graymouser

I would not. Jesus' existence is detailed in 4 short hagiographies, none of which was written until at least decades after his death (if he lived). There is no contemporary account (unless you count the forgeries in Josephus). He was not a noted public figure of his day; Socrates was (indeed, that he was satired by name in Aristophanes, and reported in the audience for the production of that very play, shows his status quite well). We cannot vouch for the historicity of the Republic, et cetera, because they are philosophical works; taking the same approach to Jesus as we do to Socrates, we'd have to honestly say we don't conclusively know a single word either of them uttered, and we do know that it would have been harder to fake the existence of Socrates (widely known in his time) than that of Jesus (obscure before his death, at least to the point where there is no contemporary commentary whatsoever). The probability that a Jesus said the words in the Gospels, like the probability that Socrates said the words in the Republic, is fairly low.

-Wayne

Mathetes

Well, Jesus is reading when visiting the Nazareth synagoge in Lk 6:16, so at least Jesus the literary character in the Gospel was not illiterate.

If Jesus really existed, probably the reason why he did not write anything is that it would have been useless: he believed that the end of the world would be imminent (before a generation), so nobody would have time to read anything anyway.

Eazy

Can you link me to some of these. Credible sources, please.

BTW, its a given that people would try and exploit any burdgeoning religion, company, political system, etc. Its not particularly damning in any way, the fact that there were spurious letters.

We know that there were about 40 purported shrouds throughout the 11th century.
Well, they did feel the need to forge the Josephus passage.

Because saying that you don't care about someone's historicity, but all of a sudden care about an HJ's strikes one as being biased. Not to mention the double, and quadruple standards applied to the HJ over many, many other historical figures.
Can you elaborate on this a little bit.

..and I didn't say "evidence to boot", I meant definitive evidence or pretty definitive evidence.

Toto

Letter from Jesus to King Abgar

But it's not a very convincing forgery.

I don't actually "care" intensely about the historicity of Jesus, since I am convinced that he was not a supernatural figure if he did exist. I could easily decide that there was a human behind the Jesus stories, and I would still be an atheist.

The more interesting question is the origin of Christianity. Did it start with a charismatic figure, or did it evolve like other religions have evolved?

It is patently untrue that you need to use different standards to decide that Christ was a myth but Alexander the Great was a historical character. The quality of evidence is drastically different, as is the quantity. There are some old threads on that issue.

Definitive evidence - finding the body, with a grave marker, and reconstructing the facial features so that they match a contemporaneous portrait or description. (That was done with Philip of Macedon, the father of Alexander the Great.)

Pretty definitive evidence - a neutral or hostile mention in a contemporaneous history by a disinterested person. If a Roman traveler had mentioned a movement in Palestine headed by a Galilean who wandered around preaching, that would be remarkable.

Chili

. . . I believe that Jesus did write all four Gospels because they compliment each others towards understanding and at the same time they contradict each other to keep the flock together for safekeeping.

My reason for saying this is that the apparent contradictions are needed to give a different and sometimes opposite perspective of the same event and therefore they are not synoptic at all.

The idea behind the Gospels is to start a new religion as a branch that was built upon the old Jewish root but with a much faster pace than Judaism ever was and I think they accomplished that.

Reality Amplifier

Such as?


Then why is there even a bible?


This sounds entirely speculative on your part, and also doesn't quite resonate as a plausible answer. If he physcially wrote the Ten Commandments, why wouldn't he also physically write THE Gospel?


Words written by God incarnate would not have been important enough to preserve?

Magus55

Teaching His message, performing miracles, giving speeches.



To reveal God's revelation to the rest of the world who didn't live in the 1st Century.



The 10 Commandments are laws passed down to the Israelites. Think of it as a Congressional act. The Gospels were written by eyewitnesses, or under the direction of eyewitnesses to attest to the life and ministry of Jesus. Think of the Gospel authors as the Media. I think by giving the responsibility to Jesus' followers probably made it more meaningful too. Writing an autobiography about divine revelation doesn't seem as effective as proving to others and having them write their accounts.

Keep in mind, it was the more common method during that time to convey information orally. Written accounts weren't as common as they are today. Jesus speaking to people orally, and having them record it was probably more effective.

Ruth Harris

Interesting topic - and one that I have personally contemplated for a while. I too wondered about the lack of anything written by Jesus; I thought it was possible that he was never taught to read or write. There are no indications either way, but given that he was respected as a teacher by some fairly well educated people (such as Nicodemus), it seems unlikely that he was illiterate.

My personal conclusion is that he never (or rarely) wrote anything simply because he knew that the actual artifact would be worshipped simply because it was his, and not for anything he said in it. And if one thing can be seen in Jesus' teaching, it is that he abhorred the elevation of things to the status of objects of adoration. This is my major problem with Catholicism; they seem to lavish worship on inanimate items instead of a living God.

Of course, this is the opinion of a Christian - so feel free to take my thoughts with a grain of salt if you so desire

Ruth

Magus55

Thats an interesting point Ruth that I hadn't thought of. Does make sense though considering the whole ordeal over the alleged Shroud of Turin. I imagine writing directly from Jesus would become quite the idol.

Rational BAC

I think that the most obvious answer is that God can do any damned thing he pleases or He could not be God------whether it pleases us or not is unimportant.

God could have written the Bible. Jesus could have written a Bible.

Obviously neither of them did. The Bible was written by Man and is full of error.

So the real question is why did God or Jesus let man write the Bible in his own words with no divine inspiration at all?

Dunno. I think God (or Jesus) decided to let man figure out supernatural things for himself possibly just as a test of our intellect.

Did we pass the test? Dunno that either. Maybe we came somewhat close to understanding God and Jesus.

Perhaps God and Jesus (or both along with the Holy Ghost if you are a trinitarian) are laughing their heads off at our misconceptions.

Or perhaps they are scratching their heads communally thinking "damned if those stupid humans didn't get it pretty much right"

Who knows?