If Jesus wasn’t a real historical figure, where did Christian theology come from?
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Anonymous
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*those thing
*their |
Anonymous
What makes you think we need those things if the scholars and academics do not need those things? What are your qualifications to believe the current evidence is lacking and the scholars and academics are all wrong? |
Anonymous
“The reality is that we don’t have archaeological records for virtually anyone who lived in Jesus’s time and place,” says University of North Carolina religious studies professor Bart D. Ehrman, author of Did Jesus Exist? The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth. “The lack of evidence does not mean a person at the time didn’t exist. It means that she or he, like 99.99% of the rest of the world at the time, made no impact on the archaeological record.” |
Anonymous
+1. Consensus among the vast majority of scholars (Ehrman says all but 1-2 out of thousands) is that Jesus certainly existed. They base this on, among others they things, linguistic evidence, external existence, and the fact that Paul knew Jesus’ brother James and Jesus’ disciples Peter and John. What are your scholarly credentials for disagreeing? Have you analyzed the linguistic evidence from the Greek and Aramaic and come to a different conclusion? Can you prove that Paul did not meet Peter, James or John, despite multiple sources attesting that a meeting did happen about 15 years into Paul’s mission? |
Anonymous
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What is the evidence for his divinity again? That seems to be an unpleasant topic for some of you.
Of course without that evidence, any other evidence of human existence is nearly meaningless except for historical purposes. |
Anonymous
Wrong thread. |
Anonymous
Nope! See the second sentence of the post you replied to. "Of course without that evidence, any other evidence of human existence is nearly meaningless except for historical purposes." That makes it incredibly relevant to the topic of this thread. But I know you'd prefer that part be pre-supposed. Funny how you are so concerned with the evidence for one but dismissive of the need for it on the other. And by funny I mean hypocritical. |
Anonymous
Not sure 1000s would actually say "absolutely certain". Certainly, they "accept" it or "don't see evidence to the contrary". But what (social) scientist says they're absolutely certain about anything. About ancient history, no less. It's my opinion. You don't have to agree. Maybe you have a different threshold for "certainty". For me, the lack of primary sources, eyewitness accounts, and archaeological artifacts is an issue. Sure, the interpretations of secondary sources (which have been posted repeatedly) lead us to believe that he most likely lived. |
Anonymous
Right. Almost no records from that era. Not surprising. That doesn't mean that he didn't exist. But it also means that we don't have primary sources. No independent, eyewitness accounts. No archaeological artifacts. |
Anonymous
Historians, scholars, academics, and college/uni professors are concerned with truth, facts, etc. Scholars and academics aren’t hypocrites for engaging in their area of academia/scholarship and coming to the overwhelming consensus that Jesus was a historical figure. |
Anonymous
Glad you learned there is no such thing as “hard” and “soft” evidence when academics and scholars research, and that term “circumstantial” evidence is a legal term. You learned alot! |
Anonymous
Again: what are your qualifications to say the evidence that every scholar and academic and professor in the western world is wrong? Except for one or two? Are you the third? |
Anonymous
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Josephus, a Jewish historian who lived the first part of his life in Palestine before AD 70, is quoted in his “Jewish Antiquities” as referring to Jesus. Josephus describes him as a miracle worker who appeared to his disciples after his death.
The text as it stands is so positive that scholars suggest that it may have been tampered with by a later Christian scribe. Yet many experts, including Jewish historians such as Shlomo Pines and Louis Feldman, judge that a simpler reference to Jesus by Josephus does lie behind the present text. In the early 2nd Century, the pagan historian Tacitus mentions in his “Annals” that “Christ, the founder of the Christian movement,” was executed by Pontius Pilate in Judea. Later rabbinical literature also contains a few scattered references to “Yeshu,” or “Yeshua"(Jesus)--though these texts were written centuries after the time of Jesus. An important point to notice is that while Tacitus, the pagan satirist Lucian (2nd Century), and later rabbis are for the most part negative in their references to Jesus, none denies his existence. Yet the fact is that various types of Christian documents, each presenting a somewhat different view of Jesus, were produced within 40 years of the supposed date of his death. This does seem to argue for the existence of the person being interpreted in such different ways so early on. In the last century a radical Dutch school tried to question the early dating of Paul’s Epistles--but no serious scholar today would deny that Paul’s authentic letters come from the ‘50s of the 1st Century. Interestingly, Paul, writing about 25 years after Jesus’ death, mentions James, “the brother of the Lord,” as well as other brothers of Jesus with whom Paul was not on the best of terms. James, in particular, seems to have provoked a good deal of infighting among the early Christians, and to have owed his prominence, at least in part, to his family relationship to Jesus. The existence of prominent relatives of Jesus argues well for the existence of Jesus himself. There is archeological confirmation of the existence of Pontius Pilate, discovered in 1961. It consisted of a fragmentary inscription on a piece of stone found on the Israeli coast. The inscription reported that Pontius Pilate, prefect of Judea, dedicated a building to the Emperor Tiberius. When one considers that Pilate was the most powerful Roman figure in Palestine during the adult life of Jesus, it is amazing that we have no other archeological evidence of him. |
Anonymous
Many of those same scholars also believe in the supernatural. So... |
Anonymous
Do we need a refresher? Hard evidence = primary sources, eyewitness accounts, archaeological artifacts Soft evidence = interpretations of secondary sources Circumstantial = containing information, especially about a crime, that makes you think something is true but does not completely prove it (https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/circumstantial) |