A language which didn’t exist in the 1st Century. Neither did wanted posters.
There was no “wanted poster” for Jesus. There is no contemporary documentation for Jesus at all.
Whether it was an original is not the point. There are no Roman records at all for anything associated with Jesus or the crucifixion. What you saw was not real, and probably not intended to be taken as real. If such a thing existed, it would be of the most significant historical artifacts ever found. It has not been found.
I would presume it’s people - or perhaps she’s talking about the old microevolution/macroevolution thing. Either way it sounds bizarre.
A couple of questions:
Don’t Josephus’ writings date from the 90s or so, some time after the earliest gospels are understood to have been written?
Weren’t the Romans pretty notorious sticklers for recordkeeping? It is not as tho we are talking about a pre-literate society. It was my understanding that we had considerable art and writings of various kinds from the era. Yet, not one mention of a revolutionary movement, a particular crucifiction, and certainly no mention of any miraculous events.
I could be way off, but was Jesus really a unique, major nuisance to them? He wasn’t the first leader of a messianic cult, I’m sure of that much. Obviously they felt he was enough of a problem that they decided to kill him, but can someone say what records they normally might have kept?
It’s not likely they would have kept any record of it at all. Jesus would have been seen as a minor rabble rouser at worst and his his arrest and crucifixion would have been fairly routine and unremarkable by Roman lights. Pilate was supposed to keep the peace in Judea but Rome didn’t care how he did it and he wasn’t expected to document everything he did. It would have been hugely impractical anyway to constantly deluge the Emperor with piles of mundane documentation from every province in the Empire. There was no need for it. The execution of an insignificant radical in a backwater province would have been of no more interest to Rome than say, a drunk driving arrest in Idaho would interest the White House.
Plus, the city of Jerusalem was destroyed by the Romans in 70 CE, so it would have been hard to find any records anyway.
They were. Of course there were some revolts and civil wars during that period, and records tended to get re-used. However, that argument argues strongly FOR a Historical Jesus. Tacticus seemed to have little doubt that at one time such a man existed. If the Romans (during the Persecution) could have cast doubt on the reality of there being such a man at all, they certainly would have done so. However, doubts as to the Historical reality of Jesus didn’t start to be popular until some 2 millenium after.
Guys you’re jumping way too hard on FRDE. I have no doubt that the wanted poster was made up. However, the fact that he saw it in an english book translated to english doesn’t prove it’s false any more that having a copy of Aesops Fables in English proves that Aesops Fables are all made up recently- as Aesop certainly didn’t write in English! :rolleyes: And, certainly there have been “wanted posters” since dudes could read. But sorry, FRDE- the wanted poster you saw was indeed something made up for that book, likely in th e20th century or so. There are damn few period mentions of Jesus- my post above covers most of them, and a “wanted poster” is certainly not one of them. Sorry.
Again, though, the matter was so trivial that it’s hard to see why he really would have done much more than account that there were some rabblerousers making claims about this dude.
What amazes me is that the Gospels at one point claim that while Jesus was dead, tons of saints burst out of their tombs and walked around appearing to people. THAT is the sort of utterly mindblowing event you’d think would find mention somewhere. But it’s just sort of a throwaway in the Gospels: they don’t explain much more about it, despite it at the very least implying the appearance of a mass grave robbing you think SOMEBODY would think to mention.
Which is the reason for drawing the distinction between the fact that there is some reliable near contemporary evidence of Jesus the man, but no such evidence of Jesus Christ.
Which leads to my opinion that Jesus may have been one of many messianic preachers at the time, but the real credit for christianity rests with his followers who were smart enough to hide his body (or claim it vanished.)
Actually, I have no great difficulty attributing the mythology of Jesus Christ to effective political PR by a group of dedicated individuals. But if someone really wants to argue that a man named Jesus existed, they can go right ahead.
