The historical Jesus leads to the biblical Jesus.

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Sky Pilot's picture
JoC,

JoC,

Even the Bible says that those who claim to talk to the dead are full of bull shit. So if you believe that statement how can you believe that Yeshua's followers spoke to the zombie?

Jeremiah 27:9 (ERV) =
"So don’t listen to your prophets. Don’t listen to those who use magic to tell what will happen in the future. Don’t listen to those who say they can interpret dreams. Don’t listen to those who talk to the dead or to people who practice magic. All of them tell you, “You will not be slaves to the king of Babylon.”"

So if you believe that Yeshua's followers spoke to the zombie then you also have to believe that people can foresee the future, interpret dreams, and practice real magic (miracles).

Ensjo's picture
Unfortunately the tomb

@JoC:

So, you see where my line of reasoning was going?

Unfortunately the tomb claimed to be Jesus' burial site and the martyrdom of the disciples and their circumstances are traditions that may have been invented or highly distorted from the facts they are supposedly based on.

mykcob4's picture
Nope, JoC There is not a

Nope, JoC There is not a shred of evidence that jesus ever existed let alone that he did anything explained or otherwise.

jonthecatholic's picture
We've been through this

We've been through this before. I actually read your recent thread on this topic. Sorry to say but the guy who wrote that article knows surprisingly little about the the evidence we have that Jesus did in fact exist.

Old man shouts at clouds's picture
citations please. This would

citations please. This would be radical news if true, But it aint, There is not one skerrick of evidence for "jesus" (yeshua bin Josef, son of Miriam. Not one independent concurrent timeline reference anywhere, but I would be happy to stand corrected providing you don't trot out the already discredited frauds of Pliny, Josephus etc.

Otherwise Hitchen's razor for you.

jonthecatholic's picture
It seems to me, you'd believe

It seems to me, you'd believe that anything is a fraud as long as it attests to Jesus existing. Are you willing to throw away the entire works of Tacitus, the best attested historical document we have on ancient Rome just because he mentions Jesus once? Are you willing to throw away all of Josephus works because he mentions Jesus and a brother of Jesus in his works as well?

If so, pretty much, nothing and no one in the ancient world could have possibly existed coz well, all the sources we have are made by frauds in your view. I have nothing more to say to you on this topic.

Old man shouts at clouds's picture
Aahahahhaha seriously? The

Aahahahhaha seriously? The one paragraph insertion into Josephus has long been considered a poor fraud, similarly with *Tacitus which is an 11th century copy of a Second Century manuscript ( we do not know how accurately copied after ONE THOUSAND YEARS) or are you throwing away all those years of study by Theological scholars and basing your assertions on misguided "faith?"

*"No original manuscripts of the Annals exist and the surviving copies of Tacitus' works derive from two principal manuscripts, known as the Medicean manuscripts, written in Latin, which are held in the Laurentian Library in Florence, Italy. It is the second Medicean manuscript, 11th century and from the Benedictine abbey at Monte Cassino, which is the oldest surviving copy of the passage describing Christians. Scholars generally agree that these copies were written at Monte Cassino and the end of the document refers to Abbas Raynaldus who was most probably one of the two abbots of that name at the abbey during that period."

Note; Tacitus describes Christians and their faith not any evidence for the existence of such a person as Jesus or the Christ. He blames them for the great fire of Rome ( 30 years after the supposed death of Jesus). Here is the key passage translated (courtesy of Wikepedia, I doubt you could cope with my original study on this)
" 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 Judæa, 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. Accordingly, an arrest was first made of all who pleaded guilty; then, upon their information, an immense multitude was convicted, not so much of the crime of firing the city, as of hatred against mankind".

Have you heard of basic research?

Note the phrase: " And a most mischievious superstition"
The Christus reference is telling, I will leave that to you to look up.
You might want to look up when Pilate was actually in Judeae, makes interesting reading being as you want to rely on Roman records.

Your evidence relies on a fake one para entry and a hand copied document one thousand years after the events describing the christians as utterly mistaken? Seriously? Oh gotta love an enthusiast JoC..."None so blind that will not see."
Please don't come back with Polycarp or the Rylands fragment I have already demolished those furphys in discussion with your fellow fantasist AB.

