Did contemporary historians mention Jesus?

[jcr4runner]

I don't follow the logic of your question about mythology.

all the pagan godman myths came true centuries or millenia after they were propogated.

No, I don't think that follows from what I wrote. What I am saying depends on how you define "mythology." The colloquial meaning of "myth" is just something that is not true. But "mythology" has another meaning.

Probably the best explanation I have seen comes from the authorized biography of J.R.R. Tolkien:

"When Lewis and Tolkien had first met, Lewis was beginning to perceive the inadequacy of the agnosticism into which he had lapsed, having previously discarded any remnants of childhood Christianity. By the summer of 1929 he had renounced agnosticism and professed himself a theist, believing in the existence of God but denying the claims of Christianity. Essentially this was his position when, in September 1931, he had the discussion with Tolkien and their mutual friend, Hugo Dyson, which was destined to have a revolutionary impact on his life. After dinner the three men went for a walk and discussed the nature and purpose of myth. Lewis explained that he felt the power of myths but that they were ultimately untrue. As he expressed it to Tolkien, myths were 'lies and therefore worthless, even though breathed through silver.'

"No," Tolkien replied, "They are not lies."

"Tolkien argued that, far from being lies, myths were the best way of conveying truths which would otherwise be inexpressible. We have come from God and inevitably the myths woven by us, though they contain error, reflect a splintered fragment of the true light, the eternal truth that is with God. Myths may be misguided, but they steer however shakily toward the true harbor, whereas materialistic 'progress' leads only to the abyss and to the power of evil.

"Building on this philosophy of myth, Tolkien and Dyson went on to express their belief that the story of Christ was simply a true myth: a myth that works in the same way as the others, but a myth that really happened. Whereas pagan myths revealed fragments of eternal truth through the words of poets, the True Myth of Christianity revealed the whole truth through the Word himself. The poets of pagan antiquity told their story with words, but God, the omnipotent Poet, told the True Story with facts -- weaving his tale with the actions of real men in actual history.

"Tolkien's arguments had an indelible effect on Lewis. The edifice of his unbelief crumbled and the foundations of his Christianity were laid. Twelve days later Lewis wrote to a friend that he had 'just passed on from believing in God to definitely believing in Christ -- in Christianity. ... My long night talk with Dyson and Tolkien had a good deal to do with it.' "

So Lewis, an agnostic, came to be one of the greatest and most read Christian theologians of the 20th century.

[AMbomb]

The Romans kept lots of records of their legal proceedings. A record would've been made if Jesus had been tried and executed in Judea (or anywhere else in the empire). Not only that, but there is no mention of Jesus in any of the Roman archives. You claim there are no records of crucifixions between the years 26 and 30. It was my understanding that Jesus was believed to have been crucified between 30 and 35.

[AMbomb]

The story of Jesus is the story of all the other pagan godmen. It's the same story. So, saying that story is true is saying that all those others came true. Is that what you believe, yes or no?

[jcr4runner]

My answers are in the posts above. Here are the main ideas.

1. You cannot produce any legal records of crucifixions from Palestine in the time of Jesus. So your point is meaningless.

2. No. The Gospel isn't the same story. Pagan stories never truly happened.

[AMbomb]

1. You cannot produce one legal record from Palestine in the time of Jesus.

I find that hard to believe.

2. No. It isn't the smae story. Pagan stories never truly happened.

Circular argument! :lol: You know Jesus existed because the Jesus story is different from the pagan godman myths. You know the Jesus story is different from the pagan godman myths because Jesus existed. :lol: Besides, whether or not the pagan stories happened is irrelevent. The story itself is the same. Come on Jay, admit it. He didn't exist. The story was never meant to be taken literally. Somewhere along the line, somebody, for some reason, got the idea that it actually happened. It didn't. Remember the old Nike commercials? Just do it. Admit it.

[jcr4runner]

No, I am not making this argument.

I know Jesus existed because the Gospels are told in the context of a definite historical time period. The birth, ministry and death of Jesus Christ can be pinpointed to the exact year of the events. I know Jesus was a historical person, just as I know that Daniel, Isaiah, David, Joshua, Moses and Abraham existed. As long as there are records of these people and archaeological artifacts that confirm the details of their stories, I have no reason to doubt the record of scripture.

http://www.askelm.com/books/book003.htm

On the other hand, pagan myths do not record historical details to the same level of accuracy that the Jews and early Christians took great care to record. The stories of Hercules, Beowulf and King Arthur may have been based on real heroic figures, but there is no time and place of their lives recorded with contemporary historical events and people that can be found in independent sources.