There actually isn’t even any real proof that any of Jesus’ direct followers ever claimed that he’d been physically resurrected or that his body was missing. The open tomb doesn’t appear in Christian literature until Mark’s Gospel (c. 70 CE) and claims for physical appearances of Jesus aren’t found until Matthew’s Gospel (c. 80 CE). There are no first hand claims for either the empty tomb or a physical resurrection and we have no testimony at all from anyone who knew Jesus personally, so we really don’t know what they claimed or believed. We only know what other people claim they said and believed.
…which is overwhelmingly based upon pre-existing cultural assumptions instead of real evidence.
There is more evidence in historical records that unicorns nd dragons (etc.) exist than that a real, actual living Jesus figure ever did. But historians do not argue that unicorns and dragons really did exist because they know they didn’t, whereas they “know” Jesus did.
The evidence for evolution in general is undeniable. The evidence for the parts of evolution that conservative religious types fear most isn’t quite as substantive, but it’s still far better supported from more sources and for more reasons than the idea of Jesus having existed.
And the evidence for Jesus having possesseed supernatural powers or so forth is positively miniscule and from wholly unreliable sources that are not even internally self-consistent.
I’m guessing he means that there are still single celled organism around. Why have the evolved, too? And of course we know the answer: they have. They just didn’t evlove in the same way that multicellular organism did.
Gaahhh! That was supposed to read: Why haven’t the evolved, too?
That someone named Jesus that started a movement is nowhere near as implausible a unicorns and dragons. The reason scholars basically figure there was a real Jesus is that this is the simplest explanation for why anyone said there was.
Bolding mine. Hehe. Nothing worse than correcting yourself and making yet another mistake. :D:D
Pretty simple - living things evolve, inanimate objects don’t.
I read, (sory no cite), that the consensus was that Tacitus an Josephus did write about Jesus but in a very unflatering way. Medieval monks didn’t like this and when they copied from the original they “created” a better version.
I am sure some doper can clarify
It’s true that Tacitus was very unflattering but his passage does not appear to have been altered. To give some context, Tacitus is describing Nero’s attempt to scapegoat Christians for the Great Fire of Rome in 64 CE. (Tacitus’ history was written around 115 CE) Here is the passage:
Consequently, to get rid of the report, Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace. Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus, and a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judaea, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome, where all things hideous and shameful from every part of the world find their centre and become popular. Accordingly, an arrest was first made of all who pleaded guilty; then, upon their information, an immense multitude was convicted, not so much of the crime of firing the city, as of hatred against mankind. Mockery of every sort was added to their deaths. Covered with the skins of beasts, they were torn by dogs and perished, or were nailed to crosses, or were doomed to the flames and burnt, to serve as a nightly illumination, when daylight had expired. Nero offered his gardens for the spectacle, and was exhibiting a show in the circus, while he mingled with the people in the dress of a charioteer or stood aloft on a car. Hence, even for criminals who deserved extreme and exemplary punishment, there arose a feeling of compassion; for it was not, as it seemed, for the public good, but to glut one man’s cruelty, that they were being destroyed.
(Annals 15.44).
As you can see, the bolded portion is not flattering to Jesus and that’s one of the reasons it’s believed to be authentic.
Josephus’ Testimonium Flavianum, on the other hand is believed to have been tampered with. Here it is again. The portions in red are what is believed to have been interpolated by Christian forgers:
Now there was about this time Jesus, a wise man, if it be lawful to call him a man, for he was a doer of wonderful works, a teacher of such men as receive the truth with pleasure. He drew over to him both many of the Jews, and many of the Gentiles. He was the Christ; and when Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men amongst us, had condemned him to the cross, those that loved him at the first did not forsake him, for he appeared to them alive again the third day, as the divine prophets had foretold these and ten thousand other wonderful things concerning him; and the tribe of Christians, so named from him, are not extinct to this day." (Antiquities 18.3.3)
The portions which are believed to be authentic seem fairly neutral, not adoring, perhaps but not vicious like Tacitus. Of course, it’s not impossible that anything malicious in the Josephus’ original words (if there were any original words) could have been stricken by the same interpolator. Some scholars believe the entire passage is interpolated. Probably the foremost problem is that it is highly unlikely that Josephus would have called Jesus the Messiah (“ho Cristos”) without becoming a Christian. Josephus did not like Messianic claimants in any case and it strains credulity that he would blithely call somebody the Messiah in such an offhand manner. Even more significantly, Origen explicitly claimed that Josephus did not call the Jesus the Messiah. There are other problems too. The first known quotation of the TF is in Eusebius (4th century), it is not quoted by other Church Fathers before then even though it would bolster their case. Many also argue that the passage does not fit Josephus’ writing style and does not fit easily within the narrative context where it appears. Some say that Origen’s claim is also evidence that he didn’t know the passage, but I’m not so sure it couldn’t better taken as evidence that he did know something like it. If he didn’t know it all, I think it would have made more sense for him to say that Josephus didn’t mention Jesus than to assert that he just didn’t call him the Messiah. The latter claim, I think, carries an implication that FJ did say something abut Jesus.
