Historical evidence for the existence of Jesus

[Sharp]

I read a very long article recently which concluded that there was no reliable evidence for the existence of a man named Jesus Christ who lived in the first century and was crucified under Pontias Pilate. Christian historical books and Christian apologetic websites that I subsequently read were able to counter these claims but not completely.

The article made the following claims:

- The authors of the gospels are actually unknown, and the gospels are clearly biased documents
- Roman records do not record Jesus' crucifixion
- No known historian or academic or scholar who lived before Jesus' death recorded his existence
- The secular historians/people who recorded Jesus' existence were born after Jesus' death and therefore do not represent eye-witness accounts (Josephus, Mara Bar-Serapion, Tacitus, etc.)
- The texts of these secular historians were edited by over-zealous christians such as Eusebius to write Jesus into greater historical prominence

The article concludes that belief in Jesus snowballed collectively from Jewish/Greek mythology.

I have a satisfactory answer for myself to all of the above points, except at this stage for the writers of the gospels being unknown.

I'd like to see what you all think of this, in terms of the treatment of documents mentioning Jesus (including the new testament) as purely historical documents, putting aside momentarily the divine inspiration of the scriptures, and whether, on the basis of documents presently available to us, there is sufficient reliable evidence to prove that Jesus walked the earth.

 

[MahogonySnail]

I don't think there is sufficient evidence. Otherwise we'd have it somewhere.. in a church.. in a synagogue..in a museum..somewhere.

 

[socperkins]

I thought there was historical evidence everywhere; it's news to me. *shrug* Doesn't change my opinion or shake my faith though.

 

[greatkraw]

there ismore documentary evidence of the existence of Jesus than of Julius caesar

one of the best sources is the writings of his enemies

by this i mean the rabbi writings in the Talmud trying to explain his virgin birth etc

people who play this game define history in very narrow ways which, if followed would mean that no ancient writings qualify

 

[Sharp]

The Talmud was written a long time after Jesus died by people who were not born before his death. So was every other secular source.

No secular sources recorded the 3 hours of darkness after Jesus' death, which would have been a pretty noteworthy event.

 

[MahogonySnail]

Well they didn't know or expect the world to live another 2000 years which I suppose is why they didnt think to keep records and things. They also didn't fully realise Jesus's importance until after his resurrection.

 

[Stuey]

I read a very long article recently which concluded that there was no reliable evidence for the existence of a man named Jesus Christ who lived in the first century and was crucified under Pontias Pilate. Christian historical books and Christian apologetic websites that I subsequently read were able to counter these claims but not completely.

The article made the following claims:

- The authors of the gospels are actually unknown, and the gospels are clearly biased documents
- Roman records do not record Jesus' crucifixion
- No known historian or academic or scholar who lived before Jesus' death recorded his existence
- The secular historians/people who recorded Jesus' existence were born after Jesus' death and therefore do not represent eye-witness accounts (Josephus, Mara Bar-Serapion, Tacitus, etc.)
- The texts of these secular historians were edited by over-zealous christians such as Eusebius to write Jesus into greater historical prominence

The article concludes that belief in Jesus snowballed collectively from Jewish/Greek mythology.

I have a satisfactory answer for myself to all of the above points, except at this stage for the writers of the gospels being unknown.

I'd like to see what you all think of this, in terms of the treatment of documents mentioning Jesus (including the new testament) as purely historical documents, putting aside momentarily the divine inspiration of the scriptures, and whether, on the basis of documents presently available to us, there is sufficient reliable evidence to prove that Jesus walked the earth.

May I ask who this 'scholar is'? There are several incorrect claims in that little piece you wrote (I'll point them out in a sec) and I'd wonder whether he is acting within his discipline.

