Jesus, historical figure?

Factual Questions
1

Since Jesus threads have been popping out like crazy these days, I thought about prolonging the trend.

So, here is my question:

The only references I have from his life are from the Bible–what I learned at Sunday school anyway, I really haven’t read it. I imagine that, since his disciples were his biographers, the narrative is highly biased. What I want to know is: does exist an objective historical account of his life just as it does for every other prominent historical figure? Can I find a history book that will treat the subject of Jesus just like it covers Alexander the Great, Socrates and the like? Or, on the other hand, can the biblical narrations of the events regarding Jesus’ life be considered as historically rigorous accounts or not?

2

Short answer: No. I think he was mentioned by some Roman historian awhile after he died (see thread referenced below–it’s in there), but no biographies or even contemporary accounts of his life.

There was a thread a few days ago about there being more evidence of the life of Jesus Christ than that of Julius Caesar. That ended pretty quick…everything we know about Jesus was written at least 40 years after his death by other people. Caesar wrote a f—in’ autobiography, among other things :rolleyes:.

3

Supposedly (if you believe tabloids) Jesus wrote a book that the Vatacain is hiding.

4

Gunslinger, i don’t know if you meant to refer to my posts, but I have said that we have no absolute proof that Julius Ceasar existed (either), or that (more likely) he is not a “psuedo- mythological” person. Ie. a real person, to whom was attributed many deeds that were not really his.

There is no doubt amoung legitimate scholars that JC really lived. “Don’t Know much About the Bible” (Ken Davis), Issac Asimov’s Guide to the Bible, the Oxford History guide to that area/period, AND Cecil- all agree that JC was most likely a real person. These are all skepical, non-Christian sources.

There is a mention in a Roman history of “James the brother of Jesus who was called Christ”, when he was killed. More importantly, during the persecutions, when the Romans wanted to discredit Christianity, they never claimed he was not a real person, and cruxified. And they had access to the actual records, then. So, if they COULD have shown there was no record of a Jesus Christ, who was executed, they would have. In fact, they did the opposite, and mocked the Christians for “their God being executed as a common criminal”. Only in the last few centuries, has there been some who have sold books with the idea there was no JC, at all.

Of course, this does not mean that JC was possibly “only” a teacher, and a “rabbi”, who had some great teachings, and maybe did a little faith-healing. And all the other “big” miracles are “mythological”. Sure, but I choose to beleive otherwise. But if you want to think that JC was a real man, that, like King Arthur, was turned into a 'semi- mythological" figure, then, well, that’s your choice. But your lack of faith, does not mean that you should say He never lived atall.

5

That is just silly, there is ample evidence from multiple sources, many of which are contemporary, of Caeser’s existance. The same is not true for Jesus.

6

Might I suggest that the point is moot?

As the “Jews for Jesus” repeatedly point out, Christianity is not likely to be a reflection of what a flesh-and-blood guy named Ieshua (Jesus) actually said. All we’ve got are second-hand accounts written by people who never knew the man. Indeed, what Paul preached may actually have annoyed Jesus (if he existed), since Paul spoke to “the nations”, whereas Jesus (if he existed) spoke primarily to the Jews (albeit with tolerance for other groups).

I’ve heard some people say that one of my favorite guys may not have existed. Buddha (if he existed) preached some ideas that appeal to me. Whether or not Buddha (if he existed) actually walked the face of the earth is largely irrelevant to me. Indeed, after Buddha (if he existed) died, his actual status was of no interest to anybody but the worms – and even they lost interest after a while.

There’s an interesting saying in Buddhism: “If you meet the Buddha, kill him.” It’s not the man that matters, but the ideas – provided you’re not a fundamentalist.

7

In the Antiquities, Josephus wrote in the early 90s CE, “Now there was about this time Jesus, a wise man, for he was a doer of wonders. He drew many after him. When Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men among us, had condemned him to the cross, those that loved him at the first did not forsake him and the tribe of Christians, so named from him, are not extinct at this day” (Antiquities 18:63-64). (Possible Christian contaminations have been removed from the text.)

After the first century, there was an explosion of expository and other references (like paintings on walls) about Jesus in a surprisingly wide geographical area. (The oldest text of any gospel — I think it was Mark — to date was found in Egypt.)

That said, the canonical gospels are not the sole scriptural references to Jesus. The Dead Sea Scrolls, the Q, and many other references (direct and indirect) exist.

PBS’s From Jesus to Christ is a good starting point if you want to dig up some information.

