Holly3278

Jesus really did exist. We know this be cause the Jewish historian, Josephus, mentions His existence. His existence is also mentioned by Pliny the Younger, Tacitus, and Suetonius and possibly some others as well. This is not to mention that the early Church fathers attest to His existence as well. If you ask me, the existence of Jesus is a fact that I don't see how any Atheist or non-Theist could possibly deny.

aa5874

But, how did Jesus exist? That is the question.

Did Jesus exist just as a man?

Or, did Jesus exist as a God?

Or God and Man?

Josephus believed the God of the Jesus did exist as the Creator , NOT as a mere man.

This is a Church writer under the name of Tertullian asking the some questions about Jesus. The writer claimed it was agreed Jews was a God or of a Spiritual nature but it was just his flesh that was problematic.

"On the Flesh of Christ" 1
This writer has already mythologised Jesus.

But, now when you say Jesus existed you mean as a God, as a man or as God and man.

1.The Church claimed Jesus existed as God and MAN, a mythological entity.

2.Marcion claimed Jesus was God but only seemed a man, a mythological entity.

3.The Ebionites claimed Jesus was just a man but Christ as a God entered his body and then Christ the God left his body before Jesus was crucified. Christ, the God, escaped and Jesus was crucified without Christ the God in his body.

And then later Christ the God raised Jesus from the dead, fictitious and mythological entities

Who has the best myth?

Or the best flesh?

show_no_mercy

Forgery by Eusebius, or scribal note inserted into the text.

They mention a Chrestus, not Jesus. Chrestus was a common name. Besides that, they are probably just regurgitating the claims made by Christians, since they are all writing in the 2nd century.

gdeering

Please actually read your claimed sources and check the BC&H archive, or most any active thread, for alternative informed opinions.

It's quite easy to deny, a pleasure in fact because the atheist is on stronger ground than the theist. You might start a thread, after a little checking up on the enemy's arsenal.


Thanks,

G-D

spin

Really and truly.

The problem we have to face before we go on is the fact that the means of maintaining the past was in the hands of christian intellectual machinery for a millennium. Even with the best of intentions the natural bias can have its effects. Consider the famous trinitarian passage in 1 John 5:7. Not one of the early manuscripts features the verse, yet it's a lovely verse for trinitarianism. Consider the long ending for Mark or the the adultery pericope in John. They have crept into biblical texts maintained by christian scribes.

The Orwellian dictum, "Who controls the present controls the past..." is something we must deal with. There is just so much opportunity in those thousand years for some slip of judgment to include personal tendency.

Imagine American histories written in the sixties or seventies about Russia, Korea, China or Cuba. The American present deemed that those countries were bad and they were represented as bad. It's just the natural tendency.

We know that Josephus would never have called a dead felon "the christ". Would the devout Jew, who wrote his books in defense of the Jews, who was a descendant of a priestly family, and who was intimate with the Jewish religious literature, have been so willing to call Jesus who achieved no liberation of the Jews the messiah? Would he have known the more intimate theological information about Jesus, such as the resurrection in three days? Resurrection, someone coming back to life after three days, would have been such an astonishing fact if it were recorded by Josephus, would he have only given it a passing mention with no song and dance?

Josephus's principal source uses the term χριστος 40 times, none of which are used by Josephus, yet the two passages mentioning Jesus both use it. This would not be a problem for a christian scribe who saw this Jesus as the christ. But for Josephus we would need a lot more faith to accept.

The Tacitus passage is found in a manuscript of the early second millennium. It contains a number of problem, including the fact that Pontius Pilate is called a procurator when Tacitus expressly provides us with the evidence that says that Claudius was responsible for raising procurators to the rank of governorship. Before Claudius they were merely responsible for the financial management of a province and had no magisterial power, not being patricians. Pilate as a prefect and Tacitus knew the situation in Judea.

I could point out the bad placing of the passage so that it ruins the general argument against Nero for the fire, or the fact that Tacitus a renowned orator uses one of the worst alliterations I've ever seen, but the error about the rank of Pilate is sufficient to show that it was written by someone who didn't know the reality of Roman administration at the time of Pilate.

Suetonius, evincing no knowledge of the christian connection with the fire, in a list of Nero's acts to maintain civic order includes the execution of christians (afflicti suppliciis Christiani -- similar to the phrasing of the execution of Christ in Tacitus) because they were a new superstition that was considered worthy of repression among all the others, this along with the rest of the list of the control of foodstuffs to be sold, the banning of pantomimes and restraint on gladiators. Pretty credible, not.

History asks for care and the attempt to do away with self-serving tendentiousness.

If christians were considered responsible for the fire, I'd expect someone as well connected as Suetonius to know about it. I'd also expect Pliny the Younger to know about it through his connection with Tacitus, but christians are new to Pliny. He knew nothing about them, apparently because they hadn't made themselves known to his world before that.

If Jesus were to be mentioned in a historical source, I wouldn't expect such theological nuggets as the TF or Tacitus. Pliny writing about christians seems the most Plausible of all these references, but I hold him in abeyance because of the christian tendency to favor orthodox corruption of texts.

Did Jesus write to Abgar? Did Paul write to Seneca? Do the Acts of Pilate represent reality? Where did Paul's letter to the Laodiceans come from? Who wrote the apocryphal letters of the emperor Julian?

There is a long track record of christian interference with literature. It is only to be expected. But we have to be more careful while trying to do the history of christianity using texts that have been maintained by christians.


spin

ApostateAbe

You are the opponent that a bunch of Jesus-mythers and Jesus-agnostics in this forum have been anxious and fidgety to debate. The best evidence is not Josephus or the second-century authors, but a tradition reflected in the earliest Christian writings that can be projected backward to a living human personality type, as well as Paul's writing of meeting James the brother of Jesus and Peter the apostle.

Kapyong

Gday,

Paul did NOT mention a "brother of Jesus",
but rather a "brother of the Lord".

But somehow this distinction seems to get lost.


K.

ApostateAbe

I used a paraphrase, and not a quote. As you can imagine, I don't see a significant difference between "brother of the Lord" and "brother of Jesus." To me, the two identifications are the same, but it is clearer to people when I say, "brother of Jesus." It is the same interpretation taken by all of the early Christians who read Paul's epistle to the Galatians, as reflected in the writings of Josephus, and the meaning is reinforced in the gospels of Matthew and Mark. But, I understand that those who argue that Jesus was not a human being would take a different interpretation of that phrase. I get it. They have absolutely no choice. Maybe there was a group of respected Christians, who were NOT apostles, who were called, "brothers of the Lord," all evidence for this group was lost except for the passing mentions of Paul, and the meaning of the phrase was completely misunderstood by the immediate generations of Christians. But, if you have a theory that has little or no evidence to begin with, then you really shouldn't talk about that interpretation like it is something serious to consider, like I said something misleading in my paraphrase. It is an ad hoc explanation, meaning that it was made on the fly with poor evidence. A sure sign of an ad hoc explanation is that nobody accepts it but those who really need it to support their own special theory. In New Testament scholarship, any theory can be made consistent through a series of ad hoc explanations like that, because there is ambiguity all over the place. That is how Christian apologists make a living, for example.

Kapyong

Gday,

It's "clearer" to CHANGE the words of the original author ?!

Are we on Monty Python or something ?


K.

spamandham

Over and over you keep talking about some *group* known as "brothers of the Lord". As best I can tell, you've invented this notion in order to avoid the arguments specific to James and James *only*.

Do you care to explain why you keep ignoring the arguments specific to James and only James? If you think they aren't compelling that's fine, but why lean on a strawman in that case?