aa5874

There is no evidence for Jesus believers up to the days of Nero. Do not confuse "Christians" with Jesus believers.

No writer of antiquity wrote about Jesus of the NT, Jesus believers or his teachings or doctrine up to the time of Nero, except for the fraud, forgery or error found in Antiquities of the Jews.

And, can you please name one literary non-apologetic source for Jesus of the NT up to the time of Nero? Just one!

andrewcriddle

You may mean Tacitus not Suetonius. (Suetonius mentions Nero's persecution of Christians but not in connection with the fire of Rome.)

Andrew Criddle

teamonger

Well that was Josephus' thing.. he was was about reporting small beer. Volume 18 of Antiquities (where the "Testimonium" is found) has as subtitle: "...conerning the sects that were among the Jews". Josephus also reports on other cult figures such as Theudas, the Egyptian, and Judas the Galilean.
t

teamonger

Reasonable to consider, perhaps, but hardly to conclude based on an argument from silence. Especially when there are plausible reasons for the silence: believers who thought the world was about to end would not be thinking about writing books.

Anyway, Paul was certainly not silent, and reports established movements. His visits to Jerusalem show that he wrote at least before the Jewish War or destruction of the Temple.
t

aa5874

Josephus, it would appear, made no statement about Jesus, he made a statement about Vespasian. Josephus claimed that the oracles and prophecies in Jewish Scriptures that should have been fulfilled around 70 CE, referred to Vespasian, and not a Jewish Messiah. See Wars of the Jews 6.5.4.

This passage in Wars of the Jews 6.5.4 exposes Antiquities of Jews 18.3.3 as a later forgery, fraud or error from some external source.

teamonger

Afraid I'm not following your logic. Josephus didn't think of Jesus as the Messiah, only that this claim was made for him. That's why Origen could say Josephus didn't believe, because there was apparently some negative statement there which was later adulterated. In that sense, yes, there was forgery and fraud on the part of an overzealous Christian scribe who coudn't resist "correcting" the account.

In any case, the short reference to Jesus as brother of James was clearly authentic, as Origen referred to it more than once. If that was authentic, that lends weight to some form of "Testimonium" being authentic.
t

aa5874

Well, perhaps Josephus wrote that Vespasian was the Messiah in Antiquities 18.3.3, which would co-incide or agree with with Wars 6.5.4, and some over zealous Jesus believer adulterated the passage.

Or maybe he wrote that Jesus the son of Damneus, the brother of James, was the Christ, or the anointed of God in AJ 18.3.3.

All we know is that the passage is most likely to be fraud, forgery or full of error.


You must mean the TF was a real forgery and it has been authenticated to be so.

And Jesus had a mother who, according to the NT,claimed Jesus was conceived without a father. I guess the mother told James he had "special" brother.

teamonger

Hmm, not sure how the clearly legendary birth narrative has to do with validating the Josephus passage.
t

LogicandReason

Just reading Josephus will put this question to bed for any critical reader. The passage following the famous Christ reference is: "About the same time another sad calamity put the Jews in disorder". This infers that Josephus is discussing tragedies (which in fact the whole section this is interpolated into is all about Romans killing Jews).

After the discussion on this thread, I went back and purchased some of Eusebius' works. It is astounding how much Eusebius references the writings of Josephus. One can quickly deduce the possibility of the gospel writers doing the same.

aa5874

Jesus of the NT was clearly a legendary figure, for sure, as you have inadvertently admitted. Jesus having a mother, brothers and sisters is really irrelevant, they cannot erase his clearly legendary origin.

All the Church writers from Ignatius to Eusebius directly or indirectly rejected that Jesus was only human, and regarded as heretics, anyone who claimed Jesus was not of the Holy Ghost and the virgin called Mary.

You know the birth of Jesus is based on Isaiah 7.14 and was not regarded as legendary by the Church.

This is Justin Martyr in Dialogue with Trypho 43 So if Jesus was human only and had a human brother called James, then the entire NT and all the early Church writings are fundamentally fiction and have no credibilty whatsoever.