First, that thread I linked to contains many posts on the reliabilitry of the Gospels. Perhaps it has none on the specific subset of that debate you most enjoy talking about, but so what? There are many other threads where we’ve debated at length about that.
Second, you seem to think that if you’re participating in a debate with someone and that person stops posting, it means that you’ve won. For some posters, that may be true. In your case it’s more likely the opposite of the truth. You nearly always “debate” by repeating yourself over and over again, insulting every source who disagrees with you, and ignoring all requests that you provide cites. (This is already on display in this very thread.) People get frustrated by the fact that they’re writing long, thoughtful, sourced posts that meets the standards of GD, and you only shoot back with meaningless sniping. Eventually they get so frustrated that they leave the thread since it’s obviously pointless. Read this thread (or rather reread it) and pay attention at posts 7 and 10. That’s the reason why people don’t go round and round with you endlessly. It’s not because everyone else is intimidated by your all-powerful intellect.
Third, on the question of whether I want to start a new thread, I’ve already answered, but I’m guess I’ll have to post the same thing again since you missed it the first time. If you want to reverse that reputation you’re welcome to try right here, perhaps by quoting those passages in the Case for books that you think qualify them as “laughable jokes”. I’m quite willing to debate in this thread, provided (1) you actually try to defend your statements with cites to reliable, outside sources for once and (2) you actually respond to the cites I post rather than calling them “idiot”, “crackpot”, “moron”, “woo books”, “bullshit”, “laughable jokes”, or any of the other insults that you typically employ when you’re unable to answer an argument. If you want to do that, you’re welcome to start at any time. However, my past experience with you strongly suggests that you won’t.
And as I said, if anyone else wants to offer a title that they think I should read that makes the argument from the skeptical side, I’ll be happy to look into it.
The Gospels were likely written in Koine Greek (there’s some dispute aboyt Matthew, which I will touch upon). However, that wasn’t a “Gentile language” as anyone here would think of it.
Many of these diaspora Jews would have Greek as their first language, and the Tanakh (“Old Testament”) was therefore translated into standard Koine Greek, i.e. the Septuagint…
Currently, 1,600 Jewish epitaphs (funerary inscriptions) are extant from ancient Palestine dating from 300 B.C. to 500 A.D. Approximately 70 percent are in Greek, about 12 percent are in Latin, and only 18 percent are in Hebrew or Aramaic. “In Jerusalem itself about 40 percent of the Jewish inscriptions from the first century period (before 70 C.E.) are in Greek. We may assume that most Jewish Jerusalemites who saw the inscriptions in situ were able to read them”.[2]
In other words, we’d *expect *the Gospels to be written in Greek as that is what the local inhabitants wrote in. The fact they are written in Greek is a argument for their authenticity, not the opposite as your rather disingenuous post would indicate.
The Septuagint, the most widely read “Bible” of that time was in Greek or as you would have it “a gentile language”. :rolleyes:
Disingenuous.
Some claim that Jesus and his apostles did have some Greek: In none of these cases is an interpreter mentioned. Even though it is impossible to estimate how fluent or eloquent Jesus and the disciples would be in their Greek, it is possible that they would be able to communicate in Greek when it was needed. In any case, most writers of that time used scribes, and of course a scribe would know Greek.
There’s a good argument that Matthew draws upon a earlier Hebrew version.
“Portions of the oral sayings in Matthew contain vocabulary that indicates Hebrew or Aramaic linguistic techniques involving puns, alliterations, and word connections. For example, in the phrase “an evil and adulterous generation seeks for a sign” (Matthew 12:39) it is not obvious in the Greek rendering why an evil and adulterous generation would seek for a “sign.” In Hebrew the connections become obvious since the word “seek” is rendered “lusts after” and is spelled the same as the word for “sign.” So in Hebrew, since “lusts after” and “sign” are written identically it is easy to see why an evil and ADULTEROUS generation would be interested in lust/signs. Hebrew/Aramaic vocabulary choices possibly underlie the text in Matthew 1:21, 3:9, 4:12, 4:21-23, 5:9-10, 5:23, 5:47-48, 7:6, 8:28-31, 9:8, 10:35-39, 11:6, 11:8-10, 11:17, 11:29, 12:13-15, 12:39, 14:32, 14:35-36, 15:34-37, 16:18, 17:05, 18:9, 18:16, 18:23-35, 19:9-13, 19:24, 21:19, 21:37-46, 21:42, 23:25-29, 24:32, 26:28-36, 26:52.[9][10][11]”
Or that he wrote such a version himself:
And of course, it is generally accepted that the Gospel of John was dictated by that Apostle to his disciples in Ephesus. Of course it was edited and John was a old man by that time. But he certainly was a “survivor”.