There is a second passage in Josephus (called the “James passage”) which goes like this:
The other passage is found in Antiquities 20.9.1 and reads as follows:
Festus was now dead, and Albinus was but upon the road; so he assembled the sanhedrim of judges, **and brought before them the brother of Jesus, the so-called called Christ, whose name was James**, and some others; and when he had formed an accusation against them as breakers of the law, he delivered them to be stoned: but as for those who seemed the most equitable of the citizens, and such as were the most uneasy at the breach of the laws, they disliked what was done; they also sent to the king, desiring him to send to Ananus that he should act so no more..."
This passage is generally taken as authentic, but the consensus is not universal.
These references in Josephus (c. 94 CE) and Tacitus (c. 115 CE) are the only semi-contemperaneous, non-Christian references to Jesus and they tend to be the things that put historical consensus “over the 50 yard line,” so to speak, in favor of a Historical Jesus. Like DrDeth said upthread, it’s not like 100% certainty or even 80 or 90. It’s more like in the 60’s. More probable than not, but nowhere near as certain as the existence of someone like say, Augustus Caesar (or even Pontius Pilate, for that matter).
Art, sure, because stone is long-lasting (at least as long as marble statues aren’t used to make some much more useful lime). But writing? Not so much. Granted, we still can read a relatively large number of roman litterary works that have been copied generation after generation, but when you consider the duration and importance of the Roman empire, the number of surviving writings is ludicrously small. Only some rare works from some of the most famous roman authors were handed to us. Sometimes, there are fragments of records found in archeological sites, when they were written on some kind of durable material. A fragment of some roman NCO’s request for more tent pegs or somesuch. That would be considered a great finding.
There’s not an overwhelming abundance of roman writings, really.
It reminds me of the dream of an italian archeologist. He knows that someone famous enough has had a house in Herculanum, and his wild hope is that someday, the house will be found with the guy’s library still somewhat (and somehow) intact…
Just like Voyager said, unless you define what you mean by evolution, we can’t even start. There is plenty of evidence for what has been deemed “MICRO-evolution” which would be the same as speciation or what has occurred since two dogs (or something that looks like a dog) walked off the ark and evolved into all the different types of canine creatures we have today. Preposterous? Not nearly as preposterous as all the canines coming from some one-celled piece of primordial soup.
As for one species changing to another, “MACRO-evolution” if you will, like fish to birds or mammals, all we have is a lot of imagination which would require much more faith than what it takes to believe that God created all this stuff using methods we are only beginning to understand in science and mathematics. Consider the possibilities in fractal geometry. Endless variety from simple variations in a formula?
Wish I could help you more, but as you all know by now, I’m dumb as a rock. Maybe Mount Everest is my ancestor. Who are yours?
By the way, did you mean moutonous? Something aobut French sheep? These computers can’t spel worth beans. They make two many misteaks.
Actually I suspect the part of evolution conservative religious types fear most is the notion that human beings are animals, evolved from other animals, and that’s as undeniable as anything in science. The exact details of abiogenesis are a lot murkier, but that’s relatively little consolation; even if God did personally plop down the Ur-Bacterium into the muck of the primordial Earth, that still leaves us as semi-hairless apes who walk upright and have rather larger brains than the other apes.