Surprisingly often I hear people claim that there is no evidence that Jesus existed except the Bible. Even on this great forum I see this misconception too often. Therefore I have decided to start this thread to inform the ignorant masses:p.

One wouldn’t expect to find many ancient scriptures that mention a man like Jesus. At that time just a few people were able to write, and they had better things to do than to write about a poor rebel who operated in a remote village, and when he finally met civilization in Jerusalem he didn’t last long. There were plenty of rebels in Judea those days.

Still there are a lot of ancient scriptures that suggest that Jesus was a real person. The best source is obviously the books in the New Testament of the Bible, but they were written to support faith and are therefore not reliable historical records. However, if Jesus had been a normal person they would have been more than enough to prove that Jesus existed. The mere existence of someone in history is often easily established on the basis of small textual samples, but since we are talking about the hatred Christianity here we need more evidence. And more evidence there is!

Apart from almost 100 other early Christian scriptures that for one reason or another were declared to be heresy by the Church, there are also plenty of unchristian recordings of Jesus. Here are some examples:

Cornelius Tacitus
Tacticus was a once a Roman senator and later governor of Asia. In 116 C.E. he writes this in his Annals about the burning of Rome in 64 C.E.:
Consequently, to get rid of the report, Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace. Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus, and a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judaea, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome, where all things hideous and shameful from every part of the world find their centre and become popular.

Flavius Josephus
Josephus lived in the first century. He was a Jewish general that surrendered to the Romans and became a historian. Unfortunately the Jews or Romans have not preserved his writings, so they are only known in Christian and Arab transcripts. It seems like the Christian ones are edited a little too much, so I guess the Arab one is more reliable:
At this time there was a wise man who was called Jesus. And 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. And those who had become his disciples did not abandon his discipleship. They reported that he had appeared to themafter his crucifixion and that he was alive; accordingly, he was perhaps the Messiah concerning whom the prophets have recounted wonders.

In another part of Josephus writings we can find this passage:
Since Ananus was that kind of person, and because he perceived an opportunity with Festus having died and Albinus not yet arrived, he called a meeting of the Sanhedrin and brought James, the brother of Jesus (who is called 'Messiah') along with some others. He accused them of transgressing the law, and handed them over for stoning.

Mara Bar-Serapion
The Syrian philosopher Mara Bar-Serapion was probably referring to Jesus when he wrote this in a letter to his son sometime after 70 C.E.:
What advantage did the Athenians gain from putting Socrates to death? Famine and plague came upon them as a judgment for their crime. What advantage did the men of Samos gain from burning Pythagoras? In a moment their land was covered with sand. What advantage did the Jews gain from their executing their wise King? It was just after that that their kingdom was abolished. God justly avenged these three wise men: The Athenians died of hunger; the Samians were overwhelmed by the sea; the Jews, ruined and driven from their land, live in complete dispersion. But Socrates did not die for good; he lived on in the statue of Plato. Pythagoras did not die for good; he lived on in the statue of Hera. Nor did the wise King die for good; he lived on in the teaching which he had given.

Celsus
Around 170 C.E. Celsus wrote his “True Discourse” and here’s what he had to say about Jesus:
Jesus had come from a village in Judea, and was the son of a poor Jewess who gained her living by the work of her own hands. His mother had been turned out of doors by her husband, who was a carpenter by trade, on being convicted of adultery [with a soldier named Panthéra]. Being thus driven away by her husband, and wandering about in disgrace, she gave birth to Jesus, a bastard. Jesus, on account of his poverty, was hired out to go to Egypt. While there he acquired certain (magical) powers which Egyptians pride themselves on possessing. He returned home highly elated at possessing these powers, and on the strength of them gave himself out to be a god.

There are many other non-Christian sources that mention Jesus as a historical person too. Like Tertullian, Simeon ben Azzai and Lucian of Samosta to name a few. All scriptures can of course be disputed, but there are so many old scriptures mentioning Jesus that it is very unlikely that they all are hoaxes. And there are no old scriptures at all that suggests that Jesus was a fictional character. That myth didn’t appear until the 18th century.

The conclusion is simple: There are vast amounts of scriptures that confirm that Jesus was a real person. After his death his followers have probably exaggerated his deed and possibly incorporated some fictional myths into the stories about him, and that is what we can read in the bible.


If you still believe Jesus is a totally fictional character, please elaborate your conspiracy theory:). In any case, feel free to discuss any ancient document that could suggest that Jesus was a real person or a fictional character.

Interesting, but I'll have to wait until tonght to reply.

Originally posted by Pikachu
Apart from almost 100 other early Christian scriptures that for one reason or another were declared to be heresy by the Church, there are also plenty of unchristian recordings of Jesus.
Any further infornation on these scriptures? Sounds interesting as to why they where heretic documents.

Playing devil's advocate.....

All of the examples you quote post-date the first ministries to Rome and other cities of the Roman empire (the earliest is AD70?).

Therefore it is entirely possible that they are based on information sourced from early Christians and then tailored to meet the author's preconceptions, either pro- or anti- the Christian message.

thus, the assumption that Jesus wsa real rests on the assumption that the early Christian church was telling the truth when decribing Jesus' existence, whcih brings us back to the early gospels as the primary source of validation.

Personally I suspect Jesus was a real person around whom, after his death, a series of historical prophecies/myths were hung by the sect he founded. All IMHO of course adn not intended to offend the devout....

Pikachu your post is quite fascinating :goodjob:

Where did you get your sources? I thought Celsus testimony in particular was v interesting.

I'm an atheist but I have no problem believing "A man called Jesus" was alive in that part of the world a couple of thousand years ago. I wouldn't have thought this was an unusual position among atheists.

Pikachu said The conclusion is simple: There are vast amounts of scriptures that confirm that Jesus was a real person. After his death his followers have probably exaggerated his deed and possibly incorporated some fictional myths into the stories about him, and that is what we can read in the bible.

Basically, this is a good conclusion, but I have an issue with what you said about the Bible being full of exaggerated deeds and fictional myths. Being a Bible believing Christian, I have access to resources that prove the Bible is reliable, accurate text and is the God-breathed truth. Therefore, we can trust what it says.

The accounts of Jesus were written by apostles. The definition of apostle is "one who has seen the earthly manifestation of Jesus." Therefore, the last book had to be written before the generation that saw Jesus died off; I believe Revelation was written, if I recall correctly, either in the 60s or 70s. I may be wrong; maybe it was the 90s. But John wrote it and saw Jesus during his earthly life.

Also keep in mind that the Old Testament is replete with prophecies that fortell of Jesus and his life. These prophesies are filled with minute details that were fulfilled exactly, right down to the price that they paid Judas to betray the Lord (30 pieces of silver). Therefore, these fulfilled prophecies also give us an accurate account of Jesus, written hundreds of years before he walked the earth. They verify the accuracy of the accounts in the New Testament, proving that the Bible is not "mythical fiction" or "exaggerated."

D

Great post Pikachu :goodjob: :thanx: for your time and effort.

Very interesting post. Perhaps the reason for so many people accepting a man like Jesus in those days was because their Gods were more Earthly than our perception of God now. Imagine if someone claimed those kind of abilities nowadays?

Originally posted by october
Also keep in mind that the Old Testament is replete with prophecies that fortell of Jesus and his life. These prophesies are filled with minute details that were fulfilled exactly, right down to the price that they paid Judas to betray the Lord (30 pieces of silver). Therefore, these fulfilled prophecies also give us an accurate account of Jesus, written hundreds of years before he walked the earth. They verify the accuracy of the accounts in the New Testament, proving that the Bible is not "mythical fiction" or "exaggerated."
It proves nothing other than they knew how the script was supposed to go.

I disagree, Iggy. One of the prophesies describes the place of his birth, and the time, and the light in the sky that we know of as the star of Bethlehem, and all kinds of stuff that could not have been made to happen by human intervention after reading prophesy.

@ October. I gather there were others who fitted part of the script / prophesies such as the pagan Osiris-Dionysos some time before JC was born. Had he been more charismatic we would probably be asking who Jesus of Nazareth was.

Originally posted by october
I disagree, Iggy. One of the prophesies describes the place of his birth, and the time, and the light in the sky that we know of as the star of Bethlehem, and all kinds of stuff that could not have been made to happen by human intervention after reading prophesy.

And we know that Jesus was born at this time and light in the sky at this place because...

Originally posted by bigfatron
Personally I suspect Jesus was a real person around whom, after his death, a series of historical prophecies/myths were hung by the sect he founded. All IMHO of course adn not intended to offend the devout....


Jesus was some charismatic Religious guy that drew a crowd. Rome made him "the son of god" a hundred years later to control the empire & to fight the Aranic (Arameic?) Christians. --> Christians that do not believe in the Holy 3some.

