Alf

There is a hidden shift of persona in the description above here.

The Jesus that experts agree that probably existed was:

1. A guy named "Yeshua" - a common name in those days in Judea. There almost certainly was many people with that name. It's like claiming "There is a guy in the US named 'Joe'". I don't know any such person personally but I am still fairly certain it is true.

2. A guy who roamed around the judean countryside preaching. There was lots of such preachers in those days. It was a time of unrest and much poverty and people looked to spiritual matters for help to overcome the daily yoke. There was also plenty of ignorance and gullibility so "miracle workers" was found in abundance.

3. This guy did some "miracles". See above. Miracle workers was in abundance those days. Nothing special here.

4. The guy got himself crucified. That was a fairly common punishment for certain crimes back in those days - again nothing special.

So, what is the claim? A guy named "Yeshua" roamed around Judea and preached and performed what people believed to be miracles and he got himself crucified.

There is nothing special about this claim and so it is most likely true even if we have zero evidence.

Now, you come to this board and make the claim - and the claim is not made by historians who make the claim above. It is by christians who claim that this guy had a virgin birth, he was resurrected and he is God and sit by God and you can have a personal relationship with the guy now 2000 years later.

This is highly extraordinary claims and so we rightfully ask for evidence and state that we do not buy into it.

So, the reason why historians can accept that Jesus most likely really existed while we don't is not that we disagree with the historians but that the claims concerning Jesus in the two cases are two very different.

QUOTE=jonathan_hili;4417000]
I don't know, though I would expect it to be a short list. But I don't see it as an all-or-nothing proposition. A pretty good case for Peter's martyrdom is here, for example. Assuming that case is indeed made, since Peter preached a resurrected Jesus, the OP question is a fair one: why would someone die for what he knows to be false?
[/quote]
Even assuming that Peter really died for his faith - which I am still not convinced of but I will leave it for others to discuss that URL you provide. However, even assuming it is true, there are no indication that Peter would know it is false even if it was false. He could himself have been convinced that Jesus really resurrected even if it never happened. We have only the gospels claiming that the he ever saw or met Jesus after the resurrection. It is quite possible that Peter himself could have believed it to be true even if he himself never met Jesus after.

Strange things happens to you when you hinge yourself on a faith in a cult. If that leader of the cult suddenly get crucified, did you live a lie? Was it all for nothing? Most people cannot accept that. It is much more easier to accept that he must have resurrected and still live on in heaven etc etc etc. One person say one thing and the others agree and add and before you know it they could have both cooked up a story and they themselves believe it wholeheartedly even if they really only made it up themselves! The human psyche is quite strange in that respects. The need for a meaning to something which for them is a meaningless crucifiction etc is enough to provide the fuel for such story making and because no single person made the story and presented it to the others but they made it up as a group with one person adding this and another adding that it sounds convincing to them and so they themselves believe it is true.

QUOTE=jonathan_hili;4417000]
The expected retorts re Heaven's Gate and the like are thus inept and inapt. The Heaven's Gate folks died believing wrongly but, by all appearances, sincerely believing. Peter dying for something he knew to be false is in an entirely different category.
[/quote]
You don't know that Peter would know it was false even if it was false.

QUOTE=jonathan_hili;4417000]
So you say -- and you're both biased and not (apparently) a professional historian. Why are you right and all the experts wrong? How is your bucking the tide different from a YEC saying all the experts are wrong about evolution?
[/quote]
First of all - as shown above the professional historians do not make the claim that christians in general think they do. There are of course christian historians who do make exactly that claim and that is a show of conflict of interest as aa5874 said.

Secondly, even if they did, then the historians would be flat out wrong. We simply have no evidence to support such claims. What the scant evidence we do have support is the claim I made earlier - that there was a guy named "Yeshua" who roamed around Judea preaching and perfoming tricks which spectators believed to be miralces and who got himself crucified. Any historian who make a claim beyond that is not acting as a professional historian.

aa5874
In general, Christian academics haven't had a problem opposing orthodoxy across the board. Call Oliver Stone if you think there's some big conspiracy, but I don't see any evidence of one. Moreover, if you want to ignore the experts who are Christian (of whatever sort), the non-Christian experts also all seem to agree that Jesus was an historical figure.[/QUOTE]
As I said, the historian's claims are not what chrisitans believe they are. The historian say "There was a guy named Yeshua roaming Judea preaching and performing tricks and the gullible spectators believed it was true miracles and he got himself crucified" The christian hear "The gospels are true, every word in them are historical. Jesus really existed and he really is Son of God and he got resurrected and ascended to heaven and was born by virgin Mary".

