The most compelling argument I’ve heard for the existence of a historical Jesus is that he is consistently known as “Jesus of Nazareth”, but there is this whole shaggy dog story about how there was a census so he was really born in Bethlehem to fulfill some prophecy. If the gospel writers were making up Jesus from whole cloth, they would have just called him “Jesus of Bethlehem” and saved themselves some trouble.
This thread is not about “religious people who want to assert the existence of jesus as a historical figure as an indisputable fact” and nobody in this thread has made such a claim, with or without proof. It’s about the historicity of Jesus, which is a historical question, not a religious one, and in particular about a researcher who claims that his research shows that Jesus did not exist. It’s his claims, and more generally the Christ myth theory, that we are scrutinising here.
Exactly. Where is a Jewish Ecclesiastical document written in 33AD[ish] that specifically names Jesus as a false messiah, and discusses his execution and burial? Where is a grafitto scrawled somewhere obscure poking fun at The King of the Jews on a cross? How about a letter from one Jewish congregation to another discussing the crazy JewBoy who wants to change Judaism? Something from 33AD-44AD [I guess that is current best guess of date of death and a bit afterwards for slop] mentioning him directly by the several names he could possibly be using.
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really? i thought this was a free country and i was allowed to talk about whatever i wanted to.
It’s reasonable to ask “where’s the evidence?”
It’s not so reasonable to assert “I looked in all the wrong places, and was shocked that I didn’t find the evidence”
There is a sort of general expectation that the topic of a conversation will continue to be the topic of that conversation.
agreed
but my point is the topic of the historical accuracy of jesus is not really a problem when discussed among agnostics or atheists. it’s a problem when religious people make the claim. and i’m more interested in preventing problems than i am in having pointless philosophical discussions with agnostics.
Happy. This is a passage from Josephus “Antiquities of the Jews”, chapter 9 (available from Project Gutenberg, if you’re interested)
“Festus was now dead, and Albinus was but upon the road; so he [Ananus, the current high priest] assembled the sanhedrim of judges, and brought before them the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ, whose name was James, and some others, [or, some of his companions]; and when he had formed an accusation against them as breakers of the law, he delivered them to be stoned.”
Here we have a respectable Jewish historian, not a Christian himself so no particular axe to grind, mention in passing Jesus as a person of the period, under the clear assumption that readers will know who he’s talking about. It’s totally compatible with other evidence from the period (the Gospel writers and Paul also say that Jesus had a brother called James, who was active in the early church), and what happens in the passage is exactly the sort of thing we know happened to early Jesus followers once the movement got big enough to be a threat to the Jewish establishment.
Is there any reason you think this passage is not evidence for the existence of a person by the name of Jesus in first century Palestine, who was being called the Jewish Messiah or Christ?
(there is also an extremely hagiographic description of Jesus elsewhere in Josephus which most historians consider either to be a later invention/insertion, or at the very least seriously embellished. But that is not this one.)
It’s a free country and you’re allowed to talk about whatever you want, but it’s considered rude to interrupt other people’s conversations and try and derail them in this fashion, and if you do you risk being misunderstood. You wait untiil post #76 of this thread to say that all along you have not been discussing the OP but instead challenging propositions which no-one in this conversation has made or even mentioned? Seriously?
With freedom comes responsibliity; you should expect a bit of blowback when you behave like this.
look, in all seriousness, those comments of Josephus are contested as to their validity. don’t you see that as a problem?
my comments are still connected to the topic at large.
That’s not the part of Josephus that’s contested. The part of Josephus that’s contested is the so called Testimonium Flavianum, ie, this part:
The general assumption, though, is that that passage is partly authentic, and partly had things added by later Christian scribes, so the original was something like:
ok… so even if James the brother of jesus called the christ… was recorded by Josephus, how is it not anything but heresay?
So you’re saying that nothing is acceptable evidence of someone’s existence except a written document of a historian who knew them personally?
no, i’m saying that second hand accounts of a traveling charlatan are much more suspect than second hand accounts of political figures or generals or similar individuals
Hearsay.
Look, if you think the only way you can disprove Christianity is by disproving a historical Jesus, you’re wrong. Most agnostics and atheists that I’ve discussed the subject with tend to believe that there was, most likely, a cult leader named Jesus in that time and place. That doesn’t make the religious aspects associated with him true.
Somebody must have started the darned religion.
If it was not somebody called Jesus (or, rather, the Hebrew or Aramaic name of which that is a translation), it was somebody who lived in roughly the same area at roughly the same time, but who is otherwise unknown except for the fact that he had a different name. Do you think the hypothesis that it might have been someone unknown, with a different name, really advances our historical understanding? If you think it does, you will also have to explain why so many people, within a few years of whatsisname’s death or retirement from the scene, started saying that his name was Jesus (and why none of them, neither supporters nor critics of the religion, seemed to question this, despite disagreeing on much else about him).
The hypothesis that Christianity was founded by someone quite unknown, called something other than Jesus is an ontological extravagance that flies in the face of Occam’s razor.
As in science, you do not get absolute proofs in history, you get best, most plausible hypotheses. In the light of the available evidence, our best available hypothesis is that Christianity was founded by someone called Jesus. This does not entail believing that he was the son of God, did miracles, etc.
in other words, what is more reasonable? that Jesus was totally and completely made up as a work of fiction, or, that he was one of many charlatan/con artists operating in the period at the time. the second - seems - much more reasonable but you’ll never get me to admit it, not until you have actual proof.
There’s no way to show you that proof/evidence if you’re going to dance around the argument like you did in posts #90, #93 and #95.
Seriously, we had:
“That bit’s fake” (refuted)
“Well, it’s hearsay” (answered)
“Well, the writer was a charlatan”
oh!
I’m not saying Josephus was a charlatan. I’m saying religious figures are by definition, charlatans.