I was recently listening a religious radio broadcast show and a profess scholar/historian who happens to be Christians blurts out the 3 names I put above.
Now as far as I know Josephus was not a contemporary and simply wrote down what others had heard or said but he was not witness to said events.
Now I had to look up Pliny and what i manage to find about him was a letter that he had written asking what he should do with christian followers. He did not confirm nor was witness to Yeshua himself so I do not understand how his letter about how to handle civil issues confirms the historical Yeshua?
Tacitus, I guess was the recipient of the letter from Pliny.
I just want to ask everyone's views and see if you can nipick and tear apart his argument. I thought he was clown shoes the minute he said, how do we know Caesar was real or if the Holocaust took place as an argument of how one historical event is more valid over another.
Last I check there are letters written by Caeser, bust of his likeness contemporaries who wrote about Caeser from inside Rome and his political actions as well as, Governors, Senators, rival nations, Kings/enemies. I dont know, I really like to hear what you guys think and your views about this guys argument.
Based on my own studies, I did not think there was a question of whether or not Jesus, the man, existed.
This was not the case for some portions of our knowledge of history, however.
The question is not whether or not Jesus existed, it is whether or not he had a divine mission and was, at the least, a prophet of God sent to deliver a genuine message of love and peace. That's a matter for the spiritual and not really science.
I would certainly love to meet Jesus during his ministry. I wonder if I could tell whether or not he was of the Divine by simply being around him? To a lesser extent, Buddha as well.
I would say yes, given that (supposedly) when an elightened being looks at you, he (or she) is not looking at you solely with his egoic mind, but ultimately with the "eyes" of the Whole.
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Shinier than a speeding bullet.
The fact that Josephus mentioned John the Baptist and James the brother of Jesus is enough to put across a good point for Christianity anyway.
Imagine if John the baptist had never supported Jesus, the amount of people in Galilee believing the Gospels which say he did would have depleted quite a bit.
"Didn't John baptise Jesus and point him out as the prophesied messiah?"
"No, John himself denied it"
"Oh..."
I think if christian additions can be blamed for things, so can anti-christian omissions.....
There is good chance Judas actully thought Jesus was divine, but wanted him to wage a war against Rome or something of sorts.
Edit: I mean, I'm pretty sure Judas had enough faith to heal the sick and exorcise the possesed, so he should have been illuminated at least at some point.
Well, i'd say the "good chance" is that Jesus wasn't divine at all. Within the Bible, that sounds like a bit of a strained interpretation. Did Judas ever perform miracles? I don't remember him doing so, but that would be an interesting point if it were true. I would say that would support the "it was a set up" view, more than anything.
At some point Jesus sends the twelve into a mission, by groups of two, without belts nor money etc. etc., they are supposed to have done miracles by themselves during that "quest".
Also, even if Jesus wasn't divine nor seen as divine, for the Judas argument to work he only needed to think he was the mesiah -as per the jewish tradition, a militaristic leader- and that he would free them from Rome. Which is according to yet other Gospel accounts, something that some of the apostles thought.
I think it is implied that they did. And I don't just mean stuff like Peter walking on water, nor the Zebedee brothers wanting to rain fire over people. At some point during the ministry Jesus tells them to go by groups of two healing people and exorcising demons. As far as the gospel goes they do such tasks, but they aren't narrated.
I believe you are correct. I was in Acts chapter 2 that we get the "power" of "apostolic miracles". I do not recall any apostolic miracles before then...
There is so much wrong with this that it makes my head hurt. To cut to the chase instead of typing up a 50,000 character essay, his name might have been "Yeshua Nasraya", not "Jesus".
I am partial to "Josh Josephson".
So because some elements may be wrong and/or embellished, it automatically makes them two separate people entirely? The answer is no, it does not. William Faulkner lied and embellished some things about his life but that does not make him cease to exist.
This is a topic for another thread. But I consider this statement to be laughably ignorant.
Wait...are you saying no such thing happened?
Wait...you're saying that the ruling Jewish clergy were not upset with someone claiming to be the great I Am? Surely you jest. Please tell me you're just trolling for lulz.
You mean things like virgin birth and divine essence?
Yes. I'm sorry, you must have mistaken me for both being an idiot and ignorant of this topic. Some people think I beat up a 9th grader (in the first grade), pooped in a water fountain, and put gum in the special-ed teacher's hair...but I didn't. So does that mean I ceased to exist because those stories were embellished or false?
But what if Mohammed really DID call down angels to fight for him? I do not rule out that possibility, either. Maybe I believe it to be 99% false, but I cannot entirely rule it out or else I commit a fallacy.
You're arguing semantics, at this point, just to simply argue them. You were wrong, I corrected you. Deal with it and move on.
You are the one arguing that, not me. Based on what I'm saying, I would be the one that said, "this legend may in fact be based on a real person."
However, with Heracles, it's more of a case "this person probably did not exist."
You've confused the weight of your argument. It is a case by case basis. You have innocently placed multiple legendary names in the same category when you cannot do that with any sort of scholarly attempt. You really do have to take a closer look at the actual evidence for each character.
A debate (in academic circles) that did not have much weight until recently and it had been relegated to myth and poetic fiction for centuries before that.
Let's not pretend anything. I'll stick with what we know.
Let's go back to my original point:
Does my point become any less contradicted by anything you have stated? No, it does not. In fact, I think you typed up a big long diatribe that ended up agreeing with me.
Jesus-God is definitely questionable. We agree there.
aside from the fact that, according to how many times you told me I was wrong, this is obviously not the case, it would mean you were in fact trolling me after I said that Jesus was a fictional character... As you seem to say the exact same thing...
There are things you said that were wrong. Overall, I still think your opinion is wrong. But you sort of do agree with me...you just go the opposite direction right at the end with your conclusion.
This is an odd stance to take when I accused you of trolling me because of how absurd some things you were saying. You came off as someone that just became aware of anti-theism* rather than your generally educated and reasonable self. You did not seem sincere so I questioned whether or not you were trolling to get a laugh: which you do and have admitted to at times.
I never said that. I only implied that some details may not be correct.
*Contrast that with an evangelical that just discovered anti-atheistic arguments. They both spew recycled arguments that are not very accurate.
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Last edited by dadudemon on Jan 20th, 2012 at 04:13 AM
I don't know of much serious debate on the existence of the man. Or if there is one, it's kind of irrelevant, isn't it? Any productive debate stems from the veracity of his divinity, not whether or not he ever existed.
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Sep 23rd, 2011 11:05 PM