That's the funny thing about it. Everything in the Roman Church can be explained as simply political moves, yet people still believe..

Moved to History.

And we know that Jesus was born at this time and light in the sky at this place because... Because it's in the Bible, and can also be uncovered in various historical texts from the region (which I'm not educated enough to give the names).

"because it's in the bible" is not to me a convincing argument :crazyeye:

The other texts would be helpful as Pickachu has provided, however on the date of his birth I would trust this to be unlikely given certain problems with other evidence such as Herod.

On the evidence above, it's interesting indeed, however all it shows is that a religious leader called Jesus lived sometime around that time in the area. The details such as the miracles and so on are much harder to prove. It kind of reminds me of the furore surrounding the spear of longinus in that Austrian museum. They managed to work out that it actually mostly dated from the 5th cent. IIRC (certainly not when christ was alive anyway). Some religious scholars, far from being upset by this pointed that the core of the spear may be older. Well uhmm, great, you proved it's an old roman spear... now what? Could have been any old roman spear from Palestine... :p

Ok so I'm skeptical, but proof Jesus existed does not mean he is proved to be the son of god who died to save our souls.

Originally posted by october
Because it's in the Bible, and can also be uncovered in various historical texts from the region (which I'm not educated enough to give the names).

:sigh:, Circular logic. You can't use the bible to prove the bible's stories. More than likely, these things mentioned in the old testament were added later on by Christians while compiling the bible to give further credibility to Jesus being the messiah. As for the other historical texts from the region that you're not educated enough to name, how in the world would they, writing decades after his death, be able to pinpoint the status of the sky and exact day he was born? They couldn't. They probalby took what Christians told them. Circular logic once again.

Originally posted by aaminion00
:sigh:, Circular logic. You can't use the bible to prove the bible's stories. More than likely, these things mentioned in the old testament were added later on by Christians while compiling the bible to give further credibility to Jesus being the messiah.

There is very convincing evidence that the old testament has not been edited by Christians to make their case for Jesus. The Dead Sea Scrolls predate the Jesus and contain copies of every book of the old testament except Esther. The later Catholic bible text is essentially unchanged from these earlier versions.

That said, however, building a case for an historical Jesus on Old Testament prophecy is tenuous business. It is easy to select those prophecies that fit the picture and ignore ones that don't. it would be interesting to see all old testament prophecy collected together with annotations as to what each is prophecying.

Basically, the 4 gospels of the New Testament are evidence enough. You might as well doubt the existence of Alexander the Great. :eek:

aaminion00 said More than likely, these things mentioned in the old testament were added later on by Christians while compiling the bible to give further credibility to Jesus being the messiah. As for the other historical texts from the region that you're not educated enough to name, how in the world would they, writing decades after his death, be able to pinpoint the status of the sky and exact day he was born? They couldn't. They probalby took what Christians told them. Circular logic once again.

Just like everyone always asks the Christians to prove they are right, the burden of proof should equally rest on those that assert he did not exist, or that he is not the Son of God. You can't discredit what Christians say using terms like "more than likely" and "probably took what the Christians told them." That is not proof, just speculation.


privatehudson said "because it's in the bible" is not to me a convincing argument
No, i believe it is. The Bible proves itself, simply because of what it is and how it was written. And every OT prophesy dealing with the Messiah was fulfilled exactly, so we did not pick and choose.

Flavius Josephus was not a Jewish General who surrendered to the Romans. I don't know where you get that BS. He was a Zealot soldier who happened to be a Roman spy.

No, i believe it is. The Bible proves itself, simply because of what it is and how it was written. And every OT prophesy dealing with the Messiah was fulfilled exactly, so we did not pick and choose.

Uhmmm no, he did not fill "every" prophesy. Though I do not agree with most of this (http://www.evilbible.com/jesus_false.htm) website, or it's tone (frankly it's way to anti-christian for my liking and some of it's points are laughable, but still), it does point out a number of phrophecies he did not fulfil. Of course feel free to find some pedantic way of ignoring or discounting each of them...

Why does what the bible consist of prove it? It's authors? Is a book by a learned historian garunteed to be true in every aspect and "prove" what it writes about? Does some of the facts being correct in a book prove it's entirety? Frankly you put too much stock in trying to prove something which requires faith to believe in. With faith, to many the bible is mostly true, some even believe completely true, without it it's an interesting work, but about as accurate as every single other book from that period. Not very in other words.

Plus as the cynics have quite well pointed out, some phrophecies can be self-fufilling or can only be proven by the bible. It's easier than is claimed to fulfill some of the prophecies if you know them beforehand...

Originally posted by october
aaminion00 said

Just like everyone always asks the Christians to prove they are right, the burden of proof should equally rest on those that assert he did not exist, or that he is not the Son of God. You can't discredit what Christians say using terms like "more than likely" and "probably took what the Christians told them." That is not proof, just speculation.

You seem to put the "blind" in "blind faith". First of all, of course it's speculation, that's why I said "probably" in the first place :rolleyes:. If I wanteed to tell you a factual statement it'd be clear. However you can easily discredit Christianity using speculation, as long as it's focused and reasonable, just like you can convict a criminal on overwhelming circumstantial evidence.

Also, your logic is backwards. I do think that Jesus existed, but I don't think he was the son of god. However, simple logic puts the burden of proof on you and not me. I am not the one who claims a man who lived some two thousand years ago walked on water, arose from the dead, rose other people from death, cured lepresy and blindness, happened to be the son of a divine being who is perfect and created everything, and did a couple of dozen other things that coincidentally were the same as a popular pagan god of the time. On the other hand, all I'm saying is that there was a man named Jesus who lived at the time who was more than likely the same as any other man, except that he started a popular religious cult that grew into today's christianity. In my version he is not the son of some magical man who created everything in seven days and turned people into salt along with hundreds of other miracles that have yet to be seen in today's world, but an ordinary human being.

My side is perfectly plausible. Your requires blind faith and a belief in witches, demons, mythical beings, ressurection, and a couple of other scientifically impossible things. The burden of proof does rest on you, there is nothing left for me to prove. That Jesus was a normal man? What is there that indicates he wasn't, the bible? The bible was just a book in which religious people wrote their opinions on a matter. If that's a credible source, then I could write a book about why there is no god, offer absolutely no proof or logic to my claim, and then quote it as proof of why there is no god.

An underlying theme of this and other religious threads is the authority of the Bible. Can we trust its words? Are the Gospels the inspired word of God? Did Jesus actually say those words? (in Aramaic of course). Has the church edited/altered Bible text? Has it done so to rewrite history?

I won't pretend to know the answers to all these, but I found an interesting tibit. The following quote is from a Christian website. They have a very detailed section on church history. This quoted passage is about Origen (185-254 AD) the first Christian theologian and a recognized Father of the early church. He was famous in his day and is praised even today as a shining example of a Christian soul. He was a prodigious writer and teacher. But, his writings were declared heretical by the later church. interesting guy. Is somebody hiding something here?

The following commentary on him discusses how Origen mentioned multiple versions of the gospels. Only one version of each has survived. Origen was writing from 200 to 250 AD,

"He is the first great textual critic of the Church. That his name occurs more frequently than that of any other father in the digests of early readings of the text of the New Testament, is due no doubt to the fact that he is the earliest writer of commentaries which have been preserved; his commentaries contain complete texts of the portions of Scripture commented on, as well as copious quotations from other parts of Scripture. But he was keenly interested in the text of the New Testament for its own sake. He tells us that many variations already existed in his day in different copies. And he preserves many readings which afterwards disappeared from the Bible. It has also to be said that he often quotes the same text differently in different passages, so that it appears probable that he used several copies of the N. T. books, and that these copies differed from each other. If, therefore, as Tischendorf suggests, Origen made a collation of the various texts of the N. T. with which he was acquainted, as he did with his texts of the O. T. in his Hexapla, he had no strong views as to which text was to be followed. He sometimes expresses an opinion as to which is the true reading, but he does so on grounds which the textual critics of the present day could not approve."

Another piece of the puzzle.

Originally posted by Iggy
Any further infornation on these scriptures? Sounds interesting as to why they where heretic documents.

The most important official reason why they wasn’t included in the Bible is that their origin is highly questionable. Critics often suspects that they were excluded because they might did not agree with the theology that some important church leaders supported. If you want to read heretic Christian documents, you can find most of them on this site (http://www.gnosis.org/library.html):satan:.


Originally posted by bigfatron
Playing devil's advocate.....

All of the examples you quote post-date the first ministries to Rome and other cities of the Roman empire (the earliest is AD70?).

Therefore it is entirely possible that they are based on information sourced from early Christians and then tailored to meet the author's preconceptions, either pro- or anti- the Christian message.

thus, the assumption that Jesus wsa real rests on the assumption that the early Christian church was telling the truth when decribing Jesus' existence, whcih brings us back to the early gospels as the primary source of validation.