1. Yes the gospels are biased, however if they are so biased the question remains why did they include things such as the crucifixion of Jesus which at the time was an extremly embarrasing thing for early christians.
2. And they record the crucifixion of who else? Even if they had teh chance that the records would hav ebeen lost and destroyed is very high. Absense of evidence is not evidence of absense.
3. The same can be said about many many other people in history, the fact remains that for even such illustrious people as roman emperors we have so few sources, often our entire history of them will be based on a single source or mabye two or three, the bible has far more independent sources - one thing we need to remember is that the bible wasn't written as a whole, but by a variety of people at different times, it was later collected together. As well as the internal sources there are also other sources which directly refer to jesus - can't remember them entirely, mabye Josephus and Jewish Antiquities, tacitus mabye, not sure, just those names/books are floating around in my head. I do remember that one is a Jewish book and the other written by a Roman.
Also... often history was written signficantly after a persons death, the bible is actually written Very soon after Jesus' death compared to many other sources.
4. What is he asking for? If he used this criteria to acertain things we wouldn't have history before the middle ages. The fact remains thata the bible is written by so many independent sources... and they ALL say pretty much the same thing.
5. This is accurate, however historians can often tell which parts have been edited by the writing style and what the writing actually says, I have a hunch it is the jewish writers works which have been edited in part, however historians are fairly sure of which bits have been edited and the additions made.

The fact of the matter is... there is far more evidence for the existence of jesus than so many other historical figures that are so readily agreed on as being fact.

More than this - Serious historians agree on far more than that Jesus existed, I wish I could remember exactly what they all were... however it was things like, He existed, he did things which people thought were miracles, he had a last supper, he was crucified under pontius pilate and a bunch of other facts to go with these... which is quite incredible when you think about it for a figure 2000 years ago. Yet we still have people - atheists often with no background in history claiming that he didn't even exist.

I recently went to a series of talks by John Dickson on the historical jesus and I Strongly recomend them. - He is the person who made or helped make the Christ Files - a documentary of the life of Jesus.

You can take a look at some of his work http://johndickson.org/christfiles there if you would like. Also I think that http://www.publicchristianity.com/library/history.html has a good amount of information on the Historical jesus available.

 

[greatkraw]

The Talmud was written a long time after Jesus died by people who were not born before his death. So was every other secular source.

No secular sources recorded the 3 hours of darkness after Jesus' death, which would have been a pretty noteworthy event.

The Talmud dates back to 200AD it has been added to over a period of time

 

[Stuey]

Sorry I should have explained who John dickson is slightly more, He is a christian and a leading scholar in regards to the Historical Jesus. His work however is done not on the basis that the bible is the word of god but is done using the standard rules and procedures that scholars use in normal history.

 

[joint-heir]

I COULD CARE LESS WHAT SO-CALLED
EVIDENCE THEY PRODUCE OR DONT
IN FACT
THEY COULD CLAIM JESUS TO BE THE COMING
ANTICHRIST
OR THAT HE WAS
LUCIFER IN HEAVEN AND SATAN ON EARTH
IT MAKES NO DIFFERENCE TO ME

BECAUSE
I KNOW
I LIVE
I FEEL
I BREATHE
I CRY
I WORSHIP
I UNDERSTAND
I TRUST
I BELIEVE
JESUS CHRSIT
IS MY GOD AND SAVIOR
AND BY HIS STRIPES I AM HEALED
BY HIS LOVE HE DIED FOR ME
AND NOW I AM SAVED
AND BY HIS GRACE
I HAVE A LIFE MORE ABUNDANT
AND
I WALK IN POWER
AND IN VICTORY
AND I CONQUER EVIL AND MY ENEMY
FOR
I AM
A
JOINT-HEIR
AND IT IS ALL BECAUSE
JESUS CHRIST

 

[charisenexcelcis]

I read a very long article recently which concluded that there was no reliable evidence for the existence of a man named Jesus Christ who lived in the first century and was crucified under Pontias Pilate. Christian historical books and Christian apologetic websites that I subsequently read were able to counter these claims but not completely.

