While Jefferson was firmly of the opinion that Jesus existed as a man, and set out to fix the bible by removing all the supernatural trappings and clean up the root of Jesus’ teachings, his method for doing so was not very elaborate. He basically took the books of the bible and cut out the passages that were statements of miracles or claims of Jesus’ divinity and such, retaining the parables and teachings and statements of “fact”.
SuaSponte said:
Danielinthewolvesden said:
Hold on. It is held by many that the one mention of Jesus in the writings of Josephus is a forgery. It was found by a christian who was known to think that deception in the name of glorifying god is a good thing.
I believe the “roman record of James, the Brother of Jesus” is actually the line from the writings of Josephus.
There are roman writings that speak of his apostles? Do they discuss them as apostles of Jesus? Or just naming figures who are believed to be the apostles mentioned in the Gospels? I know there are records of christians showing up, and some confusion over how to deal with those of that sect, but nothing about actual apostles.
Actually, while I don’t deny some people may think Josephus’ reference to Jesus entirely a forgery, it’s not the opinion of many. What is widely held (as historical fact) is that an overzealous Christian added a line to the end somewhere; that line is now removed.
I don’t have the exaxt quote with me; the totality of Josephus’ reference is rather short, and the forged fragment at the end went : “Many recognized Jesus to be a good man, a prophet, and some say he may have been the Messiah.”
Take that away, but Josephus still mentions Christ’s existence, since so many people think the gospels were written entirely by space aliens, or federal agents from the future, or Isaac Asimov, or anyone at all except his followers.
(minor note : if you don’t want to believe, don’t. I for one wouldn’t have a problem dismissing Him as a wise man who thought he was God, if I didn’t believe in him.)
You Jewish? Any knowledge of Judaic law? Any rabbis living across the street? In other words, are you able to compare what you read in “The Lost Gospel” with Jewish religious beliefs? Let me know, and thankee!
The forged Josephus passage from the The Jewish Antiquities:
Now there was about this time Jesus, a wise man, if it be lawful to call him a man, for he was a doer of wonderful works, a teacher of such men as receive the truth with pleasure. He drew over to him both many of the Jews, and many of the Gentiles. He was the Christ, and when Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men among us, had condemned him to the cross, those that loved him at the first did not forsake him; for he appeared to them alive again the third day; as the divine prophets had foretold these and ten thousand other wonderful things concerning him. And the tribe of Christians so named from him are not extinct at this day.
A universaly accepted forgery.
Again from The Jewish Antiquities, Josephus mentions James’s ultimate fate:
But the younger Ananus who, as we said, received the high priesthood, was of a bold disposition and exceptionally daring; he followed the party of the Sadducees, who are severe in judgment above all the Jews, as we have already shown. As therefore Ananus was of such a disposition, he thought he had now a good opportunity, as Festus was now dead, and Albinus was still on the road; so he assembled a council of judges, and brought it before the brother of Jesus the so-called Christ, whose name was James, together with some others, and having accused them as law-breakers, he delivered them over to be stoned.
Notice the praise-less mention of Jesus, this passage is considered consistant with Josephus’s writings.
IMHO, an easier question would be something like “Of the sayings attributed to Jesus, what would be considered Jewish heresy, apostasy, or blasphemy (meriting death), and what would be considered less than this but still objectionable or questionable?”
For example, consider the alleged incident where Jesus said “Before Abraham was, I am,” and then had to escape from an attempted stoning (in the gospel of John, I think). I believe in this context, the “I am” was considered the name of God (“Yahweh”=“I am that I am”), and Jesus was equating himself to God as well as uttering a word which was never to be uttered. As I understand, this would be considered blasphemy, and stoning to death was the prescribed punishment.
You could do this statement by statement. This way you could avoid the impossible task of determining definitely what Jesus “really” said. And as others have said, it’s not certain he even existed.
I don’t understand why everyone is so keen to rule out the new testament as evidence that Jesus existed. The only reason to do that would be if you considered the writings of a group of believers to be a detailed conspiracy to invent a messiah rather than an earnest tribute to their religious leader. (Or a much later hoax for equally implausible ends) I would think that to make the argument that “we have no evidence that Jesus existed” by first ruling out all the evidence that Jesus existed is absurd. If there is a good reason to rule out the gospels for what they seem to be (which is not history, naturally, but is about as valuable a collection of historical evidences as any other writing of the period) then shouldn’t we hear that first rather than make the assumption that the evidence is worthless because of the conclusion to which it leads?