This is the source of the conflict. The christian simply doesn't hear what the historian says but adds all their baggage to the claims and thus render them unhistorical and going from ordinary claims which require little or no evidence to extra-ordinary claims which require an extra-ordinary amount of evidence - evidence we simply do not have.

Alf

Alf

Err... he said it was interpolated and then you also verify that this is exacly what Fredriksen also thinks. The problem is that while most of us will then say that it is tainted and we do not know what exactly it was supposed to have said originallly - before the interpolation, you appear to say that it was tainted but not so much that it undermines the existence of this Jesus fella.

Keep also in mind that even omitting a little phrase such as "It is reported that..." etc in front of the paragraph will change the meaning completely. For Josephus who did not write much about any Messiah figure and not at all about Jesus where he discusses Messiah claims it apperars strange that he turns around and suddenly accept that Jesus was this fantastic miracle worker who deserved that paragraph.

It might be true that the paragraph is "on the whole" mostly genuine. But that doesn't mean much. A few words changed can radically change the meaning of the paragraph so what does it mean by "on the whole"? In short, Fredriksen and others who claim that TF can be considered a genuine proof of extra biblical testimony of Jesus is on very thin ice.

All the more strange then that it comes from someone who has turned to judaism and left christianity such as Fredriksen. Is it some left over from her christian days? I don't know, but it does appear strange that scholars are clinging to straws in this manner just to prove that Jesus was historical. Also, be aware that while jews in general do not consider Jesus to be God, they generally also accept that Jesus was a historical figure, so while she may not be christian she fits right in with jewish tradition in holding unto that belief that Jesus was historical. Also, as noted earlier, if you remove all the genuine miracles, the virgin birth, etc then the historical claims about Jesus is highly ordinary and not really worth much to quibble over - and you don't need TF to accept that claim.

Alf

post tenebras lux

And remember folks, there are scholars around who doubt that Paul existed, nevermind this Jesus fellow.

Barbarian

The problem is indeed one of terminology: I don't consider historical claims about the mundane aspects of Jesus' life to be "references to Jesus". Only historical corroboration of the miraculous, supernatural part should be used as "reference to Jesus", since when Christians talk about Jesus, they don't mean a mere human who perhaps did a few conjuror's tricks then got executed by the Romans and stayed dead just like all other guys whom the Romans wanted dead. Beats me why would a Christian claim a "reference to Jesus" which shows Jesus to be fully and ordinarily human, including staying dead - finding such historical evidence would in fact harm Christianity more than the current lack of evidence, just check the ossuary brouhaha for a reference on this. No: by the referenced Jesus Christians mean or should mean the miracle-worker, direct-line-to-God, Massiach-on-Earth, returned-from-death supernatural layer of the Jesus persona, and that layer is entirely interpolated into the TF.

Gawen

We have a forum here called Biblical Criticism & History. If you can't get this thread on track with Existence of God/s, we will be forced to move it to BC&H.

Yahzi

Would you say Jesus was as well documented as Homer? Socrates? Julis Ceaser?

I thought the claim died for their faith in Christ was in question here, and you've gone and used it as proof of another source.

People swear they saw Elvis. Benny Hinn claims he raised the dead, and yet people continue to go to his shows and pay him money. Sylvia Browne has made claim after claim of helping cops solve cases; no such case has ever been named; and yet she packs them into Montel Williams and makes $700 for a 20 minute phone call.

Why do you think the Apostles were any different than people today? Why does your entire argument depend on the Apostles being the Richard Dawkins of their day instead of just the ordinary people the Bible says they were?

You read a suggestion - and turn it into a solid fact. No wonder the Bible counts as proof for you.

Your complete failure to understand human psychology is not an argument.

North Korea. The people are starving to death, watching their children die, living in abject terror of going to death camps for so much as blinking wrong. And they worship Kim Il Dong like a god.