8

Tim,

I’m not familiar with that saying – surely it’s not common among Therevada Buddhists, and I can’t imagine even a Mahayana Buddhist advocating killing; it’s not “Right Action.”

I certainly agree with the underlying concept: that it’s not the man that matters. Indeed, the Buddha himself taught that there will be other Buddhas. (Not coming along too often, though; as I recall, the analogy was that as logn as it takes for a mountain to be worn down to nothing by rubbing it with a silk handkerchief is as long as it will take for another Buddha to come along.)

  • Rick
9

I haven’t checked out Lib’s link yet. I will soon, but first, a couple of questions:

I’m pretty convinced that Jesus existed. What I want to know is if there is any evidence of any kind regarding his virginal conception–probably not, the miracles attributed to him and his resurrection. Of course, if the only evidence was written 40 years after his death by his disciples, it is highly unlikely that it is reliable…

My second interrogation refers to Libertarians mention of the Dead Sea Scrolls. According to the movie Stigmata, the Catholic Church guards them with a great deal of secrecy. Supposedly its content has prejudicial implications for them. Does anybody have an inside scoop on what those documents deal with? Also, I had never heard about the Q, what is it?

10

It’s one of the most quoted, played on, and appropriated zen buddhist sayings online.

Try running a search for “if you meet the buddha on the road” (phrase in quotes if your search engine supports that)

You’ll get a few thousand hits. Here’s one of the ones slightly more relevant to this discussion:
http://www.websyte.com/unity/westerville/wuf/food/pl-jebu.htm

Granted, he doesn’t interpret it, (I don’t take Zen, but I think it means that enlightenment comes from inside, not from an outside figure) but it makes a cool story about the closeness of Christianity and Buddhism.

Oh, and as for this thread. I think I’d have to go with the usual viewpoint that there were so many nutcases wandering around Palestine at that time, and Yeshua was so common a name, that probably quite a few Jesuses were crucified by Pontius Pilate. Matter of fact, I’ve even read an interesting interpretation that suggests that the trial scene in John was modified to appease the Romans by suggesting they wanted to release Jesus but the Jews wouldn’t let them. (the level of jewish antagonism steadily rises, and the level of roman culpability steadily decreases with the dating of each gospel)

That interpretation points out that Bar Abbas means Son of the Father, a blasphemous title Jesus used for himself. Perhaps the two people were one and the same in an earlier story…

In any case, whether there was a historical Jesus or not, would be almost impossible to say now, and there are so many better targets to use to point out the absurdity of Christian beliefs without having to use that. My current favourite is the schizophrenia called Realised vs Established Eschatology - used to explain that the kingdom really did come within their generation.

11

**

What sort of evidence are you looking for?? There’s certainly no physical evidence available today. Witnesses? The only one qualified to say whether or not Mary was a virgin was Mary.

Zev Steinhardt

12

I am surprised that nobody has yet mentioned the Monty Python film “Life of Brian”. When I first watched it, I was a Christian, and found it very offensive. However, years later, I understand how brilliant it was.

Basically, it showed a land where a downtrodden people were looking desperately for a messiah. In the end, some of them seize upon a fellow named Brian (there’s a nice Jewish name). They start crediting him for miracles he didn’t perform, and he ends up getting crucified, which led people to think that Brian was supposed to BE Jesus, but if you conclude that, the movie is just trite.

What makes the point of the movie evident is the heavy emphasis on political bickering.

It is conceivable that “Jesus” represented more than one person and the stories got kind of mooshed together. However, I think it more likely that there was one central figure who had all kinds of miracles attributed to him, aided by the fact that he knew his scripture well enough to know what prophecies he was supposed to be fulfilling.

If you think that’s impossible, you have to consider the case of Appolonius (see http://sangha.net/messengers/appolonius.htm). The similarities to Jesus are remarkable, yet I doubt any Christian would consider him to be what the stories say he was. Well, whatever applies to him might also apply to Jesus.

When you come right down to it, our main problem is that they didn’t have camcorders. Was Lazarus really dead, or had he eaten the local equivalent of fugu? Without real hard evidence, who can tell?

13

Argh. The URL parser in this BBS software still has a ffew problems. Here’s that URL for Appolonius, again…

http://sangha.net/messengers/appolonius.htm

Bricker: While I’m writing, I might as well mention that the saying about “killing Buddha” is not actually advocating killing.

14

Now you’ve got me wondering… What history books cover Socrates? Everything we know about the man, we know from the writings of Plato, his student. Jesus at least had several different biased sources writing about him… There’s some belief that Socrates was not, in fact, a real person, but a fictional character invented by Plato in order to illustrate some of his ideas.

