Vinnie

So it only takes "a little studying" to overturn what the vast majority of historians accept as factual?

<img src="graemlins/notworthy.gif" border="0" alt="[Not Worthy]" /> <img src="graemlins/notworthy.gif" border="0" alt="[Not Worthy]" /> <img src="graemlins/notworthy.gif" border="0" alt="[Not Worthy]" />

Vinnie

Apikorus

There was once a trial in which a man was accused of stealing a valuable watch. "Ladies and gentlemen of the jury," the prosecutor began, "I can produce five witnesses who saw this man steal the watch."

The defendant leaped out of his chair and exclaimed, "So what?! I can produce five hundred people who didn't see me steal the watch!"

Jayhawker Soule

Is this "embarrassment from the silence of history" unique? I came across a website on <a href="http://www.livius.org/men-mh/messiah/messianic_claimants00.html" target="_blank">Messianic Claimants</a> not too long ago. I have no idea as to its accuracy. What it seems to suggest, however, is that a number of folks are known to us only through Josephus. So, when someone says, "42 Ancient Historians Should Have Noticed.", one possible question might be: "How do we know?"

Does anyone have the capability to take the list provided by the site (or some similar list) and search Philo for references?

Steven Carr

Are you saying , that as a Jew, who often visited Jerusalem, Philo was not interested in small Jewish sects or writing about Pilate?

Perhaps he would have been interested in all those people appearing from their graves?

Steven Carr

To quoteh original post 'A little study proves otherwise and shows with respect to the fabulous tales about him in what is known as the Bible that he is no different and no more historical than say, Apollo as M.M. Mangasarian writes here'

So if you produce 5 people who say there were earthquakes in New York yesterday, and I produced 500 New Yorkers who never mention an eathqauke, a 3-hour eclipse, people being raised from the dead, etc etc, what should we conclude about New York?

I always wonder why the Magi followed the star to Jerusalem, when Christians assure us nobody outside Palestine would have taken a blind bit of notice of anything that ever happened in such an obscure corner of the Roman Empire.

lpetrich

That he was some wandering prophet who had had two human biological parents, who had never worked any miracles, and who had never risen from the dead?

leonarde

I came upon a somewhat parallel phenomenon quite
by chance last night: I was reading something about ancient Indian history and the author, a native of India and a professional historian, said
that though Alexander the Great conquered considerable territory in northwestern India and
spent 2 YEARS there, there is NO evidence in any
of the INDIAN sources that makes ANY mention of
him. This is in contrast to the Greek written testimony to the conquests and activities of Alexander in India.
A lot has to do with WHO is writing history:
Brahmin priests probably did it more or less exclusively for the Indians and for them Alexander
and his Macedonians/Greeks were unrelated to the
religious traditions in which they (the priests)
were steeped.
In the question at hand, who/what was Jesus to the
Romans? A Jew. That diminished ANY importance he
might have had. A pacifist. Not too impressive to a people as warlike as the Romans. The founder of
a relatively obscure cult of a religion that the
Roman historians were not much interested in (Judaism).
As the cult/sect grew larger it no doubt garnered
MORE attention. That is the pattern we see: as
the Christian presence in ROME itself grew larger,
there are more and more ROMAN references to the
Christians themselves. The beliefs that the Christians had about Jesus are related matter-of-
factly...

Cheers!

galiel

Misdirection. The OP didn't assert evidence of lack, merely lack of evidence. And, contrary to your implication, there aren't five credible (or even incredible) witnesses who can testify to the existence of Jesus. There is neither physical evidence, circumstantial evidence nor, Mel Brooks notwithstanding, 2,000 year-old first-hand witnesses who can testify "I knew Jesus. Jesus was my friend. And you, Senator, are no Jesus".

All speculation on Jesus must rely on ancient historical reporting. Therefore, when evaluating the testimony of writings which have a self-serving religious agenda, one is perfectly justified in expecting corroboration in contemporaneous historical documents which do not. For that matter, the credibility of any historical document from that era relies on substantive corraboration in multiple other accounts--or at least the credibility of a specific author on a specific report relies heavily on repeated corroboration of their reporting on other matters. In the case of the Bible, we have neither corroboration of the existence of Jesus from other sources, nor can we infer the credibility of the authors, since we don't have other writings by verified biblical authors to test.

The absence of corroborating source leaves one with an Occam's Razor choice: whether to believe

A) the fantastical claims of a single source which is full of descriptions of events that defy the known laws of physics, lack any supporting evidence, contain known contradictions of known physical laws of the universe, and are not corroborated by other, credible reporters; or

B) to theorize a simpler explanation (i.e., Jesus is fiction) that does not require suspension of all scientific knowledge to date and in fact is corroborated by the identification of other known fictions and internal contradiction of the same source--and takes into account the deliberate myth-making agenda behind the account itself.

This is an exercise of elementary logic. It is not that complicated to understand.

If one is emotionally and irrationally committed to suspending logic in order to justify extraordinary claims without extraordinary proof, then one shouldn't pretend to apply logical arguments to refute skeptical responses.

At least if one grants even minimal value to consistency and personal integrity.

[ September 26, 2002: Message edited by: galiel ]

[ September 26, 2002: Message edited by: galiel ]</p>

Kosh

Hey V,

do you believe that the claims of the Mormon religion are an invention?

leonarde

Posted by galiel: I would dispute that this is a single source though: even if you take the similarities of the
Synoptic Gospels to have been based on just one
witness account, there is John. The very last few
verses (24 and 25)of John indicate that it is a written version of an eyewitness testimony. So that would give us at least 2 sources: Synoptic and John's Gospel......

To lump these (minimal) two sources together as "The Bible" is just as silly as saying "If the King James Version was good enough for Saint Paul,
it's good enough for me!" : the Synoptics and John's Gospel are in the NT/Bible because they were judged by the Christian
faith community as being the best, most reliable
written records of the life, teachings, death, resurrection of Jesus. If there had been 6 such accounts so judged, probably they would have all been included in the canon....but they would have remained six sources, not one ('the Bible'). IOW the Bible is a sort of anthology.

Cheers!

[ September 26, 2002: Message edited by: leonarde ]</p>