Personally I suspect Jesus was a real person around whom, after his death, a series of historical prophecies/myths were hung by the sect he founded. All IMHO of course adn not intended to offend the devout....
You are right that there are no contemporary documents telling about Jesus, but I don’t see why anybody would want to write about him while he still was alive.

The historians who have mentioned him could off course have got their knowledge from Christians, but would you expect a man like Tacticus to trust Christians on this? He writes down several direct facts about the execution of Jesus in a history book. Tacticus is otherwise known to be closely inspecting his sources, so I would suspect that he did his job well this time too. But even if Tacticus did trust his enemies on this, why would Josephus do the same? And what about all the others? And why did none of the enemies of Christianity write down something that could suggest that Jesus never existed until the 18th century?

Celsus has a particularly interesting piece of information. He writes that the mother of Jesus was guilty of adultery with a soldier named Panthéra. This is something a Christian would not have told, so Celsus must have had access to a different source.

Please keep on playing devil’s advocate:).


Originally posted by Evertonian
Pikachu your post is quite fascinating

Where did you get your sources? I thought Celsus testimony in particular was v interesting.

I'm an atheist but I have no problem believing "A man called Jesus" was alive in that part of the world a couple of thousand years ago. I wouldn't have thought this was an unusual position among atheists.
I have several sources, but the English translations of the ancient texts I have found on various websites. Try a simple web search and you will find a lot of good sites about this, but be careful. Most of them seem to be quite selective, and extremely naive Christians who take quite vague formulations as solid proof seems to have written some of them:worship:.


Originally posted by pomsa
Flavius Josephus was not a Jewish General who surrendered to the Romans. I don't know where you get that BS. He was a Zealot soldier who happened to be a Roman spy.

I am terribly sorry if my information really is BS. I tend to trust encyclopedia.com, and they write this about Josephus:
Josephus, Flavius
Related: Biblical History Ancestry Biographies

(fla´vees jose´fes) , AD 37-c.AD 100, Jewish historian and soldier, b. Jerusalem. Josephus' historical works are among the most valuable sources for the study of early Judaism and early Christianity. Having studied the tenets of the three main sects of Judaism—Essenes, Sadducees, and Pharisees—he became a Pharisee. At the beginning of the war between the Romans and Jews, he was made commander of Galilee, despite the fact that he had opposed the uprising. He surrendered to the Romans instead of committing suicide when the stronghold was taken...
Please give me a better source if encyclopedia.com are wrong about this.

Ok I must confess I am no Biblical scholor nor am I an expert on the history of the church or the middle east. Therefore, I can't "prove" anything to your standards. I do have blind faith. The Bible is credible enough for me, I believe it's the inerrant Word of God. Therefore, what the Bible says, I believe it. That's the bottom line. And to this day, noone has been able to disprove Christianity to me, nor have they been able to put enough doubt in my head to make me question the Bible or its reliability. So on the basis of me not being a church history scholar or a greek expert, I can't really continue this.

d

Jesus was some charismatic Religious guy that drew a crowd. Rome made him "the son of god" a hundred years later to control the empire & to fight the Aranic (Arameic?) Christians. --> Christians that do not believe in the Holy 3some.

That's the funny thing about it. Everything in the Roman Church can be explained as simply political moves, yet people still believe..

Yeah that's why many say Roman Catholics corrupted Christianity.

Just don't discount all of Christianity, because some greedy ppl used it to control others. Just because some places edit versions of the bible to exclude, dancing, sex, drinking etc, doesn't mean every christian believes nor follows those beliefs.

Anyways, nice post Pikachu.

to others, if you dispute the bible and these other texts/prophecies etc were edited or fictious, then what is the earliest text that you believe is real and factual and why?

Forgive the bump - Pikachu pointed me here so I'm sure he won't mind! This is a great thread, full of informed points and discussion on all sides. Pikachu raises interesting points about the extra-Biblical evidence for Jesus. I'm glad to see reasoned debate also from the Christian side, with october. If he'd like to challenge me to get him to doubt the inerrancy and reliability of the Bible in all things, though, I'd be more than happy to oblige!

A couple of remarks that may help:

Celsus is not much of a source for the historical Jesus. Half of the information he provides is obviously based on the Gospels, or other Christian books, and the other half, such as the name of the Roman who supposedly sired Jesus, comes from anti-Christian Jewish polemics of the time. I'm afraid that Celsus was as polemical and often unreasonable an opponent of Christianity as some of the more extreme posters in these very forums! (fora?)

I have never heard before the theory that Origen compiled a book showing the different versions of the New Testament, as he did with the Old Testament (the latter project, the Hexapla, featured several translations of the Old Testament together with the Hebrew original, and must have been so massive as to require an entire room to keep it in - Jerome later consulted it when writing the Vulgate, the Latin translation of the Bible). I have to say I'm not convinced. Origen was rather obsessed with establishing the text of the Old Testament, but it doesn't follow that he took a similar approach to the New, and I don't think there's much evidence that he did. Origen's quotations from the Bible are certainly rather loose, as is common among the Church Fathers. But this is often because they generally quoted from memory. People had prodigious memories in those days - John Chrysostom, for example, spent two years in a cave learning the whole of the Bible completely off by heart, something that made him very learned but permanently wrecked his health. But they didn't always get it right.

By the way, Origen certainly wasn't the first Christian theologian: he was preceded by a variety of great names such as Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, and Tertullian. But in my opinion Origen was the greatest of all the early theologians, even greater than the later and more well-known Augustine. He was the first Christian thinker who could really take on the pagan philosophers at their own game and wipe the floor with them - as we can see in his only complete work to survive in the original Greek, "Against Celsus" (the only source, of course, for our knowledge of the otherwise unknown Celsus). Unfortunately Origen's not well known today except to specialists, mainly because he was later regarded as a heretic and had most of his vast output destroyed.

The question of whether the Biblical text has been corrupted or fiddled with has been recently discussed in another of Pikachu's threads, at http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=91572 where I have posted quite a bit of evidence to suggest that it hasn't. We also touched on what we know of the historical Jesus there. Essentially, as the quotes that Pikachu gives at the start of this thread suggest, extra-Christian sources do testify to Jesus' existence, but don't tell us much of any use about him. If we want to know about him, we have to look at the Gospels - the four in the New Testament. There were many other Gospels, some as early as the first century, and people were still writing them even in the Middle Ages. None of these Gospels has any historical worth, with the very occasional exception (the Gospel of Thomas, for example, which is mainly sayings material, contains one or two things that may be genuine sayings of Jesus that are not in the canonical Gospels). I think that the early Christians did a pretty good job of distinguishing between the (relatively) historical and the completely legendary.

Scholars disagree over precisely what we can learn about Jesus from the Gospels, but I think we can tell quite a lot. I think that the picture of Jesus in the Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) is, in general terms, pretty much what he was probably like - but the details are hazy. For example, we have a good idea of the sort of thing that Jesus said and did, but we can't necessarily tell whether *this* story from the Gospels actually took place or not. John's Gospel is generally recognised to be a lot less historical than the others, but even here there may be some useful information. Of course, all the Gospels feature exaggeration and legendary material, and it's the task of scholars to sift the evidence.

On the other thread I gave some examples of things that we can tell about the historical Jesus from looking at the Gospels. I was arguing that the Gospel-writers were more conservative than you might think, because they included things in their work that you might have thought they would have wanted to exclude. In the field of Jesus-research, this is the "criterion of dissimilarity". Basically, anything that the Gospels attribute to Jesus that seems different from what the early Christians believed, and which is also different from common Jewish teaching in Jesus' day, is very probably authentic (because it's unlikely to have come from anyone but Jesus himself). Of course, if you apply that criterion thoroughly, you're not left with much. Obviously there must be things that Jesus said that the early Christians also believed (there can't have been complete discontinuity from the one to the others), but this does give us something of a starting point. Here are the examples I gave -

1 Thessalonians (the earliest book of the New Testament to be written) addresses the fact that some people were disturbed by the fact that some of them had died before Jesus returned. In other words, Paul, who had preached the gospel to them, had been so convinced that Jesus would return soon that he hadn't thought to tell them what happened if anyone died first. In the letter, he tells them that those who have died will rise to meet the Lord, followed by those who are still alive. Fast forward to John 21 - written decades later - and you find that some people had evidently argued that Jesus would return while at least one of his original disciples was alive. But he died, and they had to argue that Jesus had never said such a thing. Look at 2 Peter, probably the last book of the New Testament to be written, and you find the author pointing out that, with the Lord, a day is as a thousand years. In other words, by this stage people were arguing that when Jesus said the end was coming soon, he didn't mean it literally.

