What i mean is, is there any writing dating back to when he walked to Earth that is about him? Other than the bible.
Did the Romans keep a record of his execution?
Those Rabbis he talked to in the temple when he was a kid, did they keep a journal and write about this crazy kid who was talking to them?
Shortly, no.
There are no contemporary accounts of Jesus’ life. The only non-Christian source that talks about Jesus is Josephus and the authenticity of the passage is questioned. In any event, he was writing some 60 years after Jesus died.
And to be clear, the bible (new testament) wasn’t written during his lifetime.
None, for various reasons. One was the absence of mass media and printing technology. In addition, the vast majority of Palestinians were illiterate at the time.
Most importantly, Jesus didn’t rise to prominence until after his death and resurrection. It should not be surprising that few people, if any, wrote about him during his lifetime.
BTW, there’s this popular notion that nobody wrote about Jesus until the second or third century. (I’ve seen a few people mention that, even here on SDMB.) That not at all correct, though. The Pauline Epistles are generally acknowledged to have been written a few decades after the death of Christ. The Gospels are generally dated later than that, but even those were written well within the first century.
Im well aware of that.
I didn’t get that from the post where you said
That’s an overstatement on several levels. For one thing, Josephus mentioned Jesus twice. One of his citations, the Testimonium Flavianum, is believed by many to contain some interpolations by subsequent scribes, but is not generally dismissed as a complete fabrication. He also mentioned Jesus in his discussion of the martyrdom of James, and that passage is not in dispute.
In addition, you have other non-Christian sources, such as Tacitus and Pliny the Elder (to name the two most famous ones). They were admittedly dated later than Josephus, but they are also ancient sources that mention Jesus.
Most of what we do know does indeed come from ancient Christian sources. Some non-historians choose to dismiss these on the grounds that these are biased sources. Professional historians, however, do not automatically reject accounts due to alleged bias; after all, people generally write about topics in which they have some manner of personal interest. They might take this bias into account when evaluating the text, but they do not insist on completely impartial sources for all their historical accounts.
Right, i’m sorry, i should have been more clear. I guess i just didn’t want the Bible to be referenced at all, i wanted to see if there were any unbiased texts written during his lifetime.
I understand that you’re looking for unbiased sources, but as I mentioned earlier, that’s not how historians operate. No historian would dismiss Caesar’s account of the Gallic Wars, for example, even though he is our only source regarding this event. Nor would they summarily dismiss what George Washington wrote on the Revolutionary War simply because it’s biased.
As a history professor that I interviewed once said (and I paraphrase), “Historians expect that there will always be bias in the ancient accounts. They simply take that into account.”
Besides, based on what has been recorded about the life of Jesus, it would be difficult for anyone to remain unbiased about him. Most people would either follow him or dismiss him as a loon. In fact, if the Resurrection truly happened, then it would be extremely difficult to remain unbiased. You can’t simply shrug an event like that off. You’d either bow down and worship the man or strive to explain it all away.
Right, thats why i was hopeing there was something like a Roman record of his execution. I don’t know much about the ancient Roman Empire, but for being as advanced as it was, i think its weird they didnt record things like trials, executions, taxes, births, deaths, etc.
Also, i think “capturing” and executing the “King of the Jews” would probably be a big deal during that time in the Empire.
It would indeed be nice if one could find a Roman record of his execution. As far as I can tell though, they didn’t make a practice of recording such things. (Is there a specialist on Roman history in the house?)
Also, do remember that these events all took place long before modern printing and paper-producing processes were invented. The papyri and parchments used back then simply didn’t last for very long unless they were preserved very well. It’s safe to say that the vast majority of official documents from that period have not survived.
Heck, even the Dead Sea Scrolls, which were meticulously protected from the elements, are faded and fragmentary. Unless some people had been motivated to copy and re-copy these documents through the centuries, their contents would have been unlikely to survive to this day.
Only if they genuinely believed him to be a threat. In fact, based on what the New Testament says, they didn’t take him very seriously, and they only executed the man because Pontius Pilate kowtowed to an unruly mob.
Besides, it’s perfectly possible that they DID write about the man, and that those records simply have not survived to this day.
He ***walked ***here?!?
Yeah, well, he’s the son of God. He can do that sort of thing. It also explains why he didn’t get here until the time he did, and where he landed (hmmm…nice spot at the juncture of those landmasses there…)
Only on the water. The rest of the time he hovered one inch off the ground.
Wanna be “Kings of the Jews” were actually a dime a dozen.
The thoroughness of Roman record keeping tends to be greatly exaggerated. The execution of an insurgent or rabble rouser in a remote provincial territory like Judea was not something which needed to be recorded and sent to the Emperor. The Emperors really only cared about keeping peace in the provinces and collecting taxes. They did not have the time or the inclination to be apprised of every petty criminal getting nailed to a cross in every province.
The execution of Jesus (who historians nearly universally agree at least existed as a historical person and was crucified under Pilate) was probably a pretty casual affair from the perspective of the Romans in Judea. Insurgents and rabble rousers and even false Messiahs were rooted out and killed all the time. Jesus was just one more. They would have had no reason to take any special note of him or make a written record of his crucifixion (or any other crucifixion). Even if Pilate had made a practice of recording crucifixions (something we have no evidence that he did), those records would have been destroyed when Jerusalem was destroyed in 70 CE.
I am decidedly not a Christian believer, but the lack of contemporary records of his life or execution is pretty unremarkable. It would actually be far more extraordinary if any contemporary written account had been made. He was a peasant living in a culture that was (according to historical estimates) 95%-98% percent illiterate. His direct followers and audiences were the underclasses among whose ranks writers were unlikely to exist. It was an oral culture. Jesus taught in parables and aphorisms for a reason – they were easy to remember and transmit orally, and that’s why they survived in oral tradition long enough to eventually be written down by later generations.
Even if someone had made some kind of contemporary written account of Jesus, the chances it would have survived very long are still minute. The vast majority of written material did not survive, and (as I said before), Jesusalem was sacked and burned in 70 CE which would make the chances of surving, contemporary written records even more infinitessimal.
This.
There’s also no consensus among historians if Jesus was ever a real person or not – it’s possible that the story told in the Gospels is an amalgam of many Jewish prophets who lived at that time. (Brian, etc.) Many stories in John, including Lazarus, don’t appear in the other three gospels at all, and Matthew & Luke don’t even contain his ascension into heaven, IIRC.
With all due respect, this sounds like fundamentalist propoganda to me. Most non-Christians I know are indifferent to the story of Resurrection, they don’t care if it’s real or not. Speaking only for myself, if Jesus really was the Son of God, and everything in the Bible is 100% true, I would not accept him as my Savior.
No, the existence of Jesus is accepted by pretty much all historians:
I think you missed at least one… 
And boy, are his feet tired.