Historicity of Jesus

[Mange]

Then where are those documents? Care to give any examples?

That Luke is the writer of the Gospel of Luke and the Acts is far from uncontroversial and the gospels were "named" much later.

[Vendetta]

also your forgetting jewwish documents, such as the sanhedrin and phariseas "GD this jesus he's too GD popular".

There are no surviving documents from any Sanhedrin contemporary with when Jesus is thought to have lived. Also, around that time the Sanhedrin was primarily comprised of Saduccees, not Pharisees, who didn't come to be a dominant sect (and form the foundation of rabbinical judaism) until around 70CE. The presentation of the Sanhedrin as a group of corrupt Pharisees in the Gospels is a product of the time period they were written in, and an attempt to make them more roman-friendly.

The Sanhedrin's view of Jesus could best be expressed as "He's not the Messiah, he's a very naughty boy".

[Battlehymn Republic]

No one read the Straight Dope article?

[Vendetta]

Yes. Everything it says about historical records of anyone called Jesus have been pointed out here in far more detail.

Excepting possibly references to him in the Talmud, which, as it was written by people very much of the 'not the Messiah, very naughty boy' persuasion (by the time the Talmud got around to being written down, most Jews were of the opinion that Jesus was not the Messiah, and nor were any of the other contemporary candidates) is possibly not a reliable guide.

[GrandMasterTerwynn]

No one read the Straight Dope article?

The Straight Dope article glosses over the same sources that have already been discussed in the thread. Furthermore, it glosses over them and fails to discuss the criticisms about those same sources that were already discussed earlier in the thread.

[GrandMasterTerwynn]

Seeing as there is NO contemporary mention of Jesus in any Roman documents, inscriptions or other works, given his apparent significance and the events at the time of his death, I find it VERY surprising that if he WAS a genuine figure that he wasn't mentioned.

LMAO, um yes there are Roman documents.

If you'd bothered to read the thread, what Roman documents there are that make reference to Jesus were written decades after his death. This has already been addressed several times.

also your forgetting jewwish documents, such as the sanhedrin and phariseas "GD this jesus he's too GD popular".

What the fuck is this "GD" business? Goddamn? What's the matter, afraid your God will strike you down if you use his name? Again, already addressed elsewhere.

or the the texts that have been put into the bible, and luke the writer of Luke, was himself a physican(roman education might I add) and in those days that qualifies him as a complete scholar.

I'll translate this into English: "I say Luke has Roman education and is a complete scholar, thus what he writes is correct. I WIN, YOU LOSE, WORSHIP JEEBUS!" Luke was written fifty and a hundred years after the alleged death of Jesus. Not to mention nothing is actually known of the author of the gospel himself, since the attribution of it to Luke, Paul's companion didn't take place until the second century.

about the pagan stuff, they might just have taken it from the jewish texts (or what we might call the old testament), gosh golly wehockers nvr thought of that now did we, and that dates back around 4000BC minimum.

Way to go. You've gone and demonstrated your ignorance yet again. Yes, early Christianity draws heavily on Judaism, but there are parallels between it and the other major faiths extant in the Roman world at the time, including the Greco-Roman traditions, Zorostrian traditions in Persia, and the Egyptian faiths. Furthermore, archeological evidence indicates that the Israelite kingdoms didn't exist before 900-1000 BCE, with fuzzy evidence connecting them to various nomadic tribes living in the area during the fifteenth century BCE . . . not "around 4000BC minimum."

and for people say stuff like this or thats not accurate, well its damn well more(or just as much) acurate then the stuff your using.

You're not quoted any sources, you retard. Others in this thread, myself included, have already quoted the Roman sources and have pointed out how none of them were contemporary with the alleged person of Jesus.

[Darth Wong]

LMAO, um yes there are Roman documents.

Wow, the Roman Catholics have documents from the early Roman Catholic Empire which state that Roman Catholic doctrine is true. Well knock me down with a feather, it MUST be true!

[Vendetta]

LMAO, um yes there are Roman documents.

Wow, the Roman Catholics have documents from the early Roman Catholic Empire which state that Roman Catholic doctrine is true. Well knock me down with a feather, it MUST be true!

