Was Jesus the messiah?

[NapoleonGH]

umm please by all means give us these roman and jewish contemporary documents (writen during the time period of approximately 749 AVC to 786 AVC (4bce to 33ce in christian based years) because im pretty sure no one else here knows of their existance.


Paul cannot be a primary source for anything about jesus, he never met the man.


The gospels were written considerably many years after JC supposedly died, at the very least a generation after the supposed death, they even if they werent circumstantial would not be primary source documents.

[Queeb Salaron]

I'm looking for online copies of the documents.

Paul met Jesus on the road to Damascus. Granted, that was after Jesus was dead. But if this is true (as Christians claim), then Paul would, technically, be considered a primary source.

It has been theorized that the Gospels were written by disciples towards the ends of their lives. This would put them at about a generation apart from Jesus' existence. Again, I'm still looking for documentation of this online. Bear with me for a day or two.

[Darth Wong]

Proves nothing. Tacitus is not a primary historical source.

Your callous dismissal of informatin corroberating the existence of Jesus nothwithstanding, I and a great many others do acribe legitimacy to that work as a historical source.

Tacitus described these events a century after they supposedly occurred. Why do you regard him as a primary source? If an historian described WW2 50 years from now, would you regard HIM as a primary source?

[BlkbrryTheGreat]

Proves nothing. Tacitus is not a primary historical source.

Your callous dismissal of informatin corroberating the existence of Jesus nothwithstanding, I and a great many others do acribe legitimacy to that work as a historical source.

Tacitus described these events a century after they supposedly occurred. Why do you regard him as a primary source? If an historian described WW2 50 years from now, would you regard HIM as a primary source?

Yes.... if almost all knowledge from that time period had been lost. (Sad as that standard may seem.)

[NapoleonGH]

except the fact that we have reams of data and written stuff from that era, we have the aeneid, ovid, horace, livy, and many others, plenty of histories, etc. Tacitus is not a primary source, period, he is at best a secondary source

[Joe Momma]

Tacitus described these events a century after they supposedly occurred. Why do you regard him as a primary source? If an historian described WW2 50 years from now, would you regard HIM as a primary source?

Yes.... if almost all knowledge from that time period had been lost. (Sad as that standard may seem.)

Whether a source is primary or secondary should based on how close it is to the original events (primary being direct observation), not whether its the closest information available or not.

For example, a fellow student of mine is doing a thesis on black soldiers in the American Revolution. Unfortunately, blacks at that time and place were almost always illiterate (it was a felony to teach blacks to read or write) and most of the accolades that went to those troops only mentioned their white commanders. He's searching for personal letters and journals, but for the moment he's pretty much stuck with secondary sources. Even though those secondary sources are the best information he can find, he can't count them as primary because they're not based on direct observation, by and large.

FWIW, most historians will even count direct observations as secondary if they were recorded a long time after the fact because of concerns with inaccurate memories. For example, if somone was in a battle and gave a description of it thirty years later, it would often be treated as a secondary source because of the liklihood that the intervening years have affected that person's memories to some degree. Hell, ask any cop who's ever done a crime scene interview -- thirty seconds can be enough to make an eyewitnesses's memory hazy and inaccurate.

-- Joe Momma

[Jesus Christ]

Bloody hell, not that again!
You think one man can accomplish all that? we cannot do it in this day and age and you expect me to do it in my spare time? I had a job you know, carpenter {not a bad job actually, dont beleive the stories that I was poor}
Bills need paying and there is no such thing as a free lunch.
What the hell do people expect? a damn miricle?

[Dooey Jo]

For clarification, there is more proof that Jesus existed than there is proof that your great-grandmother existed.

But that doesn't mean that he was the messiah. I'd like to see this a bit more on-topic, if that's alright with you folks.

Except that I have several pictures of my great grandmother; she has a grave; it was written about her death in a newspaper of the time; she wrote a diary (my grandmother can confirm it is my great grandmother's handwriting), which we still keep as a memory; we have my great grandfather's diary in which he wrote about her; we have my grandmother; and the greatest proof of them all that my great grandmother existed: I exist. Would I have existed if my great grandmother never existed? Of course not. Do we have anything like this about Jesus? No, there are no pictures, no newspapers, no diaries from him (and certainly no-one who can confirm it is his) and none of his relatives have been found. How is that more proof that he existed, than my great grandmother?

And on the topic: If he really was the messiah, there wouldn't been any Judaism today. But there still is and they are still waiting for the messiah's coming. I mean, they were the ones who invented the messiah, they should know what he will be like. Jesus obviously wasn't him.