show_no_mercy

Of course. You're going to trot out your usual uncritical acceptance of Pliny, Josephus, and Tacitus. These have been discussed to death here, and all are written during the same time period as the gospel narratives were written. These sources still only tell us what Christians believed at the time they were written, and are the same secondary historical evidence as the gospel narratives.

We have no primary evidence (i.e. written letters by Jesus, firsthand contemporaneous accounts of encounters with Jesus, contemporary depictions/images of Jesus, etc.) for the historicity of Jesus. Well, we have Paul's encounter with the risen Jesus, but this unfortunately only adds weight to the mythicist case.

Josephus is another matter though. You haven't yet provided a cogent reason for why Josephus would describe someone as "the messiah" without any sort of explanation for what that word means.

Remember Josephus' audience - pagan Greeks and Romans. He actually does describe "the messiah" as Vespasian without using such an odd word (χριστος) that had no meaning to his audience. He used a logical-ish argument.

Jesus called the ointment? Why would someone be called "the ointment"?

This would be the response that Josephus' audience would have to the two times that Josephus uses the word "christ" (three if you count the word "christian" which would be even more nonsensical to his audience). He goes through great pains to discuss and explain the four different sects and philosophies of Judaism, but absolutely nothing about a word that had an esoteric meaning in Judaism - and never uses it for the various messiah-wannabes or for people that actually were called χριστος in the LXX that he describes in his texts.

The simplest explanation is that Josephus never wrote this word. It was inserted by later Christians. Which fits into the conscillience that no Jewish authors from the time of Jesus wrote about him.

Even though all of this evidence for Jesus is crappy, it still does not mean that Jesus didn't exist. There would have to be some sort of positive case for that (much like how disproving the theory of evolution doesn't prove creationism true). However, all reconstructions of "the" historical Jesus rely on a bit too much ad hocery, and I wish biblical historians would acknowledge this instead of demeaning the mythicist case(s) for the same reasons.

Chaucer

http://www.rationalskepticism.org/ch...esus-t267.html

Chaucer

Whether worked to death or not, that does not even start to address my chief concern. These extra-Biblical texts are _not_ Christian literature. So to say there is no Christian literature at all is indeed misleading. You have not disposed of my chief point, which is that it is careless or worse to make blanket statements that only Christian literature is out there. Non-Christian literature _is_ out there. Whatever form it's in is irrelevant. Saying it's not out there in any form at all is simply wrong.

Chaucer

Chaucer

I knew it. Here we go with distractions about the quality of the non-Christian texts, when that doesn't begin to address my point.

You stated erroneously that there are no non-Biblical texts on Jesus. That is flat-out wrong. There are. You can view them as tainted material all you like. That doesn't change the f-a-c-t that they exist. They are extant. They can be read. They were first written for pagan audiences.

This is Cloud-Cuckoo-Land -- it's sophistry -- to make blanket statements that there are no non-Christian texts. It is misleading at best, and deceptive at worst.

Chaucer

Toto

These are sources for Christianity, or Jesus, but not Peter or Paul. (James is mentioned in Josephus, but it is questionable whether that is the same James as any of the Biblical James's.)

Toto

I don't have time right now to track down the original statement that set you off, but it sounds like we can all agree that there are no contemporary non-Christian or Christian texts that mention Jesus, and that there are later non-Christian texts that refer to Jesus, although none of them are overwhelmingly convincing to a critical historian.

I think you will find it the consensus of this forum that it is not irrational to believe that there was a historical core to the Jesus portrayed in the gospel, but that there is no compelling evidence for his existence. That's why we can keep discussing it.

Will you please calm down and stop playing the victim? You can find some mythicists who make incorrect statements, just as you can find a host of other internet posters who write bad stuff. There's no need to make a crusade out of it.

bacht

Yes, these are the usual suspects, and they do confirm that there was some kind of Christianity in existence in the early 2nd C. That's a long way from confirming whether there really was a Jesus, whether he really lived in Pilate's time, and whether there were apostolic missionaries spreading a Catholic christianity before the bar-Kochba revolt.

aa5874

Please allow me to respond to sion. You do not represent me at all.

And you are continually make statements about ME that seems rather troubling.

What free speech issue are you now bringing up? You are constantly not dealing with the OP but seem to be focused on demonising me.

I admonish you please deal with the OP. You won't get anywhere trying to demonize me.

aa5874

Forget about emotions and present the Evidence from antiquity.

Well once you claim it was possible that there was an HJ I actually thought you were familiar with the sources for Jesus of the NT.

I cannot control what you believe but this is my position.

All passages in the works of Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews 18.3.3 and 20.9.1 that claimed that there was a character named Jesus the Christ are forgeries.

Josephus himself fought in the Jewish War with Jews who were looking for a Messianic ruler at around 70 CE based on prophecies in Hebrew Scripture.

Josephus eventually claimed that Vespasian was the Messianic rule as found in the Hebrew Scripture. See Wars of the Jews 6.5.4.

Even the Jesus in Josephus was a myth. He was raised from the dead on the third day. What fiction.

But, what embellishments are you talking about?

In the very NT, the disciples did not embellish Jesus, they ran away when he was arrested and Peter denied he ever knew Jesus, not once but THREE times. And when the tomb was visited and his body was missing they ran away and trembled with fear. They were SILENCED by the events. See Mark 16.

The historicity of Martin Luther King Jr is not dependent on fiction or rumors.

The historicity of Abraham Lincoln is not at all dependent upon the stories that people make up about him. There are records of the birth and death of Abraham Lincoln that are considered credible.

The existence of Abraham Lincoln is far more credible than the Creator called the God of Moses.

But we have historical figures of antiquity that were even deified and 2000 years later we see no change in human nature.

People today still believe Tiberius was a figure of history, that Jesus was the son of God who was raised from the dead and that the Greek Gods were myths

Human nature has not changed much.

I thought you said you were a newcomer and may not be aware of certain things.

Perhaps you do not understand that some people would like to "specialise" or focus on certain areas.

Right now my theory is that Jesus, the disciples and Paul are ALL 1st century FICTION characters based on APOLOGETIC sources of antiquity.

Chaucer

Excuse me: initially, neither Bacht nor show_no_mercy were addressing whether or not any of the Christian texts were contemporary or not (they are not, clearly). They were saying that the only texts of any kind are Christian texts. Now, that is just plain wrong and a little reflection on their parts would remind tham of the non-Christian ones.

There are both Christian and non-Christian texts of roughly the same (later) generation. To say there are only Christian texts in such a context is plainly misleading, and it is pure sophistry to suggest otherwise, and it is clear evasion not to address that sole point. Not a single response here has.

Chaucer