If Jesus wasn’t a real historical figure, where did Christian theology come from?
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Anonymous
Dear troll: Others have pointed out the thread’s Jesus deniers in recent posts. These are extremely easy to find. For example: 12/24 9:23 12/19 15:35 You’re obviously fishing to keep the thread going. I’m not interested in arguing with a troll; I’m copying these time stamps to help anybody else reading this to avoid your spin. |
Anonymous
I’m responding to the person who bumped the thread. ? This post (12/24 9:23) isn’t denying that Jesus existed. Are you illiterate? Were you homeschooled? “There is no convincing evidence that Jesus as a historical person - one whose life closely resembled that of the Biblical Jesus - ever existed at all. Which doesn't mean he didn't, just that there is no evidence of it.” |
Anonymous
| Why is some Christian-hating obsessive bumping all these old threads? Pp needs to get a life. |
Anonymous
Why is pp encouraging the Christian-hater by responding? |
Anonymous
| I don’t know who is more annoying: lacrosse parents or the anti-Christian (Catholic in particular) bigots. Tough call. |
Anonymous
It’s good to rehash some old topics. |
Anonymous
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“This is not even an issue for scholars of antiquity.... The reason for thinking Jesus existed is because he is abundantly attested in early sources.... If you want to go where the evidence goes, I think that atheists have done themselves a disservice by jumping on the bandwagon of mythicism, because frankly, it makes you look foolish to the outside world. If that’s what you’re going to believe, you just look foolish.“
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Anonymous
| I remember as a child in Hebrew school one of our teachers told us that Jewish researchers could find no evidence that Jesus existed. I remember thinking to myself “are they looking for any?” While I do agree that the references to Jesus in Josephus sound like they’re shoehorned Christian inserts, I don’t doubt Jesus existed. There are so many Gospels, more than just the four in the standard Bible. If you’re going to say there’s no proof Jesus existed, a fortiori there’s no proof that there was ever an Abraham, Isaac or Jacob. |
Anonymous
There’s more evidence he existed than many historical figures we never doubt the existence of. |
Anonymous
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The vast majority of scholars (Christian and non-Christian) will grant that the Epistles of Paul (at least some of them) were in fact written by Paul in the middle of the first century A.D., less than 40 years after Jesus’ death. In terms of ancient manuscript evidence, this is extraordinarily strong proof of the existence of a man named Jesus in Israel in the early first century A.D.
The first-century Roman Tacitus, who is considered one of the more accurate historians of the ancient world, mentioned superstitious “Christians” (from Christus, which is Latin for Christ), who suffered under Pontius Pilate during the reign of Tiberius. Suetonius, chief secretary to Emperor Hadrian, wrote that there was a man named Chrestus (or Christ) who lived during the first century (Annals 15.44). Julius Africanus quotes the historian Thallus in a discussion of the darkness that followed the crucifixion of Christ (Extant Writings, 18). Pliny the Younger, in Letters 10:96, recorded early Christian worship practices including the fact that Christians worshiped Jesus as God and were very ethical, and he includes a reference to the love feast and Lord’s Supper. The Babylonian Talmud (Sanhedrin 43a) confirms Jesus’ crucifixion on the eve of Passover and the accusations against Christ of practicing sorcery and encouraging Jewish apostasy. Lucian of Samosata was a second-century Greek writer who admits that Jesus was worshiped by Christians, introduced new teachings, and was crucified for them. He said that Jesus’ teachings included the brotherhood of believers, the importance of conversion, and the importance of denying other gods. Christians lived according to Jesus’ laws, believed themselves to be immortal, and were characterized by contempt for death, and renunciation of material goods. Mara Bar-Serapion confirms that Jesus was thought to be a wise and virtuous man, was considered by many to be the king of Israel, was put to death by the Jews, and lived on in the teachings of His followers. Then we have all the Gnostic writings (The Gospel of Truth, The Apocryphon of John, The Gospel of Thomas, The Treatise on Resurrection, etc.) that all mention Jesus. In fact, we can almost reconstruct the gospel just from early non-Christian sources: Jesus was called the Christ (Josephus), did “magic,” led Israel into new teachings, and was hanged on Passover for them (Babylonian Talmud) in Judea (Tacitus), but claimed to be God and would return (Eliezar), which his followers believed, worshiping Him as God (Pliny the Younger). Flavius Josephus is the most famous Jewish historian. In his Antiquities he refers to James, “the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ.” There is a controversial verse (18:3) that says, “Now there was about this time Jesus, a wise man, if it be lawful to call him a man. For he was one who wrought surprising feats....He was [the] Christ...he appeared to them alive again the third day, as the divine prophets had foretold these and ten thousand other wonderful things concerning him.” One version reads, “At this time there was a wise man named Jesus. His conduct was good and [he] was known to be virtuous. And many people from among the Jews and the other nations became his disciples. Pilate condemned him to be crucified and to die. But those who became his disciples did not abandon his discipleship. They reported that he had appeared to them three days after his crucifixion, and that he was alive; accordingly he was perhaps the Messiah, concerning whom the prophets have recounted wonders.” |
Anonymous
| ^^ thanks for your work pulling these sources together, pp |
Anonymous
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No need to hash this out again. There is no evidence he existed. Maybe he did, maybe he didn’t. No one in 2022 knows for sure. Many choose to believe he existed, but not because of any actual evidence.