There are, of course, modern books that describe both historically, but they’re based on some pretty limited sources.

15

The Qumran Scrolls came under the “protection” of a group of scholars in Israel that had an inordinate number of Catholics on the board, but that was, in no way, a “Catholic” organization. All of the complete scrolls were identified, documented, and translated by the late 1960’s (although there are challenges to some translations). The remaining scroll fragments were jealously guarded by the group under whose protection they were kept and there were the usual cries of conspiracy and pettifoggery from scholars who were not “permitted” to review the scrolls.

Quite a few years ago, all the scrolls were photographed so that if anything happened to the originals, they would not be lost to history. Copies of those photographs were stored at Stanford University in California.

Several years ago, one of the authorities at Stanford decided that he could not, in good conscience, continue to hold those photographs private while so many scholars were denied access to them by the group in Israel, so he made the copies public.

There are, that I am aware of, no “secret” scrolls from Qumran. Many of the fragments have not been completely pieced together, but they are all available for review by anyone who can get access to Stanford’s library.

As to two other points:

  1. Q is simply the initial letter to the German word quelle, meaning source. The hypothetical Q is the reconstructed passages of statements attributed to Jesus that are found in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, but not so much in Mark. The hypothesis is that there was probably a list of sayings to which Matthew and Luke had access that they each used, separately, along with Mark’s Gospel to create their own Gospels in their own styles. There is no physical Q that has ever been found. There is no reference to Q as a document prior to its conjectured existence in the nineteenth century.

  2. Libertarian mentions a reference to Jesus in the Qumran Scrolls. I have never seen such a reference. There are some scroll collections that refer to “the Teacher” that have been conjectured might have alluded to Jesus of Nazareth, but I have found the arguments against such a connection to be stronger than any arguments for it.

(I’m open to correction on this last point, but that is my memory of the situation.)

16

By the way, somebody mentioned an oblique reference to Jesus by the historian Josephus, who had no reason to make stuff up. However, we must bear in mind that he didn’t have access to a helicopter and probably got a lot of his information second- or third-hand. So when he spoke of James (half-brother of Jesus) being killed, it doesn’t necessarily mean that he was there and interviewed the guy.

So I think the answer to, “Is there evidence outside the Bible that Jesus was an actual person?” I’d have to say, “A little bit.”

But heck, who needs proof when you’ve got faith? Everybody knows that Mohammed was taken up bodily into heaven, and that John Smith recived golden tablets from the angel Moroni. It’s right down there in writing, isn’t it?

Of course, those writings aren’t Christian, so they must be wrong …

17

For naysayers:

Who of Jesus’ contemporaries do you feel could have written about Him except for those that were extremely close to Him?

I don’t think that Pontius Pilate was going to write an inside story about how great he felt about the whole deal.

We do have plenty of evidence that he existed. Are we disputing this, or just the facts of His divinity?

Who would you like to see write his biography?

There were very few who were privy to his entire life as an adult, even according to the Bible’s accounts. I believe that they all went out to tell of His existence, and His remarkable story, even to face their own deaths. I’m not sure who would be more qualified to give an account than those who were eye-witnesses to it.

18

Yes, LisaRx, the folks who lived their adult lives with Jesus would have been excellently qualified as biographers. Do you know of any such persons who did write about Him? If you do, I’m sure that there’s a lot of biblical scholars who’d love to talk with you. The known gospels are all second or third hand reports.

Of course we’re not disputing His actual existence, but I think it’s safe to say that everyone, religious and secular alike, would like to be able to know more about His life than we do.

19

Umm, well no. Matthew & John were Apostles, and knew JC 1st hand. It appears Mark met JC late in His life. Of course, these are biased sources, but they are certainly 1st hand sources.

Chronos: where do you get the idea that the Matthew & John did not write (or in John’s case, more likely dictate) their respective Gospels? Oh, sure, we have no proof, but like I said, very liitle of ancient history can be “proved”.

Anyway, the Old Roman records were on hand until sometime after the Persecution, and the ancient Romans had no doubt what-so-ever of the “historical” reality of Jesus.

20

A comment and a question: no one who reads the NT can come away without noticing some striking details-namely that Paul completely dominates the Christian scene after the death of Jesus. All of the apostles fade into history-and the letters of Paul become more important than the gospels. My question: how did Paul come to be such an important figure? Surely Peter (the “rock” that JC spoke of) had much more direct knowledge of Jesus-why was he pushed aside (as it were) by this upstart Paul?
Finally-did Paul know of the gospels? To my knowledge, he never mentions them in his letters.