**Of course **the Gospels were “known only obscurely for decades”- Christianity was obscure for decades. Again, Disingenuous.
Of course =“These books were not available in every Barnes and Noble but were copied and distributed among small congregations and read aloud in meetings”- since that pretty much describes every book of that period. **Disingenuous. **There were no “Barnes & Nobles”.
In any case- no one, not the Romans, not the Jews, not any enemy of Christianity- ever wrote or proposed that Jesus was not a real man. That idea did not surface until some 300 years ago. In other words, for 1700 tears or so, there was no notable doubt at all of there being a Historical Jesus. The Romans had no doubt. Josephus had no doubt. The Jews had no doubt. There’s several period references to Jesus as a real person.
And of course- **Cecil sez so. **
Is it not widely agreed that the Nativity stories (present in only 1 or 2 of the Gospels) are fictional embellishments? To reject an historic Jesus based on inconsistencies in the Nativity stories would be like rejecting an historic George Washington if the cherry tree story were proven false.
An historic Jesus seems like a near-certainty to me (if only via Occam’s Razor); the question is what “supernatural” powers did he have? All Gospels agree he was a very adept healer. I find this believable without supposing any miraculous aspect: psychosomatic ailment (e.g. “possession by demons”) was common in that society, and Jesus was a powerfully charismatic hypnotist/exorcist.
The Gospels have internal clues suggesting they’re based on fact. As one example, consider Jesus’ baptism by John. A fiction writer who wanted to emphasize Jesus’ greatness would probably have Jesus baptize John! (BTW, can anyone address my ignorance about evidence for John the Baptist’s existence outside the Gospels?)
How was it insulting to highlight that not everyone requires the stories in the bible to be interpreted literally? Certainly there is a lot of noise made by evangelical and fundamentalist Christians in the US claiming that the bible is literally true, but that viewpoint is by no means universal.
Circular reasoning.
I find it much easier to explain the existence of the pyramids, if aliens actually visited.
I’m not sure how convincing this piece is. It seems to me that they would have simply assumed he was a real person. Why not? In either case, how would they have proven or demonstrated that he either existed or didn’t?
The tact of the non Christians seemed to be to take the Christian story and try to make arguments from that. I’m thinking of Trypho-Justin Martyr in specific here (although this would have been a century or so after the fact).
To my understanding, it didn’t matter to the Jews if Jesus existed or not, he didn’t fulfill their prophecies - this was their major complaint. The Romans and Josephus were writing about what the Christians believed, they weren’t trying to refute it.
To me, it’s simply a simpler explanation to say that some core ‘jesus’ existed, but I can’t say that I have no doubt. In fact, I go back and forth.
For the record - I would do this with Buddha or Xenophanes as well. I have no stake in their existence and frankly, I don’t know enough about their historical circumstances to comment. I don’t know enough about Jesus’s either, however I do know something about the scholarship about Jesus’ historicity (as opposed to the Buddha’s and Xenophanes). Granted, I wouldn’t say I’m an expert, a scholar, etc on Jesus’ historicity either. From what I can tell, it doesn’t seem to matter whether Jesus existed or not (as mentioned up thread).
If we can’t discern anything about the historical Jesus (according to at least, some scholars) then what’s to say there was one?
If George Washington’s historical image included the Cherry Tree, I’d have to say that no, that is not the George Washington we know and love because he did not cut down the Cherry tree. True, that doesn’t mean George Washington did not exist, but the man is no longer as described. My question was: How much must be untrue about George Washington before you say that he did not exist?
What if he was never president? What if he wasn’t a general, just a soldier. What if he never crossed the Potomac. He was stationed say further North, and held a lesser political office after the war, but the stories associated with him stemmed from this particular individual. In fact his name was Georgie Washington.
Are we still talking about the same person?
Sure the whole thing is silly in the case of Washington, but what about Jesus?
That there were itinerant soothsayers or Messianic Prophets in 1st Century Judea, no one disputes. That at least one, hell probably several of them were executed by roman authorities, I would say is almost a certainty. But what the heck does that have to do with Jesus as described in the Bible?
Let’s entertain a scenario in which we somehow know for a fact that indeed the stories about Jesus where mostly made up (the stories of his birth example), but that some of basic places and events (mainly his death at roman hands, and the fact that he preached and perhaps even where he preached -but not WHAT he preached) are based on two preachers. One gave a stirring speech on the Mount, the other got caught man handling some Jewish priests and got crucified.