In other words, if you look at the evidence you can see the early church struggling to cope with what was evidently something potentially embarrassing for them. That makes it overwhelmingly likely that it was something they were taught by Jesus - because they wouldn't have made it up. And what is striking is that they seem to have been rather loath to alter the texts and the traditions to reflect what they were coming to think. For example, in Matthew 16:28 (written perhaps in the 80s), Jesus tells his followers that the end will come while some of his listeners are still alive. That would be a potentially embarrassing saying for a Christian near the end of the first century to attribute to Jesus, which suggests that Jesus really said it, or something like it. That in turn suggests that much of the material in the Gospels and elsewhere has not been changed as much as you might think it has.

On the subject of titles attributed to Jesus in the Gospels and elsewhere:

The notion that Jesus thought he was God is almost certainly anachronistic. In fact, it is very hard to find any idea in the New Testament that Jesus was actually God - which is why Christians argued about it for centuries to come. The speeches attributed to Jesus in John's Gospel, where he speaks about himself at great length and apparently claims closeness to God and pre-existence for himself, are almost universally recognised to be very unhistorical. The Synoptic Gospels are much more valuable as sources for the real Jesus, and as I have argued they actually are quite credible sources for Jesus, provided we treat them critically.

You will not find many places in the New Testament where Jesus is called "Son of Man". (In fact, off-hand, I believe the only places outside the Gospels where this phrase occurs are in Acts 7:56 and Revelation 1:13, both references to Daniel 7:13, which is the original source for the use of this phrase in an eschatological context.) But Jesus uses this phrase constantly in the Gospels. Why would the authors of the Gospels have attributed to Jesus frequent use of an expression that the early Christians apparently thought very unimportant? Wouldn't they have had him call himself "Christ" all the time, like most of the New Testament authors did? In fact, not only does the term "Christ" or "Messiah" crop up infrequently in the Gospels, but Matthew 26:64 actually has Jesus apparently deny that it applies to him (compare Mark 14:62, where Jesus agrees that it does apply to him, and Luke 22:67, where he refuses to answer). It looks very likely that Jesus really did use the expression "Son of Man", and that the Gospel writers left it in simply because it was something that Jesus really said. Equally, the early Christians called Jesus "Christ", but this word is not in the Gospels very much, and the authors appear hesitant to ascribe its use to Jesus himself (in Mark, other people call Jesus "Christ", but he is decidedly cagey about it himself and tells people not to say it to others - see Mark 8:30). In other words, the early Christians seem to have been less eager than you might think to ascribe things to Jesus that they would have liked him to have said.

If anyone is interested in this kind of thing I can certainly give suggestions for where to look for much fuller discussions.

Great post Plontius :goodjob: . Very interesting and new info. for me :scan: . You should get in the OT forum and do some battle there ;) ,
most there are anti-creationist :sad: and anti-Bible :( .

Thanks for your time and effort.

Sorry for the double post & spelling error with Plotinus :blush: .

Thank you, dgfred - if you follow that link you'll see that I have indeed been doing battle for moderate liberal wishy-washiness in the OT forums against the various partisans. Not particularly edifying, perhaps, but a good way of passing the night shift at work. I'm afraid that, not being religious myself, I'm certainly anti-Creationist (and which great Christian theologian was it who argued that Genesis is not meant to be taken literally? Yes! Origen!), and I wouldn't characterise myself as pro- or anti-Bible. The Bible is just a collection of books. I'm certainly anti- some *views* of that collection, and pro- others.

By the way, I forgot to mention - on the subject of Josephus, Pikachu is right and pomsa wrong, as well as strangely offensive. Here's a quote from a book that, by a happy chance, I happen to have right to hand:

"Joesphus son of Mattathias was born of an aristocratic priestly family in the year 37 CE, a few years after Jesus' execution. Josephus was extremely well educated in biblical law and history, and he had also studied the principal religious parties of his day (the Essenes, the Sadducees and the Pharisees). He showed great promise. While still a young man he was sent to Rome to persuade Nero to release some Jewish hostages. When the revolt against Rome broke out in 66 CE, he was only twenty-nine, but nevertheless he received command of Galilee. His forces were defeated, but by luck and guile he survived. He flattered the conquering general, Vespasian, by predicting that he would become emperor. When this happened, in 69, Josephus' stock went up. Vespasian's son, Titus, who completed the war against the Jews, used Josephus as an interpreter and spokesman to the Jewish defenders of Jerusalem. After the war, Titus took Josephus to Rome, where he established him with a house and pension, and Josephus wrote the history of the war ('Jewish War'). This was published in the seventies. Later he wrote a vast history of the Jews ('Jewish Antiquities'), published in the nineties. He also wrote a defence of Judaism against its critics ('Against Apion') and an apologetic autobiography ('Life'). By the standards of the day, he was a very good historian, and for some parts of his historical narratives he had excellent sources."

- from E.P. Sanders, "The Historical Figure of Jesus" London: Penguin 1993 pp. 15-16.

Ed Sanders is, incidentally, one of the foremost authorities on first-century Judaism and its relation to Christianity currently alive. He's most well known for his (sometimes controversial) work on Paul's theology and for his work on relating the historical Jesus to contemporary Judaism. The book I've just quoted is an introduction for the general reader to the historical Jesus, which is why Sanders gives this information without going much into the sources for our knowledge of Josephus. However, I think we can trust him on this.

By the way, again, and apologising for the triple post, good information on Josephus can be found at http://members.aol.com/FLJOSEPHUS/home.htm and you can read a (slightly archaic) translation of his autobiography at http://www.earlyjewishwritings.com/text/josephus/life.html

I should say that the passage that Pikachu cites from Josephus has certainly been corrupted by Christian scribes. The Arabic version is indeed a bit less "Christian" than than the Greek (eg he says Jesus may have been the Messiah rather than that he definitely was), but I think this is not because it's closer to what Josephus actually wrote, but because Muslim scribes have simply toned down the Christian corruption. In fact, nobody knows what Josephus actually wrote here. Nevertheless, it is very likely that he wrote something about Jesus. For one thing, he wrote about other important religious figures of the place and time, such as John the Baptist, so it's intrinsically likely that he would have talked about Jesus as well. Moreover, the passage about Jesus in his "Antiquities" does not come after the passage on John the Baptist, which is where you might have expected a Christian writer to insert it if he were fabricating it entirely. It therefore looks like there really was a reference to Jesus here, but some Christian bigged it up. Again, we see a relatively conservative approach to tradition on the part of many Christians - they were prepared to alter a passage in Josephus to fit their views, but not to create a completely new one.

The problem I have with all that evidence is that it was written after Jesus was supposed to have lived. If he was born in the year 1AD then I would want to see evidence of his exitence from say 25AD to 60AD. Yet most of that evidence at the start of this thread is from 100AD onwards. That is pleanty of time to create a myth and build upon it. It is not difficult to spread someones name about, whether it be a real person or not, and maybe over time stories got exaggerated upon to result in the Jesus 'myth' we have today.

[ComradeDavo] Of course that's true. But as I said, most of our evidence for what Jesus was actually like is not the evidence given at the start of this thread (the extra-Christian evidence) but the Christian evidence, the four Gospels. They are usually dated to between the late 60s (Mark) to the mid 90s (John) or thereabouts. And I suggested above that, while the stories certainly got exaggerated before being written down in those Gospels, much of the material did not get exaggerated out of all recognition. We can still critically evaluate it and draw conclusions about the history that underlies it all, whilst acknowledging the prejudices and agendas of the various authors.

In any case, Jesus certainly wasn't regarded as very significant until after his death. He made less of an impact than, say, John the Baptist, who unlike Jesus was regarded as sufficiently dangerous by Antipas to be executed. On the usual assumption that Jesus was born in around 4 BC and died in around 30 AD, it would certainly be unreasonable to expect any literary evidence dated before 30. And remember, too, that his followers thought he was going to return at any moment. Why mess about writing Gospels if you think that? It took time for the Christians to adjust to the notion that there might be a fair wait before the return of the Lord before they considered the value of writing down the memories, traditions, and stories that they had about him.

Celsus is not much of a source for the historical Jesus.

Thank you Plotinus for bringing my thread back to life:D. I just want to comment on this Celsus thing. You are of course right about everything you write about him, but I think he is a useful source for the historical Jesus. He probably bases his information on Christian sources and anti-Christian Jewish polemics, but (unlike most of the Jewish sources) he leaves no doubt that he writes about the Jesus who Christians call Christ. The Jewish sources mostly use the nickname ‘so and so’ as a reference to Jesus, but it is not obvious if the ‘so and so’ person really is Jesus.


