If I recall correctly, the founder of “Christianity” was named Saul of Tarsus, who seemed to become obsessed with a preacher after he had a seizure on the road. In fact, he appears to have argued strongly with those remaining followers of that preacher who had actually known him in life.
But that might not be relevant to the present discussion.
Right, and anyone who says more than a few words about Jesus (i.e. people who really took an interest) are religious figures?
Charlatan:
a person falsely claiming to have a special knowledge or skill; a fraud.
In all seriousness, my claim is that in a time when Charlatans came a dime a dozen I wouldn’t put to much stock into claims of prophet XYZ from three villages away even actually existing…
So the claim that charlatans were a dime a dozen is said to tell against the claim that a particular charlatan exists?
In the real world that first claim tends to make the second claim more plausible, not less.
actually, if there are more of them, chances are greater one would be made up entirely, conversely, if only a few of them existed chances would be less that one was made up entirely
What I meant was: if someone shows you a text written by someone who had quite a lot to say about Jesus, you’re going to dismiss it as fanfic, aren’t you?
Whereas texts with only a little mention of Jesus in them are dismissed as trivial hearsay.
Even if Jesus was real and solid, I’m not sure your position would be assailable by anything short of a time machine.
This makes no sense whatsoever.
Please, I doubt the high praise Plutarch extends to the people he writes about. And he’s a historian. I don’t trust ANYTHING a religious writer has to say.
I don’t find this responsive to the post it quoted. Anyway, all this has been discussed before, most recently in a 11-month-ago thread which probably made more progress than this one.
BTW, when people want to debate the historicity of Jesus it’s best to specify whether they’re referring to Jesus, a minor healer/preacher/zealot who became a cult figure after his death, or Jesus of the Miraculous Deeds who raised Lazarus from the dead. The conflated cases make the debate cross-purposed.
But I’m not sure even Jesus the Lazarus-Reviver would be well-documented:
“I just saw Uncle Lazarus walking around, drinking wine! Write it in your diary”
– Yeah, he overdoes the grape. What else is new?
“But I’m telling you!! Uncle Lazarus was stinking dead yesterday. I smelled him myself. They were already cleaning out the tomb!”
– Let me have some of what you’re drinking.
Yes… but isn’t a writer who pens high praise for a religious figure going to fall under your definition of ‘religious writer’?
do you mean Josephus specifically? I have no particular problem with him in that regard, I think he was repeating what he heard. Doesn’t make it true.
Pretty well all historians are “repeating what they heard”, Robert. Very little history is written at first hand.
No, not at all. I’m trying to work out whether your defined boundaries actually allow scope for the evidence you’re demanding (if it even existed).
If you’re saying you want documentary evidence from a non-religious writer, comprising full and enthusiastic firsthand accounts of Jesus, BUT: that anyone who wrote copious and enthusiastic firsthand accounts of Jesus was by definition a religious writer, it would be literally impossible to show you anything (because your criteria would exclude anything that could possibly exist).
I’m comfortable with the notion that a man named Joshua from Nazareth did exist and had a core group of followers who worked to spread his ideas after his execution. Being par for the course at that time, these followers embellished his story with supernatural acts so as to provide legitimacy to his new faith and also to “out-compete” the multitude of other man-deities walking around at that time claiming to be God.
These followers were also keen get their story straight and may have all been drawing from a singular (or dual) early source, given the relatively close semblance of the Gospels.
It’s also important to remember that Jesus saw himself as a reformer of Judaism, and not necessarily the father of a new religion. The stories written of his life went at pains to show him “fulfilling” the prophecy of the Old Testament. This element increases skepticism of the historicity of Jesus, because the convenience of these details is an indication that this story was made up to give it the legitimacy that some random Jew who preached pacifism would not otherwise have had.
The art of writing was still in its infancy at the time, and as others in this thread have pointed out, very few achieved a level of education to practice it. Also, there was no real cabal of historians establishing rules of authenticity governing these accounts. There were no editors, fact checkers, or peer review systems. All writings from that period that weren’t some form of record keeping are bound to be prone with errors and bias. Modern historians have little choice in accepting those accounts. The best they can hope for is that a random scroll will be discovered in a cave that somehow endured centuries of wear and tear and may have a matching account of what was then current events.
Plus, some rulers of that period didn’t like it when something bad was written about them, and they had the power to remove those writers from existence and destroy their works. John of Patmos made his revelations read like nonsense to prevent Roman Emperors from executing him for sedition. Unfortunately, that had the side effect of making future Christians paranoid about the End of Days.
Back to one of the original questions: who IS Michael Paulkovich?
I’d never heard of him until a few days ago, though that means very little. There are undoubtedly thousands of people who are well-known and highly respected in various academic fields whom I’ve never heard of.
But Googling him doesn’t turn up much except an occasional short piece he’s written for one atheist/humanist web site or another. And even those pieces don’t seem to tell us anything about the author. I’ve only come across one book he’s ever written: No Meek Messiah: Christianity’s Lies, Laws and Legacy.
Paulkovich SEEMS to be an amateur polemicist rather than a scholar, but I don’t know for sure. Is he an academic? Does he have any background in ancient history? Does he read Greek or Hebrew? What does he do for a living?
Accounts from his nominal adversaries would go a long way towards convincing me. Alexander the Great for instance, is recorded in the histories of people he fought against. That’s pretty convincing evidence that he existed.
Let us consider some facts that are indisputable:
1/ at the time Christ is said to have lived, there were many prophets on the fringes of Judaism proposing new ideas about God and his people.
2/ a body of beliefs about the facts of the life of Christ has been constructed over twenty centuries by a variety of people and these beliefs may have a variety of supports. Some may be claimed to have historical veracity. Others are influenced by other belief systems such as Jewish beliefs about the ancestry and life experiences of a putative Messiah, or the beliefs of followers of Mithras or sol invictus.
So what does it mean to claim that “Jesus Christ” was an historical figure.
There may have been a member of a first century Palestinian sect who possessed the name Joshua and who may have been claimed by him or others to be a Christ, but about whom we know little directly of his life or views. How many of Christ’s attributes and experiences would need to be shared with this Joshua for identity to be claimed?
It opens up many possibilities from complete error (this Joshua was in fact nothing to do with another person who lived the life we know as Jesus’), through partial identification (some but not all attributes are due to Joshua’s actual life, with other attributes being mythical or from other contemporaneous prophets), to a case where most of the canonical attributes of Jesus were due to events in Joshua’s life.
I can see no clear decision procedure!
Alexander the Great is NOT recorded in any contemporary histories, either of his allies or his enemies. If you are going to accept accounts written centuries later by the descendants of those he fought against, then what is the problem about accepting accounts written centuries later by Roman or Jewish or Muslim historians?
Given the survival rate for first-century writings, even if the miracles were recorded contemporaneously by first-century Palestinian observers, there’s no reason to believe their writings would necessarily have survived anyway. Somebody upthread noted how little contemporary writing we have about Pontius Pilate, who certainly existed; we don’t even have a good list of all of the governors of Roman Judea, although they certainly existed.
I believe you are mistaken