shinobi909

In some online discussion with some x-ians and I have previously been told this by a guy I once knew. They reckon that there are roman documents that prove the existance of jesus. Are there any other extra biblical references to jesus besides the shaky Josephus passage? Is anyone familiar with these roman texts?

P.S I can't take thier word for it that such documents exist becuase x-ians lie a lot.

Peter Kirby

Contemporary Roman records like a report of the trial have vanished if they ever existed.

In the early second century, three Roman authors mention Christians: Tacitus, Suetonius, and Pliny the Younger. It is possible that your correspondent has these author in mind.

Some basic information on their mentions of Christianity can be found at these web pages.

<a href="http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/tacitus.html" target="_blank">http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/tacitus.html</a>

<a href="http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/suetonius.html" target="_blank">http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/suetonius.html</a>

<a href="http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/pliny.html" target="_blank">http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/pliny.html</a>

best,
Peter Kirby

CX

There are no early Roman documents which prove the existence of Jesus. Jesus was an unknown in an obscure backwater province of the empire. There are later documents that give evidence of the existence of Xians, but that is altogether different from anything demonstrating the existence of Jesus.

shinobi909

Cool. I'm glad to find out that I was right.

Gregg

CX, this is a common misconception. Palestine was not an "obscure backwater province" of the Empire. It was a highly strategic location, a major crossroads between West and East. Keeping things under control there was of great importance to Rome, to the point where they fought a couple of savage guerilla wars to quell Jewish uprisings, and eventually deported 2/3 of the population.

It's true that this wouldn't necessarily have brought Jesus to Rome's attention if he wasn't any different from all the other preachers and agitators the authorities snapped up and executed on a regular basis. Very unlikely that Roman governors would sent detailed reports to Rome regarding every one of the hundreds or thousands of executions that took place on their watch.

Of course, if Jesus had really performed all the miracles attributed to him, Rome would have heard about that--so we can safely rule out that possibility. We can also be pretty sure that he couldn't have been as popular as he's portrayed in the Gospels--Pilate would never have allowed him to spend a year, much less three, traveling around Palestine preaching to huge crowds.

But if Jesus was an "unknown" as you put it, then why, shortly after his death, did devout Jews elevate him to divine status (an unthinkable blasphemy, equating a man with God). And how did they manage to persuade thousands of other Jews across the Empire that this obscure preacher they'd never seen, who was executed as a rebel, was in fact the incarnation of their perfect, untouchable, invisible, holy God?

The answer, of course, is that they didn't. There was no historical Jesus. Christianity didn't start with a person, it started with a belief in a mythic cosmic redeemer. Check out <a href="http://www.jesuspuzzle.org" target="_blank">www.jesuspuzzle.org</a> for more details!

Gregg
Jesus-myther & Earl Doherty follower & proud of it!

leonarde

Posted by Gregg: This is
quite a stretch: it seems to imply that there was
some miracle-cure reconnaissance unit in the Roman Army whose function was to report all religiously-oriented healers to Rome! There are
all sort of faith-healers in the US today. Probably some are phoneys and some perform at least some true healings. But offhand I can't name
a one except Oral Roberts. My ignorance of this
proves nothing. Rome was not in the faith-healer
import business.

But whatever popularity he had was the RESULT of
that one to three years of preaching/healing, not
some pre-existing popularity based on the carpentry work he did!

Cheers!

Buffman

leonarde

But whatever popularity he had was the RESULT of that one to three years of preaching/healing, not some pre-existing popularity based on the carpentry work he did!

And your verifiable evidence that there was any "one to three years of preaching/healing" is...?

Just curious.

leonarde

Gregg,[edit: should be to Buffman]
You [edit: meant Gregg himself] yourself seemed to take this as a given, at least a given of the Gospel narratives: ///leonarde's emphasis added///
so your question becomes more like "What PROOF
do you have that the Gospels are accurate?". It
seems that that has been gone over by so many
threads here, pro and con, that anything I could
say would be superfluous....
Cheers!

[ September 16, 2002: Message edited by: leonarde ]</p>

godfry n. glad

Gregg did state:

Not only did they fight a couple of savage guerilla wars, they regularly faced the other militaristic empire to their immediate east: Parthia/Persia.

Palestine and Syria were pivotal geographical locations in the geopolitics of the the era. They were the doorway to Egypt, which, as the Roman Empire grew, came to have increasing importance as a source of grain - foodstuffs for Romans.

Note also that just as Rome was securing control of the Levant, it briefly lost all control of it to Parthians (with the aid of a renegade Roman Republican general), along with much of the Anatolian peninsula. The Roman legions under Crassus' command were defeated by the mounted Parthian archers at Carrhae in 53 BCE and Crassus lost his life. In 40 BCE, Marc Anthony barely escaped with his life after a crushing defeat at the hands of the Parthians. At the turn of the millenium, Parthia was in possession of two Roman legion standards.

Palestine (along with Syria) was to become the staging area for repeated Roman attempts to conquer and subdue the Parthian (and, after 236 CE, the Sassanid) empire. It was indeed _not_ a "backwater province", but an important hinge of imperial expansionist aspirations.

godfry n. glad

[ September 16, 2002: Message edited by: godfry n. glad ]

[ September 16, 2002: Message edited by: godfry n. glad ]</p>

Steven Carr

Well, according to the Gospels, Herod was very aware of Jesus, and wanted to meet him, and Herod was on speaking terms with the Emperor.

These are quite good connections for somebody claimed by Christians to be an unimportant nobody.