The original thread was closed, but I’m interested in this, so thought I repost it in this form.
For a long time I’ve heard the statement bandied around that “there is more evidence for the existence of Jesus than Ceasat” (I remember being taught this as a statment of fact at our church youth group). Its simply a ridiculous claim, there is FAR FAR more evidence for the existence of Caesar than Jesus.
What I want to know is who first made this claim, and what justification (if any) did they have for it ? (seeing as anyone with any knowledge of classical writings could have seen it for what it is).
I actually heard it that there was more historical evidence for Jesus than there is for Socrates. Which, whether true or not, is a lot more reasonable. After all, we have actual writings of Ceaser’s. Neither Socrates nor Jesus ever wrote anything down; most of the information we have about them was recorded by their followers.
Ceaser, as the storied leader of one of the world’s largest empires, left a bit more of a trace.
EDIT: now that I’ve read the other thread, I see the Socrates thing already mentioned there. Sorry!
I guess that would make sense. The original soundbite might have been “There is more evidence for the existence of Jesus than Socrates”, which is a seems a fairly defensible position. Then at some point this got changed to “There is more evidence for the existence of Jesus than Ceasar”, which is not.
This seems that the original, less ridiculous, (though still dubious IMO) analogy might have between the historicity if Ceasar’s crossing the Rubicon, and the resurrection of Christ. Again, the subetly of what exactly is being compared between Ceasar and Jesus, could have been lost over time.
Though the book that is quoted (Reasonable Faith by William Lane) was published in 1994 long after I first heard the “Jesus vs Caesar” thing.
The trouble is that, based on other empirical evidence, it seems far more likely that a general will cross a river with his army that that a dead person will come back to life after 3 days buried in a tomb. Many generals have crossed many rivers with many armies throughout history, sometimes with documentation like photographs and movies being taken of them while doing it (though not in Caesar’s time). I’m not aware of good evidence of another person being resurrected after being dead for some days, recently (with better medical technology) or at any time in the past.
So, for an unbiased historian to accept the story, there needs to be stronger evidence of the resurrection of Christ than of Julius Caesar crossing the Rubicon.
Ah-ha. That it was a “logician” is the vital bit of information that enabled Google to answer my question. Looks like the source for this was Denis Diterot in 1770. From “Philosophic Thoughts”:
He doesn’t however say what information supports his claim that “It is as certain that Jesus Christ existed as that Caesar did”
Isn’t Diderot being sarcastic? I’ve always thought he was an atheist, or at least a skeptic in regard to Christianity.
The way I read that quote, Diderot is saying that there IS no logic that would lead on to conclude that Christ was resurrected, and he’s trying to demonstrate how silly it would be to argue that.
I would think both knowledge of Jesus and knowledge of Caesar were knowledge by description. At any rate, did Russell ever invoke Jesus to illustrate the distinction?
There are at least three documented references to Caesar’s “invasion” of Rome (ie., crossing the Rubicon) alone; there are perhaps three primary references of Jesus’ existence.