He was attempting to insinuate that there are Roman documents contemporary with Christ's generally agreed life, not from the early Christian Empire, three hundred years later.

Doesn't make him any less wrong, the only validated documents are from 40-80 years later (though still pre-Christian), but the sarcasm gun, in this instance is off target.

[Surlethe]

Seeing as there is NO contemporary mention of Jesus in any Roman documents, inscriptions or other works, given his apparent significance and the events at the time of his death, I find it VERY surprising that if he WAS a genuine figure that he wasn't mentioned.

LMAO, um yes there are Roman documents.

also your forgetting jewwish documents, such as the sanhedrin and phariseas "GD this jesus he's too GD popular".

or the the texts that have been put into the bible, and luke the writer of Luke, was himself a physican(roman education might I add) and in those days that qualifies him as a complete scholar.

about the pagan stuff, they might just have taken it from the jewish texts (or what we might call the old testament), gosh golly wehockers nvr thought of that now did we, and that dates back around 4000BC minimum.

and for people say stuff like this or thats not accurate, well its damn well more(or just as much) acurate then the stuff your using.

A word of advice, buddy: read the board policies. You might learn something, like the general attitude toward incompetent English and unsupported points. As it stands, I see your future here being short and crispy.

As for the thread topic: I myself feel the lack of contemporary documentation is no bar to establishing the existence of Jesus. Of course, this does not mean the Bible (or its interpretation) is correct, and I see some danger of committing a false dilemma: "Well, the New Testament is not historically accurate, and its record of Jesus is thus wrong; therefore Jesus must never have existed."

The way I see it, at least, is this: the existance of Christianity, which arose out of a Jewish cult in the first century, seems to me to point to the existance of someone. Cults don't spontaneously form, they rise around a personality, and, in this case, that personality would be the historical Jesus. That is, the existence of Christianity is evidence enough for some guy who claimed to be the messiah.

[tharkûn]

Revolt is probably the wrong term, but for someone to have that much of a following and be causing the local authorities, up to and including the provincial governor so many hassles - all of this mentioned in the Bible no less - then you have to wonder why the name of the rabble-rouser never turns up.

Because Roman governors tried at all times to CYA. Rome didn't like it when a governor was having trouble and most governors tried very hard to pretend all was well. Besides the troubles Jesus caused, as described by the Bible, are nothing. Riots in the market? Been done. Killing of other religious sects? Like that didn't happen before. Seeing as all the trouble was handled by the local legions, why would Jesus be of concern to Rome? What documentation there would be for a more or less pacifist cult whose leader was executed to appease another religious sect would have resided in Judea, most likely not surviving the subsequent Jewish revolts.

Even those records in Rome are far from complete as the various troubles through the centuries resulted in copious destruction of Roman records.

Frankly I highly doubt Christianity could have survived without some an actual Jesus at the heart of it. Even if the first Gospel was written decades after the time in question there are still too many people who would have had some type of direct first hand experience. While lifespans were short, most of that was due to childhood death, those who survived didn't die off in 20 years. In decent sized towns you'd be hard pressed NOT to stasticly expect some elderly person to have survived with a first hand account of yes this Jesus guy came here decades ago or no this Jesus guy never came here when I was young.

[weemadando]

I have no doubt that there was some dude called Jesus, who preached and made merry, but that he was the son of god and responsible for all of the actions in the bible... Bollocks.

And most of my experience with Christianity in Rome is to do with the later civil wars and the use of Christians as a subversive powerbase by people like Constantine who saw them as an unexploited resource with the help of whom, he could win control...

[tharkûn]

I have no doubt that there was some dude called Jesus, who preached and made merry, but that he was the son of god and responsible for all of the actions in the bible... Bollocks.

Oh.

And most of my experience with Christianity in Rome is to do with the later civil wars and the use of Christians as a subversive powerbase by people like Constantine who saw them as an unexploited resource with the help of whom, he could win control...

