I think there’s a lot of anachronism in this. Today, we ask for evidence of the existence of mythical persons or beings, and we try to draw conclusions from archaeology and science and history, because we distinguish between History and Myth.
Back then, no one tried to distinguish History from Myth. Note that the pagan world believed in the existence of the Greco-Roman gods, for heaven’s sake. They didn’t ask for proof of existence. Of couse Jesus existed, or else they wouldn’t tell stories about him… just as Achilles and Ulysses and Athena existed. Or, just as Adam and Eve and Noah existed. People back then didn’t question existence of heroes.
You forgot a small, but important element. Tacitus doesn’ t exactly mentions Christ. he mentions, in passing, Christians. And add that they were called so after the name of Christ whom…etc…
What it wrote is a brief explanation of the meaning of the name “christian”. Your way of presenting it suggested that he was aware enough of the existence of Jesus to think it was worth mentioning him in his writing.
Not necessarily. Ovid, a contemporary of Jesus, prefaced his Metamorphoses (a collection of myths, told in verse) by saying “I prate of ancient poets’ monstrous lies”. Like many Romans of the times, he didn’t believe in the literal existance of Hercules, Daedelus, and the like. He just thought they were great stories. Most Romans were not particularly religious, and those who were generally followed one of the Mystery Cults such as Mithraism (Christianity itself is sometimes classified as a Mystery Cult). While the typical Roman man on the street would have a familiarity with the stories of the gods and heroes, and would sometimes refer to them as though they were real persons, for most of them this was no different than a modern American discussing Paul Bunyan or Superman.
Yes, sorry, Chronos and thanks for the correction. I was thinking of the Hellenistic period, a few centuries earlier.
Still, I think the point stands – while the Romans “disbelieved” in ancient myths, they would not question the existence of a contemporary hero. Especially when they had (supposedly) eye-witness accounts. They didn’t have anywhere near the communications and investigative skills we have today.
Actually, that was a huge step for that people at that time. One manner in which pagans and Jews of the time differed was in their perception of a divine person. For the pagans, calling the emperor diving meant he was higher in the pantheon of beings than ordinary mortals, but below household gods, who were below civic gods, who were below the great gods, … For the Jews, calling someone divine meant that they were plain, oridnary humans with a special relationship with the God. IIRC, the Essenes believed that the Messiah was not human, but a cosmic figure. They would never make that jump, and did not make that jump, that you propose.
At any rate, the reason the hypothesis you suggest is popular anymore is that the Essenes and Jesus taught, to the extent that we can determine what Jesus taught, were different. Both taught that a world changing cataclysm was imminent. Essenes withdrew from society, because the Law was not properly adhered to by society. Jesus taught that the Law was made for man, and that the motivating factor for the Law was love, and disputes about how to obey the law should be resolved assuming that. (Paraphrase of “The Historical Jesus” by Bart D. Ehrman, mentioned above, assuming my memory is half what it was.)
The other thing to consider are the Epistles. In the letters still attributed to Paul, he mentions knowing Peter. (Discussions over That makes him a second hand witness, which is the best we have. Now Paul could have been lying, and/or Peter could have been lying. But Paul could easily have checked with other witnesses, so if Peter was lying most likely Paul was lying. It strikes me as far fetched to claim that they would have fabricated Jesus whole cloth. The simplest explanation is that Jesus did in fact exist. Whether he said all, most, any of what is attributed to him is more problematical.
Yes, that struck me as important in my recent Bible reading. Paul - who we know was historical and wrote authentic letters (though I understand not all the epsitles attributed to him are deemed so) says he met Peter and other apostles in Jerusalem on more than one occasion, including ‘James, the brother of the Lord’. He must, we assume, have discussed Jesus with them! I guess the ‘mythologists’ would say he merely discussed their mutual faith in their divine saviour god-man (and ‘brother-of-the-lord’ was just an honorary title denoting his faith and his seniority in the movement) as opposed to memories of the recent past when a flesh-and-blood Jesus walked the Earth. My assumption on reading those bits though was the same as yours.
I still do think it odd though that he says so very little about Jesus the man. But we’ve done that discussion already.