People talking about a person doesn’t mean the person exists. Ho ho ho. |
Anonymous
Skeptics might dismiss personal witness, but some of the hearsay evidence Christian scholars rely on today was written by trusted sources. “The ancient Romans helped lay the groundwork for many aspects of the modern world,” according to National Geographic. The same unbelieving record keepers of Imperial Roman culture who lay that groundwork also confirmed that Jesus Christ lived and preached during the first century AD. “Within a few decades of his lifetime, Jesus was mentioned by Jewish and Roman historians in passages that corroborate portions of the New Testament that describe the life and death of Jesus,” writes Christopher Klein. If historians doubt the legitimacy of Christian texts because of the gaps between events and extant manuscripts, one must compare the Bible with other famous texts from which we derive much of our history and the foundations for modern western culture. We might as well “throw away the works of Homer, [...] of whose writings we have no [...] fragments even older than the sixth century — fifteen centuries after the blind poet died. Of the history by Herodotus there is no manuscript extant earlier than the ninth century, but this historian lived in the fifth century before the Christian era. There is no copy of Plato previous to the ninth century, and he wrote considerably more than a thousand years before that.” One historian, responsible for much of what we know about Rome in the first century AD, is Flavius Josephus. He composed “one of the earliest non-biblical accounts of Jesus.” Josephus was born shortly after the crucifixion of Jesus and, according to Ehrman, “is far and away our best source of information about first-century Palestine.” Lawrence Mykytiuk assures readers that Josephus was able to write freely because of his unusual position of safety and privilege in Rome, while other Jews would have been cautious. Josephus mentions Jesus twice in his great work entitled “Jewish Antiquities,” dated around 93 AD. As a “well-connected aristocrat and military leader in Palestine [...] during the first Jewish Revolt against Rome between 66 and 70 AD,” he did not follow Christ. Josephus “knew people who had seen and heard Jesus,” according to Mykytiuk. The text talks about James, the brother of Jesus. Josephus further specified which Jesus he was referring to by adding the phrase “who is called Messiah,” or, since he was writing in Greek, Christos. Although Bible scholars concede that Christians have made additions or changes to some historical texts, “this phrase — ‘who is called Christ’ — is very unlikely to have been added by a Christian” because Christian texts always referred to James as “the brother of Jesus,” and because “Josephus’s description in Jewish Antiquities of how and when James was executed disagrees with Christian tradition, likewise implying a non-Christian author.’ These small points identify a non-biased writer. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.christianity.com/wiki/jesus-christ/does-proof-of-jesus-other-than-in-the-bible-exist.html%3famp=1 |
Anonymous
Gee, a Christian website thinks that Jesus lived. Shocker. We also don’t know that Homer lived. |
Anonymous
The Christian website gives the reasons why every reputable scholar in the Western world and every reputable professor of history, antiquities, religion, etc, in the western world, believe Jesus was a real man and walked the earth. Meanwhile, a pocket of Christ deniers, like their flat earther and Hillary Clinton is a lizard person brothers and sisters, continues to show their foolishness. They alone stand against every scholar and historian in the western world, with their denial and conspiracy theories, on dcum. |