Are either of these people “Jesus”? As an exercise in historical scholarship we can say that they are the roots of the Jesus mythology. But how on earth can we identify them as “Jesus”?
I really don’t think that when we move past “Itinerant preacher gets crucified, preached about being the Messiah” we can come up with a better answer than “Maybe. Doubtful”. Hell, the above is again, almost a certainty. It probably happened many times. But that is not the Jesus of the Gospels.
It’s like having a religion many years from now talk about a computer geek that did and said all of this specific things. And even when errors in the story get pointed out and the question : Did this geek actually exist? gets asked we get an answer along the lines of:
It’s a near certainty! Why? Because I don’t find the possibility of a computer Geek in the early 21st century as impossible. Well, yeah, but what the heck does that mean?
"An account of John the Baptist is found in all extant manuscripts of the Jewish Antiquities (book 18, chapter 5, 2) by Flavius Josephus (37–100):[43]
Now some of the Jews thought that the destruction of Herod’s army came from God, and that very justly, as a punishment of what he did against John, that was called the Baptist: for Herod slew him, who was a good man, and commanded the Jews to exercise virtue, both as to righteousness towards one another, and piety towards God, and so to come to baptism; for that the washing [with water] would be acceptable to him, if they made use of it, not in order to the putting away [or the remission] of some sins [only], but for the purification of the body; supposing still that the soul was thoroughly purified beforehand by righteousness. Now when [many] others came in crowds about him, for they were very greatly moved [or pleased] by hearing his words, Herod, who feared lest the great influence John had over the people might put it into his power and inclination to raise a rebellion, (for they seemed ready to do any thing he should advise,) thought it best, by putting him to death, to prevent any mischief he might cause, and not bring himself into difficulties, by sparing a man who might make him repent of it when it would be too late. Accordingly he was sent a prisoner, out of Herod’s suspicious temper, to Macherus, the castle I before mentioned, and was there put to death. Now the Jews had an opinion that the destruction of this army was sent as a punishment upon Herod, and a mark of God’s displeasure to him.[44] "
I have invited you in the past to defend the historical veracity of the claims made in the Gospels and you have always declined to so much as answer. I don’t think this means “I’ve won,” I think it means you’re afraid to debate.
I’ve already explained that your suggestion to engage a tangential debate in THIS thread would untenable since it’s a hijack. Going into a long winded dissection of the “case for” books would also be a hijack in this thread and relaly little more than an attempt at misdirectiuon on your own part. Do you think you can defend the historical veracity of the Gospels or can’t you? I’m issuing you a challenge. If I start another thread, will you have the guts to reply to it? If you’re willing to start another thread we can pursue your Strobel diversion there. If you want to cite him in defense of the historical veracity of he Goseples (which would be a mistake), then cite what points of his you think are particularly persuasive and I will refute them. I’m interested in debating you, not Strobel. You can either defend your own position or you can’t.
Please don’t waste time trying to wave me off with ad hominems. If you think my argumentation will not be strong or well suppprted, then you shouldn’t have anything to worry about.
There is no real dispute about Matthew. It was copied largely from mark and Q, both Koine sources.
If it isn’t Jewsh, it’s Gentile, by definition.
Diapspora Jews are beside the point. Jesus and other 1st Century Palestinian Jews spoke Aramaic. How much Greek they may have known is a matter of speculation.
There’s an argument that some of the Q sayings could be drawn from an Aramaic source. Matthew himself is purely a Greek composition. As I said, it copies from Mark and Q, and uses the Greek LXX as its Bible - all Greek sources.The material original to Matthew does not appear anything but Greek in composition. That fact that Matthew misunderstands Isaiah 7:14 is an indication that he didn’t know Hebrew.
If he did, it’s got nothing to do with Canonical Matthew.
This is a folk tradition. It’s not “accepted” at all by historians. John shows layered authorship and is regarded as the latest and least historical of all the Gospels.
[quote]
**Of course **the Gospels were “known only obscurely for decades”- Christianity was obscure for decades. Again, Disingenuous.
[/quote
How is that disingenuous? Yes, Christianity was obscure, and each spevific Gospel even more so (Luke was not even aware of Matthew). My point is that writing and distributing these books did not entail any risk that they would be refuted by living witbnesses, since they would not be well known, and were being copied and read well outside and well after the events they purported to describe.
You honestly thought you were making a point with this? Do you believe that I believed Barnes & Nobles existed 1st century Asia? I was being facetious. My point was that the books would not have been likely to have ever been known about by contemporaries of Jesus.