Christians were originally just another Jewish sect, then a cult, then a scapegoat for everything wrong in Rome (they got into trouble for not worshipping the Emperor as a god), and then as being a significant power bloc within the army and merchantile classe which is right about where you begin. Before Constantine others tried to utilize the Christian bloc, Trajan and Hadrian apparently tried to walk the line and get support from the Christines for not actively persecuting tham and support from the pagans for having Christian crimes on the books (Pliny is given what amounts to a "don't ask, don't tell" order). Marcus Aurelius shot that all to hell and of course the Diocletian's visit to the Oracle created a huge gulf between the empire and the Christians.

[weemadando]

Yeah, most Emperors took a laissez-faire/status-quo attitude with the Christians until they began being an overt power in use in factional conflicts. I find it most amusing though that Christians nowadays will go on and on and on about the persecution by Romans (feeding Christians to the Lions) which, to be quite frank were minor and rare occurances, then, as soon as they gained power, it was time for the lions to have their fill of as many "pagans" as they could eat, crucifictions galore for those who dared to remain faithful to the old ways and general unpleasantness.

But no. They never remember THAT part of it, do they?

[Straha]

Look, for the people who claim that we have no documents ignore the paucity of documents we actually do have. For instance the Punic Wars almost everything you've heard about it comes from TWO main sources (Polybius and Livy) and a small number of minor sources (Plutarch, Dionysus of Halicanarsus and a smattering of others who have any sort of original information).

Now, onto something else from this, Hellenic Historians were often careful to get the bare facts straight (for instance Hannibal crossed the Alps during the winter of 218 B.C.) but then they added details to make it sound better (the particular pass he used, the details that caused the war, troop numbers, etc.) because the intent of writers of that era was to write something more akin to Historical Fiction, which embellished and changed in the areas where they wanted (for instance read Livy's account of the start of the Second Punic War, and then read Polybius's.) And the main thing they used to do this were speaches, which Historians all the way back to Herodotus and Thucidyes used to give charecter to the people in their stories. How does this apply to our dear friend J-Boy of N-Town? Considering that they were writing in a Hellenic Society and that they were undoubtably followers of jesus they wrote histories of his life, only they, like any other Historian of the time, added speaches and details to his life as they saw fit. So what you have to do is strip all this away and look at the bare facts: There probably was a Jesus, he probably did preach in Gallilee (sp?) and Jerusalem agaisnt the Temple priests (the stuff about the Pharisees was probably added later) and partially against the Romans, he probably preached a relativley peaceful doctrine that was a reformation of the Judaic faith along slightly more western lines, and he was probably killed by Pontius Pilate by Crucifiction. Everything else, the miracles, the beatitudes, the parables, etc. were probably added by the historians as "something he could have said/done."

[Darth Wong]

Look, for the people who claim that we have no documents ignore the paucity of documents we actually do have. For instance the Punic Wars almost everything you've heard about it comes from TWO main sources (Polybius and Livy) and a small number of minor sources (Plutarch, Dionysus of Halicanarsus and a smattering of others who have any sort of original information).

Now, onto something else from this, Hellenic Historians were often careful to get the bare facts straight (for instance Hannibal crossed the Alps during the winter of 218 B.C.) but then they added details to make it sound better (the particular pass he used, the details that caused the war, troop numbers, etc.) because the intent of writers of that era was to write something more akin to Historical Fiction, which embellished and changed in the areas where they wanted (for instance read Livy's account of the start of the Second Punic War, and then read Polybius's.) And the main thing they used to do this were speaches, which Historians all the way back to Herodotus and Thucidyes used to give charecter to the people in their stories. How does this apply to our dear friend J-Boy of N-Town? Considering that they were writing in a Hellenic Society and that they were undoubtably followers of jesus they wrote histories of his life, only they, like any other Historian of the time, added speaches and details to his life as they saw fit. So what you have to do is strip all this away and look at the bare facts: There probably was a Jesus, he probably did preach in Gallilee (sp?) and Jerusalem agaisnt the Temple priests (the stuff about the Pharisees was probably added later) and partially against the Romans, he probably preached a relativley peaceful doctrine that was a reformation of the Judaic faith along slightly more western lines, and he was probably killed by Pontius Pilate by Crucifiction. Everything else, the miracles, the beatitudes, the parables, etc. were probably added by the historians as "something he could have said/done."

