Review finds no mention of Christ in ancient texts

Great Debates
41

By not defining “accurate historical texts” as “all texts which do not mention the figure concerned”.

Seriously. Paulkovich, whose research is the subject of this thread, claims to have identified 126 writers of the period (more or less; he takes texts from up to 300 CE) who do not mention Jesus. He includes writers like:

Sulpicia, a first century poet whose entire surviviving oeuvre consists of two lines of erotic verse.

Ptolemy, the second-century mathematician and astronomer (he of the “Ptolemaic solar system”).

Decimus Valerius Asiaticus, a wealthy Roman senator and landowner from Gaul who was sentenced to death for adultery with the mother-in-law of the Emperor Nero. Paulkovich classes him as a historical source because a letter he wrote to the authorities complaining about the theft of a pig has come down to us.

Aelius Theon, known only as the author of exercises for orators.

Soranus, a physician and gynaecologist.

Apollonius Dyscolus, who leaves us four books, one each on syntax, adjectives, conjunctions and pronouns.

Frontinus, who wrote a famous book about aqueducts and another about military strategy.

And so forth. Paulkovich apparently regards it as telling that none of these writers mention Jesus of Nazareth. At the same time he rigorously excludes the many authors writing within his timeframe who do mention Jesus of Nazareth, unless he can argue that the mention of Jesus is an error or an interpolation. He lists the Jewish historian Josephus, for example, as a writer who does not mention Jesus, whereas most historians of the period consider that Josephus does mention Jesus.

42

what???

besides Josephus, who is disputed, what specific contemporary historical texts that mention jesus is he ignoring?

43

Well, first I’d wonder what Michael Paulkovich’s credentials are. It’s hard to believe that someone without an ax to grind would publish his paper at a website with a title like jesusneverexisted.com.

The author’s book is at nomeekmessiah.com. It includes this bio:
[INDENT]Michael Paulkovich is a freelance writer and inventor, Contributing Editor for The American Rationalist, Columnist for American Atheist Magazine and Contributor for Free Inquiry and other journals. [/INDENT] This isn’t an academic work and it hasn’t undergone peer review. That doesn’t mean Paulkovich is wrong. We’ve debated this issue at this message board and I find the contention that Jesus never existed to be improbable but not ludicrous. But there are better proponents for this minority point of view.

44

why?

45

Do you understand that what this person did is essentially akin to digging up 125 dog skeletons, looking at them, and concluding that since none of those dog skeletons look like what dinosaur skeletons are supposed to look like, dinosaurs must have never existed?

46

except that there are thousands of dinosaur bones out there… now please tell me what you have to do to establish the historical accuracy of a historical figure

47

Well, the writers of the four gospels, to start with. They don’t count, because they’re Christians.

Paul. He doesn’t count, because he keeps going on about theology and ignoring biographical detail. Also he’s a Christian.

The Church Fathers - Clement, Polycarp, Ireneus and so on. They also don’t count, because they’re Christians.

Anyone who references a teacher or wonder worker living in Judea who was killed by the Romans, but doesn’t explicitly say “and he was called Jesus and came from Nazareth”. They don’t count because it might be someone else (and they might. But “not conclusive evidence on its own” is not the same as “not evidence at all and lets ignore it”)

48

In his list of 126 writers who do not mention Jesus, he includes 4 who at least arguably do mention him - Josephus, Tacitus, Pliny the Younger and Suetonius. In each case he argues that the mention is spurious.

He excludes all other writers who mention Jesus - which, given that his chosen time-frame goes up to 300 CE, is quite a few - Paul, the author of the Fourth Gospel, Mark, Matthew/Luke, the author(s) of any Pauline epistles that are not in fact by Paul, the authors of several other NT works. And that just the writers whose works made it into the New Testament.

Looking beyond scripture you’ve got Clement of Rome, Ignatius of Antioch, Polycarp of Smyrna, the anonymous author of the Didache, Irenaeus, Marcion, Justin Martyr, Tertullian . . . The list is a long one, if we are willing to go as late as 300 CE.

True, most of these writers are not writing anything we would recognise as history, but that is equally true of most of the writers that Paulkovich includes in his list - he includes epigrammatists, grammarians, physicians, poets, geographers, writers on agriculture, etc.

49

so in other words, there are no accurate, reliable sources… ?

50

Oh, I think a lot of them are totally obscure. But I doubt if there’s anything we’ve got from antiquity that’s unread, unless it was dug up out of the ground within the past year. Clearly the way this guy made his list was by scraping together a list of anyone who wrote anything at all within two hundred years and a thousand miles of Jerusalem AD 30 and then saying “so where’s the Jesus, huh?” And of course, specifically excluding all the people who were actually interested in Jesus.

51

…for anything at all, ever.

52

The claims of Josephus are in contention, Tacitus and Pliny are over 100 years after christ was supposed to have lived and I see no mention of Setonius about Jesus Christ specifically.

53

To dismiss all these sources, you have to believe that all of these authors would all decide to not only lie but also to all agree to tell the same lie despite the fact that many of them were in bitter disagreements with others.

You also have to accept the fact that no ancient source chose to expose this massive conspiracy. There were Jews and Pagans who were opposed to Christianity. But while they disputed Jesus as a religious figure, none of them ever said he didn’t exist.

54

Accuracy and reliability are not Paulkovich’s criteria, though, since the bulk of the writers he includes would be neither accurate nor reliable as sources for the history of first-century Palestine.

You do put your finger on a general problem of ancient history, though, which is how do you deal with the complete absence of objective historiography? Anybody of the period writing anything remotely like history is doing to to Make A Point. The result is that for most figures of the period you have no contemporary sources at all (Socrates, Alexander the Great) or sources which mostly have an axe to grind (Jesuis of Nazareth).

You don’t conclude, though, that the people concerned never existed. If you did think that, your belief would have to be that the ancient world consisted entirely of authors who themselves wrote texts that have survived, kings and generals who were memorialised on monuments erected in their own time, and wealthy people with ornate tombs.

Instead, you develop techniques for assessing the credibility and reliability of the sources that you do have. By the standards of the time, Jesus of Nazareth is surprisingly well-attested by a variety of near-contemporary sources. Even reading them sceptically, the parsimonious explanation for the existence of these sources is the existence of Jesus of Nazareth, and that is the conclusion that most historians of the period consider to be probable.

55

please list your proof

56

please provide sources from Jews and Pagans dipsuting Jesus as a religious figure written while Jesus was alive

57

Why improbable? The Master speaks. Cecil:

Further discussion:

58

none of those are first hand accounts, they are all basically heresay

59

If none of us can do this in a way that satisfies you, does that make the author of the linked article right?

60

Of course there are; Aspidistra named several.

The problem isn’t that useful sources don’t exist. The problem is that your conception of what constitutes a “useful source” bears zero resemblance whatsoever to what people who actually know what they’re talking about and actually practice the academic study of history recognize as a “useful source,” because they know that your standards are bullshit and insane and would exclude literally everything that a human being has ever written or produced.