Look guys, talking about a historical figure of faith is very contravertial. I think that Jesus does exist is many ways avoiding the road of science and pure facts. Many miracles happen everyday and you don’t even know of it, such as what happened to my family. Explain to me how when my grandmother had cancer in her lungs (tumors) and suddenly the next day they disapear after a priest seeing her? Or when she has harsh pains in her head but when after taking the “body of christ” (holy bread) from a priest suddenly no pain is present. My point being is that there are many matters in this world that science can’t even explain. I think if you devote your life to pure science and no faith in something else thats out there (which, no offense, some of you here are) , then life just won’t make sense.
The question was, “does any solid evidence exist to prove that a Jesus of Nazareth actually lived?” Cecil wrote, “40 years is too short a time for an entirely mythical Christ to have been fabricated out of (heh-heh) whole cloth”. That’s not “solid evidence”. It isn’t even a correct statement, since many stories and myths have certainly been written in much less time. So, the correct answer to the original question is “No”. Cecil should update his answer. For an analysis of the historical record, see http://nobeliefs.com/exist.htm .
Since this 2005 thread was opened, there have been a number of discussions on this topic in GD, not that they were conclusive. Here’s a thread about Paul that got hijacked (with the OP’s permission) into the Jesus-existence debate. FWIW, my assessment evolved from “almost certainly” to “most probably”, which is a greater shift in position than usual in these parts. That said, David Marcus’s link seems high on rhetoric and low on analysis. There are better treatments.
I looked at it this way, when writing a column to answer a question, many times you need to rephrase the question to make and answer work within the column. The question answered is really, “How solid is the evidence that Jesus of Nazareth actually lived?” While Cecil sometimes does the rephrasing for us, sometimes he does not. So instead of discussing what is meant by"solid" evidence, Cecil discusses what he considered to be evidence, although that evidence may take on amorphous forms.
I think Jesus probably existed, as did many “Messiahs” of the time. The story about him being the son of God, the tale of the resurrection and more are, I think, probably the work of a certain pr man named Saul of Tarsus.
Regarding the shroud, I saw a convincing documentary arguing that it had been created with the use of light sensitive chemicals and pinhole photography. This would describe its negative quality and lack of brush strokes. Nicholas Allen, Dean of Art and Design at Port Elizabeth University, actually created his own Shroud of Turin using this method and it looks remarkably like the original. The documentary claims that Da Vinci created the shroud, which I agree to be possible, but this is mainly conjecture on their part. The documentary is on youtube.com at this link - YouTube.
Lots of methods cause the “negative” effect. Joe Nickell did a shroud fake using a bas-relief (that’s flatter than a standard 3-dimensional sculpture) and a dry paintbrush with powdered paint and it looked exactly like the Turin fake.
The “photography and exotic chemicals” theory is much less believable for the 14th century than Joe Nickell’s example. And there has never been any convincing evidence connecting Da Vinci or Michelangelo with the Turin Shroud beyond wishful thinking.
Given that there are lists of names of gladiators killed in the arena, and given that the Romans were good recordkeepers, it does seem peculiar that the name of Jesus doesn’t show up somewhere. If he had existed and been as big a pain in the ass to both the Roman and Jewish power structures as the New Testament makes him out to be, he would not have been considered a petty criminal.
True, but he could have existed, been regarded at the time as not much more than a petty criminal, and the “pain in the ass” stuff was added later to pump up the story. Just for example.
As someone in the early days of this thread brought up the dispute about whether Nazareth existed, it may be worth mentioning that just a few months ago, archeaologists discovered buildings at the site from the time of Jesus:
…or public nuisances were a dime a dozen at the time. There were all sorts of political agitators who received the death penalty, some of whom were even harmless to the state.
Oh for pity’s sake, we have some names of gladiators; we also have some names of people about we know nothing at all except their names and that they or their friends wrote graffiti. But we have nothing at all like complete records of anything. Heck, we only just barely have non-Christian evidence that Pontius Pilate existed, who was, from a contemporary Roman viewpoint, thousands of times more interesting than Jesus.