Further you are making claims and demanding evidences that are either unprovable or nonexistent. For instance:

A record would've been made if Jesus had been tried and executed in Judea (or anywhere else in the empire). Not only that, but there is no mention of Jesus in any of the Roman archives.

You ask for a specific record of Jesus death from Roman sources. You are setting up criteria that is impossible to examine because these records do not exist. And ttehrre is no reason to think that they ever existed.

You deny as evidence the numerous records that DO exist on the life of Jesus. But if a record of Jesus' death were to be found, you would pronounce it as a forgery in any case.

But that is par for the course.

For instance, Timothy Freke (the name fits) presents the unprovable claim that Paul was a Gnostic and that Jesus never existed. But then he also claims:

“that the Earth could be conceived as a Global Brain which was in the process of awakening to itself, with the explosion of connections being made across it right now comparable to neural networks.”

http://timothyfreke.com

What is nuttier? To believe that the Gospel records are accurate in smallest detail or that the earth is a giant brain?

[jcr4runner]

I am highly amused at the constant: JUST ADMIT IT! and STOP SAYING THAT! harangue by AMbomb.

I have been looking for any evidence whatsover that records of Roman crucifixions were kept. I found the following debate. It pretty much sums up every argument AMbomb has made. It's deja vu all over again!

See the entire exchange at:

http://www.tektonics.org/qt/schneiderd01.html

Response: How about a specific claim in response ... and a look at what documentation they offer? The Duke offers none, other than the even more idiotic retort: Plus, there are detailed Roman records of crucifixions and executions in all their provinces. No, there are NOT such detailed records, nowhere, not for ANY provinicial governor of the Roman Empire; they certainly did exist at one time, but NONE at all remain to this day (as Bede says in the very next section, and to which the DoH said nothing). If the Duke of Hazards has some of these records, he needs to inform competent historians of them; as it is, he only here verifies our assessment of his as a deservedly-marginalized incompetent. "Gibsonians" indeed! Who will the Duke turn to for arguments next, the Scooby Doo Fan Club? The allusion to "Gibsonians" is, as Monty Python would say, red and smells moreover of fish. The Duke has no such specific arguments from anyone.

Bede: Occasionally people ask why there is no record of Jesus in Roman records. The answer is that there are no surviving Roman records but only highly parochial Roman historians who had little interest in the comings and goings of minor cults and were far more concerned about Emperors and Kings. Jesus made a very small splash while he was alive and there was no reason for Roman historians to notice him.

The Duke of Hazards: Yet, we have seen how Christians have declaimed Christ’s fame far & wide. Why would Roman historians never notice him if the politicians of the day were in a panic? This is subjective editing of facts that contradict the writer’s POV- & facts presented by those on the writer’s side! This lack of consistency is typical of Christian & other apologists.

Response: What the DoH is trying to prove here is hard to say. The whole issue is that the records we have left are from people who would not give a flying bowl of hummus what Christians declaimed. DoH offers no specifics as to how "politicians of the day were in a panic" (what politicians, where? how much "panic" and on what basis?) and why this should have made a difference, or what historians he thinks ought to have made an issue of this and in what work. There is no "subjective editing" or "lack of consistency" -- the DoH is just, well, stupid and that's a nice way to put it.

Response: Nothing new here; the DoH merely claims I have "no answer" and whines about a typo, oblivious to how his own commentary is shown incorrect, a mere caricature he derives from something he pulled out of his rear end and imaginary "Gibsonians" whose authority is presumed over credentialed historians and scholars such as John Meier (A Marginal Jew) and Bede himself.

Bede: Once Christianity was established as a major cult in the Empire then Jesus became rather more interesting and he is mentioned by Tacitus in the early second century. However, Jesus Mythologists counter this by claiming that he could have got his information from Christians which means his evidence is not independent. So, we have a very convenient situation for the Jesus Mythologists. Until Christianity had spread no one except Christians would be interested in Jesus but all later records are ruled out of court as they are tainted by association with Christianity. This sort of special pleading is one of the reasons that modern historians have no time for these theories as they are set up to be impossible to disprove.

