Did contemporary historians mention Jesus?

[AMbomb]

Here's another link: http://www.jesusneverexisted.com/circus.html
This one addresses Jay's claim that he knows Jesus existed "because the Gospels are told in the context of a definite historical time period." Actually, a message I posted earlier is essentially a restatement of what it says there. Just because a story is told in the context of a definite historical time period doesn't make it true.
For some reason, the link doesn't work. You have to enter the address into the space where the address goes.

[AMbomb]

Christians, let's say you were studying a religion of another planet. Now let's say that there was a story about a character in this religion. Let's say that the story takes place within the context of an actual period of this planet's history. It contains actual figures from the planet's history and events in the story can be pinpointed to specific dates in the planet's history. But, let's say it turns out that this story was actually first propogated thousands of years before it supposedly took place according to the belief of the religion you're studying. This means, of course, that if the story was true, it would've had to have come true thousands of years after it was first propogated. Would you believe that story was true or simply that it was a retelling of the original story from thousands of years earlier?

[revrosado]

AM - your premise seems to be that everything is a myth. Is that right? That since the development of man into a sentient being, he created myths or myths were imposed upon him in order to control him and provide power for those smarter than the rest - right?

But in all of your accounts - the god man myth was preexistent. Why Jesus? Why didn't the Osiris Myth or the others dominate the world, impact humanity, develop civilizations and shape the human race intellectually and culturally for ever?

Maybe its all in a name!

[revrosado]

JCR - Great job on your posts.

Anyone with good reasoning skills on a sincere quest for knowledge and the truth can glean a lot from your arduous apologetics.

[AMbomb]

I don't have a premise. This is a hypothetical situation. And you didn't answer the question.

[jcr4runner]

AMBomb,

Everyone has a premise when making an argument whether they are aware of it or not.

Revrosado did answer your question by saying that he doesn't agree with your implied premise that the "Christ myth" is simply a repeat of the pagan myths thousands of years before. Of course, he doesn't agree with that.

Your argument tactics are to repeat the same conjecture as a premise over and over. You don't answer objections or challenges to your arguments and then you falsely claim that your arguments and questions go unanswered. Then you will demand that we stop making claims that you haven't even remotely refuted.

How many times can you write: "Just admit it!"? and "You haven't answered me!" and then not answer aguments and questions posed to you?

If you will go back and reread the posts to this thread, you will see that the same ground has been gone over many times. That is why I am taking a break from it. Here is my summary of what I have written several times before.

1. Your argument is not logical: There are similarities to the story of Christ in the Bible and pagan myths. The pagan stories have no historical proof. The pagan stories were recorded prior to Christ. Therefore the Christ story was copied from pagan myths and has no historical proof.

The conclusion does not follow. Just because a fictional story existed prior to a similar historical event does not prove that the record of the historical event was copied from the fictional story.

What is more likely is that the theme of sacrifice and atonement for sin is a universal truth. We see in the Old Testament many types of sacrifice that foreshadowed the death and resurrection of Christ. The New Testament writers made use of these "types" as proof that Jesus was the promised messiah. The very proofs that the Apostles used to prove that He was God, you claim are evidence that He did not exist even as a man.

2. You need to produce records from history that state Jesus did not exist. It would be more convincing, for instance, if there were first or second century critics who wrote that Christ and the Apostles (who all were martyred as eyewitnesses to His death) were not true persons, but the product of the superstitious imaginings of Gnostics.

The charge against the Apostles was not that they had invented a myth (there were hundreds of such myths) but that they were claiming that the man Jesus who rose from the dead was God and had higher authority than Caesar.

The entire New Testament was written in the first century by contemporaries who knew Jesus. We have extant second century copies to prove that they were in circulation long before a "myth" such as you claim would have had time to arise. We also have thousands of references to the New Testament that appeared from 90 A.D. to 200 A.D.

You cannot convincingly prove the non-existence of Jesus by calling into question the reliability of the New Testament manuscripts, the thousands of references to Christ within two generations of his time, and the dozen or more pagan references.

I do not deny that false writings and legends arose after the first century. In fact, some of the "Christian" writings and some pagan writings were suspected by early Christian apologists to be forgeries or corruptions -- which shows that they did not accept documents that did not stand the test of rigorous proofs.

IN SUMMARY: Your whole argument is that there is no historical Jesus because the story is based on pagan myths. You offer no proof for that except to claim that the thousands of Christian references to Jesus in the New Testament in the first and second centuries are unreliable and the dozen or more pagan references are Christian forgeries.

If that were true, then there would have been some challenge to the historical Jesus prior to the 18th century. But until modern times, even the strongest enemies of Christianity believed that the man Jesus existed. All the early critics of Christianity assumed Jesus did in fact exist. If not, it would have been easy for one critic to simply deny that the crucifixion of Jesus occurred. But historians of all time have understood the weight of eyewitness testimony. For them and for most thinking people today, that is proof.

