ApostateAbe

blastula, Toto said something that I strongly agree with and reflects my own position. Toto said, "If all of the evidence we have for Jesus is falsehood with not the slightest bit of history, the best sense may be that there was no historical Jesus and later Christians made him up."

This is generally how I think of evidence: it is there, it exists, it is objective, and evidence doesn't change, even if we change our explanations for the evidence. Evidence may be irrelevant for a certain explanation, or evidence may be unfitting for a certain explanation. However, as long we have evidence that is relevant, then at no point is evidence ever lacking. It is not the evidence that fails--it is always our explanations for the evidence that succeed or fail.

That is what I mean when we say that we have abundant relevant evidence for Jesus. I do NOT mean that we have abundant evidence in favor of Jesus. I mean we have abundant relevant evidence to help us decide the issue. We have Christian gospels filled with details, to help us know exactly what the myths about Jesus were, and we gain an intimate perspective of Christian biases through analyzing them, to figure which historical realities would best explain what they were thinking and preaching. We have Paul's genuine epistles. We have Paul's forged epistles. We have the pastoral epistles. We have the apocrypha. We have the tertiary words of the early historians, critics, and heretics. All of that is evidence, and all of it helps us to decide which general theory of the origin of Christianity triumphs over the other theories. And, I take only one theory to be a very strong slam dunk. Most of the time, I think conclusions of ancient history really are very much uncertain and precariously tentative. There are a few exceptions, and those rare exceptions are when the relevant evidence really is abundant.

mountainman

Hi Abe,

You forgot to mention the appearance of new evidence which in theory could radically alter our earlier notions and explanations for the entire collection of evidence. eg: discovery, translation and publication of gJudas 2006 National Geographic

And you forgot to mention the emergence of new scientific technologies by which old evidence can be re-examined and dated.

Also, lower on the list, is the generally accepted increase in the education level of the people, and their justified skepticism at the procession of manifest forgeries such as the Holy Grail and the Ossuary Boxes etc etc etc which were good for Church business as usual, but which at the end of the day, are just more creations from the faith-based forgery mill we call christianity. Where there is great faith and no evidence, there is a great market for forgeries. This has been the case ever since the 4th century when the CROSS and the NAILS were officially retrieved from the Holy Land by the second Christian Pilgrim to have visted the place in 300 years.


Best wishes,


Pete

ApostateAbe

Yes, of course those would be important considerations, too.

Toto

Here is the evidence we don't have about Jesus: we don't have a Roman mention of his trial in front of Pontius Pilate. We don't have the volume of Tacitus' Annals for the year it might have happened. We don't have anything written by a disciple of Jesus. We don't have anything written by a contemporary opponent of Jesus, such as a member of the Sanhedrin. We don't have any evidence of Christian veneration of his tomb or the place from which he ascended to heaven before St. Helena's time.

We don't have any mention of Paul outside of the Bible and later Christian literature. We don't have any of Paul's original letters outside of collections.

This means that when we have Christian gospels written a few generations after Jesus would have existed and been crucified, we have no clear way to decide if those were fictional or contain a kernel of history - especially if the requirements of that kernal are vague.

spin

When you present paragraphs containing such frequent problems that require so many comments, can you understand how it is received? I'd recommend you write fewer questionable ideas, then we both could be happier.

Perhaps you might care to justify your use of Tacitus now, when at best A.15.44 contains material not historically tenable and at worst is a christian insertion which inteferes with or perhaps hides the conclusion of Tacitus's attack on Nero regarding the latter's involvement in the fire. You do have to "validate" your use of the source as tenable corroboration.

mountainman

They can be more than just important. Received wisdom that has not been critically examined is faith. They may be critically important. C14 dating for example may destroy the idea of "early papyri". What's left of the "officially exhibited evidence" after that?

jgoodguy

Most of the writings ascribed to Paul are disputed. 6 of 13 canonical letters are considered inauthentic and what is left may or may not have been edited in undetectable ways. We do not have any of the original letters. The book of Acts was supposed to replace Paul's writings which if it had would have eliminated any writings dated to before the Gospels. The only evidence is that literary analysis indicates that 7 of the canonical letters were likely to have been written by the same person.

ApostateAbe

OK, great. So, first, you imply that there is no external source to verify a claim within the central narrative of the gospels. I provide the writing of Tacitus, proving your implication wrong. Now you need me to prove that Tacitus is trustworthy, since you are also sure that this passage of Tacitus is not legit.

Actually, it would hardly matter if it turned out that Tacitus wrote just as much fraudulent hogwash as the gospel authors. When we have multiple independent attestation of the same event, then that provides pretty good probability that the event is legitimately historical. Not only does this source effectively rebut your claim, but it also provides some degree of greater historical reliability of the crucifixion of Jesus by Pontius Pilate.

It would make a difference, though, if the passage were an insertion by Christians. Too bad that ad hoc speculation is highly preposterous, since the passage directly maligns the Christians, which would make such an interpolation very much unlike any other Christian interpolation that we know about.

aa5874

We KNOW that Tacitus Annals with Christus is a FORGERY based on the following:

1. No Church WRITER used Tacitus Annals to prove Jesus Christ existed and was crucified even up to the end of the 4th century.

2. Church writers used the forgeries in Josephus to prove Jesus existed and was crucified.

3. Church writers were AWARE of the writings of Tacitus and Josephus so it is expected that they would have KNOWN that these two writers had documented proof that Jesus existed and was crucified yet only the forgeries of Josephus was used as proof.

4. If Tacitus hated Christians and KNEW Jesus was just a MAN then he would have used the VERY information to prove that Jesus was NOT the Son of God or God Incarnate but an ORDINARY man who could NOT REMIT the Sins of Mankind.

5. Sulpitius Severus who wrote in the start of the 5th century appears to show that Tacitus Annals was INTERPOLATED sometime after his writings since he produced a passage that appears to be from Annals but WITHOUT the passage about "Christus".

6. The supposed mention of Christus in Tacitus and Jesus Christ in Josephus would have been compelling evidence for Christians to DEMONSTRATE Jesus did exist and was crucified yet in the 2nd century we have NO use of these very compelling evidence even when Tertullian ARGUED about the "FLESH of Christ" in his book.

7. Tacitus Annals 15.44 also appears to have been manipulated and the word translated as "Christian" may have been a forgery.

Tacitus Annals with "Christus" is most likely a forgery.

Now, how many times are we going to go over the same DEBUNKED passages. Tacitus Annals is DISPUTED it cannot help the HJ position.

The evidence from antiquity suggests that it was NOT the character called Jesus that was apocalyptic it was the VERY author of the Jesus story himself.

It was the INITIAL author of the Jesus story who THOUGHT the world was coming to an END after the Fall of the Temple.

ApostateAbe

Shoot, good point, aa5874. We know it was a forgery in part because church writers never quoted it to prove Jesus existed, in spite of the throngs of Jesus-mythers and Jesus-skeptics at the time. You see, this is why I normally don't argue with you. It is impossible to think of any effective rebuttals.