[jcr4runner]

AMBomb tells us that there are VOLUMES UPON VOLUMES of writings by the Romans in the first century that surely would have mentioned Jesus had he really existed.

True or false?

FALSE.

We have little information at all from first-century Roman sources. However, we find an explosion of extant works beginning in the second century. One reason for this was the improvement of parchment used in codices. There are other reasons for the scarcity of first century Roman writings which I won't go into here.

In fact, it is amazing that Jesus is mentioned so prominenttly in the little information we have from the first century Romans. Check this out for the full article:

http://www.tektonics.org/jesusexist/jesusexisthub.html

Blaiklock has cataloged the non-Christian writings of the Roman Empire which have survived from the first century and do not mention Jesus. These items are:

* An amateurish history of Rome by Vellius Paterculus, a retired army officer of Tiberius. It was published in 30 A.D., just when Jesus was getting started in His ministry.
* An inscription that mentions Pilate.
* Fables written by Phaedrus, a Macedonian freedman, in the 40s A.D.
* From the 50s and 60s A.D., Blaiklock tells us: "Bookends set a foot apart on this desk where I write would enclose the works from these significant years." Included are philosophical works and letters by Seneca; a poem by his nephew Lucan; a book on agriculture by Columella, a retired soldier; fragments of the novel Satyricon by Gaius Petronius; a few lines from a Roman satirist, Persius; Pliny the Elder's Historia Naturalis; fragments of a commentary on Cicero by Asconius Pedianus, and finally, a history of Alexander the Great by Quinus Curtius.

Of all these writers, only Seneca may have conceivably had reason to refer to Jesus. But considering his personal troubles with Nero, it is doubtful that he would have had the interest or the time to do any work on the subject.

* From the 70s and 80s A.D., we have some poems and epigrams by Martial, and works by Tacitus (a minor work on oratory) and Josephus (Against Apion, Wars of the Jews). None of these would have offered occasion to mention Jesus.
* From the 90s, we have a poetic work by Statius; twelve books by Quintillian on oratory; Tacitus' biography of his father-in-law Agricola, and his work on Germany. [Blaik.MM, 13-16]

[AMbomb]

And you continue to ignore the 800 lb gorilla in the room, the fact that the Jesus story and the pagan godman myths are the same story. The problem is that you're letting emotion overpower logic. You'd have no trouble believing that the Dionysus myth came from an earlier godman myth even if everything you claim is true about the Jesus myth was true about it (story told in the context of a definite historical time period, birth, ministry and death pinpointable to an exact year etc.). The problem here is the fact that we're talking about Jesus, who you consider to be your god. It's so important for you to believe that Jesus really existed that the emotional center of your brain simply won't allow you to see the gorilla. It's time for you to be a Vulcan, Jay. It's time for you to get that emotional center under control. It's time for a little intellectual honesty.

[jcr4runner]

You don't know the process I have been through to come to these conclusions. I actually began as a believer in early life. Then I became a skeptic in that I wanted to research every religion and philosophy to see which ones had merit. Who is to say that the god-king Dali Lama does not have the same merit as Jesus? For a four to five year period, I went through a stage of inquiry. I read the transcendentalist philosophers. I saw the Dali Lama speak at my university. I listened to hours of lectures by psychologists, philosophers, and Native American mystics.

I came to the conclusion that Christianity was by far the superior philosophy and worldview. There is no real contest. Ironically, my true conversion to Christianity did not come until several years after I came to this intellectual conclusion.

I have also met many others who have come to the same conclusion when they have opened themselves to honest inquiry. Your problem is that you don't really know as much as you think you do.

Assuming that I am ruled by emotions and not logic means that you must know everything about me. It also assumes a kind of dualism that I don't accept. All people are influenced by rational thought and emotion. You cannot separate the two as the Gnostics tried to do.

Using your level of skepticism, I would have to doubt the existence of almost every historical figure.

When you say that Jesus did not exist, you are relying on a popular notion that was in vogue about 100 years ago for a short time. But the problem was that many of the skeptics went searching for answers and found nothing to prove their conjecture, but everything to prove the traditional Christian view.

Some of the greatest Christian theologians of this time period began as skeptics. Skepticism can strengthen the rigor of intellectual inquiry, but it cannot be simply blind dismissal of all evidence. If I were not willing to be skeptical, I would not even be participating in this discussion. I will consider each idea that casts doubt on my faith, however, you haven't presented me with anything that I have not encoutntered before.