That wouldn’t be the only reason, maybe you’re not familiar with the once-popular argument that Jesus could have been a legend that that evolved out of two or more real people.
There’s also nothing wrong with discrediting the entire NT when asking if Jesus existed or who or what Jesus was. Its perfectly reasonable to ask for less biased sources. Add in the fact that Jesus was a supernatural figure, not an ordinary man like say Moses and there’s plenty of room to be skeptical.
There is as much evidence that JC actually existed as there is for anyone of that time not an Emperor/king/general. The Roman leaders in the times right after JC, during the persecutions, had no doubt JC was an actual historical figure, that they executed.
Does that mean that perhaps some of the sayings & deed of JC were not mixed up with those of John the Baptist, or Hillel? No, of course that could have happened, but it appears that the Gospels are the sincere recollection of men who actually walked with JC. Even Secular Humanists/ atheists like Isaac Asimov had no problem with JC actual historical existance.
I am not familiar with any evidence for the popular arguments that are more compelling than the New Testament evidence for his existence. Just because alternate theories can be concocted to fit the evidence someone chooses to admit does not mean that it is rational to judge the evidence in terms of whether it supports the hypothesis. As for Jesus’ supernatural nature, that is something to be taken on faith, not on evidence. I’m not saying the New Testament offers proof of either, but that it is not to be discounted as evidence of historical existence just because it offers testimony to supernatural as well as historical claims.
Thats your opinion, a religious writing is biased by its nature. This bias destroys its credibility, you may not think so but I do. The supernatural aspects also destory credibility as miracles and raising the dead are very suspicious and point to more of a myth, like Apollo, than a real person, like a priest of Apollo.
Your suggestion is eminently reasonable, but what’s the fun in that? More importantly, once I post the quote for the GOJ in which JC sez “That God dude? It’s me”, the question is answered - under Jewish law, JC is a blasphemer.
It seems to me that the strongest claims for JC’s divinity came after his leaving this mortal coil (by means that I’m not going to posit at this time). So I guess that what I’m really asking is, if we ignore the claims of divinity, was JC a Jewish apostate?
I could go through the synoptic Gospels and simply present JC’s statements, but I think using the work of the Jesus Seminar might help eliminate contradictions and shorten the number of statements to consider.
Thats your opinion, a religious writing is biased by its nature. This bias destroys its credibility, you may not think so but I do. The supernatural aspects also destory credibility as miracles and raising the dead are very suspicious and point to more of a myth, like Apollo, than a real person, like a priest of Apollo.
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You’re right. I think that position is unreasonable and reactionary. I think it requires a greater leap of faith to assume that religious writers are making things up on purpose than to assume that they believed what they wrote. Remember that this writing comes to us from a pre-scientific age and it is to be expected that miraculous claims would surround a religious leader. It is much less to be expected that a group of cultists would invent a fictional character in order to decieve people… in hopes of what? That thwy would join their worship? Be persecuted by Roman governers? These weren’t greedy televangelists or opportunist politicians writing (those came a hundred or so years later) Even writers of Greek mythology weren’t trying to fool anyone. As far as all were concerned the telling of truths did not necessarily depend on verifiable observations. To ignore outright the rich information presented in the writings preserved as the Bible because modern eyes detect faults in its accuracy is absurd. Do you discredit Newton’s astronomical observations because he wrote treatises on alchemy? Is Beowulf useless as a record of early Germanic culture because there’s a dragon in it? These are matters to be determined with critical readings of the text, not by ignoring them because they have a “bias”.
Sorry for hijacking the thread to make this point. I suppose my only defense in arguing that the existence of a historical Jesus carries no burdon of proof is that without that assumption it would be hard to get very far into the extent of his apostacy.
This post is pretty well done straw-man, challenging the historical validity of Jesus doesn’t necessarily mean accusing the writers and popularizers of making anything up nor discrediting the setting. When I compared Jesus to Apollo, both supernatural and powerful beings I was making the point that their “existance” could easily come from tales from people other than the writers, tales stemming from uncredible events. Just because a writer was convinced by a group of people that so and so happened, that doesn’t mean so and so happened, not does it mean that the writer is making anything up.
This works in practice because pagan gods aren’t taken seriously anymore (well except by some neo-pagans), Apollo to the typical westerner is a myth and Jesus is a reality. Yet pagan believers had their tales with physical run ins with the gods the same as early Christians had their tales wih physical run ins with a god. Neither is really proof of anything other than a literate person thought the tales were true and wrote it down for the ages. Typical conflict of interest, not evidence.