Well said. The problem is that if an archaeologist produced evidence that there were errors in the stories of the Punic wars, the people who study the Punic wars would say "interesting" and investigate this evidence. Do the same thing with Jesus, and the people who "study" the Bible call you a heretic or a liar.

[The Dark]

Well said. The problem is that if an archaeologist produced evidence that there were errors in the stories of the Punic wars, the people who study the Punic wars would say "interesting" and investigate this evidence. Do the same thing with Jesus, and the people who "study" the Bible call you a heretic or a liar.

Bullshit. Try examining the work done by the Jesus Seminar (who threw out every saying except one from Mark as being inauthentic) rather than spouting anti-religious tripe. Or try actually looking at BAR, who do archaeological work on sites mentioned in the Bible, and were among the first to dispute that Jericho was even occupied at the time the Book of Joshua is supposed to have occurred. The people who do serious study of the Bible are quite willing to look at its historicity or lack thereof. If it were true that nobody who studies the Bible accepted historical analysis, then there wouldn't be arguments between four-source and Griesbach hypotheses, no discussion of Pauline and pseudo-Pauline epistles, no consensus that Gospel of John and the Johannine Epistles originate from the same community while Revelation According to John is from a different community (as that violates "tradition"), no JEPD theory of the Old Testament. Many of the liberals I know reject the virgin birth because it does not appear in either the Pauline epistles (ca. 50-65 CE) or Mark (ca. 70 CE), but does appear in Matthew and Luke (ca. 80-90 CE).

[Rye]

Well said. The problem is that if an archaeologist produced evidence that there were errors in the stories of the Punic wars, the people who study the Punic wars would say "interesting" and investigate this evidence. Do the same thing with Jesus, and the people who "study" the Bible call you a heretic or a liar.

I don't get this, are you saying there are no competent or objective biblical archeologists, or what?

[Imperial Overlord]

Well said. The problem is that if an archaeologist produced evidence that there were errors in the stories of the Punic wars, the people who study the Punic wars would say "interesting" and investigate this evidence. Do the same thing with Jesus, and the people who "study" the Bible call you a heretic or a liar.

I don't get this, are you saying there are no competent or objective biblical archeologists, or what?

No, he's saying that believers won't accept evidence that contradicts their preconcieved notions on Jesus and dismiss what they don't like out of hand.

[Rye]

I'm sure that's true of most of the uneducated ones, but most of the people teaching NT History in accredited Christian Colleges are Christians, teaching mainly to Christians. Of course, the inerrantists and their ilk complain these are just "liberal chrsitians" and thus dismissable. It's simply wrong to say that Christians will dismiss it, when they're the bulk of the people learning it and teaching it!

[Darth Wong]

Well said. The problem is that if an archaeologist produced evidence that there were errors in the stories of the Punic wars, the people who study the Punic wars would say "interesting" and investigate this evidence. Do the same thing with Jesus, and the people who "study" the Bible call you a heretic or a liar.

Bullshit. Try examining the work done by the Jesus Seminar (who threw out every saying except one from Mark as being inauthentic) rather than spouting anti-religious tripe. Or try actually looking at BAR, who do archaeological work on sites mentioned in the Bible, and were among the first to dispute that Jericho was even occupied at the time the Book of Joshua is supposed to have occurred. The people who do serious study of the Bible are quite willing to look at its historicity or lack thereof. If it were true that nobody who studies the Bible accepted historical analysis, then there wouldn't be arguments between four-source and Griesbach hypotheses, no discussion of Pauline and pseudo-Pauline epistles, no consensus that Gospel of John and the Johannine Epistles originate from the same community while Revelation According to John is from a different community (as that violates "tradition"), no JEPD theory of the Old Testament. Many of the liberals I know reject the virgin birth because it does not appear in either the Pauline epistles (ca. 50-65 CE) or Mark (ca. 70 CE), but does appear in Matthew and Luke (ca. 80-90 CE).

Utterly irrelevant to the bulk of the population, moron. You can talk about real Biblical scholars all you like, but the people who claim to "study" the Bible themselves usually fall into the fucktard category, exactly as I said. Too bad reality doesn't suit your apologist bullshit, asshole.

