Um… some of the records of the roman DID mention a Jesus who was crucified around the right time. At least that’s what my religion teacher told me and he is actually a history teacher. 
Whatever!!! Just don’t screw up my life with your wicked stupid ideas!
oops i meant the Roman’s.
Whatever!!! Just don’t screw up my life with your wicked stupid ideas!
Brightmoon, and that would have been Tacitus, according to the Cecil Adams column mentioned by Perderabo.
I’m sure someone will correct me on this if I’m wrong. If I remember correctly from Rabii Rosenthal in a HISTORY OF JUDIISM class many years ago, even many Jews believe in Jesus, they just don’t believe that he was the Messiah.
Not that that proves anything, I just wanted to add a couple of pennies worth of thought.
Enright3
Sure, he existed. The Jewish historian Josephus tells us what he looked like:
> At this time, too, there appeared a certain man of magical power, if
> it is permissible to call him man, whom certain Greeks call a son of
> God, but his disciples the true prophet, said to raise the dead and
> heal all diseases.
>
> His nature and form were human; a man of simple appearance, mature
> age, dark skin, small stature, three cubits high (about five feet),
> hunch-backed, with a long face, long nose and meeting eyebrows, so
> that they who see him might be affrighted, with scanty hair with a
> parting in the middle of the head, after the manner of Nairites, and
> an undeveloped beard.
No offense, but ick.
Jesus was short, balding, unshaven, and ugly? hehe
I think this is gonna get fired off to ye olde Great Debates quick enough.
I sold my soul to Satan for a dollar. I got it in the mail.
There are probably three different sets of “belief” here.
1) Jews who believe that Jesus, son of Joseph, was a man who lived in the first century.
Probably 99.999% of the Jewish people would concede that the Christian religion arose among the followers of a man named Jesus. It is simply easier to accept that Saul/Paul, James, Peter, and that crew shared in a set of beliefs inspired by a person most of them knew than that they sat down one night and conspired to create a religion out of whole cloth.
2) Jews who believe that Jesus was a good man who preached a good message.
Some small percentage of Jews who have studied the “message” of Jesus as it is presented in the Gospels probably consider his message to be worthy of consideration. This group would range from those who felt that Jesus did an adequate job of restating the teachings of Hillel in a manner suited to reaching a large number of less-well-educated people to people who think that Jesus actually brought new insights to the Jewish faith (although his disciples certainly went off on strange tangents).
3) Jews who believe that Jesus was one of many preachers throughout history who may have been good people, but who were no more deserving of special attention than so many others who have been lost to history.
The idea that “Jews” (especially “many” Jews, “most” Jews, or, worst, “all” Jews) look upon Jesus as a special leader or even a prophet is basically wishful thinking by some Christians. The best that we can say about attitudes of some Jews toward Jesus is that a few Jewish scholars have looked upon his actual teachings with some favor. Aside from a desire to not incur the wrath of his followers one more time, it is safe to say that most Jews do not think on the subject of Jesus much at all.
Tom~
Cecil said
Huh?
Can someone clear this up for me. I know I should have paid attention in sunday school.
The references to Jesus in Josephus are fairly clearly later interpolations by wishful thinkers.
Josephus was one of the world’s biggest arse-lickers. His writings are massively in praise of his patron (Titus) and that circle; from things that he writes that coincide with other documents, it is clear that he distorts the picture (sometimes massively) to portray what the Roman gentry wanted to hear. The Roman gentry of the time did NOT want to hear anything positive about Christianity, and it is highly unlikely that Josephus would have said anything favorable about Jesus.
The Tacitus comment is written around 100 AD, and so is not contemporary with Jesus’ life, but comes after some of the gospel writers. when Christianity was a growing religion.
So I repeat, and echo what Cecil said, there is no outside documentation of Jesus’ existence.
Having said that, very few people think that he was simply a fictional character. I think most scholars would agree that a man named Jesus existed. Disagreement would be in what he actually did (like miracles) and what he actually preached, compared to what was put in his mouth by later writers (starting with Paul’s vision of the dead/risen Jesus who said things that the living Jesus never did.)
My understanding is that the prevailing theory is that ( Nice intro, huh? Shit, I could take this anywhere now…) Jesus died roughly in the year 33. Calling it 33AD is a bit rough on the mind, HOW did he die 33 years after his own death?
I like saying that he died in 33 CE, and the first Gospels were penned around 70 CE, and the first Mini-Series based on those Gospels was shown around 244 CE. Lawsuits everywhere.
Cartooniverse
If you want to kiss the sky, you’d better learn how to kneel.
A.D. = Anno Domini, Latin, Year of the Lord (from his birth), not After Death.
The earliest estimated date I have seen given for Mark’s Gospel is around 64. The latest estimated date I have seen given for John’s is 110. The actual dates are probably between those two.
Tom~
And, of course, the internal evidence does not support Jesus being born in the year 1 AD or 1 BC (recollect there was no year 0); most likely date of birth would be around 4 to 6 BC.
Actually, tomndeb answered my question exactly. My stupidity. Apologies.
There are also a handful of surviving non-Biblical writings by first-generation Christians, such as the 1st epistle of Clement of Rome.
And the dates generally given for the Gospels are frequently based on presumptions about how things “must have really happened”, often without any serious evidence at all to back them up.
Note, too, that most of the epistles are of earlier date.
John W. Kennedy
“Compact is becoming contract; man only earns and pays.”
– Charles Williams
There are two vague references to Jesus/Joshua by Josephus and maybe Tacitus.
This is addressed in a book “The Search for Jesus” by Dominic Crossan and three other Jesus scholars.
Since the Messiah was supposed to appear in the year 753 B.C. in the rein of King Ahaz, it seem Jesus didn’t fulfill the prophecy of the bible.
There is no physical evidence because in the first century, the ones who were crucified were not buried, and the bodies were left for the dogs and the birds to consume. Being a purity society, among other things, non burial was considered the worst punishment.
Tim Callahan also addresses the Christ question in his book “Bible Prophecy”.
lindsay
In the first century of the Common Era, there appeared at the eastern end of the Mediterranean a remarkable religious leader who taught the worship of one true God and declared that religion meant not sacrifice of beasts but the practice of charity and piety and the shunnung of hatred and enmity. Some followers said he was the son of God, he said he was the son of man. After his death, his disciples claimed he had risen from the dead, appeared to them alive, and then ascended to heaven.
Who was this teacher? His name was Apollonius of Tyana, he died about 98 A.D. His story can be read in Flavius Philostratus’s Life of Apollonius.
Readers who assumed that the preceding described Apollonuis’s earlier contemporary, Jesus of Nazareth may attribute their error to how quickly human imagination embroiders the careers of notable figures of the past with common mythical and fictional embellishments.
From Gospel Fictions by Randel Helms.
lindsay