ushomefree, I hope the change to small text is permanent. Don't post in such big font in future.
Anyway. Whilst it is true that historians like Tactitus are not contempories of Jesus, we tend to value their contributions to plenty of other areas which are equally not recorded by contemporary scholars yet which we take as our best guide to that history. His mention of Jesus is no less than any of that. Historians in that period tended to be respected people who were not expected to justify their work with sources to everyone reading it. Nonetheless within their own scholarly fraternity there were certain standards. Tacitus is a trusted historical source and we cannot just ignore that in this single instance and keep all the rest. Furthermore, there is no motivation for Tactitus to make any of it up or to incllude it without good reason, as the mention is sucvh a sideline of a larger subject. There was nothing in it for him to do so.
A better doubt to Tactitus word is that he might simply have been echoing the word of someone else who was mistaken. But this only brings us back to the same problem- basically, this could apply to just about everything we know about ancient history.
The best sources we have for understanding ancient times are these very historians and Jesus is mentioned by them. No, it's not proof, but none of this ancient history is proof. But the best guidelines we have says such a man did exist. Of course, that's all they say. Of his works and deeds we know nothing.
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"We've got maybe seconds before Darth Rosenberg grinds everybody into Jawa burgers and not one of you buds has the midi-chlorians to stop her!"
Do you know how many "messiahs" are out there today? Not just the crazies on street corners, but those pseudo-intellectuals who speak as if they have a connection to deeper knowledge? You know, they are on Oprah and Montel all the time.
Well, guess what, they were ALWAYS around. I bet if you go back to the year 0, you can find hundreds if not thousands of people who considered themselves to be the Jewish Messiah.
I think the argument that "oh, there was probably someone" is just a cop out, seeing as there were probably hundreds. To say with any conclusiveness that any one of them was the true messiah is ridiculous.
With all due respect,you list a bunch of names,type in bold text,and quote some Bible passages.I have done my research long enough and a lot of these arguments have already been made.You offer the talmud as supporting evidence of Christ.This is very loosely based and can be debated either way.It mentions Yehoshua/Jesus,which isn't suprising.Josephus mentions no less than 10 jesus'.Passages have been translated to manipulate different Jesus' into one character in his writings through biased translations..They even call the man Yeshu the Nazarene.Again,nothing impressive.The Nazerens were a religios branch of the Jews and does not mean from Nazereth,as many have speculated. or guessed.The Talmud wasn't written until 200 CE.It was supposedly based on older writings but that is as old as it gets in terms of physical evidence.The chronology offered in the Talmud is very vague and some scholars have noted how the dates given to the Yehoshua of the Talmud very by 200 years.I could go on about more of your sources,but inimalist summed up in a paragraph what it would take me three pages worth of writing to do,so I will move on to the end of your reply to Debbie JO.
Did something big happen for so many people to be willing to die in the name of Christ?Why would so many offer their lives if nothing happened at all?Most Christ enthusiast bring this point up and belive it to be unique to the Christian faith,when in truth their is nothing unique about it at all.
Christians were offered up as sacrifices to the gods and were horribly executed for their beliefs.This same fate was handed upon the initiates of Dionysus as well.The followers of Mithra also went through terrible persecution for their beliefs.While many belive ther persecution of Christians lasted for a long time and that many were killed,we really know little about it.Looking back at the works of Origen he tells us that the Christians who died for their faith were easily numbered.
To say Christians are unique because they died for their beliefs offers little to nothing in terms of verifiying a historical Christ.It tells they belived in something,I will admit that,but we can apply this same fundementalist belief to religious fanatics flying planes into builings because they belive they will be blessed with virgins in paradise.We can apply this thinking to bizarre cults who commit mass suicide beliving they will be taken to higher intellegence on the back of a comet.We can apply this thinking to the iinitiates of Dionysus,who also died for their beliefs.In the end,you could attempt to verify any religion by these means.