The problem I have with all that evidence is that it was written after Jesus was supposed to have lived. If he was born in the year 1AD then I would want to see evidence of his exitence from say 25AD to 60AD. Yet most of that evidence at the start of this thread is from 100AD onwards. That is pleanty of time to create a myth and build upon it. It is not difficult to spread someones name about, whether it be a real person or not, and maybe over time stories got exaggerated upon to result in the Jesus 'myth' we have today.

You seem to think that most people considered Jesus to be an important person like Julius Caesar or something. Caesar had a large impact of the lives of many powerful people, but even so, the contemporary sources about him are very limited. You must remember that people didn’t write about everything just for fun those days. In most cases oral communication was preferred whenever that was possible.

Form a secular point of view; Jesus himself must have been considered a totally uninteresting character. He never gained any political power and never really threatened the establishment. All he achieved was a pathetic attempt at claiming the throne of king David when he entered Jerusalem riding on a donkey. Of course he failed miserably and was executed a few days later. He must have been looked upon as a pathetic rebel and a complete failure. Why would anybody want to write about such a fool?

To find out how much evidence we can expect to find about Jesus we can take a look at what evidence we have about people with similar lives.

Socrates seems to have many similarities to Jesus. He too was a poor unemployed carpenter who verbally challenged the religious establishment, and he was executed because of it just like Jesus. Socrates is only known through one single source, the writings of his own student, Plato.

Buddha, or Siddhartha Gautama which was his real name, also have similarities to Jesus as he founded a new religion with methods similar to what Jesus used. Buddha is known through many Buddhist scriptures, but the oldest of them, the Pali Suttas, was not compiled until about two or three centuries after his death.

I think this demonstrates that it is unreasonable to think that we could find any contemporary scriptures about Jesus. Compared to similar historical persons, there is much more ancient documents about Jesus than one could expect.

proof Jesus existed does not mean he is proved to be the son of god who died to save our souls.

You Nestorian, you! :p

most there are anti-creationist :sad: and anti-Bible

I think too many people dismiss these topics as false, lies, etc. without putting any time into looking at them.

Creation is just a spin on science's singularity to universe theory of the Big Bang. The Bible states that God created the heavens and the Earth. What's so hard about that to believe? It's the people who say God didn't do this and didn't do that; all He did, in my opinion, was create the heavens and the earth. Nowhere in the Bible does it say He created anything else; everything else He made. It all, we included, evolved from the spark of His creation.

I'm going to have to read my copy of the Nag Hammadi Library - it's been sitting on my shelf for ages.

I disagree, Iggy. One of the prophesies describes the place of his birth, and the time, and the light in the sky that we know of as the star of Bethlehem, and all kinds of stuff that could not have been made to happen by human intervention after reading prophesy.

The place of birth, time, light in the sky, 3 visiting kings, virgin mother, crucifiction, resurrection, water-to-wine, healing sick, blind and crippled, and several other stories are simply copied from the Dionysos story, which was there 100 BC.

link: Jesus Mysteries (http://homepage.ntlworld.com/anthony.campbell1/bookreviews/r/freke-gandy.html)

From a historical point of view, it is clear that this story was used as a blueprint, to construct the Jesus we know from the bible.

The most likely theory is that Jesus of Nazareth was one of the many rebel leaders in Judea. Probably after his death or disappearance he was pumped up to divine proportions.

Afaik, the first written documents that mention Jesus (as a divine being) are Paul's epistals. From a historical point of view, we absolutely cannot leave the possibility away, Paul was working for the Romans.

The four biblical gospels are religious proclamations, shaped as historical documents. As true historical documents, they hardly have any value.

You Nestorian, you! :p

Realist, cynic, whatever you choose to call me, the fact is that proving he lived is not the same as proving the way in which he lived. No more than proving the date of the Turin Shroud might be back to the 1st century is proof that it ever was wrapped around Jesus specifically, or that the spear in the Austrian museum, if dated to the same period actually is the spear that pierced Jesus' side.

You either believe or you don't, it's not about proof or logic, but faith.

You either believe or you don't, it's not about proof or logic, but faith.

To the orthodoxy it is certainly faith; to the gnostic, it is not.

There's no miracle in the bible, and no claim of jesus being the son of god and the saviour of mankind that does not require faith to believe in it. Whatever some people say.

There's no miracle in the bible, and no claim of jesus being the son of god and the saviour of mankind that does not require faith to believe in it. Whatever some people say.

I agree!

But this thread is about historical evidence of the existance of Jesus of Nazareth.
It is not too hard to find it. We can't be sure, but the existance of a guy named Yeshua, leading a small group of people is quite likely.

At the time, many people claimed to be the Messiah, or were seen as the Messiah. From a historical perspective, we, of course can't say anything about miracles or devinity.
We can't even tell whether Jesus was a religious leader with some medical experience, or a rebel leader (by far the most likely from a historical view) with some religious issues!
We can't tell neither whether Jesus was already seen as the Messiah before or after his crucifiction (if he was crucified).
The most likely is that he made some fame during his life, and was pumped up to divine proportions after his death.

There's evidence he existed, but as I have mentioned, that in no way proves anything more than his existence.

There's evidence he existed, but as I have mentioned, that in no way proves anything more than his existence.

Even his existance cannot be proven. Apart from the 99.9% probability the Romans crucified a Judean man named Yeshua around 30AD. But that is simply a statistical thing. The Romans crucified 1000s of Jews, with or without trials, which could be either fair or not. Sometimes in order to surpress rebellion, sometimes for justice, sometimes just for fun. We should not forget that Judea, from a Roman point of view, was a faraway, nasty place, a breeding nest for rebellion.

There's evidence he existed, but as I have mentioned, that in no way proves anything more than his existence.

No, there's evidence for far more than his mere existence. It's called the Gospels.

The gospel majority of the "facts" are a matter of faith, not a matter of logic or proof.

Unless of course someone would like to prove for example that Jesus walked on water...

The fact that the Gospels are full of exaggerated or legendary material does not automatically disqualify them as evidence for what Jesus was like. There's plenty of historical stuff in there too, as I've already pointed out here and elsewhere. By studying them carefully and working out the history of the material, scholars can find out quite a lot about what Jesus was like - beyond his mere existence.

In any case, I don't see what role "logic" and "proof" play in the examination of historical accounts. You can't "prove" anything about the past.

No, there's evidence for far more than his mere existence. It's called the Gospels.

There is lots of evidence that the gospels are nothing but religious proclamations, shaped as historical evidence. Therefor, they hardly are evidence of Jesus' existance (or more).

As said before, there is massive evidence the place of birth, time, light in the sky, 3 visiting kings, virgin mother, crucifiction, resurrection, water-to-wine, healing sick, blind and crippled, and several other stories are simply copied from a 100BC heathen mythology.

Apart from that, the gospels were written after 60AD, a bit late. There is also evidence that Matthew's gospel was not written by a Jew, and thus not by Matthew (or his followers).

No sensible person believes that any of the Gospels were written by the authors to whom they are traditionally assigned. Those ascriptions came much later - only at the end of the second century.

I'm afraid that the notion that the whole of the Jesus story has been lifted from pagan stories, like that of Dionysius, has been rather debunked over the past hundred years or so. It was quite a fashionable theory in the nineteenth century, but as scholars since then have learned much more about early Christianity, and in particular its relation to Judaism, they have generally concluded that it's more fruitful to look for the origins of Christian beliefs within Judaism rather than pagan mythology. For example, if you're looking for parallels to the stories of Jesus' resurrection and ascension, you'd be much better off studying the pseudepigrapha that was associated with Enoch, rather than the myths of Dionysius, Osiris, etc. Why? They're just that much more similar - not to mention far more likely to be familiar to the early Christians.

As I say, it is just extremism and completely unwarranted to say that the Gospels are "nothing but" religious proclamations. They are religious proclamations, but they do use history to make their proclamations. This kind of "either-or" thinking, that any amount of legendary material must automatically disqualify the whole, is far too simplistic!

The fact that the Gospels are full of exaggerated or legendary material does not automatically disqualify them as evidence for what Jesus was like. There's plenty of historical stuff in there too, as I've already pointed out here and elsewhere. By studying them carefully and working out the history of the material, scholars can find out quite a lot about what Jesus was like - beyond his mere existence.

Very interesting, however irrelevant to the point I was making which was was that you could not prove that he was the son of god, nor that he produced miracles. :rolleyes: I don't recall mentioning anything about what he was like for example. Perhaps my "nothing more than existence" remark clarifying something with Stapel was extreme, but had you read my remarks above that you would have noticed the point I was making had nothing to do with the above.

In any case, I don't see what role "logic" and "proof" play in the examination of historical accounts. You can't "prove" anything about the past.

:hmm: Ok lets use Arrian's work on Alexander as an example. If Arrian claimed that Alexander conquered Egypt, how can we prove this? We can study the fact that Alexander founded at least one city there, the Greek influence on Egyptian affairs, Greek influence on art there and so on. We look for external evidence. With matters of what someone said, or the life and actions of one person this becomes almost impossible. We can prove that Alexander took control of Egypt, we would find it very hard to prove he cut the Gordion Knot though.

