hundred years earlier??