I just got done with a massive reseach project called: The Real Jesus in which I debunk most of what you are throwing at me.

http://www.forerunner.com/realjesus/part1.html

Most of what you are telling me is found in the literature of the neo-Gnostic movement which has gained some ground in the past 20 years. The difference is that most of these people don't doubt Jesus existed. That is the wrong tack to take.

The idea that Jesus did not exist is non-existent in history up until the age of rationalism -- and it has largely disappeared because most have found it rational to suppose Christ existed. The few crackpots like Timothy Freke who still spout this view rely on poor scholarship, faulty logic and mountains of unsubstantiated conjecture.

I am surprised you haven't commented on Freke's "Global Brain" conjecture. Is that a rational belief or an emotional one?

[jcr4runner]

While this is an enlightening and enjoyable discussion, I don't want to run over old ground continually. The "Roman Records" debate doesn't need to be revisited, nor does the merit of Christian eyewitnesses debate. Unless AMBomb can provide me with something genuinely new, I don't see the purpose of constant repetition.

Here is a new tack: The idea that Jesus was not a real historical person didn't occur to anyone until the 1700s and 1800s. Why? Simply because people closest to the original source eyewitnesses knew that they could not discount His existence.

In the first and second centuries, early Christians had to deal with ridicule and abuse from Jewish rabbis and intellectual skepticism from Greek scholars and philosophers.

However, none of these skeptics attacked Christianity on the basis of the so-called "Christ-myth" or on the claims that supernatural miracles were impossible. The Jews and pagans of the day readily accepted that Christ lived and performed miracles. The pagans, such as Celsus, argued that His miracles were too commonplace (healing the sick, casting out of demons, providing food and wine) and did not rise to the level of what God could actually accomplish through His omnipotence.

The Jews tried to cast doubt that Jesus was the Christ by claiming that He was illegitimate and not born of the prophesied virgin. They claimed that his power came from the devil and not from God. They also started a rumor that the disciples stole His body. This indicates that they knew He was crucified and had to account for the claims by the disciples that He rose from the dead.

Note that the skeptics of Jesus' day could have easily harangued Christians into providing proof that Jesus actually existed. But NONE OF THEM did this. Why? Because being so close to the source eyewitnesses, they knew that their testimony was valid.

In addition, rationalists cannot make the claim that Christians invented the arguments of the primitive skeptics. The Jewish writings have been preserved independently by Jewish scribes. Regarding pagan writings preserved by Christian scribes, it would have been counter-productive for the early Christian apologists to argue against a skepticism that did not exist. Unless the skeptics of their day readily accepted that Jesus Christ had a historical ministry, they would not have made such arguments.

Modernists display the most shameless form of egotism when they assume that almost 2000 years from the events, that they are better judges of what transpired in the first century, than those closest to the source.

[AMbomb]

There were lots of Jesuses, but no Jesus of Nazareth. Click on this link: http://www.jesusneverexisted.com/surfeit.htm
Apparently, not only didn't Jesus of Nazareth exist, but there's no evidence of the existence of Nazareth in the first century. Check out this link: http://www.jesusneverexisted.com/nazareth.html
And Jay asked for contemporary historians who claim Jesus never existed before. Here you go, Jay: http://www.jesusneverexisted.com/scholars.html
Compare and contrast, Jesus vs. Julius: http://www.jesusneverexisted.com/exist.html
Here's the link to the site these other links are on: http://www.jesusneverexisted.com There's plenty more links besides those four.

[jcr4runner]

These "contemporary" historians are repeating the long ago disproven fallacies of the liberal critics. In fact, this discussion really is getting to be deja vu all over again. What you claim is the premise at the entrance of this discussion board:

Amazingly, some people still cling to the claims of the 19th century liberal critics. The Jesus of history is the same person as the Jesus of the Bible.

http://www.forerunner.com/discussion/

In the 1800s, rationalists such as Hermann Samuel Reimarus and David Strauss published sensational works denying the supernatural miracles of the Bible. The philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche, who coined the phrase, "God is dead," is said to have lost his faith around the time he was reading Strauss's Life of Jesus Critically Examined.

But the idea that Jesus never existed has been mostly discarded in light of 20th century evidences that refute virtually every claim of the Higher Critics.