You have been presented with account after account after account of people doing exactly what you claim the apostles would never do. You have yet to explain why these first-century fishermen should be any different than 20th century fishermen.

Josephus the forger? The NT? You are citing the NT as evidence that the NT is true?

Why should we bother to investigate your list of reasons to accept the claims of the NT if you cite as evidence the NT?

RAFH

Yeah, authentic in the whole, with interpolations. Guess what is being referred to by the "with interpolations"? The main interpolation, that referring directly to a Jesus the Christ, is widely accepted as such. It has been for a very long time because the passage doesn't fit into the context, its in an unnatural style, it has Josephus, a previously orthodox Jew who would not have believed in Jesus nor called Jesus, 'the Christ'. If you doubt this, provide current opinions on this subject, not something written decades or centuries ago.

The second passage is less doubtful, though its less of a passage. It too is unnatural and there is substantial doubt as to its authenticity.

After all, we have no original manuscripts, the only copies are those made by xians centuries after and held in their custody.

Lastly, even if you credit authenticity to the passages, they are only what Josephus recorded, not what he actually experienced.

Its a long, long ways from there to reality and as has been noted many times, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. If we were discussing Bob the Jewish Plumber here, there wouldn't even be a debate as to whether or not he existed based on the available evidence. Bob is a nobody who essentially did nothing. Jesus is claimed to be not only somebody but a very extraordinary somebody, so you are going to need rather extraordinary evidence of that rather extraordinariness. It doesn't exist.

If you believe it does, then assemble your best evidence, all of it, complete and total. Not just a reference name but their work and their references and citations. Get it all here and we can evaluate it one piece at a time and determine if it represents evidence and how reliable and effective it is.

So far your naming historians is naught but a gilded plea for popular support. Let us see what these historians based their conclusions on.

If physics and the other sciences were done as history usually is, we'd still be in the bronze age.

TomboyMom

Oh, not "many extra-biblical sources" but a single questionable source considered by most scholars to be either a forgery or an interpolation?

btw, grace: please do not take my responses as hostile in any way. I like your style and hope you stick around. You seem to be actually concerned with evidence, use logic, and do not assume your conclusions, unlike most who engage in Christian apologetics.

Yahzi

I didn't challenge the part - I challenged the whole.

What are one the classic ways in which experts are lead astray?

An investment in the conclusion.

Would you agree that Christian experts have a powerful investment in concluding that Jesus was a historical figure?

Ergo, one would almost expect every Christian historian to recuse himself on this question, since it would be asking far too much of any human being to expect him to find a conclusion that cost him his job, his marriage, his standing in the community, and his hope of eternal salvation.

When you restrict the list to non-Christian historians, the list gets much smaller, and the historicity of Jesus gets much murkier. Furthermore, to the extent that smaller list accepts a historical Jesus, it is not the Christ we were discussing; it is not the 12 apostles, the miracles, the resurrection. Indeed, it is a Christ so removed from the topic of this thread that these historians normally call him Jesus.

And yet - when we suggest that perhaps it is the people most heavily invested in the ideology, the people whose paychecks and community standing depend on the ideology, are the ones who might be blinded by ideology - you shrug it off as a non-concern.

Why would an anonymous poster on the internet have a stronger ideological need for this fact to be false than a man who makes his living selling books to Christians have for it to be true?

The OP did. So what you're saying is: you agree with me. The case for historical Jesus and the 12 martyrs is simply not solid enough to pronounce it history (even if you think parts of it might be).

Why would Peter know it was false?

Again, we are presented with the claim that Peter, the simple fisherman, is smarter than the computer geeks who died in Heaven's Gate. Not just smarter, but more educated at self-deception; more aware of fraudulent tricks; so seasoned and jaded that what fools kids who grew up on TV wouldn't stand a chance against him.

The minute you stop imbuing the apostles with these super-human powers of self-knowledge and scientific investigation, your case disintegrates under its own weight.

Because I gain nothing by being right. I am not an expert; what I am is a disinterested party.

TomboyMom

Here's Wiki summarizing the whole dispute: Testimonium Josephus

In a nutshell, although there is some dispute, the majority view is that the work is authentic, but was altered by a Christian scribe in the third century.