Doug Shaver

No, it isn't. The attestation for Socrates and Plato is better than that for Jesus. For Plato, it's a lot better. The evidence for Socrates' historicity is not quite as solid as that for Plato, but it's still better than that for Jesus.

There is also, so far as I'm aware, zero evidence against Socrates' or Plato's historicity. That is not the case for Jesus. It can be (and usually is) argued that the evidence for Jesus far outweighs the evidence against. The fact remains that there is that evidence against it, which is not the case with Socrates or Plato.

Solo

What is the evidence against Jesus' historicity, may I ask ? Pray it is not just the lack of evidence for historicity !

Jiri

Amaleq13

Your source is reading the titles of google hits?

Did you actually read any of the sources or just the titles? Are you assuming they mean "big" when they use "great" or have you established that they aren't using the term to mean "fundamentally significant" or "foundational"? I ask because I took a peek inside the Catholic Encyclopedia reference and the latter appears to me how they are using "great". Paul's churches are "great" in the sense they were first not because they were huge.

Yes. Any reason to suspect that is not possible?

Given that Hebrew Scripture has specific rules for the inclusion of gentiles, what should your new conclusion be from this passage?

aa5874

But, what is the evidence for the historicity of Jesus?

Prayer, Matthew 1.18 and Acts 1.9!

Doug Shaver

No, it is not just a lack of evidence. It is a conjunction of a lack of evidence and a reasonable expectation of there being evidence.
http://jesuspuzzle.humanists.net/partone.htm

aa5874

The NT and the early christians writers declared that Jesus was a God.

There are statements in the NT from Mary about his Spiritual conception.
There are statements in the NT from his disciples about his resurrection and ascension to heaven.

There is NO statement in the NT that Jesus was just human.

There is NO non-apologetic external source that can corroborate anyone named Jesus in the 1st century who had twelve disciples, thousands of followers, was believed to have carried out miracles, was crucified and ascended to heaven.


The HJ position is completely bogus.

patcleaver

Paul did not use any Greek word that meant church buildings. Church is an intentional mistranslation of the Greek.

If a congregation was large enough, that it could not meet in a house then it needed a building to meet in. There are thousands of existing and known ruins of Jewish and pagan temples/churches from the late first and the 2nd and 3rd centuries. There were synagogues and pagan temples everywhere - in every little town. Where are the early Christian Church buildings? Archeology has only found a few.

If you want to find the definition of a term then goggle it.

Messianic Jews are Jews who believe that a prophesied messiah will come someday.

Non-messianic Jews believe that there really was no prophesy of a messiah or that it was misunderstood or that it is just a metaphor, or that the prophesy failed.

Post-messianic Jews are Jews who believe that "the messiah" has already come and gone. They are not expecting the messiah because he has already been here. If there were first and early second century Jewish followers of Jesus who thought he was the messiah they were post-messianic Jews.

There are still post-messianic Jews, they typically believe that the messiah was unknown, or someone else then Jesus, or they do not accept the New Testament, so they are not Christians. There have been dozens of people who have been declared by some group in Judaism to be the messiah. For example, Shimeon Bar Kokhba was declared to be the Messiah-king by Rabbi Akiva the head of the Sanhedrin in 132; the followers of Menahem ben Judah claimed that he was the messiah in 132; and the Chabad Lubavitch sect of Hasidic Judaism believe that Rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schneerson who died in 1994 was the messiah.

I don't have a citation handy. Acts claims that "god fearing Greeks" were allowed in the synagogues, but I do not think that Acts is reliable, and even if such a thing were true, they were probably Greeks who were circumcised converts to Judaism. Gentile could mean someone who was not ethically Jewish regardless of his beliefs.

Solitary Man

So the evidence for it is what again? Twisted and contorted readings by Doherty having already been debunked and being demolished over and over again?

Solo

...in which case the absence of evidence IS the evidence of absence. Is that what you are saying ?

Jiri

aa5874

If Jesus did not exist in the 1st century, then there would be no evidence of his existence in the 1st century.

And this appears to be the case.

No non-apologetic writer of the 1st century wrote about Jesus, his thousands of followers, his miracles or his doctrine.

It is most amusing that HJers seem to think that absence of evidence of Jesus makes the case for the historical Jesus stronger.