Which is why I argue that proving that Jesus lived and breathed probably isn't too hard IMO. Proving he was the son of god and turned water into wine is impossible though. Faith, just like it's a matter of faith to believe that Alexander cut the Gordion Knot (as opposed to simply Arrian and others making it up after the fact to give his actions an extra twist).

The fact that the Gospels are full of exaggerated or legendary material does not automatically disqualify them as evidence for what Jesus was like. There's plenty of historical stuff in there too, as I've already pointed out here and elsewhere. By studying them carefully and working out the history of the material, scholars can find out quite a lot about what Jesus was like - beyond his mere existence.

In any case, I don't see what role "logic" and "proof" play in the examination of historical accounts. You can't "prove" anything about the past.

When writing down your own history, people tend to skip the bad parts, and exagerate the good parts. The defeats are hardly described. The glorious moments are blown out of proportions. This happens in any country even today.

Why should the bible be different?
Between 30AD and 60 AD, the died or missing Jesus was seen as the Messiah by some Jews, and some of the fans of this idea started writing gospels. It seems perfectly logic to add divinity and miracles!

The Romans, puzzled by the many rebels in Judea, saw a great opportunity. No better Messiah for these rebels, than a dead Messiah that preaches obidience to the Roman oppressor.
There is historical evidence that the Romans were capable of infiltrating and writing epsitals ;) !
When Paul, in his epistal to Christians in Rome, sais hi to several Romans, he does so to a 'guy that guards the treasury'. There is historical proof that Roman treaserers usually were in command of the secret service too. Ain't that cynical?

The bible makes so much more sense, when forgetting the religious stuff, and focussing on the historical possibilities!

No sensible person believes that any of the Gospels were written by the authors to whom they are traditionally assigned. Those ascriptions came much later - only at the end of the second century.

I'm afraid that the notion that the whole of the Jesus story has been lifted from pagan stories, like that of Dionysius, has been rather debunked over the past hundred years or so. It was quite a fashionable theory in the nineteenth century, but as scholars since then have learned much more about early Christianity, and in particular its relation to Judaism, they have generally concluded that it's more fruitful to look for the origins of Christian beliefs within Judaism rather than pagan mythology. For example, if you're looking for parallels to the stories of Jesus' resurrection and ascension, you'd be much better off studying the pseudepigrapha that was associated with Enoch, rather than the myths of Dionysius, Osiris, etc. Why? They're just that much more similar - not to mention far more likely to be familiar to the early Christians.

As I say, it is just extremism and completely unwarranted to say that the Gospels are "nothing but" religious proclamations. They are religious proclamations, but they do use history to make their proclamations. This kind of "either-or" thinking, that any amount of legendary material must automatically disqualify the whole, is far too simplistic!

I am not saying christianity origins from a pagan mythology. It seems pretty obvious it origins from Judaism (we agree on that).
But once early christianity had grown a bit, some of the the early Christians introduced all these miracles. Whether they origin from Enoch or dionysos doesn't matter too much. What matters is that they were added and do not represent historical facts.

Furthermore, it can be doubted that Jesus was a peace preaching pascifist.
1. Why would the Romans chase him? 25-30AD Judea was filled with rebels that easily took all time the Romans soldiers had?
2. Why did Jesus and his disciples hide in the fields?
3. Why were his disciples armed?

To me it seems rather obvious that the Jesus we read about in the gospels, was 'shaped' after his death or disappearance.

Of course the Jesus of the Gospels has been "shaped". But in what direction? One thing you must remember is that different Christians had different views of Jesus. For example, Matthew presents Jesus as a new Moses. Luke does not do that. Again, Luke presents Jesus as preaching repentance. The other Gospels do not. John calls Jesus "the Son". The other Gospels don't. The fact that they all had different points of view and their own agendas is one of the things that helps scholars to identify the real history behind it all.

PrivateHudson, it looks like you and I pretty much agree... I was picking up on your use of "proof" because being a philosopher at heart I think it's too strong a word to use in history. But in the sense that you use it, of course it is relevant.

Stapel, I haven't heard the theory that the Roman political authorities deliberately influenced the development of Christianity... I have to say that given that the authorities' response to Christianity was to try to stamp it out it sounds slightly unlikely. Can you give any sources or references for this?

By the way, it's actually unlikely that Jesus was any kind of social or political rebel - or if he was, he was incredibly unsuccessful. The simple reason for that is that he survived as long as he did. John the Baptist was executed by Antipas, but Jesus was not. In fact, Jesus seems to have been less popular in his day than John. Jesus perished because he caused a disturbance in Jerusalem during the flashpoint period of Passover - primarily, it seems, doing something offensive in the Temple and predicting its destruction. The High Priest saw to it that he waa charged, handed to the Romans and executed.

Also Judea was not governed by the Romans, although they technically ran the place, and they certainly didn't spend their time running around after rebels. In fact, I think the degree of rebellion that there was in Judea at this time is generally exaggerated - if nothing else, because the Roman presence there was actually very small and unobtrusive. There were a total of 3,000 Roman soldiers in Judea - a tiny number - and they spent all their time in Caesarea, except for occasions like Passover when they received reinforcements from Syria and guarded Jerusalem while the crowds were there. Jerusalem, like other cities in Judea, was actually governed by the priests - the High Priest was in charge of policing, taxes, and law and order. That's why the Gospels represent the High Priest as being the one who deals with Jesus, and Pilate as the one who simply signs the form allowing him to be executed (this was the one thing the Jewish authorities could not do). Apart from the improbable details and characterisation of this section of the Gospels (such as Pilate being unwilling to crucify Jesus), the basic plot rings perfectly true.

Of course the Jesus of the Gospels has been "shaped". But in what direction? One thing you must remember is that different Christians had different views of Jesus. For example, Matthew presents Jesus as a new Moses. Luke does not do that. Again, Luke presents Jesus as preaching repentance. The other Gospels do not. John calls Jesus "the Son". The other Gospels don't. The fact that they all had different points of view and their own agendas is one of the things that helps scholars to identify the real history behind it all.
Since we do not know who Jesus really was, we can not say in what direction he was shaped. By adding all the miracles (already known from other stories), the gospels simply loose credibility! One thing we do know, is that the gospels were written by Christians. Therefor, we cannot trust them. I think you understand what I mean with that. A self-written history is by definition not too credible. The writers of the gospels had a certain idea of Jesus, which might or might not be close to the actual truth. It seems obvious they wrote down what they wanted Jesus to be, not per se what he actually was.

Stapel, I haven't heard the theory that the Roman political authorities deliberately influenced the development of Christianity... I have to say that given that the authorities' response to Christianity was to try to stamp it out it sounds slightly unlikely. Can you give any sources or references for this?

The first source is common sense when reading Paul's epistals. They are so enormously pro-Roman........ How much work is it to intercept a letter from a prisoner, and alternate it? Or to force a prisoner to write something down? Or to write down you are in a prison, while actually retiring in a villa in Rome?

To read more about it: Robert Eisenman's analysis of the dead sea rolls. Jesus' brother James did not recognise his own brother in Paul's epistals.
There are also sources about the Roman secret service methods (Rose Mary Sheldon).
You know what is really unlikely? Not a single Roman officer thinking of splitting up the rebelling Jews into different sects.
Did you ever notice Paul got protected by the Romans at the temple? Highly suspicious! There is also a few years missing in Paul's life.

By the way, it's actually unlikely that Jesus was any kind of social or political rebel - or if he was, he was incredibly unsuccessful. The simple reason for that is that he survived as long as he did. John the Baptist was executed by Antipas, but Jesus was not. In fact, Jesus seems to have been less popular in his day than John. Jesus perished because he caused a disturbance in Jerusalem during the flashpoint period of Passover - primarily, it seems, doing something offensive in the Temple and predicting its destruction. The High Priest saw to it that he waa charged, handed to the Romans and executed.There were many unsuccesful rebels.
Why would the Romans execute a jew on behalf of the high priest. Makes no sense to me. What do they care?
This line in John's gospel, where the priests say: "We have no other king but Caesar", is completely laughable from a historical view. A jewish highpriest would never ever say that!