[The Dark]

Well said. The problem is that if an archaeologist produced evidence that there were errors in the stories of the Punic wars, the people who study the Punic wars would say "interesting" and investigate this evidence. Do the same thing with Jesus, and the people who "study" the Bible call you a heretic or a liar.

Bullshit. Try examining the work done by the Jesus Seminar (who threw out every saying except one from Mark as being inauthentic) rather than spouting anti-religious tripe. Or try actually looking at BAR, who do archaeological work on sites mentioned in the Bible, and were among the first to dispute that Jericho was even occupied at the time the Book of Joshua is supposed to have occurred. The people who do serious study of the Bible are quite willing to look at its historicity or lack thereof. If it were true that nobody who studies the Bible accepted historical analysis, then there wouldn't be arguments between four-source and Griesbach hypotheses, no discussion of Pauline and pseudo-Pauline epistles, no consensus that Gospel of John and the Johannine Epistles originate from the same community while Revelation According to John is from a different community (as that violates "tradition"), no JEPD theory of the Old Testament. Many of the liberals I know reject the virgin birth because it does not appear in either the Pauline epistles (ca. 50-65 CE) or Mark (ca. 70 CE), but does appear in Matthew and Luke (ca. 80-90 CE).

Utterly irrelevant to the bulk of the population, moron. You can talk about real Biblical scholars all you like, but the people who claim to "study" the Bible themselves usually fall into the fucktard category, exactly as I said. Too bad reality doesn't suit your apologist bullshit, asshole.

Way to provide an ambiguous context in your initial post, then. If you had said bulk of the population from the beginning, I would have agreed, because the bulk of the population doesn't study the Bible, they study narrow portions of it. The bulk of the population does not study any field. That's equivalent to the conspiracy theorists "studying" engineering, to place it within your degree area rather than mine. Either provide context, or expect vague generalizations to be demolished, Mike.

[Darth Wong]

Utterly irrelevant to the bulk of the population, moron. You can talk about real Biblical scholars all you like, but the people who claim to "study" the Bible themselves usually fall into the fucktard category, exactly as I said. Too bad reality doesn't suit your apologist bullshit, asshole.

Way to provide an ambiguous context in your initial post, then. If you had said bulk of the population from the beginning, I would have agreed, because the bulk of the population doesn't study the Bible, they study narrow portions of it. The bulk of the population does not study any field. That's equivalent to the conspiracy theorists "studying" engineering, to place it within your degree area rather than mine. Either provide context, or expect vague generalizations to be demolished, Mike.

Blow me, dipshit. If you're too fucking stupid to understand that when you deliberately surround a word in quotation marks you're being sarcastic, I can't help you. But I don't have to respect you either. Perhaps I should have carefully explained it in legalese for you, explaining the differentiation between university-educated scholars and people who "study" the Bible?

[The Dark]

Blow me, dipshit. If you're too fucking stupid to understand that when you deliberately surround a word in quotation marks you're being sarcastic, I can't help you. But I don't have to respect you either.

That same quotation mark could also be understood to cast aspersions on the field as a whole, rather than being meant sarcastically. Given your historical distaste for religion, I thought it was meant in that way. My mistake.

[Rye]

Blow me, dipshit. If you're too fucking stupid to understand that when you deliberately surround a word in quotation marks you're being sarcastic, I can't help you. But I don't have to respect you either.

That same quotation mark could also be understood to cast aspersions on the field as a whole, rather than being meant sarcastically. Given your historical distaste for religion, I thought it was meant in that way. My mistake.

Well, right before that, he did just say "study" in the proper sense with regards to the Punic wars, then changed its meaning when he talked about the bible. So yeah, that's why I asked him, I thought the same as you.

I mean look at this statement:

"The problem is that if a chemist produced evidence that there was a unifying theory in organic chemistry, the people who study chemistry would say "interesting" and investigate this evidence. Do the same thing with Biology, and the people who "study" Biology say you must repent!"

The people that "study" evolution are the creationists, in this case, but it's still sort of difficult to discern from the statement.

[Darth Wong]

What you don't seem to understand is that most of the people who have studied the Punic Wars did not do so at the university level either. But at least they tend to maintain some objectivity about it, while the vast majority of people who claim to be Bible experts do not. That's the point which seems to elude your grasp.