The Jesus Seminar: Liberal Theology Repackaged

Most recently there was the Jesus Seminar, a council of liberal theologians who meet twice a year in an attempt to debunk the accuracy of the Gospels. Many of their "discoveries" are simply repeats of what the liberal theologians of the 19th century said. Strangely, these opinions are rigidly held even though 20th century archaeology and textual criticism has refuted many of their claims.

The Jesus Seminar's attempt to debunk the Gospels as invented history is not based on a thorough examination of the Bible's manuscripts. Unbiased examinations reveal ample evidence that the Gospel accounts are, in fact, historically accurate. But these "experts" are undaunted by facts. Even today, the skeptics continue to spread the error of a "historical Jesus."

Liberal scholars up until the time of the discovery of the Dead Sea scrolls in 1947 assigned a later date to many books of the Old Testament. They rejected the early date of books that accurately predicted the coming of the Messiah, because so many of the prophecies were fulfilled to the letter.

Since liberals rejected the supernatural in scripture, they presumed there must have been a later date to the writings that accurately described the life of Jesus.

For instance, the second half of Isaiah was deemed to contain forgeries by second century Christians because it contains so many prophecies accurately fulfilled by Jesus' life and mission.

Then one of the main pillars of liberal theology fell in 1947 with the discovery of the Dead Sea scrolls including a complete Isaiah scroll.

With the discovery of the Dead Sea scrolls, we now have an Old Testament in complete form that existed at least 150 years before Christ. All of the books of the Hebrew Bible except Esther are represented in the Dead Sea Scroll collection. Jennings fails to mention this in his documentary.

The Dead Sea scrolls give us evidence that the Hebrew Bible has been virtually unchanged over thousands of years, including the famous Isaiah scroll that contains many remarkable prophecies about Jesus the Messiah.

For many years, the Higher Critics held that the Bible both the Old Testament and the New Testament had been altered and changed over the years. Therefore, the critics tried to eliminate the myths and discover the historical Jesus.

Some of the theologians of the Jesus Seminar have suggested that writers pretending to be Matthew, Mark, Luke and John took a historical person, Jesus of Nazareth, and invented a genealogy and added historical references as time went by thus "improving" the authenticity of their story.

There is no evidence that the earliest manuscripts of the Bible were altered to be more "historic." In fact, there is proof that little of the New Testament has been altered. If we look at early copies of the New Testament books, we find that there are some differences between variant manuscripts. But these are mainly misspellings and scribal errors in copying small words, prepositions and numbers.

In addition, most modern translations make note of these differences in the form of footnotes. In fact, you could take all the variant readings of the most reliable New Testament manuscripts and fit them all on one page. There is no major Christian doctrine that would be affected or changed by these small differences. Therefore, even with minor textual variations in the older manuscripts, Christians can still view scripture as inerrant and inspired of God.

[AMbomb]

You claim they're disproven, Jay, but haven't cited anything that disproves it. You claim the idea that Jesus never existed has been mostly discarded in light of 20th century evidences. You have yet to present any evidence of the existence of Jesus. The truth is the claim that there was no Jesus has never been refuted and never will be because it's true.

[jcr4runner]

Here is my favorite quote from:

http://www.jesusneverexisted.com/scholars.html

Christian apologists are ever-ready to denounce a "Christ-myther" as an isolated crank on the fringes of sanity, unworthy of serious consideration. But their strident hostility hides the fear that the downfall of their superhero may not be far off. And what they can no longer deny or suppress is the fact that the exposure of "Jesus Christ" for the fabrication that it is, far from being the manic pursuit of odd-balls, has been embraced and endorsed by a continuous stream of talented scholars in all countries.

I especially like this: "far from being the manic pursuit of odd-balls ..."

Really?

I've rarely heard such strong disclaimers against being insane! This seems to be one of the common strategies of the "Jesus never existed" conspiracy theorists.

I can only say that the author of this web page needs to read Hamlet --

"Methinks the lady doth protest too much!"

Although this is great fun, I am going to take a break from this thread for a week or so. I am not giving up on the discussion. I am just growing tired of the same claims being made over and over again by AMBomb, with no serious reply offered to my own arguments. I am starting to get swept up into the "manic oddball" spirit of this discussion.

And for now, I'll let AMBomb have the last word ...