SkepticBoyLee

Is this true?

Gawdzila

Yes, so far as I am aware. Most details about Buddah's life are not
independently verifiable, but the dates of his birth and death, his birthplace,
etc. are known with reasonable accuracy. There are many sources
contemporary to Buddah that indicate that he is a real figure.

It is also true that the statement "Jesus is more historically verifiable than
Caesar" is almost completely unsupportable. Most people assume that he was a
real person, but this is not a reasonable assumption to make. There is basically
no information at all dating to the time of Jesus that records his existence. The
Bible is the only record of Jesus at all, and the earliest Gospels within it date
something like 50-80 years after his death, maybe even older. Actually, there
is one other record of him: a passage in the Scrolls of Josephus, which has been
widely discredited as being forged by a priest long after the scrolls were
originally written.

show_no_mercy

It's especially odd since "Caesar" is just a title given to a Roman king... so Jesus is more "historically verifiable" and all of the kings of Rome.

Toto

Dating of the Historical Buddha indicates that these dates are not known with any sort of certainty.

SkepticBoyLee

The earliest writings of Jesus are biased religious accounts written DECADES after the fact. Of course I dont buy them.

But from what I understand the earliest writings on Buddha (also religious and biased) were written Four HUNDRED years after Buddhas(supposed) death.

So what is there that makes the Buddha more historically verifiable? The poster in the quote from the other thread, I think his name was Crucifiction, says that we KNOW for a FACT that Siddartha Gutama lived.


and please, we are not nitpicking terms here. When I speak of Ceasar I am Talking about Dr. J, Julius Ceaser, you know the guy who invented the dunk in ancient Rome and was murdered . Buddha is also a title. Im specifically talking about Siddartha Gutama.

Origen

Incorrect. First, Jesus didn't write anything, so the statement is wrong-headed on its face. I think you meant to say that the earliest writings about Jesus were written decades after the fact. This is actually misleading. First, Paul's letter to the Thessalonians is dated around 50 c.e., which puts it at about 20 years after Christ's death. Futhermore, the pre-Markan passion narrative is widely thought to have been written in the 30s or 40s, and it is believed that Christ died in the mid-30s. So maybe you should decapitalize decades.

Lemur

From what little I know of Buddhism, it's always been my impression that the existence of the "historical Buddha" is relatively less important than the existence of the "historical Jesus". I thought what matters in Buddhism are the Buddha's teachings, which we have today. But what matters in Christianity is the person of Jesus, which is now lost in the past. So for example if Buddha were shown to not exist, Buddhism would still go on, but if Jesus were proven to not exist, there would be no (traditional) Christianity.

Toto

Funny thing - Paul never met Jesus, and the existence of a HJ who died recently is hard to prove from his letters - even if you make the major leap of faith and accept that the letters date to the mid-first century, which cannot be shown from internal or textual evidence.

Believed by - primarily believing Christians, who will grasp at any straw.

Peter Kirby's site Also here by Peter Kirby.

There might very well have been some sort of a pre-Mark Passion idea, since Paul pre-dates Mark and refers to a crucifixion, without the details in Mark. But dating it to 30 sounds like wishful thinking.

SkepticBoyLee

I know that Jesus didnt write anything, though he should have if he existed and was the only way to escape a huge flame pit. But then that just makes too much sense. I was reffering to biographal accounts. I shouldnt have typed "writings OF Jesus". In this post I was really more concerned with the statement that we "know for a fact that Sidartha Guatama" was a historical person and that there is more evidence ofr an HB than an HJ.

This is all true. I was simple inquiring about the historical Buddah(specifically Siddartha Guatama) and also I wanted to know if the statement that the quoted poster made was true.

Theist are often grilled, and rightfully so, when they say rediculous things like "there is more evidence for Jesus than Julius Ceasar" but when the grilling is done by a poster who says things like "there is more historical evidence for Buddah and we know for a fact that he existed" it kinda cancels things out as far as unsubstantiated and errant statements eh?

Toto, thank you for the HB link.

someotherguy

Let's try this in B&CH.

someotherguy
EoG Mod