Why would they be expected to? They didn’t care, nor did they have any way to know. It was not a question that would have likely even occurred to them, or would have been able to disprove in any case.
You confuse “Jewish” with “Hebrew”. Altho certainly Hebrew is a Jewish language, so is Yiddish. In fact “Yiddish” translates as “Jewish”.
But that’s beside the point. Your argument continues to be disingenuous. Your point in your post was clearly that as the Gospels were written in a “Gentile language” they have less authenticity. The opposite is true. We’d expect most writings of that period- even by Jews- to be in Greek. Josephus, who was a law-observant Jew, wrote entirely in Greek, not in Hebrew.
Of course there was no Barnes & Noble, but the point is- almost no writings were commonly available. So, you make no point by claiming the Gospels weren’t commonly available.
They didn’t care? Tacitus wrote (wiki) “Consequently, to get rid of the report, Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite punishments on a class hated for their disgraceful acts, called Chrestians by the populace. Christ, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty [i.e., Crucifixtion] 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.[3][4]”
Clearly from “a most mischievous superstition”, “the first source of the evil” "things hideous and shameful " this is a polemic against Christianity and how evil it is. Clearly Tacitus cared. But did he claim Jesus did not exist? No, in fact he concedes His existance (and execution). In fact, one of Tacitus points is that Jesus was executed, thus He was a criminal, thus Christianity is Evil. **You don’t execute imaginary people. **
We’ve gone on and about the Gospels over & over, and you bring nothing but the same bogus and tired aguments lifted wholesale from Infidels and similar blogs.
Your assessment is very similar with Joseph McCabe. And I feel like he does a better job making a case for a historical Jesus than the Christians do. In fact, it’s often the pathetic apologetic Christian writings similar to Josh McDowell’s caliber, is when I start doubting a historical Jesus more that may have existed during this time and area. It’s always when I refresh my memory with McCabe work who always brings me back leaning in that direction of their being some kind of a historical Jesus.
I’ll go ahead and cover Tacitus here instead of waiting for an entirely new thread since you keep clinging to this. You used a wiki link in the other thread in which it says:
I think Van Voorst should enlarge his circle a bit. Besides Van Voorst, I see quite a few using this argument and that the severe criticisms of Christ are reasons to think it wasn’t written by a Christian interpolator, and is probably genuine. Not sure how persuaded one should be with that, when you consider there are other statements about Jesus in the Gospels that remain that are not the most flattering. I’m thinking in particular at this time of his family accusing him of being “out of his mind.” Couldn’t this passage in Tacitus been inserted by a Christian to gain support and sympathy for the martyrs of Christ? Others seem to think so. Let’s look at the entire section in dispute. This translation is from Alfred John Church and William Jackson Brodribb (1876) which I got from wikipedia here. Book 15 section 44:
The part I put in italics, is what I think are scholars disputing various parts of it, if not all of that part. John Remsberg gave 14 reasons for doubting this passage in The Christ. which I have already gave. To save space, scroll until you get to Tacitus if you want to refresh your memory, and cover those specifics now, I think this thread is appropriate. Not sure which translator Remsberg used, but wikipedia used a different one. I’m particularly interested in Remsberg argument that no Christian writers prior to the fifteenth century ever quotes from it, but yet many needed that quote.
Joseph McCabe also addresses Tacitus, and it’s always worth a look to see what he has to say about it concerning its authenticity. Says McCabe:
Other such as Ronald Martin says (Tacitus and the Writing of History) that Tacitus is supposed to be known for his restrain, but yet in this passage we get it all the guts and gory detail that many think is below the dignity of Tacitus as a historian. I have only read sporadically from Tacitus, he’s rather long-winded, so I can’t vouch for his style much myself, but I think many that have dabbled or delved into this seem to get plenty of diverse opinions on it once you go outside conservative Christian apologetics, and that doesn’t appear to be as cut and dried as many think to just say, “many scholars accept this passage as genuine” and be done with it.
These days Tacitus seems to get plenty of air time, second only to Josephus in using non-Christian sources for the historicity of Jesus. Although I don’t think its original interpolation was intended for that, but as I stated to gain sympathy and support for martyrs and for the cause. And it’s not like there wasn’t much borrowing, inserting and altering of texts going on with the church and with the early church fathers.
There are plenty of more problems of this passage that has been pointed out by other scholars, and I will maybe get to most of them in due time. I’m particularly interested in why you might think it the entire section is pure and unadulterated in any way, in particular when the church and clergyman was quite famous for borrowing, inserting and altering texts and had in their possession this copy of the Annals.
-1 for starting a thread in GD with “Resolved” it’s stupid, and this isn’t a high school forensics club.