Also Judea was not governed by the Romans, although they technically ran the place, and they certainly didn't spend their time running around after rebels. In fact, I think the degree of rebellion that there was in Judea at this time is generally exaggerated - if nothing else, because the Roman presence there was actually very small and unobtrusive. There were a total of 3,000 Roman soldiers in Judea - a tiny number - and they spent all their time in Caesarea, except for occasions like Passover when they received reinforcements from Syria and guarded Jerusalem while the crowds were there. Jerusalem, like other cities in Judea, was actually governed by the priests - the High Priest was in charge of policing, taxes, and law and order. That's why the Gospels represent the High Priest as being the one who deals with Jesus, and Pilate as the one who simply signs the form allowing him to be executed (this was the one thing the Jewish authorities could not do). Apart from the improbable details and characterisation of this section of the Gospels (such as Pilate being unwilling to crucify Jesus), the basic plot rings perfectly true.
It does not make sense, since the Romans burnt the whole of Jerusalem in 72AD (or so). There are many stories about the tough possession of Judea. the number of 3000 soldiers seems very unlikely to me!

Well, I'm afraid the number of around 3,000 soldiers is quite accurate. As I said, the Romans didn't actually govern Judea. They didn't want to. Until 6 AD, the whole of the Holy Land was under the direct rule of local kings and tetrarchs, existing essentially as a client state of the Empire (the kings etc had to follow Roman foreign policy, in exchange for which they enjoyed the protection of Rome in the case of problems with other foreign powers or internal insurgents). In 6 AD the ineptitude of the tetrarch of Judea led to his being replaced with direct Roman rule - the prefect - but the Romans still took a very laissez-faire approach. Hence the minimal army presence, and the turning over of domestic matters to the priests. The idea that Judea in the time of Jesus was an "occupied" country, like occupied France, is quite wrong. If there was a big problem, the prefect could call upon the help of his superior, the legate of Syria, who had something like 20,000 infantry and 5,000 cavalry. And we all know how good Ancient Cavalry is!

And why would the Romans execute a Jew on behalf of the high priest? Simple - he was a potential trouble-maker, and the last thing the Romans wanted was trouble at Passover. As a rule, the Romans trusted the Jews to run their own affairs. If the high priest wanted someone executed, the Romans would generally do it. There was nothing unusual in this at all. Pilate executed vast numbers of people while he was prefect - in fact, it was his over-enthusiastic use of the cross which led to his deposition in 36.

Of course, by 70 (the date of the destruction of the Temple) the situation was very different, as a major revolt and full-blown war had been raging for a number of years. Obviously the Romans sent in serious troops to deal with the problem. But this was nothing like the situation in Jesus' day.

You're right about the line attributed by John to the high priest - pretty daft! Of course, John was writing in, perhaps, the 90s and knew relatively little of what Judaism was really like in Jesus' day. That's why you find that the "Pharisees" and the "scribes" of the Synoptics have, by the time you get to John's Gospel, faded into the background and been largely replaced by "the Jews".

Anyhow, you are right to say that the Gospels lose credibility through their inclusion of miracles and the fact that they are written by Christians, but it doesn't mean they lose *all* credibility. As I've argued before, there are many things in the Gospels that are potentially embarrassing to Christians (e.g. Jesus' false prediction that none of the Temple's stones would remain standing, his insistence that the world would end within a generation, his use of the phrase "Son of Man" and apparent avoidance of the title "Christ", etc). This suggests that the Christians did not distort the material as much as you might think they did. They did write what they wanted Jesus to be, but they were working with material that, to varying degrees, portrayed him as he actually was. You can see the tension between the different "layers", as it were, within the Gospels, and by studying it get a pretty good idea of what is real history and what is later legend.

By the way, don't be *too* quick to dismiss *all* the miracle stories. No doubt Jesus was not really in the habit of strolling over the lake or raising the dead. But, equally, there is no doubt that Jesus had a reputation, in his lifetime, as a miracle-worker and as a healer. I think it's quite likely that Jesus did perform healings, at least, and that at least some of them were probably effective - presumably for psychosomatic reasons, and suchlike.

I'm still not enormously convinced by the theory about Paul's epistles. Note that most of them were not actually written in prison, but on the road. And what is so pro-Roman about them? Apart from Romans 13:1-10 I can't think of much. Of course, in Romans as a whole, Paul adopts an uncharacteristically submissive attitude to his readers - but these are the Christians in Rome, not the authorities. And it's quite reasonable that he should have done this, since this is the only letter by Paul that we possess that was written to a church that he himself had not founded. Again, perfectly reasonable that Paul should have been protected by Romans at the Temple. He was a Roman citizen. It would have been much stranger if they had not helped him.

Remember that Paul was, in all probability, a pretty minor character within Christianity during his lifetime. James of Jerusalem, and Peter, were the leaders of the Christian movement. If any enterprising Roman had felt like forging a few letters, they would have forged some of theirs. Of course, the New Testament does indeed include some letters attributed to James and Peter, and they are of course pseudonymous. But I don't detect much pro-Roman-state propaganda in those letters. They're theological - 1 Peter is written by a follower of Paul, James by an opponent, and 2 Peter by someone in the second century who liked Jude.

Again, the Jews were not particularly rebelling when Paul's letters were written, which was in the early to mid 50s. I don't think there would have been much motive for any Roman official to tinker with them. On the contrary, the Romans wanted to keep the Jews quiet and happy. It wasn't in their interest to have them all splitting into rival groups and denouncing each other. Little wonder that the first we hear of Christians outside Christian sources - in the sources cited by Pikachu at the start of this thread - they are all negative. The Romans didn't want this nonsense to spread any more than the Jews did.

This sort of evidence isn't quite on the level of finding a birth certificate or a final resting place.

Hang on a minute... maybe this is so to make sure people believed in him?

Then again, some people wouldn't believe even if Jesus ran over them on a pedestrian crossing.

Unless of course someone would like to prove for example that Jesus walked on water...


Here you go... Had this on my hard disk since 27 AD. :D
http://biblia.com/jesusart/jesus-water-31.jpg

Unless of course there's been a mistake in the Bible and he walked over someone

i.e.

Jesus walked on Walter. :mischief:

You're getting good at this, keep it up and I might just believe you could be funny :p

(I have GOT to stop reading and watching so much Babylon 5) :blush:

It's true. Poor old St Walter, he gets even less attention than Thaddeus or Judas (not Iscariot).

(excerpt from The Secret Gospel of Walter Ch4:v22)

An lo! the Messiah did say that I would form a perfect bridge over the tributary and, citing my concerns, he said unto me "Ask not of the strife that comes with imitating man-made crossings; they are not to be worshipped. Praise be to God." And thus, removing my meagre dressings I lay down upon the bank of the stream and reached to the other side so that the Messiah could cross. And, for a man so heavy with wisdom, it appeared that he was weightless; as if levitating over me as he crossed the river. "Rise, Walter," He said. And I did. "Cheers mate, " He said, "I just bought these sandals and didn't want to get them wet. You're a star." And with that the Messiah walked off into the approaching sunset, curing lame children, performing impromptu neurosurgery, and extracting objects from the anuses of the self-Sodomites such as forks, ducks, and tins of asparagus tips. Amen.

from the internet:

The greatest blow felt by the Jews was to their national pride. They believed that God had chosen them to be his special people. They looked forward to the day when the nations of the world would come to worship God in Jerusalem. Instead, the Romans and their puppet rulers desecrated their holy places, and insulted their laws and customs.

Herod the Great built a temple to Augustus in Caesarea. Inside it were statues of the emperor depicted as Zeus and Rome personified as Hera, statues the Jews considered idolatrous. In Caesarea andin Jerusalem Herod built theaters and amphitheaters. Games were held in both places every fourth year in honor of Augustus. The naked competitors greatly offended the Jews, as did the religious customs linked with the games. Worst of all, over the great gate of the temple in Jerusalem Herod placed a massive golden eagle- the symbol of Roman dominion.

Roman soldiers were stationed in Judea to keep in check the Parthians who came from an area north-east of Syria. They were never completely conquered by the Romans. The soldiers also kept the peace in Judea, prevented riots and ensured the safety of trade routes.

The army's headquarters was at Caesarea but a detachment was kept as a garrison in Jerusalem. Soldiers were always on duty in the outer temple area, and more were sent to Jerusalem at Passover time when pilgrims flocked to the city.

The Jews were left under no illusion as to who controlled their country. Uniformed soldiers were an everyday sight in their streets. The Jews were, however, exempt from military service because their law forbade the carrying of weapons on the Sabbath, and because soldiers were expected to take part in pagan religious ceremonies.

One of the most hated aspects of Roman domination was the heavy taxation. The provinces were expected to bear most of the cost of administering the empire. In the province of Syria income tax was 1 per cent of a man's income per year, but there were also export and import taxes, taxes levied on crops one-tenth of the grain crop and one-fifth of the wine, fruit and oil - purchase taxes, taxes payable on the transfer of property, emergency taxes, and so on.

A Roman official called a censor was responsible for collecting the revenue but he sold the right to extort it to the highest bidders. These TAX COLLECTORS demanded more money than was due and kept the difference for themselves. It is likely that they took bribes from the rich so it was the poor people who really paid for the Roman government.