The article made the following claims:

- The authors of the gospels are actually unknown, and the gospels are clearly biased documents
- Roman records do not record Jesus' crucifixion
- No known historian or academic or scholar who lived before Jesus' death recorded his existence
- The secular historians/people who recorded Jesus' existence were born after Jesus' death and therefore do not represent eye-witness accounts (Josephus, Mara Bar-Serapion, Tacitus, etc.)
- The texts of these secular historians were edited by over-zealous christians such as Eusebius to write Jesus into greater historical prominence

The article concludes that belief in Jesus snowballed collectively from Jewish/Greek mythology.

I have a satisfactory answer for myself to all of the above points, except at this stage for the writers of the gospels being unknown.

I'd like to see what you all think of this, in terms of the treatment of documents mentioning Jesus (including the new testament) as purely historical documents, putting aside momentarily the divine inspiration of the scriptures, and whether, on the basis of documents presently available to us, there is sufficient reliable evidence to prove that Jesus walked the earth.

The authorship of the four gospels is mentioned by Christian writes about a hundred years (very conservatively, some say as early as forty) after they were written, by historical standards astonishingly early, so there is actually better evidence than, say the Iliad or Caesars's record of his wars against the Gauls. An area that is providing a lot of authentication is the area of Ostrica--things scratched onto pottery and stones. These are things like letters, shopping lists, graffiti and death markings. The use of the cross at gravesites occurs within thirty years of the resurrection.

 

[Sharp]

Sorry I should have explained who John dickson is slightly more, He is a christian and a leading scholar in regards to the Historical Jesus. His work however is done not on the basis that the bible is the word of god but is done using the standard rules and procedures that scholars use in normal history.

I know John Dickson and your original post was like a summary of his book that I just read. Thanks for the post. The case he makes is a good one.

However, the authors of the gospels are assumed. I don't see any evidence for the existence of Jesus in secular writings and especially the Talmud, which was written generations after Jesus' life and death. The thing for me which is irrefutable is Paul's letters, which make it clear he met with people who knew Jesus during his life.

I'm not trying to say Jesus didn't exist. I know he obviously did. I'm just trying to come to a position where I'm satisfied that the historical evidence forJesus adds up. Those would say Jesus was a myth do have alot of factors in their favour though.

Stuey I'll message you the link to the article. I don't want to post it publicly lest it lead people astray. I wouldn't call the guy a 'scholar' either.

 

[Stuey]

I'm reading that now... it seems to be full of even more assumptions than he claims the bible is made of.


"[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]The author of Luke admits himself as an interpreter of earlier material and not an eyewitness (Luke 1:1-4). Many scholars think the author of Luke lived as a gentile, or at the very least, a Hellenized Jew and even possibly a woman. He (or she) wrote at a time of tension in the Roman empire along with its fever of persecution. Many modern scholars think that the Gospel of Matthew and Luke came from the Mark gospel and a hypothetical document called "Q" (German Quelle, which means "source"). [Helms; Wilson] . However, since we have no manuscript from Q, no one could possibly determine its author or where or how he got his information or the date of its authorship. Again we get faced with unreliable methodology and obscure sources."

lol? Not in ancient jewish/roman culture.

He is using absence of evidence as evidence of absence... you can't do that in history.



"[/FONT][FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Please understand that the stories themselves cannot serve as examples of eyewitness accounts since they came as products of the minds of the unknown authors, and not from the characters themselves. The Gospels describe narrative stories, written almost virtually in the third person. People who wish to portray themselves as eyewitnesses will write in the first person, not in the third person. Moreover, many of the passages attributed to Jesus could only have come from the invention of its authors. For example, many of the statements of Jesus claim to have come from him while allegedly alone. If so, who heard him? It becomes even more marked when the evangelists report about what Jesus thought. To whom did Jesus confide his thoughts? Clearly, the Gospels employ techniques that fictional writers use. In any case the Gospels can only serve, at best, as hearsay, and at worst, as fictional, mythological, or falsified stories."