How arrogant you are to assume that 2000 years after the fact you have a better view of first century history than those within one or two generations of the events!

Your litmus test is for Christians to produce some type of record written during the 3-1/2 years that Jesus was a public figure. You claim that volumes of such Roman records of crucifixions existed, but you cannot produce a single example of even one that exists today.

You cannot set up a test that is impossible to prove or disprove, demand proof, and then claim victory.

Unless you can come up with something new, then this is not worth my time.

[AMbomb]

In my hypothetical, I'm not talking about a different story with the same general themes propogated thousands of years earlier on this other planet. I'm talking about the same story. He didn't answer my question (and neither did you). The question is simple. Would you believe the story I described is true or simply that it's a retelling of the original story from thousands of years earlier?

[jcr4runner]

You are presenting an either or fallacy. As I wrote before in answer to your question:

Just because a fictional story existed prior to a similar historical event does not prove that the record of the historical event was "copied" from the fictional story.

What is more likely is that the theme of sacrifice and atonement for sin is a universal truth. We see in the Old Testament many types of sacrifice that foreshadowed the death and resurrection of Christ. The New Testament writers made use of these "types" as proof that Jesus was the promised messiah. The very proofs that the Apostles used to prove that He was God, you claim are evidence that He did not exist even as a man.

Again, this is another example of a false protest of: "You didn't answer my question!"

[AMbomb]

I don't know what an either or fallacy is. Forget that this question was posed on the Did Jesus Exist? forum. Suppose somebody came up to you on the street, gave you the hypothetical and asked you the question. What would your answer be?

[jcr4runner]

A syllogism is a choice between only two options: If not 1, then 2. Sometimes syllogisms are valid. For instance, either you are male (XY) or female (XX). No other options exist.

An either/or fallacy is a choice between only two options when other options exist. "What is 1+2? Choose either 1 or 2 as your answer." The fallacy here is that the one correct answer, 3, is not given as an option. You are either a Republican or a Democrat. if one is a Libertarian, however, the either/or fallacy is exposed.

You also present a cause/effect fallacy. One example would be saying that the rooster crowing every morning is the cause of the sun rising, when in actuality, the prescience of the later event causes the rooster to crow.

Christians, let's say you were studying a religion of another planet. Now let's say that there was a story about a character in this religion. Let's say that the story takes place within the context of an actual period of this planet's history. It contains actual figures from the planet's history and events in the story can be pinpointed to specific dates in the planet's history. But, let's say it turns out that this story was actually first propogated thousands of years before it supposedly took place according to the belief of the religion you're studying. This means, of course, that if the story was true, it would've had to have come true thousands of years after it was first propogated. Would you believe that story was true or simply that it was a retelling of the original story from thousands of years earlier?

Your either or fallacy is as follows: The Gospel story is either true or it is a [fictional] retelling of the original story from thousands of years earlier.

Your syllogism is an either/or fallacy for many reasons. Here are just two.

First, the fact that two stories are similar does not make them the "same story." If the historical event had the unique aspect of eyewitness testimony, then not only does that make it a different story, but I would be bound to believe it too. In a court of law, eyewitness testimony is enough to convict someone of a crime. Historians use the same criteria to judge the factual nature of a person or event.

Second, the story that was propagated thousands of years before does not have the same weight and cannot really be the same story, no matter the similarities, because it lacks reliable witnesses and the ring of authenticity.

A wider variety of options must logically exhaust all the possibilites that exist.

There is an ancient myth that predates Christianity and tells the story of a pagan deity who died and was resurrected. What does this mean?

1. This myth was an influence on the story of Jesus which is therefore also a myth despite the claims of first century eyewitnesses. Both stories are false.

2. Both stories are true. History repeats itself.

3. The myth was false, but the Gospel story is true.

4. The myth is true and the Gospel story is a counterfeit of the original.

5. Both stories arose independently and were influenced by the preexistent truth of the idea of a resurrection or simply by man's desire to know whether there is life after death.

6. While the ancient myth contains some aspects of truth, the Gospel story is the Truth (with a capital "T" ) and is the record of actual historical events.

Most thinking people would dismiss "1" through "4" as too generalized or simplistic, but would readily accept "5" and might be open to "6" if there were evidence to back it up.

But here is the correct answer:

7. The eternal truth of the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus is prefigured in the ancient myths in question and was actually the cause of all similar myths on the planet.

Jesus is the sun to your rooster myths.

[AMbomb]

7. The eternal truth of the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus is prefigured in the ancient myths in question and was actually the cause of all similar myths on the planet.

Jesus is the sun to your rooster myths.

