Yes, very good. I mentioned this breifly back in post 11, but your account is much more detailed.
I don’t find that all that interesting. Unless one thinks that Celsus had separate sources for Jesus actually being the son of a Roman soldier, and didn’t make that up out of whole cloth, all I’m left with is that Christians at the time(at least those Celsus knew of) believed Jesus was a real person, which I already knew.
What this, along with other extra-biblical sources, tells me is that pagans accepted that he was a real person. That’s what I find significant.
I’m just wondering: do we have any early sources where some Greeks or Romans doubt the existence of (say) Hercules or Theseus or Perseus as real people? We’re saying that the absence of doubt is indicative of existence, but I guess that’s only valid if we have ancient sources doubting the existence of other mythic heroes. If pagans generally accepted the existence of any mythic hero, then they wouldn’t doubt the existence of Jesus either, and the argument falls flat.
I can’t give any cites, but I’m pretty certain that it is the case. Neither the Greeks nor the Romans necessarily took their myths at face value. However, I suspect Jesus might have more easily be compared to, say, Socrates than to Hercules.
However, there’s another issue with the argument used against Christianism during the first centuries. No work from a critical author has survived. What we have is only some “refutatios” by Christian apologists. I’m not convinced that we can assume they fairly presented their opponents’ arguments, and all of these arguments.
It would be similar to only keeping the posts made by supporters of Mc Cain in half a dozen of political threads in GD, and assuming that between the counter-arguments and the occasional quotes, we can have a good perception of the opinions and arguments of the supporters of Obama, ignoring that cogent arguments might not have been quoted because addressing them was difficult, that points less commonly made might not have been addressed at all, that arguments might have been misrepresented, strawman frequently used, and so on.
To boot, we would only have a very small sample of all the threads, and in all likehood only those threads depicting the republican point of view in the best possible way. The (imaginary) “corruption scandal involving MC cain” thread wouldn’t have survived in any shape and form, and likewise there wouldn’t be even a surviving “refutatio” that would mention or address the shocking “the tradition holds that Jesus was a drunk and married a former whore, how can you worship such a person?” argument.
In any case, I doubt that anybody after, say, 100 AD would have been able to prove or disprove the existence of Jesus. And nobody bothered to write an essay criticizing the Christian religion until it became widespread enough, much later. So, even if for some reason I were led to believe that no ancient author ever used the argument that Jesus might not have existed, I wouldn’t take this as an evidence that they had proofs that he indeed existed. Plainly because I’m fully convinced they would have had no way to know.
I was recently reading a book that covered one aspect of this. (Sorry can’t remember the title.)
The Greeks distinguished the Heroic Age from the more recent stuff. Only in the Heroic Age (or earlier) could gods wander about the Earth, sire offspring, etc. After that, their meddling was less direct. Since Jesus was well past the Heroic Age, they would have naturally frowned on the idea of a god appearing among humans. (They also considered many of the tales of the Heroic Age to be a bit embarassing in truthiness. There were a lot of versions of the tales. Hercules seems to have died in different places in different ways for example.)
My personal reference book on Jesus outside the New Testament is Jesus and Christian Origins Outside the New Testament by F.F. Bruce. A bit old and not easily found I’m afraid. But it covers a lot of territory giving both sides of a given case.
Bruce has a chapter on Jesus in Rabbinical Tradition. He mentions several quotes including the ones listed down the page here. The first is taken by scholars (both Christian and Jewish) to be an actual reference to Jesus with little dispute. There are also clear references to his disciples and some of his teachings. (As well as the “Pantera” naming.)
A few of the “Jesus” references do seem to refer to another individual. One person even wrote a book “Jesus 100BC” (I think in the 80s) that puts forth the idea that another rebel Jesus gained prominance a century earlier and was excuted. (Possibly with his followers forming a group that was then incorporated into early Christianity.) Anyway, part of his argument was that some/most/all of the Talmudic references were to the earlier Jesus. Interesting but not really provable.
Well, remember, we don’t have a lot of original material from that period. but I do remember somewhere a rant by Cato or some similar Roman worthy about the new wave of eastern religions and how bogus they were.
If he accepted Jesus was a real person merely because of christian tradition, which I consider likely, I don’t see how it’s more significant than christians considering Jesus a real person.
Of course, if there’s any dispute that all christians at the time considered Jesus an actual living person it is evidence in that debate.
Cato the younger died in the Caesar-Pompey war, and Cato the elder a hundred years before. (In any case, both were approximately as right-wing as Osama bin Laden.)
If the story in the New Testament is true, JC would have been a monumental pain in the ass to both the power structures: the Romans and the Temple. Somebody would have written about him. Pilate would have, if only to cover his own ass with Caesar.
If we can find lists of the names of gladiators killed in the arena at that time, why can’t we find (as CK suggests) a tax list or something showing his existence.
Can we find that list for every arena for every year?
Do we have tax lists for Iudaea Province from 6CE through 96CE? Do said tax lists cover even indigent citizens? Do we have even one single year of Tax lists or Census for Iudaea?