There were frequent Jewish revolts against the Romans, triggered by ill treatment of the Jews. In the time of the procurator Ventidius Cumanus (48-52 AD) a Roman soldier threw a scroll of the Law into the fire. The Jews were so incensed that Cumanus was forced to have the soldier executed. Under Judas the Galilean the Jews revolted against the excessive taxes but the revolt was put down with great cruelty and all the rebels were executed (Acts 5:37). Because they longed to be free of Rome sects such as the Zealots openly rebelled, and the Essenes opted out of normal citizenship in their self-supporting community.

The occupation had some benefits. The Romans secured peace and built a good system of roads. This in turn encouraged trade. They often respected local customs, allowed religious freedom and a certain degree of self government. They built baths and government offices.

The Sanhedrin, (the Jewish council of seventy elders and the high priest which met in Jerusalem) had control of religious affairs and also administered government and justice under the authority of the Roman procurator. Although it tried certain criminal cases it does not seem to have had the right to enforce capital punishment, which is why Jesus had to be executed by Pilate, the Roman governor.

From the same website ( http://www.bible-history.com/jesus/ )

- Outside the New Testament, references to Pontius Pilate and his 10-year procuratorship in Judea are rare.

- The Roman historian Tacitus mentions him only in passing when noting "the execution of Christus, author of that sect, by the procurator Pontius Pilate in the reign of Tiberius."

- But the Jewish historian Josephus recounts three incidents involving his rule:

First , Pilate deliberately offended Jews by sending soldiers into Jerusalem carrying images of the Roman emperor, but called them back after an angry crowd demonstrated in the streets.

Second, he sought to win favor by improving the Holy City's water supply, but Jews were outraged when he tried to use temple funds for the project. In the rioting that followed, several citizens were killed because Pilate's soldiers disregarded his orders to use batons rather than swords.

Third, Pilate was ordered by his superior Lucius Vitellius, the governor of Syria, to go back to Rome for an investigation after his forces ambushed and killed a gathering of religious fanatics in Samaria. According to tradition, he was tried and condemned to exile in France at Vienne-sur-Rhone, where he committed suicide during the reign of Caligula.

- The New Testament's authors were not unsympathetic to Pilate, and early Church fathers even thought of him as "a Christian by conscience."

What we can clearly see, is that the biblical PP is somewhat different from the 'real' PP.

When reading the above information, we can conlcude that riots were common.

If we accept that Jesus was a religious leader around that time, we cannot deny the possibility he was a rebel!

Stapel, I would be a little wary of that website - anyone who thinks that Jesus "identified himself with God" is a bit shaky when it comes to New Testament scholarship!

Pilate was certainly a pretty nasty character. That's one reason to be wary of the depiction of him in the Gospels - someone like him wouldn't have given two denarii whether Jesus lived or died. No doubt he just signed the papers and forgot the matter.

But the information about the Roman "occupation" of Judea is really a caricature. The Sanhedrin didn't just run "religious" matters. They ran everything, including taxes and the police force. Again, the notion that "uniformed Roman soldiers" were an everyday sight on Palestinian streets is just fantasy, one that comes from watching "The Life of Brian" one times too many. It just wasn't like that.

Remember - the Romans had no interest whatsoever in "Romanising" Palestine. They only took nominal charge of Judea in 6 AD because they had to. They would have preferred it to remain in the charge of a local ruler, as the whole country had before that date, and as the rest of it continued to do after it. (There were, of course, no Roman soldiers in Galilee - if Jesus had spent his whole life in Nazareth he might never have seen one.) It is true that Herod the Great was regarded by many as not sufficiently Jewish. Herod was actually Idumaean, from south of Judea, and was therefore only "half-Jewish" in the eyes of many. And he did indeed seek to bring his realm into what he might have thought of as "the modern world", with the naked Games and so forth. But this had nothing whatsoever to do with the Romans. In fact, it was a policy not of "Romanising" but of "Hellenising" - that is, becoming more attuned to the Greek culture of the eastern Mediterranean. It was a domestic policy initiated by Herod. No doubt it was partly inspired by his wish to ingratiate himself to his Roman patrons, but as far as the Romans were concerned the Jews in Palestine could behave and believe as they saw fit. The Romans wanted one thing, and one thing only: a stable region in the Middle East.

You could draw a pretty good analogy with the Americans in Iraq, both in the 1980s and today. At both times, America wanted a stable, secular state in the Middle East, that could serve as a locus for American power (indirectly) and which might help to act as a sort of brake on nuttiness in the region. In the past, they did this by supporting Saddam Hussein, regarded as a strong, secular ruler. Today, for reasons that we needn't go into here, this policy has been replaced by one of removing Saddam and installing a new government that is sympathetic to America. In the meantime, America has itself been running the place. Once the various transitional governments have taken control of Iraq and sorted out the security issues, the American troops will leave, and (in theory) we will have a stable, democratic state in the Middle East that is friendly to the West. That's what the Americans want. They are not interested in converting the Iraqis to their own religion or culture. They haven't conquered the place in order to build vast numbers of McDonald's and Starbucks there - at least I hope to God not. And they don't want to keep any more troops there than necessary, or have them there any longer than necessary. Those troops are needed elsewhere and the longer they stay the more annoyed both the Iraqis and the American people become.

Similarly, the Romans wanted a secure state in the Middle East. They weren't interested in occupying it if they didn't have to. They had better things to do with their soldiers. They brought in extra troops to the region at times of potential trouble, such as Passover, to be sure, but that was to keep the peace, and the troops left afterwards. They didn't patrol the streets like some kind of ancient Gestapo. As far as they were concerned, someone like Herod was an ideal ruler. He could be relied on to keep the place stable, and he supported Roman foreign policy. In return, he could appeal to Rome if his own position was threatened.

I think that many Jews thought Herod was pretty good too. Of course much of his "Hellenising" policy was unpopular, but many people approved of it too. Some Jews went so far as to have some kind of ghastly-sounding operation to remove the signs of circumcision so they could participate in the Games and not look Jewish. But there is no evidence of any particular grumbling against Herod in his lifetime. He did, after all, observe the Jewish law pretty closely. The picture one gets is of a strong ruler, who did some controversial things but won grudging respect from most people. He never caused enough discontent to suffer genuine popular opposition to his rule. You could liken him to Margaret Thatcher - strong and controversial, hated by many, but not exactly a tyrannical despot. In fact, Herod did rather better, since he remained king until his death and was responsible for no policy as disastrously unpopular as the poll tax. His son Antipas, who ruled Galilee, did pretty similarly. His richly decorated palace was torn down by a mob after his death, but the fact that nothing like this happened during his lifetime indicates a pretty successful ruler.

As for tax collectors - that's another thing that is often very much overstated. There isn't really much to support the notion that they were hated because they were seen as tools of the Roman oppressors. On the contrary, they were hated because they lined their own pockets. And that meant that they were not necessarily hated. Josephus ("Jewish Wars" 2:285-8) talks of a tax collector who used his wealth to bribe a Roman official in Caesarea (one place that was "occupied" by the Romans) on behalf of the Jews. In that story, the tax collector is the hero (and the Roman is the villain, because he takes the money and doesn't do a thing!). In other words, tax collectors were regarded as dishonest officials, and I think that's enough explanation for their unpopularity. In any case, there is no evidence that Palestine suffered higher taxes than was normal in ancient times. It is quite possible that the Romans operated the whole place at a loss, for the sake of regional stability.

By the same token, I don't think riots were especially common either in Herod's time or in Jesus' day. Of course there were the usual fanatics, political extremists, and the rest. But that was all par for the course. The incidents cited in the post above don't testify to a region simmering with discontent, eternally on the brink of rebellion. They are the normal kind of awkward incident that is bound to occur occasionally in a situation like that. There was always the possibility of a political solution to problems, partly because, in Roman eyes, the High Priest represented the Jewish people and, if there were a serious problem, he could be replaced. Or take the notorious incident when Pilate had troops march through Jerusalem displaying their standards: the Jews objected and declared that they were ready to die rather than allow it to happen. Pilate backed down and removed the standards. Later, in 40, Caligula planned to put up a statue of himself in the Temple. That caused widespread horror, with farmers threatening to strike, bringing about serious famine and disorder. But they didn't strike. Instead, a delegation was sent to the Syrian legate (who was officially in charge of the whole Roman Middle East) to plead their case. The legate sympathised and delayed ordering the statue. And not long after, Caligula was assassinated and everyone was happy. That's how crises tended to be handled at this time - through negotiation. And even someone like Pontius Pilate was able to back down when necessary.

Of course, in the 60s, Palestine did erupt into revolt and open war. But that was decades in the future. The situation was quite different in Jesus' day. And yes, Jesus was definitely a rebel. But what sort? That's another question entirely.