I see where I went wrong now! I idiotically assumed the earlier events caused the later one instead of the other way around! How could I have been so stupid?! It was like the series finale of Star Trek The Next Generation with the spacetime rift that expanded backward through time. Hey, I know what must've happened. Marty McFly and Doc Brown traveled back in time to 3000 BC and told the story to some people in Persia. ....

[jcr4runner]

This forum is for intelligent conversation. It is also a Christian forum run by Christians, so any comments ridiculing the Godhead will be not be permitted.

That being said, I had hoped that you would have dealt with my propositions more seriously. If you do not accept the idea of an all-knowing, all-powerful being, then it is impossible to assume that God could know what would happen in the future. But if God is omniscient, then what I have written is completely logical.

The crucifixion is the central event of history. The life of Jesus divides B.C. from A.D.

The eternal truth of the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus is prefigured in the ancient myths in question and was actually the cause of all similar myths on the planet.

When we speak of cause and effect, usually we speak of past events causing effects in the future. But because Jesus was the "Lamb slain from the foundation of the world" we see that the crucifixion was a predetermined event that would drive the history of the world -- which is the history of redemption.

There are more believers in the One God today than ever before in history. That number has been growing from the beginning. In the Bible, we see many prefigures of the crucifixion of Jesus. One of my first Christian articles was called: The Cross of Jesus Christ and dealt with the many types of atonement in the Old Testament that prefigured the crucifixion.

http://www.forerunner.com/forerunner/X0 ... Chris.html

Some of these types for the atonement included the sacrifice of blood for Adam and Eve's "covering" and the commandment to Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac.

From there, it is not a stretch to see that in addition to the revelation given to Israel, other nations of the world had a foreshadowing of the coming of Christ in some of their myths.

[jcr4runner]

Abel's sacrifice was "more excellent" than Cain's because the blood was shed from the best of his flocks. God's warning to Cain, "sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you but you must master it," speaks of man's problem of sin and God's solution of atonement.

Noah became an heir because he alone of all the men of the earth had faith in God and knew of His atoning sacrifice. Noah built an ark which speaks to us of God's atonement. The ark was the only vessel able to save him from God's judgment on the world.

Noah covered the ark - inside and out - with pitch. It is interesting to note that the word translated "pitch" in Hebrew is phonetically identical to the word for atonement. The words used are kophar and kaphar. The pitch, the atonement, was designed to keep out the waters of judgment and to make Noah safe within. That is what the blood did also - it restrained the judgment of God from reaching the occupants of the ark, and made them safe in spite of the fact that God was destroying the world outside.

The same pattern is repeated over and over. Abraham met King Melchizedek and offered sacrifice. Later, he was even willing to sacrifice Isaac, his only son, but God spared him and in his place provided a male lamb with a crown of thorns.

Moses was given the design for the Tabernacle, an open tent where the priests of Israel were able to atone for the sins of the children of Israel day after day. These sacrifices were necessary but they were only a shadow of something greater to come. The blood of animals was an imperfect sacrifice (hardly a fitting substitute for a human being!) These were only types pointing to a perfect sacrifice made "once for all," the blood of Jesus Christ the Great High Priest.

[AMbomb]

OK, Jay, I have one for you. Let's assume for a moment that there was such a thing as God. Why would he cause the propogation of the story thousands of years before it occured? All that would do is make people think that the story was just a retelling of the earlier story and that it didn't really happen. According to Christian belief, Jesus wants people to believe in him so badly that he sends them to Hell if they don't. Causing the propogation of this story thousands of years before it occured would be counterproductive to what he wants. So, even assuming the existence of an omniscient god, you're assertion is illogical.

[jcr4runner]

I'll answer the question, but I must preface it with this.

We have a radical difference in our presuppositions. You keep saying that the Gospel is the "SAME STORY" as some of the pagan myths. I maintain that it is a "SIMILAR STORY" but with a radical difference. No pagan myth tells the story of the One Creator God who became man and died as a sacrifice for sin once and for all. All the pagan myths in question are polytheistic and tell the story of death and resurrection of a god, but there is no effective salvation of man that is a result of this. No pagan myth teaches redemption from sin through the sacrifice of the One Creator God on a cross.

Your question can easily be answered by asking the question in different terms.

Why did God choose the Jews and lead them through thousands of years of discipline and ritual? He did it so that those Jews whom He had chosen before the foundation of the world would know Him when He appeared as Jesus the Messiah.

Why would God put in ancient man a sense of eternity in their hearts so that even many of the pagan myths that occurred thosuands of years before Christ resemble the Gospel story? He did it so that those Gentiles whom He had chosen before the foundation of the world would know Him when He appeared as Jesus the Messiah.

Also, Jesus isn't a weak God who "wants people to believe in Him."

He is an all-powerful God who chooses those who will know Him.

Maybe your problem is just that God hasn't chosen you to know Him?

So here is a question for you:

As an atheist, what do you do with your guilt?