Now that that is out of the way, if you dig into it I think there is such a massive volume of works both from people who are not religious and of course from religious historians who operate under the accepted behavior of professional historians both supporting and arguing against the historical existence of Jesus that it’s simply an issue far too large to have any resolution. It’s one of the many things in life you’ll just have to read into and come into conclusions for yourself.
The goalposts are going to be very different, for example the OP of this thread set a specific set of goalposts for this thread. A lot of people out there, both in the historical and the religious community who believe in “historical Jesus” would have no problem accepting a Jesus who might have gone under a different name, and only loosely inspired the events written about in the bible.
Religious belief in Jesus is entirely based on faith, one of Christianity’s major themes is faith. Faith isn’t about scrutiny, faith isn’t about proving or disproving things, its’ believing in something without ever getting the comfort of knowing for sure that it’s true. Of course that directly contradicts skepticism and other ways of thinking, but in reality that’s pretty much the way it is. People that believe in something out of faith will never be convinced or persuaded by logical arguments arrayed against them. Further, with a case like this we’re talking about a person who, if he existed, has been dead for probably almost 2,000 years if not a little longer at this point. You’re never going to be able to prove Jesus existed, but lack of that proof doesn’t prove that he did not exist. It’s a well known saying in debate that you can’t “prove a negative”, at the same time there are many things in history that cannot be proven conclusively and yet most people eventually just have to come down on one side or the other.
If someone held a gun to my head and made me decide where I stand on historical Jesus, I’d say I believe there was a real human being who inspired the gospels. However, a lot of things have to be considered:
If he lived, during his life he would have been a fairly small deal. Only really well known amongst a small group of followers.
If he lived, his teachings probably served as a framework upon which his successors built and promulgated the teachings. Meaning by the time they were written down, you would still say he was the founder of that school of thought but it’s doubtful his actual words were written down in their original form.
If he lived, his life was probably not terribly spectacular. He probably taught some philosophical views on the world, perhaps engaged in some form of healing (herbal remedies, laying on hands etc) and eventually was branded a heretic and executed by the local authorities. It’s entirely possible that if he lived, even his direct followers would have reason to fill in the blanks of his life, to invent or embellish childhood stories and other such things.
Much of what we know of Socrates comes from his followers, for this reason there is still to this day some question as to what things Plato said were actually Plato’s, and what were the words of Socrates. Just like Plato adored Socrates and created the absolutely most favorable historical impression of the man that you could ask for, a historical Jesus probably had immediate students who were akin to Plato. Almost certainly, any followers of Jesus in spreading his message would have added their interpretation of that message.
What all this means to say is, if inspired by a real person, even with far better records than we have you would have an almost impossible task of tracing religious Jesus back to historical Jesus.
I hope you have something more in mind than Cecil’s column I read in which he devotes about two brief paragraphs to it and spends the rest on The Shroud of Turin. So please provide the link if it is something different.
No, I define “Gentile” as “non-Jewish.” That is what the word means. Just because diaspora Jews spoke a Gentile language does not mean it wasn’t a Gentile language.
That was not my point at all. You misunderstood me completely. I wasn’t making a comment at all on authenticity, I was saying that the language would have made it less likely to have been known by Palestinian contemporaries of Jesus. I was addressing an argument that they would have been at all likely to have been contested or refuted by alleged living witnesses.
You’re really misunderstanding me. My point was only that they were not likely to have been contested by anyone who was alive in Galilee or Judea at the alleged time of the crucifixion. The argument was made they the are more likely to have been historically accurate because they were written at a time when “people who were there” would have still been alive. All I was saying was that any of those people who “would have been there” were extremely unlikely to have known anything about the written gospels even if they’d lived that long. I was not making an argument against authenticity in this case (I can make much better arguments for that), but just refuting one particular argument *for * it.
Not about specific Christian beliefs, no they didn’t. They ahd no reason to. The reason they disliked Christians had nothing to do with their historical beliefs about Jesus or their theology in general, but because they wouldn’t honor the state temples and were seen as unpatriotic. The Romans didn’t give a rat’s ass about anyone’s religious beliefs as long as they paid tribute to the state temples.
No. Mark is adoptionist all the way through. He has the dove descend on Jesus at his baptism, and then has Jesus lamenting God’s abandonment of him on the cross. Mark does not have any language, direct or indirect, indicating that he thought Jesus was God.
because he did not cut down the Cherry tree. True, that doesn’t mean George Washington did not exist, but the man is no longer as described. My question was: How much must be untrue about George Washington before you say that he did not exist?