There is no corroborating evidence extant for such a Messiah figure. Do you not think the OCD Roman bureaucrats would have missed writing about hundreds of Jewish zombies on the streets of Jerusalem, the day turning to night? The disruption of the Jewish day of Passover? All at the crucifixion of the leader of an (not so popular) uprising? Please JoC, use some intelligence and critical thinking here. The Romans were obsessive about recording events and logistics even the most minor things!

There is no corroborating evidence of the time that describes Jesus's existence and death. None.
.

jonthecatholic's picture
Tacitus does actually mention

Tacitus does actually mention a "Christus" where the Christians get their name from. So if not Jesus, who is this Christus that Tacitus is talking about?

"Your evidence relies on a fake one para entry and a hand copied document one thousand years after the events describing the christians as utterly mistaken?"
-Exactly my point. Are you willing to throw away everything we know about the ancient world because of this? Even if this was written years after, this is our BEST record of the events of the ancient world.

"Do you not think the OCD Roman bureaucrats would have missed writing about hundreds of Jewish zombies on the streets of Jerusalem"

- From Matthew, I assume. "many bodies of the saints... were raised." Who said hundreds? It could've been a dozen or even 20. And quite possibly only the disciples would recognize them. What was it to the Romans who these people were.

"the day turning to night?"

-Coz the darkness came over the whole land? This is from Mark right? You'll actually notice that Mark makes use of a lot of hyperbole in his gospel. It's quite possible that a cloud simply made the whole land (area they were in) darkened the place. or maybe even an eclipse, which is quite possible as the moon would have been full during this time (notice that Easter is always celebrated near a Full Moon).

"The disruption of the Jewish day of Passover?"
- Why is this so hard to believe?

"The Romans were obsessive about recording events and logistics even the most minor things!"
-And? They don't need to record every single minor weather disturbance or eclipse which happens quite often.

How about the Gospels, sir? How many people copied those books laboriously over hours and days and you'd simply throw that away as well? Nothing we have today is better attested to than the New Testament.

Nyarlathotep's picture
JoC - Nothing we have today

JoC - Nothing we have today is better attested to than the New Testament.

What a ludicrous statement. Look what religion has done to your brain!

Sapporo's picture
As has been explained,

As has been explained, Tacitus's account only amounts to "I was told that there is a group of people who call themselves Christians who follow Christ". This is no different than hearing about accounts of people who follow the god Mithras.

In addition, "Christ" is merely a title meaning "anointed one": the Jews had been waiting for a Messiah for centuries, and there have been many other instances of individuals who claimed to be the Messiah.

Herodotus is regarded as a highly useful source of information for the history of the ancient world. However, he tells us that when the Persians invaded Greece, they were prevented from destroying Delphi by the Greek gods. Should we regard this as reliable proof of the Greek gods?

Old man shouts at clouds's picture
Gordon Benett JoC, nobody is

Gordon Benett JoC, nobody is remotely suggesting we get rid of recorded history including the bulk of Tacitus. Tacitus was reporting on the christians and THEIR beliefs in Rome. Not stating a fact, do you not get that or is it plainer for you in the original latin where the grammar points plainly to the passage as a report not a fact.? Note Tacitus was originally writing some time after the Fire of Rome some 30 to 50 years after the supposed death of Jesus.

Even if there were only 20 zombies wandering about the streets of Jerusalem do you not think that would, i don't know, maybe have been scribe-worthy.? According to you the folk would have just gone, oh look...a long line of dancing Rabbis, dead, by the looks, meh, commonplace. Move along, happens all the time... Yet nothing written anywhere., Nada, Zilch.

Both Josephus and Philo have heaps to say about Pilate as Prefect, yet strangely nothing about this jesus bloke, Nothing about zombies, nothing about day into night,nothing about miracles, yet plenty about day to day stuff that happened, like the Roman Soldiers smuggling in effigies to Jerusalem, the annoyance of the locals at Pilate building an aqueduct. How did they miss that earth shaking event of the crucifixion of the messiah and the removal of a body after only one day? To disrupt Passover would have been a HUGE event to the Jews at that time, they rose in revolt several times over less, yet that is not reported by either man. Pilate was less than popular with the Jews and riled their religious sensibilities several times during his tenure.His errors were reported to Rome and he got himself in serious trouble with Tiberius for his insensitivity.