I don’t think you understand how little documentation we have from that period. It is true that sometimes we have found suprising lists and documentation, but lack of documentation means nothing for someone who was as low importance as Jesus was.
There’s very little documentation (outside of the Gospels) that *Pontius Pilate *existed. There’s a mention or two by Tacitus, which appears even to have got Pilate’s title wrong (He called Pilate “procurator” but a stone was found that calls Pilate “prefect” which is more likely correct, given what we know of the political situation). Later Roman writings appear to have just copied Tacitus.
I dunno why you are all still bothering; Tabitha has delivered her sermon from On High to us heathens, & shoved off.
Long time 'go.
Not even a sign that she ever read any of the responses.
Then does “Christianity” have no meaning? Does “Islam” have no meaning? I thought everybody in the world agreed they were religions comprised of a mosh of dozens of sects, subreligions, groups, individual beliefs, official state religions, and centuries of varying histories. Except for some benighted American fools and bigots nobody contends that Christians are an ethnicity or that Muslims are an ethnicity.
Judaism seems to me to be an exact parallel to Christianity and Islam. I’m always puzzled when people attempt to deny this.
Irishman, I’ve never said that the New Testament doesn’t depict Jesus as a reformer of the Judaism of the day. (Which, I should note, has nothing in common with the supposed Jewish “ethnicity” of today, and that indeed many Jewish cultures were already in existence.) I just don’t understand why you consider that of importance when the entire intent of the work is to create a religion so at variance with contemporary Judaism that all the same sources people are citing for the existence of Jesus also use every reference to talk about the creation of a new, non-Jewish religion. Again, if you accept the one you have to accept the other.
I’ve seen several references here to second century writers who had no doubt as to Jesus’s existence, but so what? We all knew that in the second century people generally believed he was real. What we don’t have are first century sources, outside of the Bible. Paul, who never met Jesus and didn’t seem to know any facts about his life, and the gospels which were written long enough afterward that they can’t be reliable.
I think it’s more likely than not that a real Jesus did exist, but I admit that I don’t know, and from what I’ve seen, neither does anyone else. 40, 50, 100 years of separation in those days could easily be based on an “urban” legend. Or not. Unless we get more evidence than we have right now, no one knows for sure.
According to your reasoning above, no.
…which does not mean that statements can be not made about them.
True enough, but Judaism is not Christianity or Islam.
“People”, in this case, being the overwhelming majority of Jews throughout history. The traditional definition of Jewishness, time out of mind, has been being born to a Jewish mother, and even today’s acceptance, only by Reform, of a Jewish father instead does not change the underlying issue. Frankly, how Judaism “seems” to you is neither here nor there; it is not how Jews define Judaism.
One can convert:
I’ve lost the point of the argument. This appears to have originated over the joking comment that the New Testatment was a Jewish work. I think my previous remark had to do with the ambiguity within Christianity between the Pauline followers and the Peterite followers. Essentially, the debate over the nature of Christianity lasted beyond Jesus’s death into the period of formation of the early church, where Peter was leading a group of reformed Jews and Paul was the forefront of proseletyzing gentiles. There was some tension between the groups that ultimately got resolved in Paul’s favor. But either way, it’s ultimately silly.
The “Jewishness” of the New Testament rests on whether the people writing it were “Jewish” or not. Since you don’t agree they were Jewish, you don’t accept the book has any Jewishness.
Thank you for expressing my thoughts.
Because we’re having our own discussions on the topic?
Yes, but the process is long and difficult, and also discouraged. (In fact, you’re supposed to tell the applicant “No,” three times, and not even admit it’s possible until the fourth attempt – though, of course, now that everybody knows that, most rabbis don’t bother to play it out.)
And converts have slightly different marriage rules. A Cohen (hereditary priest) cannot marry a female convert. On the other hand, a convert may marry a mamzer, which an ordinary Jew may not do. (A “mamzer” is someone born of a Jewish case of adultery or incest, or a descendant.) For just about all other purposes, however, a convert counts as an ordinary Jew.
Even conceding that, it’s still strange that the historiocity of Socrates, who lived four centuries earlier, is as well established as Christopher Columbus. Not so the Carpenter of Nazareth…
Just saying…
No, that’s not true. We have almost nothing about Socrates except the dialogs of Plato and Xenophon and a few mentions by Aristotle (the “Socrates” who appears in “The Clouds” has almost nothing to do with reality, and doesn’t pretend to); we know virtually nothing, too, of Columbus, before he turned up at the Spanish court. And Jesus, unlike them, spent His entire life in a backwater province that no one who mattered gave a damn about.
We know so little about William Shakespeare that there is an entire world of lunatic theories that deny that he wrote his plays, or even that he existed. Nearly all that we know about Jane Austin is from family letters that happened to be preserved (all we know about her brother George, although he lived to be 72, is that he was probably either deaf or retarded or autistic or deformed – unless he wasn’t).
How much did you know about “The People’s Temple” before Georgetown? How much do you know about them now except Georgetown?