What further complicates the history of Christianity is some of the earliest members of this faith.The Gnostics.To dispute matters even more,some Gnostic groups belived Christ never even exisisted,and many of these Gnostics were persecuted for this belief,which they held true.I can use the same arguement and claim Jesus couldn't have existed because Gnostics were persecuted and killed for beliving he didn't exist.
Plan on posting some stuff on this topic. It is fascinating, indeed.
Particularly fascinating is that there are at least several "dying and rising" gods that predate Jesus in the general location. So clearly it's not a coincidence that such a character that influenced a huge religion originated in this area instead of say, Japan or China...
I have his book, it is good. I have not gotten all the way through it yet, it is a little repetitive. But it is because he throroughly addresses every point, and lays out a very robust case.
There are no historical records of Jesus outside of the Bible: Fact.
Mithra, Krishna, Attis, Dionysus, Hercules, Thor and even Joseph all had similar stories of miracle births and healing the sick. The oldest one, I believe, was Horus, from ancient Egypt.
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Last Edited by Blakemore on Jan 1st, 2000, at 00:00 AM
Yup, He absolutely did... not only that, but He still does as the the Son of God.
__________________ Paleontologists have tried to turn Archaeopteryx into an earth bound feathered dinosaur. But it is not. It is a bird, a perching bird. And no amount of 'paleobabble' is going to change that.-- Alan Feduccia-a world authority on birds, quoted in "Archaeopteryx:Early Bird Catches a Can of Worms," Science 1994, p.764-765
Josephus' record was a plagiarism, the others only mention the "Christ" or "Jesus, brother of James."
They don't actually go into the detail that you read in the Bible. People can't even accurately say when he was born, and seriously, a virgin birth? Curing lepracy? Walking on water? Use your ****ing head.
__________________ Sig by Nuke Nixon
Last Edited by Blakemore on Jan 1st, 2000, at 00:00 AM
"the Christ" is a title. Many messiahs were recorded around the time.
It's much more likely the Catholic Church wanted to unite all the messiahs into one single entity. Even the Orthodox Christians see Jesus existing in different forms than just one man.
__________________ Sig by Nuke Nixon
Last Edited by Blakemore on Jan 1st, 2000, at 00:00 AM
It's true, the mention of Jesus in the writings of Josephus is highly suspect and almost certainly a forgery. That's the problem with a lot of the remaining history over the years is that it has so much Christian contamination all over it. "Christian interpolation," which is basically the fancy word for scribal counterfeit/forgery/alteration. Even the biggest atheist proponent of Jesus' historicity, Bart Ehrman, has books and talks about the many forgeries and contradictions. So the evidence of Jesus' existence to say one way or the other is highly tampered with and anything that would confirm his non-existence was likely destroyed. You'd have to assume that if these religious scribes were adding things to make Jesus seem like a real historical person, they'd almost certainly be eliminating anything that questioned his existence. Jesus' historicity became more central to the religion as it grew.
"It is also difficult to imagine why Christian writers would invent such a thoroughly Jewish saviour figure..."
It's statements like that that are misleading and annoying. Clearly there was a "dying and rising" god trend at the time, and there was apparently even a trend to insert them into history. It doesn't seem much different from our fiction writings today, like Spiderman is New York city or pick your superhero. Why is that so difficult to imagine?
Another thing that tends to get left out is that there seems to be sort of an institutionalized dogma of historicity in academia because if you even question the idea, you will have your career derailed terribly. So it's only those who don't rely on such funding and career stability who can question the dogma.
It just seems odd to me that if you're writing allegorical parables about this new Jewish "dying and rising" god, why would you bother to pick a real person to base it on? Obviously all the miracles, raising people from the dead, walking on water, and death and resurrection, etc is made up. So it just makes sense that the entire figure is made up, too.
But anyway, since the history is such a mess, I think Richard Carrier has said that he puts the odds of there actually being an historical Jesus at about 1 in 3.
Oh, and any article that continues to show "Jesus the White Dude" pictures needs to immediately lose all credibility... haha...