I did direct you to to the salient points to study in my last post ( Like the context of the mention of Christus, Pilate, etc) but you seem to prefer some la la fantasy belief rather than some solid research. ..I really recommend you read some Philo and Josephus, good translations are available.

Frankly your whole Easter/full moon passage is so amusing I might keep it and show my grandkids... Easter matches the date of the crucifixion? You know that if that were so then we would be celebrating Easter and Passover at the same time? We don't, well, sometimes we do sometimes they are weeks apart, you can look it up as to why. I am not in the business of educating those capable of simple research.

I repeat: There is no corroborating evidence of the time that describes Jesus's existence and death.
None.

Sheldon's picture
"We've been through this

"We've been through this before. I actually read your recent thread on this topic. Sorry to say but the guy who wrote that article knows surprisingly little about the the evidence we have that Jesus did in fact exist."

Well it would be logically impossible to know anything about something he claims doesn't exist.

Sheldon's picture
And we can actually come up

And we can actually come up with information about him.
1. He lived
2. He did some things that could not be explained
3. He claimed to be God/ son of God
4. He put on trial, was charged guilty and crucified
5. He was buried
--------------------
1. There is no conclusive evidence for this, not one word recorded about him until decades after he had allegedly dies. The Nt is rife with errancy and inconsistency as well
2. I owned a dog like that once, this proves nothing of course.
3. Allegedly, since you can't evidence this either, but i's so commonplace it's almost a banality. again this is evidence of nothing,
4 Allegedly - I am reaching for Hitchens razor here, tread carefully.
5 Entombed surely, and again allegedly.

Nothing to see here, move along please...

algebe's picture
@ JOC: "4. He put on trial,

@ JOC: "4. He put on trial, was charged guilty and crucified 5. He was buried"

That ain't necessarily so. There are a lot of oddities in the Jesus crucifixion story. Crucifixion typically took several days to kill a strong young man. Yet Jesus died in a few hours. He was stabbed with a spear by Longinus, yet all depictions show the spear piercing the right side, not the left where the heart is. Roman practice was to leave crucifixion victims to rot on the cross as a warning to others. It would have been very unusual for a condemned criminal's body to be taken down and returned to his family for burial. Even if he was taken down, he'd be more likely to be tossed on the rubbish heap than buried in a tomb.

There were cases were people were crucified and taken down alive. Three friend of Josephus were taken down after he appealed to General Titus. Two later died, but one survived.

The supernatural events that happened during the crucifixion--the earthquake, the darkness, the resurrection--have all the hallmarks of a legend embroidered and expanded through many tellings. Similar claims were made about the births of the Kims in North Korea.

On balance, I don't think there's much that anyone can really claim to know about the life and death of Jesus.

jonthecatholic's picture
I think you need to read the

I think you need to read the accounts again. Slowly. Jesus was scourged, was given a crown of thorns. And there's also an explanation why the crucified bodies had to be taken down right away. In fact, it mentions that to kill the other criminals faster, the Roman soldiers broke their legs. Also, there's an account for why Jesus had a tomb. It's literally right there in the text. It may not be present in ALL gospel accounts. That only means, the gospel writers had different focus in their writings.

"The supernatural events that happened during the crucifixion--the earthquake, the darkness, the resurrection"
- I also explained these in a different thread. For this, I'll repeat the darkness one. It need not be a supernatural event to have darkness after noon. A Dark cloud passed by - hardly supernatural. Barely noteworthy except for the disciples maybe who were already feeling sad during this time.

algebe's picture
@JoC: "Jesus was scourged,

@JoC: "Jesus was scourged, was given a crown of thorns."

Scourging and worse was a standard part of the crucifixion package. Roman soldiers did indeed break prisoners' legs to finish them off quicker. Are you suggesting that happened to Jesus? Wouldn't that have been mentioned in the gospels? The stigmata certainly don't include broken legs.

Aposteriori unum's picture
Since I came too late to

Since I came too late to really get into the debate I have just six words for the op:

Argumentum ad populum.
Testimony is unreliable.

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