He is attacking the evidence of the bible as it wasn't written 'by the eyewitnesses', so little of history was actually written, by the eyewitnesses. I believe it was luke that is believed to have investigated the life of jesus and followed around investigating and asking questions of eyewitnesses. If the stories were not true and were simply myth, wouldn't there be errors and differences in the bible? Instead what we have is so many seperate sources which completely agree with one another!

That last statement sentence is lol, we might as well forget all history.

"[/FONT][FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]As for the existence of original New Testament documents, none exist. No book of the New Testament survives in the original autograph copy. What we have then come from copies, and copies of copies, of questionable originals (if the stories came piecemeal over time, as it appears it has, then there may never have existed an original). The earliest copies we have came more than a century later than the autographs, and these exist on fragments of papyrus. [Pritchard; Graham] According to Hugh Schonfield,"

We don't have the original copies... what we do have is many, many, many copies of the original manuscripts, some with subtle differences so we can actually trace where the innacuracies came in. The sheer amount of copies we have and how much they agree with each other lends evidence to the fact that the copies are accurate! What he is suggesting is just plain quackery. The more than a century later is very debateable. (dead sea scrolls and some other manuscripts?)

I skimmed through the rest of that article, it's just nonsense, he's claiming one form of evidence (archaelogical evidence) as all powerful while ignoring the written evidence in the bible and completely dismissing it as nonsense 'as it wasn't written by the apostles themselves' (if that is indeed the case anyway! Some of the letters clearly aren't) People are obviously coming up with they myth of Jesus in thesedays so they can be persecuted and denounced for their faith. It completely ignores the fact that there would be No reason for people to claim they were christian in thesedays unless they believed it was true! (who feels like being a martyr today!)

Pay no attention to this nonsense... just look at the site it is written on.


[/FONT]

 

[loveschild]

Your not to think like the world.

 

[superdave5221]

The Talmud was written a long time after Jesus died by people who were not born before his death. So was every other secular source.

No secular sources recorded the 3 hours of darkness after Jesus' death, which would have been a pretty noteworthy event.

A Samaritan born historian named Thallus lived in Rome around 52 A.D. His works are lost, however, a third century writer, Julius Africanus, who was familiar with Thallus' history of Greece, commented on Thallus' opinion of the darkness of which you speak. Thallus explains away the darkness as an eclipse of the sun, an impossibility considering the length of time of the darkness, and the known positions of the moon in relation to the earth at that time. The point is that Thallus took the existence of the belief in Christ for granted. In other words, the circumstances surrounding the death and resurrection of Christ were common knowledge already by the middle of the first century. And so to was knowledge of the darkness, which Thallus, a pagan, tried to explain away by natural means.

 

[charisenexcelcis]

Re: Luke--there is internal evidence of careful research, for instance he obviously interviewed Mary.
Re: the darkness--we do not know how local the darkness was.

 

[BlackDove]

Let me guess, this same article claimed that the Christian ideas for Jesus were all derived from various pagan mythologies, right? : P

I'll throw my hat into the ring on this one when it's not 1am and I don't have class at 9:30am. D :

 

[jesus_be4_religion]

I wish I had the book I read about a year ago to show you but it was called something like the archaeological proof of Jesus. There are tons of proof that Christ was crucified by roman writing as well as Greek and many other sources some of them even being biased as to trying to disprove he rose from the dead. No archaeologist ever who has studied up on the bible ever tries to disprove he was crucified this is fact. Now it can never be proven that he arose till he returns this is what they argue over.

 

[Sharp]

Let me guess, this same article claimed that the Christian ideas for Jesus were all derived from various pagan mythologies, right? : P

I'll throw my hat into the ring on this one when it's not 1am and I don't have class at 9:30am. D :

Yes, you're exactly right!

Several different belief systems all sharing similar common characteristics. Conception between God and virgin. Child heralded as a hero by some. Birth predicted. Attempts to kill the child during his youth. Attracts a large following. Dies a martyr. Rises again and becomes a god.

 

[giantone]

You can find all kinds of things on youtube.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ia_aMJSF5-M